Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
This episode contains stories involving violence against children. Listener discretion is advised. There are over 100,000 cold cases in America. Only 1% are ever solved. This is one of those rare stories.
Agents from the KBI, agents from the FBI, and members of the Wichita Police Department arrested Dennis Rader.
On February 26, 2005, the Wichita Police Department holds a news conference.
For the murders of Joseph Otero, Julie Otero.
And tells the world they have caught a serial killer.
The bottom line, BTK is arrested.
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Chapter 2: What are the statistics surrounding cold cases in America?
This is the investigations division.
Lieutenant Ken Landwehr has hunted BTK for most of his career. Cold Case Files was granted unique access into the investigation that ended in an interrogation of Dennis Rader.
It's very difficult to sit across from someone that you've chased this long, that you despise the way I despise Dennis Rader.
Say who you are. I'm BTK.
I'm BTK. Basically, that was it. Who are you? Say it. I'm BTK. And after that, the floodgates just opened.
This is Dennis Rader speaking at his plea hearing.
If you read much about serial killers, they go through what they call the different phases. That's one of the phases they go through as a trolling stage. Basically, you're looking for a victim at that time. But once you lock in on a certain person, then you become stalking.
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Chapter 3: How did the investigation of the BTK killer begin?
And that might be several of them, but do you really own me in on that person? That's the victim.
Dennis Rader's arrest and conviction provided the final chapters to a story that began three decades earlier with a little boy and a knock on a door.
He asked me, are your parents home?
In 1977, Steve Relford is six years old when he opens his front door and finds a man on the other side.
I'm telling my mother she's sick in bed. Then he proceeded to come on in. Started pulling down the blinds, turned off the TV, retched in his holster, and pulled out a pistol.
About that time, my mother stepped to the bedroom door. What the hell's going on here?
The man herds Steve, his brother, and sister into the bathroom. Then he runs a rope from the doorknob to the sink so the children can't get out.
I stood on the tub, I think, and looked over the door. As I did that, I seen my mother being stripped, her hands bound behind her back, plastic bag over her head, rope tied around her neck.
15 minutes later, the house is quiet and Steve is able to force his way out of the bathroom.
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Chapter 4: What breakthrough led to the capture of Dennis Rader?
Larry Hattaberg is a Cake TV news anchor in Wichita.
This just didn't happen in Wichita, Kansas, out here on the prairie. A killing like that, a ritual killing like that happened in New York or in LA, but not in Wichita. And that really shook up the people. That scared people to death.
Wichita police questioned three suspects in the Otero case. Before they were ever charged, detectives were called to the public library to read a letter found stuffed inside a book.
This letter is very clear to tell us, you have the wrong people. You need to stop looking at them. You need to come back and focus your attention on me. I am the important one. I'm the one that's responsible. And you need to get a handle on this one because this could happen again.
The letter provides details on the Otero murders only the killer would know. The author also wrote, the code words for me will be, bind them, torture them, kill them. They will be on the next victim.
People were very careful in terms of they would not go home alone, specifically women. It became just a way of life. I mean, no one was necessarily mad, but everyone was certainly aware that we had a serial killer.
Three years after Otero, detectives believe the man known as BTK has returned. Wichita mobilizes quickly. BTK, however, moves even faster. At 8.18 on a December morning in 1977, a phone call comes in to Wichita Police.
At the other end of the line, a voice telling police where they can pick up a body.
A team of detectives dispatches to the home of Nancy Fox and finds the 25-year-old bound and strangled with her own pantyhose. Semen is collected from her nightgown.
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Chapter 5: What was the chilling confession of Dennis Rader during the interrogation?
He wanted to make sure that we, the police, found it undisturbed, and he wanted us to see his work and wanted us to realize the type of quote-unquote monster we were dealing with.
The Monster is a serial killer known to Wichita police as BTK. In his need for publicity, detectives see an opportunity to engage the killer in dialogue and perhaps catch him.
The thought process was, we won't give him credit for it with the idea that this will prompt a communications from him. And it did. Good afternoon. This morning, Cake TV was contacted by the person who police say they believe murdered four members of the Joseph Otero family in January of 1974.
On February 10, 1978, Cake TV leads its broadcast with a letter it has received from a killer looking for publicity.
BTK began today's letter with a question. How many do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention? It was a game that he was playing. He wanted recognition.
He wanted us to know that he was in control and that we had no control over him. And this was the message that he was trying to convey to the community.
BTK decides to raise the stakes for police. In his four-page letter to the news station, he lists seven of his victims, six of whom are named. Victim number five, however, is not.
We were confident that number five was Kathy.
Kathy is 21-year-old Catherine Bright.
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Chapter 6: How did the BTK killer's methods evolve over the years?
The victim's brother was shot twice in the face by the attacker.
Four years earlier, Bright was found in her home bound and stabbed 11 times. The murder's M.O. fits BTK.
It comes back to the method of operation, the way he broke into the house. He broke the back window. He cleaned the glass up. He cut the phone wire.
With the letter to cake, BTK generates the attention and the fear he needs. For the next year, however, the killer goes quiet with no bodies, phone calls, or letters.
The hysteria that spread over the community a year ago at this time has died down. The chief does want people to be aware that BTK is probably still around. I have no reason to doubt that the individual will strike again, assuming that he's still free and walking around. There have been a lot of crimes in society that have never been solved. Is this going to be one of them?
I think we'll solve the crime.
The question is, when will we solve the crime? There were discussions as to whether or not a given case was actually a BTK victim.
In 1982, eight years after the first BTK murder, Wichita forms a special unit to reinvestigate the seven victims. Detective Jerry Harper is part of the unit.
That if he in fact took his show to the road, that that was going to be a major problem.
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