This is an accepted version of this page Dennis Lynn Rader (born March 9, 1945), also known as BTK (an abbreviation he gave himself for "bind, torture, kill"), is an American serial killer who murdered at least 10 people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991.

[14] Years later, during his "cooling off" periods between murders, Rader would take pictures of himself wearing women's clothes and a female mask while bound.

[17] On discharge, he moved to Park City, a suburb of Wichita, where he worked in the meat department of an IGA supermarket where his mother was employed as a bookkeeper.

[19][24][25][26] In this position, neighbors recalled him as being sometimes overzealous and extremely strict, as well as taking special pleasure in bullying and harassing single women.

Local author Robert Beattie began writing a book about the killings, Nightmare in Wichita, after being shocked that many young people he spoke to had never heard of the BTK case.

[32][20][33][34] In an interview with ABC News in 2019, his daughter Kerri stated she writes to her father and has now forgiven him, but still struggles to reconcile her "normal" childhood with the knowledge that she was raised by the BTK killer.

On the morning of January 15, Rader cut the phone lines and entered the Otero residence when Joey opened the back door for the family dog.

[39] Rader told the Otero family that he was a "wanted" man in California before he ordered them to lie on the living room floor at gunpoint.

Rader eventually wrote a letter that he stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974, describing the Otero killings in detail.

[45] BTK asks for infamy On February 10, 1978,[46] Rader sent another letter to Wichita television station KAKE claiming responsibility for the murders.

[47][48] In the letter, Rader claimed to be driven to kill by "factor X," which he characterized as a supernatural element that also motivated Jack the Ripper, the Son of Sam and the Hillside Stranglers.

In response, and with the knowledge that the BTK killer watched KAKE, police decided to flash a subliminal message during one of the station's evening newscasts for a split second.

The message stated: "Now call the chief," and featured a drawing of an upside-down pair of glasses, which were found at the Fox crime scene.

Rader had previously stored black plastic sheets and other materials at the church in preparation for the murder and then, later, dumped the body in a remote ditch.

In March 2004, The Wichita Eagle received a letter from someone using the name "Bill Thomas Killman" claiming that he had murdered Vicki Wegerle in 1986.

[18] On June 9, a package was found taped to a stop sign at the corner of First and Kansas roads in Wichita, which contained graphic descriptions of the Otero murders and a sketch labeled "The Sexual Thrill Is My Bill.

In July, a package dropped into the return slot at a public library contained more bizarre material, including the claim that BTK was responsible for the death of 19-year-old Jake Allen in Argonia, Kansas, earlier that month.

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 with a plastic bag tied over its head.

Surveillance tape of the parking lot from that date revealed a distant figure driving a black Jeep Cherokee leaving the box in the pickup.

[69][70] Also enclosed were a letter, a gold-colored necklace with a large medallion and a photocopy of the cover of Rules of Prey, a 1989 novel by John Sandford about a serial killer.

[70] Police found metadata embedded in a deleted Microsoft Word document that was, unknown to Rader, still stored on the floppy disk.

[74] Police obtained a warrant to test a pap smear taken from Rader's daughter at the Kansas State University medical clinic.

"[77][78] Officers from the Wichita Police, Kansas Bureau of Investigation, and FBI and ATF searched Rader's home and vehicle, seizing evidence including computer equipment, a pair of black pantyhose retrieved from a shed and a cylindrical container.

At a press conference the next morning, Wichita Police Chief Norman Williams announced, "The bottom line: BTK is arrested.

[82] However, the Sedgwick County district attorney denied the story, yet refused to say whether Rader had made any confessions or if investigators were looking into his possible involvement in more unsolved killings.

[96] Rader talked about innocuous topics such as the weather during the forty-minute drive to El Dorado but began to cry when the victims' families' statements from the court proceedings came on the radio.

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 nearby.

Rader stated in his police interview that "there are a lot of lucky people", meaning that he had thought about and developed various levels of murder plans for other victims.

[21] Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza was hired by Rader's public defenders to conduct a psychological evaluation and determine if an insanity-based defense might be viable.

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.