Who Is the BTK Killer? Inside Dennis Rader’s Horrific Crimes and How He Was Finally Caught By Alex Gurley

Dennis Rader may have evaded police for over three decades, but the murderer will now be spending the rest of his life in prison.

Between 1974 and 1991, the serial killer terrorized the city of Wichita, Kan., mostly targeting women. He gave himself the moniker “BTK” for his method — “bind, torture, kill” — and taunted police to catch him. At least 10 victims were killed at the hands of Rader, although there may be even more unsolved murders linked to him.

After finally being arrested in 2005, Rader admitted that he often allowed the dark side of his personality to take over as he stalked his victims, seeking out sexual pleasure in the most sadistic ways. He said he was driven by his twisted fantasies about asphyxiation and helpless women in bondage scenarios, a secret he hid for decades.

No one in Rader’s family, his friends at church, or his co-workers had any idea that evil lived among them. Rader had a double life: on one hand, a seemingly completely ordinary existence with a wife and two children, and on the other, a killer who brutally strangled strangers for his own sexual satisfaction.

“How could a guy like me, church member, raised a family, go out and do those sort of things?” Rader said in a 2005 interview uncovered in Snapped: Notorious BTK Serial Killer. “I want the people of Sedgwick County, the United States and the world to know that I am a serial killer. … It’s a dark side of me.”

So who is Dennis Rader? Here’s everything to know about the BTK Killer and his crimes.

Who is Dennis Rader?

Rader was born in March 1945 and was raised in Wichita, Kan., by his parents, Bill and Dorothea Mae Rader. As the eldest of four children, Rader had a relatively normal upbringing, a shy child who enjoyed reading comic books and playing in the neighborhood, according to what those who knew him told The New York Times (via the Star Tribune).

Behind closed doors, Rader was hiding dark secrets, even as a child. Looking back, he recalled a moment with his mother that first sparked his sadistic fantasies. Rader explained that her ring once got caught on a couch spring, and she got stuck. Scared, she pleaded with her son to get help — and it was then that he realized he felt excitement seeing a trapped and helpless woman.

“I would say probably even when I was in grade school, I sort of had some problems. Sexual fantasies. Probably more than normal. All males probably go through some kind of sexual fantasy. Mine was probably just weirder than other people,” Rader admitted in an interview aired on Snapped: Notorious BTK Serial Killer.

By the time he was a teenager, he was fantasizing about women in bondage scenarios. He even acted on some of those sexual desires, strangling himself to the point of almost passing out. He robbed houses and also tortured small animals, asphyxiating them for his own pleasure, per Confession of a Serial Killer by Katherine Ramsland.

Eventually, he became obsessed with high-profile killers, specifically Harvey Glatman, who was known to torture his victims for his own sexual satisfaction before killing them. But despite his hidden secrets, Rader tried to fit in with society.

He briefly enrolled at a university before enlisting in the Air Force and serving in Japan. When he returned home in 1972, he began working at a factory. He later got his dream job working for Cessna, an aircraft company, and then returned to school. He graduated from Wichita State University, receiving a degree in administration of justice.

Around the time he left the Air Force, his father introduced him to a young woman named Paula Dietz at church. The pair began dating and married in 1971, according to Confession of a Serial Killer. They appeared to have an idealistic life: Rader had a good job, the couple volunteered at church, and they had the prospects of buying their first home.

But when Rader was laid off from his job at Cessna, he became depressed, and the dark side that he had been trying to conceal once again reappeared — and he was ready to act on his twisted desires.

When did Dennis Rader commit his first murder?

In 1974, Rader put his plans into action and committed the first of several murders. While he had previously made attempts to kill, including a failed kidnapping attempt of a bank teller, Rader’s first successful attempt was his slaying of four members of the Otero family.

In interviews shared in Confession of a Serial Killer, Rader revealed that once he decided to target them, he stalked them for weeks, figuring out their habits and routines. He carefully planned out his attack and made his move on Jan. 15, 1974.

Believing Julia was home alone with two of her young children, Rader entered the backyard and cut the phone lines. He made his way inside when her son Joey opened the back door, not expecting that his father Joseph was also home. While he first told his victims that he was a criminal on the run in need of food and money, his true intentions soon became clear.

Knowing that the family, which included their daughter Josie, had seen his face and could identify him, he decided to kill them all. He gathered them all in a bedroom and suffocated Julia, Joseph and Joey. Once they were dead, he took Josie to the basement and hanged her. He then sexually satisfied himself, cleaned up and left.

How many people did Dennis Rader kill?

Between 1974 and 1991, Rader was confirmed to have killed at least 10 people, although there may have been even more victims.

Shortly after murdering the Otero family, Rader broke into the home of Kathryn Bright and stabbed her to death while also seriously injuring her brother. In 1977, he struck again, following a young boy home and then strangling his mother, Shirley Ruth Relford. He fled before killing her three children. Later that same year, Rader began stalking a woman named Nancy Jo Fox, eventually breaking into her home and strangling her to death.

Rader’s murder spree took a hiatus for nearly a decade, during which he lived a normal life, keeping his family in the dark about his crimes. But in 1985, he began concocting a plan to murder his neighbor, Marine Hedge. Not only did he strangle her to death, but he then stripped her body, brought her to his church, Christ Lutheran Church, and photographed her corpse throughout the premises, per Confession of a Serial Killer.

In 1986, while Rader was working for ADT Security Services installing security alarms, he encountered Vicki Wegerle. Pretending to work for a telephone company, he gained access to her home and, after a struggle, strangled her to death.

Rader’s final known victim was Dolores Davis, who lived in his neighborhood. In Jan. 1991, he smashed a glass door in her home to break in shortly after she went to bed. He first told her he was just going to steal her car, but he eventually tied her up and then strangled her. He then disposed of her body in a rural area.

Years later, it was discovered that Rader had also potentially been involved in the murder of two other people. In 2023, he was named a “prime suspect” in the two unsolved murders of Cynthia Dawn Kinney and Shawna Beth Garber after his former property was dug up and “items of interest were recovered at the residence.”

How was Dennis Rader caught?

Rader evaded capture for years despite having frequently contacted police and media to drop hints about his identity from 1974 to 1979. Rader first used the BTK pseudonym in a letter to The Wichita Eagle, taking credit for the Otero murders and calling out others who alleged they were the true killers.

After several other murders, Rader wrote letters to the Wichita Beacon as well as local television station KAKE, according to Confession of a Serial Killer. “How many do I have to kill, before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?” he said. Rader also taunted the authorities, calling the police after killing Fox to tell them where they could find her body.

As the investigation continued, officials discovered evidence including semen, a thumbprint and a partial palm print but were unable to find a match in the thousands of DNA samples they tested. While the murders were closely examined, the BTK Killer’s identity was still unknown by the early 2000s. It was considered a cold case — until Rader appeared once again around the 30th anniversary of the Otero murders.

In 2004, Rader resumed sending letters, including one to The Wichita Eagle, enclosing Wegerle’s drivers license and photos of the crime scene. This connected Wegerle to Rader’s crime spree for the first time, providing police with new evidence. He left several more packages around Wichita that year, which included sketches, writings, puzzles, graphic images and even a doll that had been bound in rope, per Confession of a Serial Killer.

Rader left a package in a Home Depot parking lot that helped investigators. Through security footage, they discovered that Rader drove a truck, which they could eventually trace to him through a floppy disk Rader had sent to a television station. With metadata stored on the disc, investigators traced it to Christ Lutheran Church and uncovered that one of the deleted files had been edited by Rader. When they later drove by his home, they found the same truck from Home Depot parked outside.

Authorities were then able to obtain a warrant to collect DNA from Rader’s daughter’s medical records. Testing proved a familial match to the crime scene DNA.

Rader was arrested on Feb. 25, 2005.

Was Dennis Rader charged with murder?

Shortly after being arrested, Rader was charged with 10 counts of first-degree murder, per The New York Times. When the case went to trial on June 27, 2005, Rader pleaded guilty to all charges, the outlet reported.

That same August, Rader was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences, according to The Washington Post, At the time, the death penalty was not enforced in the state of Kansas.

Where is Dennis Rader now?

For over two decades, Rader has been behind bars and serving time at El Dorado Correctional Facility.

While a judge initially ruled that Rader should not be allowed to “possess, receive or create any visual images of human beings or animals, including drawings,” per NBC News, in 2006, his prison restrictions were eased. Through a program designed to reward good behavior, Rader was granted permission to watch television, listen to the radio, read and draw in his prison cell.

Despite the eased restrictions, Rader is still only allowed out of his 8-foot-by-10-foot cell for one hour a day, five days a week.

In 2023, Rader’s daughter Kerri revealed that she had visited him for the first time in 18 years to help investigators uncover if her father had committed any other murders. She says it was the first time her father ever “dropped his mask and became BTK in front of me.”

“It took him a minute to process who I was,” Kerri told News Nation. “He’s lost like 7 inches and he’s in a wheelchair. He’s pretty much rotting to his core, so he didn’t even necessarily recognize me.”