February 10, 2025 • 40 mins
It's 2004. BTK has made his presence known once more. He threatens to kill yet again. Will he do it? Or will police capture him first?
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to
hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out
the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
On June thirteenth, two thousand and four, a man was
walking to work in a secluded part of Whichital. As
he reached the intersection of First in Kansas, he noticed
something odd, a plastic bag taped to the back of
a stop sign. He opened it and found a letter
inside with a label that read BTK Field Ground. It
(01:04):
was a three page story written by BTK in the
third person. Here is what it said.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
If a person happens to be out on one of
these cold mornings in a certain part of Wichitah, that
is the northeast part, on a particular morning in January,
he might have noticed a man park his car in
a store parking lot, pause briefly, then walk across the
street and disappear among the houses and commercial buildings. If
(01:33):
they had followed him, they would have noticed his head
bent load the ground and wearing a heavy parka. If
they would have looked closer, they would notice his eyes
dark back and forth across the street, checking the house
windows and door. As he nears a house on the corner,
he quickly glanced around and jumped the wooded fence surrounding
(01:54):
the house. He knew the family left the house at
approximately eight forty five and would walk out to the
car and leave for school, and in approximately seven minutes
the lady Judy would return home. He had earlier in
the week seen them leave for school. One day, he
thought to himself, say, this may be it a perfect setup.
(02:19):
A house on the corner, a garage set off from
the house, a fenced yard, a large space from the
nearby neighbor's house, especially the back door. It was a
few days later that he stopped across the street and
followed the family car to see where they went. That morning,
she took the kids to school each and returned. A
(02:41):
perfect setup. It was close to his fantasy of a
victim all to himself, a person he could tie up, torture,
and maybe.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Kill, killed four members of a family.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Had you vanished from her home, suddenly last weekend, her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Back and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. It was June of two
thousand and four and BTK was back. Starting in March
(03:54):
of that year, BTK had begun to send letters to
news outlets and police with haunting and threatening messages. At
KKE TV, this was a massive by far the biggest
story since btk's first murders in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 7 (04:13):
And Good Evening we have exclusive details a new communication
that could be from the serial killer BTK. On June thirteenth,
Whichita police recovered the letter which you heard about at
the top of the episode. It was discovered by a
man who was walking to work taped to the back
of a stop sign. It was btk's third correspondent since
(04:35):
his return and his longest letter to date. Previous letters
had been short, vague packages sent to local news outlets,
but this was different.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It was a lengthy and detailed recounting of his first murder,
the nineteen seventy four killing of the Otero family. He
gave a detailed, first hand account of the event from
thirty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
About twenty minutes before nine, the door unlocked and the
boy stepped outside. In just a flash, he ordered him
back inside, confronting the family, armed with a pistol and knife,
he told them that this was a stick up and
not to be alarmed.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
This letter was handed over to Wichita PD. Police detective
Kenny Landwaer quickly noticed that the letter was actually a photocopy,
most likely of a journal entry about the murder written
by BTK right after the killing in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The family was preparing to leave. The kids were packing
their lunches and they had to gather their coats by
the table. The mother, Judy, asked what was going on
and said they had no money or anything of value.
The boy was by his folk's side looking scared, and
the girl Josephine was beginning to cry. All of them
(05:59):
gathered in the hall. He told them their orders. He
was wanted and needed the car money in food. Joe
noticed his gun hand shake and told the family to
settle down and all would be okay.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The letter also included a graphic hand drawing titled the
sexual Thrill is My Bill. It depicted a naked and
tied up woman hanging by the neck from a rope.
Why this letter, why recount the Otero story once again?
And why did he leave it in a remote location?
(06:39):
Raider would answer some of these questions years later in
the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I left the package at first in Kansas. This symbolic
meaning was important to me. We live in a symbolic world.
I didn't pick the spot just because it was handy.
There was a purpose. The stop sign was stop and
look people of Kansas. The poll was the male symbol.
I picked the number three type date attached the package
(07:07):
on June twelfth. The package was wrapped in plastic and
duct tape, a symbol of bondage and staple items in
a BTK hit kit. By posting it here, I figured
an amateur would handle it before the police that would
destroy key evidence.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, BTK
labeled the letter as a quote field gram. Raider would
later explain what this meant.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The BTK field gram is like a telegram. It short
has important news coding from Morse code in the cat
and Mouse game. I envisioned the chapter of the first
BTK hit, chapter one, being the oteros.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
So this was chapter one of the BTK autobiography that
he had promised in a previous letter. If you remember
from the last episode, one of btk's earlier packages included
an outline for a thirteen chapter book about his deeds.
Rader intended to share each chapter of his story one
(08:13):
at a time, and this was just the beginning. Rader
wanted to keep the momentum going, and so the pace
of his letter started to pick up. The next one
came only a month later. This time it was found
somewhere that no one expected to find it.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
This is the strongest warning yet police have issued for
widgetans to watch out and take extra precautions. After a
letter was found at the Wichitaw Public Library early Saturday morning.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
This new package was discovered by a Wichita library employee
on the morning of July seventeenth, two thousand and four.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Speculation immediately went to BTK and another possible communication from
the serial killer. Police now confirming they are turning the
letter as such while they wait for the FBI to
confirm whether the letter is in fact from BTK.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
At Cake, we didn't know the contents of this letter.
Police had confiscated it before any journalists had a chance
to see it, but investigators had it and they were
shocked by what it said. In it, BTK claimed responsibility
for a new victim. This letter was titled Jakie, and
(09:30):
this time BTK says he met and killed a nineteen
year old named Jake Allen. Just a few weeks earlier,
a Jake Allen had been found dead near Wellington, Kansas,
just outside of Wichita, but police hadn't determined the cause
of death just yet. And then this new letter arrives,
(09:52):
where BTK writes.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I had to stop work on chapter two of the
BTK story due to the death of j I was
so excited about this incident that I had to tell
the story.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
BTK goes on to say that he supposedly corresponded with
Jake over email. According to the letter, the two men
talked about explicit sexual desires.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Jakie had fantasies about sexual masturbation in unusual ways with
bondage and homosexual thrills.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
The letter implies that at some point BTK convinced Jake
to meet him in person, and that BTK then murdered him.
Also included in this library package were photos of a
hooded figure in bondage and a crew drawing of a
bound up mail. The BTK Task Force looked into the
(10:48):
supposed connection to Jake Allen, but they found no evidence
that BTK was actually involved, and in fact, it was
eventually determined that Jake Allen had actually come headed suicide.
So what was this all about? Just a prank raider
would later admit that he was just toying with police.
(11:10):
Here's what he said years later, we're counting the library package.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I posted the Jaki letter under the cover story of
Erin's on a Saturday morning. I handled the Jakie package
with gloves. I saw the article about him in the
Wichita Eagle. I meant no disrespect to his family. I
only used him as a symbol to stir the pot.
I used some male slick ads to draw off. With
(11:35):
this letter, I let the police know that I was older,
but perhaps smarter with age, even if they didn't know
my age. At the age of fifty nine, I was
pretty old for a serial killer to be on the prowl.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Raider was pretty happy with himself. He thought he had
thrown the police for a loop. At the very least,
he made them suspect that he was still dangerous, that
he might be able to kill again all these years later,
and in fact, Raider was considering it throughout two thousand
and four. While sending these letters. He was still prowling,
(12:15):
planning to kill again, and he had his eyes on
a new target, which he discovered while working his job
with Wichita Animal Control. It was his first real project
in fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
My first attempt was October twenty second, two thousand and four.
As I drove back and forth to the Wichita Animal
shelter on North Hillside, I watched the address alone hydraulic.
The houses were set back a little. The house had
a female, a high school girl, and a male at
one time, but he disappeared or left as the days passed.
(12:52):
I would write in a log book the dates and
times of her routines. She had a perfect pattern. She
was a brunette, a bit heavy, medium height, in her
thirties or forties. She worked at a machine shop on
the corner of Hillside in thirty seventh, just north of
the shelter, so easy for me to stalk.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
We don't know her real name, but Raider called her
project board Water. After enough stalking, he finally picked a
day in the fall of two thousand and four and
made his move.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
On Friday, October twenty second. I packed up my hit kit,
bike and gear I was going to use on her
at the house, so I was ready. I drove by
the house all pent up. I saw a crew working
at the curb near her house. The unknown always and unknown,
too many people around. I waited the time ran out.
(13:48):
I was disappointed. I wasn't going to do the hit,
but I thought I would try again in the spring
when I had an excuse for fishing.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
It was a failed attempt. He got to buy the
number of people surrounding our house, most of them apparently
construction workers. But Raider wasn't done that day. He decided
to do something else instead. Before going home, on October
twenty second, he made a detour. He stopped off at
the Omni Center in Wichita.
Speaker 8 (14:19):
A UPS worker comes and goes with nothing to say,
not willing to talk about his colleague who's believed to
have found a suspicious package in this dropbox on Friday,
October twenty second, and this FedEx worker says, the employee
who usually runs by here has to be taken off
this stop because of what happened Friday night. This email
is all police would release concerning the package, it says. Recently,
(14:42):
the Wichita Police Department obtained another letter that could be
connected to the BTK investigation. It comes on October twenty second,
the thirtieth anniversary of his first communication with police concerning
his string of killings.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
It was a big day for BTK. This new letter
included information about his background and upbringing. This was chapter two,
titled Dawn. It included his supposed birth year and told
stories from his childhood. He admitted to being a peeping
tom and even gave away that he had been in
(15:18):
the Air Force. This very likely gave Raider a confidence
boost his story was getting out there. But this new
information also emboldened the police. They started looking for men
matching his age and history, and very soon they found someone.
(15:48):
On December one, two thousand and four, investigators honed in
on a promising BTK suspect. All day, police staked out
the house where the suspect lived. Then at around seven
thirty pm, they raided the house guns drawn.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
I had thought what I heard were knocks on the door,
like hard knocks, and I wasn't feeling well that day.
I had already turned in for the night, and the
next thing I knew there were people in my house,
several plain clothes policemen and some uniform There were at
least five nine milimeters pointing at me.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
The man they arrested was sixty four year old Roger Valadez.
He was born in nineteen thirty nine, the year BTK
had claimed was his birth year in the last letter,
and he lived near railroad tracks, something BTK had also
alluded to in the letter. I remember this night well.
My news director and I had to spend the night
(16:48):
in the newsroom just in case an announcement was made,
so Cake could be the first to announce btk's arrest.
They arrested Validez on some small charges misdemeanors like trespassing,
our housing code violations. Police made a mess of his
house and interrogated him for the next twenty four hours.
Speaker 9 (17:11):
They broke the storm door open, and they broke the
wooden entry door to gain entry into my house, and
there they were. They told me that I had given DNA.
They held me down and they swabbed my cheek and
they took it forciately.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
After the DNA swab, they waited for the results. But
a few days later KSNTV announced that BTK had been
caught and that his name was Roger Valadez. They had
jumped the gun because soon the DNA results did come back.
Roger was innocent and cleared of suspicion, but the damage
(17:50):
on Roger's life was already done. He was supposedly branded
a killer by some people in the community and struggled
to regain his trust with local He later sued the
TV station for one point one million dollars and one.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
My name was in My family's name was besmirched and
damaged by the media in a negative way. I want
this to come out and be known that there was
a travesty of justice here.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
This false alarm was only a temporary distraction, because a
few weeks later BTK would remind everyone that he was
still out there. Here's former Wichita Deputy District Attorney Kevin O'Connor.
Speaker 6 (18:34):
Dennis Raider called a quick trip, told a kid that
was working there that there was a package in a park,
gave directions to it, but he gave the wrong directions
and the police couldn't find it. There was a gentleman
that was walking through the park about a week or
so later that saw a package, picked it up, took
it home.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
This discovery took place on December thirteenth, two thousand and
four in Murdoch Park.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He lived with his mother.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
They opened it up and it was a doll purported
to be Nancy Fox and a description of the Nancy
Fox murder.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I spotted Nancy one day while cruising the area, found
out her name by checking her mailbox, and tracked her
to work up close. I visited the store where she worked,
asking for.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
Some jewelry, and they did what all good citizens would
do in this situation like this. They called KKE TV.
And I'm being sarcastic because they didn't call the police
like they probably should have. But they called kke TV
and KTV reporter went out there, Janine Keasling, who's a
friend of mine. Janine was the reporter on the street.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Police have not confirmed this latest package was from the killer,
but also inside was a note with what previous investigators
say appears to be BTK signature. We've been asked not
to show that.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
What ended up happening is is that they wanted to
film police opening up the things, and the police, of
course we're not going to let them do it. I
think that created some animosity.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I can remember about this time, tensions were rising between
us in the newsroom and the police. All of us
wanted to catch BTK, but there were some disagreements about
what to make public and what to withhold. That would
become an issue once more when BTK sent a slew
of new letters toss at KTV.
Speaker 10 (20:35):
It appears BTK is communicating again. KKTV receiving another mysterious
message today.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
This one contains both a message to Cake and police
on Janine Keasling, all the exclusive details coming up in
a live report.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
The first of these was a letter received on January
twenty fifth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It said date week of January seventeen eight, two thousand
and five, where between sixty ninth Street North and seventy
seventh Street North on Seneca Street contents post toasties box,
PJ Little Mix and doll, punt of KS, acronym list
(21:16):
and jewelry.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
This time, the Cake news director sent reporters to the
site to gather the package, which was in fact a
post hosty cereal box. It contained a list of his
favorite acronyms, including DBS for death by strangulation and DTPG
for death to Pretty Girl. It also contained a naked
(21:41):
barbie doll with a noose around its neck. Police thought
PJ Littlemechs might be referring to the murder of twelve
year old Josephinotaro, along with the other three members of
her family, who were killed in nineteen seventy four. The
Cake team brought the package back to the station and
the news director wanted to use it as a bargaining
(22:02):
ship with the police.
Speaker 6 (22:06):
And the police weren't having that, and it created some difficulties,
and I even had to get on the phone and
talk to KKETV saying this is a homicide investigation and
we were going to get that information one way.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Or the other.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Even KKTV anchor Larry Hattiberg thought it was a bad
idea to keep the new package hostage.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
We had one instance in which a news director started
to withhold one of the postcards and try to trade
it for an interview with the police chief. I was
standing there when he said that I had encouraged him
not to do that at any time. The police got
very mad and he came within ten seconds of being
(22:49):
arrested and hauled them to the jail.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
The situation did create some sourdness.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
So what Cake ended up doing is sending a film
crew out to where the cereal box was. That created
some hard feelings since they drove into a potential crime scene.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
They ran over some tracks in the gravel road with
their car. That's a big no no, and it was
because the two were a little bit inexperienced. Police are
probably not happy about that and certainly let us know.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
That was a difficult time. But I also tried to
take into account the pressure that the media had too,
the need to be the first reporting. So it was understood,
but it did create an animosity that hadn't been there before.
Because I think if you go through this case, you
see the media doing their best they can to help
(23:44):
as much as they can and still be responsible journalists.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
My opinion on the matter is this, it was a
very tricky time for all the media in which it all.
I agree with Larry as a longtime news anchor, it
was a very tough balancing app This on one hand,
was the biggest story any of us would ever cover
in our career. While we felt the drive to do
it better than our competitors, we were also aware that
(24:12):
at this point we were literally partnering with the police
department to try and catch a killer. After this event,
we all collectively decided to cut the in fighting. We
all had a more important job to do and we
didn't want BTK to win. The next time a BTK
(24:32):
letter came through, we were all on the same page,
and that next letter only came about a week later.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
Today's message is aily similar to a postcard Cake received
last week. Keate Janine Keysling is live outside the Cake
studios in northwest Wichita, Jenny Well Larry.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
For the second time in just more than a week,
another possible communication from BTK arrives here at our studios.
The communications are getting more frequent and a lot more
personal which top police have asked us not to reveal
certain information contained in the communications sent to Cake News.
Investigators are concerned it could hamper the BTK investigation. To date,
(25:12):
we have honored all of their requests.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
This letter, though, contained a troubling message from BTK, thanks to.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The news team for their efforts. Sorry about Susan and
Jeff's colds.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
As we told you about in episode one, Cake was
btk's favorite news station, and this letter revealed that he
knew about our colds, which my co anchor Jeff and
I had briefly mentioned on the air just a few
days prior. It was a chilling realization that BTK was
watching us. From that day forward, I had to be hypervigilant,
(25:52):
never leaving the station at night alone or engaging with
any strangers who approached me. Unfortunately, that letter didn't provide
any new leads for the police. However, the earlier letter
that revealed the location of the toasties box had one
more curious message to follow up on.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It said, let me know somehow if you are Richita
PD received this. Also let me know if you were
PD received number seven at home depot Dropsite one eight
five thanks.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
After seeing the reference to home Depot in btk's previous letter,
police combed every home depot in the area. They posted
notes in the employee breakrooms asking if anyone knew anything
about a strange package. Finally, one employee responded. He said
that some weeks earlier, in January, he noticed an odd
(27:02):
cereal box sitting in the bed of his pickup truck.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Didn't think anything of it. I don't know what rock
the person was living under, but didn't really think anything
of it and threw it away.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
This is Kevin O'Connor again.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Well, it turns out that his roommate had not put
the trash down, so they actually did recover it. Home
depot was extremely cooperative and had very good cameras. We
were able to see a car pull up next to
this employee's car. One of the detective's detective Ralph, who
knows a lot about cars, immediately identified it as a
(27:38):
black cheap Cherokee. One of my duties then was to
track down and go through or try to get a
list of all the black jeep Cherokees in which Ta Kansas,
and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
The letter in this home Depot Cereal box also had
an interesting question written on it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Can I communicate with a floppy not be traced to
a computer? Be honest?
Speaker 3 (28:04):
BTK was actually asking police if he could communicate with
a floppy disc without being caught. So far, he had
been communicating solely with paper. Maybe he thought it was
too risky and that floppy discs would be safer. The
letter continued.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Under miscellaneous section four ninety four, rex it will be okay.
Run it for a few days. In case I'm out
of town. I will try a floppy for a test
run sometime in the near future February or March.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Let me translate. BTK was instructing police to post an
ad in the miscellaneous section of the newspaper. If the
ad had the message rex it will be okay, that
would signal BTK the police had agreed to communicate via
floppy disc. Of course, investigators jumped at the opportunity. On
(29:01):
January twenty eighth, the police ran a classified ad in
the Wichita Eagle. It used that phrase so BTK would
know it was for him, and it asked him to
contact the police at a specific PO box address. Raider
thought he had them in his track. Little did he
know he was about to fall into theirs. In the
(29:26):
book Confession of a Serial Killer, author Catherine Ramslin describes
Raider's mindset at this point.
Speaker 11 (29:33):
Rader trusted the police to tell him the truth. He
had already questioned an officer, Randy Stone, about the security
of email and learned that it can be traced. He
thought that floppies were another matter, however.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And on February sixteenth, police got their biggest break when
Raider sent his final correspondence in the form of a
floppy disc. It also came with postcards with instructiontions on
how to keep communicating, but this time police wouldn't need them.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
This still gives me goosebumps because I was in the
room along with the rest of the task force and
police Officer Stone puts the disc into the computer. He
goes into the computer language. It's just gibberish. I can't
understand it, and embedded in there. As you go through
the lines of meaningless symbols and letters, you see Dennis,
(30:31):
and then a few lines later you see christ Lutheran
Church and then Parksey Library.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Buried in the disc, which had only one file and
it titled this is a test. Was metadata now for
anyone who doesn't know. Metadata is like an invisible record
of who accesses the data on the disc. And when
an unbeknownst to Raider he had left his digital tracks
on the floppy.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
Disc, somebody got on Google and just googled Christ Lutheran
Church and up there in the corner I could still
see it to this day is a picture of the
president of the church, which is Dennis Raider. Right away,
Kenny landwere sent out a couple of detectives I think
it was Detective Ralph and Detective Schneider, Clinch Schneider, and
(31:19):
they drove out to an address on Independent Street in
Park City where Raider lived, and sure enough there was
a black cherokee in the driveway that belonged to his son.
Ralph and Schneider wanted to make an arrest right then
and there. I remember listening to the phone call that
Ralph and Schneider had with Land where I was standing
right there, and they called and said there's a black
(31:42):
cherokee in the driveway. And I'll never forget how cool
Kenny Landware was. He said, Okay, come on back, and
they weren't very happy about it. There are a lot
of words that you can't say on TV. Again, I
think it goes to Kenny how prepared he was for
the situation. He wanted to make it a better case.
(32:02):
At that time, there was a concern if that they
went up and contacted Raider, it would spook him and
he would get rid of evidence. So we went about
preparing and stalking him. Learning about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
You can understand why Kenny Landweer wanted to wait. Without
rock solid evidence, Raider might walk free. So they turned
to DNA. If you remember, they had preserved samples of
BTK seamen from the crime scenes all those years ago,
and they have been testing it against people all across Wichita.
(32:40):
Oddly enough, my co anker, Larry Hadiberg, was among those
swabbed for DNA.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I had two detectives who I knew, show up at
the TV station and say, Larry, we need to take
your DNA. Said, okay, why do you need my DNA?
And they said, because we're getting hips to the BTK
tip line that since you know so much about BTK,
maybe you are BTK. And I said, well, I can
(33:09):
assure you I'm not. And they said, we're pretty sure
you're not. And what this is is just an elimination process.
Speaker 10 (33:17):
Now in the interest of full disclosure. As you know,
the Wichita Police Department has swabbed over four thousand men
to eliminate them as BTK suspects. Well, in the past
forty eight hours, I too have been swabbed. I now
joined the list of many journalists, police officials, and businessmen.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Who have consented to the swab.
Speaker 10 (33:34):
But I will tell you it gives you a very
odd feeling.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
I admit at the scenes I fit the age profile.
Then I talk about it on TV, so people say, well,
he must be BTK. I was not.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
But police weren't concerned about Larry or anyone else's DNA anymore.
They only wanted the DNA of Dennis Raider. If they
could match him to the DNA from BTK semen, it
was checkmate, and they came up with a scheme involving
Raider's daughter, Carrie Rawson.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
He had a daughter that had gone to school at
Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. With her age and
being in school, the investigator said she would have had
a PAP smear while in college. And although there was
some thought of like a TV show where we're going
to go and maybe get a cup of coffee that
he's drinking, or wait until he spits on the sidewalk,
(34:32):
which is a very CSI TV show kind of stuff
where you may or may not get DNA. What we
figured is we could do reverse DNA. We realized the
significance of that decision that we would be going into
somebody's medical history, and I can't tell you that there
was a lot of respect paid to the fact that
we're getting somebody's medical history unknowingly. And so what we
(34:54):
ended up doing rather than issuing a subpoena is we
prepared something akin to a search warrant and brought to
Judge Waller with a affidavid as to why we were
seeking it.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
As Kevin says, Carrie had no idea what was going
on or that police had been accessing her medical files
and using her DNA to get to her father.
Speaker 12 (35:18):
They got a subpoena and they got a warrant without
my knowledge, and they went to case date dug through
all my health records and found out I had had
PAF smears like in two thousand and two thousand and one,
and there was the slide, and they take that to
the KBI lab in Topeka, and some technicians able to
extract that old DNA mine pretty brilliant from the slide.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It would take some time to get the results back,
so in the meantime, police followed Raider, memorized his routines,
and learned everything about him.
Speaker 6 (35:53):
During that week, we found out where he worked, which
was with Park City. He was an animal control officer
with an office right next to the police department, like
on the other side of the wall, and went about
looking at how he did things. So we knew that
Raider would leave the office before lunch. He would travel
to his home in Park City, not far away, and
(36:14):
so the plans were made. Search warrants were drawn in advance.
We did search warrants for his home, his parents' home,
the Park City Library. I remember being part listening and
watching how they talked about who would be on the
arrest team, how the arrest would go down, what they
would do with him when he was arrested. I mean
(36:35):
they even have it down to who was going to
put the cuffs on him, who was going to walk
him back to the car that Kenny Landwuare was going
to be in. It was a fascinating night to be
a part of I remember asking if I could go,
and they reminded me I was not a police officer.
That they liked me a lot, but I'm not a cop.
I even offered to go in the trunk. I had
(36:57):
to just listen to it from the command center there
the epic center that had been set up, but the
walls around the conference room were all about Dennis Raider
and learning his history and for the lack of a
better phrase, stalking him for about a week.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Finally, on February twenty fifth, two thousand and five, after
days of waiting and decades of police work, investigators got
what they were looking for. The DNA results came back.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
It told us that the semen that was from the
feet of Josie o'tero, the stain that was left in
the bathrobe that was at Nancy Fox's head, and the
fingernail from Vicky Waigerley all those three DNA samples by
using reverse DNA told us that whoever left those samples
(37:53):
was the father of Kerrie Raider, which meant Dennis Raider.
And then that was the time to make an arrest.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 6 (38:09):
On that day, I remember it was radio silence.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
When the chief came out and said we've caught BTK.
Denial was the first reaction. One thing now said, My
phone started ranging and literally literally didn't quit ranging all
day on.
Speaker 12 (38:29):
I've gone into physical shock.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
I shook for four days.
Speaker 12 (38:32):
I'm spinning, literally about to pass out, and I make
it over to my couch right.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Then at that moment, I'm starting to plan my revenge
now that they got him, how am I going to
get my hands on him?
Speaker 11 (38:43):
Once he realized there was no getting out of this,
he then admitted to all the murders and said, well,
since you know about seven, I'll tell you event some others.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
(39:25):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producerrima Il Kali.
Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Podcasts and Caroline Origemma at tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by
(39:46):
Claudia Daffrico, original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original
music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin
Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and the Nord Group.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(40:08):
favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to
hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out
the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:39):
On June thirteenth, two thousand and four, a man was
walking to work in a secluded part of Whichital. As
he reached the intersection of First in Kansas, he noticed
something odd, a plastic bag taped to the back of
a stop sign. He opened it and found a letter
inside with a label that read BTK Field Ground. It
(01:04):
was a three page story written by BTK in the
third person. Here is what it said.
Speaker 1 (01:11):
If a person happens to be out on one of
these cold mornings in a certain part of Wichitah, that
is the northeast part, on a particular morning in January,
he might have noticed a man park his car in
a store parking lot, pause briefly, then walk across the
street and disappear among the houses and commercial buildings. If
(01:33):
they had followed him, they would have noticed his head
bent load the ground and wearing a heavy parka. If
they would have looked closer, they would notice his eyes
dark back and forth across the street, checking the house
windows and door. As he nears a house on the corner,
he quickly glanced around and jumped the wooded fence surrounding
(01:54):
the house. He knew the family left the house at
approximately eight forty five and would walk out to the
car and leave for school, and in approximately seven minutes
the lady Judy would return home. He had earlier in
the week seen them leave for school. One day, he
thought to himself, say, this may be it a perfect setup.
(02:19):
A house on the corner, a garage set off from
the house, a fenced yard, a large space from the
nearby neighbor's house, especially the back door. It was a
few days later that he stopped across the street and
followed the family car to see where they went. That morning,
she took the kids to school each and returned. A
(02:41):
perfect setup. It was close to his fantasy of a
victim all to himself, a person he could tie up, torture,
and maybe.
Speaker 4 (02:53):
Kill, killed four members of a family.
Speaker 5 (03:02):
Had you vanished from her home, suddenly last weekend, her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled.
Speaker 6 (03:13):
You could tell it was a plan scenario.
Speaker 5 (03:16):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 1 (03:24):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (03:26):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them.
Speaker 4 (03:29):
Back and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 3 (03:33):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV, I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. It was June of two
thousand and four and BTK was back. Starting in March
(03:54):
of that year, BTK had begun to send letters to
news outlets and police with haunting and threatening messages. At
KKE TV, this was a massive by far the biggest
story since btk's first murders in the nineteen seventies.
Speaker 7 (04:13):
And Good Evening we have exclusive details a new communication
that could be from the serial killer BTK. On June thirteenth,
Whichita police recovered the letter which you heard about at
the top of the episode. It was discovered by a
man who was walking to work taped to the back
of a stop sign. It was btk's third correspondent since
(04:35):
his return and his longest letter to date. Previous letters
had been short, vague packages sent to local news outlets,
but this was different.
Speaker 3 (04:46):
It was a lengthy and detailed recounting of his first murder,
the nineteen seventy four killing of the Otero family. He
gave a detailed, first hand account of the event from
thirty years earlier.
Speaker 1 (05:02):
About twenty minutes before nine, the door unlocked and the
boy stepped outside. In just a flash, he ordered him
back inside, confronting the family, armed with a pistol and knife,
he told them that this was a stick up and
not to be alarmed.
Speaker 3 (05:20):
This letter was handed over to Wichita PD. Police detective
Kenny Landwaer quickly noticed that the letter was actually a photocopy,
most likely of a journal entry about the murder written
by BTK right after the killing in nineteen seventy four.
Speaker 1 (05:38):
The family was preparing to leave. The kids were packing
their lunches and they had to gather their coats by
the table. The mother, Judy, asked what was going on
and said they had no money or anything of value.
The boy was by his folk's side looking scared, and
the girl Josephine was beginning to cry. All of them
(05:59):
gathered in the hall. He told them their orders. He
was wanted and needed the car money in food. Joe
noticed his gun hand shake and told the family to
settle down and all would be okay.
Speaker 3 (06:16):
The letter also included a graphic hand drawing titled the
sexual Thrill is My Bill. It depicted a naked and
tied up woman hanging by the neck from a rope.
Why this letter, why recount the Otero story once again?
And why did he leave it in a remote location?
(06:39):
Raider would answer some of these questions years later in
the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (06:46):
I left the package at first in Kansas. This symbolic
meaning was important to me. We live in a symbolic world.
I didn't pick the spot just because it was handy.
There was a purpose. The stop sign was stop and
look people of Kansas. The poll was the male symbol.
I picked the number three type date attached the package
(07:07):
on June twelfth. The package was wrapped in plastic and
duct tape, a symbol of bondage and staple items in
a BTK hit kit. By posting it here, I figured
an amateur would handle it before the police that would
destroy key evidence.
Speaker 3 (07:25):
As we mentioned at the beginning of the episode, BTK
labeled the letter as a quote field gram. Raider would
later explain what this meant.
Speaker 1 (07:35):
The BTK field gram is like a telegram. It short
has important news coding from Morse code in the cat
and Mouse game. I envisioned the chapter of the first
BTK hit, chapter one, being the oteros.
Speaker 3 (07:51):
So this was chapter one of the BTK autobiography that
he had promised in a previous letter. If you remember
from the last episode, one of btk's earlier packages included
an outline for a thirteen chapter book about his deeds.
Rader intended to share each chapter of his story one
(08:13):
at a time, and this was just the beginning. Rader
wanted to keep the momentum going, and so the pace
of his letter started to pick up. The next one
came only a month later. This time it was found
somewhere that no one expected to find it.
Speaker 5 (08:34):
This is the strongest warning yet police have issued for
widgetans to watch out and take extra precautions. After a
letter was found at the Wichitaw Public Library early Saturday morning.
Speaker 3 (08:45):
This new package was discovered by a Wichita library employee
on the morning of July seventeenth, two thousand and four.
Speaker 5 (08:54):
Speculation immediately went to BTK and another possible communication from
the serial killer. Police now confirming they are turning the
letter as such while they wait for the FBI to
confirm whether the letter is in fact from BTK.
Speaker 3 (09:09):
At Cake, we didn't know the contents of this letter.
Police had confiscated it before any journalists had a chance
to see it, but investigators had it and they were
shocked by what it said. In it, BTK claimed responsibility
for a new victim. This letter was titled Jakie, and
(09:30):
this time BTK says he met and killed a nineteen
year old named Jake Allen. Just a few weeks earlier,
a Jake Allen had been found dead near Wellington, Kansas,
just outside of Wichita, but police hadn't determined the cause
of death just yet. And then this new letter arrives,
(09:52):
where BTK writes.
Speaker 1 (09:55):
I had to stop work on chapter two of the
BTK story due to the death of j I was
so excited about this incident that I had to tell
the story.
Speaker 3 (10:06):
BTK goes on to say that he supposedly corresponded with
Jake over email. According to the letter, the two men
talked about explicit sexual desires.
Speaker 1 (10:17):
Jakie had fantasies about sexual masturbation in unusual ways with
bondage and homosexual thrills.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
The letter implies that at some point BTK convinced Jake
to meet him in person, and that BTK then murdered him.
Also included in this library package were photos of a
hooded figure in bondage and a crew drawing of a
bound up mail. The BTK Task Force looked into the
(10:48):
supposed connection to Jake Allen, but they found no evidence
that BTK was actually involved, and in fact, it was
eventually determined that Jake Allen had actually come headed suicide.
So what was this all about? Just a prank raider
would later admit that he was just toying with police.
(11:10):
Here's what he said years later, we're counting the library package.
Speaker 1 (11:15):
I posted the Jaki letter under the cover story of
Erin's on a Saturday morning. I handled the Jakie package
with gloves. I saw the article about him in the
Wichita Eagle. I meant no disrespect to his family. I
only used him as a symbol to stir the pot.
I used some male slick ads to draw off. With
(11:35):
this letter, I let the police know that I was older,
but perhaps smarter with age, even if they didn't know
my age. At the age of fifty nine, I was
pretty old for a serial killer to be on the prowl.
Speaker 3 (11:52):
Raider was pretty happy with himself. He thought he had
thrown the police for a loop. At the very least,
he made them suspect that he was still dangerous, that
he might be able to kill again all these years later,
and in fact, Raider was considering it throughout two thousand
and four. While sending these letters. He was still prowling,
(12:15):
planning to kill again, and he had his eyes on
a new target, which he discovered while working his job
with Wichita Animal Control. It was his first real project
in fifteen years.
Speaker 1 (12:30):
My first attempt was October twenty second, two thousand and four.
As I drove back and forth to the Wichita Animal
shelter on North Hillside, I watched the address alone hydraulic.
The houses were set back a little. The house had
a female, a high school girl, and a male at
one time, but he disappeared or left as the days passed.
(12:52):
I would write in a log book the dates and
times of her routines. She had a perfect pattern. She
was a brunette, a bit heavy, medium height, in her
thirties or forties. She worked at a machine shop on
the corner of Hillside in thirty seventh, just north of
the shelter, so easy for me to stalk.
Speaker 3 (13:12):
We don't know her real name, but Raider called her
project board Water. After enough stalking, he finally picked a
day in the fall of two thousand and four and
made his move.
Speaker 1 (13:25):
On Friday, October twenty second. I packed up my hit kit,
bike and gear I was going to use on her
at the house, so I was ready. I drove by
the house all pent up. I saw a crew working
at the curb near her house. The unknown always and unknown,
too many people around. I waited the time ran out.
(13:48):
I was disappointed. I wasn't going to do the hit,
but I thought I would try again in the spring
when I had an excuse for fishing.
Speaker 3 (13:57):
It was a failed attempt. He got to buy the
number of people surrounding our house, most of them apparently
construction workers. But Raider wasn't done that day. He decided
to do something else instead. Before going home, on October
twenty second, he made a detour. He stopped off at
the Omni Center in Wichita.
Speaker 8 (14:19):
A UPS worker comes and goes with nothing to say,
not willing to talk about his colleague who's believed to
have found a suspicious package in this dropbox on Friday,
October twenty second, and this FedEx worker says, the employee
who usually runs by here has to be taken off
this stop because of what happened Friday night. This email
is all police would release concerning the package, it says. Recently,
(14:42):
the Wichita Police Department obtained another letter that could be
connected to the BTK investigation. It comes on October twenty second,
the thirtieth anniversary of his first communication with police concerning
his string of killings.
Speaker 3 (14:57):
It was a big day for BTK. This new letter
included information about his background and upbringing. This was chapter two,
titled Dawn. It included his supposed birth year and told
stories from his childhood. He admitted to being a peeping
tom and even gave away that he had been in
(15:18):
the Air Force. This very likely gave Raider a confidence
boost his story was getting out there. But this new
information also emboldened the police. They started looking for men
matching his age and history, and very soon they found someone.
(15:48):
On December one, two thousand and four, investigators honed in
on a promising BTK suspect. All day, police staked out
the house where the suspect lived. Then at around seven
thirty pm, they raided the house guns drawn.
Speaker 9 (16:06):
I had thought what I heard were knocks on the door,
like hard knocks, and I wasn't feeling well that day.
I had already turned in for the night, and the
next thing I knew there were people in my house,
several plain clothes policemen and some uniform There were at
least five nine milimeters pointing at me.
Speaker 3 (16:28):
The man they arrested was sixty four year old Roger Valadez.
He was born in nineteen thirty nine, the year BTK
had claimed was his birth year in the last letter,
and he lived near railroad tracks, something BTK had also
alluded to in the letter. I remember this night well.
My news director and I had to spend the night
(16:48):
in the newsroom just in case an announcement was made,
so Cake could be the first to announce btk's arrest.
They arrested Validez on some small charges misdemeanors like trespassing,
our housing code violations. Police made a mess of his
house and interrogated him for the next twenty four hours.
Speaker 9 (17:11):
They broke the storm door open, and they broke the
wooden entry door to gain entry into my house, and
there they were. They told me that I had given DNA.
They held me down and they swabbed my cheek and
they took it forciately.
Speaker 3 (17:25):
After the DNA swab, they waited for the results. But
a few days later KSNTV announced that BTK had been
caught and that his name was Roger Valadez. They had
jumped the gun because soon the DNA results did come back.
Roger was innocent and cleared of suspicion, but the damage
(17:50):
on Roger's life was already done. He was supposedly branded
a killer by some people in the community and struggled
to regain his trust with local He later sued the
TV station for one point one million dollars and one.
Speaker 9 (18:07):
My name was in My family's name was besmirched and
damaged by the media in a negative way. I want
this to come out and be known that there was
a travesty of justice here.
Speaker 3 (18:20):
This false alarm was only a temporary distraction, because a
few weeks later BTK would remind everyone that he was
still out there. Here's former Wichita Deputy District Attorney Kevin O'Connor.
Speaker 6 (18:34):
Dennis Raider called a quick trip, told a kid that
was working there that there was a package in a park,
gave directions to it, but he gave the wrong directions
and the police couldn't find it. There was a gentleman
that was walking through the park about a week or
so later that saw a package, picked it up, took
it home.
Speaker 3 (18:55):
This discovery took place on December thirteenth, two thousand and
four in Murdoch Park.
Speaker 2 (19:01):
He lived with his mother.
Speaker 6 (19:02):
They opened it up and it was a doll purported
to be Nancy Fox and a description of the Nancy
Fox murder.
Speaker 1 (19:12):
I spotted Nancy one day while cruising the area, found
out her name by checking her mailbox, and tracked her
to work up close. I visited the store where she worked,
asking for.
Speaker 6 (19:23):
Some jewelry, and they did what all good citizens would
do in this situation like this. They called KKE TV.
And I'm being sarcastic because they didn't call the police
like they probably should have. But they called kke TV
and KTV reporter went out there, Janine Keasling, who's a
friend of mine. Janine was the reporter on the street.
Speaker 5 (19:47):
Police have not confirmed this latest package was from the killer,
but also inside was a note with what previous investigators
say appears to be BTK signature. We've been asked not
to show that.
Speaker 6 (20:00):
What ended up happening is is that they wanted to
film police opening up the things, and the police, of
course we're not going to let them do it. I
think that created some animosity.
Speaker 3 (20:13):
I can remember about this time, tensions were rising between
us in the newsroom and the police. All of us
wanted to catch BTK, but there were some disagreements about
what to make public and what to withhold. That would
become an issue once more when BTK sent a slew
of new letters toss at KTV.
Speaker 10 (20:35):
It appears BTK is communicating again. KKTV receiving another mysterious
message today.
Speaker 5 (20:42):
This one contains both a message to Cake and police
on Janine Keasling, all the exclusive details coming up in
a live report.
Speaker 3 (20:50):
The first of these was a letter received on January
twenty fifth, two thousand and five.
Speaker 1 (20:56):
It said date week of January seventeen eight, two thousand
and five, where between sixty ninth Street North and seventy
seventh Street North on Seneca Street contents post toasties box,
PJ Little Mix and doll, punt of KS, acronym list
(21:16):
and jewelry.
Speaker 3 (21:18):
This time, the Cake news director sent reporters to the
site to gather the package, which was in fact a
post hosty cereal box. It contained a list of his
favorite acronyms, including DBS for death by strangulation and DTPG
for death to Pretty Girl. It also contained a naked
(21:41):
barbie doll with a noose around its neck. Police thought
PJ Littlemechs might be referring to the murder of twelve
year old Josephinotaro, along with the other three members of
her family, who were killed in nineteen seventy four. The
Cake team brought the package back to the station and
the news director wanted to use it as a bargaining
(22:02):
ship with the police.
Speaker 6 (22:06):
And the police weren't having that, and it created some difficulties,
and I even had to get on the phone and
talk to KKETV saying this is a homicide investigation and
we were going to get that information one way.
Speaker 2 (22:18):
Or the other.
Speaker 3 (22:19):
Even KKTV anchor Larry Hattiberg thought it was a bad
idea to keep the new package hostage.
Speaker 4 (22:26):
We had one instance in which a news director started
to withhold one of the postcards and try to trade
it for an interview with the police chief. I was
standing there when he said that I had encouraged him
not to do that at any time. The police got
very mad and he came within ten seconds of being
(22:49):
arrested and hauled them to the jail.
Speaker 3 (22:53):
The situation did create some sourdness.
Speaker 6 (22:57):
So what Cake ended up doing is sending a film
crew out to where the cereal box was. That created
some hard feelings since they drove into a potential crime scene.
Speaker 4 (23:08):
They ran over some tracks in the gravel road with
their car. That's a big no no, and it was
because the two were a little bit inexperienced. Police are
probably not happy about that and certainly let us know.
Speaker 6 (23:23):
That was a difficult time. But I also tried to
take into account the pressure that the media had too,
the need to be the first reporting. So it was understood,
but it did create an animosity that hadn't been there before.
Because I think if you go through this case, you
see the media doing their best they can to help
(23:44):
as much as they can and still be responsible journalists.
Speaker 3 (23:48):
My opinion on the matter is this, it was a
very tricky time for all the media in which it all.
I agree with Larry as a longtime news anchor, it
was a very tough balancing app This on one hand,
was the biggest story any of us would ever cover
in our career. While we felt the drive to do
it better than our competitors, we were also aware that
(24:12):
at this point we were literally partnering with the police
department to try and catch a killer. After this event,
we all collectively decided to cut the in fighting. We
all had a more important job to do and we
didn't want BTK to win. The next time a BTK
(24:32):
letter came through, we were all on the same page,
and that next letter only came about a week later.
Speaker 10 (24:40):
Today's message is aily similar to a postcard Cake received
last week. Keate Janine Keysling is live outside the Cake
studios in northwest Wichita, Jenny Well Larry.
Speaker 5 (24:50):
For the second time in just more than a week,
another possible communication from BTK arrives here at our studios.
The communications are getting more frequent and a lot more
personal which top police have asked us not to reveal
certain information contained in the communications sent to Cake News.
Investigators are concerned it could hamper the BTK investigation. To date,
(25:12):
we have honored all of their requests.
Speaker 3 (25:16):
This letter, though, contained a troubling message from BTK, thanks to.
Speaker 1 (25:22):
The news team for their efforts. Sorry about Susan and
Jeff's colds.
Speaker 3 (25:28):
As we told you about in episode one, Cake was
btk's favorite news station, and this letter revealed that he
knew about our colds, which my co anchor Jeff and
I had briefly mentioned on the air just a few
days prior. It was a chilling realization that BTK was
watching us. From that day forward, I had to be hypervigilant,
(25:52):
never leaving the station at night alone or engaging with
any strangers who approached me. Unfortunately, that letter didn't provide
any new leads for the police. However, the earlier letter
that revealed the location of the toasties box had one
more curious message to follow up on.
Speaker 1 (26:12):
It said, let me know somehow if you are Richita
PD received this. Also let me know if you were
PD received number seven at home depot Dropsite one eight
five thanks.
Speaker 3 (26:39):
After seeing the reference to home Depot in btk's previous letter,
police combed every home depot in the area. They posted
notes in the employee breakrooms asking if anyone knew anything
about a strange package. Finally, one employee responded. He said
that some weeks earlier, in January, he noticed an odd
(27:02):
cereal box sitting in the bed of his pickup truck.
Speaker 6 (27:06):
Didn't think anything of it. I don't know what rock
the person was living under, but didn't really think anything
of it and threw it away.
Speaker 3 (27:14):
This is Kevin O'Connor again.
Speaker 6 (27:16):
Well, it turns out that his roommate had not put
the trash down, so they actually did recover it. Home
depot was extremely cooperative and had very good cameras. We
were able to see a car pull up next to
this employee's car. One of the detective's detective Ralph, who
knows a lot about cars, immediately identified it as a
(27:38):
black cheap Cherokee. One of my duties then was to
track down and go through or try to get a
list of all the black jeep Cherokees in which Ta Kansas,
and there's a lot of them.
Speaker 3 (27:51):
The letter in this home Depot Cereal box also had
an interesting question written on it.
Speaker 1 (27:58):
Can I communicate with a floppy not be traced to
a computer? Be honest?
Speaker 3 (28:04):
BTK was actually asking police if he could communicate with
a floppy disc without being caught. So far, he had
been communicating solely with paper. Maybe he thought it was
too risky and that floppy discs would be safer. The
letter continued.
Speaker 1 (28:23):
Under miscellaneous section four ninety four, rex it will be okay.
Run it for a few days. In case I'm out
of town. I will try a floppy for a test
run sometime in the near future February or March.
Speaker 3 (28:38):
Let me translate. BTK was instructing police to post an
ad in the miscellaneous section of the newspaper. If the
ad had the message rex it will be okay, that
would signal BTK the police had agreed to communicate via
floppy disc. Of course, investigators jumped at the opportunity. On
(29:01):
January twenty eighth, the police ran a classified ad in
the Wichita Eagle. It used that phrase so BTK would
know it was for him, and it asked him to
contact the police at a specific PO box address. Raider
thought he had them in his track. Little did he
know he was about to fall into theirs. In the
(29:26):
book Confession of a Serial Killer, author Catherine Ramslin describes
Raider's mindset at this point.
Speaker 11 (29:33):
Rader trusted the police to tell him the truth. He
had already questioned an officer, Randy Stone, about the security
of email and learned that it can be traced. He
thought that floppies were another matter, however.
Speaker 3 (29:47):
And on February sixteenth, police got their biggest break when
Raider sent his final correspondence in the form of a
floppy disc. It also came with postcards with instructiontions on
how to keep communicating, but this time police wouldn't need them.
Speaker 6 (30:07):
This still gives me goosebumps because I was in the
room along with the rest of the task force and
police Officer Stone puts the disc into the computer. He
goes into the computer language. It's just gibberish. I can't
understand it, and embedded in there. As you go through
the lines of meaningless symbols and letters, you see Dennis,
(30:31):
and then a few lines later you see christ Lutheran
Church and then Parksey Library.
Speaker 3 (30:38):
Buried in the disc, which had only one file and
it titled this is a test. Was metadata now for
anyone who doesn't know. Metadata is like an invisible record
of who accesses the data on the disc. And when
an unbeknownst to Raider he had left his digital tracks
on the floppy.
Speaker 6 (30:58):
Disc, somebody got on Google and just googled Christ Lutheran
Church and up there in the corner I could still
see it to this day is a picture of the
president of the church, which is Dennis Raider. Right away,
Kenny landwere sent out a couple of detectives I think
it was Detective Ralph and Detective Schneider, Clinch Schneider, and
(31:19):
they drove out to an address on Independent Street in
Park City where Raider lived, and sure enough there was
a black cherokee in the driveway that belonged to his son.
Ralph and Schneider wanted to make an arrest right then
and there. I remember listening to the phone call that
Ralph and Schneider had with Land where I was standing
right there, and they called and said there's a black
(31:42):
cherokee in the driveway. And I'll never forget how cool
Kenny Landware was. He said, Okay, come on back, and
they weren't very happy about it. There are a lot
of words that you can't say on TV. Again, I
think it goes to Kenny how prepared he was for
the situation. He wanted to make it a better case.
(32:02):
At that time, there was a concern if that they
went up and contacted Raider, it would spook him and
he would get rid of evidence. So we went about
preparing and stalking him. Learning about Dennis Rader.
Speaker 3 (32:19):
You can understand why Kenny Landweer wanted to wait. Without
rock solid evidence, Raider might walk free. So they turned
to DNA. If you remember, they had preserved samples of
BTK seamen from the crime scenes all those years ago,
and they have been testing it against people all across Wichita.
(32:40):
Oddly enough, my co anker, Larry Hadiberg, was among those
swabbed for DNA.
Speaker 4 (32:46):
I had two detectives who I knew, show up at
the TV station and say, Larry, we need to take
your DNA. Said, okay, why do you need my DNA?
And they said, because we're getting hips to the BTK
tip line that since you know so much about BTK,
maybe you are BTK. And I said, well, I can
(33:09):
assure you I'm not. And they said, we're pretty sure
you're not. And what this is is just an elimination process.
Speaker 10 (33:17):
Now in the interest of full disclosure. As you know,
the Wichita Police Department has swabbed over four thousand men
to eliminate them as BTK suspects. Well, in the past
forty eight hours, I too have been swabbed. I now
joined the list of many journalists, police officials, and businessmen.
Speaker 1 (33:32):
Who have consented to the swab.
Speaker 10 (33:34):
But I will tell you it gives you a very
odd feeling.
Speaker 4 (33:38):
I admit at the scenes I fit the age profile.
Then I talk about it on TV, so people say, well,
he must be BTK. I was not.
Speaker 3 (33:50):
But police weren't concerned about Larry or anyone else's DNA anymore.
They only wanted the DNA of Dennis Raider. If they
could match him to the DNA from BTK semen, it
was checkmate, and they came up with a scheme involving
Raider's daughter, Carrie Rawson.
Speaker 6 (34:10):
He had a daughter that had gone to school at
Kansas State University in Manhattan, Kansas. With her age and
being in school, the investigator said she would have had
a PAP smear while in college. And although there was
some thought of like a TV show where we're going
to go and maybe get a cup of coffee that
he's drinking, or wait until he spits on the sidewalk,
(34:32):
which is a very CSI TV show kind of stuff
where you may or may not get DNA. What we
figured is we could do reverse DNA. We realized the
significance of that decision that we would be going into
somebody's medical history, and I can't tell you that there
was a lot of respect paid to the fact that
we're getting somebody's medical history unknowingly. And so what we
(34:54):
ended up doing rather than issuing a subpoena is we
prepared something akin to a search warrant and brought to
Judge Waller with a affidavid as to why we were
seeking it.
Speaker 3 (35:05):
As Kevin says, Carrie had no idea what was going
on or that police had been accessing her medical files
and using her DNA to get to her father.
Speaker 12 (35:18):
They got a subpoena and they got a warrant without
my knowledge, and they went to case date dug through
all my health records and found out I had had
PAF smears like in two thousand and two thousand and one,
and there was the slide, and they take that to
the KBI lab in Topeka, and some technicians able to
extract that old DNA mine pretty brilliant from the slide.
Speaker 3 (35:41):
It would take some time to get the results back,
so in the meantime, police followed Raider, memorized his routines,
and learned everything about him.
Speaker 6 (35:53):
During that week, we found out where he worked, which
was with Park City. He was an animal control officer
with an office right next to the police department, like
on the other side of the wall, and went about
looking at how he did things. So we knew that
Raider would leave the office before lunch. He would travel
to his home in Park City, not far away, and
(36:14):
so the plans were made. Search warrants were drawn in advance.
We did search warrants for his home, his parents' home,
the Park City Library. I remember being part listening and
watching how they talked about who would be on the
arrest team, how the arrest would go down, what they
would do with him when he was arrested. I mean
(36:35):
they even have it down to who was going to
put the cuffs on him, who was going to walk
him back to the car that Kenny Landwuare was going
to be in. It was a fascinating night to be
a part of I remember asking if I could go,
and they reminded me I was not a police officer.
That they liked me a lot, but I'm not a cop.
I even offered to go in the trunk. I had
(36:57):
to just listen to it from the command center there
the epic center that had been set up, but the
walls around the conference room were all about Dennis Raider
and learning his history and for the lack of a
better phrase, stalking him for about a week.
Speaker 3 (37:16):
Finally, on February twenty fifth, two thousand and five, after
days of waiting and decades of police work, investigators got
what they were looking for. The DNA results came back.
Speaker 6 (37:31):
It told us that the semen that was from the
feet of Josie o'tero, the stain that was left in
the bathrobe that was at Nancy Fox's head, and the
fingernail from Vicky Waigerley all those three DNA samples by
using reverse DNA told us that whoever left those samples
(37:53):
was the father of Kerrie Raider, which meant Dennis Raider.
And then that was the time to make an arrest.
Speaker 3 (38:06):
Next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 6 (38:09):
On that day, I remember it was radio silence.
Speaker 1 (38:13):
When the chief came out and said we've caught BTK.
Denial was the first reaction. One thing now said, My
phone started ranging and literally literally didn't quit ranging all
day on.
Speaker 12 (38:29):
I've gone into physical shock.
Speaker 3 (38:31):
I shook for four days.
Speaker 12 (38:32):
I'm spinning, literally about to pass out, and I make
it over to my couch right.
Speaker 4 (38:37):
Then at that moment, I'm starting to plan my revenge
now that they got him, how am I going to
get my hands on him?
Speaker 11 (38:43):
Once he realized there was no getting out of this,
he then admitted to all the murders and said, well,
since you know about seven, I'll tell you event some others.
Speaker 2 (39:00):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
(39:25):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising producerrima Il Kali.
Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Podcasts and Caroline Origemma at tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by
(39:46):
Claudia Daffrico, original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original
music by Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin
Rosenbaum and the team at UTA and the Nord Group.
For more podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the
iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your
(40:08):
favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
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