Original subtitles

[uneasy music]

- People in Wichita had been

terrorized by this

Bind, Torture, Kill Individual

for 30 years.

- He said, "If you become my project

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

- Rader then moved on to a different project,

Project Blackout, and again, no results.

- Dennis Rader, he was the master manipulator.

- In 1991, Rader was in his mid-40s.

By this time, he had accomplished ten murders

without anyone suspecting him.

[intense musical buildup]

[brisk music]

♪ ♪

- When I was writing the book about Dennis Rader,

the serial killer known as BTK,

one of the things he wanted me to have to use to organize it

was his project list...

♪ ♪

Comprised of various people

he had identified as potential victims,

and that meant being very clear about

when he attempted to kidnap somebody,

when he stalked somebody and made contact.

- There were a number of young women during that time

who he had picked out,

who were on his list,

who he was going to murder.

- The list had the project name,

the years, the dates, the location--

All the details he could think of

and fit onto this little chart.

So it gives a lot of sense of his personality.

He liked things organized, clear.

He liked to follow rules

because he wanted other people to follow rules,

but that way, he could then break the rules

but come back into a safe, organized world.

Project 16 on the project list

was known as Project Blackout.

- My name is Cheryl Gilmour Sarkozy,

and I'm a survivor of BTK.

And his name for me was Project Blackout.

- 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.

[dramatic musical sting]

♪ ♪

[uneasy music]

After the Dolores Davis murder,

Rader slips back into a period of dormancy.

He continues to look for projects,

but he doesn't act out.

What were you doing in those years

when nothing was really happening?

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

- The planning for

any sexually compelled serial killer

is definitely part of the pleasure,

and Dennis Rader is quite the organizer.

In the project list, marked Project Blackout,

Blackout refers to a bar

near the campus of Wichita State University

where Rader would often go have a beer.

Rader writes, "Girl at bar," and indicates the year 1977.

[uneasy music]

♪ ♪

- I was 26 years old at that time.

One afternoon, a girlfriend and I

decided to go to the Blackout Bar,

and I started talking to this man,

and he told me that he was studying at the university.

It had to do with, like, police work and law.

The bar got raided,

and everybody was told to leave.

And so he was walking with me through the parking lot.

I said, "So, tell me, do you know

if it's against the law in Kansas to commit suicide?"

And he said, "It is against the law."

And I said, "Well, that's a shame because

"I think that anybody that wants to commit suicide

should have that right."

And he reached over and took my arm

and he squeezed it and he said,

"Oh, please don't say that."

And I thought, "What a kind man."

By then I was at my car, and I got in the car and left.

He was really sort of a nondescript type of character.

He wasn't someone

that I gave a second thought to after that,

but it turned out that that was Dennis Rader.

[dark chords]

That particular day,

he had followed me home,

and then he started stalking me.

♪ ♪

- So I have a report from a woman named Cheryl.

She said she talked with you at the Blackout Lounge.

- Cheryl Gilmour Sarkozy's neighbor

was Dennis Rader's sixth murder victim,

Shirley Vian, who he killed on March 17, 1977.

- The day Shirley Vian was murdered,

I had a 4-year old son,

and he had come to work with me that afternoon.

When he and I got home,

the whole neighborhood was filled with police cars.

There was a knock on my door, and this policeman came in

and he said the woman a few doors down

has been murdered,

and her little boy has said

he saw the man knock on your door,

so we feel that you might have been the intended victim.

I can't imagine why anybody would want to kill me.

It was a horrifying time in my life,

and I nailed all my windows shut.

And I couldn't sleep for months.

Had I been home that day,

it would have been me instead of Shirley Vian.

- It certainly was possible

that Rader would have had a number of other victims

had things gone a little bit differently,

had someone come home when he expected them to,

had he figured out a routine of somebody in the right way.

♪ ♪

From the project list Rader shared with me,

we can see that he continued stalking a number of people

during the period of 1991 to 2005,

but he just didn't succeed.

At the same time,

Rader worked as a park city compliance officer...

- The dogs are somewhat territorial...

- A job that once again gave him cover

to stalk and troll in his own backyard.

- the reporting parties of where the sheep were killed.

- A compliance officer is like a law enforcement equivalent

which is "Your grass is overgrown,"

"Your dog is off the leash,"

"Your house needs painting."

He can kind of lord it over people

and actually could carry a gun as part of the job.

- Did you like being a compliance officer?

- Serial killers who aspire to become cops

typically had delusions of power.

- As I recall, several citizens called

and made complaints about

his being strict or rude,

confrontational and that type of behavior.

- As a compliance officer, he didn't like it

if somebody did something he thought they shouldn't.

So in his world, it was okay for him to break the rules,

but he needed that safety of that regimented world

so everyone else around him had to stay within their lane.

January 2004 marked the 30th anniversary

of Dennis Rader's first murders, the Otero family.

It was 25 years since his last correspondence

with police or the media,

and it had been 13 years

since he'd killed his last victim, Dolores Davis,

although no one had yet linked BTK to her murder.

- When you have anniversaries,

news departments do stories on it,

so it was on the front page

that a guy was writing a book about BTK.

Well, BTK did not like that.

He is so arrogant

that he wanted to tell his story.

- When Dennis Rader

learned that an attorney wanted to write a book

about the unsolved BTK crimes

and he was going to cover seven victims,

and Rader knew there were more,

so he didn't want a book written

that would be his legacy

that would really not get the story right.

- My administrative assistant goes up to the mail every day,

and she had gotten a letter that had a photocopy

of what appeared to be an old Polaroid.

It looked like a woman's body on the floor

and a copy of a woman's driver's license.

The driver's license was Vicki Wegerle's.

Her murder had never been tied to BTK.

- Investigators believe the letter is from BTK

because it has information about a 2-decade-old homicide

linked to BTK that only the killer would know.

BTK claims in the letter

that Vicki Wegerle was his eighth victim.

- No photographs had been taken of the victim

at the scene by the police, by anybody,

because Vicki Wegerle had been removed from the scene

by an ambulance crew.

So if there were any doubts in anybody's mind

that this guy was the real thing,

it stopped right there.

It regenerated the fears of the citizenry

there in Wichita.

In your gut you felt like, "Oh, my God, whoever he is

and wherever he lives, we gotta stop this."

- A letter received by KAKE TV

was turned over to us last Wednesday,

and we are treating it as possibly being sent by BTK.

♪ ♪

- In 2004, after the re-emergence of BTK,

the Wichita Police Department,

under the leadership of Kenny Landwehr,

who was the homicide lieutenant at that time,

formed a task force made up of Wichita police detectives,

FBI agents, KBI agents.

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

I don't care what it takes."

- BTK is back because

he wants to see his name in the paper.

He wants to see him talked about

on the television station.

- BTK is communicating again.

- BTK is back. - BTK--

- BTK--

- This is one of the most challenging cases

that I've ever been involved with,

and I find that the individual that is doing this

would be very interesting to talk to.

- Early on in the investigation,

a couple of profilers from the FBI were brought in,

and one of the greatest guidances that they provided

was the creation of the communications

that Kenny Landwehr would release

in these various media events.

It all looked fairly natural, the way Kenny delivered it,

but these were scripted for the intent

and sole purpose of keeping BTK communicating.

If we could keep him communicating,

that was the key to catching him.

Eventually he would slip up.

- When Ken Landwehr did a press conference about you,

what was that like for you?

- The strategy that Ken Landwehr adopted

was to personalize this,

to address whoever BTK was.

The hope was that that would make the killer

feel as if they were buddies,

which is exactly what did happen.

Rader really enjoyed it.

So what started as an attempt to control his story

turned into this game with law enforcement

that he thought they were having as much fun as he was.

- He has communicated with us since the '70s,

and it continues today.

- Shortly after that,

KAKE TV got a letter that had one page

the BTK story-- Chapter one, chapter two,

chapter three, chapter four--

Went all through the chapters.

- He suggests chapter names in talking about BTK.

What killer does that?

He wanted to give us a guide on how we cover him, basically.

- But the scariest thing was the very last chapter

was just a question: "Will there be more?"

Taunting police and Wichita.

Who was going to be the next victim?

Scared us all to death.

♪ ♪

- Why did you decide to send

the BTK's story to the TV station?

- We would get sent information.

Obviously, we'd read it, we'd do a story about it,

but immediately hand it over to the police department

hoping that maybe this will lead to his capture.

- In May of 2004, Dennis Rader sent a word puzzle

comprised of random letters and numbers to KAKE TV.

It was obviously a word search,

and the idea was that in this puzzle

there might be clues to his identity.

- Our responsibility was to find the words

in the word puzzle.

One was victim.

One was serviceman.

One was ruse.

So we were in the newsroom looking at this puzzle going,

"Oh, my gosh."

- Hello, Susan. - So nice meeting you,

Dr. Ramsland, and thank you so much

for shedding light on these puzzles.

- Well, he loved codes.

That was his big thing, he loved codes

and communicating through codes,

with just the idea of, "Now you have to figure me out.

You have to be thinking of me."

Why he chose these words, why some are backwards,

some are forwards, what's this number,

which actually should have the zero to it

because that's his address.

- Oh!

Wait a minute. Where's his address?

- 6220.

If you saw that an O,

you wouldn't know that's a zero.

- Exactly! First of all, we didn't know at the time...

- Right, of course. - Obviously.

But the 622 and then the 0... - Yeah, who would do that?

- Was his address. - Right, who would do that?

- Here it was here all the time.

And then he puts address right down there.

- But that's the cat-and-mouse nature of it.

The fun of it is he's going to take some risk

in order to have some delight

over how confusing this is going to be,

and then he'll see that you won't get it,

so he'll feel superior.

- Which... I'm sure he did.

He sent KAKE TV most of the clues and the correspondence.

Why do you think he sent it to KAKE TV?

- He knew he was going to get publicity

if he sent this to KAKE.

And he loved the station because he watched it as a kid.

He loved you particularly.

- I remember responding to one correspondence in particular

where he said,

"I hope Susan's and Jeff's cold gets better."

Two nights before I had just said on the air,

"Jeff and I have a cold, Jay.

Can you give us some warm weather?"

Why do you think he did that?

- Rader wanted you to know he was watching you.

He was aware of you, alert to you,

and he wants you to feel his eyes on you.

- That's so frightening. - Definitely.

I was wondering, because you were

so attuned to media at that time,

whether you ever considered a media person as a project?

- Okay.

- He's having fun because he is watching this hit the news,

be talked about on TV,

but he forgets you are a serial killer.

This cat-and-mouse game is about real people

that you killed.

You're acting as if the police are playing a game with you

and everybody's having a good time at it,

and that is not what's happening.

- We were all concerned because we didn't know

what was going to happen-- We didn't know

if all of a sudden in the middle of the night

the BTK was going to go show up in our bedroom.

- Throughout 2004 into the beginning of 2005,

Dennis Rader sent correspondence

and items of evidence from his crimes

to the media and police.

He enjoyed the publicity,

and he wanted to tell his story in his own way.

- KAKE received another message from BTK about a cereal box

that he had deposited at a home-improvement store

that wasn't that far from KAKE TV.

- We sent--immediately sent detectives to Home Depot,

and they looked, didn't see anything,

talked to all the employees

about any packages they had found.

- Investigators posted a message

in the employee lounges

asking if anyone saw anything suspicious.

- A guy came back from vacation and said, "Well, yeah,

"I found this cereal box in the back of my truck,

and it said 'BTK bomb.'"

[tense music]

Thought somebody was just messing with him.

So he said, "I just threw it in my burn barrel

when I got home.

It turns out that was the communication

that Rader was referring to, so when we got

the surveillance of the parking lot,

that was our actual first sighting

of what we believe was BTK delivering that package.

- The video was blurry, and he's far from the camera,

so police couldn't clearly see what he looked like.

However, they did see

that he was driving a dark-colored Jeep Cherokee.

What about driving into the Home Depot parking lot?

Did you think they'd have a surveillance camera?

- Dennis Rader has gotten away with this for 30 years,

so there's a narcissism.

We actually call this narcissistic immunity.

The immunity part is the sense that he's so special

that no one can touch him,

but the narcissistic immunity is kind of well-earned because

"I'm one of the few serial killers

that they haven't identified and never will," in his mind.

- He asked to communicate with law enforcement directly.

He was trying to find a way to do that

without giving himself away,

and so one of the things he suggested

was to use a floppy disk.

So at one point,

he sent a message through the media saying,

"Can I communicate with you guys,

and can we use a floppy disk, and you won't trace it?"

And then he specified, "Be honest."

- If it was okay for Rader to send the floppy disk

without being traced,

he instructed the police to respond in code

through an ad in the newspaper that said,

"Rex, it will be OK."

- We thought it so ironic that a freaking serial killer

wants us to be honest.

Lieutenant Landwehr decided, and the FBI,

they decided to go ahead and place the ad

and see what happens.

- Treated as a possible--

- This letter is from BTK, and we--

[uneasy music]

- Rader had this kind of idealism he had developed

ever since he was a boy scout

and his hope to become a police officer,

had this kind of John Wayne thinking going on

that they're upholding the law,

so of course they're not going to lie to him.

- He answered with the floppy disk.

- The floppy, was it just a test file on it,

or was there anything else on it?

+- Okay.

- One of their IT guys

there at the Wichita Police Department

loaded it into his computer.

He began pulling metadata files

showing prior users of that disk.

Immediately there was an indication

that it had been used

at Christ Lutheran Church up in Park City,

but also the name Dennis appeared.

- Real quick check-- The president of that church

was a guy named Dennis Rader.

That was a huge break.

- That was one of those moments where you were just ecstatic.

We found an address in Park City,

and the race was on-- We all wanted to get there.

[intense music]

- As soon as they get the location

where Dennis Rader lives,

two of our detectives are on it,

and there sits the type of vehicle that was used by BTK

to deliver the package to Home Depot.

- We wanted to just go knock doors down

and go in and get him.

The lieutenant, he said, "We don't have his DNA

to confirm that this is in fact the BTK Killer."

We didn't arrest him at that point,

but he was placed under surveillance 24-7

because the last thing we wanted was for him to go out

and try to victimize somebody

after we had already identified him.

- With DNA testing,

forensic scientists can link criminals to crime scenes,

something that was unavailable to police

when the BTK Killer first terrorized Wichita, Kansas

in the mid-'70s.

- We had DNA from the Otero case and several other cases.

At this point, you've got DNA analysis.

When BTK was leaving all that evidence behind,

it was worthless.

It couldn't be analyzed back then,

but technology had caught up.

- Were you worried about

getting caught during this time,

that they might trace something back to you?

- We began to mull over the idea,

"How do we get his DNA?"

And I happen to notice that his daughter

had gone to Kansas State University.

Let's get a court order

and see if they've got any records.

Sure enough, they had records of her.

The records indicated that she had had a Pap smear.

We're able to take possession of that sample.

Then we began to wait for the analysis.

I got a call that following Monday from the examiner,

and she said, "That sample you submitted,

that person is the offspring of BTK."

Those were words that I had waited

and hoped we would hear eventually.

- That's pretty definitive at that point.

It was very exciting.

I can only imagine for the Wichita guys

who'd been living this case every day and night

for months and years-- That had to feel incredible.

- Following the findings of our forensic laboratory,

number one on that priority was the arrest of Dennis Rader.

There were a number of people in the arrest team--

All of the task force,

plus a couple of uniformed officers.

We got word from the surveillance team

that Dennis Rader, the BTK, was on the move.

He was leaving his office and was likely headed home,

and so we were set up along his route home.

And the decision was made that once he passes,

a uniform car will execute a traffic stop on him.

When the uniform car stopped Dennis Rader's truck,

I had kind of beat feet as quickly as I could move

because Dennis was coming out of his--

His door popped open fairly quickly,

but before he was able to get out,

I grabbed him and introduced him to the concrete.

I was joined by several of my colleagues

who had every kind of gun in the world pointed at him.

They got him handcuffed, and we stood him up.

When he turned to me, we're maybe a foot apart,

looking eye to eye.

He looks at me and says,

"Would you mind telling my wife I won't be home for lunch?

I assume you know where I live,"

just calm as calm can be,

And we escort him back to a transport vehicle.

- He stuck his head in the door

and he says, "Well, hello, Mr. Landwehr."

So that was all he said.

Immediate recognition and knew who Kenny was.

We scooted him in the car. I jumped in next to him,

and we took off for our interview location.

- 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?

- Right.

- One of the things the FBI profiler

that was interviewing him with Lieutenant Landwehr

made him say--very specific, he said,

"Tell us who you are.

Tell us who you are, Dennis."

And eventually he would say, "I'm BTK."

[dramatic chords]

[intense percussive music]

- During the initial interview process,

Kenny Landwehr was in the room with Dennis Rader

and laid the floppy disk on the table just to get his reaction.

- When you asked them to tell you

if the floppy could be traced, why did you trust them?

- To this day when Rader talks about that,

he still can't believe the cops lied to him.

He got a degree in administration of justice,

and he would know

that interrogators use lies all the time

because they're trying to catch the bad guys.

So there's an odd child-like naivety at play here.

"How could you have ever betrayed me like that?"

- Dennis even felt, you know, that since he wore a badge

and a uniform that we were kind of in the same group,

that we were all in the law enforcement, that world.

- Why did you finally confess during the interrogation?

- He cooperated on all the cases,

including the two that the county detectives had,

which were the Dolores Davis and Marine Hedge,

who were disposed of in their territory, their jurisdiction.

- For decades, it's been speculated BTK was responsible

for more murders,

the 1991 murder of Dolores Davis

and the 1985 murder of Marine Hedge.

[uneasy music]

- When Dennis Rader was asked

about the possibility of his family

knowing that he was BTK,

he did not feel that they ever had a clue.

- On the day that Dennis Rader was arrested,

Detective Kelly Otis and myself talked with his wife.

She was, of course in shock, in complete denial,

complete denial. She said, "No, no, no."

She said, "You've made a horrible mistake."

She was not going to believe this.

Although she was putting on a brave face, you know,

that she had to be--

Her mind had to be just whirling,

and wondering, and worrying,

and thinking back over their marriage--

"Is this a possibility?"

- He was manipulative enough to keep them in the dark.

As much as-- I'd say sick to my stomach,

I was sick to my heart.

I don't know that the Dennis that I thought I knew exists.

- I did interview his son.

He said, "We lived the perfect 'Leave It To Beaver' Life.'"

He said, "We went on vacations.

Dad was involved in our sports,

and our activities and the church.

We had a great time at home." He said "There's nothing."

But the day he was arrested is basically the day

he will mark forever as the day he died.

- He was like my best friend that I walked the dog with,

and I was very close to him.

And so when the FBI showed up at my door, you know,

February of 2005,

like, I told them they had the wrong guy.

I tried to alibi him, and I just fell into physical shock.

My whole world just fell out under me.

- When you were arrested, did it occur to you

that people who looked up to you,

how they were going to feel about that?

- He never thought he'd be caught,

so he really didn't think about what it would be like for them

to find out their father

or their husband was a serial killer.

So if you consider that love is being able to

think about what benefits the loved one,

then you would say Rader's love,

whatever it means, does not run very deep.

- Today is a very historic day.

The bottom line-- BTK is arrested.

[crowd cheering]

- The day Dennis Rader was arrested,

I'm in a shopping center. I hadn't gone into work yet.

My boss calls, and he goes,

"We're almost positive BTK has been caught.

You need to get into work right away."

No lie, the whole room,

the whole shopping center started spinning.

The blood rushed from my head down to my toes,

and I sat down and said, "I'm going to faint."

And then I started crying.

I just cried and cried and cried,

and I think I had much the same reaction

as a lot of women in Wichita had,

and that was such a sense of relief.

- Glad they caught the son of a bitch.

Now my mom can rest in peace.

[dark music]

- It was very, very tense time.

I didn't know how to feel. I wanted revenge.

I wanted to get my hands on this guy.

[intense musical buildup]

- Rader tells us he had most of

what he called the mother lode of evidence

in a two-drawer file cabinet

located in his compliance office at Park City.

When we were there, it was unlocked.

There was a key to lock it up on top, but it wasn't locked.

So he was pretty comfortable, I guess,

that it was safe there.

He had everything categorized, indexed,

and they were in order,

kept all the originals of any correspondence,

of all the artifacts that he was collecting.

He would mark them with dates and times.

The level of organization was remarkable.

♪ ♪

- At this time, we're going to ask

how do you plead to these ten counts?

- Guilty. - All right.

Are you pleading guilty because you are guilty?

- Yes, sir. - All right.

Mr. Rader, I need to find out more information.

- Well, I mean, I strangled Mrs. Otero.

- He was sentenced to ten consecutive life sentences.

The death penalty for his case was not on the books,

and so we really never had a discussion

about the death penalty being possible.

He was fully aware

that he was never going to see freedom again.

- I think that we in the media and in the community

really fully understood the damage he had done

when you could feel that sense of relief

that he was off the street forever.

- In the courtroom, families of some of BTK's victims

got their first real look

at the man police believe killed their loved ones.

- This changed these young people's lives

30, 25 years ago

and they've lived with that ever since.

- The criminal actions of Dennis Rader

caused irreparable damage

to the very fabric of my blood family.

He caused me to challenge my faith,

changed my future forever,

yet I have never allowed his actions

to send me to the dark side.

- Nancy Fox is my sister.

Nancy's death is like a deep wound

that will never, ever heal.

- I'd just like for him to suffer

for the rest of his life.

- I'm Jeffrey Davis, son of Dolores Davis.

For the last 5,326 days, I have wondered

what it would be like to confront

the walking cesspool that took my mother's precious life.

Not only were we united as a family of survivors,

we were kind of representative

of the family of citizens of the community

who had literally lived in terror at times.

You have to live with the cold reality

that while all of us here will overcome your depravity,

you have now lost everything,

and you will forever remain nothing.

- His wife requested an emergency divorce,

and I think it's probably the quickest divorce in history.

It was probably less than five minutes.

I don't think she's ever looked back.

I don't think she enjoys being in the public.

She's never been interviewed.

- Paula and the kids became Dennis' victims.

I can't imagine the price that they paid.

My heart--I can't imagine.

♪ ♪

- This is now Dennis Rader,

no longer in a courtroom suit but a prison uniform.

This is likely the last time

you'll ever see the serial killer again.

- One of the things I suspected about Rader,

there were things different about him

than the typical things we know about serial killers--

The fact that he was a family man,

had a full-time job.

He seemed to be a regular guy with an ordinary childhood.

It impressed upon me the importance of studying people

who don't fit the mold, who break the stereotypes.

We need to be very clear that there are no formulas

because I think had we been like that back then,

Rader would have been caught sooner.

I think it's an irony

that everything about Rader is control,

and yet he's in a prison cell 24-7

with guards deciding when he gets his meds

and his food and he gets to have a shower, et cetera.

He's totally under our control,

and it's important that we learn from people like Rader

by demystifying them,

decoding them, and unmasking them.

Even though my work with Rader is finished,

my research of extreme offenders

and how to prevent them continues.