January 13, 2025 • 38 mins
BTK has killed again. But then, unexpectedly, he stops. Until years later, when he can longer hold it in any longer. He must be known.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
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 (00:37):
Delores Davis was reported missing on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
I remember my wife after the phone and I saw
her come in. I can see her mouth the words,
and I kind of waved her off and like, I
don't have time for it. She said, it is just important.
My name is Jeff Davis and I'm the son of
Doloris Davis. So I picked up the phone and talked
(01:07):
to my sister, and she's pretty ristals. She said that
one of our cousins had called and they had been
contacted by the Sriiff's office and had been told the
mother's house had been broken into and the mother was missing.
And I knew as an ext cop Fatman Hugh probably did.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The body of Dolores Davis was found on February first,
at the intersection of West one hundred and seventeenth Street
North and North Meridian Street in Park City by a
teenager named Nelson Shank. Again, police failed to connect it
with BTK. With this murder, there were multiple opportunities where
(01:51):
Raider could have been caught.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
With Deloris Davis. He wanted to do something different. He
wanted to take her body and take it to a barn,
but it was a foggy, snowy night, so he got
lost and he had to finally just dump the body
out under a bridge. So he comes back and he's
in a change into the Boy Scout uniform stuff, and
(02:16):
a cop comes along and they're checking people because they're
looking for this missing woman. And the cop is supposed
to check everybody. Had he checked Rader's car, he would
have found things that would have been very suspicious. And
Rader immediately started talking about, oh, you know, I'm a
Boy Scout volunteer, you know this camp up here, and
(02:38):
with the idea that no one would suspect somebody who
volunteers with the Boy Scouts to be a nefarious killer.
And he was right because the cop let him go.
The cop did not do his job that night, because,
of course, a nice guy like this isn't the kind
of person I'm looking for. So stereotype and the expectation
(03:03):
allowed Raider to be not caught.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
That night, someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 7 (03:16):
Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8 (03:22):
You see the victim play in there with plastic bags
over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a
plan scenario.
Speaker 9 (03:29):
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 6 (03:37):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
He'd get him to the point of death and then bring.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Them back and then brings them back to the point
of death.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. It was May of nineteen
ninety one. Dennis Raider had gotten away with his tenth
murder just four months earlier. A Raider could have used
(04:11):
this success to keep killing, but instead he pulled back
and got a job as a compliance officer for the
city of Park City, a small suburb just outside of Wichita.
This was a job that would keep Raider very busy.
Here are his words from the book Confession of a
Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I revamped the program there instead of new animal control
laws and enforced them and set up professional standards in training.
I started code enforcement on junk cars, trashing the yard,
unmowed grass, etc. The position became more professional throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
This job earned Raider some unwelcome notoriety in the neighborhood.
Here's Carrie Rawson, daughter of Dennis Raider.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
People in Park City, they knew him as a compliance officer,
and there's stories of him getting a ruler and measuring
their grass and being a hard knows about their animal
being loose so that they didn't have the permit for
their garage that they're building or their yard cell. I mean,
he could be a total hard ass. We even had
to change our phone number after you got that job
(05:20):
because people were calling mad.
Speaker 10 (05:23):
I mean, there are people been liking, including people sometimes myself,
because he could be abrasive.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
This is Bob Smiser, a Wichita native who personally knew
Dennis Raider.
Speaker 10 (05:38):
If Dennis was nothing else, he was very very by
the book, there was no gray, it was black and white,
and he was very precise in how things were doing
and if you worked with Nis, that's the way you
did it. I'm not saying it was bad. I'm just
saying that that's how he saw things. Was ABC.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And Rader went to the same church, Christ Lutheran in
Park City. Most of their interactions were normal, if not kurt,
but there was one incident with Rader that had put
Bob on edge.
Speaker 10 (06:13):
One of my older daughters lived in Park City in
the house that her grandparents had lived in then the
street from Dennis. But my daughter came to me and said, Dad,
you know Dennis has showed up in our backyard a
coup foers. And I said, really, well, are your dogs
getting out? Is there something? No, No, we didn't have
any problem with the dogs. Get out. We got that
(06:34):
fixed up, she says, just creepy. I said, okay, And
I happened to catch Dennis at church. I said, hey,
what's up with my daughter and her husband? He asked
me where they lived and I told him why. Well,
she said, you know, you've showed up in the backyard
a few times. Just found it a little creepy, just
sort of wondering, Oh, it's their neighbor. I'm militia. The
(06:57):
neighbor in the last couple of years and I've talked
about it. She told me that her neighbor was single.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A single woman, single, vulnerable women were Raiders bread and butter.
From the middle of nineteen ninety one on, Raider used
his compliance officer job as a way to stalk women.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
There were other pjs, PJ Tube, PJ Webb, PJ twin Peaks,
PG Music, PJ Clip, and PJ Spider. This last one
was a bee where I entered and waited, but no
one came home. Most of these were in Park City
area or north of Wichita. I was always on the prowl.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
It's a common thing in the true crime books that
are written about Raider to say that he went dormant
between nineteen ninety one and two thousand and four, and
he says that's not true.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Author and professor of forensic psychology Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
He gave me a list of fifty five different projects
of women he had seen and stalked, and he had
named them, he had their address, he had described them.
He just broke in their house and they didn't come home,
or there wasn't a good opportunity, you know. During his
college years he could say I'm writing a paper at
(08:25):
the library and then goes stalk someone without anyone suspecting anything.
But once he was a father and husband and really
had to have a schedule, it was much harder to do.
But he did not go dormant. It's just that he
didn't succeed, and he talks about it being like a fisherman.
He goes out to fish and sometimes comes home empty handed.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
We don't know for sure if Rader killed again during
this time period. It's possible, but nothing has ever been confirmed.
If he did, in fact stop killing, it's the question
why why would he stalk but never kill.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
I don't think it was anything like some moral idea
like maybe I should be attending to my soul now
or I don't think it was anything like that. I
think it was bad timing. I don't think he had
any reason to stop. I think he just didn't have
the opportunities that he had had earlier, and he was
feeling much less agile. His body strength wasn't what it
(09:29):
had been. That put him at risk for getting caught
if he had to jump out a window or something
like that. So I think he was feeling kind of
vulnerable and that maybe some of the things he had
done earlier, he was not going to be able to
pull them off.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
As the years passed, everyone in the Wichita area wondered
what happened to BTK. Bob Smyser says that on more
than one occasion he was with Raider when that very
question was brought up.
Speaker 10 (09:59):
Every Sunday, monks in the North Exa this group of
guys that we went fishing and did those things. We
all got together and talked and BTK came up. Dennis
was always really quiet. One of the guys said, you know,
BTK must have been pretty smart, you know, and Dennis said, yeah, yeah,
he was. He thought, you know, I'm the smartest guy
(10:21):
in the room and they're never going to catch me.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
It's likely that Raider did think he was the smartest
guy in the room because he'd miraculously gotten away with
murder over and over again. Police at this point thought
BTK had either died or been arrested on other charges,
when in reality, Raider was walking through people's yards and
(10:46):
collecting items from their homes.
Speaker 7 (10:50):
He can't help himself. I guess sometimes my dad could
be a dickhead or something growing up, but it's just
It's like an iceberg, right, like you're only seeing the
very tip of somebody with him, You're not seeing all
this stuff underneath.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We're pressing. Those feelings turned Raider into a pressure cooker
ready to explode at any moment, and his family usually
paid the price when he did. Carrie recalls the time
when Rader got violent with her older brother Brian.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
In August of ninety six. It was a week before
I was to go to Case statu as a freshman.
My cousin, Michelle, she was killed in a g vaccinaw
on my mom's side of the family. It was a
really horrible accident. She was like a sister to me,
and I was deeply grieving. All my family was and
I come home after my first week of college. My
(11:44):
mom had made manichotti for us after working all day
and gone to all this trouble. My brother was still
living at home in ninety six. For some reason, we
got into a family fight. Now I'm sure grief spilled over.
My dad's dad William at leukemia, So there's a lot
of stress going on. We've got this old kitchen table
(12:07):
and somebody pounds on the table. A metal leg comes out,
and so all like the plates come crashing down on
the floor. There's like Manicotti red sauce all over everywhere,
and my dad is blaming my brother. And my dad
snaps and he just lunges out of his chair at
my brother. He starts strangling him from the front.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
These sorts of violent outbursts were not uncommon, and they
were typically directed at Brian. In fact, a similar incident
happened again just a few years later.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
Maybe around two thousand, two thousand and one. My dad
went for my brother again, up against the utility closet
in the kitchen where he stored everything. He pushed him
against the same thing again with the hands, and after
that my brother moved out. My Dad's done it twice,
and we're not telling anybody. I don't know what do
(13:06):
they tell domestic abuse victims. If they're strangling you, they're
escalating and they're going to kill you eventually. There's literature
about it. If they're strangling you, they're going to escalate,
and you're gonna end up debt. Of course, I don't
know that. I'm not even equating it to abuse.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Then.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
I literally had had conversations with my mom. We would
read something in the news, and she's like, why are
these women staying with these guys? Why are these battered
women not leaving? And we talked about it that we
would always leave and we wouldn't do that. We were
that family. I mean, there's sort of like this whole
Midwestern thing, like you don't talk about your problems and
(13:45):
you look like you have it together or everybody has problems,
and so you're not special. But like mom and dad
are firstborns, and we look a certain way, and we
wear are nice clothes to church, our kids are well behaved,
get together with our families.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
As time went by, Raider became less and less able
to control his anger. As much as he tried to
be a father at home, he was instead becoming more
of a monster, and it only got worse as he
(14:27):
got older. Raider's neuroses became more pronounced at home. Growing up,
Carrie was made to feel paranoid and confused by her father.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
My dad was so ocd, it's so weird. He murdered
two children, right, He murdered Josephinotaro and Joey O'taro. In
seventy four, he murdered an eleven year old and a
nine year old. Yet he became so overly protective, especially
if me and my mom. He had dead bolts on
our front door and our back door in the kitchen.
(15:01):
It was almost like he was protecting us from him.
But it's because he knew how bad people could be.
He had that keen ability to read bad people. I
know to stay clear.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
But Carrie knew none of that. To her, this was traumatizing.
Speaker 7 (15:18):
When I'm little, he's teaching me these things. You're not
supposed to be telling kids about home invasions, right, And
he's telling me like, well, the kitchen door isn't that
great because the windows too big, and somebody can just
punch out the glass and then they can reach in.
But if it's dead bolton and the key's not in,
then they can't get in. They got a leg jam
the door.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
More.
Speaker 7 (15:36):
He's telling me when I'm little, don't open the door
to strangers. Question them, make them show you like they're badger.
They're telling you they're a cop or a maintenance man.
Check their uniform because he literally used it.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
What he calls the roofs.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
He has and will break into homes with women home
during the day taking care of children and murder these
women in front of their children, and yet he is
obsessive fleet trying to keep me safe.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Reader would continue to train Carrie as she got older
about how to look out for bad guys and to
defend herself.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
This is mid nineties, around fifteen or sixteen. We're a
twin Link shopping mall, not far from where Vicky Wurgily
was murdered in eighty six. We're at Seers and he
decides at that moment that there is a good time
to teach me safety and security in a parking lot.
He's physically showing me, Now, if a bad guy rushes you,
(16:33):
you can knee him in the ball so you can
poke their eyes out, or you can jab him with
their elbow. He's literally showing me how to bite him off.
He's like, you're going to start driving now, so when
you're going to a dark heart night, check your back
seat and make sure there's not somebody laying in your
back seat, or check underneath your car, because somebody's skinny
could be under there in the slice ankle. And he's
(16:55):
showing me how to do the key as a woman
on women know, you stick the key in between your
hands and you can use it as a weapon. He's
teaching me that when I'm fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
On the surface, there's nothing sinister about a father teaching
his daughter self defense. For normal families, this wouldn't raise
any red flags, and it didn't for raiders. But his
self defense lessons weren't the only obscure clue to raiders
dark secrets.
Speaker 7 (17:25):
My dad never bowled, but nobody questioned, Like this maroon
in my bowling bag that was kept by our door,
And of course you never looked at anything of dad's
because it wouldn't make your life really uncomfortable and awful.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Boys in there.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
It was his hic hit. We camped a lot, so
we had tubs with rope and canvas tarps because he
would build two shelters when we're camping, and he would
store this stuff, so it wasn't unusual to have these
things in your house. And you don't go snooping in
dad's stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Carrie says it's when she thinks back to her father's hobbies,
many of which were likely covers for his murderous activities.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
I used to go to the hardware store with my
dad when I was the kid. He built this massive
treehouse that was one of his projects he threw himself
into after gardening. I found out later he would get
supplies for his hit kits while he was at the
lumber store, probably with me. I used to share cryptograms
with my dad. He taught me how to do him.
(18:29):
That was another thing I shared with my dad.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
As the years passed, Raider's children got fed up with
his controlling behavior, they got older, and both eventually moved out,
but Carrie says she never forgot about her father's defensive
training or the paranoia that came with it.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
In two thousand and one, I'm up at k State.
I've been in the dorms for five years. I'm ready
to have my own apartment. I call my dad. I said,
I've I find this little apartment on the corner in Manhattan.
It's a one bedroom. I want to live by myself.
And I said, the problem is the only door is
a patio door. Now I'm upstairs, but the door's pretty flimsy.
(19:14):
The lock is really flimsy, and I don't have any
way to get out if there's a fire somebody gets
in my home. He said, well, are there any other windows?
And I said, yeah, in the bedroom upstairs, if I
had to, I could jump out of that in a fire.
He said, well, tell me about the location. I said, well,
it's on a busy corner. It's across from a pizza
hut and a Dylan's. I said, it's well lit, it's active.
(19:35):
And he said, no, you're fine, you're safe. No one's
going to mess with you there on that corner. He said,
go ahead and rent it, and when I come up,
I'll rig something up to secure your door. So he
took a broom and he took the broom part off
of the handle, and he wedged the handle in the
door for me, so that every night when I went
into my apartment, I would wedge it so that even
if somebody broke my flimsy lock, they couldn't open the door.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
This story really struck me. It sounded odd that Rader
would tell his daughter that no one would mess with
her on a busy corner when he himself had committed
murders in broad daylight on busy streets. In my visits
to the victims' homes, I was often shocked by how
public the properties were. But yet again, Raider's mind doesn't
(20:24):
work like the rest of us. When Carrie and Brian
moved out of the house. Dennis invested more time and
responsibility at Christ Lutheran Church. This is where he and
Bob Smiser got to really know each other.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
I think that for him in the church that it
may have been repentance. He was trying to figure it out.
I've stood at the front of the church with him
when we had communion and it was just him and
I in front of Pastor Clark. You know, you say
a little and I always had to wait for Dennis.
(21:02):
I mean, he was always a little longer at it.
Now was that show? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Bob says that Dennis always seemed like a loner. They
rarely talked about anything important.
Speaker 10 (21:16):
Dennis and I were never best friends, but I don't
nobody had one. He always felt like he was a
little bit guarded. He did help my mother. I had
a fire at ninety five out here on West Central
in the apartment she was living in id bet Her
had a fire. She had bunch smoke, damaged, water damage
and called Dennis, and Dennis went out and helped halt
(21:37):
her stuff open to my cousin's house.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Bob never imagined that this man had a twisted dark side.
Speaker 10 (21:46):
I had not seen that component of Dennis. Yeah, I
hadn't seen that component.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Neither did Pastor Michael Clark, who had a close relationship
with Dennis. In fact, Clark relied on Dennis for chor
around the church.
Speaker 10 (22:02):
If when the acolytes hadn't got there and the candles
didn't get lift, he always had always turn to Dennis
and say Dennis, and Dennis would do that. Their relationship
was good, and he was somebody kicked to Bendo.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Looking back, Bob never would have expected that raider was BTK,
but he felt that something big was going to happen
regarding the mysterious BTK killer.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And soon.
Speaker 10 (22:27):
I just got this feelding, I want to know this guy.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
In two thousand and four, Bob's premonition would begin to
take shape. That year was the thirtieth anniversary of the
Otaro killings, the first BTK murder. It's pretty common for
news outlets to program anniversary retrospectives for big events. In
the case of unsolved murders, where there's been no justice
(22:56):
for the victims or their families, there's an added goal
of potentially generating new leads, and that's what happened in Wichita.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
The Wichita Egle ran an anniversary piece and there was
a show on the Otto murders on the thirtieth anniversary
that ran in like January two thousand and four, and
that's supposedly woke my dad up. He said that he
was kind of bored. The kids were grown, we were safe,
we were out of the house. He had raised us well.
(23:30):
Nobody remembered BTK, and he wanted to terrorize the community again.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
On January seventeenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita Eagle
newspaper ran an article titled BTK Case Unsolved thirty years later.
Here is an excerpt.
Speaker 11 (23:49):
It was a routine followed by thousands of wichital women
in the late nineteen seventies. Upon arriving home, checked the
phone immediately. If the line is dead, get out. What
made the case frightenedly different for city residents was the
fact that the killer sent several taunting letters about the
crimes to local media.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
The article, written by reporter Herschelaviana, was a complete retrospective
on Btk's many terrible deeds. Dennis saw the article. To him,
it was a resume of his many accomplishments. Part of
the article features Robert Beatty, who wrote a book about
the hunt for BTK. In it, Baty said that he
(24:34):
did not think BTK would ever return. Dennis took that
as a challenge.
Speaker 10 (24:42):
We went on a fishing trip every year the guys
do and Dennison never went with us. In two thousand
and four we asked him again. Dennis said nah, He said,
I can't. I can't come along this year. I got
some projects I'm working on.
Speaker 12 (25:11):
Eight minutes past now. In decades after a serial killer
terrorized Wichita, Kansas cops say the case that was once
cold may be warm yet again. In his letters to
media organizations, the killer used the initials BTK, standing for bind,
torture and kill. They never caught that guy, and twenty
(25:31):
five years of silence have followed, and today a Wichita
paper says it received another letter claiming responsibility for an
eighth victim who was killed in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
On March nineteenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita Eagle
received a new letter from someone claiming to be BTK.
Speaker 13 (25:52):
The newspaper received that letter including photographs of the dead
woman's body as well as her driver's license as proof
that this was in fact BTK. Now he is also
claiming that she is victim number eight. He is not
just responsible for killing seven people. Now, the victim number
eight is Vicky Wagery. She was strangled back in nineteen
(26:13):
eighty six, but her case had never been solved over
all these years, nor had it been connected to BTK. BTK,
he is sadistic, he is psychopathic, and investigators worry about
why he is suddenly making public contact.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
That letter was from Bill Thomas Killman, so BTK. It
had three polaroids of Vicky Wagery and it had her
driver's license. My name is Kevin O'Connor. I was the
deputy District attorney in wich Daw Sedgwa County, Kansas during
the Dennis Raider investigation. The experts on that say that
(26:53):
that is him potentially giving up a momento. The polaroids
were significant because missus Wager was in very bad condition
when the medics found her, so they removed her and
took her to the hospital to try to save her.
So there were no crime scene photos of her, and
so this had to be the killer or somebody who
(27:13):
had come across or had access to the killer's stash.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Before now, authorities had no idea that Vicky Weggerley was
connected to BTK. In exchange for his name in the paper,
Raider was willing to give up his trophies. He wanted
to start up a new cap'n Mouse game, so along
with the polaroids and driver's license, he sent along a cipher.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I had kept photos of missus Weggerley in my dark
green box in my Heidi hole in the false bottom
drawer of the cabinet. The code I placed on top
was a German fractional. Very simple. You line up the
alphabet in columns and put your code word in the
first line. It was a message to the author lit
beads for his book.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
After years of hiding, BTK was back. Rayder loved the
attention he was getting in the news, and he wanted more.
He felt it was time to re emerge and claim
his credit.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
With thirty years of material and growing older each year,
I knew I needed to get it out of the house.
I had for many years wanted to take my secret murders, clippings, drawings,
and stories and put them in a book or story format.
My BTK years as a young serial killer were done.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
The Eagle ran its story on btk's return on March
twenty fifth, two thousand and four. Here is an excerpt.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
A serial killer who terrorized Wichita during the nineteen seventies
by committing a series of seven murders has claimed responsibility
for an eighth slave and is now probably living in Wichita,
police said Wednesday. The photographs appear to be authentic, said
Lieutenant Ken Landware. I'm one hundred percent sure it's BTK.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Of course. At KKTV we also reported on this letter
sent to the Eagle this morning.
Speaker 14 (29:19):
We have more information on the letter sent to the
Wichita Eagle by the BTK killer. Even thirty years after
btk's first known murders, investigators are still working the case.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Now.
Speaker 14 (29:30):
Police believe BTK is alive and living in Wichita. Btk's
trademark writing letters to the paper and KKTV detailing his
murders and taunting police.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
The last known letter.
Speaker 14 (29:41):
Linked to BTK was received in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
What we didn't anticipate was that very soon we'd be
roped into it ourselves again. Less than two months later,
on May fourth, two thousand and four, another letter appeared,
this time at k TV and in an envelope from
a Thomas B. Kingman.
Speaker 15 (30:07):
It read the BTK story One, A serial Killer is Born,
two Dawn three, Fetish four, Fantasy World five, The Search Begins, six,
Btk's Haunts, seven PJS, eight, mo id Ruse, nine Hits, ten,
(30:33):
Treasured Memories, eleven, Final Curtain Call, twelve, Dusk thirteen Will
there be More?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
This was an outline for a thirteen chapter book about BTK,
told by him and him alone. The letter also included
a word puzzle, a blacked out ID card, and a
special office first badge for Rader. Sending the letter to
KKE was an obvious choice.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
KKE TV was my favorite media spot for me. They
seemed to cover the BTK case very well.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
It's a very odd feeling to go to work every
day and know that you have to feed the national media,
you have to feed the local media.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
This is Larry Hadiberg, my dear friend and former colleague
at CAKE. Larry and I would lead every single newscast
with the latest information on BTK. We felt like it
was our responsibility to tell people everything we could about BTK.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
This was an odd time in my journalism history. Susan
and I were in it together and Jeff and several
of the other reporters who worked very hard on this,
and we had to cover each other's But because we
didn't know where it was going, we didn't know how
it was going to end.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Deep down, everyone at CAKE was scared. It was a
time when we had to look out for each other.
We had no idea if BTK would one day just
walk through the station doors.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
One night when we were walking out of CAKE, it
was quarter eleven or so, and we get just past
the concrete stepping into the thing, and a bicyclist is
down at the end of our driveway and he comes
at us seemed like one hundred miles an hour, and
(32:41):
I thought we're in trouble. I didn't know who that
guy was, and he's coming at us one hundred miles
an hour on that bicycle pulls up in front of us,
and I thought we're going to shot stab something, and
he was just a viewer.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Fear was a dominant emotion for us all the line
will there be More at the end of Btk's letter,
in particular, would haunt everyone at k TV and across Wichita.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I would go to the.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Grocery store and BTK was all that people would talk about.
Enrollment and self defense classes went way up, and people
started locking their doors again. We all reverted back to
the habits of the seventies. After over twenty years of peace,
Wichita was once again in a panic. Here's Bob Smeiser.
Speaker 10 (33:38):
When that first letter came out, some of our neighbors,
some of the kids were just petrified. A lot of
people didn't know about the seventies. There's a lot of
younger people just didn't know. I think that most people
thought he was dead. To be real honest with.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
You, the day after we received btk's letter at Cake News,
the police went on air to ask for tip.
Speaker 16 (34:01):
Based on the information contained in this letter. We're again
asking for help from the public. We want to talk
to any citizen who he calls a man seeking access
to their resident by presenting identification as the employee of
a school or a utility company.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Kevin O'Connor says it became an all hands on deck
effort to find BTK. Everyone from local police, to state
police to federal authorities were called in. O'Connor was one
of them.
Speaker 8 (34:36):
It was very strange and difficult time for my family.
I couldn't tell my wife. I mean it was news,
there was reporting on it now. But my particular role
is I couldn't tell anybody, so I might be having
dinner or something and get a call and go, I
gotta go. We had Witchtop Police, we had the Sheriff's apartment,
(35:01):
we had FBI personnel, we had Kansas Bureau Investigation that
helped out. We even had law enforcement from the United
States Postal Service. Everybody worked together. It was a beautiful
thing to see, really about how all the different agencies
focused on finding the right person rather than worrying about
(35:21):
who got credit.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
None of us knew how long this would go on.
As it turns out, this was just the beginning.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
This was my fantasy. The cat and mouse game gave
me an adrenaline rush or a high. It also set
a stage for the police to know that a serious
minotaur was in their midst. I've spotted a female that
I think lives alone. Just got to work out the details.
I'm back.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 9 (35:58):
This is the strongest warning and yet police have issued
for widgetants to watch out and take extra precautions after
a letter was found at the widgeta public library early
Saturday morning.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
They opened it up and it was a doll purported
to be Nancy Fox and a description of the Nancy
Fox murder.
Speaker 17 (36:17):
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.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
They got a subpoena and they got a warrant without
my knowledge, and they went to case date.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
And so the plans were made, search warrants were drawn
in advance, and then that was the time to make
an arrest.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Noames Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk is Susan Peters. Executive producers on behalf of
Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, alongside supervising
(37:09):
producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Podcasts
include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers Nomes Griffin
and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing support by
David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline
(37:31):
Origemma at tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico, 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,
(37:56):
or wherever you listen to your 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 (00:37):
Delores Davis was reported missing on January nineteenth, nineteen ninety one.
Speaker 4 (00:44):
I remember my wife after the phone and I saw
her come in. I can see her mouth the words,
and I kind of waved her off and like, I
don't have time for it. She said, it is just important.
My name is Jeff Davis and I'm the son of
Doloris Davis. So I picked up the phone and talked
(01:07):
to my sister, and she's pretty ristals. She said that
one of our cousins had called and they had been
contacted by the Sriiff's office and had been told the
mother's house had been broken into and the mother was missing.
And I knew as an ext cop Fatman Hugh probably did.
Speaker 3 (01:29):
The body of Dolores Davis was found on February first,
at the intersection of West one hundred and seventeenth Street
North and North Meridian Street in Park City by a
teenager named Nelson Shank. Again, police failed to connect it
with BTK. With this murder, there were multiple opportunities where
(01:51):
Raider could have been caught.
Speaker 5 (01:54):
With Deloris Davis. He wanted to do something different. He
wanted to take her body and take it to a barn,
but it was a foggy, snowy night, so he got
lost and he had to finally just dump the body
out under a bridge. So he comes back and he's
in a change into the Boy Scout uniform stuff, and
(02:16):
a cop comes along and they're checking people because they're
looking for this missing woman. And the cop is supposed
to check everybody. Had he checked Rader's car, he would
have found things that would have been very suspicious. And
Rader immediately started talking about, oh, you know, I'm a
Boy Scout volunteer, you know this camp up here, and
(02:38):
with the idea that no one would suspect somebody who
volunteers with the Boy Scouts to be a nefarious killer.
And he was right because the cop let him go.
The cop did not do his job that night, because,
of course, a nice guy like this isn't the kind
of person I'm looking for. So stereotype and the expectation
(03:03):
allowed Raider to be not caught.
Speaker 6 (03:06):
That night, someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 7 (03:16):
Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8 (03:22):
You see the victim play in there with plastic bags
over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a
plan scenario.
Speaker 9 (03:29):
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 6 (03:37):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (03:40):
He'd get him to the point of death and then bring.
Speaker 6 (03:42):
Them back and then brings them back to the point
of death.
Speaker 3 (03:47):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. It was May of nineteen
ninety one. Dennis Raider had gotten away with his tenth
murder just four months earlier. A Raider could have used
(04:11):
this success to keep killing, but instead he pulled back
and got a job as a compliance officer for the
city of Park City, a small suburb just outside of Wichita.
This was a job that would keep Raider very busy.
Here are his words from the book Confession of a
Serial Killer.
Speaker 1 (04:32):
I revamped the program there instead of new animal control
laws and enforced them and set up professional standards in training.
I started code enforcement on junk cars, trashing the yard,
unmowed grass, etc. The position became more professional throughout the years.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
This job earned Raider some unwelcome notoriety in the neighborhood.
Here's Carrie Rawson, daughter of Dennis Raider.
Speaker 7 (05:00):
People in Park City, they knew him as a compliance officer,
and there's stories of him getting a ruler and measuring
their grass and being a hard knows about their animal
being loose so that they didn't have the permit for
their garage that they're building or their yard cell. I mean,
he could be a total hard ass. We even had
to change our phone number after you got that job
(05:20):
because people were calling mad.
Speaker 10 (05:23):
I mean, there are people been liking, including people sometimes myself,
because he could be abrasive.
Speaker 3 (05:31):
This is Bob Smiser, a Wichita native who personally knew
Dennis Raider.
Speaker 10 (05:38):
If Dennis was nothing else, he was very very by
the book, there was no gray, it was black and white,
and he was very precise in how things were doing
and if you worked with Nis, that's the way you
did it. I'm not saying it was bad. I'm just
saying that that's how he saw things. Was ABC.
Speaker 3 (06:00):
And Rader went to the same church, Christ Lutheran in
Park City. Most of their interactions were normal, if not kurt,
but there was one incident with Rader that had put
Bob on edge.
Speaker 10 (06:13):
One of my older daughters lived in Park City in
the house that her grandparents had lived in then the
street from Dennis. But my daughter came to me and said, Dad,
you know Dennis has showed up in our backyard a
coup foers. And I said, really, well, are your dogs
getting out? Is there something? No, No, we didn't have
any problem with the dogs. Get out. We got that
(06:34):
fixed up, she says, just creepy. I said, okay, And
I happened to catch Dennis at church. I said, hey,
what's up with my daughter and her husband? He asked
me where they lived and I told him why. Well,
she said, you know, you've showed up in the backyard
a few times. Just found it a little creepy, just
sort of wondering, Oh, it's their neighbor. I'm militia. The
(06:57):
neighbor in the last couple of years and I've talked
about it. She told me that her neighbor was single.
Speaker 3 (07:06):
A single woman, single, vulnerable women were Raiders bread and butter.
From the middle of nineteen ninety one on, Raider used
his compliance officer job as a way to stalk women.
Speaker 1 (07:23):
There were other pjs, PJ Tube, PJ Webb, PJ twin Peaks,
PG Music, PJ Clip, and PJ Spider. This last one
was a bee where I entered and waited, but no
one came home. Most of these were in Park City
area or north of Wichita. I was always on the prowl.
Speaker 5 (07:48):
It's a common thing in the true crime books that
are written about Raider to say that he went dormant
between nineteen ninety one and two thousand and four, and
he says that's not true.
Speaker 3 (07:59):
Author and professor of forensic psychology Catherine Ramsland.
Speaker 5 (08:03):
He gave me a list of fifty five different projects
of women he had seen and stalked, and he had
named them, he had their address, he had described them.
He just broke in their house and they didn't come home,
or there wasn't a good opportunity, you know. During his
college years he could say I'm writing a paper at
(08:25):
the library and then goes stalk someone without anyone suspecting anything.
But once he was a father and husband and really
had to have a schedule, it was much harder to do.
But he did not go dormant. It's just that he
didn't succeed, and he talks about it being like a fisherman.
He goes out to fish and sometimes comes home empty handed.
Speaker 3 (08:49):
We don't know for sure if Rader killed again during
this time period. It's possible, but nothing has ever been confirmed.
If he did, in fact stop killing, it's the question
why why would he stalk but never kill.
Speaker 5 (09:06):
I don't think it was anything like some moral idea
like maybe I should be attending to my soul now
or I don't think it was anything like that. I
think it was bad timing. I don't think he had
any reason to stop. I think he just didn't have
the opportunities that he had had earlier, and he was
feeling much less agile. His body strength wasn't what it
(09:29):
had been. That put him at risk for getting caught
if he had to jump out a window or something
like that. So I think he was feeling kind of
vulnerable and that maybe some of the things he had
done earlier, he was not going to be able to
pull them off.
Speaker 3 (09:44):
As the years passed, everyone in the Wichita area wondered
what happened to BTK. Bob Smyser says that on more
than one occasion he was with Raider when that very
question was brought up.
Speaker 10 (09:59):
Every Sunday, monks in the North Exa this group of
guys that we went fishing and did those things. We
all got together and talked and BTK came up. Dennis
was always really quiet. One of the guys said, you know,
BTK must have been pretty smart, you know, and Dennis said, yeah, yeah,
he was. He thought, you know, I'm the smartest guy
(10:21):
in the room and they're never going to catch me.
Speaker 3 (10:25):
It's likely that Raider did think he was the smartest
guy in the room because he'd miraculously gotten away with
murder over and over again. Police at this point thought
BTK had either died or been arrested on other charges,
when in reality, Raider was walking through people's yards and
(10:46):
collecting items from their homes.
Speaker 7 (10:50):
He can't help himself. I guess sometimes my dad could
be a dickhead or something growing up, but it's just
It's like an iceberg, right, like you're only seeing the
very tip of somebody with him, You're not seeing all
this stuff underneath.
Speaker 3 (11:05):
We're pressing. Those feelings turned Raider into a pressure cooker
ready to explode at any moment, and his family usually
paid the price when he did. Carrie recalls the time
when Rader got violent with her older brother Brian.
Speaker 7 (11:23):
In August of ninety six. It was a week before
I was to go to Case statu as a freshman.
My cousin, Michelle, she was killed in a g vaccinaw
on my mom's side of the family. It was a
really horrible accident. She was like a sister to me,
and I was deeply grieving. All my family was and
I come home after my first week of college. My
(11:44):
mom had made manichotti for us after working all day
and gone to all this trouble. My brother was still
living at home in ninety six. For some reason, we
got into a family fight. Now I'm sure grief spilled over.
My dad's dad William at leukemia, So there's a lot
of stress going on. We've got this old kitchen table
(12:07):
and somebody pounds on the table. A metal leg comes out,
and so all like the plates come crashing down on
the floor. There's like Manicotti red sauce all over everywhere,
and my dad is blaming my brother. And my dad
snaps and he just lunges out of his chair at
my brother. He starts strangling him from the front.
Speaker 3 (12:31):
These sorts of violent outbursts were not uncommon, and they
were typically directed at Brian. In fact, a similar incident
happened again just a few years later.
Speaker 7 (12:44):
Maybe around two thousand, two thousand and one. My dad
went for my brother again, up against the utility closet
in the kitchen where he stored everything. He pushed him
against the same thing again with the hands, and after
that my brother moved out. My Dad's done it twice,
and we're not telling anybody. I don't know what do
(13:06):
they tell domestic abuse victims. If they're strangling you, they're
escalating and they're going to kill you eventually. There's literature
about it. If they're strangling you, they're going to escalate,
and you're gonna end up debt. Of course, I don't
know that. I'm not even equating it to abuse.
Speaker 5 (13:23):
Then.
Speaker 7 (13:23):
I literally had had conversations with my mom. We would
read something in the news, and she's like, why are
these women staying with these guys? Why are these battered
women not leaving? And we talked about it that we
would always leave and we wouldn't do that. We were
that family. I mean, there's sort of like this whole
Midwestern thing, like you don't talk about your problems and
(13:45):
you look like you have it together or everybody has problems,
and so you're not special. But like mom and dad
are firstborns, and we look a certain way, and we
wear are nice clothes to church, our kids are well behaved,
get together with our families.
Speaker 3 (14:03):
As time went by, Raider became less and less able
to control his anger. As much as he tried to
be a father at home, he was instead becoming more
of a monster, and it only got worse as he
(14:27):
got older. Raider's neuroses became more pronounced at home. Growing up,
Carrie was made to feel paranoid and confused by her father.
Speaker 7 (14:39):
My dad was so ocd, it's so weird. He murdered
two children, right, He murdered Josephinotaro and Joey O'taro. In
seventy four, he murdered an eleven year old and a
nine year old. Yet he became so overly protective, especially
if me and my mom. He had dead bolts on
our front door and our back door in the kitchen.
(15:01):
It was almost like he was protecting us from him.
But it's because he knew how bad people could be.
He had that keen ability to read bad people. I
know to stay clear.
Speaker 3 (15:12):
But Carrie knew none of that. To her, this was traumatizing.
Speaker 7 (15:18):
When I'm little, he's teaching me these things. You're not
supposed to be telling kids about home invasions, right, And
he's telling me like, well, the kitchen door isn't that
great because the windows too big, and somebody can just
punch out the glass and then they can reach in.
But if it's dead bolton and the key's not in,
then they can't get in. They got a leg jam
the door.
Speaker 4 (15:35):
More.
Speaker 7 (15:36):
He's telling me when I'm little, don't open the door
to strangers. Question them, make them show you like they're badger.
They're telling you they're a cop or a maintenance man.
Check their uniform because he literally used it.
Speaker 3 (15:48):
What he calls the roofs.
Speaker 7 (15:50):
He has and will break into homes with women home
during the day taking care of children and murder these
women in front of their children, and yet he is
obsessive fleet trying to keep me safe.
Speaker 3 (16:04):
Reader would continue to train Carrie as she got older
about how to look out for bad guys and to
defend herself.
Speaker 7 (16:12):
This is mid nineties, around fifteen or sixteen. We're a
twin Link shopping mall, not far from where Vicky Wurgily
was murdered in eighty six. We're at Seers and he
decides at that moment that there is a good time
to teach me safety and security in a parking lot.
He's physically showing me, Now, if a bad guy rushes you,
(16:33):
you can knee him in the ball so you can
poke their eyes out, or you can jab him with
their elbow. He's literally showing me how to bite him off.
He's like, you're going to start driving now, so when
you're going to a dark heart night, check your back
seat and make sure there's not somebody laying in your
back seat, or check underneath your car, because somebody's skinny
could be under there in the slice ankle. And he's
(16:55):
showing me how to do the key as a woman
on women know, you stick the key in between your
hands and you can use it as a weapon. He's
teaching me that when I'm fifteen.
Speaker 3 (17:05):
On the surface, there's nothing sinister about a father teaching
his daughter self defense. For normal families, this wouldn't raise
any red flags, and it didn't for raiders. But his
self defense lessons weren't the only obscure clue to raiders
dark secrets.
Speaker 7 (17:25):
My dad never bowled, but nobody questioned, Like this maroon
in my bowling bag that was kept by our door,
And of course you never looked at anything of dad's
because it wouldn't make your life really uncomfortable and awful.
Speaker 2 (17:36):
Boys in there.
Speaker 7 (17:37):
It was his hic hit. We camped a lot, so
we had tubs with rope and canvas tarps because he
would build two shelters when we're camping, and he would
store this stuff, so it wasn't unusual to have these
things in your house. And you don't go snooping in
dad's stuff.
Speaker 3 (17:58):
Carrie says it's when she thinks back to her father's hobbies,
many of which were likely covers for his murderous activities.
Speaker 7 (18:08):
I used to go to the hardware store with my
dad when I was the kid. He built this massive
treehouse that was one of his projects he threw himself
into after gardening. I found out later he would get
supplies for his hit kits while he was at the
lumber store, probably with me. I used to share cryptograms
with my dad. He taught me how to do him.
(18:29):
That was another thing I shared with my dad.
Speaker 3 (18:35):
As the years passed, Raider's children got fed up with
his controlling behavior, they got older, and both eventually moved out,
but Carrie says she never forgot about her father's defensive
training or the paranoia that came with it.
Speaker 7 (18:52):
In two thousand and one, I'm up at k State.
I've been in the dorms for five years. I'm ready
to have my own apartment. I call my dad. I said,
I've I find this little apartment on the corner in Manhattan.
It's a one bedroom. I want to live by myself.
And I said, the problem is the only door is
a patio door. Now I'm upstairs, but the door's pretty flimsy.
(19:14):
The lock is really flimsy, and I don't have any
way to get out if there's a fire somebody gets
in my home. He said, well, are there any other windows?
And I said, yeah, in the bedroom upstairs, if I
had to, I could jump out of that in a fire.
He said, well, tell me about the location. I said, well,
it's on a busy corner. It's across from a pizza
hut and a Dylan's. I said, it's well lit, it's active.
(19:35):
And he said, no, you're fine, you're safe. No one's
going to mess with you there on that corner. He said,
go ahead and rent it, and when I come up,
I'll rig something up to secure your door. So he
took a broom and he took the broom part off
of the handle, and he wedged the handle in the
door for me, so that every night when I went
into my apartment, I would wedge it so that even
if somebody broke my flimsy lock, they couldn't open the door.
Speaker 3 (19:59):
This story really struck me. It sounded odd that Rader
would tell his daughter that no one would mess with
her on a busy corner when he himself had committed
murders in broad daylight on busy streets. In my visits
to the victims' homes, I was often shocked by how
public the properties were. But yet again, Raider's mind doesn't
(20:24):
work like the rest of us. When Carrie and Brian
moved out of the house. Dennis invested more time and
responsibility at Christ Lutheran Church. This is where he and
Bob Smiser got to really know each other.
Speaker 10 (20:41):
I think that for him in the church that it
may have been repentance. He was trying to figure it out.
I've stood at the front of the church with him
when we had communion and it was just him and
I in front of Pastor Clark. You know, you say
a little and I always had to wait for Dennis.
(21:02):
I mean, he was always a little longer at it.
Now was that show? I don't know.
Speaker 3 (21:09):
Bob says that Dennis always seemed like a loner. They
rarely talked about anything important.
Speaker 10 (21:16):
Dennis and I were never best friends, but I don't
nobody had one. He always felt like he was a
little bit guarded. He did help my mother. I had
a fire at ninety five out here on West Central
in the apartment she was living in id bet Her
had a fire. She had bunch smoke, damaged, water damage
and called Dennis, and Dennis went out and helped halt
(21:37):
her stuff open to my cousin's house.
Speaker 3 (21:40):
Bob never imagined that this man had a twisted dark side.
Speaker 10 (21:46):
I had not seen that component of Dennis. Yeah, I
hadn't seen that component.
Speaker 3 (21:52):
Neither did Pastor Michael Clark, who had a close relationship
with Dennis. In fact, Clark relied on Dennis for chor
around the church.
Speaker 10 (22:02):
If when the acolytes hadn't got there and the candles
didn't get lift, he always had always turn to Dennis
and say Dennis, and Dennis would do that. Their relationship
was good, and he was somebody kicked to Bendo.
Speaker 3 (22:14):
Looking back, Bob never would have expected that raider was BTK,
but he felt that something big was going to happen
regarding the mysterious BTK killer.
Speaker 1 (22:25):
And soon.
Speaker 10 (22:27):
I just got this feelding, I want to know this guy.
Speaker 3 (22:34):
In two thousand and four, Bob's premonition would begin to
take shape. That year was the thirtieth anniversary of the
Otaro killings, the first BTK murder. It's pretty common for
news outlets to program anniversary retrospectives for big events. In
the case of unsolved murders, where there's been no justice
(22:56):
for the victims or their families, there's an added goal
of potentially generating new leads, and that's what happened in Wichita.
Speaker 7 (23:06):
The Wichita Egle ran an anniversary piece and there was
a show on the Otto murders on the thirtieth anniversary
that ran in like January two thousand and four, and
that's supposedly woke my dad up. He said that he
was kind of bored. The kids were grown, we were safe,
we were out of the house. He had raised us well.
(23:30):
Nobody remembered BTK, and he wanted to terrorize the community again.
Speaker 3 (23:36):
On January seventeenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita Eagle
newspaper ran an article titled BTK Case Unsolved thirty years later.
Here is an excerpt.
Speaker 11 (23:49):
It was a routine followed by thousands of wichital women
in the late nineteen seventies. Upon arriving home, checked the
phone immediately. If the line is dead, get out. What
made the case frightenedly different for city residents was the
fact that the killer sent several taunting letters about the
crimes to local media.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
The article, written by reporter Herschelaviana, was a complete retrospective
on Btk's many terrible deeds. Dennis saw the article. To him,
it was a resume of his many accomplishments. Part of
the article features Robert Beatty, who wrote a book about
the hunt for BTK. In it, Baty said that he
(24:34):
did not think BTK would ever return. Dennis took that
as a challenge.
Speaker 10 (24:42):
We went on a fishing trip every year the guys
do and Dennison never went with us. In two thousand
and four we asked him again. Dennis said nah, He said,
I can't. I can't come along this year. I got
some projects I'm working on.
Speaker 12 (25:11):
Eight minutes past now. In decades after a serial killer
terrorized Wichita, Kansas cops say the case that was once
cold may be warm yet again. In his letters to
media organizations, the killer used the initials BTK, standing for bind,
torture and kill. They never caught that guy, and twenty
(25:31):
five years of silence have followed, and today a Wichita
paper says it received another letter claiming responsibility for an
eighth victim who was killed in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 3 (25:42):
On March nineteenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita Eagle
received a new letter from someone claiming to be BTK.
Speaker 13 (25:52):
The newspaper received that letter including photographs of the dead
woman's body as well as her driver's license as proof
that this was in fact BTK. Now he is also
claiming that she is victim number eight. He is not
just responsible for killing seven people. Now, the victim number
eight is Vicky Wagery. She was strangled back in nineteen
(26:13):
eighty six, but her case had never been solved over
all these years, nor had it been connected to BTK. BTK,
he is sadistic, he is psychopathic, and investigators worry about
why he is suddenly making public contact.
Speaker 8 (26:31):
That letter was from Bill Thomas Killman, so BTK. It
had three polaroids of Vicky Wagery and it had her
driver's license. My name is Kevin O'Connor. I was the
deputy District attorney in wich Daw Sedgwa County, Kansas during
the Dennis Raider investigation. The experts on that say that
(26:53):
that is him potentially giving up a momento. The polaroids
were significant because missus Wager was in very bad condition
when the medics found her, so they removed her and
took her to the hospital to try to save her.
So there were no crime scene photos of her, and
so this had to be the killer or somebody who
(27:13):
had come across or had access to the killer's stash.
Speaker 3 (27:18):
Before now, authorities had no idea that Vicky Weggerley was
connected to BTK. In exchange for his name in the paper,
Raider was willing to give up his trophies. He wanted
to start up a new cap'n Mouse game, so along
with the polaroids and driver's license, he sent along a cipher.
Speaker 1 (27:41):
I had kept photos of missus Weggerley in my dark
green box in my Heidi hole in the false bottom
drawer of the cabinet. The code I placed on top
was a German fractional. Very simple. You line up the
alphabet in columns and put your code word in the
first line. It was a message to the author lit
beads for his book.
Speaker 3 (28:02):
After years of hiding, BTK was back. Rayder loved the
attention he was getting in the news, and he wanted more.
He felt it was time to re emerge and claim
his credit.
Speaker 1 (28:21):
With thirty years of material and growing older each year,
I knew I needed to get it out of the house.
I had for many years wanted to take my secret murders, clippings, drawings,
and stories and put them in a book or story format.
My BTK years as a young serial killer were done.
Speaker 3 (28:41):
The Eagle ran its story on btk's return on March
twenty fifth, two thousand and four. Here is an excerpt.
Speaker 11 (28:51):
A serial killer who terrorized Wichita during the nineteen seventies
by committing a series of seven murders has claimed responsibility
for an eighth slave and is now probably living in Wichita,
police said Wednesday. The photographs appear to be authentic, said
Lieutenant Ken Landware. I'm one hundred percent sure it's BTK.
Speaker 3 (29:13):
Of course. At KKTV we also reported on this letter
sent to the Eagle this morning.
Speaker 14 (29:19):
We have more information on the letter sent to the
Wichita Eagle by the BTK killer. Even thirty years after
btk's first known murders, investigators are still working the case.
Speaker 4 (29:30):
Now.
Speaker 14 (29:30):
Police believe BTK is alive and living in Wichita. Btk's
trademark writing letters to the paper and KKTV detailing his
murders and taunting police.
Speaker 3 (29:40):
The last known letter.
Speaker 14 (29:41):
Linked to BTK was received in nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3 (29:46):
What we didn't anticipate was that very soon we'd be
roped into it ourselves again. Less than two months later,
on May fourth, two thousand and four, another letter appeared,
this time at k TV and in an envelope from
a Thomas B. Kingman.
Speaker 15 (30:07):
It read the BTK story One, A serial Killer is Born,
two Dawn three, Fetish four, Fantasy World five, The Search Begins, six,
Btk's Haunts, seven PJS, eight, mo id Ruse, nine Hits, ten,
(30:33):
Treasured Memories, eleven, Final Curtain Call, twelve, Dusk thirteen Will
there be More?
Speaker 3 (30:45):
This was an outline for a thirteen chapter book about BTK,
told by him and him alone. The letter also included
a word puzzle, a blacked out ID card, and a
special office first badge for Rader. Sending the letter to
KKE was an obvious choice.
Speaker 1 (31:07):
KKE TV was my favorite media spot for me. They
seemed to cover the BTK case very well.
Speaker 6 (31:15):
It's a very odd feeling to go to work every
day and know that you have to feed the national media,
you have to feed the local media.
Speaker 3 (31:27):
This is Larry Hadiberg, my dear friend and former colleague
at CAKE. Larry and I would lead every single newscast
with the latest information on BTK. We felt like it
was our responsibility to tell people everything we could about BTK.
Speaker 6 (31:44):
This was an odd time in my journalism history. Susan
and I were in it together and Jeff and several
of the other reporters who worked very hard on this,
and we had to cover each other's But because we
didn't know where it was going, we didn't know how
it was going to end.
Speaker 3 (32:04):
Deep down, everyone at CAKE was scared. It was a
time when we had to look out for each other.
We had no idea if BTK would one day just
walk through the station doors.
Speaker 6 (32:20):
One night when we were walking out of CAKE, it
was quarter eleven or so, and we get just past
the concrete stepping into the thing, and a bicyclist is
down at the end of our driveway and he comes
at us seemed like one hundred miles an hour, and
(32:41):
I thought we're in trouble. I didn't know who that
guy was, and he's coming at us one hundred miles
an hour on that bicycle pulls up in front of us,
and I thought we're going to shot stab something, and
he was just a viewer.
Speaker 3 (32:57):
Fear was a dominant emotion for us all the line
will there be More at the end of Btk's letter,
in particular, would haunt everyone at k TV and across Wichita.
Speaker 2 (33:13):
I would go to the.
Speaker 3 (33:13):
Grocery store and BTK was all that people would talk about.
Enrollment and self defense classes went way up, and people
started locking their doors again. We all reverted back to
the habits of the seventies. After over twenty years of peace,
Wichita was once again in a panic. Here's Bob Smeiser.
Speaker 10 (33:38):
When that first letter came out, some of our neighbors,
some of the kids were just petrified. A lot of
people didn't know about the seventies. There's a lot of
younger people just didn't know. I think that most people
thought he was dead. To be real honest with.
Speaker 3 (33:52):
You, the day after we received btk's letter at Cake News,
the police went on air to ask for tip.
Speaker 16 (34:01):
Based on the information contained in this letter. We're again
asking for help from the public. We want to talk
to any citizen who he calls a man seeking access
to their resident by presenting identification as the employee of
a school or a utility company.
Speaker 3 (34:22):
Kevin O'Connor says it became an all hands on deck
effort to find BTK. Everyone from local police, to state
police to federal authorities were called in. O'Connor was one
of them.
Speaker 8 (34:36):
It was very strange and difficult time for my family.
I couldn't tell my wife. I mean it was news,
there was reporting on it now. But my particular role
is I couldn't tell anybody, so I might be having
dinner or something and get a call and go, I
gotta go. We had Witchtop Police, we had the Sheriff's apartment,
(35:01):
we had FBI personnel, we had Kansas Bureau Investigation that
helped out. We even had law enforcement from the United
States Postal Service. Everybody worked together. It was a beautiful
thing to see, really about how all the different agencies
focused on finding the right person rather than worrying about
(35:21):
who got credit.
Speaker 3 (35:23):
None of us knew how long this would go on.
As it turns out, this was just the beginning.
Speaker 1 (35:31):
This was my fantasy. The cat and mouse game gave
me an adrenaline rush or a high. It also set
a stage for the police to know that a serious
minotaur was in their midst. I've spotted a female that
I think lives alone. Just got to work out the details.
I'm back.
Speaker 3 (35:55):
Next time on Monster BTK.
Speaker 9 (35:58):
This is the strongest warning and yet police have issued
for widgetants to watch out and take extra precautions after
a letter was found at the widgeta public library early
Saturday morning.
Speaker 8 (36:09):
They opened it up and it was a doll purported
to be Nancy Fox and a description of the Nancy
Fox murder.
Speaker 17 (36:17):
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.
Speaker 7 (36:29):
They got a subpoena and they got a warrant without
my knowledge, and they went to case date.
Speaker 8 (36:34):
And so the plans were made, search warrants were drawn
in advance, and then that was the time to make
an arrest.
Speaker 2 (36:48):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Noames Griffin, Trevor Young, and
Jesse Funk is Susan Peters. Executive producers on behalf of
Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay, alongside supervising
(37:09):
producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Podcasts
include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers Nomes Griffin
and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing support by
David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts and Caroline
(37:31):
Origemma at tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico, 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,
(37:56):
or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
Dateline NBC
Current and classic episodes, featuring compelling true-crime mysteries, powerful documentaries and in-depth investigations. Follow now to get the latest episodes of Dateline NBC completely free, or subscribe to Dateline Premium for ad-free listening and exclusive bonus content: DatelinePremium.com
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.