After a series of brutal killings, dating back to the 1970s and continuing as long as the early 1990s, Dennis Rader pleaded guilty to his crimes in 2005. He made no apologies at the time.
Dennis Rader, 59 at the time of his arrest in 2005, was president of his local church and a Boy Scout leader. He was also married with two children, and worked for the city as supervisor of the Compliance Department. Unlike some of the other killers I have written about, I haven't found anything to suggest Rader's childhood -- or indeed his everyday life -- was at all unsual. He graduated from high school, achieved Associate's and Bachelor's degrees from university and served briefly in the Air Force.
Until 2004, the BTK killer -- as he liked to be called, standing for "bind, torture, kill" -- was an unsolved mystery. He had been silent since the early 1990s, and it was speculated that he had most likely either died or was in prison. Exactly why he did stop killing and communicating is unclear, but in 2004 he broke his silence -- inspired by a recently-published book about him, "Nightmare in Wichita" by Robert Beattie.
What Rader does share with other mass murderers like this is his arrogance, and an obsessive desire for attention. Like Jack the Ripper and David Berkowitz, Rader wrote letters to the police and the media -- sometimes complaining about a lack of media interest, and suggesting a list of nicknames for himself. In one of his letters Rader explained that he didn't often get the urge to kill, that it wasn't continuous for him, and he would return to his normal life like anyone else. He also compared himself to various other infamous serial killers, including the Son of Sam, Ted Bundy and the Boston Strangler, among others.
Rader was meticulous in his planning of his kills. He would choose a victim almost at random from the street, and then stalk them until he knew the pattern of their lives. He would then break into their homes, cut the phone line, and wait for the victim to return home. It might be significant he had worked for a time installing security systems in people's homes.
If Rader had been able to keep quiet he might have got away with the murders, but as mentioned earlier he started sending letters to the press again, bringing up the unsolved crimes and taunting them. The police followed advice given by the FBI and encouraged him to keep talking, to keep making contact and making drops -- packages of symbolic items, like dolls with their limbs bound, or items like victims driving licences. One such drop was a cereal box, which Rader dropped into the back of a pickup truck in a car park. The driver had found the box and thrown it away, not realising what it was until Rader later asked in a latter to the media what had happened to it. Security camera footage of the car park caught Rader on film making the drop, although it wasn't good enough to make him out his own car was identified.
Rader's fatal mistake was believing he was stringing along the police and the media with his letters. He would send them an entirely fictional autobiography and make up false details of his life, arrogantly believing he was in control. When his missives were published he would be encouraged to send more, and Rader asked if it would be safe to send a floppy disk. What response he was expecting I don't know -- but he believed the police when they told him it was fine.
The last package contained a letter, some jewellery and a purple diskette. When analysed, the disk contained file information including the Christ Lutheran Church in Wichita and the name "Dennis". It didn't take long to find that Dennis Rader was current president of the church, or that he drove the same black Jeep cherokee seen in the security camera footage of the earlier drop.
Rader unederestimated the advances that had been made since his first murders -- access to DNA swabs from his daughter showed a familiar match to the semen found at murder scenes, along with his DNA found under the fingernails of a victim. The BTK strangler pleaded guilty to ten counts of murder, and was sentenced to 175 years in prison without parole.
But what really caught Rader was not advances in technology or forensics, but his own egotism. He couldn't bear to be forgotten, and he wanted to keep the media interested. But most of all, he reportedly couldn't get over that he was lied to by the police about the floppy disk -- his egotism went so far that he thought they were his friends.
No comments:
Post a Comment