All language subtitles for 5540

On the only 24-hour
radio news center in Kansas,

I'm Gordon Basham
with the 2:00 report.

30 years have gone by
since the serial killer

calling himself BTK took
the life of his first victim.

Now Wichita police say
they've solved the case

with the arrest of
a 59-year-old Park City man.

Today is a very historic day.

The bottom line,
BTK is arrested.

People in Wichita
had been terrorized

by the concept of this bind,
torture, kill individual

for 30 years, from '74 to 2005.

I thought, "This is a--
This is a master criminal."

I mean, he's eluded hundreds of
investigators over the years.

The man accused of being
the BTK serial killer

returns to a Kansas courtroom
this morning.

Everybody wanted to know
what this guy was about,

who this guy was,
and, more important,

how he could kill ten people,
including two children.

The hope is,
some of the burning questions

people here are asking

may be answered soon
by Rader himself.

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

Well, I mean,
I strangled Mrs. Otero,

and she went out--
Or passed out.

I thought she was dead.
She passed out.

Then I strangled Josephine.

It was so quiet
in that courtroom,

you could hear a fly landing

on a piece of paper
a mile away in there.

Dennis Rader
was in the center ring

of a three-ring circus,

and the spotlight was on him.

Because of his ego,
he loved that,

absolutely loved that.

At that point in time,
strangled her

for a death strangle
at that time.

With your hands?

There was no regret.

There was no, you know,
"I feel bad for doing this."

What happened then?

Oh, tried to find a place
to hide her,

hide the body.

Did you find a place?
Yes. Yes, I did.

You gotta be kidding me.

I looked at this, and I thought,

"That is what killed
all these women?"

Got her to the car, put her
in the trunk of the car.

When people watched the
televised courtroom confession

of Dennis Rader,

they basically thought
they knew the whole story.

But for me,
that was just the start.

Or say--

When you went before
Judge Waller and he asked you

to talk about the details
of all the crimes,

what was--what were
you thinking?

What was that like for you?

Were you feeling anything
when that was happening?

Was--

Okay.

I'm Dr. Katherine Ramsland,

professor
of forensic psychology.

I've been corresponding
with Dennis Rader

for over ten years

to try to understand
what led him to become

one of the most notorious
serial killers in America.

He really controlled Wichita
during that time period.

Rader wanted you to know
he was watching you,

he was aware of you.

He wants you to feel
his eyes on you.

That's so frightening.

I think it's very important
to understand

how any given individual could
become an extreme offender.

Why do they make
these life choices?

What kinds of mental states
do we see in these people?

The story isn't over,
because at this point,

we still don't know--
Or at least I don't know--

What caused Dennis Rader to
become the monster that he did.

I don't know. I'm not sure.

Do you know?
I think I know.

Dennis Rader is a monster.

Dennis Rader
is the worst of humanity.

I don't want the story
to go away

until we find out why.

Why did he decide that his life

was going to be that
of a killer?

This is the first time
that Rader has explored

these topics in depth
with anyone.

Why did you want
to put your story out there?

Each serial killer
has a unique set of factors

that turns him or her
into monsters.

The more information we have,

the more we understand
what makes them tick,

the easier it will be
to prevent them.

Serial killers have interested
me for about 30 years

and in part
because when I was a kid,

there was a serial killer
operating in my neighborhood

before anyone even used
the phrase "serial killer."

And my brother's friends

found the first body
on their farm.

An Eastern Michigan
University student

was charged today

with one of the seven
co-ed murders

in the Ann Arbor,
Michigan, area.

John Collins,
22-year-old student

at the university's
school of education...

John Norman Collins
is also known

as the Co-ed Killer

because co-eds from two
different university campuses

in the area were being
picked up and murdered.

It fascinated me to watch

the development of this case
in the newspapers,

and I wanted to find out more
about serial killers.

Later in life

as I became a professor
of forensic psychology,

extreme offenders

were something
we knew very little about,

and I wanted
to contribute to that.

I've published 68 books
and have 4 more in the works.

Not only do I write
about serial killers.

I'm constantly teaching.
I do police trainings.

I do a broad variety
of activities,

all surrounding my knowledge
of extreme offenders.

A lot of myths have cropped up

about serial killers,

so I especially want
to study cases

that show that these myths
just don't work.

And law enforcement
needs to understand this

so that they don't dismiss
a potential suspect too soon.

Dr. Katherine Ramsland

is one of the leading
serial killer experts.

She's helped us understand
how we might notice

certain behaviors
at a early age,

pick up on those behaviors,

and get help for those behaviors

before it's too late.

When Dennis Rader
was finally caught

and revealed to be
this older guy,

paunchy balding guy,

I was interested
in the media response to him.

This is a man--a family man

who went home to his wife
and two children every night.

Doctor, why were there
no red flags?

Why did nobody see this?

He was a church leader,
a family man

right there in the middle
of the community.

You know, I'm amazed
by that as well,

that nobody was able
to figure out

that this guy had this--

This secret life
that he was hiding.

The media wanted
a specific type of person

to fit the mold
of serial killer.

But he'd been a family man,
a churchgoer.

He had a job.

You know, he basically blasted
all the FBI stereotypes

out of the water.

One of the reasons
I wanted to work with him

was to look at someone
who appears to be an outlier

and see what he teaches us.

Because he's not unique.

There are others
who have been family men,

churchgoers,

seemingly normal people
who have these thoughts

and sometimes act
on these thoughts.

And so I think
it's important for us

to not just understand them

but also treat them before
they become serial killers.

My initial communications
with Dennis Rader

were kind of interesting.

He liked the fact that
I came in with credentials,

because it meant
he was being taken seriously.

But at the same time,
he wanted to test me.

He said he wanted me
to solve some codes,

and he liked working with codes.

He began to send me
cut-out pages from magazines

and newspapers
where he'd circle things,

and he'd make odd comments.

Like, at one point, he said,

"I understand you're interested

in recipes
of the three-layer kind."

I thought that was strange,
because I actually don't cook

and especially
three-layer recipes.

So I didn't really
quite get what he meant.

I put the whole alphabet down,
A, B, C, D, E, F.

And then I looked at each
of the pieces of paper

that had things circled
or items in his letter

that corresponded
to the A, B, C, D letters

and wrote everything
I could down.

But then I began to see
the things that he had circled,

like "beef,"

"tangy,"

"king."

So there's K.

And then it dawned on me what
the three-layer recipes were:

BTK,

for bind them,
torture them, kill them.

And so once I returned
the code to him

and said,
"Okay, what's next?"

He recognized not that
I had solved the code

but that I would play the game.

So your fantasy life
was more important to you

than your real life,
it sounds like.

There's a great value
in understanding Dennis Rader

and his motivations,

the things that made him
do what he did.

If we have more people
who are skilled

at recognizing
those aspects of a person

that might lead them in a path
of some criminal behavior,

whether it be a serial killer
or whatever,

if they can intervene,

I mean, think of the lives
that they'll save.

I would love it
that you could just

get some of this stuff
off your chest.

Your health is declining,

and I think it'd be
really great for you

to be able to just say
what you need to say.

Is that okay with you?

People refer to Wichita
as a big little small town.

And a lot of people don't
realize how big Wichita is.

It's the biggest city,
you know, in Kansas.

And Wichita is just
this very livable place

with very friendly people.

It's a small town
with small-town values,

neighborly people right
in the middle of the country.

Dennis Rader was raised
primarily in Wichita

and moved to the suburb of
Park City when he got married.

When I'm writing
about any person,

I want to see what they saw,

smell what they smelled,

feel the air.

Where did he work?

Kinds of travel routes
did he use?

It's almost as if I'm putting
myself in their headspace.

There's a psychology in it.

I'm in Wichita.

Haven't been here since 2016.

Are you ready to go?

Okay.

Dennis Rader is in El Dorado
Correctional Facility

in Kansas.

He's in a cell by himself,

apart from the general
population in the prison.

But he does have a phone
that he can use.

Okay.

Okay.

In order to produce
the kind of book I wanted,

I needed to get permission
from family members

of the victims
who had formed a trust.

Dennis Rader had signed over
his life rights

to the victims' family trust
as part of a settlement.

So Dennis Rader
gets absolutely no profit

from any of the work
I do with him.

So what's your cell like?

The way to approach
really any offender

is to be nonjudgmental.

That's the first rule.

You have to be able to listen
to what they have to say,

no matter what they have to say.

But at the same time,

you also must keep
your goals in mind.

You must set parameters

and keep some respect
in the process.

Is that why you call yourself
a cave monster?

Rader loves
to manipulate people.

And I know, despite a long
involvement with Dennis Rader,

I could easily be used
and exploited in some way.

So yeah, I have to keep my
guard up really all the time.

Dennis Rader was 28 years old

when he murdered four members
of the Otero family.

By all appearances,

Dennis Rader was an average joe,

and he lived in Wichita
his whole life

except for the years
from 1966 to 1970,

when he served in the air force.

I met the Rader family
before Dennis.

We went to church together
at Christ Lutheran.

I remember Dennis
coming back in '70

from the service.

It was a big deal.

All the people of the church
who had been there

for years knew him.

So they were welcoming him home

and, you know,
"How are you doing?"

And, "Where you going to work?"

We had an old basketball goal.

Dennis and his brothers
would play.

Dennis didn't like to lose.

He was a little bit
of a bully, arrogant,

older, better, whatever--

You know, those kind of things.

In 1970, Dennis Rader
returned from the air force,

and he's 25 years old.

The world that Dennis Rader's
coming back to, the Midwest,

puts a big emphasis
on family values,

where what matters
is going to church,

getting a job,

getting married,
and raising a family.

His parents wanted
to introduce him

to a girl at their church.

He met her and got married
pretty quickly.

What were you anticipating

when you thought
about getting married?

What were you anticipating
being as a husband?

The question
is commonly raised,

can serial killers--

Can they ever
really love someone?

If a serial killer
has what we call

the brain of a psychopath,

their emotions
tend to be shallow,

and their ability to process
moral information is distorted.

If Dennis Rader talks
about loving someone,

it could be
that he really doesn't

experience that very deeply.

Rader got his dream job,
as he would call it,

at Cessna, building aircraft.

But then a short time later,
he lost the job.

And this was
a big failure for him.

He couldn't figure out
why he'd been laid off.

And he also had the pressure
of how he'd support his wife.

You got a job at Cessna
which you loved, right?

Oh, yeah, yeah.

And then you were laid off.

Mm-hmm.
What was that like for you?

But why would that--
Why would getting laid off

get you to the point

where you want to break
in someone's house?

When you talk about
your organized offender,

which if you look from
Dennis Rader's perspective,

most of what he did would fall

into what we call
an organized-offender style...

They plan, and he actually

would execute practice sessions

to see what it was like
to break glass,

go through a house
he wasn't familiar with

until he thought he was ready.

He would try to get
the timing down

of his potential suspects,

then use that to have
a successful event.

That person wasn't involved
in your layoff.

Why would you pick
someone like that

to take out your frustration on?

Did it work?

When he got fired,
he was so angry

that he wanted to do
something destructive,

to act out against society.

And that meant breaking laws,
and that made him feel better.

It just gave him a sense
of being powerful again,

and he was ready to move forward

with something
far more serious and lethal.

In 1974, Wichita was just
a large Midwestern city.

About 250,000 people lived here.

The main jobs here
were agriculture and aviation.

What we didn't have here
is crime.

We had the occasional
burglaries and robberies,

but the bad stuff happened
on the East or West Coast.

It didn't happen
in Wichita, Kansas.

We ended up in Wichita
after my father

had gotten out of the air force.

He found a job here in Wichita
at Cook Airfield.

There were five of us kids
in the family.

I was the oldest.

Josie was very artistic,
creative.

She wrote poetry,
drew a lot of pictures.

Joey was just like a little man.

I mean, he was already
a lady-killer,

good-looking, totally athletic.

My mom and dad
had this relationship

of unbelievable love.

You know, he adored her.

It's the kind of love
you wish you could find.

They lived together,
and they died together.

They basically died
looking in each other's eyes.

In January of 1974,
I was 15 years old.

It had been snowing.

It was the day
of testing for school.

I asked my dad to take me
to school early that day

so that I could get
to that early study hall.

And Danny and Carmen
had to go with me

because they were riding
with him also.

Took my tests, aced everything.

I was walking home.

Walked over to the back gate,
opened it up,

and my dog, Lucky, was outside.

And that was totally not normal.

So I said, "Hey, Lucky,

what are you doing
out here, buddy?"

I went to the back door,
opened it up...

And I noticed
that my mom's purse

was on the stove, flipped up.

So I yelled out,
"Is anybody home?"

One of my siblings yelled out,

"Charlie, come back here.

Mom and dad are playing
a bad trick on us."

So I ran back down the hall.

I looked and saw my mom
laying on the bed.

She was beat up.

My dad had a belt
around his neck.

You could smell the death.

You could smell the fear.
You could smell all--

I could--to this day,
I can smell fear.

My heart just broke.

It felt like somebody
had ripped my chest wide open

and taken--and pulled
my heart out.

I told Danny to get on the phone

and call the police.

He yelled
that the phone was dead.

So I told Danny to go next door
and call the police.

Crime scene investigators

and detectives
from Wichita police showed up.

And the three
older Otero children

didn't know where their
11-year-old sister was

and 9-year-old brother.

When police went
through the house,

they also found Joey Jr.

Dead in his bedroom

and Josephine hanged
from a pipe in the basement.

They took us
to the police department.

I asked for Joey and Josie.

And finally, a police captain
and a chaplain came up to me

and said,
"Charlie, we gotta tell you

"that Joey and Josie...

were in the house."

And once again, it felt like
they'd ripped my heart out

all over again.

Sorry.

The crime scene
investigators noted

that the thermostat had been
turned extremely high.

Rader would often
take his ideas

from true-detective magazines
or fiction about crimes.

And so he had read
if you turn up the thermostat,

it makes bodies decompose faster

and foils the ability

to determine the time of death.

The lack of items stolen
would give you the indication

that the motive
behind these killings

was not a home invasion.

It was more for
the sexual gratification.

The police, when they found
11-year-old Josephine

partially clothed,

there was semen on her
and around her body.

DNA was not even on law
enforcement radar in the '70s.

And that's one
of the remarkable things

about this case is the way
the Wichita Police Department

original crime scene folks

collected that evidence
and maintained it

so that it was not contaminated

so that it was available for DNA

when DNA came along years later.

The Otero murders were
the first taste of a maniac

that we knew was loose
somewhere in Wichita,

somewhere in Kansas.

We thought it was a one-off,

a one-time deal.

We were wrong.

Now we're on our way to what
was once the Otero house

where Dennis Rader
committed his first murders,

four people in a single family.

Hi, Doctor.
Hello. How are you?

Pleasure to meet you.
You too.

Can you tell me something about
when you were here that day...

Sure.
What it was like?

We had no idea what was
going on here at all.

Detectives were
running in and out,

and no one would talk to me.

But you knew them?
I knew them.

And they knew you. Okay.
Yeah, I knew them.

And I'd go up to them,

and they'd say,
"Can't talk now. Busy."

In 1974, I was the chief
photographer for KAKE TV.

All the reporters there
were trying to get

the police department
to say something.

Finally, they said
that four people

had died in the house.

Well, that was huge.

Four people dying in a house
in Wichita, Kansas?

That just didn't happen.

The bodies of Joseph Otero,
his wife, Julie,

their daughter Josephine,
and their son Joseph II

were discovered
in their east Wichita home.

The victims had been bound,

gagged,
and strangled with a cord.

The investigators
looked shaken,

and it was basically
from the children,

what they saw and what had
been done to the children.

That would shake anybody.

Do you remember
where you spotted her?

When I talked to Dennis Rader,

he had targeted the wife,
not the children.

The children were just
collateral damage.

And he said it
in such a matter-of-fact way

that was haunting.

What was your plan?

What did you think
you were going to do that day?

He didn't know
that Joseph Otero Sr.

Was not going to work.

He also did not know
they had a dog.

All he's thinking about is,
he's picked them,

he has a limited time frame
in which to act,

and now he must
complete the plan.

What we do know
about psychopathic killers

is that they tend to overfocus.

So it's as if they're a train
on a track

that is not going to stop

till it gets to its goal,
no matter what.

As you talked to Dennis Rader,

did you feel at any point

that he was trying
to manipulate you?

Always.
Yeah.

But I always knew
that's how he operates.

You've researched
all these serial killers.

Do you have dreams?

I do not, in part, I think,
because I do it clinically.

Do you compartmentalize?
I probably do.

That's just
what Rader said he did.

He actually has
a better word for it: "cubing."

Rader's idea of cubing
is that he's the cube

with multiple sides
that he can switch in and out

at any given time
for whatever is necessary.

But he's still
all these other things.

After Rader
had killed four people,

he went home.

He knew that he had
to present himself to his wife

as if everything was normal.

So he pulled it together
very quickly and managed to act

as if it was just a regular day

and nothing had happened.

And in retrospect,

she didn't see anything
different about him.

So he was able
to cube very quickly.

We've been
tracking him down...

Dennis Rader and other
serial killers like him

can present themselves
in multiple ways,

whatever works
for their purposes,

and have no real concern

about any inconsistencies
or contradictions,

including moral judgments.

And so yes, he can say
he feels shame or remorse.

But that can all be
erased immediately

if he's trying to present
the face of BTK,

the infamous serial killer.

Did you think
you would do it again?

Did you think, "That's it.
I'm done.

It's out of my system,"
or did you think--

Okay.

It was horrible for people
here in Wichita,

which was pretty much
a sleepy little town,

to all of a sudden find

that this major massacre
of a family

had happened right here

in our--in our community.

It was a huge story.

Most people at that time
thought it was a drug deal,

because no person
in their right mind

would kill a family.

That didn't happen at all.

Quadruple homicides today

are still rare, thankfully,

but you can imagine
how rare they were then

and then the kind
of attention that

that kind of a homicide garnered

and the public outrage
and the public fear

and the demands
that those investigators felt

when lead after lead after lead
led them nowhere.

In 1974,
no one in law enforcement

was using the phrase
"serial killer."

It would really end up
being used later that decade

and into the 1980s.

But nobody really understood
what serial murder was about,

in particular stranger murder.

Fear spread quickly
in the community.

People began looking
over their shoulders.

Doors and windows
were locked tight.

Gun sales skyrocketed.

And the prevailing paranoia
was not without good reason.

The Otero murders
changed the life,

I would think, of everybody
in the city at that time.

It did in our own household.

We did not lock a door
in our house

until January of '74.

When we were talking
to the police detectives

over a series of days

and we were starting
to find out what's happened,

it reminded me very much

of the "In Cold Blood" murders

in Holcomb, Kansas, in the '50s.

It reminded me of that
because I had been

at the hanging of
Richard Hickock and Smith.

The Clutter family was killed

by a couple of recently
released prison inmates

that had been falsely told

that they had a safe
full of money at this farm.

The prison inmates decided
to pull this home invasion.

Showed up, killed the family,

the four that were present,
in cold blood

for just a small amount
of money and a radio,

a transistor radio.

When news of the Clutter
murders rocked Kansas,

it made a deep impression
on Rader.

You did hear that on the radio
when it happened?

Dennis Rader was especially
interested in the fact

that they had been bound
with rope before being killed,

because he himself loved
the feel of ropes

around his waist.

And also, in his fantasies,

he would be using rope
to bind his victims.

So the fact
that the Clutter family

had been bound with rope
appealed to him.

After Rader
murdered the Oteros,

he took a radio

as if to establish
some link of solidarity

to the Clutter killers,
who also had taken a radio.

Rader aspired to become
a serial killer.

So that meant
he needed to study them

in order to figure it out.

I think most serial killers
are not very creative

or bright
about what they're doing.

And they do tend to read

what other killers
like themselves have done.

And yet Rader, I think,
took that to an extreme,

where most of what he did
or thought about

had been done before
by someone else.

He really was not that creative.

And in order to become

the serial killer
he aspired to be,

after the Oteros,
he had to kill again.

After the Oteros,

the Kathryn Bright murder
wasn't very long afterward.

Didn't you think that was risky?

At this point,
he was going about his life

as a student
at Wichita State University

and a husband
and hoping to start a family.

It takes a different
type of mentality

to commit a crime
during daylight hours--

More confidence
and the ability to blend in--

Than it would to work
under the cover of darkness.

So that tells you a little bit
about the mentality

and the planning that was
going into these crimes.

When you had picked out
Kathryn Bright,

how long did--how long
did you watch her

before you decided to act?

Kathryn Bright
was a 21-year-old girl

who lived alone.

She had a brother who was 19
who lived in Valley Center.

One night, he spent the night
with his sister

so they could go shopping
the next morning,

and they got up,
and they went shopping.

A normal day at that point.

BTK prided himself
on meticulous planning,

or at least he thought he did.

He knew who Kathryn Bright was.

He had monitored her
for a while.

But he was not
expecting a brother.

Well, the brother came in,

and BTK had to do something
with the brother,

because the brother
was immediate threat.

He tied me up,
had me tie my sister up,

and he separated us
into separate bedrooms.

And he came back in and was
gonna strangle me to death.

And I broke loose the bonds
he had me tied up with

and jumped up
and fought him for the gun.

He jerked it away from me,

and then he shot me
the first time in the head.

And I went down,
and then he thought I was dead.

This was not
in BTK's plan at all.

He was there to kill
Kathryn Bright

and to do all
of the torturous things

that he did to Kathryn Bright.

A brother?
That wasn't in the plan.

So a second fight entails.

He once again shoots him,

thinks he's killed him,
and goes back

to attack Kathryn
once more time.

And next thing he heard
was the front door open,

and Kevin's running away.

So he knew his time was limited.

So he didn't get to do
everything he wanted to do.

He said he knew he had
to kill her and just move on,

so he stabbed her.

But as soon as he had
stabbed Kathryn Bright,

he realized this was not
what he wanted to do.

What he liked
was to strangle people,

to bind them and strangle them.

Stabbing was not in the picture,

and never again did he use it.

When did you first feel
like you were a serial killer?

Now that Rader
had murdered people

in two separate incidents

in unrelated locations,

he instinctively knew
he was among

the rare group of killers
that grabbed headlines.

Motiveless, random killings,

sometimes thousands
of miles apart.

A Justice Department
investigator calls it

terrifying, an epidemic.

They're known as serial killers.

And according to
law enforcement officials,

there are at least 35 of them

roaming the country now,
stalking victims.

Dennis Rader had aspired
to become a serial killer.

And with these murders,

he had become BTK.

He loved murder.

He loved the idea
that he was a serial killer.

Why did you like hanging cats?

Although he looked normal
on the outside,

it just gives you
a glimpse of the monster

that was living inside him.

We have no solid leads at all.

That was like an atomic bomb
going off in the city.

"How many people
do I have to kill

"before I get my name
in the paper?

BTK."