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Speaker 4: You are now listening to True Murder, the most shocking
Speaker 4: killers in true crime history and the authors that have
Speaker 4: written about them. Gasey, Bundy, Dahmer, the Nightstalker BTK. Every
Speaker 4: week another fascinating author talking about the most shocking and
Speaker 4: infamous killers in true crime history. True Murder with your host,
Speaker 4: journalist and author Dan Zupansky. Good evening to all appearances.
Speaker 4: Dennis Raider was a model citizen in the small town
Speaker 4: of Park City, Kansas. The self named BTK for Bind
Speaker 4: Torture Kill, had terrorized Wichita for thirty one years. In
Speaker 4: nineteen seventy four, b t K committed his first murders,
Speaker 4: torturing and strangling four members of the Ortero family, and
Speaker 4: wrote the police on audacious letter declaring his responsibility for
Speaker 4: the Ortero's deaths and labeling himself b t K. Thus
Speaker 4: he established a patron stalking and killing a series of
Speaker 4: ten victims, then bragging and claiming ownership of his crimes
Speaker 4: that ended in nineteen ninety one, until that is, he
Speaker 4: resurfaced in two thousand four with another string of letters
Speaker 4: that would finally lead to his arrest. Drawing from extensive
Speaker 4: interviews with Raider's pastor, congregation, detectives, and psychologists who worked
Speaker 4: the case, and from his unnervingly detailed thirty two hour confession,
Speaker 4: best selling author Stephen Singular delves into the disturbing life
Speaker 4: and crimes of b t K to explore fully for
Speaker 4: the first time the most dangerous and complex serial killer
Speaker 4: of our generation and the men and the man who embodied.
Speaker 2: At once astonishing extremes of normality and abnormality. In Unholy Messenger,
Speaker 2: Singular recounts the year prior to Raider's arrest in which
Speaker 2: the BTK killer re emerged and the aftermath. The result
Speaker 2: is a chilling story of a man considered a spiritual
Speaker 2: leader by his pastor and congregation who turned out to
Speaker 2: be the devil next door. The book they were featuring
Speaker 2: this evening is Unholy Messenger, The Life and Crimes of
Speaker 2: the bt K Serial Killer, with my special guest investigative
Speaker 2: journalists and authors, Joyce and Stephen Singular. Welcome to the
Speaker 2: program and thank you very much for a greenness interview.
Speaker 2: Joyce and Stephen Singular, thanks.
Speaker 5: For having us. Dan appreciate it.
Speaker 2: Thank you very much for joining us on this incredible story,
Speaker 2: a credible book on Holy Messenger. Now, Steven, i'll start
Speaker 2: off right now with first with you that what happened
Speaker 2: in two thousand and five, specifically that puts you on
Speaker 2: course to write on Holy Messenger.
Speaker 6: Well, Raider was arrested in late February of two thousand
Speaker 6: and five, and I was sort of aware of it,
Speaker 6: but wasn't paying that much attention to it. I grew
Speaker 6: up in eastern Kansas in a very small town similar
Speaker 6: to Raiders, so I sort of had that connection. And
Speaker 6: I had gone with Joyce and our son to my
Speaker 6: small hometown when school got out. We did this every
Speaker 6: year and we visited my parents, and my son and
Speaker 6: I were going down to this gym to shoot some
Speaker 6: baskets for basketball. He was really into basketball at that time.
Speaker 6: And we were down there and my old basketball coach
Speaker 6: was there and we started talking. He said, you've got
Speaker 6: to write about this BTK case. And I said, well,
Speaker 6: lot of other people writing about it, you know, it's
Speaker 6: been covered. He said, no, I'm serious, and he took
Speaker 6: out a cell phone. He said, you've got to talk
Speaker 6: to my son in law Dan, and he dialed the
Speaker 6: number and he just handed me the phone. I said,
Speaker 6: who's Dan. He said, well, he was on the task
Speaker 6: force that investigated BTK for a year and he was
Speaker 6: one of the people who arrested him on February twenty fifth,
Speaker 6: two thousand and five. And I thought, well, you know,
Speaker 6: maybe he's worth talking to. Handed me the phone, and
Speaker 6: the next day I drove to Wichita and I met
Speaker 6: with him with the detective, and I also had an
Speaker 6: appointment with Pastor Michael Clark. And both of these people,
Speaker 6: the first one really isn't named in the book. That
Speaker 6: was sort of a back alla on background information, but
Speaker 6: Pastor Clark was the pastor in the Lutheran church where
Speaker 6: Dennis Raider was the president of the congregation. So when
Speaker 6: all of this happened, he was not only totally dumbfounded
Speaker 6: and startled that the guy he was working beside all
Speaker 6: the time was the BTK serial killer, but it sent
Speaker 6: him on this spiritual journey of his own, and I
Speaker 6: kind of wanted to have some light in the book.
Speaker 6: I mean, obviously it's a very dark subject, but sort
Speaker 6: of chronicling Pastor Clark's life alongside Dennis Raiders, showing one
Speaker 6: guy who went really really bad, one guy another guy
Speaker 6: who had a very tough life in some ways, but
Speaker 6: sort of went through it, came out much better for it,
Speaker 6: and then went on this spiritual journey. After learning about BTK,
Speaker 6: I thought it added a dimension to the book that
Speaker 6: the book needed, and it added some fumor and some
Speaker 6: life and lightly. So that was really the starting point
Speaker 6: for getting involved in the case. Knowing somebody who was
Speaker 6: on that task force gave me a lot of background
Speaker 6: information that filtered into the book.
Speaker 2: Certainly. You opened the book with January seventeenth, two thousand
Speaker 2: and four, with the Wichita Eagle. Now what is published.
Speaker 2: You talk about the article that's published, and you talk
Speaker 2: about how old Raider is and the effect on him
Speaker 2: reading that article. Tell us what that article basically conveyed
Speaker 2: and expressed and what was Dennis Rader thinking at that
Speaker 2: time once he read that article.
Speaker 5: Well, Dennis Rader had a lot of artistic bent and
Speaker 5: was very repressed in that regard. He was interested in
Speaker 5: photography and writing and drawing, and when he saw that
Speaker 5: this anniversary of the BTK murders, this cold case is
Speaker 5: coming out, he took offense because he heard that someone
Speaker 5: else was going to be writing a book about it,
Speaker 5: and he really wanted to write his own book about it,
Speaker 5: his BTK Productions. You know, he had chapters outlined, and
Speaker 5: he really got quite angry about that, and that's what
Speaker 5: prompted him to start sending mementos of I believe it
Speaker 5: was Vicky Weggerly Steve, Is that correct?
Speaker 6: That's crust to the Eagle, right, Yeah, he sent in
Speaker 6: he had taken her driver's license. He usually took something
Speaker 6: from a crime scene, but he took her driver's license
Speaker 6: and so he photo copied it, and he also had
Speaker 6: pictures of her during the crime. And so when he
Speaker 6: sent it in to the Witchita Eagle, they knew that
Speaker 6: this had to be the killer. No one else could
Speaker 6: have had these things, so that, you know, it motivated
Speaker 6: him to come out of hiding. Basically, since nineteen ninety one,
Speaker 6: he hadn't really done much of anything. That's as far
Speaker 6: as we know. There are people who think he might
Speaker 6: have kept killing, but as far as we know, for
Speaker 6: those thirteen years, he was doing and he just thought,
Speaker 6: I'm going to show them one more time, you know
Speaker 6: that I'm alive, and that I'm active, And he really.
Speaker 5: Took great pride in his quote unquote work. He didn't
Speaker 5: want anybody else taking credit for He was a very
Speaker 5: highly detailed, highly organized person in both his daily life,
Speaker 5: his home life, and in his murdering m o. So
Speaker 5: he wanted to get the credit for that.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 5: He in one of his missives to the police, you know,
Speaker 5: he said, I think it was to the Eagle, he said,
Speaker 5: you know, what is it going to take to get
Speaker 5: the media to get some national attention about my crimes?
Speaker 6: Right? And you had then alluded earlier to the Oto murders.
Speaker 6: The first crimes he committed were the killing of the
Speaker 6: four people in this family, the Oteos, and he had
Speaker 6: set off a huge investigation that got no near him.
Speaker 6: But six months went by, ers six or about eight
Speaker 6: or nine months went by, he killed somebody else in
Speaker 6: the interim, and then he someone came out and took
Speaker 6: credit or was trying to take credit for the Otero murders,
Speaker 6: someone who was mentally disturbed, basically. So he wrote this
Speaker 6: very extensive letter, as Joy said, he was very detailed
Speaker 6: to and put it in the library, and the Eagle
Speaker 6: went over and got it, and he gave an absolute
Speaker 6: minute description of the murders and where the bodies were
Speaker 6: and how they were laid out to prove, you know,
Speaker 6: to everyone that he was actually the BTK killer.
Speaker 5: And also by the time you know, that article came
Speaker 5: out in the Wichita Eagle about the anniversary, his two
Speaker 5: kids had grown and were out of the house. He
Speaker 5: was kind of he was just working as a compliance officer,
Speaker 5: sort of, you know, measuring people's to make sure they
Speaker 5: hadn't gone over the limit, measuring it with a ruler
Speaker 5: in some cases, you know, to make sure. That's how
Speaker 5: detailed he was. And so he was sort of bored
Speaker 5: I think at that juncture of his life, and he
Speaker 5: thought he would stir in his own words, he wanted
Speaker 5: to stir up the hornet's nest again.
Speaker 2: Right.
Speaker 6: He had kind of a peculiar attachment to law enforcement.
Speaker 6: I mean, in a very low level. I guess you
Speaker 6: could say he was sort of an enforcement officer, but
Speaker 6: he liked this idea of communicating with the police and
Speaker 6: having some connection to them, and it's a very important
Speaker 6: part of his story, especially in that last year leading
Speaker 6: up to his arrest.
Speaker 2: Now you talk about this twenty five years BTK is
Speaker 2: back and the Wichita Police Department is ready to make
Speaker 2: its first pronouncement in twenty five years. Who is the
Speaker 2: face and the voice of the new investigation and tell
Speaker 2: us what his approach is in terms when making these
Speaker 2: public pronouncements and press conferences or press releases. What's the
Speaker 2: new approach?
Speaker 6: Once that raider BTK had sent in that driver's license
Speaker 6: Vicky Wegerly, and they knew, and it went from the
Speaker 6: paper to the police department, and they knew that he
Speaker 6: was alive and out there and active. They had to
Speaker 6: put together a strategy, a task force, and they and
Speaker 6: the person to lead it was Lieutenant ken Land, where
Speaker 6: this sort of soft spoken, mild mannered, you know, gray
Speaker 6: haired guy who had a just a sort of a
Speaker 6: calming presence about him. So when he came forward to
Speaker 6: make the announcement in March of two thousand and four,
Speaker 6: about three weeks after or a few days after Raider
Speaker 6: had sent in that that letter, they and the idea
Speaker 6: from the very beginning was that he wouldn't lendwear wouldn't
Speaker 6: just talking to the general public when he had a
Speaker 6: press conference, but that he would be speaking very directly
Speaker 6: to the killer. He thought, if I can get this
Speaker 6: guy to pay attention to what I'm doing, if I
Speaker 6: can get him to feel a little bit connected to me.
Speaker 6: It was very soft. It wasn't threatening or anything like that.
Speaker 6: It was a very intelligent strategy because they knew that
Speaker 6: what BTK craved was some sort of attention and some
Speaker 6: sort of connection, and so he began basically speaking to him.
Speaker 6: I'd really be interested in talking with this the person
Speaker 6: and finding out who he is. And it spurred Raider
Speaker 6: on to keep communicating with him, to keep sending in
Speaker 6: these letters and these mementos of his crimes, and that's
Speaker 6: that's really what led to his downfall.
Speaker 2: Joyce. Let's talk about as you do in the book.
Speaker 2: You write about in the book about that he was
Speaker 2: born in nineteen forty five, Dennis Raider in Pittsburgh, Kansas,
Speaker 2: and he was back tis Lutheran, and we should talk
Speaker 2: about that Lutheran upbringing for all people that don't know,
Speaker 2: as you point out the differences in the Lutheran religion
Speaker 2: and Catholicism, and his mother Dorothea and his father William,
Speaker 2: what was his upbringing like in and what were some
Speaker 2: of the things that characterized that early childhood.
Speaker 5: Well, all start out with that. He was the oldest
Speaker 5: of four brothers. He considered himself to be sort of
Speaker 5: the white sheep of the family, kind of prided himself
Speaker 5: on doing everything, you know, by the book, by the rules.
Speaker 2: But he had.
Speaker 5: He had this penchant at an early age, as many
Speaker 5: serial killers do, to start experimenting with killing animals, you know,
Speaker 5: birds and cats and dogs and finding secretive places to
Speaker 5: take them to. He particularly liked barns because, you know,
Speaker 5: they did live in a rural area and you could
Speaker 5: easily get to a barn, would know one around, and
Speaker 5: he could he could, you know, watch the life being
Speaker 5: sucked out of these young, these these small creatures. And
Speaker 5: then he went to high school, where I believe he
Speaker 5: met Oh no, let me backtrack.
Speaker 2: A little bit.
Speaker 5: He started reading and getting a hold of his father's
Speaker 5: true detective magazines, and for people don't know what those
Speaker 5: were like around in the fifties in the early sixties,
Speaker 5: they were these sort of sensationalistic magazines with a woman
Speaker 5: with terror in her eyes, sort of looking off in
Speaker 5: the distance at some you know, shadowy figure, and he
Speaker 5: claims that those magazines aroused him. He also claimed that
Speaker 5: being spanked by his mother he found arousing. But I
Speaker 5: always want I always have to take that with a
Speaker 5: grain of salt because a lot of the times, I mean,
Speaker 5: it's been proven that not everything that Dennis Raider said
Speaker 5: was the was the truth. So we always kind of,
Speaker 5: you know, ask was he really telling the truth about
Speaker 5: that or was he just trying to rationalize why he
Speaker 5: started developing this dark side. Then he went to high
Speaker 5: school and he met his wife, Poladips. She was a
Speaker 5: couple of years younger than him, but also a little
Speaker 5: before that he began began to be a peeping tom.
Speaker 6: Right, Yeah, And he had this this combination of sort
Speaker 6: of you know, being in this very conservative place again,
Speaker 6: a kind of town that I grew up in, about
Speaker 6: a thousand people in Kansas, and yet having this artistic
Speaker 6: bent that Jewish referred to earlier, where he liked to draw,
Speaker 6: he liked to try to write and do things like
Speaker 6: that not very necessarily very acceptable in the environment that
Speaker 6: he grew up in.
Speaker 5: I'm sorry, Stee. And he also did follow in his
Speaker 5: father's footstep and went into the army.
Speaker 6: So he had this sort of the drawings he made also,
Speaker 6: by the way, were he would draw lines over women's
Speaker 6: bodies as if they were bound up or mummies or
Speaker 6: something of that nature. But you know, sometimes, and I
Speaker 6: know for myself, you know, growing up in that kind
Speaker 6: of environment, if you sort of have an artistic bent,
Speaker 6: you have to sort of get out of that to
Speaker 6: pursue it. But he did the opposite. He followed exactly
Speaker 6: in his father's footsteps. He was in that church, he
Speaker 6: graduated from high school, he went into the army. He
Speaker 6: kept thinking, you know, if I just sort of go
Speaker 6: down the straight and narrow path, these ideas I have,
Speaker 6: these thoughts, these impulses, these dark urges might leave me
Speaker 6: alone and go away. The army didn't help. Got married,
Speaker 6: you know, that didn't help, and by then he'd sort
Speaker 6: of graduated into stalking women.
Speaker 5: He also claimed that while he was in the army
Speaker 5: and in Asia, in Japan, in other places, that he
Speaker 5: learned more about, you know, sexuality.
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Speaker 6: I on her? Then in late seventy three, he lost
Speaker 6: his job and he was sort of at loose ends.
Speaker 5: With a lot of time on his hands and feeling
Speaker 5: sort of ineffectual. I think too. Yeah, so what he
Speaker 5: mentioned to the.
Speaker 6: Police later, right, So he began to establish this ritual,
Speaker 6: which he named everything. Uh, he would give it, you know,
Speaker 6: as Joyce said the BTK production so with trolling, and
Speaker 6: trolling would be you know, going up and down the
Speaker 6: streets looking for maybe a single target that would evolve
Speaker 6: into stocking.
Speaker 5: And he started naming his projects.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then that would evolve into you know, what's
Speaker 6: the person's schedule, When did they come and go or
Speaker 6: are they always alone? How much resistance might Julia Otero,
Speaker 6: for example, put up And he noticed that she would
Speaker 6: the older kids would go to school, but she would
Speaker 6: come back home with her young daughter, Josie. So he
Speaker 6: settled in on this target, and he named the project
Speaker 6: Little mex He.
Speaker 5: Thought there were Mexicans, but actually they were from Puerto Rico.
Speaker 6: So in his mind, finally, when he's actually ready to
Speaker 6: commit a big crime for the first time, he's going
Speaker 6: to go to the Otero house. The mother and the
Speaker 6: daughter will be there. He thinks he can fairly easily
Speaker 6: subdue them and then carry out what had really become
Speaker 6: an overwhelming fantasy to him, which was basically to bind
Speaker 6: them up, to torture them, and then ultimately to kill them.
Speaker 6: That was the plan. So when he arrived on the
Speaker 6: morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, thinking everything was set,
Speaker 6: he went into their garage and hid there, and he said,
Speaker 6: he soon realized that there was a dog, a fairly
Speaker 6: large dog in the house, and this wasn't something he
Speaker 6: was counting on. But he waited. He was sweating so
Speaker 6: hard that he swept through the gloves that were on
Speaker 6: his hands, and he waited until this little boy came
Speaker 6: out the back door, which.
Speaker 5: Was their son, Yeah, Joey, he was nine years old.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he thought, you know, that's not part of
Speaker 6: the plan either, but he just decided to go into
Speaker 6: the house. So in all the history of crime, I mean,
Speaker 6: this is one of the most interesting situations you could
Speaker 6: sort of imagine. The family had all been trained in
Speaker 6: martial arts. The father had been in the military. The
Speaker 6: other three actually were being trained in martial arts, so
Speaker 6: they knew sort of how to handle themselves, even though
Speaker 6: the kids were young.
Speaker 5: But do you have to remember at that time and
Speaker 5: in that place in America, people didn't know a lot
Speaker 5: about serial killers. It wasn't as you know, widely known
Speaker 5: as it is now. People didn't lock their doors. So
Speaker 5: when he got access to their house, he you know,
Speaker 5: he showed him a gun, pulled out a gun and
Speaker 5: said that he was a fugitive from California. He just
Speaker 5: wanted to tie them up, you know, I think he
Speaker 5: had a loaded twenty two caliber pistol pistol, and they complied,
Speaker 5: you know, the father, everyone, and they just he just said,
Speaker 5: I just watch your car. So they allowed him to
Speaker 5: tie them up. Now today people would probably not allow that,
Speaker 5: well if.
Speaker 6: There were four people present, two adults, but they did.
Speaker 6: They complied, and he just proceeded to strangle the father
Speaker 6: first and then and then the mother, and then he
Speaker 6: went to the boy and then he.
Speaker 5: Ripped it off and he had to go back back,
Speaker 5: and you know, he had to do the same thing
Speaker 5: with the son. It was not any process, and he
Speaker 5: had to learn from his mistakes, as many serial killers do.
Speaker 6: So to sort of get the dichotomy of his this
Speaker 6: needed to be stronger. So when he would go home
Speaker 6: to his house in Park City above Wichita, sat on
Speaker 6: the couch with his wife and watch television, he would
Speaker 6: squeeze these rubber balls to make his hand stronger for
Speaker 6: the next kill. And that's kind of says a lot
Speaker 6: about his life. And he would also hide souvenirs or
Speaker 6: other things about the crimes in this house. This house
Speaker 6: was nine hundred square feet, that's quite small if you
Speaker 6: can envision that. And he's living with this woman and
Speaker 6: he's hiding souvenirs and written material about his serial killing.
Speaker 6: And she has absolutely no clue.
Speaker 5: But the family was in some ways. They were and
Speaker 5: they do whatever he said because he could be very angry.
Speaker 5: He had a temper, and they knew that his private
Speaker 5: spots were off limits. He just didn't go into dad's
Speaker 5: closet or into dad's boxes.
Speaker 6: Right. This set off the Terramers set up one of
Speaker 6: the largest investigations ever in that area. They set up
Speaker 6: roadblocks to stop people and interview them. They interrogated a
Speaker 6: thousand people, They alerted five hundred other police surrounding police
Speaker 6: departments and looked everywhere. It was just a massive investigation,
Speaker 6: but they were looking in what you taught proper, not
Speaker 6: where Raider was living. Oh they also swabbed a lot
Speaker 6: of people for DNA, and that didn't go anywhere. Because
Speaker 6: Joseph Otero had been stationed in Panama and they were
Speaker 6: from Puerto Rico. They looked down there. They did a
Speaker 6: very extensive investigation and came up with absolutely nothing. However,
Speaker 6: through the process of masturbation, Rader did leave behind DNA,
Speaker 6: and as we all know, DNA can be preserved, and
Speaker 6: that piece of evidence preserved would be very critical in
Speaker 6: the coming years and decades.
Speaker 2: You talk about this endeavor from law enforcement unprecedented. But
Speaker 2: less than ninety days later, you write, Catherine Bright and
Speaker 2: her brother Kevin is visiting from nearby town and Raider
Speaker 2: had been watching her when driving past her house.
Speaker 5: Right, he was driving past her home on his way
Speaker 5: to lunch with his wife Paula in the car, began
Speaker 5: seeing her and he named that one lights out project.
Speaker 5: And this time he didn't cut the phone lines because
Speaker 5: he wanted to trick the police. You know, he had
Speaker 5: been studying other serial killers throughout the years, HH Holmes,
Speaker 5: who was you know, one of the first known American
Speaker 5: serial killers in the late eighteen hundreds, Jack the Ripper
Speaker 5: of course in England late eighteen hundreds, Harvey Glatman in
Speaker 5: the late nineteen fifties who also liked to tie up women,
Speaker 5: the Boston Strangler in the early sixties, and then Ted
Speaker 5: Bundy in the seventies. So he was learning from other
Speaker 5: serial killers, and he didn't he wanted to try to
Speaker 5: play this cat and mouse game with the Katherine Bright
Speaker 5: murder so that you know, the police wouldn't necessarily know
Speaker 5: that it was the same killer.
Speaker 6: Right, so again he has this master plan, stalking, trolling, stocking,
Speaker 6: name it. You figure out a way to get in
Speaker 6: the house by breaking in, and he's got it all
Speaker 6: laid out, but he doesn't factor in that she's going
Speaker 6: to come home with her brother. So she does with
Speaker 6: Kevin and Kevin and he ties up Catherine and then
Speaker 6: they get in Kevin and get into a huge fight.
Speaker 6: Kevin gets his gun and sticks it into Raider's stomach
Speaker 6: and pulls the trigger and for some reason, it doesn't fire.
Speaker 6: I mean, if that gun had fired, we wouldn't be
Speaker 6: talking about this today. But it misfires. Raider shoots him
Speaker 6: in the face and he eventually sort of staggers out
Speaker 6: of the apartment.
Speaker 5: Raider thought he was dead at that point, but then
Speaker 5: he goes into the other room to start killing Catherine,
Speaker 5: and Kevin, you know, manages to get out of the.
Speaker 6: House to go get help, but he'd been shot. So
Speaker 6: later on, even though Rader was not in disguise or anything,
Speaker 6: his testimony was not considered very valid. But Rader goes
Speaker 6: back to Catherine and this time uses a knife and
Speaker 6: stabs her multiple times and she will soon die. So
Speaker 6: he was consciously trying to make it a different crime
Speaker 6: from the otaros.
Speaker 5: And it's interesting that, you know, he mangled this and
Speaker 5: so badly, he wasn't proud of it like he would
Speaker 5: be of the others, and he didn't appear to keep
Speaker 5: any mementos from that one. He wanted him to be
Speaker 5: meet organized, just like he was.
Speaker 6: There would be this kind of myth build up around
Speaker 6: him as time went on, and as he named himself,
Speaker 6: btk that he was somehow this master criminal, this very sophisticated,
Speaker 6: slick person. The opposite was true, as you can see
Speaker 6: from these crimes. Nothing went the way he planned it,
Speaker 6: but it did end up with five victims, five dead victims.
Speaker 6: So these two sets of crimes are basically what prompted
Speaker 6: him then in October of seventy four to write this
Speaker 6: letter and to start to take credit or want the credit,
Speaker 6: or to demand the credit for committing these crimes. It's
Speaker 6: one of the most striking things about him that he
Speaker 6: he was just craving some sort of recognition, and yet
Speaker 6: he didn't obviously want people to know his identity.
Speaker 2: You write about the letter that he sends them about
Speaker 2: buying them, torture them, kill them. But the Wichita police
Speaker 2: department felt that they shouldn't publicize that letter. Why was that?
Speaker 2: What was that decision? How'd they come to that?
Speaker 5: Well, they didn't want to alarm the public, right Steve,
Speaker 5: I mean, and instead didn't they put an ad in
Speaker 5: the paper saying b K Help is available, call this
Speaker 5: number before ten pm. They just didn't want the public
Speaker 5: to panic.
Speaker 2: Yet.
Speaker 6: I think it goes back, maybe a little bit to
Speaker 6: what Joyce was saying that as a culture, we didn't
Speaker 6: have that much experience with serial killing at that point,
Speaker 6: or at least we didn't know about it. And you
Speaker 6: have to remember that the Behavioral Science unit of the
Speaker 6: FBI and Quantico was just about to get started. I
Speaker 6: mean that came about in the seventies when these crimes
Speaker 6: were being committed, So it wasn't a science yet, and
Speaker 6: they made a judgment call and it turned out, you know,
Speaker 6: not to be the right call, because in seventy seven,
Speaker 6: as time went on, he decided to, as he would
Speaker 6: put it, set another kill. And he just was walking
Speaker 6: up and down the street. Is a Wichita He had
Speaker 6: a tweed code.
Speaker 5: Oh. He sort of like James Bond. He kind of
Speaker 5: envisioned himself as now like a James Bond type of character.
Speaker 6: And he goes to this house where he thinks he's
Speaker 6: picked out some victims, but nobody's home. So he sees
Speaker 6: this little boy walking down the street and talks to
Speaker 6: him a little bit and then just follows him. It's
Speaker 6: totally random. Back to his house where there's a woman
Speaker 6: named Shirley Vian and she has three young kids, and
Speaker 6: he just sort of barges in with his gun again
Speaker 6: and says, I just want to tie you up to
Speaker 6: the mother and you know, have sex and I'll leave.
Speaker 5: And she said, but I'm sick, and he said, well
Speaker 5: I know, but this is how it's going to be. So,
Speaker 5: you know, he put the kids in the bathroom and
Speaker 5: locked them in while he tied him up, and while
Speaker 5: he tied the mother up and starts strangling her. But
Speaker 5: one of the sons I believe his name is Steve Wright.
Speaker 5: Steve he saw what Raider was joined to his mother
Speaker 5: and it affected him deeply, of course, you know, for
Speaker 5: the rest of his life.
Speaker 6: So he just goes in kills this is the sixth victim,
Speaker 6: and then goes back to his house. He is about
Speaker 6: he's either now or about to be working for a
Speaker 6: d T, which, for those who don't know, is a
Speaker 6: security company, which is pretty ironic in itself. But if
Speaker 6: you're working then that field, you know how to get
Speaker 6: into people's houses, or set up security systems or dismantled
Speaker 6: security systems, or do all of those things. So he's
Speaker 6: leading this perfectly normal life in this small town north
Speaker 6: of Wichita, steadfast Church member, good father by most accounts,
Speaker 6: I think, and.
Speaker 5: By now his first son, Brian, was old enough to
Speaker 5: be involved in the Cub Scouts, and so he became
Speaker 5: a troop leader and got him and he got a
Speaker 5: son involved in the Cub Scouts, and he taught them
Speaker 5: his special skill, which was not time right.
Speaker 6: So he's leading two entirely separate lives at this point,
Speaker 6: and he does. Then he sends in another communication about
Speaker 6: killing Shirley Vann and it gets lost for a while
Speaker 6: and eventually makes its way to the authorities and to
Speaker 6: one of the television stations there, and by now he's
Speaker 6: really angry because they're not giving him any attention. He said,
Speaker 6: I've put seven people in the ground and you're not
Speaker 6: even paying attention to me. How many do I have
Speaker 6: to kill to get a little recognition around here. I mean,
Speaker 6: it's an extraordinary isn't that way?
Speaker 5: He actually named himself to BTK.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So, now three years later and these victims later,
Speaker 6: the authorities decide that now we need to publicize this.
Speaker 6: This strategy isn't working, so we will tell Wichitah that
Speaker 6: there is a serial killer among us. And it set
Speaker 6: off a lot of panic.
Speaker 5: And people were buying guns and getting installing home security
Speaker 5: systems and you can imagine, you know, the terror in
Speaker 5: that town at that time.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and then at the end of seventy seven, he
Speaker 6: stalks this other woman that he sees in a mall.
Speaker 5: She worked at a jewelry store, right, and.
Speaker 6: Her name is Nancy Fox. He strolled, he stocked. He
Speaker 6: called this project foxtail, and he broke into her home
Speaker 6: one evening and he would like to he would sit
Speaker 6: in the closet. He did this several times and wait
Speaker 6: for women to come home. And when she came home,
Speaker 6: he sort of came bursting out of the closet told
Speaker 6: her again the same thing. I just want to tie
Speaker 6: you up have sex.
Speaker 5: And she tried to stall for time. She said, well,
Speaker 5: I need to have a cigarette. So he let her
Speaker 5: have a cigarette and sit in the kitchen and she
Speaker 5: kind of gave him some pushback, but he told her
Speaker 5: that he had cut her phone lines and he just
Speaker 5: wanted to tie her up and have sex and take pictures.
Speaker 5: And so then he handcuffed her, but before he killed her,
Speaker 5: and this is where I think, this is where the
Speaker 5: torture part comes in. He told the police later that
Speaker 5: he whispered to her right before he died. She died
Speaker 5: that he was a serial killer known as BTK. He
Speaker 5: also took jewelry and a keychain and mementos.
Speaker 6: From her, and he also left behind more seamen. So
Speaker 6: this is the second collection that the police will make
Speaker 6: of his DNA, which becomes important.
Speaker 5: And then he also was strangely enough, as he's leaving
Speaker 5: that scene of the crime, he goes to a phone
Speaker 5: booth and calls the police and says, you have a
Speaker 5: homicide at eight forty three South Pershing Street, Nancy Fox.
Speaker 6: So now they have his voice, you know, recorded, And
Speaker 6: the person who came out, he didn't hang up the phone,
Speaker 6: he just dropped it. The operators were still on nine
Speaker 6: one one and all of that dispatcher and the guy
Speaker 6: who comes out is the head of the fire department
Speaker 6: in Wichard. Tony picks up the phone and he starts
Speaker 6: talking to them, and he said, I sort of was
Speaker 6: able to make this guy, as you know, Caucasian, about
Speaker 6: five foot ten to six foot, light colored hair, worked
Speaker 6: in a had a van that had some writing on it,
Speaker 6: which was probably a DT. So they sort of get
Speaker 6: a sense of who he is, but the investigation doesn't
Speaker 6: go anywhere.
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Speaker 3: We're not necessarily dad where everybody lost the terms of
Speaker 3: conditions eighteen plus So this.
Speaker 6: Is nineteen seventy seven, and in seventy eight he writes
Speaker 6: in this angry letter, and then there's sort of a
Speaker 6: pause in his criminal activities as far as we know,
Speaker 6: because and it's possible because he was raising his kids
Speaker 6: then and busy with other things. It's possible that they
Speaker 6: did start to give him his attention at that time
Speaker 6: and that sort of backed him off. But the next
Speaker 6: crime will be truly spectacular, you know, even for him.
Speaker 6: There are now seven victims in nineteen eighty five. All
Speaker 6: of the victims had been in Wichita, the Wichita proper.
Speaker 6: So again he lives in this small town north of Wichita,
Speaker 6: and now he picks out a victim in his small town.
Speaker 5: But right before that, if I could just backtrack a bit,
Speaker 5: it's kind of an interesting detail because in January of
Speaker 5: nineteen seventy eight, his wife found some lines from a
Speaker 5: bizarre poem that Raider had written, and she asked him
Speaker 5: what is this And he had to quickly make up
Speaker 5: this story that they had been studying BTK at Wichita
Speaker 5: State because he was I think he was taking class
Speaker 5: is at that point in criminal administration something, some sort
Speaker 5: of criminology class, and she believed him. So in January
Speaker 5: of January thirty, first he mailed some index cards inside
Speaker 5: an envelope to the Wichita Eagle, parrotying this old nursery
Speaker 5: rhyme called curly locks curly locks, will that be Mine?
Speaker 5: But instead it read Shirley Lock, Shirley locks, Wilt that
Speaker 5: be Mine? A reference to the nineteen seventy seven murder
Speaker 5: of Shirley Vyan. The Eagle employees turned it over to
Speaker 5: the police, and again the media and the police department
Speaker 5: didn't respond to it. And then that's when he wrote
Speaker 5: an angry letter in February to k tv KA k
Speaker 5: E television in Wichita, included with another poem o death
Speaker 5: to Nancy with a drawing of her on a bed
Speaker 5: tied up. So he said, you know how many how
Speaker 5: many do I have to kill before I get a
Speaker 5: name in the paper, some national attention.
Speaker 6: Right, And again it's just ongoing theme of needing to
Speaker 6: reach out and communicate with either the meteor law enforcement
Speaker 6: and to get some feedback from them and some credibility
Speaker 6: as a serial killer. So in nineteen eighty five he
Speaker 6: picks out a woman living not far from him in
Speaker 6: Park City, and he goes her home, breaks in again
Speaker 6: hides she had brought home a male visitor, but he
Speaker 6: ultimately left. Then he ties up. Her name is Marine Head.
Speaker 6: She ties her up and he kills her, and he
Speaker 6: puts her in the trunk of I believe it's her car,
Speaker 6: and he drives her to his church. She's dead. He
Speaker 6: takes her out of the trunk, he goes into the church.
Speaker 6: He puts her in the basement.
Speaker 5: Well before Steve earlier, he had actually gone to the
Speaker 5: church basement and taped the windows with black you know,
Speaker 5: sheeting and duct tape, so that when he was joined
Speaker 5: this work of his, any passing cars wouldn't see the
Speaker 5: light filtering out of the church basement.
Speaker 6: And the one detail we left out of that is
Speaker 6: that he was this He was on a weekend camping
Speaker 6: cub Scout trip, camping with his son, and he slipped
Speaker 6: away from the cub Scout event to go do all
Speaker 6: of these things. So again the dichotomy of his life.
Speaker 6: He takes Marine Hedge into the basement and spends hours
Speaker 6: photographing her in bondage positions, the sort of the S
Speaker 6: and M type of things. And I mean, this is
Speaker 6: about as sacrilegious as you could get.
Speaker 5: So he took a ring off her finger and then
Speaker 5: he dumps body and a drainage ditch, and then he
Speaker 5: returns to the cub Scouts, but he remembered that he
Speaker 5: had left a piece of cord, so he had to
Speaker 5: go back and pick up the chord and then returned.
Speaker 6: But again it's this very peculiar mixture of killing and
Speaker 6: then making some sort of artistic statement about it. It
Speaker 6: goes right back to when he was a boy and
Speaker 6: was looking at those pictures in True Detective and then
Speaker 6: making drawings of women. But now he's got actual, you know,
Speaker 6: physical bodies that he has killed, and he's doing something
Speaker 6: similar now. So he he kills Marine Hedge. No connection
Speaker 6: is made with BTK at all. That investigation is cooled
Speaker 6: down over the last seven or eight years. The following year,
Speaker 6: he again picks out a victim that we alluded to earlier,
Speaker 6: Vicki wagerly Jack piano he killed. She plays the piano.
Speaker 6: He had walked by her house numerous I'm stalking and
Speaker 6: hearing her play the piano. So in September of eighty
Speaker 6: six he goes into their house. She has a two
Speaker 6: year old son who's there with her, and again tells
Speaker 6: his story.
Speaker 5: Well, this time he had a fake Southwest Belle hardhat
Speaker 5: On and a fake ID, and he said he needed
Speaker 5: to check her phone line because they had some sort
Speaker 5: of static problem. So she, you know, she lets him
Speaker 5: into their home. She pulls out a gun and he says,
Speaker 5: let's go to the bedrooms. And she's saying, well, what
Speaker 5: about my son. My husband's going to be home soon.
Speaker 5: But he tied her up, and now this worried him,
Speaker 5: of course, because again there's this unknown factor of a
Speaker 5: male going to be involved, so he had to hurry up,
Speaker 5: strangle her, take pictures of her. But what's interesting is
Speaker 5: that when her husband came home, her body was wedged
Speaker 5: in between the bed and the wall, and he didn't
Speaker 5: see her, and he just saw that the sun was
Speaker 5: there alone. So for many years, the husband was under
Speaker 5: the umbrella of suspicion, right right.
Speaker 6: He was the primary suspect, and the key picked out
Speaker 6: another victim, Delores Davis, who lived nearby Park City, and
Speaker 6: again he used a cub Scout or a boy Scout
Speaker 6: event to go to and he slipped away in the
Speaker 6: middle of the night, but this.
Speaker 5: Time he actually threw a cinder block through her back
Speaker 5: sliding glass door. She awoke, startled, and see now at
Speaker 5: this point in his life, he's getting older. He realizes
Speaker 5: he has to pick ups that are older than him
Speaker 5: that can't fight back, as you know, and Catherine Bright,
Speaker 5: these women were fifteen sixteen years older than him, and
Speaker 5: they were easier to strangle and like And when he
Speaker 5: killed her, she was dead within three minutes, as opposed
Speaker 5: to the length of time that it took to kill
Speaker 5: the o'tarrell's when he first started.
Speaker 6: Right, So he again put her in a car and
Speaker 6: took her out into the countryside, and he was going
Speaker 6: to do some things with her, photography or other things.
Speaker 6: But he left her in the on the ground and
Speaker 6: it would come back at a later time.
Speaker 3: With her.
Speaker 6: So by the time he got back there, this is
Speaker 6: a gross tesque detail. But you know, animals are predators,
Speaker 6: especially in the dead of winter and the dead of winter,
Speaker 6: and you know, they had attacked her and she no
Speaker 6: longer you know, looked the way he wanted her to
Speaker 6: look when he got back there. But again, no one
Speaker 6: was looking in this part of Kansas around Park City
Speaker 6: or making a connection to the BTK case. So in
Speaker 6: the early nineties, that period there that we've just covered
Speaker 6: from about seventy four to ninety one, Kansas did not
Speaker 6: have the death penalty. Raider played close attention to these things,
Speaker 6: and then Kansas reinstated the death penalty, which he obviously
Speaker 6: did not want any part of. So we we think
Speaker 6: that he stopped killing at that time. That's the general consensus.
Speaker 6: He traveled around Kansas a lot. He said he never
Speaker 6: stopped stalking women, but we don't know of any other merder.
Speaker 5: But I think during his time is when he was
Speaker 5: taking photographs of himself that are actually quite disturbing and
Speaker 5: quite startling. He would dress up, he would put this
Speaker 5: this mask on himself and put a blonde wig, and
Speaker 5: he would, you know'd string himself up in his parents'
Speaker 5: basement or up in a tree out in the countryside,
Speaker 5: hanging upside down, putting himself like in a grave with
Speaker 5: a you know, with that disguise on. And I think
Speaker 5: that's sort of how he was, you know, carrying on
Speaker 5: what he wanted to do without killing. He was it's
Speaker 5: just fantasy, and he was getting older. He lived an
Speaker 5: incredible fantasy life, this person, and.
Speaker 6: He was making himself the victims in each case. I mean,
Speaker 6: he's hung up in his parents' basement just like when
Speaker 6: he killed the Otero girl. I mean, it's a very
Speaker 6: similar type of visual thing now, but he's doing it
Speaker 6: to himself. He would dig a grave out in the countryside,
Speaker 6: become nude, wrap himself in plastic, set up a camera
Speaker 6: twenty feet away with remote control, take pictures of himself
Speaker 6: as if he were dead in the grave. Again, this
Speaker 6: incredibly entangled mixture sort of you know, sensuality or sexuality
Speaker 6: and death, and he would swing in these trees with
Speaker 6: this elaborate system he'd set up naked swinging from limb
Speaker 6: to limb, utterly disturbing and bizarre images that would later
Speaker 6: come out. So from ninety one until two thousand and
Speaker 6: then four, when the Ego prints that article in January
Speaker 6: two thousand and four, it's the thirtieth anniversary of their
Speaker 6: terror murders, and the general speculation in there is it
Speaker 6: will Btk's probably dead or moved away or one of
Speaker 6: those things, And of course as he reads it, he goes, well,
Speaker 6: none of that's true, and I need to tell my
Speaker 6: story for myself. And that's where the narrative really picks up.
Speaker 6: Over the next year.
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Speaker 2: January two thousand and five, and he makes a mistake,
Speaker 2: Dennis Rader makes a mistake, and when he drops off
Speaker 2: his latest package at home depot, tell us what happens
Speaker 2: at that time and what is his response and what
Speaker 2: is the police response.
Speaker 6: Well, first of all, he started sending in these communications
Speaker 6: in the spring of two thousand and four after he
Speaker 6: decides to come out of hiding and communicate with the police,
Speaker 6: and there from time to time having a press conference.
Speaker 6: And again said earlier, Lieutenant Lander, who's in charge of
Speaker 6: the investigation, is sort of speaking to him him. His
Speaker 6: strategy is working. He's connecting with with Rader on sort
Speaker 6: of subtle levels. Raider continues to communicate with them, and
Speaker 6: then to go to January of two thousand and five,
Speaker 6: he makes two mistakes, actually, and he goes down on
Speaker 6: a very snowy night and he goes to the parking
Speaker 6: lot of home depots.
Speaker 5: But he's writing in his son's pickup, not his but yeah.
Speaker 6: But he so there are cameras, you know, security cameras
Speaker 6: that are in many of these places, and for the
Speaker 6: first time ever, they they get a shot of the truck. Uh,
Speaker 6: And then they get sort of an image of him
Speaker 6: because he takes a communication.
Speaker 5: He put a serial box. He thought that was real,
Speaker 5: you know, funny, you know, serial killer serial box and
Speaker 5: he and he puts it in the bed of another
Speaker 5: truck with the words BTK and bomb you know. So,
Speaker 5: but it's one of his first misakes. And this and
Speaker 5: number seven of those communicates, he describes his home as
Speaker 5: his lair with three stories in an elevator, and it
Speaker 5: had a bondage room and it was booby trapped in
Speaker 5: case the police came in. So again there's this self
Speaker 5: aggrandizement of who he is as opposed to who he
Speaker 5: wants to be, as opposed to who he really is
Speaker 5: living in this nine hundred square foot wood frame home.
Speaker 6: Right, And to show that Lieutenant land Wher's strategy is working.
Speaker 6: They're they're sort of communicating back and forth. Raider BTK
Speaker 6: goes so far as to ask the lieutenant or the police,
Speaker 6: if I were to use a diskett, a computer diskette
Speaker 6: to communicate with you, it wouldn't, you know, have any
Speaker 6: other information on it that might reveal So yeah, he
Speaker 6: said it couldn't be traced.
Speaker 5: To a computer, be honest.
Speaker 6: Those are his words. Beyond So he's actually asking the
Speaker 6: police to tell him that truth when they spent the
Speaker 6: last three decades trying to catch him. So they write back,
Speaker 6: you know, don't you know, don't worry about it, no problem,
Speaker 6: And so eventually he leaves these packages and this diskette
Speaker 6: reaches the police department. They are assuming again that this
Speaker 6: is a very sophisticated killer, very intelligent, probably about the
Speaker 6: computer world. And as they get the diskette and are
Speaker 6: about to do a search, they think, you know, this
Speaker 6: could take forever, maybe it's encrypted, buried whatever, this could
Speaker 6: take a long time. They put it in and ten
Speaker 6: minutes later they hit the properties thing on your computer
Speaker 6: and it comes up Dennis Lutheran Church essentially in part
Speaker 6: outside of part Christ Christ Lutheran. So within ten minutes
Speaker 6: they know that somehow this Diskett is connected to christ
Speaker 6: Luthor in church and somebody named Dennis. And within ten
Speaker 6: more minutes they figure out that the president of the
Speaker 6: congregation is Dennis Raider, and they think we've got him.
Speaker 6: But it's not quite that simple. So they they they
Speaker 6: now they have to come up with a with a
Speaker 6: DNA match from him. He also left semen at the
Speaker 6: Weggerly nineteen eighty six crime scenes, so there are three
Speaker 6: preserved samples of DNA in his semen that they now have,
Speaker 6: and now they're trying to figure out, without alerting him
Speaker 6: that they're onto him, how did they get that sample.
Speaker 6: So they kick it around for you know, a week.
Speaker 5: Or so, and they decide that he well no, remember
Speaker 5: one of them said, well maybe because now by now
Speaker 5: they knew where his grown children were and where his
Speaker 5: wife worked and everything about him. And they're kind of detectives.
Speaker 5: They're joking around, well, g you know, how are we
Speaker 5: going to get the DNA from his daughter?
Speaker 6: You know, do I have to do?
Speaker 5: Does one of us has to pose as like a
Speaker 5: potential suitor or something and go up to Michigan where
Speaker 5: she lives, and you know, get something that way. But
Speaker 5: then they come up with getting her her DNA from
Speaker 5: a gynecological test from like a papsmerror that she had
Speaker 5: done when she was at the University of Wichita.
Speaker 6: Or was it Wichita State Kansas State University, which is
Speaker 6: an hour two away.
Speaker 5: So they didn't they get a you know, to do that.
Speaker 6: They get a search warrant essentially, and they get the
Speaker 6: sample of hers and they conclude from after studying it
Speaker 6: that we we don't know if if Dennis Raider is BTK,
Speaker 6: but we know that this woman's father is BTK, and
Speaker 6: and that's that's good enough for them essentially, and they
Speaker 6: decide the very next day after they get the test
Speaker 6: results to move in on him. So it's Friday, It's
Speaker 6: it's February twenty fifth, two thousand and five. He gets up,
Speaker 6: he goes to work as he does every day.
Speaker 5: And he wants his lunch. He wants his wife to
Speaker 5: have his lunch ready for him every day at twelve seventeen.
Speaker 5: He'll get there at twelve fifteen, and he wants the
Speaker 5: lunch ready by twelve seventeen. And so they're following him now.
Speaker 6: They're tracking his every movement.
Speaker 5: And just like he tracked all of his victims.
Speaker 6: He goes to work. He has a truck. He has
Speaker 6: a shotgun in his truck. He's also carrying a knife,
Speaker 6: probably as part of his job. He's fiddling with the radio,
Speaker 6: the police scanner radio, and he hears it something about
Speaker 6: the FBI is in the area and might be doing something.
Speaker 6: But you know, he kind of shrugs it off.
Speaker 5: Like, well, well, and it's too late to run now
Speaker 5: where it's god.
Speaker 6: To go, right, So he does his morning rounds. He
Speaker 6: always leaves the offs at twelve fifteen for his lunch
Speaker 6: at twelve seventeen, and as he gets about halfway home,
Speaker 6: the police cruisers pull in, pull in in and around him,
Speaker 6: tell him to get out, you know, tell him to
Speaker 6: get on the ground, Say do you have any weapons.
Speaker 6: He gives them his knife, and you know, they take him.
Speaker 6: There's another police car there and it's Lieutenant Land where
Speaker 6: is sitting in the back seat. Now, this is thirty
Speaker 6: one years after the savage murders of the Terras. He's
Speaker 6: not only terrorized Wichita when they named him as a
Speaker 6: serial killer in the late seventies, but when Land we're
Speaker 6: announced in March at two thousand and four of the
Speaker 6: BTK serial killer is back. He terrorized the city all
Speaker 6: over again. They swabbed forty five hundred people to try
Speaker 6: and find a DNA match and they couldn't. They set
Speaker 6: off another and huge investigation. So they take radio over.
Speaker 6: They put him in the backseat with Lieutenant Land where
Speaker 6: they both say to each other and Land versus, do
Speaker 6: you know why we're here? And Raider says, I think
Speaker 6: I have a pretty good idea. So they they've decided
Speaker 6: to interrogate him in the most the biggest and most
Speaker 6: impressive looking building in Wichita, which is where the FBI
Speaker 6: is located, and they sort of sneak him in there
Speaker 6: before the media gets wind of this of what's going on,
Speaker 6: and they they sit down. There's a special FBI agent,
Speaker 6: Bob Morton, and there's Lieutenant Land where and for three
Speaker 6: and a half hours they sort of dance around things.
Speaker 6: Not too much comes out, and then they pull out
Speaker 6: the diskette, the thing that he had sent them, and
Speaker 6: they place it in front of him and he sort
Speaker 6: of looks at the diskett looks at them and then
Speaker 6: makes the connection in right right, and so he's it.
Speaker 6: He says something to the effect of you know, this
Speaker 6: is going to be hard to get out of and
Speaker 6: so well, no, and.
Speaker 5: Then he said to land where you know I trusted you.
Speaker 5: You know, he said I couldn't be chased. And you know,
Speaker 5: they're all in astonishment that he's actually saying this to them,
Speaker 5: and Landmer says, well, I was trying to catch.
Speaker 6: You, right right, And so Morton presses him. He says,
Speaker 6: who are you? You know, who are you? Who are you?
Speaker 6: And finally he says, I'm the BTK serial killer. And
Speaker 6: they had made an arrest earlier and they had blown
Speaker 6: up in their face and been a big embarrassment. So
Speaker 6: there was a lot of tension around whether this was
Speaker 6: really going to work out, and that has So you
Speaker 6: have to understand that in those three decades plus he
Speaker 6: had never talked to anybody at all about anything he'd
Speaker 6: ever done, except when killing Nancy Fox and saying I'm
Speaker 6: the BTK serial killer. Now he will sit down with
Speaker 6: the authorities, both FBI and police, and he will speak
Speaker 6: about his crimes in great detail for hours, thirty two hours.
Speaker 6: For the next thirty two hours, just this volcanic eruption
Speaker 6: of information. So that's where you know a lot of
Speaker 6: the information it's in the book it came from, because
Speaker 6: you truly get a blow by blow account of his crimes.
Speaker 2: What we missed though, too, in passing was what was
Speaker 2: his status at the christ Lutheran Church right before this?
Speaker 2: What was he preparing for? Again, just this dichotomy, incredible
Speaker 2: dichotomy between these two realities. And yeah, tell us a
Speaker 2: little bit about what was happening at that time.
Speaker 5: Well, we'll Steve all start out, but I believe it
Speaker 5: was a year before he was arrested. He had been
Speaker 5: elected the president.
Speaker 6: He was actually ascended to the presidency in January t
Speaker 6: two thousand and five, so it's about seven to eight
Speaker 6: weeks before he will be arrested. He has become, by
Speaker 6: total consensus, you know, the next president, and his pastor,
Speaker 6: clerk says, the spiritual leader of his church. So the
Speaker 6: ironies basically couldn't get any thicker. He chaired the January
Speaker 6: and February meetings for the officials in the church.
Speaker 5: And he was great people and he'd you know, he
Speaker 5: was very involved in that church community. You know, would
Speaker 5: they would help people that were in need, and he
Speaker 5: was a big part of that church. So you can
Speaker 5: only imagine how they felt betrayed. When they started coming
Speaker 5: to the church to start questioning Pastor Clark.
Speaker 6: Yeah, about an hour or so after his arrest, four
Speaker 6: police officers showed up at the church and Pastor Clark
Speaker 6: it was just, you know, obviously just completely stunned that
Speaker 6: here he thought his most trusted person in the church
Speaker 6: was just being named the BTK serial killer.
Speaker 2: In the communication that BTK had for police and media,
Speaker 2: he spoke of again a rationalization for his urges, and
Speaker 2: it was and you write about a rex or a
Speaker 2: factor X, and that he was different than other people
Speaker 2: when they do the thirty two hour questioning, tell us
Speaker 2: more about some of the things that he said, and
Speaker 2: does he include that again, otherworldly rationalization for his urges
Speaker 2: and his crimes.
Speaker 6: I don't recall him specifically talking about that with the police.
Speaker 6: He did say something to the effect of, you know,
Speaker 6: I'm generally speaking, I'm a pretty nice guy, but I
Speaker 6: you know, have some bad moods or something.
Speaker 5: Well, and one of those in one of those earlier
Speaker 5: letters to the police, he had said that, you know,
Speaker 5: that there was a monster living inside of him. So
Speaker 5: he was aware that there was something going on, you know.
Speaker 5: I think eventually he wanted to make it sound like
Speaker 5: he was possessed by this demon, this Rex, this factor X.
Speaker 5: You know, it's funny. He said, well, Rex doesn't like dogs,
Speaker 5: you know, he didn't. Rex didn't like when there was
Speaker 5: a dog in a home that he was going to be,
Speaker 5: you know, entering. But yet he had his own dog
Speaker 5: that he loved very much. He had several dogs, and you.
Speaker 6: Know, I think he he spoke more about that demonic
Speaker 6: possession with Pastor Clark after the arrest. He you know,
Speaker 6: there are sort of three interpretations of Raiders' behavior that
Speaker 6: are explored in the book. One is the standard psychological interpretation,
Speaker 6: which doctor Arbrotski is excellent at laying that out in
Speaker 6: the book. They basically he was he was just incredibly
Speaker 6: repressed his sexuality, his creativity, all that, and it came
Speaker 6: out in this horrific way.
Speaker 5: And then Tony Ruark, who was a psychologist that Steve
Speaker 5: interviewed for the book, said his sexual fantasies dominated his
Speaker 5: life and affected his decision making, which is basically the
Speaker 5: definition of mental illness. So, you know, as we were
Speaker 5: working on this book, we we always try to go
Speaker 5: for you know, the larger, the bigger picture, rather than
Speaker 5: just chronicling these crimes and the sensationalistic, you know, grizzly factor.
Speaker 5: We want to try to get to the psychological underpinnings.
Speaker 5: And what we have found in working on so many
Speaker 5: true crime books throughout the years is that there are
Speaker 5: you know, there are grad dations of mental illness. There
Speaker 5: are people that can function in society. And he did
Speaker 5: it to the extreme to be able to comport mentalize
Speaker 5: one part of your life and live like a boy
Speaker 5: Scout troop leader and a president of your church and
Speaker 5: a family man and a father, and then be able
Speaker 5: to have this totally other identity. I mean, you know,
Speaker 5: that's the kind of questions we were trying to explore
Speaker 5: rather than just labeling something that's very simplistic. Oh, he's evil,
Speaker 5: you know, he's evil.
Speaker 6: And then the second interpretation is, you know, this demonic
Speaker 6: possession I mean, and Pastor Clark represents that in the
Speaker 6: book because he sort of went on this journey the
Speaker 6: search to see, well is that a real thing? Are
Speaker 6: people actually possessed by demons? And so that's that's sort
Speaker 6: of his journey and interpretation. And then the third is
Speaker 6: what might be called you know, just bad brains, a
Speaker 6: bad a genetic or chemical problem inside the brain that
Speaker 6: leads to crime. That's a whole other study of criminology.
Speaker 6: Now doctor A. And Rain is one of the leaders
Speaker 6: of that study, So that gets explored a little bit too.
Speaker 6: Is there are there genetic components or brain components that
Speaker 6: simply bend one toward criminal behavior?
Speaker 5: Yeah? Like, well, the sociologists that we talked to, the
Speaker 5: clinical social worker, she said, you know, how how can
Speaker 5: a person kill ten people and be considered legally?
Speaker 6: Saying it's a good question, right, So you know, you
Speaker 6: sort of have those three choices in front of you.
Speaker 6: I myself sort of coming from that environment, you know,
Speaker 6: some of the same influences extreme religion, Not not that
Speaker 6: the religion was extreme, but you're sort of saturated with it,
Speaker 6: you know, sort of clashing with artistic desires, you know,
Speaker 6: maybe unconventional sexuality, all of those things. I mean, he
Speaker 6: just shoved it down as far as he could until
Speaker 6: it would just explode over and over again in these
Speaker 6: horrible acts.
Speaker 2: What I found incredible too, is that despite not being
Speaker 2: having a low IQ, he seemed to be naive about
Speaker 2: a great many things. And many people commented it. But
Speaker 2: even in this thirty two hour interview. He saw it
Speaker 2: as that he was really really impressing these law enforcement
Speaker 2: people that he was impressed by. He really did have
Speaker 2: an effect on society, he wrote, He really his artistic ambitions,
Speaker 2: his writing, that he always wanted to be a writer.
Speaker 2: Now people, now, society was affected by this guy, and
Speaker 2: he could see it in those officers' eyes.
Speaker 6: He said, yeah, but again, I mean, think of it,
Speaker 6: you know, from sort of an emotional point of view.
Speaker 6: He said something to the effect of, you know, I
Speaker 6: didn't know that I was necessarily arising, you know, the
Speaker 6: city of Wichita or all these things. I mean, his
Speaker 6: wife was terrified as he sat on the couch with
Speaker 6: her and that last year and they would watch these
Speaker 6: increasing media reports night after night about the hunt for
Speaker 6: the BTK serial killer. You know, she talked about, you know,
Speaker 6: being safe or locking the doors, and he'd say, well,
Speaker 6: don't worry too much about it.
Speaker 5: And his own his daughter would even say that that's
Speaker 5: how they grew up. He always told them not you know,
Speaker 5: never opened the door to strangers. You know, here the
Speaker 5: monster is right in the house with you, telling you
Speaker 5: not to open the door to strangers.
Speaker 6: Yeah. So no, he again he felt this odd connection
Speaker 6: with law enforcement. I mean asking Lieutenant Lander, why did
Speaker 6: you lie to me about the disket? Well, we were
Speaker 6: trying to catch you know, you've killed people. And it
Speaker 6: was this very bizarre naivety in certain.
Speaker 5: Ways emotional like kind of an emotional arrested emotional development.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and he would say, I mean, his phrase was,
Speaker 6: you know, I'm basically a good person, you know, I
Speaker 6: just have bad habits or something. Mean, it's a very
Speaker 6: sallow you know, just the extreme level of denial.
Speaker 5: And part of the reason that I don't and I
Speaker 5: don't necessarily believe everything that came out of his mouth
Speaker 5: is you know, he had said in the police confession
Speaker 5: that he had intended to put on a CDs you know,
Speaker 5: his whole life story, and he was going to put
Speaker 5: it into a safety deposit box so that one day
Speaker 5: after he was dead, you know, people would know who
Speaker 5: the real bt K serial killer was. Well, in court
Speaker 5: he cried about, you know, hurting his family and this
Speaker 5: and that. But who would have been the people who
Speaker 5: would have opened the safety deposit box in the end
Speaker 5: after he was dead? His family, So his family it
Speaker 5: was a victim to this man. Also.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and again something about the thirty two hour confession is.
Speaker 6: You know, he did a shortened version of that in
Speaker 6: court on June twenty seventh, two thousand and five, roughly
Speaker 6: four months after the arrest. He had to go into
Speaker 6: court and plead guilty or whatever he was going to
Speaker 6: do legally. He did plead guilty, and the judge then
Speaker 6: basically had him walk through the crimes. So we as
Speaker 6: the public sort of felt like, well, he's telling us
Speaker 6: everything about what he's done and who he is, and
Speaker 6: he can't get enough attention for this, et cetera. The
Speaker 6: book came out, The un Holy Messenger came out in
Speaker 6: early April of two thousand and six, about a year later.
Speaker 6: And so I was on CNN Anderson Cooper three sixty
Speaker 6: one evening for an hour with him. Joyce was in Denver,
Speaker 6: and as I was on the shore got off, we
Speaker 6: got an email from someone who lived Whichita.
Speaker 5: Well, because on the screen on the CNN program they
Speaker 5: were flashing our website, which is Stephensiguiler dot com. And
Speaker 5: we continue to get tips and information not only about
Speaker 5: this crime, but other true crimes we've written about. So
Speaker 5: somebody saw that lived in Wichita from a from a
Speaker 5: prominent family and wrote us these emails.
Speaker 6: And he said, you know, when I was young, he
Speaker 6: was roughly Raiders age. There used to be a place
Speaker 6: in Wichita where gay people would gather. And he said,
Speaker 6: once I saw Raider's pictures as an older person, and
Speaker 6: then he put up his pictures when he was young.
Speaker 6: He said, I realized this is the same person. And
Speaker 6: he would go down there, Raider and have these encounters
Speaker 6: with men. And he was deeply, deeply conflicted about his sexuality.
Speaker 6: And he went out with this fellow who contacted us.
Speaker 6: On one occasion. He had him dress up like a
Speaker 6: woman and then they went out and then Raiders started
Speaker 6: tie him up. He hit him over the head with
Speaker 6: an ash tray, but he tied him up very effectively,
Speaker 6: just like he would do later on in his crimes.
Speaker 6: And this guy was just basically what he was saying was,
Speaker 6: if you think you know everything about Raider, you think
Speaker 6: Raiders told you everything about himself. He hasn't, you know.
Speaker 6: This is the other part of his life that he's
Speaker 6: never talked about. And this fellow also told us, and
Speaker 6: this may or may not be true, we don't know,
Speaker 6: but there was a murder of a gay man in
Speaker 6: the late sixties, and through one thing and another, people
Speaker 6: thought that Raider was likely responsible for that because he
Speaker 6: was attracted them in and yet he would become violent
Speaker 6: in these situations, as he had done with this man
Speaker 6: who contacted us. So here we are thinking, well, we know,
Speaker 6: you know pretty much everything about Dennis Raider now, and
Speaker 6: this guy opened up an entirely new, you know, area
Speaker 6: for us. So again, as Joy says, you can't take
Speaker 6: at face value that everything he's telling you is the
Speaker 6: truth or the whole truth.
Speaker 5: I'd like to just say a couple of things though.
Speaker 5: You know, we in having to do a CNN interview
Speaker 5: last month in which toap they're going to be doing
Speaker 5: a program on this in I think in March and
Speaker 5: twenty twenty. But anybody that wants more information on that
Speaker 5: type of information can go to our website. We had
Speaker 5: to really, you know, study the book again, take copious notes,
Speaker 5: because you know, we've written so many books you have
Speaker 5: to go back and you can't keep all that data
Speaker 5: in your head all the time. And so we reread
Speaker 5: the book. We took all these notes. We you know,
Speaker 5: we did the CNN interview. Then I got a copy
Speaker 5: of Dennis Raider's daughter's book, Carrie Ross and a Serial
Speaker 5: Killer's Daughter, And it was fascinating and I would read
Speaker 5: committed anybody interested in this subject to read Unholy Messenger
Speaker 5: and then read Carrie Rawson's book because the perspective and
Speaker 5: the point of view as she goes through what they're
Speaker 5: her family and what they were doing as he was,
Speaker 5: you know, committing each one of those crimes is absolutely riveting.
Speaker 5: And and it's really unfortunate that she had to suffer
Speaker 5: from PTSD from you know, having to find out about
Speaker 5: her father. It deeply affected her family. And it was
Speaker 5: a very moving story and a very honest, you know
Speaker 5: and heartfelt. And one thing during the sentencing or when
Speaker 5: Denis Rader was committed was confessing the court in front
Speaker 5: of Judge Greg Waller. We thought it was very interesting.
Speaker 5: You know, people were saying, why are they letting the
Speaker 5: judge let him recount all these crimes, you know, like
Speaker 5: as if he's at the Academy Awards or something, getting
Speaker 5: all this attention. But in effect, Judge Waller was doing
Speaker 5: sort of like what Lieutenant Landweer was doing. He was
Speaker 5: letting him. He was doing the public of Wichita a
Speaker 5: favor by demystifying the urban legend that the BPK had become.
Speaker 5: The public could now see this monster for who he
Speaker 5: really was, this average looking, inarticulate, bumbling, balding, sat eyed
Speaker 5: sixty year old man, and the mask had fallen off.
Speaker 5: And I think that was a really great service that
Speaker 5: he did to the community.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he definitely became demystified in that moment. It was
Speaker 6: kind of like a purging, Like Wichita had been so
Speaker 6: traumatized by this for so long that they needed some public,
Speaker 6: you know, event that would sort of let them get
Speaker 6: over it. So we both thought that was very effective.
Speaker 2: Despite the heinous nature. It's again surprising he did get
Speaker 2: fan mail and lots of it, didn't.
Speaker 6: He Well, the strange thing is is that, you know,
Speaker 6: his whole life was I can't share with anybody who
Speaker 6: I am. I mean, and maybe it was you know,
Speaker 6: parts of the sexuality or personality or think I have
Speaker 6: to repress this, I have to shove it down. It's unacceptable,
Speaker 6: blah blah blah. You know, once he actually came out
Speaker 6: of the closet and told the world who he was,
Speaker 6: he did he got a lot of attention from media.
Speaker 6: Psychologists wanted to interview him and you know, find out
Speaker 6: who he really was and how he functioned. He got
Speaker 6: fan mail. There was a woman from Topeka who who
Speaker 6: sort of shared his religious views and wanted to write
Speaker 6: about him or help him. I mean, you know, begging
Speaker 6: the entire question, what if he had sought therapy when
Speaker 6: he was twenty two years old rather than stalking women
Speaker 6: or you know, stealing things out of their house. One
Speaker 6: of the best psycho theiatric hospitals in the United States
Speaker 6: is in Kansas. People were sent there, you know, to
Speaker 6: get help for all kinds of things, the Manager Clinic.
Speaker 6: You know, I don't know if it would have derailed him,
Speaker 6: maybe it wouldn't. But his, as doctor Brodsky says, his
Speaker 6: absolute failure to take any responsibility for his life, you know,
Speaker 6: is very likely at the source of these crimes, to
Speaker 6: shove it down until you can't do it anymore. What
Speaker 6: if he'd taken one step. I mean, we've written about
Speaker 6: a lot of criminals, and they're people who are you know,
Speaker 6: to me, they're just inevitable criminals. They're gonna they're going
Speaker 6: to kill people for gain, They're going to get money,
Speaker 6: They're going to do all kinds of things we wrote
Speaker 6: about someone else like that in Kansas. These crimes are
Speaker 6: so peculiarly psychological, you know that you can't help. But
Speaker 6: think if he had just you know, tried to help
Speaker 6: himself in any way at all, some of this might
Speaker 6: have been prevented.
Speaker 5: And it would be interesting if someone studied his brain.
Speaker 6: Yeah, you know, it would be.
Speaker 5: To see if there's some sort of abnormality between that
Speaker 5: kind of a brain and a normal brain.
Speaker 6: That's true. I mean, you can blame it on a demon,
Speaker 6: but you know, that's like saying, you know, in that
Speaker 6: twenty or thirty minutes when I was killing somebody, a
Speaker 6: demon took over. But what about you know, stocking, trolling,
Speaker 6: following people. I mean, this took hours, This took days
Speaker 6: and weeks. Right.
Speaker 5: We talked to a woman in prison who committed murder
Speaker 5: wrote a book about her. When we asked her about
Speaker 5: the moment of killing, it was like she couldn't she
Speaker 5: never could quite wrap her head around it. And she
Speaker 5: also said, in effect that the devil made.
Speaker 6: Her do it, right, it's convenient and you know, anyway,
Speaker 6: and to me, this guy is the ultimate example of
Speaker 6: sort of you know, not not being able to come
Speaker 6: to terms with yourself and taking it out on other people.
Speaker 5: And there's so many I mean, there's so much interest
Speaker 5: in this in this story about the BTK now, I
Speaker 5: think particularly because of the Netflix series mind Hunter, which
Speaker 5: is on and you know, see was recently interviewed by
Speaker 5: the equivalent of People magazine in Australia about this book BTK.
Speaker 5: They want to know more about him.
Speaker 6: Yeah, it is. It is a fascinating case study. And
Speaker 6: you know, as I reread it, I mean what jumped
Speaker 6: out of me was this this profound need for attention.
Speaker 6: You know, he just it's there right from the beginning,
Speaker 6: and it's what got him caught. You know, he could be,
Speaker 6: you know, living quietly in Park City today, minding his
Speaker 6: own business, but he just couldn't, you know, not, he
Speaker 6: couldn't live without that recognition.
Speaker 2: What also struck me, Joyce and Stephen, is that it
Speaker 2: seems just another killer well before the imitators thinking that
Speaker 2: this was an artistic expression. Very much of this wasn't
Speaker 2: his artistic expression. What do you think about that?
Speaker 6: I think it's absolutely true. Absolutely, you know, he had
Speaker 6: to make the biblical phrase graven images of his work.
Speaker 6: He had to memorialize it in some way. So not
Speaker 6: only is he stashing these drawings writings around the house
Speaker 6: with his wife and kids when they're there, but in
Speaker 6: his office at work, locked in this foul cabinet is
Speaker 6: his mother load. He's collected all these articles, he's done
Speaker 6: all this writing, He's got chapters for his book. He
Speaker 6: wants to write a book, but he writes a chapter
Speaker 6: and sends it in, but the handwriting is so small
Speaker 6: that nobody can read it. So again it's this contradiction.
Speaker 6: He wants to reveal himself, but he can't himself.
Speaker 5: One of the psychologists in the book said, I thought
Speaker 5: it was very astute that he couldn't show himself who
Speaker 5: he really was to people. He could only show who
Speaker 5: he really was to the people that he killed.
Speaker 6: Yeah, yeah, so no, I think it's it's one of
Speaker 6: the more fascinating cases certainly we've ever worked on, and
Speaker 6: just stumbled in it sort of inadvertently, just by being
Speaker 6: in the right place at the right time, is just,
Speaker 6: you know, adds to the story. So it's very fortunate
Speaker 6: that he was caught. He was planning another killing, another
Speaker 6: sort of spectacular.
Speaker 5: The finale of his movies atk.
Speaker 6: Productions in October two thousand and four. As he was
Speaker 6: communicating with the police, he wanted to find a victim
Speaker 6: and sort of string them.
Speaker 5: Up in the silence of the lambs, right right, But.
Speaker 6: He couldn't quite you know, bring it off. So we're
Speaker 6: all better off with him in prison for life.
Speaker 2: Yes, it was fascinating too with the court case where
Speaker 2: the judge made that decision to have him recount his
Speaker 2: crimes because it didn't look like that was going to happen.
Speaker 2: It looked like he was just going to plead guilty
Speaker 2: and he was going to avoid all the shame and
Speaker 2: humiliation for himself and for his family. But the judge
Speaker 2: made this unprecedented decision to.
Speaker 6: Have to do this and not to live national television.
Speaker 6: So yes, it's true, we were both very.
Speaker 5: Everybody was shocked. But that when as that was happening
Speaker 5: in real time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, And you talk about the sentencing. He was
Speaker 2: asked if he wanted it, if he wanted to say anything,
Speaker 2: tell us basically what he had to say.
Speaker 6: Well, he again, this peculiar naivety or some piece of
Speaker 6: his personality. He gets up and he starts making a
Speaker 6: speech that many people compared to again the Academy Awards
Speaker 6: or something. He starts thanking the people who were incarcerated him,
Speaker 6: you know, talking about how he has certain connections with
Speaker 6: the victims, like he and Joseph Otero had served in
Speaker 6: the military. I mean, just utterly and totally inappropriate if
Speaker 6: he and Joseph Otero were somehow equal parts of this drama.
Speaker 6: And just you know, I remember that the fellow who
Speaker 6: contacted us in Wichita, who talked about raiders gay experience
Speaker 6: as a young man, his phrase was he had all
Speaker 6: the social graces of an angry skunk. I think was
Speaker 6: the way he put it. He just couldn't he just
Speaker 6: it was excruciating to sort of watch him.
Speaker 5: Just go on and on, and it infuriated the DA
Speaker 5: Nola Boston.
Speaker 6: Well, the victims and the victims' families got up and
Speaker 6: walked down. I mean, just no empathetic connection to the
Speaker 6: lives you've taken, the people you've hurt beyond measure. You
Speaker 6: know that that's what you did, and they're not really
Speaker 6: interested in being your friend.
Speaker 2: So now, right after this, of course, there are were
Speaker 2: people that you talk about Pastor Clark visiting with Raider
Speaker 2: in prison, and I guess the congregation coming to terms
Speaker 2: with this, this unholy messenger, this whole case. You talk
Speaker 2: about Pastor Clark its effect, What was the what was
Speaker 2: his conclusion about evil and the nature of evil after
Speaker 2: all of.
Speaker 6: This, Well, I think I think it just shook him
Speaker 6: to his foundations. To begin with, the book begins just
Speaker 6: a bit of a sidelight with him writing his sermon
Speaker 6: for the weekend the raider's arrest. And he's been a
Speaker 6: practicing minister for twenty years and he knows what he thinks,
Speaker 6: and he understands good and evil and all that. And
Speaker 6: then the police come to the church and they arrest
Speaker 6: rate her, and they tell him what's going on. And
Speaker 6: one of the first things that he does is tear
Speaker 6: up his sermon and say, I don't know anything. I've
Speaker 6: got to start over. We need a new definition of evil.
Speaker 6: What will be my response to this? And he literally
Speaker 6: at the end of the book is going on on
Speaker 6: a journey to meet people who do exorcism in Minnesota.
Speaker 5: Right.
Speaker 6: Yeah, he wouldn't tell me very much about this. That
Speaker 6: was interesting because he was very open about many other things.
Speaker 6: But at the end of the book, you know, I
Speaker 6: interviewed him again and what I think he came to believe,
Speaker 6: and I think it was more comfortable for him to
Speaker 6: believe that there was something to this demonic possession. I
Speaker 6: think it was very difficult for him to think that
Speaker 6: contained in one person is my right hand man at
Speaker 6: the church.
Speaker 5: Well, you know, and for anybody, for his wife or
Speaker 5: his kids, for anybody that knew it. I imagine how
Speaker 5: your perception of reality would be altered if you thought
Speaker 5: you couldn't trust your judgment. Most people feel that they can,
Speaker 5: you know, trust their good about someone. But if all
Speaker 5: of a sudden that is totally taken away, it's like
Speaker 5: the rug being pulled out from you.
Speaker 6: Yeah, very true. And so he would allow that much
Speaker 6: that he when he came back from that trip, that
Speaker 6: he thought, you know, there was something too demonic possession.
Speaker 5: But he didn't say if he went to like a
Speaker 5: Catholic place, right, because generally speaking, I think if the Catholics,
Speaker 5: having been brought up Catholic myself, that believe in exorcisms
Speaker 5: or you know, I don't know if the Protestant congregations
Speaker 5: believe in.
Speaker 6: That, well, I think he was disturbed enough to go
Speaker 6: in whatever direction he could get.
Speaker 5: Some answers he just wasn't real specific.
Speaker 6: No, he wasn't, and it was somewhat closed off.
Speaker 2: So yeah, this is an incredible book. I want to
Speaker 2: thank you both Joyce and Stephen Singular for coming on
Speaker 2: and talking about Unholy Messenger the Life and Crimes of
Speaker 2: the BTK serial Killer mention. Again, you mentioned about the
Speaker 2: CNN interview that should about VTK should be out in March, you.
Speaker 5: Say, and maybe March twenty twenty, but well, you know
Speaker 5: when that comes out. As soon as we know from
Speaker 5: the producers when that's going to be airing, because I
Speaker 5: think they're doing a series on serial killers from what
Speaker 5: I understand, then we will put that on our website
Speaker 5: Stevensingular dot com. As to when the interview will.
Speaker 2: Air, well, that's great. Again, I want to thank you
Speaker 2: very much for coming on and talking about Unholy Messenger.
Speaker 2: It has been absolutely fascinating. Thank you very much. I
Speaker 2: appreciate it.
Speaker 5: Thank you.
Speaker 2: You have a great evening.
Speaker 5: Thank you to do the same. Bye, good night,