Original subtitles

- People in Wichita had been terrorized

by the BTK killer for 30 years.

- I looked and saw my mom laying on the bed.

You could smell the death.

- Four people dying in a house in Wichita, Kansas?

That just didn't happen.

- The motive behind these killings

was more of the sexual gratification.

- The demands that those investigators felt

when lead after lead led them nowhere.

- Three months after the Otero murder

came Kathryn Bright.

- Dennis Rader had aspired to become a serial killer.

And with these murders, he had become BTK.

[dramatic music]

When Dennis Rader,

the serial killer known as BTK,

started corresponding with me,

one of the first things he said

was that I should take a drive

into the countryside around Wichita.

♪ ♪

He grew up on farms,

and he wanted me to look at the barns and silos.

They might look ordinary, but those were the places

he had his first torture fantasies.

♪ ♪

He had this fantasy he was going to build

this silo of terror.

And so he drew it,

and inside were things like the wheel of death,

where he would chain a victim to it.

And there was a train along with a railroad track

because his fantasy was to tie girls to the track

and have the train run over them.

When did you think of a barn

for the elaborate torture devices?

- One of the things that we know about sexually compelled

serial killers like Dennis Rader

is that they often have generated a fantasy life

that's very vivid to them.

Usually starts quite young.

Studying that would show me what motivates them

to want to kill someone

but also to actually cross the line and do it.

- So good morning. - Hello, Dennis.

I'm Dr. Katherine Ramsland,

professor of forensic psychology

and the author of multiple books

about extreme offenders like serial killers.

I've been corresponding with Dennis Rader

to try to understand what led him to become

one of the most notorious serial killers in America.

This is the first time that Rader has explored

these topics in depth with anyone.

- The more information we have about serial killers,

the more we understand what makes them tick,

the easier it will be to prevent them.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

My goal with Dennis Rader is to use his story

to dissolve some of the stereotypes

about serial killers so that we can better identify

children who might be at risk for becoming adult offenders.

♪ ♪

To do that, we need to understand

what motivates someone like Dennis Rader.

So we need to look at their development,

their fantasy life,

and their crimes to understand it.

♪ ♪

By the fall of 1974, Rader had killed the Oteros,

murdered Kathryn Bright, attempted to kill her brother.

♪ ♪

And Rader has been going about

business as usual as a young husband

and a student taking classes at Wichita State.

♪ ♪

- Initially, the Bright murder was not associated

with the Otero killings.

There were not a lot of similarities

in the method of killing.

The strangulation that was used at the Otero house

was different than what you found

where Kathy was stabbed,

and that's what resulted in her death.

- At the crime scene at the Oteros',

the telephone line was cut,

and there had not been a sign of a struggle.

And at the Bright scene, of course,

there was a struggle as Kevin fought back

and they turned furniture over.

And the phone in the bedroom had been unplugged.

But Kathryn Bright was found

clutching a telephone receiver in her hand.

She just wasn't able to make the call.

♪ ♪

- Because Kathryn Bright's brother didn't die,

he was able to give the police a little sketch.

♪ ♪

- Did you pay attention to the news coverage afterward?

- One of the things Rader said to me

was that he always had bad luck with his crimes

because something always seemed to go wrong.

And he always felt as if he were the victim.

And it's because he sees his world from his point of view

and no one else matters.

Clearly, he has not thought of his victims

as human beings at all.

They belong to him, and they're supposed

to behave according to his fantasies.

And when they don't, he's the victim in his mind.

♪ ♪

- After the Otero case and the Kathryn Bright case,

the newspaper makes a report

that there were some people that had been arrested

that were indicating they might have been

involved in the Otero killings.

- The one thing BTK likes

more than anything else is publicity.

So when suspects were in custody,

not Dennis Rader,

Rader was not happy about that.

So Rader is thinking about, "Wait, I'm the guy.

Where's the headline? I want to see the headline."

And that ticked him off.

♪ ♪

- In October of 1974, a prominent newspaperman

for the "Wichita Eagle & Beacon"

received a anonymous telephone call telling him

that there was a letter related to the Otero case

on the second floor of the public library

in an engineering textbook.

Detective Bernie Drowatzky was assigned to go

look for the letter, and he did find that.

♪ ♪

The letter started out with, "I did this.

"I did it myself. I did it alone.

So let's set this straight."

And then he goes into a recitation

of all four of the victims,

what position they were found in,

how they were killed,

the types of bindings that were used,

the types of knots that were used.

Whoever wrote that had intimate knowledge of the crime scene

or had committed the crime.

♪ ♪

At the end of the letter,

he mentioned that, "The code words for me

will be bind them, torture them, kill them, BTK."

♪ ♪

- What gave you that idea that you should have a name,

and how did you come up with it?

- But other killers didn't name themselves.

- One of the things that motivates Dennis Rader a lot

is the need for attention.

He wanted to be considered special.

♪ ♪

And other serial killers,

he saw them as being famous.

So I think he named himself

because he saw the way those names generated attention

and he wanted to terrorize Wichita.

♪ ♪

- The letter in 1974

indicated that he intended to continue to kill.

He said that he was occupied by a monster

and he doesn't know what the monster is gonna do

and that BTK doesn't have a choice in the victims,

that the monster picks the victims.

♪ ♪

The decision was made by the command at that time

the letter should not be shared to the public

because it was work product of the investigation.

- The "Eagle" withheld the information from the public

at the request of police

and did not publicize that there was a serial killer.

And, you know, police had convinced editors at the paper

at that time in the '70s that it was,

you know, you don't want to panic the public.

- When Dennis is trying to talk about Factor X,

he's saying, "Here's the big mystery.

What is it that motivates me?"

- Factor X was kind of what one would consider to be

the evil part of him.

He was constantly daydreaming

about how he can use sex to control others.

- He wants to say, "There's a Factor X that's alive in me

"that will have its way

and there's not a lot I can do about that,"

as a way to slip responsibility for the decisions he made

and the actions he took

because it makes him seem larger

than he actually is.

If we can't figure him out, he's a much bigger person.

But if he can be reduced to reasons for why he did it,

he's no longer special.

- When do you think that started for you?

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- Let me take you back to your childhood.

You haven't talked very much,

even to me, about your father and your sense of your father.

- Okay.

- Oh, I'm sorry.

- What do you have?

- Dennis Rader thinks of himself as a good person

who did some bad things.

I don't buy that.

But he certainly lives

in an ordinary way most of the time.

If anyone wanted to have an association with him,

I mean, you have to talk about ordinary things

that really aren't about serial murder.

Well, I mean, feel free to eat while you're talking

if you think you can do both.

I don't want you to waste that.

So let's go back to your childhood.

- Okay.

- Would you say you were close to him

growing up, then?

- The common perception of a serial killer's childhood

is that they inevitably have endured some form

of physical, sexual, or verbal abuse

and pretty serious abuse.

And we need to recognize that we're wrong about that,

and we need to stretch our concept

to accommodate somebody

who didn't have child abuse.

♪ ♪

Dennis Rader was born in a small town

in southeastern Kansas.

Both grandparents had farms.

There was prayer, Bible reading.

It seemed as if he had basically

an all-American boyhood.

♪ ♪

But Rader didn't mature beyond

the childhood need for attention.

And one of the things we do see in serial killers,

especially those who have this psychopathic kind of nature,

is an arrested development.

While he matured in other ways,

this need for attention remained very infantile.

♪ ♪

When Rader was a boy,

there was an incident that happened

that he thinks of as a formative event.

♪ ♪

- The expression on his mother's face

was a part of Factor X.

Watching his mother, who is typically

in a more powerful position, be utterly helpless

translates through his development later

to be, "That's the expression I want

on the face of my victims."

♪ ♪

- As a child, there was a big progression

in his sexual fantasy life that slowly escalated

and became increasingly more deviant.

♪ ♪

- I never knew that.

Why did you like hanging cats?

♪ ♪

- He did admit that he had tortured kittens, cats

when he was younger, and it seems

that a lot of the serial killers prefer cats.

What they will tell you is that it sounds like

a female in distress when you torture a cat.

♪ ♪

- Why does he not see the immorality

of his treatment, but also, why does he relish it?

He loved utter helplessness and desperation

and needing him to decide to let them go.

It would certainly be a training ground

for what is coming for him in the future.

♪ ♪

- At a young age,

one of the things he was really fixated with was bondage.

And it led to his actually experimenting on himself.

- The rope has already become an arousal mechanism.

Peeping on people has been something

that has made him feel powerful.

Now we put it together with a woman

he wants to have power over quite specifically

and he ejaculates.

This cements the paraphilia.

♪ ♪

A paraphilia is a trigger to arousal

that is considered to be deviant,

sometimes to the point

where they can't get aroused in a normal way at all.

♪ ♪

- Over time, you start to need more--

More to stimulate yourself, more to get excited.

And the fantasy started to escalate even further

to his wanting to carry it out on others.

♪ ♪

- We see these childhood fantasies

come full circle in the Otero murders,

where all four victims were tied up, strangled,

or hanged like the cats.

And he replicated in his victims

the look of helplessness he'd seen on his mother's face

when her hand was stuck in the sofa.

♪ ♪

- When Chief LaMunyon took over the department in 1976,

BTK really wasn't on anybody's immediate radar

because after 1974,

we did not hear from BTK for about 2 1/2 years.

At that point, that is enough time to go by

that some of us speculated that perhaps

he was in prison or he had been killed.

♪ ♪

- What authorities didn't know

is that Rader was starting a family

in the Park City suburb of Wichita.

Dennis and his wife had their first child in 1975.

Rader had gotten a job from a security company.

In a way, it was, like, the perfect job.

- Dennis was one of the supervisors

who would come out and supervise the installation.

I mean, how ironic is that?

- Working at a security company

enhanced his predatory activities.

He developed more skills and understanding

of how to enter a home and how to get past a security system.

- So no one ever caught you or complained

that things were missing?

- While Rader's wife was home taking care of their newborn,

he began to act on his fantasies again.

And his new job allowed him to troll for victims.

- He was always looking for victims,

and he was always monitoring his victims' activities.

He called them projects.

And one of the things he kept repeating to me

throughout the time I spent with him

is, "If you become my project

and you have a routine, you're in trouble."

- Once you knew who you were going to target,

what did that feel like to you?

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[dramatic music]

- This is the neighborhood where Dennis Rader

would roam around looking at the homes,

going in backyards, being a voyeur,

looking for what he called projects.

And what he really liked about this neighborhood was,

this was close to the interstate,

where it was a quick getaway.

♪ ♪

For Rader, a project is an incident

that Rader has planned where he has targeted a person

against which he's going to commit a crime.

He began to name them.

Like, someone playing the piano

was Project Piano.

So whenever he wanted to think about a project,

he had a label.

♪ ♪

- When we sort of back up on this

and look at it psychologically,

he's dehumanizing people.

He can distance himself from them

and what he's going to do with them.

Any pain they feel, any loss to other people

is of no consequence to him 'cause they're projects.

♪ ♪

On March 17, 1977,

almost three years after he killed Kathryn Bright,

the pressure from his fantasies had been building,

and Rader was ready to kill again.

♪ ♪

Rader had had his eye on several different projects,

potential projects.

He dressed up in tweed

and, you know, nice shoes and a briefcase,

which was his James Bond outfit

because he liked to think of himself as a spy.

♪ ♪

When he came to the first project,

Project Green, he knocked on the door,

and no one answered.

And so he figured if one project didn't work out,

there was another one down the street

that he could try as well.

He was dressed to kill. This is what he had in mind.

♪ ♪

- Rader then moved on to a different project,

Project Blackout, and again, no results.

He did not want to let this day get wasted, in his mind.

And so he saw a little boy, and he thought,

"If there's a little boy here,

he must have a mother at home."

- [sniffles]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

[knocking]

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- Anytime you have a survivor

who was approached by an offender,

you do learn more about his MO, his approach,

whether he was persistent or not.

What kinds of things did he say?

How did he pass himself off?

Shirley had told the kids to calm down

because she did not know she was in for murder that day.

She might've said to the--

"Keep screaming. Keep screaming.

The neighbors might hear you."

She might've said that, except that he calmed her

and assured her, "If you just do what I say,

it'll be over and I'll leave."

♪ ♪

- Dennis Rader was an unforgiving,

unrelenting madman.

And Steve, I've always felt very bad for him

for what happened to him,

because BTK just didn't kill his mother.

BTK really killed him too.

♪ ♪

- At Shirley Vian's home, there's no empathy whatsoever

for the kids or even seeing them as human beings.

♪ ♪

Rader has a wife and a child at home,

and yet he doesn't seem to have the same feelings

about what these kids are going through

as they're watching through this crack in the door

as he's killing their mother.

Having the children there in Shirley Vian's house,

did that bother you at all?

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

- Rader was barely even aware of them,

which is exactly how the brain of a psychopath works.

They're very goal-orientated,

and they're just gonna keep going until they achieve it.

♪ ♪

- After the Vian murder,

BTK was back on the radar of a number of people at WPD.

♪ ♪

Some officers speculated

that Shirly Vian was a BTK victim

because of the way she was tied.

She was actually tied to the bed,

not just tied up and placed on the bed.

And there was some semen found

in the immediate area of her body.

Most of the cases, there was semen discovered

either on or near the bodies, but it was not a rape.

It wasn't discovered in the bodies.

♪ ♪

- There's an odd thing about Dennis Rader

in that he never seems to recognize

that murder is the worst thing you can do.

So when he talks about raping, "too far," it's absurd

because in his fantasies, he did rape them.

♪ ♪

- Shirley was found with a bag over her head.

And the fact that the bag was tied shut with a nightgown

just seemed to ring of BTK.

♪ ♪

- There were formal knots used,

not just someone just making loops in a rope

until it was secure.

When you start looking at the symmetry of the tie

and bindings, that's when the bizarre flavor

of the sadomasochistic interaction

with the victims was there.

The bindings were not just for security,

but they were for bondage gratification as well.

- Dennis Rader often experimented

with different forms of binding and knots

that allowed them to make certain movements

or restrict them further.

It's a part of the paraphilia.

That was the feeling of power and control.

And that was also a part of the fantasy.

♪ ♪

- Dennis Rader would take artifacts,

like a lot of serial killers do,

from the crime scenes,

and he would take items from his victims

to dress in and use as articles

in his autoerotic activities.

- We had a pretty good feeling if we find this guy,

there'll be no doubt 'cause we'll find all his collection

of things that he's stolen from these poor victims.

♪ ♪

- Do you ever think when you're in that cell

about the possibility that you could

one day face a firing squad?

- They don't have firing squads in Colorado,

and I don't think that...

- Rader idolized other serial killers

and craved the recognition and attention they received.

He wanted to be acknowledged as being like them.

But Rader worried

that Shirley Vian's kids had seen him.

He wanted recognition for this crime,

but he wanted to see what would happen,

so he didn't immediately communicate with police

or the media.

How long had you been studying other serial killers?

- Harvey Glatman, yeah.

♪ ♪

- Glatman was a serial killer from the '50s

known as the Lonely Heart Killer.

He posed as a professional photographer

in California, Los Angeles.

And he would lure his victims

by promising them that he could open the doors

for a modeling career or profession.

He would get more sinister

in the types of pictures he would take.

♪ ♪

So pictures of them in certain types of bondage,

and eventually he'd take control of them.

And in the pictures, you can see

the female's reaction to the fear.

- Rader wanted to replicate that expression in his victims

where they would look at him,

recognize his complete power and control over them

because it would make him feel dominant and powerful.

♪ ♪

Serial killers tend to keep killing,

but after the murder of Shirley Vian,

Rader would go quiet again

but only until he spotted the perfect victim.

- It's December of 1977.

Rader has murdered six people.

He's gotten away with it.

He's feeling cocky.

He's made mistakes.

He's had close calls.

He wants the next one to be just right.

[dramatic music]

When he came to this street,

he saw a young woman outside

who fit exactly what he was looking for.

She was petite, young, blonde Nancy Fox.

He stalked her.

He went to where she worked.

He wanted to get her routine

so he knew when she'd be home and when she wouldn't.

- She had taken a second job during the Christmas season,

and that was at the mall.

He'd go in and act like he was gonna buy something,

looking for gifts just to interact with her.

♪ ♪

- On December 8, 1977,

nine months after the murder of Shirley Vian,

Dennis Rader came to Nancy Fox's house

for the final time.

♪ ♪

- He had already broken in and was sitting inside

when she walked through the door...

♪ ♪

When she realized he was sitting there,

and she says, "What do you want?"

And he told her that he was a--

He always used the word "strange dude."

"I'm a strange dude. Gonna do some stuff with you.

If you cooperate, you'll be okay."

♪ ♪

- She was upset, but he let her have a cigarette.

They sat and talked for a while.

At one point, she then said,

"Let's get this over with so I can call the police."

♪ ♪

- He learned that he needed to take control quickly,

so he took her to the bedroom.

- At this point, he begins to mentally torture her

so that he can capture that terror on her face

in exactly the way his adolescent fantasy had formed.

You enjoy the look of fear on your victim's face?

- As he was sitting astraddle of her,

he leaned over and whispered in her ear,

"I'm BTK. I'm a bad dude."

That was the second scene where DNA was found--

Or the seminal stains that were eventually used for DNA

was on one of her nightgowns

that was on the head of her bed.

- When he was telling us the story about killing Nancy Fox,

he recalled with specificity the details of the murder--

Her pleas and her words and her fear.

This man committed these things to memory,

and he lived these things day after day

in his fantasy world.

Although he looked normal on the outside,

it just gives you a glimpse of the monster

that was living inside him.

♪ ♪

♪ ♪

- With Nancy Fox, having been in the house

and seeing how very small it was,

it was very clear that he had picked a place

where he could easily keep total control

over the situation, because his ultimate goal

was to get her to the point where she felt helpless

and there was no place for her to go.

And that way, he could enjoy his ultimate fantasy.

- Rader said Nancy Fox was his favorite case

because everything went the way he had orchestrated it.

- Now he wanted some acknowledgment

that BTK had killed again,

so he called it in and listened for the news.

Because this is his special murder,

he wants something associated with it

that he can cut out of the newspaper and keep as a token.

♪ ♪

- On a cold morning in December of 1977,

a police dispatcher received an anonymous call.

[line rings]

[siren wailing]

♪ ♪

- I have a homicide that occurred here

at 843 South Pershing.

We received a call about 8:20 from an individual

that said there's a homicide and hung up the phone.

And officers came out, and we have checked,

and we do have a young lady that is a victim of homicide.

- Was she shot or stabbed?

- No, she appears to have been strangled this time.

- The officers that I knew

thought it was pretty arrogant of the killer to call.

[dramatic music]

- He made the call that had put him at risk

in ways he hadn't anticipated.

There were definitely times when he expected to be caught,

yet when he went uncaught, it just confirms for him

there must be something special about him

and it must be because he's smarter than the police.

- He said that was the stupidest thing he ever did

was make that phone call because now

there was a vocal footprint of him

that could give him away.

- It's been over three years since he left the letter

at the library about the Otero murders.

And now he's craving publicity.

And he'd murdered twice more.

But police still haven't revealed

there's a serial killer in Wichita.

This keeps them in control of the narrative

and drives BTK to the media.

♪ ♪

- I was on duty at KAKE as the chief photographer.

The receptionist out front called back,

and I took the call, and she said,

"You know, I have an odd letter here."

So I took a look at it,

and it was a letter talking about Nancy Fox,

detailing several different things.

But the chilling moment in that letter was the line,

"How many people do I have to kill

"before I get my name in the paper?

BTK."

- Executive producer Ron Loewen

received the letter.

He's with us today to give us the information.

Ron.

- Jack, the communication came in the form

of a two-page typewritten letter

addressed to KAKE channel 10.

It was signed with the initials BTK.

BTK claims to have strangled a total of seven women--

Seven people, rather, mostly women.

He provided a list of his victims

beginning with the number five.

- During the newscast,

the police chief walks into the studio,

takes a seat,

and we cut to LaMunyon,

and LaMunyon picks up the story.

- BTK has killed seven people, Chief.

What kind of leads do you have?

- Very honestly, we have no solid leads at all.

We have a general lead.

We have circumstantial evidence.

We have absolutely nothing

that will point us to any one particular individual.

- Chief LaMunyon made the decision

that in fairness to the public, he needed to warn them

that there was a serial killer afoot in Wichita after all.

- This guy is in our community, and he's killing our people.

- When they finally announced that there was a serial killer

on the loose in Wichita,

what was that like for you?

- Dennis Rader loved the idea that he was a serial killer.

It was the hottest aspect of his identity.

And his need for attention

would ultimately be his downfall.

- The most important thing that everyone can do

is certainly be aware

that we do have a very serious problem.

- That was like an atomic bomb going off in the city.

- The whole city was turned upside down.

There were 200,000 people here.

It changed the lives of 200,000 people.

- You're dealing with a person who is perverted,

a person that is sick.

- People were just terrified.

Question for Wichita back then

is, how many more people are gonna die?

♪ ♪

- People were frightened.

- That person is gonna kill again.

- When she turned to check on the baby,

he pounced on her.

- There were a number of other young women

who he was going to murder.

♪ ♪

- The sexual arousal started to escalate.

♪ ♪

- Rader really enjoyed

this game with law enforcement.

- Taunting police.

Who was gonna be the next victim?

- All of a sudden, BTK is back.

♪ ♪

[siren wailing]

- Dennis Rader has gotten away with this

for 30 years.

- Eventually, he would slip up.

I said, "We're gonna get this guy.

I don't care what it takes."

♪ ♪