Dennis Rader killed 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas, between January 1974 and January 1991. The first four were members of one family, strangled in their home on a weekday morning. The last was a 62-year-old woman taken from her house near Park City, the small suburb north of Wichita where Rader lived. In between he wrote to the police and the press, gave himself the name BTK, for "bind, torture, kill," and asked why the newspapers were not paying him more attention.
For most of those years he was a married father of two, an alarm installer and later a municipal code officer, a Cub Scout leader and the president of his church council. Police never named him as a suspect before 2005. He was found because he started writing again. In March 2004 he mailed The Wichita Eagle proof that he had killed a woman whose death had never been linked to BTK, and in the months that followed he sent police and television stations package after package. In one of them he asked whether a computer disk could be traced. A disk he mailed in February 2005 was traced to his church and carried the name Dennis. He was arrested on February 25, 2005, pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder that June and was sentenced in August to 10 consecutive life terms.
Dennis Lynn Rader was born on March 9, 1945, in Pittsburg, Kansas, according to Encyclopaedia Britannica. The Associated Press described him in 2005 as a man who had lived in the Wichita area almost his whole life. He served four years in the Air Force, where he gained the technical skills he later used in the alarm trade, according to the trade magazine Security Sales and Integration, and AP reports describe him as a former Air Force sergeant. In the early 1970s he worked at the Coleman Company's camping equipment plant in Wichita, where two of the women he later killed, Julie Otero and Kathryn Bright, also worked.
In November 1974 he went to work for ADT Security in Wichita as an alarm technician and later an installation supervisor. He stayed until July 1988. A sales secretary at the branch described him as a man who followed the rules "to the T," and a former co-worker said there was so much detail in his work that he seemed almost obsessive about it. Colleagues nicknamed him "Blue Book Man" because he had memorized the company's policy manual. ADT's field hours ran from about 8 a.m. to 4:30 p.m., and the magazine noted in 2005 that the killings during his years there all happened in daylight. Media reports at the time found no evidence that any of the victims had been ADT customers.
He graduated from Wichita State University in 1979 with a degree in administration of justice. He never became a police officer. In 1989 he worked as a supervisor for the census, a job that took him across Kansas. By the time of his arrest he was the compliance supervisor for the city of Park City, responsible for housing codes and animal control. He lived with his wife, Paula, whose parents lived around the corner, in a house he had occupied for almost 30 years. They had been married 34 years by 2005 and had two grown children, a son and a daughter, Kerri.
To his neighbors he was two people. Some told reporters after his arrest that he helped elderly residents with their yard work. Others described a bureaucratic bully who looked for reasons to write citations. Jim Reno, who lived across the street for 16 years, called the job "a glorified dog catcher" and said he had clashed with Rader several times over what he considered harassment. A truck driver who lived behind him said his wife had caught Rader filming the back of their house. One neighbor said his mother had pulled his younger brother out of Rader's Cub Scout pack because of the way Rader behaved. At Christ Lutheran Church, where he had been a member for 30 years, he was an usher and the elected president of the congregation council.
Joseph Otero was 38. Born and raised in New York, he had retired from the Air Force, and he had moved his family to Wichita about four months before January 1974, after a posting that had included the Panama Canal Zone. He worked as a mechanic and flight instructor at an airport in Rose Hill. His wife, Julie, was 34 and worked on the assembly line at Coleman. They had five children. Josephine, called Josie, was 11. Joseph II, whom his family called Joey, was 9. Their three other children were at school on the morning of January 15, 1974.
The family lived at 803 North Edgemoor, in northeast Wichita. The telephone line had been cut. Charlie Otero came home from Robinson Junior High at about 3:40 that afternoon and ran to a neighbor's house to say that his father was dead. Police found Joseph and Julie Otero and their two youngest children strangled. The cord was of the kind used in Venetian blinds. A neighbor had seen a white man about 6 feet tall with dark, shaggy hair near the house at about 8:45 a.m., and someone saw a dark-complexioned man driving the family's 1966 Oldsmobile station wagon at 10:35. The car was found that evening in a store parking lot. The keys were never found.
In the first 10 days, 75 officers worked 18-hour shifts, contacted 1,500 residents and sent bulletins to 500 agencies. The bodies were flown to Puerto Rico for burial. In February the police chief, Floyd Hannon, and a senior officer traveled to interview relatives and visited the Canal Zone, and for a time police thought the motive might lie in a money dispute in Central America. None of it led anywhere.
At his sentencing hearing in 2005, investigators recounted what Rader had told them. He said that the family had panicked and he had acted quickly; that he had never strangled anyone before and did not know how much pressure it took or how long; and that after believing Julie Otero was dead he had to return to her. A Kansas Bureau of Investigation agent testified that he killed Josephine last, in the basement, after her parents and brother were dead. Later in 2005 he told the court that Joseph Otero had served in the Air Force as he had, and that Julie Otero had been a loving mother, like his wife.
Kathryn Bright was 21. She also worked on the Coleman assembly line, the same line as Julie Otero, though the police did not publicly connect the two women at the time. On April 4, 1974, an intruder broke the glass of a back door at her house and waited for her to come home, and was then surprised by her brother Kevin, who was 18.
The man said he wanted money and a car to get to New York. He tied Kathryn to a chair and tried to strangle Kevin with a cord. He then shot Kevin twice in the head with a .22-caliber pistol. Kevin Bright survived and gave police a description of a white man of about 25 wearing a black stocking cap and an orange jacket. Kathryn was stabbed and died about five hours later. For years the case was not publicly counted as one of the strangler's. Police later concluded that she was a BTK victim.
Detective Clint Snyder of the Wichita police, who questioned Rader about the Bright case in 2005, told the court that when he raised it, Rader answered, "Sweet kid. What do you want to know?" Snyder said he sensed no remorse.
By the autumn of 1974 three men had confessed to the Otero killings, including a man held in a psychiatric ward, and police had announced an arrest. All three confessions were later discounted. In October a caller telephoned Don Granger, who ran The Wichita Eagle's secret witness tip line, and told him where to find a letter hidden in a mechanical engineering textbook at the Wichita Public Library. Granger passed the tip to police, who recovered it.
"Those three dude(s) you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders," the letter said. "I did it by myself and no ones help." It described the position of each body, details the police had not released, and gave the writer a name: the BTK strangler, because he liked to bind, torture and kill. Police kept the letter from the public for fear of panic. Nearly 30 psychologists studied it. On October 24 police ran a classified advertisement inviting the writer to call. Nobody did. In December a Sunday magazine published excerpts and the police chief confirmed the letter was real.
Shirley Vian was 24 and lived at 1311 South Hydraulic with her three young children. On March 17, 1977, she was unwell, and the two older children had stayed home from school. At about 11:45 a.m. a man carrying a gun and a small case came into the house. Steve Relford, her young son, later told a court that the man had shown him a photograph and asked where he lived, posing as a detective. AP reports give his age at the time as 5 or 6.
Rader told the court in 2005 that he told Shirley Vian he had a problem with sexual fantasies and was going to tie her up. He tied up the children and locked all three in the bathroom with toys and blankets. A Wichita detective, Dana Gouge, testified that Rader had intended to kill the children too, but the telephone rang, he was startled, and the children got out and ran to a neighbor. When they returned their mother was dead. Two money orders were missing from the house. The children described a heavyset, dark-haired man.
At the time, officers who had worked the Otero and Bright cases could not say whether the same man was responsible.
Nancy Fox was 25. She worked as a secretary and part-time at Helzberg's jewelry store on East Harry Street, and she lived in a duplex on South Pershing. On the night of December 8, 1977, she left the store at 9 p.m. and was killed soon after she got home. Her telephone line had been cut and a back window broken. She was bound and strangled with nylon stockings.
The next morning, at about 8:20, a man called a police dispatcher from a pay phone at Central and St. Francis, gave an address on South Pershing and the name Nancy Fox, and said police would find a homicide there. The call was recorded. A firefighter who saw the caller described a man about 6 feet tall with blondish hair in a gray work uniform. Rader admitted at his plea hearing in 2005 that he had told her he had "sexual problems" before he handcuffed and strangled her. In his statement at sentencing he called her a wonderful person and said he had tracked her "just like a predator."
On January 31, 1978, an index card with a rubber-stamped poem about Shirley Vian arrived at the Eagle. Staff took it for an advertisement and sent it to the classified department. On February 10 a two-page letter reached KAKE-TV. "How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?" it asked. It claimed seven lives, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox and a victim it did not name among them, and blamed an urge it called "factor X." "There is no help, no cure except death or being caught and put away," the writer said. He added that after a killing like Fox's he went home and carried on like anyone else. Another passage, quoted by AP in later years, read: "How about some name for me, its time: 7 down and many more to go."
The police chief, Richard LaMunyon, announced that evening that a serial killer was at large in Wichita. He said police had kept the first letter quiet in the hope of preventing further killings, but that the strategy had failed and public safety came first. Sales of home alarm systems in Wichita surged; thousands were installed during the 1970s because of the BTK case, and residents learned to check for a dial tone when they came home, because the killer cut telephone lines.
On April 28, 1979, a 63-year-old woman on South Pinecrest came home from a dance to find that her home had been burglarized and the telephone line cut. Clothing, jewelry and 35 dollars were missing. On June 15 an envelope arrived at her house with a poem, a sketch and some of her stolen belongings. The writer said he was sorry she had been out so late, because he had meant to kill her. An identical package reached KAKE-TV the next day. Police assigned 15 detectives and 8 laboratory investigators. A New York specialist enhanced the 1977 dispatcher tape, and when it was broadcast on August 15, 1979, police received more than 100 tips on the first day. None led to the caller. BTK did not write again for 25 years.
Marine Hedge was 53 and lived in Park City, on the same street as Rader. On the evening of April 27, 1985, she had dinner and played bingo with her boyfriend. She was abducted from her home after that evening out. Her body was found along a dirt road in Sedgwick County in May, eight days later. An autopsy showed she had been strangled.
Rader told the court in 2005 that he had sneaked into her house and strangled her. A KBI agent testified that he took her body to Christ Lutheran Church, his own church, where he posed and photographed it. In his statement at sentencing Rader described her as a neighbor he had walked past and waved to, a gardener. Kerri Rawson, his daughter, was 6 at the time. The house where Marine Hedge lived was sold at auction in August 2013 for 35,000 dollars, well under its appraised value.
Vicki Wegerle was 28. She stayed home with her children and volunteered as a babysitter at two Wichita churches, St. Andrew's Lutheran and Asbury United Methodist. On the morning of September 16, 1986, she took her 10-year-old to OK Elementary School and came home with her 2-year-old son. A neighbor heard two dogs barking unusually at about 10:15, and another saw the family's gold Monte Carlo leave the driveway at about 10:30. The car was found that afternoon.
Her husband found her at about noon, bound at the wrists and ankles and strangled. Emergency workers took her to hospital before police arrived, where she was pronounced dead, so no crime scene photographs were taken. Her 2-year-old son was in the house and was not hurt. The only thing her relatives knew to be missing was her driver's license. Rader told the court he had walked past her house and listened to her playing the piano.
Her death was not attributed to BTK until 2004. Her daughter, Stephanie Clyne, who was 10 when her mother died, told the court at sentencing that she struggled every day without her and that her mother's three grandchildren would never know her.
Dolores Davis, known as Dee, was 62 and lived near Park City. She kept a dog kennel. On January 19, 1991, a brick was thrown through the sliding glass door of her house and she was taken from her home. Her body was found 13 days later under a bridge in rural northern Sedgwick County, bound with pantyhose.
Captain Sam Houston of the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office described her death to the court in 2005. Investigators said Rader had been at a Cub Scout campout that night. He told the other leaders he had forgotten something at home, changed out of his uniform at his parents' house, and went back to the camp afterward. He called her "Project Dogside," after the kennel; the code names he gave his targets were part of a system he called "projects." He told investigators the killing took two or three minutes. At sentencing he said she loved animals and that he had a great fondness for animals too.
Rader told police that he had become "lazy" in his last years, because his last two killings were close to his own home in Park City. "This is not really good serial killer business, this is right at my back door," he said. After Dolores Davis there were no more killings attributed to him.
The investigation never closed. In 1984 the Wichita police set up a secret unit at City Hall, known as the Ghostbusters, which spent about three years on the BTK case using computers, DNA testing, database searches and psychological profiles. The FBI's Behavioral Science Unit noted that the known killings had happened within about 3.5 miles of one another and suggested the killer lived or worked nearby. Detectives traced one of the poems to a nursery rhyme and a folklore textbook, and a copy of a letter to a photocopier in the Wichita State University library. They narrowed a list of local men to 225; five refused to give DNA samples and seven could not be ruled out. The unit was disbanded in 1987 with about a dozen names still unresolved.
In 1988, after a man and two of his daughters were killed in their east Wichita home, the man's widow received a letter from someone claiming to be BTK. The letter did not claim the killings, and experts disagreed about whether BTK had written it. No charge against Rader has ever been brought in those deaths.
By the early 1990s the case had faded. The Eagle did not mention BTK at all in 1993, 1995 or 1996.
DNA testing of evidence from Vicki Wegerle's case, completed in December 2003 after about three years, found an unknown man's genetic profile under her fingernails, which cleared her husband. On January 17, 2004, the Eagle marked the 30th anniversary of the Otero killings, and Robert Beattie, a lawyer, was talking publicly about a book he was writing on the case.
On March 19, 2004, a letter arrived at the Eagle. It held a photocopy of Vicki Wegerle's driver's license and three photographs of her body. The return address read "Bill Thomas Killman," initials BTK. Hurst Laviana, the Eagle's police reporter, recognized her name and thought it was not the usual crank letter. Police did not at first treat it as serious, and homicide detectives saw it only after Laviana reminded them three days later. By March 25, Lieutenant Ken Landwehr, who had worked the case for more than 20 years and led the new task force, confirmed that it was authentic. The same month, the profile from Wegerle's fingernails matched the BTK profile in the national DNA database, confirming, as Detective Gouge later put it, that one offender had committed all the BTK cases. Within days police had received 365 tips through a new telephone line and email address. Calls to one Wichita alarm company rose almost ninefold.
Dale Fox, Nancy Fox's father, told reporters he hoped resurfacing would be the killer's fatal mistake. "We just want it to be solved so we can get closure," said Vicki Wegerle's sister-in-law.
Before his arrest Rader sent 11 communications in all, police said. In May 2004 he mailed KAKE-TV a word puzzle; among its hidden words were "D. Rader," the number of his house, and kinds of jobs that could get a man into other people's homes. In October 2004 a letter was left in a UPS drop box; the FBI confirmed it was genuine. In December 2004 a Wichita resident found a package in Murdock Park containing Nancy Fox's driver's license. Police later said he had chosen a date, October 22, 2004, to kill again, and that the intended victim lived near Wichita. They have never named her.
In January 2005, in a message left in a cereal box, he asked a question: whether he could communicate by floppy disk without being traced to a computer. "Be honest," he wrote. He told police to answer with a classified advertisement in the newspaper, and they did, on January 30: "Rex, it will be OK." Security video at a Home Depot showed someone placing an item in an employee's pickup truck, and detectives worked out that the vehicle he drove was a black Jeep. In late January and early February, police said, at least three of the packages contained jewelry.
On February 16, 2005, a padded envelope reached KSAS-TV in Wichita. It held a letter signed "PJ Fox," a piece of jewelry and a floppy disk. The letter said that KAKE was a good station but was being singled out because of him, and that he wanted to spread his messages around.
Rader had given the disk to his own pastor in January, the Associated Press reported, saying it contained an agenda for a church council meeting and asking him to print copies. The pastor, Michael Clark, put it into a church computer without suspicion. Investigators found that data on the disk led to Christ Lutheran Church and contained the name "Dennis." A Google search showed that the president of the congregation was Dennis Rader.
Police then needed DNA. They tested a sample from Rader's daughter, Kerri, and DNA from three crime scenes was a familial match, according to the Associated Press in August 2005. The Tonganoxie Mirror reported in December 2005 that the sample was court-ordered and tested by a KBI laboratory. Kerri Rawson has said it came from a Pap smear taken at her college health center, obtained without her knowledge. She was 26, newly married and living in Michigan, and learned of her father's arrest when officers came to her door.
On Friday, February 25, 2005, at about noon, officers stopped Rader on East Kechi Road as he drove home for lunch. Eight officers in four cars made the arrest, and more than 200 officers from five agencies took part in the operation. Nine search warrants were served at once, on his home, his office and his church, and investigators seized computer equipment from the house. Several women had complained over the years that he was stalking them, a detective said later, but no tip had ever named him as BTK.
At a news conference in the Wichita City Council chamber the next day, before about 300 people, among them relatives of the victims who filled five rows, Police Chief Norman Williams said, "The bottom line: BTK is arrested." Governor Kathleen Sebelius said DNA evidence had made the link. Officials confirmed that the deaths of Marine Hedge and Dolores Davis were BTK killings, bringing the count to 10. "It's been unbelievable," said Dale Fox.
In Park City his fellow church members were stunned. Days before his arrest he had brought spaghetti sauce and salad to a church supper he could not attend. "We prayed that it would come to a conclusion," said one member, but not the conclusion they expected. Another usher said his 5-year-old son recognized Rader's photograph on television and asked, "Daddy, he tricked us, didn't he?" Rader's younger brother, Jeff, 50, said he did not believe his brother was BTK, but that if it was the truth, "let the truth be the truth."
Rader talked. He gave about 30 hours of videotaped interviews after his arrest. Larry Welch, the KBI director, said the interviewers "couldn't shut him up." He confessed to the 10 killings. The task force found evidence that he had been involved in burglaries, but none of the material it gathered pointed to him in other unsolved killings. Kevin Stafford of the FBI said investigators believed a man with Rader's personality would have disclosed any more murders, and Chief Williams said, "If there are any additional, he would have told us." Police also said that while he was traveling for the census in 1989 he had dug a grave in northern Kansas for a potential victim.
"His arrogance helped catch him," Welch said. "He should have kept his mouth shut." At his sentencing Rader said the only sore spot in the investigation was the use of his daughter's DNA.
On March 1, 2005, Rader appeared by video from the Sedgwick County jail, seated behind a small desk with his hands folded, while District Judge Gregory Waller read 10 counts of first-degree murder. He answered yes or no. He was being held on 10 million dollars bail, and the court appointed the state public defender's office to represent him. The lead defense lawyer was Steve Osburn, chief public defender for Sedgwick County. About a dozen relatives of the victims watched.
The district attorney, Nola Foulston, said from the start that the death penalty could not apply to crimes committed between 1972 and 1994, the years when Kansas had none. The state reinstated capital punishment in 1994.
At the preliminary hearing set for April 19, Rader waived his right to a hearing, conceding that the state had enough evidence to go to trial. Charlie Otero, who had wanted to see him face to face, said he was "extremely disappointed." At his arraignment in May, Rader declined to speak and Judge Waller entered a plea of not guilty on his behalf. Foulston served notice that she would seek a "hard 40," 40 years without parole, for the 1991 killing of Dolores Davis. Trial was set for June 27. The defense considered an insanity plea and dropped it. "From a legal standpoint, we had nothing to work with," Osburn said.
On June 27, 2005, the day his trial was due to begin, Rader, then 60, waived a jury and pleaded guilty to all 10 counts. Prosecutors said there was no plea agreement. Osburn said the state had a very solid case, including a confession, DNA and what he called personal trophies, and that Rader basically wanted to take responsibility. Rader said that given the evidence, a trial was "just a mathematical problem."
For each count, Judge Waller asked him to describe what he had done, and he did, calmly and at length. He said he would "troll" for victims in his off time and, once he "locked in" on one, become a stalker, sometimes for months or years. He called the people he selected "projects" and "potential hits"; if one did not work out, he moved to another. He carried what he called a "hit kit" of guns, rope, tape and handcuffs in a briefcase or bowling bag, and wore what he called "hit clothes." He said he broke into some homes and talked his way into others, once claiming he needed to check a telephone line, and used a cinder block to break a window at another. He said sexual fantasy drove the killings, though he was never charged with sexual assault. He let some of the women smoke and gave one a glass of water to calm her before he killed her. He was courteous throughout, answering "Yes, sir" and "Yes, your honor."
Listeners in the courtroom were struck by the tone. A 19-year-old spectator said, "He was so cold about it." Osburn said afterward that he had been shaken. Charlie Otero, then 47 and living in Albuquerque, said that as far as closure went, "it's far from it." Jeff Davis, Dolores Davis's son, told a Memphis television station that the testimony had reopened a wound: "It's always been an open sore, and always will be."
Sentencing began on August 17, 2005. The question for Judge Waller was only whether the 10 life terms would run at the same time or one after another; the defense had agreed when Rader pleaded guilty not to oppose the maximum. Prosecutors used two days to put the record before the court, and Osburn called it grandstanding.
Lieutenant Landwehr described the searches. Investigators had found hundreds of pictures of women and girls cut from magazines and catalogs and mounted on index cards, which Rader called "slick ads"; files holding copies of nearly every message he had sent to the police and the media; and hit kits with rubber gloves, rope, tape, handcuffs and bandanas. They found them in his home, his office and his camper. Prosecutors also showed dolls he had painted and posed and books about serial killers, one with a mention of BTK highlighted. Detective Snyder said Rader had shown them how he used a squeeze ball to strengthen his grip, and testified that Rader had apologized to him, acknowledging that his victim was a human being, while describing himself in the harshest terms. KBI agents described the Otero killings and Captain Houston described the death of Dolores Davis. In court Foulston stood silent for a minute while watching the clock, then said that Davis had struggled for three times as long.
The families spoke on August 18. Charlie Otero told the court, "Despite Dennis Rader's efforts to destroy my family, we survive, stronger and closer now more than ever." His sister, Carmen Montoya, who was 13 when her parents, sister and brother were killed, told Rader that when he took her mother he took someone who meant a lot to a lot of people. "His name was Joey, not Junior," she said of her brother. She called Rader a coward.
Kevin Bright said his sister had suffered greatly and that Rader had shown "no remorse, no compassion." Shirley Vian's son said he wanted Rader to suffer for the rest of his life. Beverly Plapp, Nancy Fox's sister, said Nancy's death was a wound that would never heal, and that Rader did not deserve to live and should be "thrown in a deep, dark hole and left to rot." Her brother, Fred Fox, asked for the worst sentence possible. Stephanie Clyne spoke for her mother, Vicki Wegerle. Jeff Davis said he had waited 5,326 days to confront the man who killed his mother, called Rader's speech a pathetic, rambling diatribe, and told him, "As of today, you no longer exist." Dolores Davis's granddaughter, Amy, said her grandmother had shown grace and strength to the end.
Rader spoke for about half an hour, his voice breaking at times. He quoted Scripture, thanked the police, the lawyers and the jail staff, and corrected points of the evidence. He went through the victims one by one, naming things he believed he shared with each: the Air Force with Joseph Otero, a loving mother, like his wife, in Julie Otero, a fondness for animals with Dolores Davis. He said he had been selfish and dishonest with his family and his victims, and he called himself a sexual predator. "A dark side is there, but now I think light is beginning to shine," he said. "Remorse, I think it's here." He apologized to the families and said, "There's no way that I can ever repay them." He also said that he had blown so much smoke that nobody knew fact from fiction any longer. Some relatives walked out.
Judge Waller imposed 10 consecutive life terms, the longest sentence the law allowed. The Davis count carried the hard 40 after the judge found that her killing met the aggravating standard in Kansas law for killings committed in an atrocious or cruel manner. Foulston said Rader would not be eligible for parole for 175 years and would likely die in prison. Prosecutors also asked the court to restrict his prison conditions, including denying him crayons, markers and magazines that could be used to draw figures or feed his fantasies; Waller said he would rule on that separately. No appeal of the convictions or sentence was reported.
At 7:28 the next morning a three-vehicle convoy escorted by seven state troopers delivered Rader to the El Dorado Correctional Facility, a maximum-security prison in Butler County. He stared out the window on the way while a radio station broadcast the families' statements, the Sedgwick County sheriff, Gary Steed, said; when he turned around he had tears in his eyes. He told officers he hoped his imprisonment might help prevent future killings. His first cell measured about 80 square feet, with no television and meals passed through the door. He was allowed out five times a week for an hour, in restraints, in a small enclosed yard. While he awaited trial in the county jail he had received 436 letters and sent more than 300.
Paula Rader was granted an emergency divorce soon after the arrest and received the family home and his retirement savings. Families of the victims filed nine civil lawsuits, and a week after the sentencing District Judge Timothy Lahey placed an attachment on Rader's personal property, including three boxes of writings and photographs from his jail cell, so that nothing could be sold while the cases were pending. Kansas law barred him from profiting from telling his story, but in 2005 no law prevented him from selling memorabilia, and families feared crime scene photographs would appear online. The Raders' house sold at auction in July 2005 for 90,000 dollars, well above its assessed value. It was demolished in 2007, and the land belongs to the city of Park City.
Ken Landwehr, who led the task force, is remembered by Wichita officials as the man who kept the case alive. "Kenny was a better cop than Rader was a criminal," the Sedgwick County district attorney, Marc Bennett, said in 2025. Bennett noted that investigators had collected swabs from thousands of men, about 1,600 by one count, none of which matched.
In 2005, while in custody, Rader telephoned KAKE-TV and said he had chosen an 11th victim before his arrest. He later told the station that a "demon" had got inside him when he was young. "I have a lot of remorse," he said. "I'm very sorry for them."
Rader's family refused for years to speak to the press. His daughter broke that silence in 2014 in an interview with the Eagle and in 2019 published a memoir, A Serial Killer's Daughter, which she wrote over about three and a half years at her trauma therapist's urging. She has spoken about years of depression and about trauma therapy she began about two years after her father's arrest. In 2019 she said she wrote to him and he wrote back, but she had never visited him; a letter he sent in September 2005 said he had asked God to stand between him and his victims and that he was sorry. "I legit don't know if it was for real," she said. "He imploded my family; my family has never been the same."
In 2023 she agreed to help investigators in Oklahoma and Missouri, and that June and July she visited her father twice at El Dorado, their first meetings in 18 years. She said he now used a wheelchair and had lost about seven inches in height, and that he had been uncooperative. In November 2023 she announced that she had resigned from the task force created by the Osage County sheriff's office, while continuing to serve as a protected witness for active law enforcement. A 2025 Netflix documentary directed by Skye Borgman, My Father, the BTK Killer, follows her search for answers.
Rader is serving his 10 consecutive life terms in the Kansas prison system. His earliest possible release date was reported in December 2005 as February 26, 2180. KWCH reported on August 18, 2025, the 20th anniversary of his sentencing, that he remained at the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Butler County. Encyclopaedia Britannica's entry, updated September 26, 2026, gave his age as 81 and recorded no death.
Proven by final judgment: the 10 murders to which he pleaded guilty in 2005. None of the other cases has been proven. Rader has not been charged with any other killing.
The 2005 reviews. In the days after his arrest, sheriffs in Reno and Harvey counties reopened cold cases to compare them with BTK's methods: the 1977 killing of Gail Sorensen near Hutchinson and a 2001 death of a Wichita woman found in a creek. CBS News and AP reported that investigators were also checking the deaths of two Wichita State University students and of a woman who lived near a known BTK victim. In August 2005 the task force said it could account for 10 murders, that none of the evidence it had gathered pointed to him in any other cold case, and that it believed he would have disclosed any others. A Wichita detective said in December 2005 that, judging by his extensive notes and journals, Rader had probably committed only the murders he was convicted of.
The Fager letter. In 1988 a letter claiming to be from BTK reached the widow of an east Wichita man killed with two of his daughters. It did not claim the killings, experts disagreed about its author, and Rader was never charged in those deaths.
Cynthia Dawn Kinney. Cynthia Kinney, called Cindi, was a 16-year-old cheerleader in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, who disappeared from the laundromat where she worked on June 23, 1976. She has never been found. The Osage County sheriff's office said in August 2023 that it had re-examined her case the previous year and reopened it. The sheriff, Eddie Virden, said he began looking at Rader after finding the phrase "bad laundry day" in Rader's writings, and that in 1976 a bank across the street from the laundromat was installing new alarms at a time when Rader was a regional installer for ADT, though he could not confirm that Rader worked on that job. In an interview with Virden at El Dorado in 2023, Rader denied any killings beyond his 10, but volunteered that he had always wanted to kidnap a girl from a laundromat. In February 2023 Kerri Rawson said she would be very surprised if her father were involved, because it did not match his methods; by September 2023 she was reported to believe there could be more victims.
In August 2023 the sheriff's office called Rader "a prime suspect" in the Kinney case, and on August 22 investigators dug at his former property in Park City and recovered what they called items of interest, including a pantyhose ligature. The district attorney for Osage and Pawnee counties, Mike Fisher, said on September 11, 2023, that the information shared with him was insufficient to charge Rader. He said ADT records did not go back far enough to show whether Rader had worked near the laundromat; that the ligature had not been tested and its handling could make it inadmissible; that he had refused the sheriff's request to offer Rader immunity from the death penalty in return for a confession; and that there was a second possible suspect, who was dead. He asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to open a formal inquiry and said he doubted the case would ever be solved, adding, "I hope I'm wrong." The sheriff later sued the district attorney in Osage County District Court over his public comments. In June 2024 Virden lost his bid for reelection to Bart Perrier. No charge in Oklahoma had been reported as of October 2026.
Shawna Beth Garber. In August 2023 the Osage County sheriff's office also named Rader as a suspect in the death of Shawna Beth Garber, 22, whose body was found in December 1990 in McDonald County, Missouri, and who was identified by DNA in 2021. On March 21, 2024, the McDonald County Sheriff's Office closed the case, named as her killer a local man who had died in 2021, and said Rader was not linked to it. Investigators had interviewed Rader because of the way she was killed.
Several details differ in reliable reports. Kathryn Bright's death is dated April 4, 1974, in most AP accounts and April 5 in a 2004 Knight Ridder account. Shirley Vian's age is given as 24 by AP and 26 by Knight Ridder. Dolores Davis is described as 62 in most reports and 63 in some, and one 2005 Fox News report dates her abduction January 13 rather than January 19, 1991. Accounts give Steve Relford's age in 1977 as 5 or 6. Joseph Otero is described as a retired Air Force officer by Knight Ridder and as a retired master sergeant by AP. Jeff Davis's count of the days he had waited is 5,326 in The New York Times' report.
March 9, 1945: Dennis Lynn Rader is born in Pittsburg, Kansas.
Early 1970s: works at the Coleman Company plant in Wichita.
January 15, 1974: Joseph, Julie, Josephine and Joseph Otero II are killed at 803 North Edgemoor, Wichita.
April 4, 1974: Kathryn Bright is killed; her brother Kevin survives two gunshot wounds.
October 1974: a letter hidden in a library textbook claims the Otero killings and names the writer BTK.
November 1974: Rader joins ADT Security in Wichita.
March 17, 1977: Shirley Vian is killed; her children escape from the bathroom where they were locked.
December 8, 1977: Nancy Fox is killed; the next morning the killer reports it to a police dispatcher.
January 31, 1978: a poem about Shirley Vian reaches the Eagle.
February 10, 1978: a letter to KAKE-TV claims seven killings; police announce a serial killer is at large.
April 28 and June 15, 1979: the Pinecrest burglary and the package sent to the homeowner.
1979: Rader graduates from Wichita State University.
August 15, 1979: the dispatcher tape is broadcast.
1984 to 1987: the Ghostbusters task force works the case.
April 27, 1985: Marine Hedge is taken from her Park City home; her body is found in May.
September 16, 1986: Vicki Wegerle is killed.
July 1988: Rader leaves ADT.
1989: works as a census supervisor.
January 19, 1991: Dolores Davis is taken from her home; her body is found 13 days later.
December 2003: DNA from the Wegerle case yields an unknown male profile.
March 19, 2004: the Wegerle letter reaches the Eagle; the profile later matches the BTK profile.
May 2004: word puzzle mailed to KAKE-TV.
October 2004: letter in a UPS drop box; police later say he had chosen October 22, 2004, to kill again.
December 2004: package with Nancy Fox's driver's license found in Murdock Park.
January 2005: cereal box message asks whether a floppy disk can be traced; police reply on January 30, "Rex, it will be OK."
February 16, 2005: package with the floppy disk reaches KSAS-TV.
February 25, 2005: Rader is arrested on East Kechi Road.
February 26, 2005: "BTK is arrested," Chief Norman Williams announces.
March 1, 2005: charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder.
April 2005: waives his preliminary hearing.
May 2005: arraigned; Judge Waller enters a not guilty plea.
June 27, 2005: pleads guilty to all 10 counts.
August 17 and 18, 2005: sentencing hearing; 10 consecutive life terms.
August 19, 2005: taken to El Dorado Correctional Facility.
2007: the Park City house is demolished.
August 2013: Marine Hedge's former house is sold at auction.
2019: Kerri Rawson publishes her memoir.
June and July 2023: Kerri Rawson visits her father in prison.
August 22 and 23, 2023: Osage County investigators dig at the former Park City property and name Rader a prime suspect in the Kinney case.
September 11, 2023: the district attorney says the evidence is insufficient to charge him.
November 3, 2023: Kerri Rawson resigns from the Osage County task force.
March 21, 2024: Missouri authorities close the Garber case and say Rader is not linked.
June 2024: Sheriff Virden loses his reelection bid.
February 25, 2025: 20th anniversary of the arrest.
August 18, 2025: reported still held at El Dorado.
2025: My Father, the BTK Killer is released on Netflix.
October 2026: no death, transfer or new charge reported.