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Rawson, Kerri. A Serial Killer’s Daughter : My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming. Nashville, Tennessee, Nelson Books, An Imprint Of Thomas Nelson, 2020.

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This link tells all about the life of Dennis Rader also known as BTK. It tells about the victims that he murdered.

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Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill") or the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to police and newspapers describing the details of his crimes. After a decade-long hiatus, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent guilty plea. He is serving ten consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Prospect Township, Butler County, Kansas.

Dennis Lynn Rader was born on March 9, 1945, to Dorothea Mae Rader ( Cook) and William Elvin Rader, one of four sons. His brothers are Paul, Bill, and Jeff Rader. Born in Pittsburg, Kansas, he grew up in Wichita. His parents both worked long hours and paid little attention to their children at home; Rader later described feeling ignored by his mother in particular, and resenting her for it.

From a young age, Rader harbored sadistic sexual fantasies about torturing "trapped and helpless" women. He also exhibited zoosadism by torturing, killing and hanging small animals. Rader acted out sexual fetishes for voyeurism, autoerotic asphyxiation and cross-dressing; he often spied on female neighbors while dressed in women's clothing, including women's underwear that he had stolen, and masturbated with ropes or other bindings around his arms and neck.

Years later, during his "cooling off" periods between murders, Rader took pictures of himself wearing women's clothes and a female mask while bound. He later admitted that he was pretending to be his victims as part of a sexual fantasy. Rader kept his sexual proclivities well-hidden, however, and was widely regarded in his community as "normal", "polite", and "well mannered".

Rader attended Kansas Wesleyan University after high school, but received mediocre grades and dropped out after one year. He served in the United States Air Force from 1966 to 1970. Upon discharge, he moved to Park City, where he worked in the meat department of a Leekers IGA supermarket where his mother was a bookkeeper. Rader married Paula Dietz on May 22, 1971, and they had two children, Kerri and Brian. He attended Butler County Community College in El Dorado, earning an associate degree in electronics in 1973. He then enrolled at Wichita State University, and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor's degree in administration of justice.

Rader initially worked as an assembler for the Coleman Company, an outdoor supply company. He worked at the Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services from 1974 to 1988, where he installed security alarms as part of his job, in many cases for homeowners concerned about the BTK killings. Rader was a census field operations supervisor for the Wichita area in 1989, before the 1990 federal census.

In May 1991, Rader became a dogcatcher and compliance officer in Park City. In this position, neighbors recalled him as being sometimes overzealous and extremely strict, as well as taking special pleasure in bullying and harassing single women. One neighbor complained that Rader killed her dog for no reason.

Rader was a member of Christ Lutheran Church and had been elected president of the church council. He was also a Cub Scout leader. On July 26, 2005, after Rader's arrest, his wife was granted an "emergency divorce" (waiving the normal waiting period). In an interview with ABC in 2019, his daughter Kerri said she still writes to her father and has now forgiven him, but still struggles to reconcile him with the BTK killer, stating her childhood seemed normal and they were a "normal American family".

On January 15, 1974, four members of the Otero family were murdered in Wichita, Kansas. The victims were Joseph Otero, age 38; Julie Otero, age 33; Joseph Otero Jr., age 9; and Josephine Otero; age 11. Their bodies were discovered by the family's three older children, who had been at school at the time of the killings. After his 2005 arrest, Rader confessed to killing the Otero family. Rader wrote a letter that had been stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974, which described in detail the killing of the Otero family in January of that year.

Between the spring of 1974 and winter 1977, Rader killed three more women: Kathryn Bright (April 4, 1974), Shirley Vian Relford (March 17, 1977), and Nancy Fox (December 8, 1977). In early 1978, he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Bright, Vian Relford, and Fox. He suggested many possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed titled "Oh! Death to Nancy," a parody of the lyrics to the American folk song " O Death". In the letter, he claimed to be driven to kill by "factor X", which he characterized as a supernatural element that also motivated the Jack the Ripper, the Son of Sam, and the Hillside Strangler murders.

He also intended to kill others, such as Anna Williams, who in 1979, aged 63, escaped death by returning home much later than expected. Rader explained during his confession that he became obsessed with Williams and was "absolutely livid" when she evaded him. He spent hours waiting at her home but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends.

Marine Hedge, aged 53, was found on May 5, 1985, at East 53rd Street North between North Webb Road and North Greenwich Road in Wichita. Rader killed her on April 27, and took her dead body to his church, the Christ Lutheran Church, where he was the president of the church council. There, he photographed her body in various bondage positions. Rader had previously stored black plastic sheets and other materials at the church in preparation for the murder and then later dumped the body in a remote ditch. He had called his plan "Project Cookie".

In 1988, after the murders of three members of the Fager family in Wichita, a letter was received from someone claiming to be the BTK killer, in which the author of the letter denied being the perpetrator of the Fager murders. The author credited the killer with having done "admirable work." It was not proven until 2005 that this letter was, in fact, written by Rader. He is not considered by police to have committed this crime. Additionally, two of the women Rader had stalked in the 1980s and one he had stalked in the mid-1990s filed restraining orders against him; one of them also moved away.

His final victim, Dolores E. Davis, was found on February 1, 1991, at West 117th Street North and North Meridian Street in Park City. Rader killed her on January 19.

By 2004, the investigation of the BTK Killer was considered a cold case. Then, Rader initiated a series of 11 communications to the local media. This activity led directly to his arrest in February 2005.

In March 2004, The Wichita Eagle received a letter from someone using the return address Bill Thomas Killman. The author of the letter claimed that he had murdered Vicki Wegerle on September 16, 1986, and enclosed photographs of the crime scene and a photocopy of her driver's license, which had been stolen at the time of the crime. Before this, it had not been definitively established that Wegerle was killed by BTK. DNA collected from under Wegerle's fingernails provided police with previously unknown evidence. They then began DNA testing hundreds of men in an effort to find the serial killer. Altogether, over 1,300 DNA samples were taken and later destroyed by court order.

In May 2004, television station KAKE in Wichita received a letter with chapter headings for the "BTK Story", fake IDs, and a word puzzle. On June 9, a package was found taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas roads in Wichita. It had graphic descriptions of the Otero murders and a sketch labeled "The Sexual Thrill Is My Bill." Also enclosed was a chapter list for a proposed book titled The BTK Story, which mimicked a story written in 1999 by Court TV crime writer David Lohr. Chapter One was titled "A Serial Killer Is Born." In July, a package dropped into the return slot at a public library contained more bizarre material, including the claim that he was responsible for the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen in Argonia, Kansas, earlier that month. This claim was false, and the death was ruled a suicide.

After his capture, Rader admitted in his interrogation that he had been planning to kill again and he had set a date, October 2004, and was stalking his intended victim. In October 2004, a manila envelope was dropped into a UPS box in Wichita. It had many cards with images of terror and bondage of children pasted on them, a poem threatening the life of lead investigator Lt. Ken Landwehr, and a false autobiography with many details about Rader's life. These details were later released to the public.[citation needed ] In December 2004, Wichita police received another package from the BTK killer. This time, the package was found in Wichita's Murdock Park. It had the driver's license of Nancy Fox, which was noted as stolen from the crime scene, as well as a doll that was symbolically bound at the hands and feet, and had a plastic bag tied over its head.

In January 2005, Rader attempted to leave a cereal box in the bed of a pickup truck at a Home Depot in Wichita, but the box was discarded by the truck's owner. It was later retrieved from the trash after Rader asked what had become of it in a later message. Surveillance tape of the parking lot from that date revealed a distant figure driving a black Jeep Cherokee leaving the box in the pickup. In February 2005, more postcards were sent to KAKE, and another cereal box left at a rural location was found to contain another bound doll, apparently meant to symbolize the murder of 11-year-old Josephine Otero.[citation needed ]

In his letters to police, Rader asked if his writings, if put on a floppy disk, could be traced or not. The police answered his question in a newspaper ad posted in the Wichita Eagle saying it would be safe to use the disk. On February 16, 2005, Rader sent a purple 1.44-Megabyte Memorex floppy disk to Fox TV affiliate KSAS-TV in Wichita. Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion, and a photocopy of the cover of Rules of Prey, a 1989 novel about a serial killer.

Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document that was, unknown to Rader, still stored on the floppy disk. The metadata contained the words "Christ Lutheran Church", and the document was marked as last modified by "Dennis." An Internet search determined that a "Dennis Rader" was president of the church council. When investigators drove by Rader's house, a black Jeep Cherokee-the type of vehicle seen in the Home Depot surveillance footage-was parked outside. This was strong circumstantial evidence against Rader, but they needed more direct evidence to detain him.

Police obtained a warrant to test a pap smear taken from Rader's daughter at the Kansas State University medical clinic. DNA tests showed a "familial match" between the pap smear and the sample from Wegerle's fingernails; this indicated that the killer was closely related to Rader's daughter, and combined with the other evidence was enough for police to arrest Rader.

Rader was arrested while driving near his home in Park City shortly after noon on February 25, 2005. An officer asked, "Mr. Rader, do you know why you're going downtown?" Rader replied, "Oh, I have suspicions why." Wichita Police, the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the FBI, and ATF agents searched Rader's home and vehicle, seizing evidence including computer equipment, a pair of black pantyhose retrieved from a shed, and a cylindrical container. The church he attended, his office at City Hall, and the main branch of the Park City library were also searched. At a press conference the next morning, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams announced, "the bottom line: BTK is arrested."

On February 28, 2005, Rader was charged with 10 counts of first degree murder. Soon after his arrest, the Associated Press cited an anonymous source alleging Rader had confessed to other murders in addition to those with which he had been connected; the Sedgwick County district attorney denied this but refused to say whether Rader made any confessions or if investigators were looking into Rader's possible involvement in more unsolved killings. On March 5, news sources claimed to have verified by multiple sources that Rader had confessed to the 10 murders he was charged with, but no other ones.

On March 1, Rader's bail was set at US$10 million, and a public defender was appointed to represent him. On May 3, the judge entered not guilty pleas on Rader's behalf, as Rader did not speak at his arraignment; however, on June 27, the scheduled trial date, Rader changed his plea to guilty. He described the murders in detail, and made no apologies.

At Rader's August 18 sentencing, victims' families made statements, after which Rader apologized in a rambling 30-minute monologue that the prosecutor likened to an Academy Awards acceptance speech. His statement has been described as an example of an often-observed phenomenon among psychopaths: their inability to understand the emotional content of language. He was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences, with a minimum of 175 years. Kansas had no death penalty at the time of the murders. On August 19, he was moved to the El Dorado Correctional Facility.

Rader talked about innocuous topics such as the weather during the 40-minute drive to El Dorado, but began to cry when the victims' families' statements from the court proceedings came on the radio. He is now in solitary confinement for his protection (with one hour of exercise per day, and showers three times per week). This will likely continue indefinitely. Beginning in 2006, he was allowed access to television and radio, to read magazines, and other privileges for good behavior.

Following Rader's arrest, police in Wichita, Park City and several surrounding cities looked into unsolved cases with the cooperation of the state police and the FBI. They particularly focused on cases after 1994, when the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas. Police in surrounding states such as Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas also investigated cold cases that fit Rader's pattern to some extent. The FBI, and local jurisdictions at Rader's former duty stations checked into unsolved cases during Rader's time in the service.

After exhaustive investigations, none of these agencies discovered any further murders attributable to Rader, confirming early suspicions that Rader would have taken credit for any additional murders that he had committed. The ten known murders are now believed to be the only murders for which Rader is actually responsible, although Wichita police are fairly certain that Rader stalked and researched a number of other potential victims. This includes one person who was saved when Rader called off his planned attack upon his arrival near the target's home due to the presence of construction and road crews nearby. Rader stated in his police interview that "there are a lot of lucky people", meaning that he had thought about and developed various levels of murder plans for other victims.

Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza was hired by Rader's court-appointed public defenders to conduct a psychological evaluation of Rader, and determine if an insanity-based defense might be viable. He conducted an interview after Rader pleaded guilty on June 27, 2005. Mendoza diagnosed Rader with narcissistic, antisocial and obsessive-compulsive personality disorders: He observed that Rader has a grandiose sense of self, a belief that he is "special" and therefore entitled to special treatment; a pathological need for attention and admiration; a preoccupation with maintaining rigid order and structure; and a complete lack of empathy for his victims.

NBC claimed Rader knew the interview might be televised, but this was false according to the Sedgwick County Sheriff's Office. Rader mentioned the interview during his sentencing statement. On October 25, 2005, the Kansas attorney general filed a petition to sue Mendoza and Tali Waters, co-owners of Cambridge Forensic Consultants, LLC, for breach of contract, claiming that they intended to benefit financially from the use of information obtained through involvement in Rader's defense. On May 10, 2007, Mendoza settled the case for US$30,000 with no admission of wrongdoing.

Forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland compiled Confession of a Serial Killer from her five-year correspondence with Rader.

Multiple works draw on the case:

Ramsland, Katherine. Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. Foredge, 2016. ISBN 978-1-5126-0152-7.

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Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945) is an American serial killer known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself, for "bind, torture, kill") or the BTK Strangler or the BTK Killer. Between 1974 and 1991, Rader killed ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, and sent taunting letters to police and newspapers describing the details of his crimes.

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Friends and family gathered for my parents wedding. (pg. 27)

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In November 1973 Dennis got laid off from his job at the Cessna Aircraft Company. This was the start of his downward spiral that would lead to many murders. He was so angry about losing his job that he broke into some houses and attempted to kidnap a woman that was in the Twin Lakes Mall. (pg. 31)

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In 1974 Dennis murdered 4 members of the Otero family. Joseph, Julie, and their 2 kids, Josephine, and Joseph.  "The three older Otero children found their family's bodies after walking home from school. " (pg. 31)

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In April Dennis murdered Kathryn Bright. She was 21 years old and lived by the WSU campus. "He fought with her nineteen-year-old brother, Kevin, shooting and almost killing him." (pg. 32)

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Dennis took responsibility for the murders in the paper. He went by the name BTK (bind, torture, kill) so that people still didn't know who he was.

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BTK murdered Shirley Vian Relford. She was a mom of three. BTK also began to stalk more victims. "Dad continued to stalk potential victims." (pg. 33)

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When BTK's wife was 3 months pregnant with his daughter he murdered Nancy Fox who was only 25. He was about to have a child but killed other people children and took innocent mothers lives.

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BTK murdered a grandmother and widow named Marine Hedge at the end of April. She was a neighbor of him and his daughter and wife would wave hello to her when they passed by her house. She went missing on a stormy night and BTK's daughter was very scared and didn't feel safe. "How did I know if we were safe?" (pg. 40)

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When Dennis and his family were on vacation in Southern California he flipped out when he saw foot prints on top of a van below their hotel room. He thought that someone had climbed into their room while they were gone. He made the family use a password to enter the room and he was very panicky.

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A month after getting home from their trip to California BTK murdered Vicki Wegerle who had two children.  "Dad murdered Vicki Wegerle" (pg. 45)

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BTK would do many things to communicate with the police and the world. He would write letters, make puzzles for people to try and solve, he would use cereal boxes, and codes.

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" Dad was grieved over the loss of his father-he had loved him, very much. It's impossible for me to reckon that with Dad taking the lives of ten innocent people." (pg.72)

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Dennis took his daughter up to hike at the Grand Canyon. They hiked for many days and it was very hot. "I shook my head again. No. I wouldn't. 'Whoa, careful now, kid. Why don't ya get closer to the wall as we keep going here,' came Dad's warm, steady voice from a few feet behind me." (pg. 93) This quote shows that BTK was just a normal nice loving dad to his kids even though he had killed multiple people.

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"'Is you dad always like this?'... It would be his first and last campout with because my 'idiosyncratic dad,' as Darian would say later." (pg.137) Darian was Dennis's daughters boyfriend who didn't seem to like Dennis.

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One time Dennis's daughter was staying at a friends house and her friends mom told them that someone not far from where they were, had thrown a cinder block into someones sliding-glass door. The lady that lived into the house went missing and later they found out that she had been murdered. 14 years later Btk's daughter found out that it has been her dad who had thrown the block in a house who belonged to a lady named Mrs. Davis.

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BTK left cereal boxes to taunt the police about the murderers. He would use the boxes because he was a serial killer so he thought it was funny to use the cereal boxes. "I asked your dad once why would BTK use a cereal box to communicate with the police- like it was reported in the news. He said, 'Cereal- like a serial killer." (pg. 217)

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"In the spring, the national media blurted that DNA taken from semen left on eleven-year-old Josie Otero's leg in January 1974 was matched on February 24 to my DNA taken from one of my Pap smears, leading to the arrest of my father the next day" (pg. 234)

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Dennis Lynn Rader was arrested for murder. He killed 8 adults and two children in the town of Wichita, Kansas.

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BTK was sentenced 175 years in prison which is 10 consecutive life sentences.

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"Thinking my ordinary, normal, everyman dad was the last person on earth who could be BTK." (161) - Kerri (daughter of BTK) Kerri had no idea that her father was or even could be BTK. He was a loving father who went on adventures with her and helped her through things.

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This website talks about how Kerri (Btk's daughter) lived a normal life with her dad and had no idea he was a killer.

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Kerri Rawson will never forget getting the knock on her door on Feb. 25, 2005, that changed her life forever.

"It was a normal day. I had slept in," she told "20/20" her first television interview. "I was substitute teaching and I took the day off. I'm already ... uptight, thinking, 'Who is this person in my apartment building?' And then ... he said he was the FBI."

"He asked, 'Do you know who BTK is?' I was like, 'You mean the person that's wanted for murders back in Kansas?'" Rawson continued. "And then he says, 'Your dad has been arrested as BTK.'"

For the first 26 years of her life, Rawson knew her father, Dennis Rader, as a family man who could be a gruff at times, but who loved her. A man who was the president of his church, a Boy Scout troop leader and an Air Force veteran. A man who was nearly 60 by that point, balding and wore glasses.

Then suddenly, in a matter of minutes, he was being named among the most notorious serial killers by the FBI agent standing in Rawson's new Michigan apartment.

"I was gripping the wall next to my stove, [the room] was spinning, [I was] saying, 'I think I'm going to pass out,'" she said. "[The agent] was asking me questions about my dad, about dates and things, and I was ... trying to almost alibi my father. I was like, 'My father is a good guy.'"

"You don't want to believe it's true," Rawson continued. "And you know ... the father you know is not capable of any of this."

The abbreviation " BTK" stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill," a moniker Rader had given himself years earlier indicating what he had done to his victims.

I had my family. I had my husband. I had therapy. But you're, sort of, alone. It's a very lonely -- worst club you could ever imagine belonging to, being the daughter of a serial killer.

For more than 30 years, the BTK killer haunted the community in and around Wichita, Kansas, torturing and murdering 10 people, including two children. He was known for taunting the Wichita community, local media and police with letters, sometimes phone calls, seeking recognition and detailing his horrific crimes.

From the moment the FBI agent broke the news to her, Rawson said it felt like her "whole life was a lie."

In her new book, "A Serial Killer's Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming," Rawson describes struggling to reconcile the loving father she knew with psychopathic murderer known as BTK.

"It's taken me a long time to even be able to say that out loud," she said, referring to her book title. "But it is the truth."

Rader, now 73, pleaded guilty on June 27, 2005, to 10 counts of first-degree murder. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole.

Rader's killing spree began in January 1974, when he targeted four members of the Otero family, killing Joseph and Julie Otero and two of their five children. He killed 21-year-old Kathryn Bright later that year and his next two victims, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox, in 1977.

"I was born in '78," Rawson said. "My dad murdered a young woman when my mom was three months pregnant with me."

He asked, 'Do you know who BTK is?' I was like, 'You mean the person that's wanted for murders back in Kansas?' And then he says, 'Your dad has been arrested as BTK.

To Rawson, her childhood seemed normal. She said the family lived in a three-bedroom ranch house with a dog, and a treehouse her father built for her and her older brother in the backyard.

"Most of the time, [my father] was even-keeled and kind and warm," Rawson continued. "At times, he could be very firm or have flashes of anger or outbursts that you weren't expecting."

"He has said himself that he just got busy raising kids and having a family," Rawson said.

It was in April 1985 that Rader murdered his eighth victim and neighbor, Marine Hedge, who lived just six doors down.

Looking back, Rawson said she was 6 years old at the time of Hedge's death. She believed her father was away on a Cub Scout camping trip with her older brother. Rader later told authorities he snuck away from the event that night to commit the murder and returned to the campsite in the morning.

"Somehow I knew -- at 6 -- that her body had been found and that she had been murdered and she had been strangled," Rawson said of her neighbor. "It scared me. I started having night terrors around that time."

"I would wake up screaming, sitting up in bed, and my mom was always the one that would come comfort [me]," she continued. "She would sit there and I would say, 'There's a bad man in my house,' and she's like, 'No, there's no bad man in your house.'"

Less than two years later, in September 1986, Vicki Wegerle became Rader's ninth victim. Five years passed, and in January 1991, Rader murdered his 10th victim, Dolores Davis.

But after that, Rader, the BTK killer, went silent. For years, there were no killings, no phone calls to police, no letters left around town or sent to journalists. Most in Wichita believed he just disappeared.

If we had had an inkling that my father had harmed anyone, let anyone murdered anyone, let alone 10, we would've gone screaming out that door to the police station.

By 1991, when Rawson was 12 years old, her father got a job as a compliance officer in the Wichita suburb of Park City, Kansas. His office was down the hall from the Park City Police Department.

In the years after his last killing, the Rader family continued to live their everyday lives.

Rawson went to Kansas State University, where she met her husband, Darian. In 2003, Rader walked his daughter down the aisle at her wedding.

Then, the Wichita Eagle newspaper ran a story in 2004 about the 30th anniversary of the unsolved Otero family murders.

"And we included in [the piece] that nobody remembered him, which invoked his ire," said Michael Roehrman, executive editor of the Wichita Eagle.

So Rader decided to send a letter to the Wichita Eagle under the name "Bill Thomas Killman," or "BTK" as the return address.

"I'll never forget that day," said former Wichita Police Det. Kelly Otis. "We opened it up and it was pictures of Vicki Wegerle, who was killed in 1986 in her home."

The reports of BTK's return were explosive.

Rawson said she first read about the serial killer in Wichita in an article on ABCNews.com. As she started to learn more, Rawson said she assumed the killer "was a loner," some guy who had been in trouble with the law in the past.

She never suspected the man she was reading about online would turn out to be her father.

Between 2004 and 2005, Rader sent a series of various communications to the Wichita Eagle and to ABC's Wichita affiliate KAKE-TV -- a postcard, a letter -- and in one instance, describing the location of a cereal box left on a county road.

"Cereal boxes because serial killer," said Dr. Katherine Ramsland, a forensic psychologist and author of "Confession of a Serial Killer, the Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer."

Ramsland corresponded and met with Rader over the course of five years after he was incarcerated.

"He thought this is a great joke. ... He got these dolls dressed them to look like his victims, put them into the boxes with ... some of the victims' items," she added.

In a separate instance, Rader went to a Home Depot and dropped another cereal box containing a communication in the bed of an employee's pickup truck, asking authorities if he could send them a floppy disk without its being traced, telling law enforcement to "be honest."

"He says, 'Let me know ... in the classified ads of the Wichita Eagle, that it's OK. I'll look for that ad and if I see it, give me a couple weeks to send you something,'" Otis said.

"So law enforcement put an ad in the paper that said 'Rex, it'll be OK,'" said Tim Relph, a Wichita Police detective. "Eventually the disk arrives, and it is taken directly to a forensics software detective."

When investigators got into the disk's metadata, Relph said it showed that the disk had been in a computer registered to Christ Lutheran Church and a user named Dennis.

Investigators started Googling the church and found the website for Christ Lutheran Church in Park City, whose president was named Dennis Rader.

Then began the task of linking Rader to the BTK crime spree. When the murders began in the 1970s, DNA technology had yet to be developed. But biological specimens left behind at his crime scenes had been carefully preserved, allowing authorities by 2005 to confirm the killer's identity through DNA analysis.

In an effort to avoid tipping Rader off, authorities obtained a search warrant to access Rawson's medical records from her college's health center. They took her annual pap smears to get samples of her DNA for testing.

"I had no idea," Rawson said. "It would've been nice if someone had asked me for my DNA. I would've willingly given it. I understand why nobody approached me. They needed to catch my dad. They needed to be safe about it. They needed to do it quick. ...... At the time, it felt like an invasion of my privacy."

When law enforcement matched Rawson's DNA to the DNA found at the crime scenes, "we knew we had our guy," Otis said.

"Overnight we called 200 policemen," Relph said. "We had helicopters. We had a tank. ... And we knew he was leaving work. And we were going to catch him right before he got to his house."

On Feb. 25, 2005, police arrested Rader, who had been on his way home to have lunch with his wife. When Rawson reached her mother on the phone the day she found out, "You could just hear her [my mother] break ... just utter grief and loss," she said.

Rader eventually confessed. After her father's confession, Rawson tried to find ways to cope with what had happened. She said a pastor at their church encouraged her to write to him as he was in jail, which she did.

"I had to learn how to grieve a man that was not dead, somebody I loved very much that no one else loved anymore," she said.

"I wasn't corresponding with BTK. I'm never corresponding with BTK," Rawson contined. "I'm talking to my father. I'm talking to the man that I lived with and loved for 26 years. ... I still love my dad today. I love the man that I knew. I don't know a psychopath. ... That's not the man I knew and loved."

Rawson couldn't bring herself to attend her father's court appearances, where he recounted how he tried to make one of his victims comfortable offering him a pillow as he was killing him.

"After my father's plea and sentencing in August of 2005, I shut down," Rawson said. "I was mad. I was done. I wiped my hands of him for two years."

Rawson said her mother was granted an emergency divorce in July 2005. Rawson is emphatic that neither she, nor her mother or her brother knew anything about their father's killings prior to his arrest.

"If we had had an inkling that my father had harmed anyone, let anyone murdered anyone, let alone 10, we would've gone screaming out that door to the police station," she said. "We were living our normal life. We looked like a normal American family because we were a normal family. And then everything upended on us."

As time has passed, Rawson said she tried for nearly 10 years to avoid telling people she was Rader's daughter.

"I live with depression and anxiety. I'm suffering from PTSD," she said. "I had my family. I had my husband. I had therapy. But you're, sort of, alone. It's a very lonely -- worst club you could ever imagine belonging to, being the daughter of a serial killer."

"The problem is if you live such a quiet, private life, it sits inside you and eats at you because it's like something you have to hide or something you have to be ashamed of," Rawson added.

She said she wrote her dad in 2007 to let him know she was pregnant with her first child -- a daughter -- but then said she cut off communication with him again for five years afterward. She now also has a son in addition to her daughter.

"When my daughter was around 5, she started noticing, she only had one grandfather. And, you know, she was, kind of, like, "Well, where's the other grandfather?" Rawson said. "So I said, 'You know, I have a father, but he's in jail.' And she's just this little thing. So she's like, 'Well, what is jail?' And I was like, 'Well, it's like a really long timeout.'"

Rawson said she began writing her father again in 2012, and still does to this day, because she has forgiven him.

"It was a very long journey," Rawson said. "There was a lot of hard work in me, with faith. I had gone back to church. I was working on my relationship with God, working on my own heart."

Rawson decided to come forward to talk about her story now, after all this time, she said, because she wants to start taking control of her story.

"[I'm] trying to say, 'I've gone through hell. I'm still here. You, too, can overcome things. Don't ever give up. No matter what you're going through, you can get through it,'" she said.

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BTK serial killer's daughter: 'We were living our normal life. ... Then everything upended on us'

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Kerri Rawson will never forget getting the knock on her door on Feb. 25, 2005, that changed her life forever. "It was a normal day. I had slept in," she told "20/20" her first television interview. "I was substitute teaching and I took the day off. I'm already ...

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Dennis Rader, in full Dennis Lynn Rader, byname or BTK Killer, (born March 9, 1945, Pittsburg, Kansas, U.S.), American serial killer who murdered 10 people over a span of three decades before his arrest and confession in 2005. He called himself BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his victims.

Rader was raised in Wichita, Kansas. He later claimed that as a youth he had killed animals and developed violent sexual fantasies that involved bondage. In the 1960s he served in the U.S. Air Force, and in 1970 he returned to Wichita, where he married and had two children. He held various jobs, including a brief stint as a factory worker for the Coleman Company, a maker of camping equipment. In 1979 he graduated from Wichita State University, where he studied criminal justice. During this time he began working for ADT, a home-security company, and in 1991 he became a compliance officer in Park City, Kansas. Rader was active in his church, and he served as a Boy Scout leader.

On January 15, 1974, Rader committed his first murders, strangling four family members, including two children, in their Wichita home; the mother had worked for Coleman. Semen was found at the scene, though none of the victims had been sexually assaulted. Rader took a watch from the home, and he would acquire souvenirs-often underwear-from subsequent victims. In April 1974 Rader targeted a 21-year-old woman who was another Coleman employee. After breaking into her house, however, he also encountered her brother, who managed to escape despite being shot. Rader fatally stabbed the woman before fleeing. Later that year he wrote a letter detailing the January murders and saying that "the code words for me will be...bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K." He left the note in a book at the Wichita Public Library, and it was eventually recovered by the police.

Over the next two decades, Rader killed five more women. His sixth victim was strangled in March 1977 after he locked her three young children in the bathroom. Following the death of his next victim in December 1977, Rader grew irritated by the lack of media coverage. In a letter to a local TV station he wrote, "How many people do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention." The resulting coverage helped set off a panic. Rader then waited eight years before murdering a neighbour in her home in 1985; he reportedly later took her body to his church, where he photographed her in bondage. A 28-year-old mother of two was killed in 1986, and in 1991 Rader committed his last murder, strangling a 62-year-old woman in her secluded home. The cases subsequently went cold.

In 2004, on the 30th anniversary of Rader's first murders, a local paper ran a feature in which it speculated that the killer had either died or been imprisoned. Rader responded by sending various evidence from his ninth murder-notably a copy of the victim's driver's license as well as photographs of her body-to a reporter. For the next year, he sent packages to the media or simply left items around Wichita. He often used cereal boxes-possibly a reference to "serial killer"-to hold drawings; crime souvenirs, including photographs; written descriptions of the murders; and even dolls posed to mimic the various deaths.

In January 2005 police received a break after recovering a cereal box that included a note in which Rader asked police whether they would be able to trace a floppy disk he wanted to send them. Through a classified ad, law enforcement officials indicated that it would be safe. He then sent them a disk, which the police quickly traced to his church, where he served as president of the congregation. Rader's DNA was then matched to the semen found at the first crime scene. He was arrested in February 2005, and he soon confessed to the crimes-and expressed shock that the police had lied to him. In June Rader pled guilty, and two months later he was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms.

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Dennis Rader, in full Dennis Lynn Rader, byname BTK or BTK Killer, (born March 9, 1945, Pittsburg, Kansas, U.S.), American serial killer who murdered 10 people over a span of three decades before his arrest and confession in 2005. He called himself BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his victims. Rader was raised in Wichita, Kansas.

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This website shows every single person that BTK murdered. It goes through each one and gives info on everything that happened. It also talks about his background, how he was caught, and what the case looked liked.

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BTK was the undercover name chosen by Dennis Rader which stood for “bind, torture, kill”. BTK went on a 30 year killing spree from 1974 to 1991, killing 10 people. Finally, he was caught and...

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Dennis Rader, who took 10 innocent lives in the area of Wichita, Kansas, as the BTK Killer - for Bind, Torture, Kill - seemingly had his twisted modus operandi figured out to a "T."

A family man, government worker and church leader by day, Rader was smart enough to blend into his community and avoid detection for the string of victim stalking and killings that fulfilled his sexual desires. And while he relished the headlines that announced his grotesque acts and the taunting messages he relayed to the media, he also controlled his impulses enough to suddenly stop the killings and disappear before authorities could get too close to his trail.

Yet it was his insatiable lust for attention that ultimately proved to be his Achilles heel. BTK reemerged years later to remind police that he remained at large, but got too careless with his cat-and-mouse games, providing investigators with an opening to crack the once-unsolvable case-and bring the killer to justice.
Watch the special three-night event, 'Invisible Monsters: Serial Killers in America,' beginning Sunday, August 15 at 9/8c on A&E.
January 15, 1974: Rader kills four members of the Otero family

A 28-year-old married Air Force veteran, Rader makes the plunge into infamy after severing a phone line and entering the East Wichita home of Joseph and Julie Otero, the latter a former co-worker at the Coleman equipment company. Along with strangling the two homeowners, Rader kills two of their young children, leaving three older siblings to discover the bodies when they arrive home from school later in the day.

April 4, 1974: Rader strikes again

Kathryn Bright, another Coleman employee, returns home with her brother Kevin to find Rader waiting with a gun. Kevin somehow survives a gunshot to the head, but he is unable to save his sister, who Rader stabbed to death.

October 1974: The killer introduces himself to police

After one young man allegedly confesses to killing the Oteros with two friends, an editor at The Wichita Eagle receives a strange phone call that directs him to a mechanical-engineering book at the Wichita Public Library. Police find the book and a letter wedged inside, which reads, in part, "Those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity... The code words for me will be...Bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K., you see he at it again. They will be on the next victim."

Along with including then-unknown details of the Otero killings, the letter is filled with what authorities come to recognize as the killer's peculiar brand of misspellings and grammatical errors, along with a distinct, sexually suggestive signature.

March 17, 1977: BTK murders a mother of three

Entering a home by way of the 5-year-old child who opens the door, Rader barricades the boy and his two siblings in the bathroom before strangling their mother, Shirley Vian. The children eventually escape and provide police with a vague description of the intruder.

December 8, 1977: BTK reports his next victim

After binding and strangling 25-year-old Nancy Fox, Rader heads to a pay phone to point police to his handiwork. "You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing," he bluntly tells the 911 dispatcher.

January 31, 1978: The killer reaches out with a poem

The Wichita Eagle receives an index card imprinted with a poem that begins with "Shirley Locks, Shirley Locks, wilt thou be mine." Unaware of the connection to Shirley Vian, and believing it to be a Valentine's Day note, the mail clerk forwards the card to the paper's classified department.

February 10, 1978: The BTK threat is made public after another letter

Apparently angered by the lack of response to his last attempt, the killer sends a more direct message to Wichita-based KAKE-TV. "How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention?" he writes, before reeling off a list of suggested nicknames, including "The BTK Strangler," "The Wichita Hangman" and "The Asphyxiator."

Wichita Police Chief Richard LaMunyon subsequently calls a news conference to reveal, for the first time, the presence of the "BTK Strangler" in the area. "We have no reason but to believe the individual has the capability to kill again," he warns.

April 28, 1979: Another target narrowly misses becoming the next victim

Rader lies in wait for Anna Williams, but gives up and leaves when the 63-year-old woman takes too long to return home. Less than two months later, Williams learns of her brush with death when she receives several of her personal items by mail, along with a poem titled, "Oh, Anna, Why Didn't You Appear."

Photo: Bo Rader-Pool/Getty Images

August 14, 1979: BTK's phone call is broadcast

Seeking help from the public, authorities release the recording of BTK's December 1977 phone call to report the death of Nancy Fox. Tips come pouring in from listeners who think they recognize the voice, though no relevant information emerges.

1984: The 'Ghostbusters' are formed

Chief LaMunyon establishes a task force devoted to BTK's crimes, nicknamed the " Ghostbusters" after the popular Bill Murray movie. The task force-which includes a young officer named Ken Landwehr, who will spearhead later efforts to track down the killer-takes pains to carefully organize and preserve valuable evidence.

April 27, 1985: Rader's neighbor is strangled

After an evening of bingo and dinner with her boyfriend, 53-year-old Marine Hedge is taken from her home in the Wichita suburb of Park City, just down the street from Rader's house. She is found dead by strangulation eight days later, though police fail to connect her murder to BTK at the time.

September 16, 1986: A husband takes the blame for the work of BTK

Bill Wegerle returns home for lunch to find his 2-year-old son sitting by himself and his wife, Vicki, dead in their bedroom. In the absence of other credible evidence, the husband becomes the primary suspect in Vicki's death.

January 19, 1991: BTK kills for the final time

BTK throws a cinderblock through a sliding door at the home of retiree Dolores Davis, strangles her to death and leaves her body by a bridge. Seemingly preoccupied by his day-to-day duties as a Park City compliance officer and father of two, Rader ceases killing and BTK drops off the map.

January 2004: 'The Wichita Eagle' runs a 30th anniversary piece on BTK

Three decades after the killer first killed the Oteros, The Wichita Eagle prints an article recalling the terror BTK wielded in the 1970s and suggesting that he had faded from memory after so many years. Rader later admits that this article spurs him to revive his deadly alter ego.

March 19, 2004: BTK announces his return

The Wichita Eagle receives an envelope from a " Bill Thomas Killman" containing a copy of Vicki Wegerle's missing driver's license, photos of her body and BTK's distinctive signature, a chilling message that links her unsolved murder to BTK and declares the Wichita terror to be very much alive.

May 5, 2004: BTK teases with a puzzle

BTK's next outreach, mailed to KAKE-TV, includes a phony ID, chapter titles for a BTK biography and a find-the-word letter grid spelling out clues like "prowl" and "fantasies," though investigators note the lack of his usual signature. Puzzle sleuths later realize the letters R-A-D-E-R are grouped around the numbers 6220 - the author's street address.
READ MORE: How the BTK Killer Got His Name - and the Paper Trail He Left Behind
December 13, 2005: BTK leaves another disturbing package

After BTK leaves more messages in various public locations, a man walking though Wichita's Murdock Park stumbles on a garbage bag containing Nancy Fox's driver's license and a Barbie doll with a hood over its head and arms tied behind its back.

January 25, 2005: A postcard points to more clues

Acting on instructions from a postcard mailed to KAKE-TV, police find a cereal box on a road outside Wichita containing a graphic description of BTK's first murders and another doll fashioned in a death position. However, it's another section of the postcard, which inquires as to whether his package was found at the local Home Depot, that proves more interesting to authorities.

After poking around the store, investigators learn that one employee had found a cereal box in the bed of his pickup truck. A search of his trash produces the box and a message asking if BTK could communicate via a computer floppy disk without being traced; if so, the police are instructed to run a newspaper ad with the message: "Rex, it will be OK."

January 28, 2005: Police signal BTK through the newspaper

After an undercover detective makes arrangements with The Wichita Eagle, the paper runs a classified ad that reads: "Rex, it will be ok, Contact me PO Box 1st four ref. numbers at 67202." Six days later, BTK confirms his receipt of the message through another postcard sent to KAKE.

February 16, 2005: A computer disk breaks the case open

A computer disk arriving by mail is relayed to cybercop Randy Stone, who uncovers BTK's message about checking an index card for more information, along with the hidden metadata that reveals the disk to have been used by a "Dennis" at "Christ Lutheran Church" and "Park City Library." Within seconds, an internet search for Christ Lutheran Church reveals the name of its president: Dennis Rader.

Already armed with DNA evidence carefully preserved by the Ghostbusters, Lieutenant Landwehr and his team learn that Rader's daughter, Kerri, had been in the hospital for a pap smear. The hospital soon turns over a sample of her DNA, which matches that of BTK.

February 25, 2005: Rader is arrested

Heading home from the office to have lunch with his wife, Rader is pulled over by the line of police cars trailing him and taken into custody. He confesses after being confronted with the DNA evidence, and enjoys what he believes is a bonding session with law-enforcement agents-although he is plainly irritated that Landwehr lied to him about the security of communications via computer disk. BTK's arrest is announced at Wichita City Hall the following day, drawing applause from the audience gathered.

April 19, 2005: Rader waives his right to a preliminary hearing

The scheduled hearing ends after a few short minutes, an acknowledgment from the defense that the state possesses enough evidence to send the case to trial. Two weeks later, a silent Rader has the judge enter a not guilty plea for him.

June 27, 2005: Rader pleads guilty to the BTK killings

Catching prosecutors off-guard by pleading guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder, Rader provides the court with explicit details on how he selected, stalked and finally killed each of his victims. His lawyer later notes that they went with the guilty plea due to overwhelming evidence against their client and the lack of firm legal footing on which to enter an insanity plea.

August 18, 2005: Rader is sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms in prison

The two-day sentencing hearing features testimony from investigators who describe Rader's documentation of his torture-fueled sexual fantasies, emotional pleas from the victims' families and an apology from the convicted killer, who expresses hope that the families will one day forgive him.

Having committed his murders before Kansas reintroduced the death penalty in 1994, the BTK Killer received a sentence of 10 consecutive life terms in prison, for a minimum of 175 years without the possibility of parole.

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BTK Killer: A Timeline of His Murders, Reappearance and Capture

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Dennis Rader, who took 10 innocent lives in the area of Wichita, Kansas, as the BTK Killer - for Bind, Torture, Kill - seemingly had his twisted modus operandi figured out to a "T."