One of history’s most unsettling serial murderers is back to haunt our dreams, thanks to Netflix’s Mindhunter season 2, which details the BTK Killer’s 1970s-era murder spree. But what you probably don’t know is that the creepy predator who left notes, poems, and clues to solve the mystery of who TF he was actually almost got away with it.
Who was the BTK Killer IRL?
Dennis Rader lived in Wichita with his wife and two kids. He held several jobs, which included working as a compliance officer for Park City as well as for a camping equipment company and a home security company. He was a member of the local Lutheran church and became involved with his son’s Boy Scouts troop. A pretty normal guy, except for, you know, all the murders.
It took 30 YEARS to catch him.
TG for modern technology. The BTK Killer was on the loose from 1974 until 2005, which obviously left Wichita in a constant state of fear and panic. During that time, he took the lives of 10 people in the area.
He also enjoyed messing with the authorities’ heads.
Rader began leaving clues related to his murders for the police and reporters to find. The first clue was a note left in an engineering textbook at the Wichita Public Library. A Wichita newspaper employee received a tip about the note, which he passed on to officials. In the letter, Rader referred to himself as a monster and called himself the BTK Killer for the first time. (Which stands for “bind them, torture them, kill them,” as you probably know.)
But the clues didn’t stop there.
He left a poem in 1978 after the murder of Shirley Vian and another letter in 1977 that referenced three of his other victims.
Rader’s last murder occured in 1991, but he started dropping clues again more than 10 years later, in 2004.
This ultimately led to his capture.
Thirty years after Rader took the lives of his first victims, the Otero family, he sent a box to a news channel in Wichita that included a Barbie doll acting out the murders. It also included another victim’s driver’s license.
The same news station received a postcard one month later that led them to another note that read, “Can I communicate with Floppy [disk] and not be traced to a computer. Be honest.”
Rader ended up sending the floppy disk, and officials were able to use metadata from the documents to reveal him as the BTK Killer. It was pretty much a real-life game of Clue.
Rader is still being held at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
He was given 10 life sentences—one for each victim. His wife was granted an emergency divorce after his arrest, and his daughter is the only one who has spoken publicly about her father’s dark past.
