"Sort of a Monster": Dennis Rader's Recorded Prison Phone Calls, c. 2021

Name: "Sort of a Monster": Dennis Rader's Recorded Prison Phone Calls, c. 2021
Uploaded: 2023-01-19T00:00:00Z
Duration: 36 min 1 s
Description: Speaking by phone from a Kansas prison, Dennis Rader talked about the "cave monsters" he sees in his cell wall, the BTK murders, a suicide attempt, and his arrest in 2005.

Speaking by phone from a Kansas prison, Dennis Rader talked about the "cave monsters" he sees in his cell wall, the BTK murders, a suicide attempt, and his arrest in 2005.

Subject: Dennis Lynn Rader
Recorded: about 2021
Runtime: 36:01

Content warning: A serial killer describes stalking and killing his victims, including the murder of a family with two children, his sexual fantasies and bondage, the abuse of animals in his childhood, and a suicide attempt.

The Interview

In this 36-minute recording, Dennis Rader speaks by telephone from prison. The calls open with the Kansas Department of Corrections' automated prompt, "you have a prepaid call from Dennis L. Rader". The woman asking the questions has clearly known him for years: she reads back a dream he had sent her in a letter, says she is in Wichita for the first time "since 2016", and tells him that because his health is declining he may want to "get some of this stuff off your chest". She is not named in the recording. She is very probably Dr. Katherine Ramsland, the forensic psychologist who corresponded with Rader for more than a decade. Rader answers questions about his life, his crimes and his arrest.

Historical Context

Between 1974 and 1991 the killer who named himself "BTK" ("bind, torture, kill") murdered ten people in and around Wichita, Kansas: Joseph and Julie Otero and their children Josephine and Joseph II (1974), Kathryn Bright (1974), Shirley Vian (1977), Nancy Fox (1977), Marine Hedge (1985), Vicki Wegerle (1986) and Dolores Davis (1991). He taunted police and the press with letters, then fell silent for years before writing again in 2004. Rader, a city compliance officer in Park City and a church council president, was arrested on February 25, 2005. He pleaded guilty to all ten murders before Judge Gregory Waller on June 27, 2005, and on August 18, 2005 he was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms. He is held at El Dorado Correctional Facility.

Circumstances of the Interview

Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology, first wrote to Rader in 2010. They exchanged letters, spoke on the phone and met at El Dorado Correctional Facility. Her book with him, "Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer", was published in 2016; she agreed that its proceeds would go to a trust fund for the victims' families. In January 2022 A&E broadcast a two-night special, "BTK: Confession of a Serial Killer", from executive producer Dick Wolf. It was built around her work and included phone conversations with Rader. This upload, posted about a year later without a description, appears to be a compilation of call audio from that programme. That has not been confirmed.

What the Interview Covers

Rader describes the cracks in his concrete cell wall, where he looks for faces he calls "cave monsters", and calls himself "sort of a monster". He talks about his marriage and, when the interviewer raises his layoff from Cessna, says it set him off on his first break-in. He gives his account of the murders of the Otero family, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox, of taking Marine Hedge's body to his church, and of later killings that he does not always name, including one in which he says he posed as a telephone repairman. He goes back to his childhood: his parents, the abuse of farm cats, a fifth-grade teacher who became what he calls his first fantasy victim, and early bondage fantasies. Asked about the BTK name, he says he chose it himself, unlike other killers who were named by the media or the police. He describes what he calls "Factor X" and the "volcano" of his urges. He says he once put a loaded .357 in his mouth while stalking another target but "chickened out". He talks about his letters, his "bonding" with Lieutenant Ken Landwehr of the Wichita police, the floppy disk that led to his arrest, and his confession. The interviewer reads him a dream he had sent her, in which police tell him "we know you did more than 10". He does not explain it.

What Makes the Recording Significant

Most recordings of Rader date from 2005: his plea hearing, his sentencing statement and excerpts of the defence psychologist's tape. Here he speaks about sixteen years later, at length and in a conversational setting, about his childhood, the years between the murders and the end of the case. The interviewer's questions about the dream and about "what else there is" reflect long-standing questions about whether Rader committed crimes beyond the ten he admitted. In 2023 an Oklahoma sheriff publicly named him the prime suspect in an unsolved case.

Archival Importance

The recording preserves Rader's own account, in his own voice, of how he says he chose, watched and killed his victims, and how he says he saw the investigation from the other side.

Important Caveats

Everything Rader says here is his own account, given decades after the events. It includes self-serving claims (for example, that he never raped a woman) and explanations such as "Factor X". None of it has been tested in court, and it should not be read as established fact. The video is an edited compilation: questions and answers are cut together, some answers start mid-sentence, and several passages are hard to make out. The interviewer's identity and the source programme are inferred and not confirmed. A woman named only as "Cheryl" is mentioned in one question; she is not otherwise identified.

Automated Operator: [music] Hello, you have a prepaid call from Dennis L. Rader, an inmate at Kansas Department of Corrections. To accept this call, press or [unclear: "save" / "say"].

Interviewer: When you went before Judge Waller and he asked you to talk about the details of all the crimes, what was, what were you thinking? What was that like for you?

Dennis Rader: Well, I guess I want to be [unclear: "careful" / "sure"]. I wanted to let people know what happened, and people were aghast that I would go like that. Whoa. It's like [unclear: "it was on a show" / "I was putting on a show"] or something.

Interviewer: Were you feeling anything when that was happening?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Was"] I just unloaded. Maybe it was a wave, a pressure valve, I guess.

Interviewer: Okay. Why did you want to put your story out there?

Dennis Rader: The main thing is to help [unclear: "people like yourself" / "you have to help"] understand a dark mind. You know, I lived a normal life. You [unclear: "had to have" / "gotta had"] a real dark mind. And that's the [unclear: "$64,000" / "54,000"] question. Why did I do that?

Interviewer: So your fantasy life was more important to you than your real life, it sounds like.

Dennis Rader: Well, I guess to the degree it was. The fantasy world was always right there, you know, not very far away. I could switch gears and move into one and move out of the other very quickly.

Interviewer: I would love it that you could just get some of this stuff off your chest. Your health is declining, and I think it'd be really great for you to be able to just say what you need to say. Is that okay with you?

Dennis Rader: Yeah, I think so.

Dennis Rader: So, good morning.

Interviewer: Hello, Dennis. I'm in Wichita. Haven't been here since 2016.

Dennis Rader: Oh.

Interviewer: [unclear: "You ready" / "Are you ready"] to go?

Dennis Rader: I guess so.

Interviewer: Okay.

Dennis Rader: Let me get a drink while I'm here, okay?

Interviewer: Okay.

Dennis Rader: My mouth is awful dry. Nervous.

Interviewer: Okay. So what's your cell like?

Dennis Rader: Well, basically it's a 12 by 8, concrete, naturally. Naturally the [unclear: "concrete" / "country" / "Optometry"] has cracked, and I look through that and I look for figures. Mainly I look for eyes first, and that's what I usually spot, the eyes. And then I could probably draw hundreds and hundreds of those things off the [unclear: "floor" / "before"]. I call [unclear: "them" / "my"] cave monsters.

Interviewer: Is that why you call yourself a cave monster?

Dennis Rader: Yeah, people call me a monster. I guess I am sort of a monster, but basically a, a Dr. Jekyll and Dr. Hyde.

Interviewer: What were you anticipating when you thought about getting married? What were you anticipating being as a husband?

Dennis Rader: Well, I think the main thing on [unclear: "me" / "man"] is love. I was really in love with my wife, and I still am. I still have [unclear: "bond" / "one"] memories. But basically, I think, like any man, we fall in love, we don't really have any other thoughts except we want to eventually, [unclear: "you don't worry that that marries" / "we don't marry that, that married"] your person that you've met, falling in love with.

Interviewer: You got a job at Cessna, which you loved, right? And then, and then you were laid off. How do, what was that like for you?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Well" / "Oh"], that was a tremendous blow to me. That really set me off on going to my first break-in. [unclear: "Back today, I got laid off" (Whisper) / "tremendous" (captions)].

Interviewer: But why would that, why would getting laid off get you to the point where you want to break in someone's house?

Dennis Rader: I think I was just frustrated with the system. So I had an opportunity for that evening, and I just basically went on a [unclear: "prowl" / "crowd"] and broke in my first home.

Interviewer: That person wasn't involved in your layoff. Why would you pick someone like that to take out your frustration on?

Dennis Rader: Basically, I wanted to [unclear: "do something I could see" / "say something like this deviant"]. You know, that was the way to [unclear: "release" / "relieve"] my frustration.

Interviewer: Did it work?

Dennis Rader: Oh, no, [unclear: "I got worse" / "I got one"]. I started on this dark side a long time before that, and the volcano was finally starting to erupt. I turned the temperature up in the house so that would mess up their body heat temperatures. [unclear: "I did things like that" / "But it tasted like that"].

Interviewer: Do you remember where you spotted her?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "But it's"] probably when I took my wife to work. This is the [unclear: "winter" / "weather"] now, and there's a lot of ice and snow. A lot of times you didn't like to drive on that. So I wasn't at work at that time. I was probably in that area where the Oteros lived, and then saw her and the kids go to school one day. So I thought, well, this might be it. My first fantasy victim would become real. Basically I just focused on that all the time. I was up in the neighborhood, I checked on that house. [unclear: "I was hanging out for another" / "but saying after another"].

Interviewer: What was your plan? What did you think you were going to do that day?

Dennis Rader: I [unclear: "went to Florida to pick out" / "had a war that picked out"] northwest of Wichita, [unclear: "then" / "that"] I was going to take her and [unclear: "kidnap her" / "couldn't have her"].

Dennis Rader: Probably anger. Mr. Otero was going to mess up the whole formula. He wasn't supposed to be there. He was. They had a fence all the way around. I hadn't looked over the side of the fence. All of a sudden their dog [unclear: "crept over the place" / "prints all with me"]. I didn't think about that. But Otero had to do something. That was [unclear: "too much" / "teed up too much"]. But about that time I reached down with my [unclear: "feathers" / "headers"] and [unclear: "cut the whole line" / "got the phone line"].

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Remember the cube, you know, it's a" / "There was a few, you know,"] big guy, bad guy. [unclear: "That's some early father" / "I was a girl. She was a father"] and husband to my family. I worked in church, I worked in Scouts. [unclear: "There's, there's the dark side of me" / "And there's the dogs I hate. Secret."] And that's very strong.

Interviewer: Did you think you would do it again? Did you think it would, that's it, I'm done, it's out of my system? Or did you think I...

Dennis Rader: That wasn't there for a while. I guess you call that the [unclear: "cold state" / "cold station"] or whatever, and then it starts [unclear: "spilling" / "building"] again.

Interviewer: Okay.

Dennis Rader: Probably just like a person on a drug. Things like a drug, you know, high for a while, and then it wears off. And then they're ready to go at it again.

Interviewer: You did hear that on the radio when it happened.

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "I heard that we were on the way to Mexico. Now it's working software." (Whisper only)] [unclear: "I wrote to the school and" / "to the 400 of"] one of my employer's daughters [unclear: "had" / "I had"] a station wagon. I always had a crush on her. And I loved setting the front seat, and she always wore a skirt. And it was on the radio, and I heard that. [unclear: "I only found out" / "When I found out"] that they were tied up. That's [unclear: "what I wanted to do" / "what we're going to do"]. That went back to the bondage thing.

Interviewer: After the Oteros, the Kathryn Bright murder wasn't very long afterward. Didn't you think that was risky?

Dennis Rader: No, I think the objective was that house and her. And everything else seemed to not mean that much. But she played into, uh, some of the magazines [unclear: "and seeing a friend going after COVID" / "on scene, you know, a purple towing after cohes"] and this sort of thing. I saw her one day in her house. I thought, well, [unclear: "this is my guy" / "this might be all right"]. I mean, he's coming from somewhere at that time of the day, and I'm in between classes. So that's the possibility.

Interviewer: When you had picked out, uh, Kathryn Bright, how long did, how long did you watch her before you decided to act?

Dennis Rader: I [unclear: "worked away and wanted that address" / "ress"] for a while to see whether that would cost me. And, you know, [unclear: "you did come home" / "if you could come home"] in the afternoon. So I thought, well, all I have to do is break in and be waiting for it when she comes in. So I took [unclear: "a picture" / "the picture"], probably about [unclear: "a month" / "another month"].

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "She panicked" / "He panicked"]. And I just, out of pure stupidness, I stabbed her. And I didn't, I didn't like to use a knife. I really did. And then secondly, he ran out of the place. The door was wide open. I saw him running down the porch and heading out on the road. So it was just total mess.

Interviewer: When did you first feel like you were a serial killer?

Dennis Rader: Um, uh, probably after [inaudible].

Interviewer: When did you think of a barn for the elaborate torture devices?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "I'm back from grade school"]. That's when I first started. It happened when we were playing cowboys and Indians. We would tie each other up in a silo, and I got sexually excited when I'm ready to [unclear: "fight up"], or even better when somebody else is playing. Later on I came up with my sexual fantasy about the silos.

Interviewer: [Did] you pay attention to the news coverage afterward?

Dennis Rader: [inaudible] that he came to the police. I looked at that and I said, whoa, that's pretty close.

Interviewer: What gave you that idea that you should have a name, and how did you come up with it?

Dennis Rader: I've been reading books, like the Boston Strangler. And basically, I [unclear: "didn't mind" / "did mind"] the people, the other killers didn't name themselves. No, they picked up on the media or the police. And I thought I'd be a little different. I'd go ahead and name my own name [unclear: "and be dealt with it" (Whisper only)].

Dennis Rader: I had a [unclear: "paper court"] that time, and I could tell on the [unclear: "paper court"], why did I do this? What caused this? And I think that, and I finally figured it out for what I call the Factor X, and [unclear: "they could do that"]. Factor X [unclear: "is" / "has been"] an overall drive. Even today, [unclear: "I see" / "if I see"] something on TV or a picture or start thinking about the old times and fantasy, I still get that feeling, you know, that sexual [unclear: "fizzling" / "feelings"]. I really do, okay? I can't, it's just still there. [unclear: "That language on the Factor X is sitting all of a sudden saying, whoa, I'm going to go the only location in this building building." (Whisper only)] It built me to be kind of like a volcano.

Interviewer: When do you think that started for you?

Dennis Rader: It started all the way when I was young.

Interviewer: Let me take you back to your childhood. You, you haven't talked very much, even to me, about your father and your sense of your father.

Dennis Rader: Okay. Oh, there's lunch.

Interviewer: Oh, I'm sorry? What do you have?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Baloney, they kind of" (captions only)].

Interviewer: Well, I mean, feel free to, to eat while you're talking, if you, if you think you can do both. I don't want you to, to waste that. So let's go back to your childhood.

Dennis Rader: Uh, [unclear: "you work" / "he worked"] two jobs, moonlighting, and he was just a busy man.

Interviewer: Would you say, would you say you were close to him growing up then?

Dennis Rader: Yeah, I was closer to probably him [than] to Mom, but, uh, they were both good parents.

Dennis Rader: My mom, she was vacuuming the living room, and under one of the sofas she got a [unclear: "drink caught him on" / "caught him was"] the spring, and you can reach it with your other hand [unclear: "if you can turn it" / "because she was hurting"]. So she asked me to go for help. That image of her being a terror and kind of held is [unclear: "prolonging into one of my dark side" / "prolonged me into whatever my dark side"].

Dennis Rader: I did start to abuse farm cats. I built a box, and I cut out the top of it just for a cat head, and I'd get some milk, and [unclear: "wait till one" / "we, someone,"] would get in there, and I'd pull the string, the box [would] drop over, and [unclear: "let it stand up through the hole" / "let's stick his head up through the hole"]. And I had [unclear: "an itch for it" / "a nice fork"].

Interviewer: I never knew that. Why did you like hanging cats?

Dennis Rader: There was some sexual excitement there to see them hung. My fifth-grade teacher, she was a real dominating female, and she used to pick on weaklings like me. But anyway, she became my first fantasy victim. I would sneak out and do some window peeking, and so I'd catch her occasionally in her bedroom.

Dennis Rader: That's where I had my first sexual outlet, and it wasn't normal, because it wasn't with the female. It was me tying myself up in a [unclear: "head roll"] against [unclear: "a fence" / "the fence"], and I had this weird feeling. And, whoa, what was this? What happened? To create that again, I had to use [unclear: "closets" / "quasi"]. I used to like to go to people's closets, mess around in their chest of drawers and stuff, and [unclear: "buy" / "buying"] nylon socks and panties and things of that nature. I would steal them. That was kind of exciting.

Interviewer: So no one ever caught you or complained that things were missing?

Dennis Rader: No, no, I was real careful.

Interviewer: Once you knew who you were going to target, what does that feel like to you?

Dennis Rader: Well, it's kind of like the, uh, the big game hunter, I guess you'd say. He's got the target, or he's got the animal, and he's got the sights on his gun. This is going to be it.

Dennis Rader: I think it [unclear: "just popped in my head" / "locked my head"] one day. I had to come up with some kind of nickname. A lot of times, you can name on a boat, or the oil man, they always [unclear: "name" / "clean"] their oil [unclear: "wells" / "whales"].

Dennis Rader: I was all geared up to do something, and it didn't happen at [unclear: "Project Green"], where the girls [unclear: "went home" / "were home"]. But I think I went to a couple other houses and knocked on the door, so I was in the mood. So that was random, but the opportunity struck, and I already had to plan what I was going to do, and there was the opportunity, so I latched onto it.

Interviewer: Having the children there in Shirley Vian's house, did that bother you at all?

Dennis Rader: No, no, I think it was [unclear: "to her"]. Kind of like a World War II, you're flying a bomber, and you've got [unclear: "any aircraft"] shooting you down, but your main focus is to drop the bombs on what they want you to drop the bombs on. Nothing else matters. [unclear: "He was my focus" / "Much more focus"].

Interviewer: Weren't you worried about what might happen with them?

Dennis Rader: No, no, no. They were old enough to take care of [unclear: "the South" (Whisper only)].

Dennis Rader: I never raped a girl. Just one of those things I just didn't do. [unclear: "Helped just" (Whisper only)] a little bit too far. I think even serial killers probably [unclear: "had" / "has"] some kind of taboos. Yeah, that was mine. I would not rape a female.

Dennis Rader: I used [unclear: "hishes" / "cold hitches"] on hands or on feet. [unclear: "Those were very hard knots, good enough" / "That's a very hard knot to get a none"]. Basically, once that knot comes to its peak, there's no way you can get out of that. So that was probably my favorite knot, but the other one was, uh, tie a knot on the end of the line and make a slip knot.

Interviewer: How long had you been studying other serial killers?

Dennis Rader: Well, [inaudible] the models, Harvey Glatman, yeah.

Interviewer: You enjoyed the look of fear on your victim's face?

Dennis Rader: Well, yes, uh, it's sort of a sexual arousement. With Fox, things went pretty smooth and everything, and although her face [unclear: "now"]. It's just the idea that I had done it. It was all I needed. It's like my mom, when her finger was caught in that couch. She was struggling.

Dennis Rader: Well, after the incident, then I had time to quickly go through some of her stuff, and I took some of her nicer clothes or [unclear: "clips"] and stockings and things of that nature, and my tokens. Here I go home and my wife's there, you know? So I had to make up a story [unclear: "why it was a little late" / "it was running a little late"]. We were having car trouble at that time, so I just blamed it on the car.

Dennis Rader: But when I made the phone call about Fox, Fox thing had already happened, and there was nothing, nothing about it. And that's probably kind of like a cat-and-mouse thing. I went ahead and used the phone. Stupid. I was so afraid that someone would ID that and say, well, I know that voice. Well, that's Dennis Rader.

Interviewer: When they finally announced that there was a serial killer on the loose in Wichita, what, what was that like for you?

Dennis Rader: That was a pretty, pretty big buzz, really. I mean, that's not saying this is good, but wow. They finally recognized me. You know, I felt kind of cocky at that time, I guess you would say.

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "I always had" / "You always had"] the tripod, and so I rigged that up, and lo and behold, I could take pictures of myself. And then what I had was a squeegee ball, and basically ran the cord over to your hand, and then somewhere I hit the ball when I [unclear: "looked at my pictures" / "was in my pictures"], and I just squeezed that ball, and the [unclear: "ball worked its way" / "follower hit slick"]. I used to cross-dressing and tying myself up as a sexual fantasy, like, like I was the victim. I knew they would say something about it on TV, you know, "BTK sent us a letter." That was an extremely big high, I can tell you that.

Interviewer: Why do you think you wanted this recognition?

Dennis Rader: Along my childhood, I've always felt like I was an underdog, and that somewhere along the lines of getting a high [unclear: "recognition" / "in recognition"], I think it's like the movie stars and stage people. They see the picture [in] a newspaper or a story about them, I think they get a rush on that.

Interviewer: While you were in school, you were also committing your own crimes. Were you listening for things that would help you?

Dennis Rader: Yes, I was very careful with the forensics. I made sure I [unclear: "couldn't sleep my fingerprints" / "basically my fingerprints"]. I wore rubber gloves, ones that you use when you're washing dishes. One of the people that went to our church worked with Xerox, so he eventually figured out one of my original letters came from the [unclear: "copies" / "coffee"] from WSU. He was [unclear: "that sharp enough" / "not sharp enough"], that, whoa. After I found that out, whatever I copied, I didn't send that in. I went to different copies before I sent it in.

Interviewer: After you knew that they had traced your Xeroxing to Wichita State, did it scare you that they were closing in on you?

Dennis Rader: It did. I prepared for the police to come knocking on the door.

Dennis Rader: There was times when I thought they were closing in, and I would [unclear: "smoke things around" / "hang around"] and kind of clean up a little bit. I had hidey-holes here or there. I had some cabinets at home that I could hide [things] up in. There was the shed. I had some little boards I could stuff in. And then I had the hidey-hole underneath the house, [unclear: "I told nothing to house, space, I told nothing to anything" / "across the space"].

Interviewer: You got Wichita all in a frenzy over a serial killer, and then you went quiet. What were you doing?

Dennis Rader: Well, Kerri was born in '78. Right? [unclear: "Motherhood was a big performance at that time" (Whisper only)]. And I graduated in '79. So there was another factor. I did not have time to do anything in the evening. [unclear: "Stocking a nest up" / "that stuff"] never completely stopped. Basically collecting detective magazines and sketches and [unclear: "slick cards" / "slick cars"] and [unclear: "three of a five" / "three with like"]. That continued. The only time I had to do anything was be out of town. That's when the little [unclear: "tail party" (Whisper only)] started. I [unclear: "work at the sexy pretty" / "with a sexy frizzy"] by doing bondage.

Dennis Rader: A lot of times I have pictures of the girls and go through that and lay them out, rearrange them, look at them, or bring things out from the hiding holes of my collection that I got from victims. I bought a nice big suitcase and had a lock on it. When I was packing up and ready to go out of town, I would take enough of those things with me.

Dennis Rader: When Paula was at work and I had time off, I would wash all the stuff, clean it all up and dry it out, and I would [unclear: "start" / "try"] to be real careful I didn't leave anything in there. And then I'd hide it back in my regular closet. My wife caught me twice, and boy, she was really upset, and I was upset because I got caught. She just told me, this is it. You ever do [unclear: "the scan" / "the skin"], ever catch you, we're gonna leave, [unclear: "don't like to get" / "take the kids"], we're gonna divorce you. I made sure that would never happen again.

Interviewer: There was a time where you thought about suicide.

Dennis Rader: Yeah, I put a .357 in my mouth. I, I just felt to a point where maybe it was just [unclear: "a man upstairs" / "with the man upstairs"] or something, with the family. I thought, this time has come. I'm basically stalking somebody else. So I got another person I want to set up for. I need to end this, because I'm going to take somebody's life again.

Interviewer: You put a loaded .357 in your mouth.

Dennis Rader: Yep. I was just in that mood to take my life.

Interviewer: And what did it feel like when you didn't pull the trigger and you put the gun down? Then what, then what went through your mind?

Dennis Rader: Ah, well, I guess I chickened out. I just couldn't do it.

Interviewer: Well, it sounds like you gave it a lot of thought. Was that about having regrets and, or remorse?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Building could agree one time I was more religious knowing him now" (captions only)] I thought, well, gosh, if indeed [unclear: "Kevin doesn't" (captions only)] exist, what will my [unclear: "grandparate"] say to me while I'm doing all this? But my concept on religion right now is a lot different than [unclear: "you should be"].

Interviewer: Okay. Remember the dream you sent to me? I want to read that back to you and see if you have anything to say about it. Do you mind?

Interviewer: Okay, so the dream was about a boxcar. And here's what you wrote: "One end had an old-fashioned barbershop like my grandpa Cook had. In my dream, I'm working on a letter to you, so it is spread out on the table. I get my call number for a haircut and realize there is too much stuff left out for eyes to see. So I walk back to put it into my black briefcase. Then the alarm clock goes off in my dream, and I'm trying to shut it off, and at the same time, two police officers come in. One taps me on the shoulder and says, 'We know you did more than 10.' Then I awake to find out the real alarm clock is buzzing away."

Interviewer: I've always really wondered about that dream and what it meant. And it sounded like you meant some very dark things.

Dennis Rader: It does.

Interviewer: The dream. This is a dream you had, and you wrote it to me. What do you think it means?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "Yeah" (Whisper only)].

Interviewer: You're clearly protecting secrets in this dream, and it is related to your BTK activities. I'm really curious about what else there is that you would want to tell me.

Dennis Rader: Um, well. [inaudible]

Interviewer: This dream is related to your BTK activities, and it is something that you're writing to me, but you don't want other people to find it.

Dennis Rader: I kind of recall a little bit about the writing [of] that, [unclear: "but I should only recall all the details" / "unless you don't recall in detail"]. But basically, uh, as I told the police, [unclear: "can it sit" / "can ... candidate"].

Interviewer: Okay, well, let's, let's continue this thinking about this conversation. And if you do have things, uh, so that you could write down, that would be great.

Dennis Rader: Okay, all right. I will do that for you.

Interviewer: Okay.

Dennis Rader: If I [unclear: "walk my mother's walks" (Whisper only)] or something like that, I'd just wave at her and say hi. She's usually out in [the] front yard, [unclear: "attending" / "changing"] her flowers. That was a long wait. I had to wait a long time in the closet before he left. He left, and then he went to bed.

Interviewer: [Did] you think you could participate in church activities while at the same time harming other people?

Dennis Rader: Yes, I did.

Interviewer: Didn't it seem to violate what you believed?

Dennis Rader: I know people would say, wow, what you did with Mrs. Hedge in the church, [the] house of God, doing something like that. It was terrible. But I hadn't had any, [unclear: "work if you would call real longish type" / "well, I guess you would call real bondage type"] pictures of a female.

Interviewer: But when you first decided to use a room in the church to bring a body to, to dress, to take pictures of, did it seem weird? Like, why would you even think of using the church?

Dennis Rader: No, it was a way to get what I wanted done.

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "That place was not what I call my typical pacing" / "No, it's pacing"]. Those opportunities that I had to really look for my next victim was around lunchtime. And I would drive over there and eat, and then I'd watch [unclear: "your place" / "a washer place"] from my car. [unclear: "I used my rest of" / "Yeah, use my rest of"] the telephone man. I had the hard hat on and the little symbol I stuck on it, and some gear that looked like telephone gear, you know, in my hands.

Interviewer: Didn't you know that her husband was coming home?

Dennis Rader: She mentioned it. But I thought, well, she may be lying on that. That was a big risk. It really was, in the middle of the day, around noon time. So that was a big risk, [but] my focus was on her.

Interviewer: Did you ever think about what it would be like for you if somebody entered your home and did something like that to your wife?

Dennis Rader: I would have stepped in and fought them for sure, doing everything possible to protect my, my wife or my kids.

Interviewer: But I mean, what if you found her dead, murdered? What would that have been like for you?

Dennis Rader: Oh, that would have been very upsetting. It's like revenge [has] come back, only. [unclear: "So I was building" / "Well, I was building"], I guess, towards what I call the perfect, the perfect murder. She thought the car had run into her house because of [unclear: "it"] and the back door. And I'm talking to myself, what if [unclear: "you" / "he"] stepped out of [unclear: "this" / "that"] door with a shotgun? I [unclear: "just all over" / "did it all over"], oh, good Lord. My wife, my kids, my family, friends are going to know all about it. Here I am caught, like a rat in a trap. I had like 55 projects. People were pretty close to [unclear: "reaching" / "meeting"] the hands of death. [unclear: "Didn't happen." (captions only)]

Interviewer: What were you doing in those years when nothing was really happening?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "A lot of things in" / "Get a lot of things for them, do a lot of things with"] the community. I worked in church. You know, working Scouts. Okay. If I wasn't real busy, then I would go out on a prowling and look for my next victim. Those were basically projects.

Interviewer: Did you feel like you were in control of your urges then?

Dennis Rader: Yeah. I can always fantasize or look for more victims. That was part of the excitement, is being able to do the hunts.

Interviewer: So I have a report from a woman named Cheryl. She said she talked with you at the Blackout Lounge.

Dennis Rader: I used to go to that lounge. What I was trying to do was get more notches on my gun at that time. So I was in the mood. I've had everything set. I had my hit kit, [unclear: "head roll"], tape. So I had two guns, a couple of knives. I was going to do something. I was at the height of my, uh, eruption.

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "The main target" (Whisper only)], and that didn't work out, so it was, uh, [unclear: "what's next" / "thumbs up, what's next"]. [unclear: "Yes, Charlie, go ahead." (Whisper only; speaker uncertain)] It was totally [unclear: "confusing" / "consultative"]. I didn't know exactly who lived in that house, because I followed her son home that time.

Interviewer: Did you like being a compliance officer?

Dennis Rader: Yeah, I did. I was pretty close to where I wanted to be. I wanted [to be a] police officer, something like that. I always wanted to be out there a little bit, be known, and let them people know that [unclear: "nobody's around" / "now we're still around"]. They thought I would maybe have died in prison or moved out of the area, or basically just passed away.

Interviewer: When Ken Landwehr did a press conference about you, what was that like for you?

Dennis Rader: Well, that was pretty high. [unclear: "She finally came out and said" (Whisper only)], yeah, BTK still exists in our community, so be careful. I was having a field day with cat and mouse, so I'm having fun.

Interviewer: Why did you decide to send the BTK story to the TV station?

Dennis Rader: I wanted the police [or] the [unclear: "terminal" / "general"] population to know that, yeah, there might be some more. You know, I mean, it's not right off the sunset. There might be some more.

Interviewer: I was wondering, because you were so attuned to media at that time, whether you ever considered a media person as a project.

Dennis Rader: Uh, not really, not really, although that would have been something else. I think [unclear: "Susan" / "central"] was really worried that maybe I was after her, but I really didn't have [unclear: "first" / "her inside"]. I didn't have any media people at all. I was using them to get things done, and that was the main purpose.

Interviewer: What about driving into the Home Depot parking lot? [Did] you think they'd have a surveillance camera?

Dennis Rader: Well, [unclear: "or I get my incident work" (captions only)] put that stuff in the back of the pickup. There wasn't any cameras mounted on the light pole, so I knew that [if] there were any cameras, it would be a distance, and I wouldn't be very distinguishing, mainly just a person. Yeah, that wasn't really too nervous about it.

Dennis Rader: I sent a lot of stuff [through] the mail and didn't have any feedback, or any feedback from it. I guess I got confident that they were sort of buddies or something, or friends. I kind of had a little bonding with Landwehr. I think I've had a bonding with him. "This letter is from BTK," and we thought they were wanting to play cat and mouse. [unclear: "I wish they were" / "We wish they were"], but I thought they would be [unclear: "careful" / "truthful"].

Interviewer: The floppy, was it just a test file on it, or was there anything else on it?

Dennis Rader: No, that was it. This is just a test. I wanted to see if they picked up on it or if it would get through okay. [unclear: "That would be anything beyond that" (Whisper only)]. This is a test.

Interviewer: Were you worried about getting caught during this time, that they might trace something back to you?

Dennis Rader: Yeah, I was real careful with my fingerprints. I didn't even think about [unclear: "Ms. Seaman" (Whisper only)]. They would have had to say that, what, 30 years? But they also had [the] DNA sample from Fox. [unclear: "Think waggling?" / "Hank wagonally"], she had some [unclear: "scraping memories or fingernails" / "scraping stories or fingernail"] for me, because we did fight.

Interviewer: Let's talk about when you did get caught. It was a huge effort. What was that like to be in the middle of it?

Dennis Rader: Anyway, when I pulled off to go down this side street, they were all lined up on the street, and I thought, what are they there for? Could it be me? And then as soon as [unclear: "I appeared" / "they appeared"] in the mirror, [unclear: "I knew, oh" / "you mirror my new bottle"], I couldn't figure out how they [unclear: "can do" / "knew"]. I first thought that they made a connection when I dropped off my floppy in a mailbox, and that really threw me, because how can you [unclear: "hear that" / "hear me"]? There was no cameras or anything, right?

Interviewer: Right.

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "I thought I could do, I could do that and talk to" (captions only)] Mr. Landwehr. He said, you know why you're going downtown? And I said, I've got an idea. I think that kicked it off right there.

Unidentified Voice: Well, that's, it's okay. Yeah, you're right. [unclear: "I'm sure if you like"] ... because I was trying to catch you.

Interviewer: When you ask them to tell you if the floppy could be traced, why did you trust them?

Dennis Rader: I [unclear: "like to Scout oaths" / "like the Scouts"], always be truthful. [unclear: "I just put trustful" / "Not just, but trustful"]. They had declared war on me, and wars are not nice things. I actually felt like they should have given me more respect, I guess, playing [the] cat-and-mouse game.

Interviewer: Why did you finally confess during the interrogation?

Dennis Rader: They talked about the DNA, so nowhere along the line was it going to be able to escape that. So that was the final [unclear: "lane" / "wing"]. I was [unclear: "caught, but there was nothing" / "comfortable with anything"] else to do, to be honest.

Dennis Rader: One time I was spelling, I think I was writing something [unclear: "in" / "to"] the church or something, and I was using her computer. I was using newsletters, back and forth. And she says, you spell just like BTK. I go, whoa! I said, yeah, I've always been bad on spelling.

Interviewer: When you were arrested, did it occur to you that people who looked up to you, how they were going to feel about that?

Dennis Rader: [unclear: "I was devastated" / "Devastated"]. I can't believe that. You know, wow, Dennis has been arrested. What, what happened? How? Yeah, you know, I'm sure that crossed their mind. I was very, very depressed on that, you know.

Dennis Rader: Well, first of all, I didn't think I was ever going to get arrested, so, you know, you just keep going and keep going, so you never think that would ever happen. Pretty soon [unclear: "it will be" / "I'll be"] a black hole. I won't be here, [unclear: "we're gone" / "and be gone"]. Yeah, I've accumulated a lot of deaths, a lot of hurt, and shame on my family and everything, and it's kind of like things have been sucked into me, or I'm basically in a black hole. [recording ends] ---