Wichita Serial Killers - omgmovies76’s blog

Rader s mugshot at the El Dorado Correctional Facility

Dennis Lynn Rader born March 9, 1945 is an American serial killer who murdered ten people in Sedgwick County in and around Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991.

He is known as the BTK killer or the BTK strangler. BTK stands for Bind, Torture, Kill, which was his infamous signature. He sent letters describing the details of the killings to police and local news outlets during the time period in which the murders took place.

After a long hiatus in the 1990s through early 2000s, Rader resumed sending letters in 2004, leading to his 2005 arrest and subsequent conviction. He is currently serving 10 consecutive life sentences at El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.

Contents

1 Early life

2 Personal life

3 Victims

4 Case history

4.1 1974–2000

4.2 2001–2005

5 Arrest

6 Legal proceedings

6.1 Further investigations

6.2 Robert Mendoza

7 Media

8 See also

9 References

10 Further reading

11 External links

11.1 Films

Early life edit

Dennis Rader is the oldest of four sons, born to Dorothea Mae Rader née Cook and William Elvin Rader. 1 Though born in Pittsburg, Kansas, he grew up in Wichita. According to several reports, including his own confessions, as a child he tortured animals. 2 He also harbored a sexual fetish for women s underwear and would steal underpants from his victims and wear them himself. 3

Personal life edit

Rader spent four years 1966–1970 in the United States Air Force. 3 Upon discharge, he moved to Park City, a suburb located seven miles north of Wichita. He worked for a time in the meat department of Leekers IGA supermarket in Park City alongside his mother, a bookkeeper for the store. 4

Rader attended Butler County Community College in El Dorado, earning an associate degree in electronics in 1973. 5 He then enrolled at Wichita State University and graduated in 1979 with a bachelor s degree in administration of justice. He married Paula Dietz on May 22, 1971, and they had two children. 6 7

Rader worked as an assembler for Coleman Company, an outdoor supply company, and then, from 1974 until 1988, worked at the Wichita-based office of ADT Security Services, a home security company. He installed security alarms as a part of his job; many of his clients booked the company to stop BTK from entering their homes, unaware that BTK himself was installing them. 6 8 Rader was a census field operations supervisor for the Wichita area in 1989, prior to the 1990 federal census. 9 He then became a dogcatcher and compliance officer in Park City. 6 10 11 In this position, neighbors recalled him as being sometimes overzealous and extremely strict; one neighbor complained that he euthanized her dog for no reason. 12 On March 2, 2005, the Park City council terminated Rader s employment for failure to report to work or to call in. He had been arrested for the murders five days earlier. 13

Rader was a member of Christ Lutheran Church and had been elected president of the church council. 6 14 He was also a Cub Scout leader. 6 On July 26, 2005, after Rader s arrest, Sedgwick County District Judge Eric Yost waived the usual 60-day waiting period and granted an immediate divorce for his wife, agreeing that her mental health was in danger. Rader did not contest the divorce, and the 34-year marriage was ended. Paula Rader said in her divorce petition that her mental and physical condition had been adversely affected by the marriage. 7 15

Victims edit

All of Rader s known crimes occurred within the state of Kansas. He killed ten people in total and collected items from each murder scene. He also intended to kill others, notably Anna Williams, 63, who in 1979 escaped death by returning home much later than he expected. Rader explained during his confession that he had become obsessed with Williams and was absolutely livid when she evaded him. Rader spent hours waiting in her home but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends. 16 Two of the women Rader had stalked in the 1980s and one he had stalked in the mid-1990s filed restraining orders against him; one of them also moved away. 17

Rader admitted in his interrogation that he had been planning to kill again. He had set a date, October 2004, and was stalking his intended victim. 17

Name

Sex

Age

Date of Death

Place of Death

Cause of Death

Weapon Used

Date Body Found

Place Body Found

Joseph Otero

January 15, 1974

803 North Edgemoor Street, Wichita

Suffocated

Plastic bags

Julie Otero

Strangled

Rope

Joseph Otero, Jr.

Plastic bag

Josephine Otero

Hanged from a drainage pipe

Kathryn Bright

April 4, 1974

3217 East 13th Street North, Wichita

Stabbed once in back and lower abdomen

Knife

Shirley Vian

March 17, 1977

1311 South Hydraulic Street, Wichita

Nancy Fox

December 8, 1977

843 South Pershing Street, Wichita

Belt

Marine Hedge

April 27, 1985

6254 North Independence Street, Park City

Hand s

May 5, 1985

East 53rd Street North between North Webb Road and North Greenwich Road, Wichita

Vicki Wegerle

September 16, 1986

2404 West 13th Street North, Wichita

Nylon stocking

Dolores E. Davis

January 19, 1991

6226 North Hillside Street, Wichita

Pantyhose

February 1, 1991

West 117th Street North and North Meridian Street, Sedgwick

Case history edit

1974–2000 edit

Rader was particularly known for sending taunting letters to police and newspapers. 18 19 20 He authored several communications from 1974 to 1979. The first was a letter that had been stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974 that described, in detail, the killing of the Otero family in January of that year. 9 In early 1978, he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the murders of the Oteros, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, and Kathryn Bright. 9 He suggested a number of possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed titled Oh. Death to Nancy, a botched version of the lyrics to the American folk song O Death. 21 22

In 1988, after the murders of three members of the Fager family in Wichita, a letter was received from someone claiming to be the BTK killer in which he denied being the perpetrator of this crime. He did credit the killer with having done admirable work. It was not proven until 2005 that this letter was in fact written by Rader, and he is not considered by police to have committed this crime. 22

2001–2005 edit

By 2004, the investigation of the BTK Killer had gone cold. Then, Rader began a series of 11 communications to the local media that led directly to his arrest in February 2005. In March 2004, The Wichita Eagle received a letter from someone using the return address Bill Thomas Killman. The author of the letter claimed that he had murdered Vicki Wegerle on September 16, 1986, and enclosed photographs of the crime scene and a photocopy of her driver s license, which had been stolen at the time of the crime. 23 Prior to this, it had not been definitively established that Wegerle had been killed by BTK. 23 DNA collected from under Wegerle s fingernails provided police with previously unknown evidence. They then began DNA testing hundreds of men in an effort to find the serial killer. 24 All together, over 1300 DNA samples were taken and later destroyed by court order. 25

In May 2004, a letter containing chapter headings for the BTK Story, fake IDs and a word puzzle were received by KAKE. 4 On June 9, 2004, a package was found taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas in Wichita. It contained graphic descriptions of the Otero murders and a sketch labeled The Sexual Thrill Is My Bill. 26 Also enclosed was a chapter list for a proposed book titled The BTK Story, which mimicked a story written in 1999 by Court TV crime writer David Lohr. Chapter One was titled A Serial Killer Is Born. citation needed In July, a package was dropped into the return slot at the downtown public library containing more bizarre material, including the claim that he was responsible for the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen in Argonia, Kansas earlier that month. This claim was found to be false and the death was ruled a suicide. 27 In October 2004, a manila envelope was dropped into a UPS box in Wichita. It contained a series of cards with images of terror and bondage of children pasted on them, a poem threatening the life of lead investigator Lt. Ken Landwehr and a false autobiography containing many details about Rader s life. These details were later released to the public. citation needed

In December 2004, Wichita police received another package from the BTK killer. 28 This time, the package was found in Wichita s Murdock Park. It contained the driver s license of Nancy Fox, which was noted as stolen from the crime scene, as well as a doll that was symbolically bound at the hands and feet and had a plastic bag tied over its head. 27 In January 2005, Rader attempted to leave a cereal box in the bed of a pickup truck at a Home Depot in Wichita, but the box was discarded by the truck s owner. It was later retrieved from the trash after Rader asked what had become of it in a later message. Surveillance tape of the parking lot from that date revealed a distant figure driving a black Jeep Cherokee leaving the box in the pickup. In February, more postcards were sent to KAKE, and another cereal box left at a rural location was found to contain another bound doll, apparently meant to symbolize the murder of 11-year-old Josephine Otero. citation needed

In his letters to police, Rader asked if his writings, if put on a floppy disk, could be traced or not. The police answered his question in a newspaper ad posted in the Wichita Eagle saying it would be safe to use the disk. On February 16, 2005, Rader sent a purple 1.44-MB Memorex floppy disk to Fox TV affiliate KSAS-TV in Wichita. 29 30 Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion, and a photocopy of the cover of a 1989 novel about a serial killer Rules of Prey. 30 Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document that was, unbeknownst to Rader, on the floppy disk. 31 The metadata contained Christ Lutheran Church, and the document was marked as last modified by Dennis. 32 An internet search determined that a Dennis Rader was president of the church council. 29 From the Home Depot incident, the police also knew BTK owned a black Jeep Cherokee. When investigators drove by Rader s house, they noticed a black Jeep Cherokee parked outside. 33

The police now had strong circumstantial evidence against Rader, but they needed more direct evidence in order to detain him. 34 They obtained a warrant to test the DNA of a pap smear Rader s daughter had taken at the Kansas State University medical clinic while she was a student there. The DNA of the pap smear was processed by the Kansas Bureau of Investigation at their laboratory in Topeka and demonstrated a familial match to the DNA of the sample taken from the victim Vicki Wegerle s fingernails. This indicated that the killer was closely related to Rader s daughter, and was the evidence the police needed to make an arrest. 35

Arrest edit

Rader was stopped while driving near his home in Park City and taken into custody shortly after noon on February 25, 2005. 36 Once in handcuffs, Rader was asked by an officer, Mr. Rader, do you know why you re going downtown. to which he replied, Oh, I have suspicions why. 37 38 Immediately after, law enforcement officials, including a Wichita Police bomb unit truck, two SWAT trucks, and KBI, FBI, and ATF agents, converged on Rader s residence near the intersection of I-135 and 61st Street North. 38 Police searched Rader s home and vehicle, collecting evidence, including computer equipment, a pair of black pantyhose retrieved from a shed, and a cylindrical container. The church he attended, his office at City Hall, and the main branch of the Park City library were also searched that day. Officers were seen removing a computer from his City Hall office, but it is unclear if any evidence was found at these locations. citation needed At a press conference the next morning, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams announced, the bottom line: BTK is arrested. 39 40

Legal proceedings edit

On February 28, 2005, Rader was formally charged with 10 counts of first degree murder. 41 The Sunday after his arrest, the Associated Press cited an anonymous source alleging that Rader had confessed to other murders in addition to the ones to which he had already been connected. 42 When asked about the reported confessions, Sedgwick County District Attorney Nola Foulston said, Your information is patently false, but refused to say whether Rader had made any confessions or whether investigators were looking into Rader s possible involvement in more unsolved killings. 43 On March 5, news sources claimed to have verified by multiple sources that Rader had confessed to the 10 murders he was charged with, but no additional ones. 44

He made his first court appearance via video conference on March 1, 2005, from jail. District Judge Greg Waller Tuesday set his bail at 10 million and appointed a public defender to represent him at a preliminary hearing on March 15. 45 On May 3, Waller entered not guilty pleas to the 10 charges on Rader s behalf, as Rader did not speak at his arraignment. 46 On June 27, the scheduled trial date, Rader changed his plea to guilty. He described the murders in detail and made no apologies. 47 48 49

He faced sentencing on August 18, 2005. Victims families made statements and were followed by Rader, who apologized for his crimes in a rambling, bizarre 30-minute monologue that District Attorney Nola Foulston likened to an Academy Awards acceptance speech. 50 He was sentenced to serve 10 consecutive life sentences, one life sentence per murder victim. In total, Rader would be eligible for parole after 175 years of imprisonment, in 2180. 51 Because Kansas had no death penalty at the time the murders were committed, life imprisonment was the maximum penalty allowed by law. 50

On August 19, Rader was moved from the Sedgwick County Jail to the El Dorado Correctional Facility, a Kansas state prison, to begin serving his consecutive life sentences as Kansas Department of Corrections 0083707. His earliest possible release date is February 26, 2180. 52 According to witnesses, Rader talked about innocuous topics such as the weather during the 40-minute drive from Wichita to El Dorado, but began to cry when the victims families statements from the court proceedings came on the radio. Rader is now being held in the EDCF Special Management unit, also known as solitary confinement, for the inmate s own protection. This is a designation he will most likely retain for the remainder of his incarceration. He is confined to his cell for 23 hours a day with the exception of voluntary solo one-hour exercise yard time and access to the shower three times a week. 53 Beginning April 23, 2006, Rader reached Incentive Level Two and has been allowed to purchase and watch television, purchase and listen to the radio, receive and read magazines, and receive other privileges for good behavior. The victims families disagreed with this decision. citation needed According to Rader s record in the Kansas Department of Corrections database, he had a Class Two disciplinary report concerning mail on April 10, 2006. 52

Further investigations edit

Following Rader s arrest, police in Wichita, Park City, and several surrounding cities looked into unsolved cases with the cooperation of the state police and the FBI. They particularly focused on cases after 1994, when the death penalty was reinstated in Kansas. Police in surrounding states such as Nebraska, Missouri, Colorado, Oklahoma, and Texas also investigated cold cases that fit Rader s pattern to some extent. The FBI, Civil Air Patrol, 54 and local jurisdictions at Rader s former duty stations checked into unsolved cases during Rader s time in the service.

After exhaustive investigations, none of these agencies discovered any further murders attributable to Rader, confirming early suspicions that Rader would have taken credit for any additional murders that he had committed. The 10 known murders are now believed to be the only murders that Rader is actually responsible for, although Wichita police are fairly certain that Rader stalked and researched a number of other potential future victims. This includes one person who was saved when Rader called off his planned attack upon his arrival near the target s home due to the presence of construction and road crews near her home. In his police interview, Rader stated that there are a lot of lucky people, meaning that he had thought about and developed various levels of murder plans for other victims. 55

Robert Mendoza edit

Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza was hired by Rader s court-appointed public defenders to conduct a psychological evaluation for Rader and determine if an insanity-based defense might be viable. He conducted an interview after Rader pled guilty on June 27. NBC claimed Rader knew the interview might be on TV, but this was false according to the Sedgwick County Sheriff s Department. Rader mentioned the interview during his sentencing statement. On October 25, 2005, the Kansas attorney general filed a petition to sue Mendoza and Tali Waters, co-owners of Cambridge Forensic Consultants, LLC, for breach of contract, claiming that they intended to benefit financially from the use of information obtained through involvement in Rader s defense. On May 10, 2007, Mendoza settled the case for 30,000 with no admission of wrongdoing. 56

Media edit

The writer Stephen King says his novella A Good Marriage, and the film based on it, was inspired by the BTK killer. 57

Musician Steven Wilson s track Raider II off his album Grace for Drowning is based on the murders of Rader. 58

Further reading edit

Beattie, Robert. Nightmare In Wichita: The Hunt for the BTK Strangler. New American Library, 2005. ISBN 0-451-21738-1.

Davis, Jeffrey M. The Shadow of Evil: Where Is God in a Violent World.. Kendall/Hunt Publishing Company, 1996. ISBN 0-7872-1981-9. Davis is the son of BTK victim Dolores Davis.

Douglas, John E. Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind Thirty Years of Hunting for the Wichita Serial Killer. Jossey Bass Wiley, 2007. ISBN 978-0-7879-8484-7.

Singular, Stephen. Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer. Scribner Book Company, 2006. ISBN 1-4001-5252-6.

Smith, Carlton. The BTK Murders: Inside the Bind Torture Kill Case that Terrified America s Heartland. St. Martin s True Crime, 2006. ISBN 0-312-93905-1.

Wenzl, Roy; Potter, Tim; Laviana, Hurst; Kelly, L. Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of the Serial Killer Next Door. HC an imprint of HarperCollins, 2007. ISBN 978-0-06-124650-0.

Welch, Larry. Beyond Cold Blood: The KBI from Ma Barker to BTK. Univ Pr of Kansas, 2012. ISBN 978-0700618859.

External links edit

Wikinews has related news: Suspect in BTK killings arrested after 25 years in hiding

B.T.K. – The Worlds Most Elusive Serial Killer

Sedgwick County 18th Judicial District collection of legal documents on the Rader case

The Wichita Eagle Collection of articles and videos about BTK

KAKE Collection of articles and videos on BTK

Dennis Rader s listing on the Kansas Department of Corrections Kansas Adult Supervised Population Electronic Repository site, including current location and disciplinary actions.

Finding BTK Investigation Discovery

Films edit

The Hunt for the BTK Killer 2005 at the Internet Movie Database

B.T.K. Killer 2005 at the Internet Movie Database

B.T.K. 2008 at the Internet Movie Database

Feast of the Assumption: BTK and the Otero Family Murders 2010 at the Internet Movie Database

Retrieved from https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php.title Dennis_Rader oldid 666871543

Categories: 1945 birthsLiving peopleAmerican LutheransAmerican mass murderersAmerican murderers of childrenAmerican people convicted of murderAmerican prisoners sentenced to life imprisonmentAmerican serial killersMale serial killersPeople with antisocial personality disorderCriminals from KansasPeople convicted of murder by KansasPeople from Pittsburg, KansasPeople from Sedgwick County, KansasPeople from Wichita, KansasAmerican torturersPrisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by KansasUnited States Air Force personnelWichita State University alumniButler Community College alumni20th-century American criminals.

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Crime-- BTK murders, Wichita. 6 Pins; 34 Followers; There are no Pins on this board yet Serial Killers Crime Scene, Btk Murders, Crime Scene Photos, Btk Killers.

Sep 26, 2014 Kerri Rawson, the daughter of Wichita, Kansas, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader, broke the family s nine-year silence Thursday and talked about her father.

Kerri Rawson, the daughter of Wichita, Kansas, BTK serial killer Dennis Rader, broke the family s nine-year silence Thursday and talked about her father s 10 murders.

An interview by writer Stephen King about the upcoming movie A Good Marriage prompted her to break the self-imposed silence, she said.

The movie, adapted from one of King s short stories, is about a wife who suddenly discovers her husband is a serial killer.

Rawson, 36, learned on Wednesday that the movie was inspired by her father and her family.

He s exploiting my father s 10 victims and their families, she said.

She said she, her brother and her mother didn t know that her father was BTK until the FBI told her in February 2005, shortly after Dennis Rader s arrest.

She said her father is where he belongs, in prison. She has never visited him there. I haven t been brave enough for that yet, she said.

He has said he is sorry, but that means nothing, she said of her father. He is not worth all the books and the news stories and all the attention.

And she criticized King, who gave interviews in recent days saying the novella and movie were inspired by the BTK murders, and how the killer lived for years with a family who had no idea what he was doing. A Good Marriage is a story in the collection Full Dark, No Stars, which was published in 2010.

King until Wednesday was one of her favorite writers, she said.

He s just going to give my father a big head, and he absolutely does not need that, she said. Great – now Stephen King is giving my father a big head. Thanks for that. That s the last thing my dad should get.

She said King will make money, as she said he always does, only this time from the grief of all the victim families. How many millions does he already have. she said.

Any money King makes off this story should go either to abused children, battered wives, or police, Rawson said.

She said she s read at least a dozen Stephen King novels and loved them all but won t read another. She said her father was also a huge King fan – she worries that King s books might have influenced some of the bad things her father did in some of his later murders.

We feel exploited, she said of her family. We consider ourselves the 11th victim family. Stephen King has the right to tell a story, but why bring us into it. Why couldn t he just find inspiration for another good story, but leave out where it all came from.

They never knew

Rawson lives in Michigan; she married her husband, Darian, 11 years ago, with Dennis Rader giving her away at the wedding.

She is a stay-at-home mother and a former elementary school teacher; she has two young children, a boy and girl. Dennis Rader knows he has grandchildren, she said, but she has never sent him pictures.

She and her family were hounded by the media after her father s arrest. They hid, and talked through doors, asking people to go away.

Oprah called. Diane Sawyer called. I saw my father s picture on CNN. It was insane, Rawson said.

She said it hurt to hear that Ken Landwehr died of kidney cancer earlier this year. Landwehr was the Wichita police homicide unit commander who devised the strategy to capture her father after the serial killer resurfaced with taunting messages sent to police and the media in 2004.

Landwehr and Kelly Otis a police detective on the BTK task force were very kind to me and my family, Rawson said. They helped us get through it, talked to us with a lot of kindness. I am sure they kept a lot of media crap away from us afterward. And there was a lot of that.

She s grateful to Landwehr for two other reasons.

He and his task force removed a serial killer from freedom. And they publicly defended the rest of the family, saying in interviews that they were sure the other Raders, including her mother, Paula, did not know what Dennis was doing in the 31 years that he stalked women, killed 10 people and remained free.

In the nine years since her father s capture in February 2005, a statement she and her mother Paula have heard repeatedly was that Paula knew all along.

No way could she have known, Rawson said. She wouldn t have raised us with him.

Otis said she s right.

It s absolutely true; they never knew about it, Otis said.

Otis, now chief of investigations for the Sedgwick County district attorney, said he thinks it is unfortunate that King is basing the short story on the BTK story.

Dennis Rader got sexually aroused every time he relived what he did to those victims, Otis said. I can absolutely guarantee that that s what he will do now that he ll know that King is basing this story on him.

King s inspiration

Katherine Monoghan, a publicist for King, who is scheduled to speak in Wichita on Nov. 14, said King was traveling by air on Thursday and wasn t available to respond to Rawson s comments.

But on King s website he wrote this about the inspiration for his short story, A Good Marriage :

This story came to my mind after reading an article about Dennis Rader, the infamous BTK bind, torture, and kill murderer who took the lives of ten people – mostly women, but two of his victims were children – over a period of roughly sixteen years.

In many cases, he mailed pieces of his victims identification to the police. Paula Rader was married to this monster for thirty-four years, and many in the Wichita area, where Rader claimed his victims, refuse to believe that she could live with him and not know what he was doing.

I did believe – I do believe – and I wrote this story to explore what might happen in such a case if the wife suddenly found out about her husband s awful hobby.

I also wrote it to explore the idea that it s impossible to fully know anyone, even those we love the most.

A synopsis of King s story on the website says: Darcy Anderson learns more about her husband of over twenty years than she would have liked to know when she stumbles literally upon a box under a worktable in their garage.

He was confessing

Dennis Rader remains in special management at El Dorado Correctional Facility, prison records show.

He has been held there since Aug. 19, 2005, according to Kansas Department of Corrections records. His earliest possible release date is listed as Feb. 26, 2180, long beyond a human lifetime.

He has received only one disciplinary report in those nine years, for a mail-related violation.

His latest prison mug shot, taken in early 2013, shows a man who looks noticeably older, with a deeply creased forehead and disheveled hair on both sides of the bald top of his head.

Her father is now 69, Rawson said. Her mother is 66, and retired.

Rawson said the FBI came to her door in Michigan in February 2005.

At first I tried to argue, she said. I get a knock on my door at noon in Michigan. The FBI is telling me my dad is this other person. I didn t believe it and tried to alibi my dad: What dates are you talking about. What time periods are we talking about here. I tried, but then quickly found out there was no other way around it, it was true.

He was confessing.

The media hounded her mother, her grandmother, the rest of her family in Wichita. They hounded her in Michigan, she said. They offered friends and relatives money to talk. It was awful, she said. I think my mother and I both suffer from some PTSD from what happened.

It shattered her and her brother s lives and emotions, she said. Both were bright children. Her brother, Brian, had been an Eagle scout and was in training to serve in U.S. Navy submarines when Dennis Rader was arrested, she said, noting that you can t do anything like that unless you re really bright.

Her brother served on Navy submarines from 2004 to 2009, she said. He s going to college on the GI Bill, she said. She worries that he is struggling.

He doesn t have the kids and the family that I have, she said. And that s really all I should say about him.

She has two degrees, one in education, one in life sciences, from Kansas State University, she said. But they all had to go into hiding. She and her mother sought counseling.

The hardest thing: Once you find out this horrible stuff about someone you loved and live with, you had to really work through it, Rawson said.

She said she would never have made it without the strength of her husband, her mother and her Christian faith. You just decide this is what life gave you, Rawson said. And you decide to go on.

Her mother, who still lives in the Wichita area, is one of her heroes. She held her head up, kept her life quiet, kept going to church – she is amazing, she said.

Her own daughter, a child, has begun to ask questions. She s realized she s got these two grandmothers – but where is her grandfather. Rawson said. She s seen our wedding video. My father gave me away at the wedding. What father wouldn t do that.

I didn t want to lie, Rawson said. So I ve told my daughter he s in prison. I have not told her why. I told her that her grandpa did bad things. And because it s sometimes really hard to get through a day, I sometimes tell her that her mom is having a really bad day.

I know it s all crazy. Anybody who met my dad, who knew him – to hear that he s this other thing, this killer. It is very hard for everyone who knew him to wrap their heads around it.

He was my dad

The last time she saw her father: Christmas 2004. BTK had resurfaced the previous March. He would be caught two months later, in February 2005.

She can t bring herself to go see him in prison, she said. But she has written occasionally, Is it true.

And her father has occasionally written back.

She accepts none of his explanations for what he did.

In her home, growing up, she loved him.

He was everything, Rawson said. He was just a dad. He taught us about nature. How to fish. How to go camping. How to garden. He taught me a ton. He took us on good vacations. He was pretty Boy Scouty – no swearing.

In her home in Park City as a child, she said, their father disciplined her and her brother for mistakes – for not picking up their shoes, or for swearing, or for sitting in his favorite chair at the kitchen table. But, she said, he never abused us in any way.

He s just this guy.

I have never hated him. I was extremely hurt by him I loved him, after all. He was my dad. So I was extremely angry and hurt.

One of the worst parts: wondering, did he really love us.

Or was it just a facade.

I m glad they caught him

In 2012, she said, she stood up in her church I am a non-denominational evangelical Christian, she said. I told my story to 200 women, she said.

That brought a measure of relief, though she told the women she d never forgive her father.

But some time after that, at Christmas time, on the way home from a movie, she decided to forgive her father – to bring some peace to herself, though not necessarily for him. God gave me that forgiveness, she said. My faith is my rock under me.

She wrote a six-page letter to her dad, explaining that her forgiveness comes with caveats: That she will never understand what he did, or why. That what he did makes no sense.

No matter what the books or the stories have said, he s not a monster, she said. He s just a guy who did the worst thing possible, 10 times in 17 years.

He belongs in prison.

I m glad they caught him.

I cannot imagine being one of the victim families and to endure what they must have gone through.

Letter from Dennis Rader s daughter

On Thursday, Kerri Rawson sent a letter titled: A letter to Stephen King, the media from Dennis Rader s daughter.

She included her phone number and e-mail.

The letter from her reads as follows:

To The Eagle, The Wichita TV Media Mr. Stephen King. My family is done, we are tired. We are not news, we are not a story to be exploited profited on, to be twisted retold to your liking whenever you want. Leave us, the families the community out of it.

My dad is not a monster, that s elevating him. He s just a man, who choose to do some of the most horrible things a person can do. Not a monster, a man. A man who took 10 precious lives tried to destroy countless others. He s not worth the attention.

My mom is the strongest bravest woman I know. She doesn t need her life re-spun in a story or on the big screen. Her life is a true testament of all that is good right in this world.

My family has tried hard to fight the good fight, to stand on our faith live out a peaceful life. So let us live that life please, leave us out of it. Out of the noise chaos the ugly the awful.

Kerri Rader Rawson.

Were serial killings in Wichita a plague or because of better detection. Police in Wichita, Kan., like to joke the chief of their homicide squad has serial killers on.