LOOKING out of her window, Kerri Rawson, 26, was puzzled about a car parked outside that had been there for some time.
Heeding her father’s protective advice about strangers, she was cautious when she heard a knock on the door.
BTK killer Dennis Rader murdered at least 10 people between 1974 and 1991[/caption]
Growing up, Rader ingrained in his daughter the warning of ‘stranger danger’[/caption]
A drawing by Rader shows a bound and gagged woman in a red top[/caption]
“Dad had ingrained in me ‘stranger danger’ and to make them prove to you who they are,” she says.
“So I pulled the door open a crack and thought I could maybe stop the man from coming in.
He said, ‘I need to question you.’ I’m like, ‘What is going on?’ And he said, ‘Have you heard of BTK?’ And then he goes, ‘Your dad is BTK.’”
The chilling initials, as everyone in Wichita, Kansas and across the US knew only too well, stood for Bind, Torture, Kill, the self-styled moniker of the sadistic, perverted serial killer who had terrorised the neighbourhood for 30 years, targeting women to satisfy his warped sexual gratification.
Between 1974 and 1991 he had broken into homes where he had tied and tortured women before hanging them, taking pictures of their half-naked bodies along with ‘trophies’, including underwear, home with him.
He sent a series of letters to police taunting them about their failure to find him and was also in regular communication with his local TV news channel.
Desperate for fame and notoriety, this seemingly ordinary, church-going husband and father-of-two got away with it because nobody would ever have imagined he could be the BTK killer.
Dennis Rader, 59 at the time of his arrest, was a monster hiding in plain sight.
That day, in February 2005, was to tear the family apart and cause disbelief, not only with them but everyone who knew this unassuming church congregation president, a former Cub Scout leader who rounded up stray, homeless or nuisance dogs to be placed in official shelters.
His chilling reign of terror is recounted through the eyes of his daughter, Kerri in the Netflix documentary My Father, the BTK Killer, as she talks about her personal reflections growing up with her father, trying to come to terms with his secret dark side and the social media attacks on her.
“Probably my earliest memories are when I was two or three,” she says. “We had a three-bedroom house with a big garden and dad built us this massive tree house on stilts.
“On the outside he looked like a very well-behaved, mild-mannered man but there were these moments when something would trigger him and he flipped and could be dangerous.
“You knew not to sit in Dad’s chair at the kitchen table and to let him get lunch first. You let him choose which activities you were going to do, what movies to watch. There was a lot of control.”
These trigger moments were far darker and more violent than she could ever imagine.
The first ‘project’
BTK broke into the home of the Otero family and suffocated nine-year-old Joey[/caption]
Larry Thomas, of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, holds up a T-shirt that was taken from Joey[/caption]
Rader on the first day of his sentencing at the Sedgwick County Courthouse, August 17, 2005[/caption]
In 1974, becoming depressed after being laid off from work, Rader began to act out the sexual fantasies about torturing trapped and helpless women which he had harboured from a young age.
On January 15, he broke into the home of the Otero family, holding a pistol. He bound four of the family – Joseph Snr and his wife Julie, along with their children Joey, nine and Josie, 11.
He suffocated Joseph and his son by placing a plastic bag over their heads and strangled Julie with a rope.
Taking Josie down to the cellar, he undressed her and hung her, watching her die.
This was the first of his “Projects” which he meticulously detailed in notebooks that he kept at home in his study.
You knew not to sit in Dad’s chair at the kitchen table and to let him get lunch first. There was a lot of control
Kerri Rawson
That October he sent a letter to his local newspaper, The Wichita Eagle, using the pseudonym BTK saying that three brothers held in psychiatric units who had confessed to the crime were innocent.
Such was the detail he gave of the scene and the manner of death that the police realised that he was the true killer.
He added, “Since sex criminals do not change their MO or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine.
“The code words for me will be…Bind them, torture them, kill them – B.T.K. You will see he’s at it again. They will be on the next victim.”
Killing spree
Eight of the 10 people whose deaths have been linked by authorities to the BTK serial killer[/caption]
Cynthia Kinney, a potential victim, went missing in 1976 and was never found[/caption]
His next victim was 21-year-old Kathryn Bright. In April, he broke into her home and waited for her to return.
He was not expecting her to be accompanied by her brother, Kevin but he made him tie up his sister before tying him up in a separate room.
Kevin managed to escape, flee the house and call for help, despite being shot by Rader. Before leaving, Rader tried to strangle Kathryn but when she fought back, he shot her dead.
Three years later he strangled Shirley Vian, 24, and later Nancy Fox, 25.
The code words for me will be…Bind them, torture them, kill them – B.T.K. You will see he’s at it again. They will be on the next victim.
BTK
It became apparent that the killer was also a narcissist who was following news coverage of himself.
On February 10 1978, he sent a letter to the news channel at KAKE-TV complaining, “How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?”
He laid low for a time before striking on April 27 1985, killing his neighbour, Marine Hedge, 53.
“Dad later said that having kids slowed down his murders,” says Kerri.
In March 2004, he sent another letter to KAKE-TV claiming that Vicki Wegeale, 28, found strangled in her bed on September 16 1986, was his eighth victim.
Police tape hangs across the street in front of the house that Rader lived in[/caption]
Rader’s property dug up by cops after they got a ‘tip’ about missing teen Cynthia Kinney[/caption]
The letter included photographs taking at the crime scene.
A second letter detailed the chapter headings he envisaged for a book about himself – 1. A serial killer is born. 2. Dawn. 3. Fetish. 4. Fantasy world. 5. The Search Begins, 6. BTK’s Haunts. 7. PJ’s, 8. MO-ID-Ruse, 9. Hits, 10. Treasured Memories, 11. Final Curtain Call, 12. Dusk, 13. Will There Be More?
It was this final chapter that sent nerves jangling. The BTK killer who some had hoped had died or had been imprisoned for something else, was still clearly at large, sending shivers throughout the community once more.
The confession
His undoing came in January 2005 when he decided to communicate with police via floppy disk.
But the data on one indicated it had been used at the Park City Public Library and Christ Lutheran Church and the username was Dennis.
Within minutes he was identified as Dennis Rader, the congregational president of Christ Lutheran Church.
Police stopped his car as he left his work place and Ray Lundin, Former Agent at Kansas Bureau of Investigation, wrestled him to the ground.
“He looked at me and said, ‘Would you mind telling my wife I won’t be home for lunch? I assume you know where I live,” Lundin recalls.
“When I searched his house, there were the usual family pictures on the wall but as you entered the front door there was a coat closet.
“On the shelf above the coats was a ‘kill kit,’ It was a little bag that had pre-knotted ropes, a bandana, handcuffs, a 32 auto pistol and some ‘trophies’ – jewellery, clothing, underwear. He kept all of it. It was very disturbing.”
The documentary shows the interview police had with Rader, confronting him with the evidence they had on him.
When they eventually say, ‘Just tell us who you are,’ he replies, ‘Guess you guys know. BTK.’
“Once he said that, the floodgates opened and he talked about every crime,” says Lundin.
Wichita Police Detective Sam Houston shows a mask, which was used in one of the crimes[/caption]
Rader was sentenced to consecutive life sentences for each with a minimum of 175 years[/caption]
It included a victim they had not linked with him – 62-year-old Dolores Davis on January 19 1991.
“It was clear to me that he was very proud of his killings. He said, ‘If I was a lone wolf, without all my social obligations – family, church, work – there would have been a lot more murders’,” says Lundin.
After he had strangled Marine Hedge he put her in his truck and took her body to Christ Lutheran Church where he undressed her, changed her clothes and took photographs.
Rader calmly told police: “I had decided she was going to the church, alive or dead. Basically, I was trying to work towards the BTK lair, the home, the torture chamber thing. That’s what I was working towards in my fantasy world.”
Guilty of ten murders
A sketch of a ‘bound and gagged female’ by BTK[/caption]
The woman in one of BTK’s drawings is believed to be a woman who vanished on 1991, a sheriff says[/caption]
Rader wrote this letter from his cell at the El Dorado Correctional Facility and refers to Stephen King’s use of the story of BTK for a book[/caption]
At his trial, Dennis Rader pled guilty to ten murders but shocked those gathered, including the families of his victims, as he calmly went into detail about how he had tortured and killed them.
Ray Lundin says: “Dennis Rader said we would find a mother load of stuff in his office in is file cabinet. It was an unlocked file cabinet so he obviously felt very secure in maintaining these things here.
“There were a lot of pictures he had taken and a lot of drawings including a naked woman gagged and hanging. He had everything identified, dated, alphabetised, cross-referenced. He basically created a worksheet of what he called his ‘projects’.”
There were also bondage-style photographs of Rader himself, tied up and partially clothed with his victims stockings over his head.
He was sentenced to consecutive life sentences for each with a minimum of 175 years.
He’s still my father. For my mum, she can divorce him, she can cut him off and has the power to separate her life and try to move on. For me and my brother, we don’t have that. He’s always our dad. I look like him.
Kerri Rawson
“It’s frustrating as hell because dad is still alive,” says Kerri. “He’s still my father.
“For my mum, she can divorce him, she can cut him off and has the power to separate her life and try to move on. For me and my brother, we don’t have that. He’s always our dad. I look like him.”
Kerri has received a lot of backlash for publicly talking about her father and writing a book called A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming.
“I have had people messaging me, threatening to kill me,” she says.
Kerri’s hell was compounded when she discovered cops had used a smear test she had at university to confirm the close family match to the BTK killer, leaving her feeling “violated”.
BTK’s sick journal
Kerri stands in the backyard of the vacant lot that was once the site of her childhood home[/caption]
In a further twist, she now wonders whether she was an early victim of his warped sexual urges.
“I was reading through my dad’s notes and he has a notation for the year 1981, when I was, which in caps says, ‘KERRI/BND/GAME’. BND means bondage,” she says.
“And then there’s another one that says, ‘KIDS/BATH/S’. The last initial stands for Sex. So, I am like, ‘Did Dad molest me in the bath when I was three? And why is my name in a bondage game?
“I am full spinning at this point. Really confused. Had he been practising on me?”
After 18 and a half years since he was locked up, Kerri agreed to police request that she visit her father in prison to see if he would confess to any other murders.
“He was frail, in a wheelchair and he was literally crying because he was so happy to see me,” she says.
“I was there for two or three hours, asking him questions about everything but he got angry when he realised that was why I was there.
“I ended up asking my dad him about the notation in his journal. I said, ‘Dad, what does KERRI/BND/GAME mean?’ And he said, ‘Oh, that was just a fantasy. I never touched the family. You’re just making stuff up about me now to be famous.’
“I was so upset and angry about how he was gaslighting me. It was like I wasn’t even talking to my dad, I was talking to a sub human.
“When everybody had talked about him being a psychopath and a narcissist, I had still been able to find humanity in him.
“Now I wasn’t able to. I don’t ever want to go near that person again. That’s not my dad. I don’t know who that is.”
My Father the BTK Killer is on Netflix now
