Murderpedia

 

 

Juan Ignacio Blanco  

 

  MALE murderers

index by country

index by name   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

  FEMALE murderers

index by country

index by name   A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

 

 

 
   

Murderpedia has thousands of hours of work behind it. To keep creating new content, we kindly appreciate any donation you can give to help the Murderpedia project stay alive. We have many
plans and enthusiasm to keep expanding and making Murderpedia a better site, but we really
need your help for this. Thank you very much in advance.

   

 

 

Dennis Lynn RADER

 
 
 
 
 

 

 

 

 


A.K.A.: "The BTK killer"
 
Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Sadist - Fetishist
Number of victims: 10
Date of murders: 1974 - 1991
Date of arrest: February 25, 2005
Date of birth: March 9, 1945

Victims profile: Joseph Otero, 38, his wife Julie, 34, and two of their children: Joseph II, 9, and Josephine, 11 / Kathryn Bright, 21 / Shirley Vian, 24 / Nancy Fox, 25 / Marine Hedge, 53 / Vicki Wegerle, 28 / Dolores E. Davis, 62

Method of murder: Ligature strangulation - Stabbing with knife
Location: Sedgwick County, Kansas, USA
Status: Sentenced to serve 10 consecutive life sentences on August 18, 2005. Rader would be eligible for parole after 175 years of imprisonment
 
 
 
 
 
 

Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography

1975-1979

In November, 1974 Dennis Rader finally found a steady job with ADT Security, a company specializing in the installation of alarm systems. He would stay with ADT for the next 14 years. He rose to the position of installation supervisor, which gave him some flexibility in terms of where he could be during the day.
 


 

In 1975 the Raders' first child was born, Brian. Dennis had a full schedule between ADT and night school at WSU. Even though he is not known to have committed any known crime during 1975 and 1976, by his own description the trolling for more victims never did cease then or until his arrest 30 years later.
 


 

On March 17, 1977 Rader decided it was time for a murder one way or another. He had been trolling a particular neighborhood fairly heavily and had some women in mind there. He had met a woman named Cheryl in a bar and found her quite interesting. Cheryl was renting a house with another woman and often had parties there in those days.

Rader found out where she lived and decided it would be "a go", meaning a definite hit. Fortunately for Cheryl and her friends, no one was home when Rader came around that day. Rader states he had also cased another home in the neighborhood, but that no one was there either.
 


 

Rader went trolling on foot down Hydraulic Street and encountered a five year old boy, Steve Relford. He pulled out a photo of his own wife and son and asked Steve if he knew who they were. Steve said he didn't and proceeded on home to complete the errand to the store his mother had sent him on. Rader soon knocked on the door, and Steve answered.

He was posing as an official person, perhaps a detective, and gained entry into the home. There were three children in the home including Steve and an 8 year old brother and a 4 year old sister. Rader abruptly turned off the television and lowered the blinds. (Photo and a story about Steve Relford from CNN.com).
 


 

The mother emerged in a bathrobe, demanding to know what was going on. At gunpoint, Rader ordered all the children into the bathroom, where he blockaded the children in. He made his intentions clear to the mother, Shirley Vian, 24, that he was going to bind her up and have his way with her.

However, it wasn't rape he was after as he led Shirley to believe. Rader claims he got her a glass of water after she threw up and allowed her to have a smoke to calm down. Shirley was ill that day and her common law husband Richard Vian wouldn't be home till later.
 


 

Rader tied her up as promised but then strangled her to death with a cord around her neck. He left semen on panties found next to the body. He was gone before the children could break out of the bathroom and summon help. Rader later stated that a ringing telephone unnerved him and caused him to leave before he could kill the children.
 


 

In December, 1977 Rader became fixated on Nancy Fox, 25, stalking her from her residence and workplace. On the evening of December 8 he broke into her modest duplex via a rear bedroom window after first cutting the phone line.

He awaited her arrival from her evening job at a jewerly store. Nancy was the sole occupant of the duplex at that time and lived alone. The initial confrontation took place in the kitchen, presumably at gunpoint. Rader stated that he had a sexual issue and needed to tie her up to rape her. Other than making barbed comments, Nancy didn't fight back.

She was ordered into the bedroom after being allowed to partly disrobe in the bathroom. Rader tied her to the bed and undressed himself. At that point he announced who he really was, making it clear he was the same person who had killed the Oteros, and proceeded to strangle her to death with a ligature. He left semen deposited on a nightgown found next to the body.
 


 

The following morning after reporting to work at ADT and leaving the office in a company van, Rader stopped at a phone booth just a couple blocks down the street. He dialed a police dispatcher and said, "Yes, you will find a home-acide at 843 South Pershing. Nancy Fox...That is correct", and left the receiver dangling.

Police rushed to the residence and found the lifeless body still lying on the bed, the head badly swollen. A tape recording of that call was eventually played repeatedly over and over in the Wichita media, but no one including Rader's co-workers or family was able to recognize the voice.

In early 1978 Rader attempted to send a postcard with a sarcastic poem, "Shirley Locks", to the Wichita Eagle but no one recognized the significance of it until days later. It was followed by a letter that was taken quite seriously. In it the killer took full responsibility for the Otero, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox murders plus an unnamed seventh victim later assumed to be Kathryn Bright.

The writer suggested a number of names for himself, including B.T.K. It was written in the same style as the 1974 letter, and mentioned a mysterious "factor x" that the writer said was the reason for his need to kill people. Also included was a bizarre poem, "Oh death to Nancy", mimicking an old folk song and poem called "Oh Death".

This letter forced the Wichita Police Department to make a decision. It was decided that it would be publicly announced that Wichita had an unknown serial killer on the loose, and citizens were urged to be extra careful about locking doors and looking out for each other. A whole generation of women grew up in Wichita that routinely checked their phones for a dial tone whenever re-entering their homes, to make sure the phone line had not been cut by an intruder.
 


 

In June, 1978 Paula gave birth to the Rader's second and final child, Kerri. She had been pregnant through all the events during and following Nancy Fox's murder.

In April, 1979 Rader broke into the home of Anna Williams, a 63 year old widow who had recently lost her husband. He waited fruitlessly for Anna to come home, but she didn't until later that evening. Rader pilfered a few small items and left, disappointed.

In June of that year, just days before Rader's graduation ceremony at WSU, Anna received a package in the mail with a poem entitled "Oh Anna why didn't you appear", a drawing of what Rader had intended to do her and a few of the things he had stolen. The next day a similar package arrived at the studios of KAKE-TV in Wichita. Anna was terrified and quickly moved far away from Wichita.

 

The 1980s

If Dennis Rader had enjoyed all the publicity BTK was getting in the late 1970s, he must have grown increasingly wary of being caught. Ahead in the game, he knew when to fold it. Nothing more was heard from the killer publicly until 2004, except for one letter that was not officially acknowledged to have come from BTK in 1988.

Rader continued his trolling while becoming more active in his church and also became a Cub Scout leader when his son was old enough. In fact, son Brian would eventually attain the status of Eagle Scout, undoubtedly with ample encouragement and guidance from his father.

Rader never utilized his degree in Administation of Justice from WSU, but was known to have envied becoming a police officer and was also reportedly involved at times in reserve officer programs as a volunteer.
 


 

It is impossible to understand the story of Dennis Rader unless one has some knowledge of what a psychopath is. A psychopath is a person who is incapable of empathy for other beings. They are self-centered to the extreme that no one else matters unless someone serves a purpose or potential purpose for the psychopath.

This is a person who has no problems with hurting others, no guilt, shame or remorse. It is a person who is deceptive, lies freely and skillfully without shame or regret. Dennis Rader from his youth learned how to live in two worlds, the conventional, social realm everyone lives in and his own private world of torture and death.

He was extremely skillful in separating these two worlds, what is known as compartmentalizing. He could go out and commit the most atrocious murder, and come home like nothing had happened. It was like changing clothes or switching to a different channel.
 


 

By 1985 as far as anyone knows, it had been a number of years since the last kill. Rader was a busy family man, a person with no criminal record, someone apparently religious and helpful at church. Despite all this he took great lengths to pull off his next murder. He was now 40 years old, his son was 9 and his daughter 6.
 


 

Marine Hedge, 53, was a widowed neighbor who lived on the same street in Park City as the Raders. She was a petite, friendly woman, mother of four grown children, who had lost her husband Thomas in the past year.

In the 1970s the Raders had purchased a small home on Independence Street. During their walks Dennis and Paula would sometimes wave to Marine, who enjoyed gardening around the home as did Dennis.
 


 

On the weekend of April 27, 1985, Rader was attending a Boy Scout camp-out just outside of Wichita. He left camp in the evening, with the pretext of having a headache and needing to get to town to buy something for it.

He parked his car by a bowling alley in the city and bought himself a beer. He swished the liquid in his mouth and spit it out, and also deliberately got some beer on his clothing so he would have a smell like he had been drinking.

Calling a cab, he pretended to be drunk and instructed the driver to take him to a park in Park City so he could walk it off before arriving home. The park adjoined the backyard of the Hedge property. Rader was disappointed to see Marine's car in the carport, and assumed she was home.

He cut the phone line and quietly pried open a rear door using a screwdriver. It turned out that no one was home as he had hoped, and soon a car pulled up and Rader hid in a bedroom closet. Marine Hedge and a friend, Gerald Porter, entered the home. Gerald left for the night around 1 a.m. Rader waited while Marine went to bed and fell asleep.
 


 

Rader crept out of the closet. He flicked on the bathroom light and then pounced on Marine in the bed, manually choking the 100 pound woman to death. However, his fantasy-driven outing was far from over. He dragged the body with the bedding to her car and put her in the trunk.

Rader drove directly to his church, where he was a person so trusted that he had the keys to the building. He dragged the body underneath some trees and entered the building down to the basement, where he taped black plastic over the basement windows so no one could see inside.

He then dragged the body down into the basement and photographed it in various poses. It was getting late and Rader hurriedly returned the body to the car trunk and took off. He found a dumping place in a ditch along a dirt road several miles outside of Park City, and semi-concealed the body under some trimmings.

He left knotted pantyhose by the body, which apparently had been used for some purpose during the night. At one point Rader had dropped the car key onto the dashboard and the key slid down and wedged under the windshield. He used a rock to smash a corner of the windshield to retrieve the key.
 


 

By now it was getting light and Rader hurriedly made his way back to where he had left his car in Wichita. He parked Marine's car there after wiping it down for fingerprints, and returned to the Scout camp he had deserted earlier. He was never connected to this crime until some 20 years later. He still had those photographs in his collection.
 


 

In September, 1986 Rader had his eye on Vicki Wegerle, a 28 year old mother of two. He would walk by her house, hearing strains of piano music as Vickie played. On September 16 he took some time out for a "PJ" or project, as he called his murder prospects.

Sometime after 10 a.m. he showed up at Vickie's door, dressed up like a telephone repairman complete with hardhat. He somehow managed to get Vicki to allow him inside the home to check the phone line. He fiddled with her phone with an improvised testing gadget and then informed her she was going to be tied up.

Presumably using a gun, he forced her into a bedroom and attempted to tie her up, but she gave him a fierce battle scratching him in the process. Rader prevailed in the physical fight and secured her with ropes, then proceeded to strangle her to death using pantyhose as a ligature.

He photographed the dying body in a few poses and hastily left in the Wegerle car. Vicki had warned him that her husband would be arriving home shortly. Rader later stated that had the husband come home, he would have been killed also.
 


 

Bill Wegerle indeed came home soon afterward and even saw his own car going in the opposite direction away from the house. He couldn't identify the driver, but it didn't appear to be Vicki.

His 2 year old son Brandon was still in the living room, unattended. Bill couldn't find Vicki at first, who was on the bedroom floor behind the bed, but finally did after a while. She was rushed to a hospital with paramedics desperately trying to revive her, but was pronounced dead a short time later.
 


 

BTK meanwhile had driven around the city for a while disposing of evidence, then returned to the area near the house and parked the Wegerle's car a couple blocks from their home. He exited the area on foot and returned to his own car nearby. Changing clothes, he escaped all detection for this crime and was never suspected of it.

Bill Wegerle's life soon took a turn for the drastic. Not only had he lost his wife and mother of his two children, he was faced with a hostile and skeptical police and public who never seemed satisfied that he was innocent of this crime. This dark cloud of suspicion hung over him for the next 18 years.

Nobody had heard from BTK in eight years and the police discounted this as a BTK crime. No charges were ever filed against Bill, but the anguish of those years was keen. (Photo and a story about the Wegerle family from CBSnews.com and the program 48 Hours Mystery).
 


 

At the very end of 1987 another notorious family murder occurred in Wichita, this time three members of the Phillip Fager family: the father, Phillip, and two teenage daughters.

A contractor who worked for the Fagers was arrested in Florida after leaving the murder scene in the Fager car and using a credit card stolen from them. Bill Butterworth was eventually acquitted by a jury due to a lack of physical evidence, but the police remain satisfied that he was the murderer.

A letter was received by Mrs. Fager in early 1988 from BTK, who stated he did not do this crime but admired the work of the man who did. This was never confirmed as a genuine BTK communication until police found a copy of the original letter in Rader's stash 17 years later.
 


 

He also had his own illustration of what he thought had happened that day to one of the girls, but it was not accurate to the real crime scene.

In 1988 Rader succeeded in getting himself fired from ADT Security. The official reason stated by the company was that he was not getting his work quota done. The varying reports from co-workers describe a man who could be difficult to work with but was customer-oriented.

One description of him from that time paints a picture of a man who wanted to be a police officer but had been forced to settle for what Rader saw as the inferior position of being an alarm installer. In any case, he was out of a steady job.

There is a record of Rader working for the US Census Bureau for several months only in 1989 as a field operations supervisor. Otherwise he may have been unemployed or finding temporary work until landing a new position in 1991.

dennisraderbtk.blogspot.com

 

 

 
 
 
 
home last updates contact