January 13, 2025 • 49 mins
A botched murder plan leads the killer to an unsuspecting door. Inside, the killer does something he can never undo. Later, he brags about his deeds in taunting letters to the police and media.
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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
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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):
What happened first? You were home from school? About what
time in the morning was it?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Matt Jim Claudora Mom.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
See this is Steve Ralford who says one day, when
he was just a little boy, his mom sent him
to the store because she was sick.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Excuse me, dealing driven street, get him kind of shoop,
you know.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
On the way back, got on the sidewalks Toppee shows
me photograph.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Dennis Raider showed you a photograph.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Yes, ma'am, asked me, Did I know who it was?
I said you no, say I herd look at it again,
Take it, look at it again. Get back to him,
you know. About fifteen minutes later, came knocking.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
On our door.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Me and my brother writes to the door and opened it.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When Steve answered the door, Dennis Raider was standing.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
There are your parent, comes my mama.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
She shick in bed and proceeded to come on in.
He forced his way through, turned off TV, and at
that time, my mama keeps out, what the hell's going
on here? Reaches under his arm, got the gun. Tell
those kids to sit on the couch.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
He put some toys and blanket made my mom put
the toys and blankets and busting and tied the one
door shut, puts us in there, shut us bed against
the other door.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Steve and his siblings were trapped in the bathroom helpless.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
There was a cracking the door. While I look out,
I heard my mom pleading. When I looked out, she
can't beating them fucking her mom's hands. She broke a
fucking bottle in her hands and shit patched it back
over her head, roped out around her neck, hog tied
with tape. My brother he broke fucking windows out in
(02:50):
the bathroom. However, for help, I think I scared him off.
I broke through the fucking bathroom door.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
My mom was try down town the road. I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Steve ran outside and tried to find help. He went
to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I go aside go to my neighbors that big, big window,
clean glass door, poun on it, broke it and come
the door calling on a couple of mom's dead. I
tried to given call him down. Hain't got time calling down.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The neighbor called the police and went next door.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
He went down and kicked seem what I was talking about.
I'm dead?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Their mom surely was dead.
Speaker 7 (03:55):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
Had you vanished from her home last weekend? Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 9 (04:04):
You see the victim play in there with plastic bags
over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a
planned scenario.
Speaker 8 (04:11):
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 7 (04:19):
He's gonna play with these victims.
Speaker 10 (04:21):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back and then brings them back to the
point of death.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. The murder of Shirley Vyanne
Ralford was one of the most unusual and tragic murders
(04:49):
committed by BTK, and that's because She wasn't even the
intended target. Vyanne was never supposed to interact with BTK
that terrible day in nineteen seventy seven. It was just
another unfortunate consequence of Dennis Raider's lunacy and poor planning.
(05:15):
Vyanne was a young mother, just twenty four years old,
who was spending her days raising her three children, Bud, Stephanie,
and Steve.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'm in trouble at it in the corner.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
This is Steve Ralford, son of Shirley Vyanne. You heard
him tell the harrowing story of witnessing his mother's murder
at the top of the episode. He said his mom
was strict, but that all of her children adored her.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
A gospel singer, Church mekays take share off for bag Giftea.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
When I talked to you years ago, you told me
about a song your mama used to sing to you
before you went.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
To bed, shout and teach, Loune Schatt and build cwn.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Didn't she sing a song too about tears on the pillow?
Or do you remember that song?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah? I probably sing it to you, but I'm not
going to.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Go ahead so we can hear the word will you
want to just tell us some of the words?
Speaker 11 (06:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Sure? What she sing to you? Chat? And she lou
sad pillow cud big long cut, I do not have big.
I don't remember all the words, but it.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Was a country song.
Speaker 11 (06:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
What'd she cook for dinner?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
What did you guys like? Efford?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Do you remember any of that?
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I changed my favorite SKay O b asked she'd always
feel Margie South.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
That's how.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
While Shirley was raising her children, Dennis Rader was planning
his next murder. It was nineteen seventy seven, and he
hadn't killed since Catherine Bright in nineteen seventy four. According
to the book Confession of a Serial Killer, he picked
March of that year for his next murder because.
Speaker 11 (07:29):
It relates to threes. It was the third month. It
was also spring break at WSU in work vacation.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, Saint Patrick's Day. Coincidentally,
Rader left his house. Here's an excerpt from the book
Buying Torture Kill, The Inside Story of BTK.
Speaker 12 (07:53):
His primary target this day lived at twelve oh seven
South Greenswood. If that target didn't work out, just a
block to the east at twelve forty three South Hydraulic.
There was an alley behind that address, a place to hide,
and if those targets didn't work out, he had another
backup and yet another. He stopped multiple women, switching surveillance
(08:16):
from one to another for weeks, taking notes, pondering escape routes.
His not theirs.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Raider's main target at this address was a woman named
Cheryl Gilmore. He called her Project Blackout because he had
spied on her for weeks prior, drinking heavily at nearby bars.
Raider also discovered that Cheryl lived with two other women.
If Cheryl wasn't home, surely one of them would be
(08:46):
there instead. Here are Raiders' own words, quoted in the
book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (08:54):
On that particular day, I drove to Dylan's and parked
in the parking lot and watched this particular residence. And
then I got out of the car and walked over
to the door. I knocked, but nobody answered.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
No one was home. Raider got frustrated.
Speaker 11 (09:13):
I was all keyed up over not getting into that
house on PJ. Green, So I drove and then parked
and started going through the neighborhood. I had on my
James Bond jacket, a tweed jacket, and nice shoes. I
had enough projects I had been watching that if one
didn't work out, I could just go to another. But
while I was walking away from the intended house and
(09:35):
down hydraulic, I saw a young boy coming back from Dylan's.
I figured he had a mother in the house.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
That young boy was Steve Ralphord. His mother, Shirley, was
sick with the flume. She had sent him on an
errand to pick up some soup from the store. Dylan's
raider approached Steve on his way back home.
Speaker 11 (09:57):
I had a picture in my wallet of my wife baby,
so I used it to pretend I was looking for them.
I asked if he had seen them. I knew he
wouldn't know them. He told me he didn't, but I
watched where he went.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Next raider waited about fifteen minutes before approaching the door.
Finally he knocked.
Speaker 11 (10:20):
This boy opened the door with his brother. I told
them I was a private detective and showed them the picture.
I carried a blue briefcase large enough for my hit kit,
cord tape, plastic bags, a gun, but not too large
to be noticed when I carried it on the street,
like I was a salesman or a businessman.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Steve was just a little boy, six years old. He
didn't know better, and even if he was older and
more prepared, he couldn't have predicted that this man was
a murderer. After Steve opened the door, he didn't really
respond to Raider's speech about being a detective. So Rader
forced his way through the doorway and brandished a gun.
(11:06):
Shirley heard the commotion from the other room and came
out to see what was going on.
Speaker 11 (11:12):
I told her I had a problem with the sexual
fantasies and I was going to tie her up. I
pulled down the blinds and turned off the TV. I
said I would tie up the kids first. I decided
to put the kids in the bathroom and shut the door.
We put toys and blankets in there for them. She
told the kids to do whatever I said. I tied
(11:33):
the door shut, but the kids were still yelling. She
helped me to shove a bed against the door. Then
I proceeded to tie her up.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
First, Rader used electrical tape to bind her hands and feet.
Then he used cores and nylon stockings to tie up
her ankles and wrists even tighter, and he placed her
face down on the mattress. All the while, steven siblings
were banging on the door and screaming. Raider threatened to
(12:04):
shoot them, so they quieted down, and then Shirley Vyanne
got sick and vomited on the floor.
Speaker 11 (12:13):
I think my being there had made her worse. She
was partially tied when I got her a glass of
water and comforted her a bit.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
After Rader finished tying up Shirley Vyanne, he pulled a
plastic bag around her head and began to strangle her
until she died.
Speaker 11 (12:33):
I used white plastic bags, garbage size that you could
buy in a roll. I like the ones in a box,
using plastic gloves, I folded them neatly and placed them
in another bag. That bag would go with me in
case it had fingerprints or material on it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
The room became more chaotic when suddenly the phone rang.
It startled Rader, and the kids started to scream and
bang on the door once again. Rader decided it was
time to go. He packed up his hit kit and
left the house. He didn't realize the kids had escaped
through the bathroom window and were running around the neighborhood
(13:13):
yelling out for help.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
The kids were able to get out. They broke out
the window and were able to escape. We worked with
the children as best we could.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion. He says
the Wichita Police Department was called by a neighbor who
found Steve and his siblings running around outside. When police arrived,
they questioned the children, but it was tough to get
much out of them.
Speaker 9 (13:48):
One of the children I think was six or eight,
but he was intellectually challenged, and so we did work
with him to try to get some ideas. We did
get the fact that it was a white male. We
knew also he had a bag, which stands to reason
because he'd brings the tape, he brings the rope, he
brings the guns, he brings everything he needs the bags.
(14:10):
So we were able to establish that. We had specialists
work with the children, but again that was to no avail.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Lemunion says the kids were too stunned to formulate coherent recollections,
which is understandable given their age and the situation. Still,
it took investigators a while to figure out what happened,
as Lemunion says, they discovered Vyanne's body, along with all
of the rope tape and one of the bags that
(14:41):
BTK left behind. They also found seamen at the crime
scene where the killer supposedly masturbated. Police immediately noticed the
similarities to previous BTK murders. Responding officer Raymond Fletcher was
quoted as saying, it looks like the same thing as
the O'to case. A few more officers reportedly also expressed
(15:04):
their suspicions at the crime scene, but according to the
book Buying Torture Kill, police were hesitant to officially connect
the crimes.
Speaker 12 (15:15):
Supervisors told them to stop guessing and work the evidence.
If BTK had killed Shirley Vyanne, it meant he was
a serial killer, and the brass didn't want to leap
to that conclusion or set off a panic.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Le Monnion says he had a hunch that was the
same person who killed the Otos, but ultimately he decided
not to release an official statement connecting the murders. He
didn't want to give BTK any incentive to kill again,
and he didn't want to create a frenzy. He says
his main objective following the Vane murder was to protect
(15:50):
the people of Wichita from further tragedy.
Speaker 9 (15:55):
The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
that this is going to happen again. You know what's
going to happen again, and that's what frustrates you to
the point that what else can I do to protect
the community. It's not so much that I'm worried about
my children, because I can protect them, but it's the
other single moms. It's the other people that can't protect themselves.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
While investigators were busy in making sense of the Buyan murder,
Steve Ralford's life had been turned upside down.
Speaker 11 (16:33):
After that.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
We went to Posha home and my grandparents. They had
to have a bunch shit. They come gays from okah huh,
and that's what in my fucking trouble. Well, he started
guarded smoking, shooting dope with Data nine, bringing age of six.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I ain't I don't know, camera rebellious. You can give
shit about nothing or nobody.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
When you went to your grandparents' house after the Foster home,
was there any kind of therapy or I.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Mean they try to give me therapy. I've become remillions.
Like I said, I thank her My brother and sister,
they both and draw the yesesile of their life.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Me.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
They said I was too fucking smart. What might be
a smart?
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Ask me?
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I'm not smart.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
My heart breaks for Steve Ralford. Over the years, I've
gotten to know this man well and watch him try
over and over again to overcome the tragedy of his
mother's death. Yes, it spiraled him out and sent him
down a path of self destruction, but I've also watched
(17:58):
him heal and come to terms with the events of
his life. Steve has spent the last many years slowly
pulling himself up, and I'm just happy that I've gotten
to know him and to be alongside him in his
journey to recovery.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Nowadays, that family I had two kids, more about I
can't do shit.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And hard.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
The unfortunate reality is that Steve was just one of
many people whose lives would be destroyed by BTK. Because
Shirley Vanne was far from the last BTK victim. Only
months later, this time BTK would strike again.
Speaker 13 (18:56):
Yeah, you will find a homicide forty three, Ny Fox,
I'm sybody to address.
Speaker 9 (19:17):
Shirley was killed in March of seventy seven, and in
December of seventy seven Nancy Fox. Nancy was killed.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Raider had discovered Nancy Fox on another of his prowls
through the streets of Wichita. He would drive around and
scope out women that might make good targets. He was
still reeling from the high of the Shirley Vyanne murder,
and one day he discovered Nancy walking into her apartment
at eight forty three South Pershing. She was coming home
(19:51):
from her job at the nearby mall. Raiders spent weeks
following her to and from work. He determined that she
lived alone and would be the perfect project. On the
evening of December eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Raider left home,
telling his family that he'd be studying at the WSU library.
(20:15):
Around nine pm, Raider left the library and parked two
blocks down from Nancy's apartment building. He grabbed his hit
kit and walked up to her door. Here are Raider's
words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
I knocked first to see if anybody was home. I
had studied her work routines and knew she arrived at
a particular time. I just wanted to be sure. Nobody
answered the door, so I looked around, went around to
the back of the house and cut the phone lines.
I cut the window, broke in and waited in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Raider recalls seeing Christmas decorations throughout the apartment. She was
very clean and tidy, something he liked about her. He
waited and waited until finally.
Speaker 11 (21:11):
She came in. She was startled. She asked what I
was doing there After, we confronted each other. I told
her I traveled a lot. I meant no real harm.
I had a sexual problem. I wanted sex. I would
tie her up and take a picture. She took her
park off. I believe it was white or cream colored.
(21:32):
As she laid her park it down, I began to smoke.
I sat on the couch and she sat on a
chair on the west side of the living room. She
was upset.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
According to Rader, Nancy said something to the effect of,
let's get this over with so I can call the police.
That was a mistake.
Speaker 11 (21:52):
She sealed her doom for sure when she told me
she would contact the police. I wore no mask or
anything to hide my face. I had to kill her.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
At this point, Rader says Nancy asked to go to
the bathroom. He said yes, but instructed her to remove
her clothes. After she returned, he handcuffed her, bound her
feet at the ankles, and gagged her.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
I got on top of her, and then I reached over,
took a belt, and then strangled her with it. That's
all I needed with a victim in bondage. The act
of strangling brought gratification quickly along with a victim struggling.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
This guy wanted to be in position.
Speaker 10 (22:36):
I was like, God, he's going to determine whether or
not you're get to live when you got to die.
He's going to play with these victims and torture these
victims psychologically and physically.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
This is former FBI profiler John Douglas. He says that
the murder of Nancy Fox was a prime example of
Raider's peculiar mo because Raider didn't just strangle Nancy until
you died.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
This guy wasn't killing him right away. He'd get him
to the point of death and then bring them back,
and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 11 (23:10):
Fox passed out. I had her come back, and I
whispered in her ear a little bit I told her
I was BTK, I was a bad guy. This was
the torture thing. You can visualize being tied up and
knowing that something's going to happen to you and you
can do nothing. That's my torture. What he was doing.
Speaker 10 (23:34):
It was very similar to some other cases we've seen,
like this kind of torture where they'll strangle and you
can see marks on the throat where there's kind of
like skid marks.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
And what it is.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
It's they're using ligature strangulation and then the ligature will
be released at the point where they're unconscious. They wait
for them to regain conscious, and then they put it
on their neck again, and so you see that there'd
be several marks on the victim's throat. It's just for
the sake of again playing God's part of the torture.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
The murder of Nancy Fox was also another example of
Raider killing a woman in a sexual way without actually
having sex with them. He once again chose to masturbate
rather than engage in penetrate of sex, and for someone
like John Douglas, this was telling.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
He was getting a sexual euphoria from the acts that
he was doing and killing was part of that. Sexual
penetration on.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
The victims was absent.
Speaker 10 (24:38):
He would stand over then and ejaculate onto the victims. Well,
I would find out later on sexually penetrating or having
sex with him, that would be like cheating on his wife.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
This is the thinking of these people.
Speaker 10 (24:52):
And I'd be cheating on my wife if I do that.
But if I masturbated the scene, I mean that's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
The murder of Nancy Fox was all so yet another
example of Raider trying to deceive the victim. Remember he
told Nancy Fox some story that he was just passing through.
He had told Steve Ralford he was a private detective
for Douglas. This was also a good indicator of the
type of killer that Raider was him.
Speaker 10 (25:20):
And another case is they'll come up with a story
to control them, to make them settle down. Don't worry,
I'm not going to hurt you. The story was he
would go in there like he's escapee. He's committed a crime.
I need your car, I need your food, and I'm
not going to hurt you, and want some money. Then
they will allow him. When you hear that, the emotion
(25:42):
goes down and he starts binding him up and then
decides to do the things he really wants to do
with him, and that is to bind him up and
kill him, kill him slowly.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Clearly, the goal in each of these cases was twofold.
One to the victim down and keep the situation under control.
Two to fill a twisted sense of power by lulling
the victim into a false sense of security. According to
(26:17):
John Douglas, Raider's patterns should have been clear to the
local investigators by this point, and in fact, Wichita PD
could no longer ignore the fact that this was BTK.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
He left semen in a neglige beside her. She was
laying face down on the bed, and he obviously took
some pictures while he was in there, took a driver's license.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
This is retired Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemunion Again. He
said he was shocked to find another BTK murder so soon,
and this time his attitude changed about addressing the BTK
problem publicly.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
It was after Nancy that I made the decision we
need to do officially give him credit, stopping keeping from
doing anything else.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And police would get plenty of opportunities to do just
that because BTK decided he wanted to communicate once again. First,
not long after the murder, nine to one to one
dispatch received a strange phone.
Speaker 13 (27:22):
Call, good if you will find a homicide forty three stop,
I'm going what is your address?
Speaker 9 (27:40):
The dispatchers received a call indicating he said you will
find a homicide and gave the address and her name.
That's the communications that we got from him through the dispatch,
which was obviously taped, so we tried to follow up
on that.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Le Monnion says the call came in just after a
on the morning of December ninth. They immediately sent someone
to investigate the source of the payphone call.
Speaker 9 (28:08):
The phone that he used was outside of a grocery
store was on Central Street and there was a firefighter
who was off duty, and then he had just walked
out of there. The investigator went back about the time
the call came and firefighter came up and said, yeah,
I saw a guy, and he was able again to
tell us about a white male. That's when it became
(28:31):
so clear that this was a game they was playing,
but he was using innocent people and he was killing
them and he was going to kill again. We had
to gear up. What else can we do, And that's
the frustrating part. What else can we do?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Using a public payphone and his own voice was a
monumental risk, But BTK loved the thrill. He loved it
so much, in fact, that he followed it up with
another letter in January of nineteen seventy eight, once again
addressed to the Wichita Eagle.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
Actually was a poem. He sent us a poem on
Shirley Surely thy In sure you have seen.
Speaker 11 (29:14):
The poem Shirly locks, surely locks? Wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not scream nor yet to feel the line,
but lay on cushion and think of me and death
and how it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
For whatever reason, this poem flew under the radar. Perhaps
the mail room team at The Eagle thought it was
just some bizarre prank, and so it wasn't reported to
police or connected to BTK, at least not yet.
Speaker 9 (29:50):
And then in February a letter from BTK was sent
to Cake TV claiming responsibility for Surely and for Nancy.
Speaker 14 (30:02):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 15 (30:03):
This morning k T they was contacted by the person
who police say they believe murdered four members of the
Joseph Otero family in January of nineteen seventy four, executive
producer Ron Lowan receive the letter. He's with us today
to give us the information, ron Jack.
Speaker 16 (30:18):
The communication came in the form of a two page
typewritten letter addressed to Kake Channel ten. It was signed
with the initials BTK. BTK claims to have strangled a
total of seven women, seven people, rather mostly women. He
provided a list of his victims, beginning with the number five,
where he wrote you guessed the.
Speaker 11 (30:37):
Victim and the motive.
Speaker 16 (30:39):
Then he listed Shirley Vyanne as his sixth victim and
provided a paragraph of details concerning the murder, with many
details known only to the police.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Hake received the letter on February ninth, nineteen seventy eight,
along with the poem we told you about in episode
one called Oh Death to Nancy. It also included crude
hand drawings of the Nancy Fox crime scene. The letter started, I.
Speaker 11 (31:08):
Find the newspaper not writing about the poem on vanne
Unamusing a little paragraph would have been enough. I know
it's not the news media's fault. The police chief he
keeps things quiet and doesn't let the public know there's
a psycho running around loose, strangling mostly women. There's seven
(31:28):
in the ground. Who will be next?
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Later in the letter, he mentioned Nancy Fox by name.
Speaker 11 (31:37):
There is no help, no cure except death or being
caught and put away. It's a terrible nightmare, but you see,
I don't lose any sleep over it. After a thing
like Fox, I come home and I go about life
like anyone else.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Then he brought up the matter of his own moniker.
Speaker 11 (32:01):
Before a murder or murderers, you will receive a copy
of the initials BTK. You keep that copy, the original
will show up someday on guess who You may not
be the unlucky one. Ps. How about a name for me?
It's time seven down and many more to go. I
(32:23):
like the following. How about you? The BTK strangler, Wichita Strangler,
poetic Strangler, bond age strangler, the Wichita Hangman, the Wichita Executioner,
the Garat Phantom, the exphyxiator.
Speaker 7 (32:46):
It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
into our mail room, and so the station manager and
I took the postcard down to the Wichita Police Department
and we gave it to the police, and we asked
to talk to him about this because obviously something was up.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
This is KKE TV anchor Larry Hadiberg, and.
Speaker 7 (33:11):
So he went into a room with his chief detective,
shut the door. After about a half hour, came out
and he told us that he wanted to go on
our air that night at about six o'clock in the
evening and tell the people of Wichita that the serial
killer was loose. We were shocked. Wow, this is incredible.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
I went to KTV with the idea that what we
wanted him to do was communicate with us. And I
have to tell you at that time we had great
rapport with the reporters at KKTV, their higher ups, and
with the newspaper. I mean that's the time and history
when really we were partners. We had to have the media.
(33:58):
This was his communication network. So we encouraged him to
communicate until we could find out who this individual was.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
So obviously we went back to the television station, prepared
the newscast and waited for the police chief to come
and sure enough he shows up, goes on the air
and says, we have a serial killer in Wichita. Here's
what we know about him.
Speaker 16 (34:25):
But with us right now is Chief of Police Richard Lemoniam,
who has been reviewing the letter since this afternoon, and
I have a couple of questions, Chief, how can you
be sure that the BTK letter is authentic.
Speaker 17 (34:38):
Or on After reviewing the contents of the letters? Absolutely
no question that the only person who would have the
type of information that was included in the letter would
have to be the killer himself.
Speaker 16 (34:50):
Do you know what the initials BTK stand for?
Speaker 14 (34:53):
Is?
Speaker 17 (34:54):
It's our feeling that the initials that were placed there
stand for buying, torture and kill. We have an individual
who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times,
he is not a rational person during that frame of mind.
So I think an undo or a special awareness on
(35:15):
the part of the citizens be alert call us when
they have any type of information that they feel could
be relevant, even if it seems at the time very insignificant,
it might be just exactly.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
What we need.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The race to catch BGK now included the media as
purveyors of public information. They cooperated with police to try
and find the now infamous killer.
Speaker 14 (35:55):
Last February, police Chief Richard Lemonnion ask KKE TV to
run us second picture in one of our news reports
psychologists were hoping BTK would unconsciously detect the subliminal message
and follow its instructions. It's the same principle as splicing
shots of popcorn into a movie to make the viewer hungry.
Subliminal messages of all kinds are illegal, but Cake was
(36:17):
given special permission by the.
Speaker 7 (36:19):
SEC to air the report. And here's what it looked like.
Speaker 9 (36:24):
That's the Catherine Bright murder that occurred in April of
seventy four.
Speaker 14 (36:29):
When we slow the picture down electronically, you can see
the subliminal message. The message shown here, still framed, urged
BTK to call the chief.
Speaker 11 (36:39):
He did not.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
As a journalist, it's a tricky balance when working with
the police. On the one hand, we have to be
purely objective and remain independent from any agency authorities included.
On the other hand, when police need your help to
track down a killer, you feel a certain responsibility to
help them.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
We had, for the most part, good relations with the
police department, but in journalism you're always going to rub
knuckles with them at some point, and we did.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
This is former Cake TV anchor Larry Hadiberg.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Again.
Speaker 7 (37:23):
Anytime we got anything related to BTK, we turned it
over immediately. We would get it, we would photograph it,
we would call a PD and they would have it.
So we turned everything, we had, everything we knew over
to the police department because we wanted to cooperate. I mean,
we're not standing in the way of catching anybody, and
(37:44):
I think it's important for a local television station to
be part of a solution. We tried to work with
them and the FBI and anybody else and at the
same time be professional journalists. There's no manual written on
how when you become part of the story that you
react to every given situation. You're really flying by the
(38:08):
seat of your pants and trying to make the right,
most honest decision at every point in time and hoping
you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Following that big news broadcast, a tip line was made public,
and Richard Lemonian says it blew up almost immediately.
Speaker 9 (38:29):
When we announced the fact that we did as a
serial killer. We had hundreds, literally hundreds of tips, and
we put additional officers, additional detectives to run every one
of those tips down.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Meanwhile, Dennis Rader was getting scared once again. The overwhelming
attention spooked in so he decided to lay low and
stop sending letters temporarily. Besides, he had other matters to
worry about. His second child and only daughter, Carrie, was
born in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 8 (39:06):
So I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. We lived in
Park City. It's a small northern suburb of Wichita. It's
about five thousand people. I lived nine houses down from
my mom's parents, Eileen and Palmer dates.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Carrie recently visited the Tenderfoot Studio to talk with Payne Lindsay.
She says she has fond memories of growing up in Wichita. Obviously,
she was unaware of the chaos of the time. She
only knew her father, Dennis as a regular dad.
Speaker 8 (39:36):
By the time I was toddling, he would like take
me out gardening. I was three or four. He was
teaching me about all the plants, the vegetables, growing seasons, soil.
Anything Dad was doing I wanted to do. He loved
the outdoors, so he was cool and let me get muddy.
He had this big, huge, like green gardening book and
(39:56):
in the winter we would like do Burpy's Calloggs, so
we would like pick out seeds and plan. He was
obsessed with gardening when I was little.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
But Carrie also remembers peculiar things about Dennis from her childhood.
For example, he would have these unpredictable bursts of rage
and anger, and he could never sit still.
Speaker 8 (40:19):
My mom would always tell him when we were growing up,
can't you just sit down for five minutes?
Speaker 15 (40:23):
You know?
Speaker 8 (40:23):
He always had to be busy, always active. He always
had like the Wichita eagle out, like he was marking
it with these markings or cutting things out of it,
or he was always messing with something. Later on, he
would have his stamps out. Saturday nights were sitting down
to watch a movie. We're popping popcorn and having pop.
Everyone else is just choosing a comfortable chair to watch
(40:44):
a movie. And now he's setting up the card table
to do something like he had to do something. He
couldn't just like relax because he could be controlling and
angry and verbally abusive at times. I learned early how
to like get him to relax, which was hell well,
like with my mom, she knew how to say, Dennis,
(41:06):
just go outside to your garden. Why don't you take
the dog for a walker, Why don't you go fishing
this weekend?
Speaker 18 (41:12):
How did your mom know when to say that?
Speaker 8 (41:14):
Because he was tight and he was tense. His eyes
would narrow and like he's about to yell, or he
is yelling. He's making your life uncomfortable. Like later we
said it was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Ironically, Carrie says Dennis was very protective over her and
her mother. He was obsessed with safety, always worried that
an intruder might break in and harm them.
Speaker 8 (41:40):
He had dead bolts on our front door and our
back door.
Speaker 18 (41:43):
In the kitchen, and why was that.
Speaker 8 (41:46):
So he worked for eighty t so I feured he
was security conscious because he knew about alarm systems. He
knew about people breaking into homes. He was making home
for more secure with alarm systems.
Speaker 18 (41:56):
But what do you think he was protecting you from
bad guys?
Speaker 8 (42:00):
But literally, it's like he's so messed up. It was
almost like he was protecting us from him. But it's
because he knew how bad people could be. When I'm little,
he's teaching me these things. So you're not supposed to
be telling kids about like home invasions. 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
(42:21):
the key's not in, then they can't get in. They
got to lake jam the door. More so, I'm learning
this when I'm like little. It it's imprinting because it's
over and over and over with this man. 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. He is obsessively trying to keep me safe.
Speaker 18 (42:45):
It seems like, at least from what I'm picking up,
that you sort of look at your dad as two
different people. So my question is this is kind of weird.
But going back to being like a six year old
hindsight looking back, do you feel like the BTK killer
would have ever harmed you?
Speaker 13 (43:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (43:08):
That's one of those big questions. Part of my ability
to survive and do what I need to do now
is to compartmentalize. So like with my father, I have
to put Dad in BTK like day to day now,
I don't think of my dad as BTK I can
separate it, or I'm not really even thinking about my dad.
I'm living my life as a mom and writer and
(43:28):
whatever I'm doing right, My dad's my dad. He could
be mean and mad, but most of the time ninety
five percent of the time he's like my best friend.
And my brother will say the same thing he was
like his best friend.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
While Raider was raising his daughter, he was also planning
yet another murder. By April of nineteen seventy nine, he
was still taking classes at Wichita State, and he used
this as an excuse to his family for late night absence.
One night, he spotted a twenty four year old woman
named Rebecca walking into a nearby house. A few nights later,
(44:10):
Raider got to work after classes. On the night of
April twenty eighth, Raider approached the home. Here again are
his words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (44:24):
I also cut the phone line in my trademark. I
used tape on the window where I broke in, and
perhaps a glass cutter, which I now carried in my kit.
Since the house was dark when I came, I thought
perhaps she was asleep. Further, I saw a car in
the garage, so I tried a cat burglar approach, going
(44:44):
through the basement window, but the house was empty.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Raider waited and waited. What he didn't know at the
time was that this was actually the home of sixty
three year old Anna Williams. The young woman named Rebecca
that he'd seen was her granddaughter. Williams was out square
dancing on this night and wouldn't be home for quite
a while. Raider busied himself by rumging through her drawers
(45:11):
and stealing various articles of clothing. He claims he scribbled
something on her bathroom mirror and lipstick, something to the
effect of bt K was here, though this was never
confirmed or included in the police report. He laid out
all of his instruments of murder on the bed to prepare,
(45:32):
and then he ran out of time. He had to
get home before his wife became suspicious, so he packed
up and left a failed attempt. Anna Williams returned home
just after eleven pm to discover that someone had cut
her phone line, stolen some jewelry and clothing, and broken
(45:54):
a window. She called the police, who determined it was
just a regular burglary, but weeks later, in June, she
got a strange package in the mail. It included a
crude drawing of a hogtied woman naked on a bed.
The package also contained some of the stolen items from
(46:17):
around her home, and scariest of all, it came with
a handwritten letter.
Speaker 11 (46:24):
Twas a perfect plan of deviant pleasure, so bold on
that spring night, my inner felling hot with propension of
the new awakening season, warm, wet with interfere and rapture,
my pleasure of entanglement like new vines at night, Oh Anna,
(46:44):
why didn't you appear alone? Now? In another time span,
I lay with sweetened rapture garments across most private thought,
bed of spring, moist grass, clean before the sun enslaved
with control. Alone Again, I trod in past memory of
mirrors and ponder why for number eight was not?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (47:09):
And why didn't you appear?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Next time? On Monster BTK.
Speaker 8 (47:23):
He broke into her house, expecting her to be home
because her car was there, But she had fond with
this man. She's not home, so he hides in her closet.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North,
just east of Webb Road.
Speaker 9 (47:37):
Before she died, we had a very very close relationship.
Speaker 7 (47:41):
He killed a woman in his own neighborhood that violated
his own rules don't kill close to home.
Speaker 9 (47:48):
If he was dead, we knew that we would find
the trophies sometime, or if he was still alive at
some point, he's going to come back.
Speaker 10 (47:56):
When you have an offender who starts to communicate, I
want him to communicate with a person affiliated with the
investigation I called to supercot.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
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
(48:38):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima ilk Ali.
Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research
(48:59):
by Claude Africa. 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
(49:22):
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):
What happened first? You were home from school? About what
time in the morning was it?
Speaker 4 (00:46):
Matt Jim Claudora Mom.
Speaker 3 (00:49):
See this is Steve Ralford who says one day, when
he was just a little boy, his mom sent him
to the store because she was sick.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
Excuse me, dealing driven street, get him kind of shoop,
you know.
Speaker 5 (01:07):
On the way back, got on the sidewalks Toppee shows
me photograph.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
Dennis Raider showed you a photograph.
Speaker 5 (01:15):
Yes, ma'am, asked me, Did I know who it was?
I said you no, say I herd look at it again,
Take it, look at it again. Get back to him,
you know. About fifteen minutes later, came knocking.
Speaker 4 (01:31):
On our door.
Speaker 5 (01:33):
Me and my brother writes to the door and opened it.
Speaker 3 (01:37):
When Steve answered the door, Dennis Raider was standing.
Speaker 4 (01:41):
There are your parent, comes my mama.
Speaker 6 (01:45):
She shick in bed and proceeded to come on in.
He forced his way through, turned off TV, and at
that time, my mama keeps out, what the hell's going
on here? Reaches under his arm, got the gun. Tell
those kids to sit on the couch.
Speaker 5 (02:05):
He put some toys and blanket made my mom put
the toys and blankets and busting and tied the one
door shut, puts us in there, shut us bed against
the other door.
Speaker 3 (02:20):
Steve and his siblings were trapped in the bathroom helpless.
Speaker 5 (02:26):
There was a cracking the door. While I look out,
I heard my mom pleading. When I looked out, she
can't beating them fucking her mom's hands. She broke a
fucking bottle in her hands and shit patched it back
over her head, roped out around her neck, hog tied
with tape. My brother he broke fucking windows out in
(02:50):
the bathroom. However, for help, I think I scared him off.
I broke through the fucking bathroom door.
Speaker 4 (03:00):
My mom was try down town the road. I couldn't.
Speaker 3 (03:06):
Steve ran outside and tried to find help. He went
to the neighbor's house.
Speaker 5 (03:12):
I go aside go to my neighbors that big, big window,
clean glass door, poun on it, broke it and come
the door calling on a couple of mom's dead. I
tried to given call him down. Hain't got time calling down.
Speaker 3 (03:37):
The neighbor called the police and went next door.
Speaker 4 (03:42):
He went down and kicked seem what I was talking about.
I'm dead?
Speaker 3 (03:48):
Their mom surely was dead.
Speaker 7 (03:55):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 8 (03:58):
Had you vanished from her home last weekend? Her phone
lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 9 (04:04):
You see the victim play in there with plastic bags
over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a
planned scenario.
Speaker 8 (04:11):
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 7 (04:19):
He's gonna play with these victims.
Speaker 10 (04:21):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back and then brings them back to the
point of death.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK. The murder of Shirley Vyanne
Ralford was one of the most unusual and tragic murders
(04:49):
committed by BTK, and that's because She wasn't even the
intended target. Vyanne was never supposed to interact with BTK
that terrible day in nineteen seventy seven. It was just
another unfortunate consequence of Dennis Raider's lunacy and poor planning.
(05:15):
Vyanne was a young mother, just twenty four years old,
who was spending her days raising her three children, Bud, Stephanie,
and Steve.
Speaker 4 (05:26):
I'm in trouble at it in the corner.
Speaker 3 (05:32):
This is Steve Ralford, son of Shirley Vyanne. You heard
him tell the harrowing story of witnessing his mother's murder
at the top of the episode. He said his mom
was strict, but that all of her children adored her.
Speaker 5 (05:48):
A gospel singer, Church mekays take share off for bag Giftea.
Speaker 3 (05:57):
When I talked to you years ago, you told me
about a song your mama used to sing to you
before you went.
Speaker 5 (06:04):
To bed, shout and teach, Loune Schatt and build cwn.
Speaker 4 (06:11):
Yep.
Speaker 3 (06:12):
Didn't she sing a song too about tears on the pillow?
Or do you remember that song?
Speaker 4 (06:17):
Yeah? I probably sing it to you, but I'm not
going to.
Speaker 3 (06:21):
Go ahead so we can hear the word will you
want to just tell us some of the words?
Speaker 11 (06:27):
Yeah?
Speaker 4 (06:27):
Sure? What she sing to you? Chat? And she lou
sad pillow cud big long cut, I do not have big.
I don't remember all the words, but it.
Speaker 3 (06:47):
Was a country song.
Speaker 11 (06:48):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (06:49):
What'd she cook for dinner?
Speaker 4 (06:50):
What did you guys like? Efford?
Speaker 3 (06:52):
Do you remember any of that?
Speaker 5 (06:53):
I changed my favorite SKay O b asked she'd always
feel Margie South.
Speaker 4 (07:02):
That's how.
Speaker 3 (07:07):
While Shirley was raising her children, Dennis Rader was planning
his next murder. It was nineteen seventy seven, and he
hadn't killed since Catherine Bright in nineteen seventy four. According
to the book Confession of a Serial Killer, he picked
March of that year for his next murder because.
Speaker 11 (07:29):
It relates to threes. It was the third month. It
was also spring break at WSU in work vacation.
Speaker 3 (07:38):
On March seventeenth, nineteen seventy seven, Saint Patrick's Day. Coincidentally,
Rader left his house. Here's an excerpt from the book
Buying Torture Kill, The Inside Story of BTK.
Speaker 12 (07:53):
His primary target this day lived at twelve oh seven
South Greenswood. If that target didn't work out, just a
block to the east at twelve forty three South Hydraulic.
There was an alley behind that address, a place to hide,
and if those targets didn't work out, he had another
backup and yet another. He stopped multiple women, switching surveillance
(08:16):
from one to another for weeks, taking notes, pondering escape routes.
His not theirs.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
Raider's main target at this address was a woman named
Cheryl Gilmore. He called her Project Blackout because he had
spied on her for weeks prior, drinking heavily at nearby bars.
Raider also discovered that Cheryl lived with two other women.
If Cheryl wasn't home, surely one of them would be
(08:46):
there instead. Here are Raiders' own words, quoted in the
book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (08:54):
On that particular day, I drove to Dylan's and parked
in the parking lot and watched this particular residence. And
then I got out of the car and walked over
to the door. I knocked, but nobody answered.
Speaker 3 (09:08):
No one was home. Raider got frustrated.
Speaker 11 (09:13):
I was all keyed up over not getting into that
house on PJ. Green, So I drove and then parked
and started going through the neighborhood. I had on my
James Bond jacket, a tweed jacket, and nice shoes. I
had enough projects I had been watching that if one
didn't work out, I could just go to another. But
while I was walking away from the intended house and
(09:35):
down hydraulic, I saw a young boy coming back from Dylan's.
I figured he had a mother in the house.
Speaker 3 (09:43):
That young boy was Steve Ralphord. His mother, Shirley, was
sick with the flume. She had sent him on an
errand to pick up some soup from the store. Dylan's
raider approached Steve on his way back home.
Speaker 11 (09:57):
I had a picture in my wallet of my wife baby,
so I used it to pretend I was looking for them.
I asked if he had seen them. I knew he
wouldn't know them. He told me he didn't, but I
watched where he went.
Speaker 3 (10:11):
Next raider waited about fifteen minutes before approaching the door.
Finally he knocked.
Speaker 11 (10:20):
This boy opened the door with his brother. I told
them I was a private detective and showed them the picture.
I carried a blue briefcase large enough for my hit kit,
cord tape, plastic bags, a gun, but not too large
to be noticed when I carried it on the street,
like I was a salesman or a businessman.
Speaker 3 (10:42):
Steve was just a little boy, six years old. He
didn't know better, and even if he was older and
more prepared, he couldn't have predicted that this man was
a murderer. After Steve opened the door, he didn't really
respond to Raider's speech about being a detective. So Rader
forced his way through the doorway and brandished a gun.
(11:06):
Shirley heard the commotion from the other room and came
out to see what was going on.
Speaker 11 (11:12):
I told her I had a problem with the sexual
fantasies and I was going to tie her up. I
pulled down the blinds and turned off the TV. I
said I would tie up the kids first. I decided
to put the kids in the bathroom and shut the door.
We put toys and blankets in there for them. She
told the kids to do whatever I said. I tied
(11:33):
the door shut, but the kids were still yelling. She
helped me to shove a bed against the door. Then
I proceeded to tie her up.
Speaker 3 (11:42):
First, Rader used electrical tape to bind her hands and feet.
Then he used cores and nylon stockings to tie up
her ankles and wrists even tighter, and he placed her
face down on the mattress. All the while, steven siblings
were banging on the door and screaming. Raider threatened to
(12:04):
shoot them, so they quieted down, and then Shirley Vyanne
got sick and vomited on the floor.
Speaker 11 (12:13):
I think my being there had made her worse. She
was partially tied when I got her a glass of
water and comforted her a bit.
Speaker 3 (12:22):
After Rader finished tying up Shirley Vyanne, he pulled a
plastic bag around her head and began to strangle her
until she died.
Speaker 11 (12:33):
I used white plastic bags, garbage size that you could
buy in a roll. I like the ones in a box,
using plastic gloves, I folded them neatly and placed them
in another bag. That bag would go with me in
case it had fingerprints or material on it.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
The room became more chaotic when suddenly the phone rang.
It startled Rader, and the kids started to scream and
bang on the door once again. Rader decided it was
time to go. He packed up his hit kit and
left the house. He didn't realize the kids had escaped
through the bathroom window and were running around the neighborhood
(13:13):
yelling out for help.
Speaker 9 (13:17):
The kids were able to get out. They broke out
the window and were able to escape. We worked with
the children as best we could.
Speaker 3 (13:29):
This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion. He says
the Wichita Police Department was called by a neighbor who
found Steve and his siblings running around outside. When police arrived,
they questioned the children, but it was tough to get
much out of them.
Speaker 9 (13:48):
One of the children I think was six or eight,
but he was intellectually challenged, and so we did work
with him to try to get some ideas. We did
get the fact that it was a white male. We
knew also he had a bag, which stands to reason
because he'd brings the tape, he brings the rope, he
brings the guns, he brings everything he needs the bags.
(14:10):
So we were able to establish that. We had specialists
work with the children, but again that was to no avail.
Speaker 3 (14:19):
Lemunion says the kids were too stunned to formulate coherent recollections,
which is understandable given their age and the situation. Still,
it took investigators a while to figure out what happened,
as Lemunion says, they discovered Vyanne's body, along with all
of the rope tape and one of the bags that
(14:41):
BTK left behind. They also found seamen at the crime
scene where the killer supposedly masturbated. Police immediately noticed the
similarities to previous BTK murders. Responding officer Raymond Fletcher was
quoted as saying, it looks like the same thing as
the O'to case. A few more officers reportedly also expressed
(15:04):
their suspicions at the crime scene, but according to the
book Buying Torture Kill, police were hesitant to officially connect
the crimes.
Speaker 12 (15:15):
Supervisors told them to stop guessing and work the evidence.
If BTK had killed Shirley Vyanne, it meant he was
a serial killer, and the brass didn't want to leap
to that conclusion or set off a panic.
Speaker 3 (15:29):
Le Monnion says he had a hunch that was the
same person who killed the Otos, but ultimately he decided
not to release an official statement connecting the murders. He
didn't want to give BTK any incentive to kill again,
and he didn't want to create a frenzy. He says
his main objective following the Vane murder was to protect
(15:50):
the people of Wichita from further tragedy.
Speaker 9 (15:55):
The big thing that weighs on you is the fact
that this is going to happen again. You know what's
going to happen again, and that's what frustrates you to
the point that what else can I do to protect
the community. It's not so much that I'm worried about
my children, because I can protect them, but it's the
other single moms. It's the other people that can't protect themselves.
Speaker 3 (16:23):
While investigators were busy in making sense of the Buyan murder,
Steve Ralford's life had been turned upside down.
Speaker 11 (16:33):
After that.
Speaker 5 (16:34):
We went to Posha home and my grandparents. They had
to have a bunch shit. They come gays from okah huh,
and that's what in my fucking trouble. Well, he started
guarded smoking, shooting dope with Data nine, bringing age of six.
Speaker 4 (16:54):
I ain't I don't know, camera rebellious. You can give
shit about nothing or nobody.
Speaker 3 (17:03):
When you went to your grandparents' house after the Foster home,
was there any kind of therapy or I.
Speaker 5 (17:10):
Mean they try to give me therapy. I've become remillions.
Like I said, I thank her My brother and sister,
they both and draw the yesesile of their life.
Speaker 3 (17:26):
Me.
Speaker 4 (17:27):
They said I was too fucking smart. What might be
a smart?
Speaker 11 (17:32):
Ask me?
Speaker 4 (17:33):
I'm not smart.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
My heart breaks for Steve Ralford. Over the years, I've
gotten to know this man well and watch him try
over and over again to overcome the tragedy of his
mother's death. Yes, it spiraled him out and sent him
down a path of self destruction, but I've also watched
(17:58):
him heal and come to terms with the events of
his life. Steve has spent the last many years slowly
pulling himself up, and I'm just happy that I've gotten
to know him and to be alongside him in his
journey to recovery.
Speaker 5 (18:16):
Nowadays, that family I had two kids, more about I
can't do shit.
Speaker 4 (18:26):
And hard.
Speaker 3 (18:34):
The unfortunate reality is that Steve was just one of
many people whose lives would be destroyed by BTK. Because
Shirley Vanne was far from the last BTK victim. Only
months later, this time BTK would strike again.
Speaker 13 (18:56):
Yeah, you will find a homicide forty three, Ny Fox,
I'm sybody to address.
Speaker 9 (19:17):
Shirley was killed in March of seventy seven, and in
December of seventy seven Nancy Fox. Nancy was killed.
Speaker 3 (19:28):
Raider had discovered Nancy Fox on another of his prowls
through the streets of Wichita. He would drive around and
scope out women that might make good targets. He was
still reeling from the high of the Shirley Vyanne murder,
and one day he discovered Nancy walking into her apartment
at eight forty three South Pershing. She was coming home
(19:51):
from her job at the nearby mall. Raiders spent weeks
following her to and from work. He determined that she
lived alone and would be the perfect project. On the
evening of December eighth, nineteen seventy seven, Raider left home,
telling his family that he'd be studying at the WSU library.
(20:15):
Around nine pm, Raider left the library and parked two
blocks down from Nancy's apartment building. He grabbed his hit
kit and walked up to her door. Here are Raider's
words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (20:32):
I knocked first to see if anybody was home. I
had studied her work routines and knew she arrived at
a particular time. I just wanted to be sure. Nobody
answered the door, so I looked around, went around to
the back of the house and cut the phone lines.
I cut the window, broke in and waited in the kitchen.
Speaker 3 (20:56):
Raider recalls seeing Christmas decorations throughout the apartment. She was
very clean and tidy, something he liked about her. He
waited and waited until finally.
Speaker 11 (21:11):
She came in. She was startled. She asked what I
was doing there After, we confronted each other. I told
her I traveled a lot. I meant no real harm.
I had a sexual problem. I wanted sex. I would
tie her up and take a picture. She took her
park off. I believe it was white or cream colored.
(21:32):
As she laid her park it down, I began to smoke.
I sat on the couch and she sat on a
chair on the west side of the living room. She
was upset.
Speaker 3 (21:42):
According to Rader, Nancy said something to the effect of,
let's get this over with so I can call the police.
That was a mistake.
Speaker 11 (21:52):
She sealed her doom for sure when she told me
she would contact the police. I wore no mask or
anything to hide my face. I had to kill her.
Speaker 3 (22:02):
At this point, Rader says Nancy asked to go to
the bathroom. He said yes, but instructed her to remove
her clothes. After she returned, he handcuffed her, bound her
feet at the ankles, and gagged her.
Speaker 11 (22:17):
I got on top of her, and then I reached over,
took a belt, and then strangled her with it. That's
all I needed with a victim in bondage. The act
of strangling brought gratification quickly along with a victim struggling.
Speaker 4 (22:33):
This guy wanted to be in position.
Speaker 10 (22:36):
I was like, God, he's going to determine whether or
not you're get to live when you got to die.
He's going to play with these victims and torture these
victims psychologically and physically.
Speaker 3 (22:46):
This is former FBI profiler John Douglas. He says that
the murder of Nancy Fox was a prime example of
Raider's peculiar mo because Raider didn't just strangle Nancy until
you died.
Speaker 10 (23:01):
This guy wasn't killing him right away. He'd get him
to the point of death and then bring them back,
and then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 11 (23:10):
Fox passed out. I had her come back, and I
whispered in her ear a little bit I told her
I was BTK, I was a bad guy. This was
the torture thing. You can visualize being tied up and
knowing that something's going to happen to you and you
can do nothing. That's my torture. What he was doing.
Speaker 10 (23:34):
It was very similar to some other cases we've seen,
like this kind of torture where they'll strangle and you
can see marks on the throat where there's kind of
like skid marks.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
And what it is.
Speaker 10 (23:44):
It's they're using ligature strangulation and then the ligature will
be released at the point where they're unconscious. They wait
for them to regain conscious, and then they put it
on their neck again, and so you see that there'd
be several marks on the victim's throat. It's just for
the sake of again playing God's part of the torture.
Speaker 3 (24:07):
The murder of Nancy Fox was also another example of
Raider killing a woman in a sexual way without actually
having sex with them. He once again chose to masturbate
rather than engage in penetrate of sex, and for someone
like John Douglas, this was telling.
Speaker 10 (24:26):
He was getting a sexual euphoria from the acts that
he was doing and killing was part of that. Sexual
penetration on.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
The victims was absent.
Speaker 10 (24:38):
He would stand over then and ejaculate onto the victims. Well,
I would find out later on sexually penetrating or having
sex with him, that would be like cheating on his wife.
Speaker 4 (24:49):
This is the thinking of these people.
Speaker 10 (24:52):
And I'd be cheating on my wife if I do that.
But if I masturbated the scene, I mean that's okay.
Speaker 3 (24:58):
The murder of Nancy Fox was all so yet another
example of Raider trying to deceive the victim. Remember he
told Nancy Fox some story that he was just passing through.
He had told Steve Ralford he was a private detective
for Douglas. This was also a good indicator of the
type of killer that Raider was him.
Speaker 10 (25:20):
And another case is they'll come up with a story
to control them, to make them settle down. Don't worry,
I'm not going to hurt you. The story was he
would go in there like he's escapee. He's committed a crime.
I need your car, I need your food, and I'm
not going to hurt you, and want some money. Then
they will allow him. When you hear that, the emotion
(25:42):
goes down and he starts binding him up and then
decides to do the things he really wants to do
with him, and that is to bind him up and
kill him, kill him slowly.
Speaker 3 (25:55):
Clearly, the goal in each of these cases was twofold.
One to the victim down and keep the situation under control.
Two to fill a twisted sense of power by lulling
the victim into a false sense of security. According to
(26:17):
John Douglas, Raider's patterns should have been clear to the
local investigators by this point, and in fact, Wichita PD
could no longer ignore the fact that this was BTK.
Speaker 9 (26:29):
He left semen in a neglige beside her. She was
laying face down on the bed, and he obviously took
some pictures while he was in there, took a driver's license.
Speaker 3 (26:40):
This is retired Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemunion Again. He
said he was shocked to find another BTK murder so soon,
and this time his attitude changed about addressing the BTK
problem publicly.
Speaker 9 (26:56):
It was after Nancy that I made the decision we
need to do officially give him credit, stopping keeping from
doing anything else.
Speaker 3 (27:07):
And police would get plenty of opportunities to do just
that because BTK decided he wanted to communicate once again. First,
not long after the murder, nine to one to one
dispatch received a strange phone.
Speaker 13 (27:22):
Call, good if you will find a homicide forty three stop,
I'm going what is your address?
Speaker 9 (27:40):
The dispatchers received a call indicating he said you will
find a homicide and gave the address and her name.
That's the communications that we got from him through the dispatch,
which was obviously taped, so we tried to follow up
on that.
Speaker 3 (27:57):
Le Monnion says the call came in just after a
on the morning of December ninth. They immediately sent someone
to investigate the source of the payphone call.
Speaker 9 (28:08):
The phone that he used was outside of a grocery
store was on Central Street and there was a firefighter
who was off duty, and then he had just walked
out of there. The investigator went back about the time
the call came and firefighter came up and said, yeah,
I saw a guy, and he was able again to
tell us about a white male. That's when it became
(28:31):
so clear that this was a game they was playing,
but he was using innocent people and he was killing
them and he was going to kill again. We had
to gear up. What else can we do, And that's
the frustrating part. What else can we do?
Speaker 3 (28:49):
Using a public payphone and his own voice was a
monumental risk, But BTK loved the thrill. He loved it
so much, in fact, that he followed it up with
another letter in January of nineteen seventy eight, once again
addressed to the Wichita Eagle.
Speaker 9 (29:08):
Actually was a poem. He sent us a poem on
Shirley Surely thy In sure you have seen.
Speaker 11 (29:14):
The poem Shirly locks, surely locks? Wilt thou be mine?
Thou shalt not scream nor yet to feel the line,
but lay on cushion and think of me and death
and how it's going to be.
Speaker 3 (29:33):
For whatever reason, this poem flew under the radar. Perhaps
the mail room team at The Eagle thought it was
just some bizarre prank, and so it wasn't reported to
police or connected to BTK, at least not yet.
Speaker 9 (29:50):
And then in February a letter from BTK was sent
to Cake TV claiming responsibility for Surely and for Nancy.
Speaker 14 (30:02):
Good afternoon.
Speaker 15 (30:03):
This morning k T they was contacted by the person
who police say they believe murdered four members of the
Joseph Otero family in January of nineteen seventy four, executive
producer Ron Lowan receive the letter. He's with us today
to give us the information, ron Jack.
Speaker 16 (30:18):
The communication came in the form of a two page
typewritten letter addressed to Kake Channel ten. It was signed
with the initials BTK. BTK claims to have strangled a
total of seven women, seven people, rather mostly women. He
provided a list of his victims, beginning with the number five,
where he wrote you guessed the.
Speaker 11 (30:37):
Victim and the motive.
Speaker 16 (30:39):
Then he listed Shirley Vyanne as his sixth victim and
provided a paragraph of details concerning the murder, with many
details known only to the police.
Speaker 3 (30:49):
Hake received the letter on February ninth, nineteen seventy eight,
along with the poem we told you about in episode
one called Oh Death to Nancy. It also included crude
hand drawings of the Nancy Fox crime scene. The letter started, I.
Speaker 11 (31:08):
Find the newspaper not writing about the poem on vanne
Unamusing a little paragraph would have been enough. I know
it's not the news media's fault. The police chief he
keeps things quiet and doesn't let the public know there's
a psycho running around loose, strangling mostly women. There's seven
(31:28):
in the ground. Who will be next?
Speaker 3 (31:32):
Later in the letter, he mentioned Nancy Fox by name.
Speaker 11 (31:37):
There is no help, no cure except death or being
caught and put away. It's a terrible nightmare, but you see,
I don't lose any sleep over it. After a thing
like Fox, I come home and I go about life
like anyone else.
Speaker 3 (31:56):
Then he brought up the matter of his own moniker.
Speaker 11 (32:01):
Before a murder or murderers, you will receive a copy
of the initials BTK. You keep that copy, the original
will show up someday on guess who You may not
be the unlucky one. Ps. How about a name for me?
It's time seven down and many more to go. I
(32:23):
like the following. How about you? The BTK strangler, Wichita Strangler,
poetic Strangler, bond age strangler, the Wichita Hangman, the Wichita Executioner,
the Garat Phantom, the exphyxiator.
Speaker 7 (32:46):
It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
into our mail room, and so the station manager and
I took the postcard down to the Wichita Police Department
and we gave it to the police, and we asked
to talk to him about this because obviously something was up.
Speaker 3 (33:07):
This is KKE TV anchor Larry Hadiberg, and.
Speaker 7 (33:11):
So he went into a room with his chief detective,
shut the door. After about a half hour, came out
and he told us that he wanted to go on
our air that night at about six o'clock in the
evening and tell the people of Wichita that the serial
killer was loose. We were shocked. Wow, this is incredible.
Speaker 9 (33:35):
I went to KTV with the idea that what we
wanted him to do was communicate with us. And I
have to tell you at that time we had great
rapport with the reporters at KKTV, their higher ups, and
with the newspaper. I mean that's the time and history
when really we were partners. We had to have the media.
(33:58):
This was his communication network. So we encouraged him to
communicate until we could find out who this individual was.
Speaker 7 (34:08):
So obviously we went back to the television station, prepared
the newscast and waited for the police chief to come
and sure enough he shows up, goes on the air
and says, we have a serial killer in Wichita. Here's
what we know about him.
Speaker 16 (34:25):
But with us right now is Chief of Police Richard Lemoniam,
who has been reviewing the letter since this afternoon, and
I have a couple of questions, Chief, how can you
be sure that the BTK letter is authentic.
Speaker 17 (34:38):
Or on After reviewing the contents of the letters? Absolutely
no question that the only person who would have the
type of information that was included in the letter would
have to be the killer himself.
Speaker 16 (34:50):
Do you know what the initials BTK stand for?
Speaker 14 (34:53):
Is?
Speaker 17 (34:54):
It's our feeling that the initials that were placed there
stand for buying, torture and kill. We have an individual
who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times,
he is not a rational person during that frame of mind.
So I think an undo or a special awareness on
(35:15):
the part of the citizens be alert call us when
they have any type of information that they feel could
be relevant, even if it seems at the time very insignificant,
it might be just exactly.
Speaker 11 (35:27):
What we need.
Speaker 3 (35:43):
The race to catch BGK now included the media as
purveyors of public information. They cooperated with police to try
and find the now infamous killer.
Speaker 14 (35:55):
Last February, police Chief Richard Lemonnion ask KKE TV to
run us second picture in one of our news reports
psychologists were hoping BTK would unconsciously detect the subliminal message
and follow its instructions. It's the same principle as splicing
shots of popcorn into a movie to make the viewer hungry.
Subliminal messages of all kinds are illegal, but Cake was
(36:17):
given special permission by the.
Speaker 7 (36:19):
SEC to air the report. And here's what it looked like.
Speaker 9 (36:24):
That's the Catherine Bright murder that occurred in April of
seventy four.
Speaker 14 (36:29):
When we slow the picture down electronically, you can see
the subliminal message. The message shown here, still framed, urged
BTK to call the chief.
Speaker 11 (36:39):
He did not.
Speaker 3 (36:42):
As a journalist, it's a tricky balance when working with
the police. On the one hand, we have to be
purely objective and remain independent from any agency authorities included.
On the other hand, when police need your help to
track down a killer, you feel a certain responsibility to
help them.
Speaker 7 (37:03):
We had, for the most part, good relations with the
police department, but in journalism you're always going to rub
knuckles with them at some point, and we did.
Speaker 3 (37:18):
This is former Cake TV anchor Larry Hadiberg.
Speaker 4 (37:21):
Again.
Speaker 7 (37:23):
Anytime we got anything related to BTK, we turned it
over immediately. We would get it, we would photograph it,
we would call a PD and they would have it.
So we turned everything, we had, everything we knew over
to the police department because we wanted to cooperate. I mean,
we're not standing in the way of catching anybody, and
(37:44):
I think it's important for a local television station to
be part of a solution. We tried to work with
them and the FBI and anybody else and at the
same time be professional journalists. There's no manual written on
how when you become part of the story that you
react to every given situation. You're really flying by the
(38:08):
seat of your pants and trying to make the right,
most honest decision at every point in time and hoping
you're doing the right thing.
Speaker 3 (38:19):
Following that big news broadcast, a tip line was made public,
and Richard Lemonian says it blew up almost immediately.
Speaker 9 (38:29):
When we announced the fact that we did as a
serial killer. We had hundreds, literally hundreds of tips, and
we put additional officers, additional detectives to run every one
of those tips down.
Speaker 3 (38:45):
Meanwhile, Dennis Rader was getting scared once again. The overwhelming
attention spooked in so he decided to lay low and
stop sending letters temporarily. Besides, he had other matters to
worry about. His second child and only daughter, Carrie, was
born in nineteen seventy eight.
Speaker 8 (39:06):
So I grew up in Wichita, Kansas. We lived in
Park City. It's a small northern suburb of Wichita. It's
about five thousand people. I lived nine houses down from
my mom's parents, Eileen and Palmer dates.
Speaker 3 (39:20):
Carrie recently visited the Tenderfoot Studio to talk with Payne Lindsay.
She says she has fond memories of growing up in Wichita. Obviously,
she was unaware of the chaos of the time. She
only knew her father, Dennis as a regular dad.
Speaker 8 (39:36):
By the time I was toddling, he would like take
me out gardening. I was three or four. He was
teaching me about all the plants, the vegetables, growing seasons, soil.
Anything Dad was doing I wanted to do. He loved
the outdoors, so he was cool and let me get muddy.
He had this big, huge, like green gardening book and
(39:56):
in the winter we would like do Burpy's Calloggs, so
we would like pick out seeds and plan. He was
obsessed with gardening when I was little.
Speaker 3 (40:05):
But Carrie also remembers peculiar things about Dennis from her childhood.
For example, he would have these unpredictable bursts of rage
and anger, and he could never sit still.
Speaker 8 (40:19):
My mom would always tell him when we were growing up,
can't you just sit down for five minutes?
Speaker 15 (40:23):
You know?
Speaker 8 (40:23):
He always had to be busy, always active. He always
had like the Wichita eagle out, like he was marking
it with these markings or cutting things out of it,
or he was always messing with something. Later on, he
would have his stamps out. Saturday nights were sitting down
to watch a movie. We're popping popcorn and having pop.
Everyone else is just choosing a comfortable chair to watch
(40:44):
a movie. And now he's setting up the card table
to do something like he had to do something. He
couldn't just like relax because he could be controlling and
angry and verbally abusive at times. I learned early how
to like get him to relax, which was hell well,
like with my mom, she knew how to say, Dennis,
(41:06):
just go outside to your garden. Why don't you take
the dog for a walker, Why don't you go fishing
this weekend?
Speaker 18 (41:12):
How did your mom know when to say that?
Speaker 8 (41:14):
Because he was tight and he was tense. His eyes
would narrow and like he's about to yell, or he
is yelling. He's making your life uncomfortable. Like later we
said it was like walking on inkshells at times with him.
Speaker 3 (41:26):
Ironically, Carrie says Dennis was very protective over her and
her mother. He was obsessed with safety, always worried that
an intruder might break in and harm them.
Speaker 8 (41:40):
He had dead bolts on our front door and our
back door.
Speaker 18 (41:43):
In the kitchen, and why was that.
Speaker 8 (41:46):
So he worked for eighty t so I feured he
was security conscious because he knew about alarm systems. He
knew about people breaking into homes. He was making home
for more secure with alarm systems.
Speaker 18 (41:56):
But what do you think he was protecting you from
bad guys?
Speaker 8 (42:00):
But literally, it's like he's so messed up. It was
almost like he was protecting us from him. But it's
because he knew how bad people could be. When I'm little,
he's teaching me these things. So you're not supposed to
be telling kids about like home invasions. 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
(42:21):
the key's not in, then they can't get in. They
got to lake jam the door. More so, I'm learning
this when I'm like little. It it's imprinting because it's
over and over and over with this man. 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. He is obsessively trying to keep me safe.
Speaker 18 (42:45):
It seems like, at least from what I'm picking up,
that you sort of look at your dad as two
different people. So my question is this is kind of weird.
But going back to being like a six year old
hindsight looking back, do you feel like the BTK killer
would have ever harmed you?
Speaker 13 (43:07):
I don't know.
Speaker 8 (43:08):
That's one of those big questions. Part of my ability
to survive and do what I need to do now
is to compartmentalize. So like with my father, I have
to put Dad in BTK like day to day now,
I don't think of my dad as BTK I can
separate it, or I'm not really even thinking about my dad.
I'm living my life as a mom and writer and
(43:28):
whatever I'm doing right, My dad's my dad. He could
be mean and mad, but most of the time ninety
five percent of the time he's like my best friend.
And my brother will say the same thing he was
like his best friend.
Speaker 3 (43:44):
While Raider was raising his daughter, he was also planning
yet another murder. By April of nineteen seventy nine, he
was still taking classes at Wichita State, and he used
this as an excuse to his family for late night absence.
One night, he spotted a twenty four year old woman
named Rebecca walking into a nearby house. A few nights later,
(44:10):
Raider got to work after classes. On the night of
April twenty eighth, Raider approached the home. Here again are
his words from the book Confession of a Serial Killer.
Speaker 11 (44:24):
I also cut the phone line in my trademark. I
used tape on the window where I broke in, and
perhaps a glass cutter, which I now carried in my kit.
Since the house was dark when I came, I thought
perhaps she was asleep. Further, I saw a car in
the garage, so I tried a cat burglar approach, going
(44:44):
through the basement window, but the house was empty.
Speaker 3 (44:49):
Raider waited and waited. What he didn't know at the
time was that this was actually the home of sixty
three year old Anna Williams. The young woman named Rebecca
that he'd seen was her granddaughter. Williams was out square
dancing on this night and wouldn't be home for quite
a while. Raider busied himself by rumging through her drawers
(45:11):
and stealing various articles of clothing. He claims he scribbled
something on her bathroom mirror and lipstick, something to the
effect of bt K was here, though this was never
confirmed or included in the police report. He laid out
all of his instruments of murder on the bed to prepare,
(45:32):
and then he ran out of time. He had to
get home before his wife became suspicious, so he packed
up and left a failed attempt. Anna Williams returned home
just after eleven pm to discover that someone had cut
her phone line, stolen some jewelry and clothing, and broken
(45:54):
a window. She called the police, who determined it was
just a regular burglary, but weeks later, in June, she
got a strange package in the mail. It included a
crude drawing of a hogtied woman naked on a bed.
The package also contained some of the stolen items from
(46:17):
around her home, and scariest of all, it came with
a handwritten letter.
Speaker 11 (46:24):
Twas a perfect plan of deviant pleasure, so bold on
that spring night, my inner felling hot with propension of
the new awakening season, warm, wet with interfere and rapture,
my pleasure of entanglement like new vines at night, Oh Anna,
(46:44):
why didn't you appear alone? Now? In another time span,
I lay with sweetened rapture garments across most private thought,
bed of spring, moist grass, clean before the sun enslaved
with control. Alone Again, I trod in past memory of
mirrors and ponder why for number eight was not?
Speaker 4 (47:08):
Oh?
Speaker 11 (47:09):
And why didn't you appear?
Speaker 3 (47:19):
Next time? On Monster BTK.
Speaker 8 (47:23):
He broke into her house, expecting her to be home
because her car was there, But she had fond with
this man. She's not home, so he hides in her closet.
Speaker 3 (47:32):
The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North,
just east of Webb Road.
Speaker 9 (47:37):
Before she died, we had a very very close relationship.
Speaker 7 (47:41):
He killed a woman in his own neighborhood that violated
his own rules don't kill close to home.
Speaker 9 (47:48):
If he was dead, we knew that we would find
the trophies sometime, or if he was still alive at
some point, he's going to come back.
Speaker 10 (47:56):
When you have an offender who starts to communicate, I
want him to communicate with a person affiliated with the
investigation I called to supercot.
Speaker 2 (48:13):
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
(48:38):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima ilk Ali.
Marketing support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart
Podcasts and Caroline or Agemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research
(48:59):
by Claude Africa. 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
(49:22):
favorite shows. Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
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