Last Podcast On The Left
Last Update on the Left - Episode 12 - BTK Returns w/ Katherine Ramsland
23 Mar 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
when the cannibalism started.
Last update on the left.
Welcome to the last update on the left, ladies and gentlemen. We got a real special treat for you today. Big update on a big piece of shit. Yeah. I was going to say a big dumper. Yeah. Big time killer. Big time killer. Well, you could say dumper. He's a dumper.
Yeah. You're Marcus Parks. I'm Henry Zebrowski. We're sitting here with Ed Larson. Hello. We talk with... She's a pip.
Yeah, she's great. This woman is incredible.
And what I like is, there's something about a classy lady doctor that just hangs out with serial killers all day. Yeah. That's all she does. That's very frightening, almost.
It's Catherine Ramsland. We talked to her about BTK, about Dennis Rader, the new victims that are supposedly Dennis Rader's, the ones that are being tied to Dennis Rader. But Catherine Ramsland has many opinions on whether or not there's any truth to that. So all you Rader heads, get ready.
You strapped in. And also, I'll just tell you up front, we found out Dennis Rader not getting fellers.
No, not getting fellers. Yeah. Not getting dentures. No, I asked. Rotting away in prison. Yep. The Wichita Raiders. Wow. That was the family.
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Chapter 2: How did Katherine Ramsland begin her correspondence with Dennis Rader?
All right. Here's an interview with Dr. Ramsland. Fly from your grave. All right, we are here with Dr. Catherine Ramsland. You've probably seen her on countless serial killer documentaries. She's written one of the best books about a serial killer that I've ever read, Confessions of the BTK Killer. Catherine Ramsland, doctor, thank you so much for joining us today.
I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me.
Of course. Well, part of the reason why we're bringing you on is that we're here on our update show. And the big update is that it seems like there are new victims. Dennis Rader being discovered, or at least people are assuming that they're Dennis Rader's victims. I guess our first question is how much validity are you giving as someone who's spoken personally to Dennis Rader many times?
How much validity are you giving to these claims?
Well, you know, it's been a progression of stuff for the past year. I think Sheriff Eddie Burden is who you're talking about because he's kind of leading the way. He's an Oklahoma sheriff.
Yeah.
He laid out the whole case that he had to me in May, and I didn't think he had evidence for some of the things that he was saying. And certainly everything that he's offered has an alternative interpretation. Sure. And Rader's interpretation is, no, it's not me. And he's been given immunity to confess, to close the cases. He still says no.
And the main question that he asked, which I think somebody has to answer, why wouldn't I confess?
Right.
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Chapter 3: What new victims are being linked to Dennis Rader?
Or do you think people go and screw around there at night because it was BTK's old house?
Maybe. Or Rader said he used to tie plants to stakes with knotted pantyhose. As many people do, actually. Oh, wow. Or it is one of his pieces from a hit kit, but it's to a victim we already know about. Interesting. So there's a number of things here that don't lead us to think he's got another victim.
There was also a letter that he wrote to the woman who had initially gotten me involved in writing this book. And he had said to her, he thought there were some trophies from, from known victims. He didn't say these were new victims or she would have never, you know, she would turn that over to the police immediately. He said he thought he had moved them. They had been buried under his shed.
He had a lot of hidey holes, really a lot of them. That's what he called them, hidey holes. And he, he thought he had moved him, but could she just go see? So he, Sheriff Burden has that letter, so he decides to dig on the property where the shed had once been, and he claims that he had items of interest. Okay. And that was back in, I think, September of 2023. So he formed a task force.
Among the people in that task force are criminalists, including top DNA experts. So here we are, May 15th. almost June 2024, why haven't they been tested? So instead of coming out with results of a DNA test, especially on the pantyhose, well, but he couldn't really do that because he's handling them with his bare hands.
So, but he still kept telling me he was going to get it tested and by now you should have test results. And now they came out with, last week they came out with this word puzzle that Rader had sent in 2004. Yeah, what's this all about? Okay, so if you had the puzzle, you can see how he writes these lines. Yeah. Put the place to it. So my name's in there, if you do it that way.
Did Dennis say anything about me in 2004? We found a number of people's names in there if you make enough of those kinds of connections.
It's like the Torah codes where people say they can find damn near anything in the Bible through numerology. You can find anything in Dennis Rader's ciphers.
Except that I will say this. Rader had put his own street number in. from his at-home address, and he had put it in an odd way, 6220, and then another zero was underneath the middle two. So Sheriff Vernon took that to mean, oh, well, then it isn't just straight lines. Oh, yeah. So I'm free to draw these lines in this variety of ways because of what Rader did. But I'm going to tell you if
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Chapter 4: How reliable are Dennis Rader's claims about his victims?
Yeah. Don't just play this out in the media. You have a task force full of bring charges.
So why aren't they? Like, why are they going to the media?
No, they don't. He doesn't talk to me anymore.
Ask too many uncomfortable questions.
Well, you know, the thing is, I've been put in this weird position of being Dennis Rader's spokesperson, which is not to say I'm his advocate for innocence in this, but I agree with him. He shouldn't confess to something he didn't do. Because also, why would he? And if they're sure that They have evidence against him. Bring it.
So is the only reason why they're bringing these charges or at least hinting that they're saying the BTK is responsible is just because of the way the bodies were found, the bodies were found bound and or that it's sort of confusing because I know one of you said one of the bodies was found and one of them was never found.
Yeah. The original victim that started this all has never been found.
Right. So why do you think they chose Dennis Rader of all people?
because um the way the sheriff's puts it is it was a revelation he had while watching tv late one night that um you know raider oklahoma borders kansas and that area of southeastern kansas is where he grew up he he traveled and during 1990 early 90s in the sense for the census from one state to another um
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Chapter 5: What evidence connects Dennis Rader to other potential cases?
He'd mix, similar to that word puzzle, he'd mix facts about his life with Fictions. Yeah. So to keep them guessing and to keep them looking, you know, running around looking for leads and whatnot. Does he have a book?
Did he write a book? Didn't he have a book or a journal? Like, are we ever going to see any?
He had lots of journals. He kept journals of what he was doing.
Do you think we'll ever see any of that or that's just going to go?
That's what Eddie's putting out there. That's where the bad wash day comes from.
That I know, but I'm talking about the compendium.
Are we getting the full... It's hard. It's scribbly. It's not like a narrative that's articulate and well put together. Just scribbly little notes here and there.
Is it kind of boring?
No, because some of it was when he was talking about the murders, he put those in detail and then he used that to create These chapters.
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Chapter 6: How does Katherine Ramsland analyze Rader's psychological profile?
It's all corroborated. Everything he said he did is corroborated by the scenes, by the evidence. So he's not a totally unreliable person.
I mean, what I find fascinating about all this is that you say that, you know, Dennis Rader, of course, his big motivation is to be famous. You know, he wanted to be seen on par with the Zodiac Killer and, you know, and Jack the Ripper. What is it that keeps him from claiming fame?
more victim, like what, what is it a sense of pride that he has that keeps him from saying like, because 11 victims, 12 victims would make him more notorious than 10. What is it that keeps him from claiming more in order to get more fame in order for people to keep talking about BTK?
Where's morality lines?
They do have some sense of morality, oddly enough. And it's each one of them has weird lines. They won't cross. Ted Bundy, I was just listening to a bunch of his interviews over the weekend for a documentary, and he had some. John Wayne Gacy had. They do. It's not like they're totally devoid of, you know, any sense of integrity. It's just not as developed as it is for most other people.
But I think that's the big question. Why isn't Dennis Rader confessing to them? getting more fame he says to me and to those associates of his who known him for a while and i've known him for 14 so 14 years yeah he says i'm not going to admitted something I didn't do. He even said, I'm going to have the number 10 tattooed on me so that if I die, it'll still be there and nobody can change it.
Very interesting. Because also you could see him not wanting to claim something that he wasn't necessarily proud of. But he is a, it's weird. This is a massive pride for him. This was his life's work.
Well, and here's why the Missouri detective team, when they went over and talked to him for hours, I mean, he was willing to talk with them But they said the difference between when he talked about his own murders and then when he discussed the one we were interested in, the difference in his demeanor, his interest level, his excitement told us he was not our guy.
Yeah. Yeah. Do you think like an officer would try to tie a cold case to someone famous like Rader just to get more eyeballs on the investigation in general?
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Chapter 7: What insights does Ramsland provide about Rader's motivations?
is that you mentioned Annette Funicello, and I know that he, when he was younger, had a lot of very dark fantasies about Annette Funicello. And one of the things that has always fascinated me about BTK is that every serial killer that you read, every biography starts off with the horrific childhood, starts off with the abuse, right?
With Dennis Rader, there wasn't really any, there hasn't been any evidence. Like, all the evidence points towards Dennis Rader having a normal childhood. No abnormalities at all. So, I mean, is there something hidden there, do you think? Or is he just like this?
Well, it's one of the reasons I wanted to work with him, is he's an outlier to the formulas. But he's not the only one. I mean, I know of others that do not have any kind of horrific childhood experiences. That is a formula. That's an idea that they all have. And to the point where I've been told by some experts in the field, oh, he just lied to you.
Well, OK, but I talked to other people who knew him as a kid, too. And there wasn't really his family was like all American, middle class, Kansas, religious family, both parents, both sets of grandparents. a farm kid, oldest of four brothers, had buddies in high school, had girlfriends. he didn't have abuse in his background.
Do you weirdly think that that's why I hate to again, use this term. That was what made him quote unquote successful, what he did for so long and then sort of like fell apart. It's almost because there wasn't a sort of like insane comorbidity in his brain. You know what I mean? Like the idea that he wasn't a completely, totally crazy person.
Success had a lot to do with luck.
Yeah.
Yeah. Cause he made mistakes and he knew he did and he was scared. but the police didn't pick up on it. And you know, it's the 70s. They didn't have all the things we have today. They didn't have databases. They didn't have forensic instruments. They didn't have DNA. There's all kinds of things they did not have as an aid in investigation.
And serial murder in 1974, my Lord, they hardly knew anything.
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Chapter 8: What is Katherine Ramsland's latest project related to true crime?
He thought so. He said that had there been S&M clubs... that he could go to or something like that where he had a way to vent and, you know, just let off some of the pressure of the kinds of fantasies he had. He thought that would actually have made a difference for him.
But there were S&M clubs. He could have. No, I guess not in Wichita.
In Kansas? I mean.
I actually feel like a lot of it is just, you just have to ask Farmer John. You'd be surprised who likes getting spanked down the hills.
We're talking 1970s. The 80s in a very religious community. He can't be is going to have to be somewhere else. He can't he can't be seen going. He's a president. I think his vice president and president. I mean, he's he's got a family. He's got appearances to keep up. So it's not as if he can just go join some S&M club. But I don't think there were any in Wichita at the time.
Not in Wichita, but I was just reading about David Parker Ray and, you know, in his life. And there was some wild shit going down in Albuquerque in the 70s and 80s that he was a part of.
He was in a very isolated place, too, with his toy box. Yeah. He also had accomplices who were bringing people to him.
Yeah. Yeah.
So he was in a very different kind of situation.
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