True Crime Documentary Review: My Father, the BTK Killer

A short review, because I just watched Netflix's "My Father, the BTK Killer" and I need to talk about it.

This isn't another documentary glorifying a serial killer. This is Kerri Rawson's story. She's the daughter of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer who murdered 10 people over nearly two decades while pretending to be a normal dad.

Imagine finding out your Boy Scout leader father, who danced with you to John Denver and took you on family vacations, is one of America's most notorious serial killers. That's Kerri's reality. And 20 years later, she's still processing it.

This show hit...differently. Because it's not about him. It's about the wreckage he left behind. The family trying to make sense of the senseless. The daughter asking herself how she didn't see the monster living in her house.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Sunny spaces, smiling faces, happy places. But every sunny space
holds a shadow. Behind every smile, our sharp teeth, and
every happy place has something sinister lurking just below the surface.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Welcome to We Saw the Devil, the podcast diving deep
into the chilling realms of true crime. Join your host
Robin as she unravels mysteries that have left investigators baffled
and armchair sleuth's obsessed. Be forewarned, Dear listener, We Saw
the Devil is not for the faint of heart. Our
unflinching exploration will take you to the darkest corners of

(00:41):
the psyche, and through the unimaginable depths of human darkness,
to unearthed stark secrets, to the harsh light of day.
Nothing will be left untouched. Are you ready? Are you sure?

Speaker 3 (00:54):
We Saw the Devil? Hey, guys, th Robin you're listening
to We Saw the Devil? And I am here with
a bonus episode because I just finished watching Netflix's My Father,
The BTK Killer. It dropped today and I have to
say that I've been looking forward to this one for
a while, and look, I thought I knew the full story.

(01:17):
We all know BTK buying portrait kill Dennis Rader, the
sick asshole who murdered least ten people back in Wichita, Kansas,
And this was about two decades ago. Almost every true
crime podcast has covered this. We've heard it all before.
Another serial killer, another documentary, another podcast episode, except this

(01:38):
one hits different because this actually isn't really about him.
This is primarily about his daughter, Carrie Rawson, and holy hell,
her story is devastating in a way that most true crime,
for me at least, just isn't. Sky Borgmann directed this.
She's the one behind a non number or the recent

(02:01):
catfish show that went viral. Girl in the picture and
abducted in plain sight, so you know, she doesn't mess
around and my father. The BTK Killer is an hour
and thirty three minutes long, and I'm not gonna lie,
it feels longer because every second of it just sits there,
like sits there on your chest. But before we get

(02:23):
into it, I'll just do really quick housekeeping again. You're
listening to We Saw the Devil. I'm your host, Robin.
If you're not already, please follow the show on Instagram.
You can do that at We Saw the Devil podcast
on Facebook at we saw the Devil, and then also
on Twitter, I refuse to call it x as we
saw the Devil. In terms of schedule, on Sunday, there
will be an episode of Red, White, and Bruise, the

(02:45):
new political series that I started, And there's a lot
to talk about this week, guys. There is a lot
to talk about this week, and this show is really
just a place for me to express my political thoughts, opinions,
and kind of analyze the events that are going on
in this country right now. I don't know how many
how many of you, guys are how many of you
are just really tired of living through unprecedented times. I

(03:08):
would like some precedented times for a change. I would
like to go back to some sense of normalcy, because
what we're living in right now is far from normal.
But in any case, new episode of Red, White, and
Bruise will be dropping on Sunday. I'm also recording with
Iris on Sunday, and we each picked a horror movie
that we were going to review. I picked the scariest

(03:28):
movie that I have seen. It's called The Dark and
the Wicked. Iris has never seen that, so she's gonna
watch it. And then she picked Immaculate with Sidney Sweeney.
I haven't seen that, so we are going to watch
and then convene and discuss them. So that will be
coming out likely on Monday. Hopefully you won't be tired
of me if you think you will be, just I

(03:49):
guess pace yourself. I don't know, but that's it. Let's
just go ahead and get into this. Carrie Rawson's world
as she knew it ended on February twenty fifth of
two thousand and five. She was twenty six, married, living
in Michigan. There's a chocolate bunt cake on her kitchen
counter that she baked the night before, you know, normal

(04:11):
normal life stuff. Then an FBI agent shows up in
her kitchen and drops the bomb. Is your father, Dennis Raider. Basically,
he's been arrested and your dad is wanted from murders
in Kansas. Just like that, no warming, no build up, Hey,
good afternoon. Your dad's a serial killer. And she describes

(04:31):
how she couldn't breathe and honestly, who could imagine standing
there thinking about your dad, your boring, normal boy scout
leader dad, and being told that he's one of the
most sadistic killers in American history. Seven hours later, Dennis
Raider started confessing to everything. And what destroys me about

(04:51):
this documentary is that Carrie doesn't give us the easy narrative.
She doesn't pretend her childhood was some Stephen King novel
where all the red flags were obvious, because they weren't.
She talks about how people always ask her, and it's
the question she absolutely hates, how did you not know?

(05:11):
And you know what, that question is absolute garbage because
she didn't know. Her mom, who slept next to this
man for thirty four years, also didn't know. Ninety five
percent of the time, Dennis Raider was apparently a good
dad and a loving husband. And that's the thing about psychopaths.
They're not exactly walking around with a scarlet letter of

(05:35):
serial killer. They blend in they're your neighbor, your church buddy,
your dad. Have you guys seen the latest tiktoks coming
out of California. Over a dozen women are now reporting
that there is some guy out there who's basically trying
to ted Bundy women. He has his arm in a sling,
he is trying to move something from his car to

(05:55):
his trunk. He's asking women who walk by, hey, can
you help me? And they say that they just get
a really, really, really bad, creepy feeling about it. And
he's now been caught over a dozen times and the
picture of him, he looks normal, normal as can be.
This documentary shows home videos, family photos, Carrie dancing with
her dad to John Denver, family vacations in the Grand

(06:19):
Canyon Church on Sundays. That was real. Those were real,
happy memories and now they're all poisoned and tainted. And
for me, the fascinating part of the documentary is where
it gets a little twisted, because there were signs and
looking back, Carrie can see them now that at the
time it just seems like your dad being weird. Like

(06:41):
when they were on vacation in southern California in nineteen
eighty six, Dennis apparently spotted some dusty footprints on a
car parked under their motel balcony, and he went into
full paranoid mode. He was convinced that someone broke into
their room makes up a password for the whole family
to use before entering their room. At the time weird
dad behavior. Now he was projecting and his job at

(07:05):
ADT Security Services. The guy who was obsessed with home
security got a job installing alarm systems. Perfect cover story, right,
except he was actually using it to learn how to
break into homes. He worked at ADT from nineteen seventy
four to nineteen eighty nine, right smack in the middle
of his killing spree and then the violent outbursts. Carrie

(07:26):
talked about how you could see it coming. His eyes
would change from sea green to darken cloudy. One labor
day during her freshman year of college, she watched her
dad lunge across the dinner table and choke her brother
Brian out until his face turned white. Terrifying, absolutely, but
it happened rarely enough that people just thought he had
anger issues, not oh, that's probably out murdering people issues.

(07:49):
And the show includes interrogation footage of Dennis Raider, and
watching him talk is absolutely chilling. If you've seen his
courtroom footage where he's just so matter effect about how
he killed them, he's just as matter of fact about it.
In the interrogation tapes. He called his victims projects projects

(08:10):
like they were a home improvement task on his fucking
to do list, and one of his victims was the sweet,
grandmotherly woman who lived down the street from him. From
his family, raider broke into her house, strangled her, then
took polaroids of her body in bondage. And then what
did he do? He went home, made dinner with his family,

(08:32):
and helped the kids with homework like it was just
another Tuesday. From Carrie Rawson's perspective, can you imagine being
in her shoes? Because how does she even begin to
process that? And I think most people know how he
got caught by sending the discs, right, because it's almost
comedic if it wasn't so fucking horrific. So BTK stopped

(08:53):
communicating in nineteen seventy nine, everyone law enforcement, most people
assumed that he was dead or locked up somewhere else
on another charge. But in two thousand and four, his
ego couldn't take it anymore. He needed the attention, so
he started sending messages again. And if you guys remember,
he sent this weird list of details about himself to
the media, things like his grandfather fought in World War Two,

(09:17):
someone in his family plays the fiddle, he lives near
train tracks. And Carrie actually read about BTK online that
year and that list stuck with her. Something about it
felt off like deja VU and she couldn't shake it.
In hindsight, every single item on that list pointed to
her dad, but who thinks that way about their own father?

(09:40):
And the thing that brought him down was a floppy disk.
This genius asked police if a floppy disc could be traced.
They were like no, and lied, and he sent them one.
They traced it back to the church last years er Dennists.
They matched Carrie's DNA to seamen found at the crime scene,
and boom game over. Dennis Raid is outed as BTK.

(10:02):
He was arrested at fifty nine years old driving home
for lunch, and you know what his first words were,
would you please call my wife? She was expecting me
for lunch. But what this documentary really digs into is
Carrie's nightmare since that day PTSD anxiety depression. She's got
the full collection, like unfortunately, it's kind of a Pokemon

(10:24):
situation of gonna catch them all. And my heart bleeds
for her for even having to go through that, because
no whom, no human should. For weeks, she couldn't even
say the words serial killer out loud, not even to
her husband. The words just wouldn't come. And here's what
gets me. Two weeks after his arrest, she wrote him
a letter. No matter what you may have done or

(10:46):
not done, you were my father and I love you.
You raised me and Brian as well as any man could.
And she kept writing to him through his arraignment, through
his trial, through all the discussing details coming out in
court about what he'd done to those people. He got
the max sentence because Kansas didn't have the death penalty
at that time. And you know what, Carrie has never

(11:07):
visited him, never called him, just letters, that's it. And
in the documentary she talks about how he still doesn't
understand why she won't visit, why the family can't just
go back to normal, like he just shoplifted or something
instead of, you know, torturing and murdering ten human beings
plus more. He genuinely doesn't get it. That's not manipulation,

(11:32):
that's true delusion. And then here's a gut punch. Carrie
has two kids, a ten year old daughter and a
seven year old son, and when her daughter asks why
she only has one grandpa Carrie, Carrie told her that
he's in jail for a super long time out, like
permanent time out. But her kids don't know the truth.
They've seen pictures of Grandpa, they know he writes letters,

(11:54):
but they have no idea their grandfather is one of
America's most notorious serial killers. And how do you tell
your kids that? When do you tell them that? Do
you wait until they're teenagers? Do you do it gradually
so they don't accidentally google their mom at school and
have their world implode? There's no parenting book that covers
how to tell my children and their grandfather as a
serial killer. And what I also didn't realize is that

(12:18):
there might be more victims. In twenty twenty three, Dennis
Rader was named as a suspect in at least two
other cases. A BTK task force was formed, and Carrie
is on it. She's been working with investigators, including Nancy
Grace and Paul Hols, trying to figure out if her
dad killed more people than he admitted to. The documentary

(12:39):
shows footage of her visiting him in prison recently to
ask him directly about potential victims. Can you imagine sitting
across from your own father, the man who taught you
how to ride a bike, who walked you down the aisle,
and asking him, Dad, did you kill even more people
than you told us about. That takes a level of

(13:00):
strength and mental fortitude that I cannot even fathom because
I don't possess it. And what I really really respect
about this documentary is that Skyborgmann didn't exploit Carrie's story.
She didn't turn it into true crime born or or
some Murder of the Week episode. Carrie had real control

(13:21):
over her narrative. That shows, and that matters because most
true crime glorifies the killer. People obsess over them, they
give them cute little acronyms, they try to understand them. Meanwhile,
the victims become footnotes and the families are largely left behind.
They're invisible. Carrie wrote a memoir in twenty nineteen called

(13:43):
a Serial Killer's Daughter, and when she told her dad
about it, he had the nerve to ask if they
could make it a joint project. She shut that shit
down hard. This is her story, her life, her trauma,
and she had to get legal permission to published his
prison letters in her book because and this is insane.

(14:04):
Even though she physically has the letters, he legally still
owns them, so even from behind bars, he's still got
his clause in her life Carrie's also reached out to
other families dealing with this nightmare. Like earlier this year,
she met with a family of Gilgo Beach suspect Rex Huerman,
specifically his daughter Victoria, because who else can understand what

(14:25):
that's like. She said, Her and I's reality is we're
never going to be able to separate ourselves from our fathers.
I know, in the bottom of my heart my father
loved and cared for us and protected us. But he also,
I know, in the bottom of my heart, committed murder.
Both things are true. He was a loving father and
he's a monster, and those realities exist simultaneously, and Carrie

(14:47):
has to live with that contradiction every single day. Look,
this documentary is not for everyone. I'm seeing a lot
of reviews online of people saying it's boring and they're
whining and that it focused. This is too much on
Carrie instead of the murders. And to those people, I
would like to say to you, you are missing the
point entirely. We don't need another documentary jerking off to

(15:12):
a serial killer's crimes. We don't need another psychological profile
of a monster. We need to hear from the people
whose lives were shattered by it, the ones picking up
the pieces. Carrie is still healing twenty years after her
dad's arrest. She's still processing, still trying to figure out
who she is when her entire childhood was built on lies.

(15:35):
She even says in the show quote, it's hard to
know who I am if every moment in my life
was a lie. And that's what makes me so sad.
How do you reconcile the dad who danced with you
to John Denver with the man who strangled a grandmother
down the street and took sick photos of her body?
How do you hold both of those truths in your
head without losing your mind? If you're going to watch this,

(15:58):
and you should understand that, it's not about the murders.
It's what comes after. It's about a daughter trying to
understand how evil was her father's face. It's about trauma, identity, forgiveness,
and the impossible task of loving someone who did the unforgivable.
Carrie hasn't abandoned her father, and I can only say

(16:21):
this as someone who hasn't experienced it. If I had
found out that my father was a serial killer, I'm
pretty sure I would have watched the gate slam shut,
and I never would have reached out, talked to, spoken
to or contacted him again. But she still writes to him.
She loves him in some painful, complicated way, but she
also knows that he can never be part of her
actual life. He's now been in prison for twenty years

(16:44):
and he is going to die there. And maybe that's
the most tragic part of this. You know, Dennis Raider
didn't just destroy his victims' lives, He destroyed his own family.
His wife, his kids, his grandkids will never know of him,
all of it gone. My Father the Killer is streaming
on Netflix right now again. It's directed by Sky Borgman
and based on Carrie Rawson's memoir, because these are the

(17:08):
stories that need to be told, the ones about the
wreckage they live behind, the people fighting to survive after
the worst thing imaginable happens. Carrie Rawson is one hell
of a survivor and her voice matters more than her
father's ever will. It came out today and a lot
of the reviews have been tepid at best, saying that
it's boring, not what they expected, blah blah blah. So

(17:30):
just be aware, this is about Carrie's journey. But I
would give this an eight out of ten. And that's it, guys.
I just wanted to come drop my two cents here again.
New episode of Red White and Bruce coming on Sunday,
and then on Tuesday, horror movie episode with Iris, and
then we saw The Devil Continues next week as well,

(17:50):
if you're not following on Instagram, we saw the Double Podcast.
That's it, guys, until next Crime