50 Shades of Evil: KANSAS - “BTK” Dennis Rader

0:11 Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola. I'm your host, Jim Chapman, and today we are continuing with the fifty Shades of Evil series and we're going to be traveling to the heart of the American Midwest, Wichita, Kansas to examine one of the most chilling and deceptive serial killers in United States history, Dennis Rader, better known as the BTK Killer. Now, I know what you're thinking, Jim. We already went to Kansas, and you would be correct. Although, when I released Fifty Shades of Evil Kansas, and I told you the story of the Car Brothers way back in February of this year, I had tons of people from Kansas reach out and they let me know that while the car Brothers for sure fit the profile evil, if I wanted to cover the most evil monster from that state, I needed to cover Dennis Rader, also known as BTK. Well, you requested it, and I am delivering it now. For more than thirty years, this man walked among his neighbors as a trusted family man, a church leader, a Boy Scout troop leader, and seemingly an upstanding citizen.

1:25 But behind that ordinary facade, there was a predator who bound, tortured, and killed at least ten innocent people, and then tormented an entire city with tawny letters and packages that he would send a police In media. He even chose the name himself BTK Bind Torture, Kill, and for decades he would get away with it. I'm going to cover everything in this episode, the investigation that spanned generations of detectives, his dramatic capture in two thousand and five, the trial, his life behind bars, and by the end of this episode, you're gonna have a complete picture of how evil can hide in plain sight in America's heartland. But before I begin, I want to take a moment in respect, in remembrance of the ten victims whose lives were stolen in the families who still carry that pain today. Their names are Joseph O'tero, Julie O'tero, Joseph O'tero the Second, Josephine Otero, Catherine Bright, Shirley Vann, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vicky Wiggerly, and Dolores Davis. These were real people, mother's fathers, sons, daughter's friends whose story deserves to fully be told. And that is exactly what I am going to do. So

2:56 let's get into it with fifty shades of evil. Kansas beat Now. Dennis Raider was born on March ninth of nineteen forty five in Columbus, Kansas. Columbus, a small town in Cherokee County. It's not far from the Oklahoma and Missouri borders, and he would be the oldest of four sons born to William and Dorothea Raider. His father worked as a Marine Corps veteran who took a job with the Kansas Gas and Electric Company, and his mother would be a stay at home mom raising boys in what appeared from the outside to be a working class, normal Midwestern household. The Raider family eventually would move to Wichita, Kansas.

3:40 This was when Dennis was still very young, and they settled into what was a rapidly growing city that would later become a central hub for all of its horrific crimes. Now. Wichita in post World War two times was a booming town aircraft manufacturing, draw military presence, and the tight knick neighborhoods that made up Wichita. It was where people knew their neighbors, or at least they thought they knew them. Now. As a child, Dennis was described by those who knew the family is quiet and somewhat reserved. He attended Riverview Elementary School in later Wichita Heights High School, and teachers and neighbors would recall a boy who didn't stand out, either in a good way or a bad way. He wasn't the class clown, and he wasn't the troublemaker. He was just someone who kind of kept to himself more than most kids his age. He was an average student.

4:39 He participated in boy Scouts and seemed on the outside very shy, but a normal everyday kid when you coupled all the other extra stuff that he would do. But even in those early years, there were glimpses that would later take on a much darker meaning. Writer himself would later admit in interviews in court statements that he developed unusual sexual fantasies at a very young age. He spoke of being fascinated by bondage and restraint as early as the age of nine or ten. He described fantasies involving tripping animals and imagining himself binding them with rope and torturing them. He later would recount an incident in which he became sexually aroused watching his grandmother ring the neck of a chicken, and he also claimed to have engaged in choking experiments with animals, where he would say, choke a cat until it passed out, but not kill the animal.

5:39 He would also experiment in voyeurism and secretly watch neighbors through windows. And keep in mind, this started in his preteen years, and I can tell you, as would any psychologist or criminologists, these behaviors are prototypical of someone who's going to grow up a serial killer. Most always starts with animal torture and peeping Tom incidents at an early age. So Dennis Rader's relationship with his father it was reportedly strict, but it wasn't considered unusually abusive by standards of that era. William Rader would expect his sons to be disciplined and hard working, and Dennis would learn early how to compartmentalize.

6:25 He would present one face to the world, and he would have a whole another face, a whole secret inner life that was filled with these dark fantasies. This ability to compartmentalize it would become his greatest weapon as an adult. Now in school, he showed interest in technical subjects and mechanics. He was known to be very smart, with an IQ later estimated in the above average range, although his academic report card, if you will, wouldn't reflect it. He also enjoyed drawing and created sketches, and he was actually very good at that. But this was a hobby that would resurface decades letter when he sent hand drawn images to police, very disturbing images along with letters that he would send and we'll get into that later. Now, by his early teens, Dennis would attend church all the time with his family.

7:23 He was baptized and he became an active Lutheran. And what's really shocking when you look back at Dennis Writer's childhood is outside of the issues that nobody knew about, some of them I just told you about, on paper, it just seemed like an ordinary upbringing. There were no major trauma incidents, no extreme poverty in this family. And that's what makes his story unique. He wasn't created by horrific abuse or broken home in the way that a lot of your serial killers would claim. Instead, something inside of his wife hiring was just way off. He learned very early in life how to be one person privately and one person publicly, and before we move on, I want to go a little deeper into the incidents as it relates to BTK in childhood that if you were someone who knew what you were looking for, really screamed warning signs. So there's a classic warning sign in the criminology world that's known as the homicidal triad, which, alongside bed wedding and fire starting, was cruelty toward animals. Now.

8:36 According to Raiter's own accounts, an investigative reporting drawn from his journals and police interviews, he started out by targeting stray cats and an occasional dog in his Wichita neighborhood and the surrounding rural areas of town. He would spot, lure, capture these animals, often carrying them to an abandoned barn or in isolated spa where no one could see him, and there he would practice binding their legs with rope or baling wire. He would restrain them in ways that let them completely helpless, exactly the kind of domination and control that fueled his sexual fantasies. He would describe later that he would tighten wires or ropes around their necks, slowly strangling them while watching them struggle, and he would sometimes loosen the pressure only to tighten it again, prolonging that suffering. In some instances, he actually would hang the animals.

9:39 He would then dispose of the bodies casually, just tossing them into the ditch or leaving them on the roadside, and forensic psychologists who would later evaluate him they would note that these early experiences appeared to be the first time Raider connected sexual pleasure with watching a living creature so for or die. Just like the story I told you above where he talked about watching his grandmother wring the neck of that chicken. Same thing. Rather than feeling horror or disgusted like most any child would, he actually became aroused by the sight of That tells you how sick this guy was. And these incidents weren't isolated where he did it and then he freaked himself out because he did it and he didn't do it again. Dennis Rader would do this with animals over and over and over again. Raider estimated he killed dozens of cats and dogs this way throughout his early childhood and early teens, and as I also said, he was very into voyeurism during this time as well. He would spy on female neighbors through windows while he was dressed in stolen women's clothing, and he would suffocate himself by binding his own hands, his own hands and his own ankles, and placing bags over his head to restrict his own freaking breathing. Now, everything I just told you to me, it demonstrates how

11:09 scary this guy was. This kid wasn't just being cruel for cruelty's sake. He was practicing. He was actually rehearsing these rituals of binding, torturing, and killing that would define his signature later on as bt K. The helplessness of these animals, the power he felt in controlling their final moments, and that sexual release that followed it would become a drive for every single human murder he would create later on in life. And of course, no one knew this on the outside. Dennis was attending school, he made good grades, he participated in the Boy Scouts, he was fishing, reading comic books, going to church, all the things kids do.

11:55 No one had a clue how crazy this kid was. He kept this part of his life completely hidden, just as he would later hide those stalking incidents, planning, and killings from his wife and his kids. So by the time Dennis Rader entered his teenage years this is in the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, these dark fantasies would take root and really grab him. He would attend Wichita Heights High School, where he was an average student academically, but he managed to stay out of trouble. He would work part time jobs. He worked as a bad boy in a stoker at a local grocery store, and he would save money to buy his first car himself.

12:40 It seemed like he was maturing pretty good on the outside. It was also during these years that his secret life would expand significantly. His voyeurism really got worse. He would drive around Wichita neighborhoods and night y'all, a behavior he would call trolling, and he would just look for when to watch through windows. He would steal women's underwear from clotheslines, and he began collecting items that really fueled this fantasy. At home, he would continue to experiment with self bondage and raiders' sexual fantasies became increasingly detailed and increasingly violent.

13:21 By puberty, he was already dreaming of tying up girls and women assaulting them while they were bound and terrified, and he would later tell investigators these fantasies that played out in his mind were like a movie that he was directing. He developed a celebrity fixation on a popular actress at the time. Her name was a Net Finochello, and she was a Mickey Mouse Club star, and he said he couldn't help but imagine her bound and at his mercy, and he would start cutting out pictures of her in magazines and he would take them and he would draw ropes and gags onto her images. Now, during all of this, Raider continued to be involved in church and Boy Scouts, and he seemed to enjoy the structure of that. And after high school he would briefly attend college.

14:14 He would drop out to go to the Air Force at the age of twenty one and he would serve as an aircraft mechanic, travel all over the world doing that. When he gets back, he did eventually get his degree in college. And military life was kind of scary for Rader because when he would travel overseas, he would actually get hookers and stuff and he would do all this bondage to them as part of the pay I guess you could say. So he gets back from the Air Force and he actually takes a job with the Coleman Company. Now Coleman it's just who you're thinking. They are the largest supporter of outdoor and camping equipment in the United States now and they were then. And it was during this time. He was also still involved heavily with his church, and it was a local Lutheran church, and that's where he met Paula Deet's now Paula was a few years younger than Dennis, and she came from a stable religious family.

15:14 She worked as a bookkeeper and friends and family they would say that she was quiet, kind, devoted, someone who valued faith, family and stability. And in nineteen seventy they start dating, and by all accounts, it was a pretty traditional courtship. They attended church together, they spent time with family, and they presented like they were a wholesome Midwestern couple. Writer would propose, and they were married on May twenty second, nineteen seventy one, in a Lutheran ceremony. Now Paula was twenty three, Dennis was twenty six, and photos from that marriage from the wedding actually would show a smiling young couple.

15:57 Dennis in a dark suit, Paula in a modest wedding dress, and they looked like any other newly weds you would see anywhere else in the country. But what makes this marriage interesting in hindsight is how completely Rader was able to hide who he was from his wife. To Paula and their families, he was a hard working, church going husband. He held steady jobs, first with the Coleman Company and then later with ADT Security Services installing home alarm systems, a position that would ironically give him intimate knowledge of home security vulnerabilities that he would later exploit, and he was able to hide all of who he was from these people. Now. Shortly after marriage, the couple moved into a modest home in Wichita, Kansas. On the surface, everything seemed great. Raider work days, came home in the evenings, participated in church. Paula would manage that household. They attended church regular and Dennis ber He came very active in the church leadership over that time. Yet during this exact period the early years of the marriage, Raiders fantasies would intensify dramatically. He would continue trolling neighborhoods stealing lingerie, practicing bondage on himself, and scouting potential victims. His job with Ady t that would allow him to case those homes under the guise of professional work, and the mass that

17:30 he wore for Paula was nearly perfect. In nineteen seventy five, they welcomed their first child, a son named Brian. Three years later, in nineteen seventy eight, their daughter, Carrie was born, and Raider often spoke later about how much he loved his children, how pride he was of his family life, and he participated in typical fatherly activities boy scouts with his son, family outings, holidays. Paula raised the children primarily while he worked, but when he was off of work, he would do a lot of things with them. Just seemed very typical, and Raider would claim in later interviews that he truly loved Paula and his children, and that that other side was completely separate. He described as double life as two different people sharing the same body. Now.

18:19 By the time their first child was born in nineteen seventy five, Dennis Rader had already committed his first murders. By the early nineteen seventies, his fantasies. They just were no longer enough, y'all. He began planning and scouting potential victims. He installed alarm systems for ADT starting in nineteen seventy four, and that job gave him the access that he needed and it was perfect as far as a professional role to cover for these dark activities. Now, psychologically, Rader was developing what experts would describe as a narcissistic and sadist personality. He craved power, he craved attention, but was also highly organized and very patient, and these traits allowed him to operate undetected for so long. He learned to compartmentalize perfectly, loving father and husband at home, church, council member, compliance officer, all the things, while secretly nurturing a predator's mindset. Now, by nineteen seventy four, at the age of twenty eight, Dennis Raider was ready to cross from fantasy into reality.

19:33 The ordinary Kansas boy with the secret life of cruelty and control was about to unleash horror in a city he called home. So I'm going to take you to the morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, a quiet Wichita neighborhood and Dennis Raider is going to take the irreversible step from fantasy to reality. What happened inside that small home at eight three North Edgemore Drive that day would shock the city and mark the beginning of a reign of terror that would last decades. The Otero family had moved from Wichitaal from Puerto Rico just a few years earlier. Joseph O'tero, who was thirty eight, was a US Air Force veteran who worked as a mechanic, very similar to Dennis Rader. His wife, Julie O'tero, she was thirty four and she was a stay at home mom, and they had five kids in total, but on that morning four were home. Joseph Joey O'tero he was nine, Josephine Otero she was eleven, Danny who was five, and Carmen who was four. Now, Raider had been stalking this family for weeks. He later admitted he chose them partly because of their ethnicity. He nicknamed the case and he would call these cases. He nicknamed this one project Little Max,

21:05 and he had driven by the house multiple times, noting the routines of the family, what time they got home, what time they went to work, what time they woke up, what time they had visitors there, all the things. This guy was methodical with that, and on that very cold January morning, he would cut the phone lines, approach the back door, and force his way inside that home at eight thirty am. He would claim he was a fugitive who needed food, money in a car, and he didn't realize that Joseph O'tero Senior was still at home during this time. What followed was a calculated brutal attack. It lasted for two to three hours. Raider would use cords from Venetian blinds and other items in the home to bind those family members, and he would separate them strategically.

21:58 He put Joseph Senior in Julie in the bedroom. The children were moved in other bedrooms, and he first focused on Joseph's senior, obviously being the biggest threat. He placed a plastic bag over his head and tightened it while also using a chord around his neck. Now Joseph fought desperately, but he would eventually succumb to that suffocation. Julie Otero she was strangled next her hands bound behind her back, and Rader would later describe in court how Julie briefly regained consciousness after he thought she was dead, forcing him to strangle her again. The children they witnessed this unimaginable horror.

22:42 Nine year old Joey was suffocated with a bag and a chord in the same room as his parents, because Raider then brought him into that room. Eleven year old Josephine she was taken into the basement and hanged from a pipe using a chord around neck, and he later admitted to masturbating over her body as she died, a signature that would appear in several of his later crimes. Simply horrific. Now, the family was left bound and partially covered, and Raider would attempt to clean up some evidence, but he left behind critical clues, including seamen and fibers that would link him to the scene years later when DNA would become a thing, and like almost all serial killers, he also took some personal items with him as trophies. Now, the surviving Otero children returned home later that day and they actually discovered this nightmare, and of course police were called.

23:43 All those things the community shot at this. This was a city, Wichitaal that prided itself on safety during this time, and suddenly they felt very vulnerable. This wasn't a random burglary gone wrong. It was too brutal to be and everyone sensed it. And Raider's planning on this, y'all, was meticulous. He used his knowledge from ADT in his military background. He wore gloves, he brought some tools with him, and he used some tools around the house because he didn't expect that many people to be there. But he did make some mistakes. He stayed in that house far too long, literally hours, and he left DNA evidence on the scene as well. He later would send letters about that crime, and those letters would eventually help to catch him. Now.

24:35 In later confessions, Raider would describe the Otran murders with a detached, his clinical tone. He admitted the sexual gratification he got from the power in control and with the family, representing his first full realization of the fantasies that he had held since childhood. Binding dominating, taking life while watching terror in his victim's eyes. That was intoxicating to this monster. After this quadruple homicide, Raider goes home to his own young family as if nothing has ever happened, and he would later say he felt a rush of power after that. He felt like he had completed his quote project and that would only fuel his confidence. He had crossed the line and there was no going back. And the police, of course, they started investigating this. But because the killer had disabled the phone lines and he had effectively subdued an entire family at gunpoint, he also didn't leave any signs of fourth century, detectives thought, man, this is too professional to be just some random murder of an entire family, the Otero family. Somewhere in there. The police were convinced there was some ties to like gangs or some sort of cartel, and that's what they thought this was. They thought it was a professional hit. They thought it had to be because they had no other evidence on the scene, and that's kind of the direction they took the investigation,

26:06 which we knew it wasn't. Three months later, after the brutal murder of the Otero family, Dennis Raider would strike again. On April fourth of nineteen seventy four, he targeted twenty one year old by the name of Katherine Bright now Catherine just a young lady trying to build her life in Wichita. She worked at a local company in the area and everybody knew her as a friendly personality. She was close with her family, especially her brother Kevin, and she had recently moved into a house at thirty two seventeen East thirteenth Street with her brother. Now, her brother and her had went shopping this particular morning. Unbeknownst to Rayder, So Raider had been trawling neighborhoods looking for opportunities, and he later admitted he chose Katherine partly because she lived relatively close to the previous targets and she fit his victim profile. She was a young woman, she appeared to be living in a vulnerable situation, and he started scouting her home in advance. So Raider enters that home through the back door. This is around midday and when Catherine gets home, he is waiting for her. However, she came home with her brother, who, as I told you, she had been shopping with, and BTK he's kind of shocked by this. He had prepared perfectly, studying her every routine and this was not expected. So BTK pulls a gun.

27:38 He tells the brother and sister he's an escaped convict. He needs a car and some money, and hey, I'm just going to tie you up, take your car in any cash, and leave. So he ties Kevin up and his sister Katherine, and they were placed in separate bedrooms. So while BTK is in Catherine's bedroom strangling her, Kevin breaks free of his bindings. BTK hears this. He goes into the bedroom where Kevin is and they start fighting, and believe it or not, Kevin actually wrestles the gun away from BTK, but sadly, BTK was able to regain control of that gun and he shoots Kevin in the head.

28:20 He thinks he's dead. He turns to leave, and Kevin actually jumps back up and they go to fighting again, and BTK shoots him a second time. This time. Surely, this guy's got to be dead. So he goes back to Catherine in the in the middle of it strangling Catherine, he hears the front door open and it's Kevin. He's shot twice, but he's running out the front door, so he kind of chases after him for a second. This kid is down the road at this point, so he turns around and he knows my time is limited. He goes back to Catherine and rather than strangling her and taking more time, he a knife and he stabs and kills her, but her brother would survive, and he was able to provide a description to police. And he would say later that he did not like stabbing and I'm talking BTK here as a form of killing, because he would say it was too messy, and he vowed to never carry a knife again. I mean, this one was sloppy all around and enraged BTK. He just felt he was too smart for that. He was arrogant. A lot different here than the Otero killings. The use of a knife, the victim getting away one of the victims, so not much would initially connect here in the eyes of the police, and I felt like, how can you not at least suspect these were related, But police did not relate the

29:52 two at the time. So the crime scene at Catherine's home, of course, would show signs of a fierce struggle. There were blood in multiple rooms, overturn furniture, evidence of raider's attempts. He did try to clean up a little bit, and again he took some trophies, including personal belongings that held sentimental value to Catherine's family. Now, her brother's survival provided one of the earliest eyewitness descriptions of the killer a white male approximately five eight to six feet tall with a stocky build. However, still no DNA technology at this time. In police they just didn't connect the cases. And for Raider, the Bright murder was both a success and a learning experience.

30:33 He had completed what he called another project. But the resistance in the fact that Kevin survived taught him to be more careful and he would refine his approach in future attacks. He would often bring more binding materials in the event that somebody was there he didn't expect, and he would also rely less on firearms, and in the years that followed, Raider would occasionally reference cap in his communications with police, showing just how narcissistic this guy was. In the recognition that he wanted for killing these people. He wanted to make sure the police knew, Hey, I killed that girl. Now. The gap between the Otero and the Bright murders was short, and it you know, if they would have connected these, they would have thought another one's coming in short time. But after Raider would go quiet for a while, at least in terms of known killings, maybe because the fact that Catherine was so tough and didn't just roll over for him and accept her fate.

31:38 Writer would just return to his normal life as a husband, father, and employee, all while the city of Wichital was living in fear of a killer who seemed to strike without any pattern. And there would actually be a three year lull following the murder of Katherine Bright. And that is very interesting to me, because he would have a couple of life here throughout all of this, totally unlike any other serial killer I've ever studied, and I've studied hundreds. Usually when they get that taste, that thirst for death, it is uncontrollable to them, and there's no way they're going nine months a year in between killings unless they're in jail or their life is going so perfect that they don't want to mess it up. They usually can't control it. In his case, it seems like he could at least until March seventeenth of nineteen seventy seven. Now, his next victim was twenty four year old Shirley Vanne, a mother of three young children. And Shirley was a witchita mother just doing her best y'all to raise her children.

32:45 They were four, six, and eight. All of this while dealing with their own personal challenge. She lived in a small home at thirteen eleven South Pine Crest, and neighbors would describe her as friendly and devoted to her kids. Now, on that March afternoon, Rader had been trolling that area and selected her home after observing her routine for quite a while. He knocked on the door, and when she answered, he claimed to be a private detective and he needed to talk to her about an urgent matter. Once inside the home, he quickly took control of her at gunpoint, and her three young children all at home during this time, so they start panicking. He's thinking this isn't gonna work.

33:30 He tells her, look, we've got to do something with these kids. Let's put him in the bathroom and we'll put some toys in there and they can play with the toys and they won't be distracting. Then he starts claiming, look, I'm only going to rape you. I've got a sexual problem, but I'm not going to kill you. Essentially, and so they take the kids, they put them in the bathroom, they put the toys in there. She actually helps him tie the bathroom door shut with a cord. She's wanting to do this poor lady wanted to do whatever she could to make sure her kids weren't harmed. Now, sadly, the children could hear their mother scream and the struggle going on outside of that bathroom door. Raider would bound her with a rope and a cord and strangle her with it, and as in previous attacks, he would masturbate at the scene after killing her, And he spent a lot of time in the home taking trophies, including some of Shirley's personal items, and he would leave behind seeming evidence y'all that would later link him through DNA. And keep in mind the time frame here, it's the seventies.

34:34 Nobody could foresee that there would come a point a time in history where your seamen could be used to connect you to a crime, unless you were a scientist maybe or something working on DNA technology at that particular time in history. So it seems careless now when you look back on it, but at the time, who would have thought. Now the children would be locked in the bathroom for hours until they were finally discovered trauma that they endured. I can't imagine hearing their mother's final moments, and they would actually become key witnesses in the long term investigation, but they were too young at the time, y'all to provide a really detailed description of the suspect. Now, after this murder, parents would become hyper vigilant and police they're figuring out Houston, we got a problem. They form a task force, but without modern forensic tools like DNA, the killer would remain elusive to say the least, and Rater returned to his normal life, still working at adt, attending church, raising his own young children with Paula. So let's fast forward just nine months to December eighth of nineteen seventy seven, and this is when Dennis Rider claimed his seventh known victim, twenty five year old Nancy Fox.

35:52 She was a young professional woman living by herself in Wichita, and her murder stands out because writer would later describe it as one of his most perfect projects. He meticulously planned this when and executed it with a level of control that would feed his ego for years now. Nancy she lived in a small apartment at eight forty three South Pershing Street. Rader had been watching her for a good while, adding to his growing list of projects, and he studied her every routine netting when she came and went from work and home, her friends, et cetera. And on that December evening, he would break into her apartment while she was out and about and he waited patiently for her return. When she arrived, he confronted her again, telling her that he was a wanted fugitive and needed help, and Nancy, like Catherine Bright before, she was not going to be a victim easily. She fought back, but Rader did eventually overpower her. He would bind her hands and feet with items from his own home, court in stockings from her home, and he would use the binding techniques that he had absolutely perfected by this point. He strangled her with a ligature, and as in previous crimes, he would masturbate on that scene. After killing her, he took trophies, including some of her lingerie in personal items, which he kept in a secret stash for years. And what made

37:24 this murder particularly significant for Raider was the communication that followed. In early nineteen seventy eight, he would send a detailed letter to a TV station and in that letter he would claim responsibility for Nancy Fox's death, and this is also where he became known for the first time as BTK bind Torture Kill, And he actually gave himself that name because he's an arrogant piece of shit and he would start tawning police in the media. So initially what he did was he sent a point to a newspaper about the VM murder. But they didn't print it, they didn't do anything with it. In this pissed raider off.

38:04 So he sends another letter and he resends the original poem. And this is pre email, y'all. This is actual letters received by the newspaper with stamps on the envelope and everything. And here is how that first letter received read after the murder of Nancy Fox, I find the newspaper not writing about the point in the VM murder, unamusing a little paragraph would have been enough. I know. It's not the news media's fault. The police chief. He keeps things quiet and he doesn't let the public know there's a psycho running around loose, strangling mostly women. There are seven in the ground. Who will be next? How many do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention. Do the cops think all these deaths are not related? Golly g yes, the mo is different in each, but look hard a pattern developing.

39:01 The victims are tied up. Most have been women. Phone lines cut bring in some bondage and sadist tendencies. No struggle, and no witnesses except for the vuying kids. They were very lucky a phone call save them. I was going to tape the boys and put plastic bags over their head like I did Joseph and Shirley, and hang the little girl. God, oh god, what a beautiful sexual relief that would have been Josephine. When I hung her, it really turned me on her pleading for mercy. When the rope took hold, she was helpless, staring at me with wide tear field eyes while the rope was getting tighter and tighter. My short poem of death and maybe a drawing in later, a real picture and maybe a tape of the sound will be coming your way. How will you know it's me? Before a murder or murders? You will receive the initials BTK And as I told you, a poem was included. He titled this one owed Death to Nancy, and it says, what is that? I can see cold, icy hands taking hold of me? For death has come you all can see Hell has opened its gate to trick me. O death, O death. Can't you spare me over for another year. I'll stuff your jaws till you can't talk, I'll bind your legs till you can't walk, I'll tie your hands till you can't stand.

40:23 And finally, I'll close your eyes so you can't see. I'll bring sexual death unto you for me, signed BTK. So this letter, y'all provided details only the killer could know, and that confirmed the connection between the cases and detectives do this a lot. They will talk to the press and they will give them only so much information about a murder, and that's intentional because they want to be able to identify the actual killer, and they know that person is going to have details we never released. That was the case here. There were some things he mentioned that nobody outside of the killer would have known. Could have been the fact that this young poor girl was hanged in a basement, and maybe the police didn't release that, but he sure mentioned it in his letter. Now, for investigators, it was a breakthrough, and it was also a frustration.

41:18 They confirmed they were dealing with a single killer across multiple cases. But it also mocked their inability to catch him, and the letter contained enough details to prove as I said that it came from the killer. Writer later admitted that the Nancy Fox murder and subsequent letter gave him an enormous thrill. He talked about the power he felt not just in taking life, but controlling the narrative through the media, and it became almost as addictive, he said, as the killings themselves. And in the years that followed, he would send more communications, more points, more packages, all while living this double life as a family man and a community member. In the gap between Nancy Fox and his next known victim would stretch all the way to nineteen eighty five, one of several cooling off periods where Raider would focus on work, church, and his family while the city tried to heal. And as I told you, that's pretty unique to Raider. All the serial killers I've researched, nearly all cases. Once these animals get a taste for death, it becomes undeniable. They lose complete control of it. And Raider was absolutely different in this respect. And that is where I'm gonna leave this one for today. Next week we're gonna continue, We're gonna wrap this one up. Actually, we're gonna go to nineteen eighty five and who would become the eighth victim of BTK. It just gets more

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