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BTK Killer Dennis Rader Is Sentenced to 10 Consecutive Life Terms, the Longest Kansas Law Allowed

Victims' relatives called him a monster at the two-day hearing. Rader apologized and quoted the Bible, and will not be eligible for parole for at least 175 years.

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Illustration of a crowded courtroom gallery seen from behind, facing the bench in a wood-paneled Kansas courtroom. Not an actual scene from the case.

Dennis Rader could not be sentenced to death for the BTK killings. On August 18, 2005, a Wichita judge gave him the longest sentence available: 10 consecutive life terms.

Judge Gregory Waller ordered Rader, 60, to serve a minimum of 175 years without a chance of parole. Kansas had no death penalty when the killings were committed. Rader, a former church congregation president and Boy Scout leader who called himself BTK, for "bind, torture and kill," had been arrested in February and pleaded guilty in June to 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1991. His victims were Joseph and Julie Otero and their children, Josephine and Joseph Jr.; Kathryn Bright; Shirley Vian; Nancy Fox; Marine Hedge; Vicki Wegerle; and Dolores Davis.

The two-day hearing included testimony from detectives and from relatives of the victims. "This man needs to be thrown in a deep, dark hole and left to rot," said Beverly Plapp, the sister of Nancy Fox. Before he was sentenced, Rader spoke for half an hour, quoting the Bible, thanking police and apologizing to the families, and admitted that he had tracked his victims "like a predator." "I know the victims' families will never be able to forgive me," he said. Some relatives walked out during his speech.

District Attorney Nola Foulston asked that Rader be denied anything in prison, such as markers or crayons, that he could use to draw or write about his fantasies. The defense, which had agreed to the maximum sentence when Rader pleaded guilty, called the hearing "grandstanding" by prosecutors.

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