SERIAL KILLER: "BTK" Pt. 1

Before he was known as the BTK Killer, Dennis Rader was a quiet Midwestern boy with a dark imagination. Behind his polite smile and churchgoing charm, Dennis harbored fantasies of control, torture, and death. In this first episode, Killer Minds hosts Vanessa Richardson and Dr. Tristin Engels uncover how Rader’s early experiences — from childhood humiliation to secret obsessions — shaped one of the most chilling serial killers in American history. A disturbing look into how a seemingly ordinary man became a master of deception and murder. Killer Minds is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios. Listen wherever you get your podcasts. For ad-free listening and early access to episodes, subscribe to Crime House+ on Apple Podcasts. Don’t miss out on all things Killer Minds! Instagram: @Crimehouse https://www.instagram.com/crimehouse/ TikTok: @Crimehouse https://www.tiktok.com/@crimehouse Facebook: @crimehousestudios https://www.facebook.com/crimehousestudios X: @crimehousemedia https://x.com/crimehousemedia YouTube: @crimehousestudios https://www.youtube.com/@crimehousestudios

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus, Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on earth. Follow What the Fact wherever you listen, or subscribe on YouTube at What the Fact Pod.

• 0:36Speaker 01

  This is Crime House.

• 0:42Vanessa Richardson?

  Every kid has their fantasies. Some pretend to be superheroes. Others see themselves as astronauts blasting off into space, or professional athletes scoring a game-winning shot. Usually, these childhood daydreams are a fun, harmless escape. But Dennis Rader's fantasies weren't so innocent. From an early age, his imagination wandered into dark territory. He dreamed about binding and torturing people, including those he loved. Eventually, Dennis's fantasies consumed him, so he transformed them into deadly reality.

• 1:37Vanessa Richardson?

  The human mind is powerful. It shapes how we think, feel, love, and hate. But sometimes, it drives people to commit the unthinkable. This is Killer Minds, a Crime House original. I'm Vanessa Richardson.

• 1:52Tristin Engels?

  And I'm Dr. Tristin Engels. Every Monday and Thursday, we uncover the darkest minds in history, analyzing what makes a killer.

• 2:00Vanessa Richardson?

  Crime House is made possible by you. Follow Killer Minds and subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts for ad-free, early access to each two-part series. And if you can't get enough true crime, go search and follow Crime House Daily, our team's twice-a-day show bringing you breaking cases, updates, and unbelievable stories from the world of crime that are happening right now. Before we get started, be advised that this episode contains discussion of sexual assault, suicide, animal abuse, sexual violence against minors, and murder. Today, we begin our deep dive on Dennis Rader, a serial killer who named himself BTK after

• 2:44Vanessa Richardson?

  his own methods, Bind, Torture, and Kill. Dennis evaded capture for over 30 years, until his own arrogance finally brought him down.

• 2:55Tristin Engels?

  As Vanessa goes through the story, I'll be talking about things like why Dennis was drawn to such deviant behavior despite a relatively normal upbringing, how he was able to live a double life and hide the darkest part of himself from those he loved, and how his alter ego may have led him to make crucial mistakes.

• 3:14Vanessa Richardson?

  And, as always, we'll be asking the question, what makes a killer? When he was young, Dennis Rader seemed like an ordinary Midwestern boy, but even as a kid, his mind wandered to places most people could never imagine. Dennis was born on March 9, 1945, in Pittsburgh, Kansas, to parents Dorothea and William. He was the oldest of four boys. His mother worked as a bookkeeper, and his father put in long hours with the Kansas Gas Service. Between work and responsibilities, neither parent had much time to dote on their kids,

• 3:56Vanessa Richardson?

  but they did their best to provide a steady home, one built on routine, structure, and devotion to their local Lutheran church. Dennis and his brothers were always expected to follow the rules, but his parents' strict parenting style often left him feeling criticized and even ashamed. One time when Dennis was young, he found a toy tractor on the sidewalk outside his house. When Dennis showed Dorothea, she accused him of stealing it and told him to put it back where he found it. Dennis was humiliated, and from that point on, he seemed to learn it was best to hide the things that brought him enjoyment. The next time Dennis had to hide feelings of pleasure, he was seven years old.

• 4:40Vanessa Richardson?

  By then, the Raider family had moved to Wichita, Kansas. Dennis had started having regular, painful ear infections, which got so bad, a doctor had to come to their house, and these treatments were unlike anything Dennis had ever experienced. It started with Dorothea pinning Dennis down. Then, the doctor would use a sharp instrument to pierce his eardrums. Dennis screamed in pain the entire time, but when the doctor was done, his pain turned into relief.

• 5:11Tristin Engels?

  This is a really significant moment in Dennis's development. So for example, when a child is physically restrained and in pain, the nervous system goes into survival mode, like fight, flight, or freeze. But if that pain is immediately followed by comfort or relief like this, it can create a powerful emotional pairing. Through conditioning, the brain can learn to link distress with soothing, fear with safety, and pain with attention. Over time, those paired experiences can become unintentional associations, where feelings of fear of vulnerability start to trigger a strange form of gratification or calm. Because this happened in the context of authority, with his mother restraining him and a doctor performing the procedure, it may also have taught him that power and suffering

• 5:56Tristin Engels?

  should coexist in intimate or trusted relationships. That kind of conditioning can, in certain cases, distort empathy development and emotional regulation. So while these experiences alone don't cause violence or sadism, they can lay a framework where control, fear, and relief become psychologically linked. And this is especially true if comfort, relief, and nurturance were missing everywhere else in his life. When a child doesn't have consistent warmth or safety at home, they'll seek it in whatever form their brain can find, even if that means pairing it with distress. Now, in Dennis's case, that seems highly probable here. His parents had an authoritarian style of parenting and that left little room for emotional connection or validation,

• 6:39Tristin Engels?

  often leaving him feeling criticized and ashamed. This just adds to that framework. Over time, he learned control and secrecy were the only ways to find comfort, even if it came through distorted or harmful means.

• 6:53Vanessa Richardson?

  For Dennis, those moments of agony seemed to plant the idea that pain, restraint, and release were all connected, and he became fixated on it. Dennis started chasing that feeling during ordinary activities, like when he played the game Cowboys and Indians with his brothers. The game usually ended with someone being tied to a tree, and Dennis quickly developed a huge thrill from this. When he was tying someone else, or being tied, it started giving him feelings of sexual arousal. From there, Dennis's burgeoning sexual desires were amplified when he joined the Boy Scouts. There, he learned how to tie complex knots, which quickly led to a fascination with ropes and cords.

• 7:37Vanessa Richardson?

  From that point on, Dennis collected twine and even old cables, anything he could experiment with. He often tied up his friends under the guise of a harmless game, but in reality, Dennis was testing the limits of his sexual urges. And soon, his fantasies shifted toward one of his neighbors, a girl about his age who lived nearby. By the time Dennis was 10, he started sneaking out of his house at night to spy on her through her bedroom window. Sometimes he would climb into his treehouse to do it, but when that view no longer satisfied him, Dennis saved up his allowance to buy a telescope. Soon, Dennis wasn't just watching his crush, he started peeping on other neighbors too.

• 8:21Vanessa Richardson?

  Eventually, he took things a step further and removed a window screen from a nearby house just to get a better look inside. But those late-night peeping sessions didn't truly satisfy his curiosity. Although sneaking around was exciting, Dennis still had an insatiable desire to tie people up. By 6th grade, he began imagining himself in control of his teacher, and not just watching her, but also binding her.

• 8:50Vanessa Richardson?

  One day Dennis went into the tree line near his house. He took some ropes with him and found a spot where he could see into his teacher's house. Dennis tied himself to a tree and pulled tight on the rope as he fantasized about doing the same thing to his teacher. Then, something unexpected happened. Dennis ejaculated.

• 9:10Tristin Engels?

  So let's compare Dennis's behavior at this age to the average boy his age. Most 10-year-old boys are curious and experimenting in ways that build social understanding and emotional reciprocity. They're learning rules about friendship, empathy, and fairness. Their curiosity is typically directed outward toward connecting with others and figuring out how relationships work. Dennis's curiosity in contrast turned inward and secretive. He started testing his limits through play, which on the surface seemed like an outward connection, but it really wasn't when you break it down. He was engaging in deception by misleading his peers into believing they were playing a harmless game.

• 9:51Tristin Engels?

  But in actuality, his real motive for this game was secret and hidden. That then progressed into private rituals that revolved around control and observation. Most children at this age do have a normal developmental curiosity surrounding privacy, nudity, and sexuality, but Dennis's behavior goes beyond normal curiosity and into voyeuristic territory. Clinically speaking, the onset of voyeuristic behavior is typically around 10 to 13 years old. But to develop the disorder itself, the behavior must be recurrent, compulsive, cause distress or impairment, and involve non-consenting individuals, which arguably, he's close to meeting that criteria already at such a young age, given the lengths he's going to.

• 10:36Vanessa Richardson?

  How does this relate to Dennis's early experiences with pain and relief stemming from those ear infections he had?

• 10:44Tristin Engels?

  Yeah, this is an extension of our previous discussion regarding conditioning. So each time Dennis experienced sexual gratification paired with pain or vulnerability, his brain was reinforcing the same powerful conditioning loop, which is classical conditioning combined with operant reinforcement. And here's how it works. The pain or fear creates a physiological arousal, like increased heart rate, muscle tension, or adrenaline. When that's immediately followed by sexual or emotional relief, like ejaculation, for example, the brain connects those sensations as pleasurable. That release floods the reward pathways with dopamine, effectively rewarding the behavior and strengthening the association. Over time, Dennis's mind wasn't just tolerating pain or helplessness, it was seeking them

• 11:29Tristin Engels?

  because they became essential for the gratification part. The vulnerability or pain became the trigger, and then the release became the reward. So each repetition made the link stronger, more automatic, and harder to interrupt. So instead of unlearning those early associations of restraint and relief, this experience reinforced them. Every instance of sexual gratification linked to fear, pain, or control will ingrain the pattern more, turning a learned response into a compulsive need.

• 12:02Vanessa Richardson?

  That moment was a turning point for Dennis. His private fantasies were no longer just daydreams, but he also learned something crucial. He had to make sure that no one ever knew how much pleasure he gained from these fantasies. Otherwise, people might avoid him altogether, and then he could never act on them. So Dennis kept it all a secret. However, he didn't realize that he was leaving evidence behind. One day, his mother noticed stains in his underwear. She recognized the stains right away and showed his father. William reprimanded Dennis and told him that "good Christian boys didn't pleasure themselves." Dennis felt ashamed, but he still had no intention of stopping.

• 12:45Vanessa Richardson?

  Instead, he wanted to get revenge on his mother for causing him to feel this way again. So he started sneaking into Dorothea's room, stealing her underwear and pleasuring himself into them. Then he threw them away so he wouldn't get caught.

• 13:02Vanessa Richardson?

  Between gaining a sense of control and working so hard to hide his secret, Dennis unlocked a new level of arousal. He realized that hiding his urges and actions was part of the fun. It was the beginning of a pattern for him. Dennis began compartmentalizing the two different sides to himself, dutiful Christian and sexual deviant. And the more he nourished his deviant side, the more Dennis became drawn to violence as part of his arousal process. One day at his grandparents' farm, where he and his brother spent a lot of time, Dennis watched as chickens were bound before their heads were chopped off. It was one of the first experiences that connected death to his sexual inclinations.

• 13:47Vanessa Richardson?

  Before long, Dennis started testing those feelings on stray cats that wandered onto the property. He'd catch them, tie them up, and hang them in the barn until they died.

• 13:58Tristin Engels?

  So we can already see a pattern establishing where Dennis needs to feel in control. When his mother confronted him, he felt humiliated or shame because she caught a secret act of his, and he wanted to reclaim his power. This is important for the next discussion, which is that transition into killing animals. Now, an argument can be made that killing animals for food is practical and a normalized act, done for survival, not cruelty. For most kids, that context helps them understand the difference between necessary harm and gratuitous harm. But for someone like Dennis, who already showed a fascination with control, restraint, and suffering, those experiences may have taken on a different emotional tone. Watching animals being killed might have desensitized him to pain and death

• 14:42Tristin Engels?

  because it taught him in that moment that life and death were things people would control or could control, which was what appealed to him most. That kind of exposure could easily feed into his already established internal conditioning. Power over something helpless equals relief, excitement, and gratification. So while most children would witness those moments with discomfort or some curiosity and recognize it was done for food and practicality, and then move on, Dennis seemed to internalize them as part of his control schema, the same one that tied pain, vulnerability, and dominance to sexual relief.

• 15:18Vanessa Richardson?

  Is killing animals usually a rehearsal stage for future violence against people?

• 15:23Tristin Engels?

  Yes. So firstly, it can definitely be a warning sign, especially if the killing is for pleasure, power, or curiosity about suffering. And animal cruelty is a common behavioral marker among serial killers. This is well-known and well-established in the research. And in Dennis's case, it was part of his psychological rehearsal, and it was a form of escalation. The act of killing allowed him to explore domination and control in a concrete way. It gave him a physical experience that mirrored his internal fantasies, which is absolute power and control over a living being. That experience, again, further reinforced the thrill and gratification he'd been seeking. Now, it's also important to note that not every child who kills or injures animals becomes violent later. Sometimes, it's a

• 16:08Tristin Engels?

  sign of trauma, or modeling, maybe even peer pressure, or it's just simply the normalization of their environment. One does not, is not a causal link to another. It is, though, a behavioral marker commonly seen with serial killers.

• 16:24Vanessa Richardson?

  Soon, Dennis wasn't just harming animals. He discovered other things on his grandparents' farm that caused him to find pleasure in the thought of killing people. When Dennis was 12 years old, he came across one of his grandmother's true crime magazines. Inside was a story about a man who strangled his girlfriend. Dennis couldn't get enough of the idea. Soon, he was spending every bit of allowance he earned on detective magazines, flipping straight to any stories he could find about murdered girls. As Dennis's fascination with crime and death grew darker, his curiosity about exploring these impulses took a more dangerous turn. As he grew into his teens, he acted more and more on his sexual fantasies,

• 17:09Vanessa Richardson?

  and began experimenting with self-asphyxiation. When no one else was home, or when people were sleeping, he would sneak down to the basement and choke himself with ropes until he climaxed. Eventually, Dennis was ready to stop acting alone and started pursuing girls his age. For the most part, he was well-liked among his peers at school and church, so he had a pretty easy time flirting and talking to girls. In 1959, when Dennis was 14 years old, he began dating the daughter of his church pastor. Dennis fell hard for her. He called her his first love, but that didn't stop him from envisioning violent fantasies about her. If anything, Dennis's new relationship gave him more fodder.

• 17:55Vanessa Richardson?

  One day, the pair was hanging out, listening to the radio, when they heard a breaking news alert about a quadruple murder that had occurred just a few hours from where they lived. It was the Clutter family killings, which later inspired Truman Capote's book In Cold Blood. The details were brutal. The family had been bound, gagged, and murdered inside their own home. The story sent a chill through Dennis's girlfriend, but he was excited by it. When the broadcast ended, Dennis turned to look at her and imagined tying her up and murdering her, just like the Clutters. In that moment, Dennis decided

• 18:37Vanessa Richardson?

  he had to turn his fantasies into reality.

• 18:48Speaker 03

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• 19:32Speaker 03

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• 19:49Speaker 01

  The moment a body is found, the clock starts ticking. Forty-eight hours. That's how long detectives have before the trail begins to go cold. From A and E and Crime House, this is the official podcast from the famous true crime series, The First Forty-Eight. Step inside the critical window, the interrogations, the dead ends, and the breakthroughs that crack a case wide open. I'm Carter Roy. Each week, I revisit a landmark homicide investigation with the depth you know and immersive, long-form storytelling built for your ears. Real detectives, real cases, real stakes. This is The First Forty-Eight.

• 20:34Speaker 01

  New episodes every Thursday. Listen to and follow The First Forty-Eight on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts.

• 20:51Vanessa Richardson?

  In 1959, 14-year-old Dennis Rader decided that in order to experience the highest level of sexual gratification he possibly could, he would have to bind, torture, and kill another human being. However, Dennis knew that if he wanted to get away with it, he'd have to play his cards right. He was still a minor, living at home. He didn't have the freedom or resources to act on his urges. So he decided to keep his head down and get through the rest of his teenage years without getting into trouble. That same year, Dennis enrolled at Wichita Heights High School. At some point, he and his girlfriend broke up. Other than that, high school was pretty unremarkable for him.

• 21:34Vanessa Richardson?

  He earned average grades and didn't seem to get involved with many sports or clubs. Dennis's main priority was to buy a car. That way, he could get around on his own. Soon, he got a job at Leakers Family Foods, a grocery store where his mother worked as a bookkeeper. For Dennis, the job came with certain perks, like the steady stream of female customers he could watch and fantasize about. The more he did this, the more urge he felt to act on his fantasies. But since he couldn't do that yet, he found other ways to up the ante and the excitement. Dennis began pleasuring himself in public. He found a secluded spot under a small bridge outside of town and would tell his family he was going fishing there.

• 22:20Vanessa Richardson?

  In reality, Dennis was tying himself up beneath the bridge and masturbating as cars and people passed by overhead.

• 22:29Tristin Engels?

  These behaviors are actually consistent for Dennis. He chases experiences that give him a blend of risk, control, and fantasy. Being in public but hidden like that created a psychological experience that mirrored his earliest conditioning, which was, again, fear mixed with excitement and vulnerability mixed with power. It also blurred the boundaries between his fantasies and reality. Each time he enacted part of his fantasy in real life, even in a limited or symbolic way like this one, it became less imaginary and more integrated into his identity. So the thrill of secrecy, planning, and the self-control required to conceal it, all of that fed the illusion that he could live inside his fantasy world undetected.

• 23:14Tristin Engels?

  This was really about gaining mastery over risk and exposure. And every time he got away with it, it reinforced that sense of control. It built his confidence and, more importantly, or more scary, I should say, his willingness to escalate.

• 23:30Vanessa Richardson?

  Does public but hidden behavior like this indicate that at some point, fantasy wouldn't be enough for him?

• 23:37Tristin Engels?

  Unfortunately, I think it's already a sign that the fantasy has stopped being satisfying already. This behavior in itself is an escalation because it involves more risk. People like Dennis build tolerance to fantasy. And just like with an addictive behavior, the brain starts to need more stimulation to achieve the same emotional or physiological effect. Once a person starts bringing those imagined scenarios into the real world, even in small covert ways like this, it's usually only a matter of time before the fantasy turns into full action.

• 24:10Vanessa Richardson?

  Testing the waters of what he could get away with in public was another step forward in Dennis's escalating deviant behavior. At the same time, he was becoming better at keeping the two sides to himself separate. He even had a name for this practice. He called it "cubing." It was his way of describing how he could shift in and out of different sides to himself. He let people see only the side of the cube that he wanted them to, whether that was dutiful son, diligent worker, or whatever else he needed to be to convince people he was normal and non-threatening.

• 24:43Tristin Engels?

  And this is a pretty significant level of compartmentalizing.

• 24:47Vanessa Richardson?

  Definitely. And in the summer of 1963, when Dennis was 18, he decided he wanted to try his hand at love again. By that point, he'd graduated from high school and saved up $800 to buy his first car. And with it came all the freedom he'd been waiting for. While his secret self-bondage provided some satisfaction, Dennis had still never had sex with another person, and it was something he desperately wanted. He set his sights on a former classmate he had a crush on, who'd always been nice to him. Dennis thought that meant she liked him back, so when he finally worked up the courage to ask her out at a party, he was stunned when she said no.

• 25:28Vanessa Richardson?

  The rejection wasn't just a disappointment, it threw Dennis into a tailspin. He left the party in a fury, got into his car, and sped down the neighborhood roads, reaching 100 miles an hour. And at some point, he thought about intentionally crashing to end his own life. But as Dennis calmed down, he remembered something that had once made him feel better in the past: revenge. By the time he pulled back into his parents' driveway, Dennis had cooled off, because he had an idea. He went inside and began cutting out photos of the girl who rejected him from old yearbooks. Then he pulled out some pulp crime and pornographic magazines and glued her face onto the pictures

• 26:13Vanessa Richardson?

  of women being bound and gagged. Dennis sat back to admire his work and felt a sense of control wash over him.

• 26:23Vanessa Richardson?

  That became a part of Dennis's pattern. When real life disappointed him, he would retreat even deeper into his own world. His tendency to retreat inward became more pronounced as the summer wore on. By the end of that summer, most of Dennis's friends were going off to college, but he stayed behind. He'd become so accustomed to hiding his true self from others that he was gaining less satisfaction from being around other people. Still, he wore a mask of normalcy and continued with his daily life. However, by the fall of 1965, 20-year-old Dennis was ready for a change. Some of his friends convinced him to enroll at Kansas Wesleyan University, about an hour

• 27:05Vanessa Richardson?

  and a half north of Wichita, which meant moving out of his parents' house. A part of him wanted to have the normal college experience that everyone else was having, but he also knew that outside of his parents' close watch, there would be more opportunities to unleash his dark side. Although, he still wasn't ready to act on his most violent fantasies, not yet at least. Instead, once Dennis went off to college, he began testing the waters of what he could get away with. On a few occasions, before hanging out with his friends, Dennis applied lipstick on himself. Then he told his friends he'd just been making out with a girl. It seems like people usually believed him.

• 27:48Vanessa Richardson?

  From there, things escalated quickly. Dennis began going out at night and breaking into houses just to see if he could. He soon took it a step further and started pocketing small items, such as underwear or trinkets, that were so negligible, no one would ever miss them. With each successful break-in, Dennis experienced a greater rush than before.

• 28:12Tristin Engels?

  And this is exactly what I meant when I said the fantasy stopped being satisfying, because now he has shifted into behavioral testing. These weren't just acts of curiosity or thrill-seeking, they were trials of power and ways for him to continue to test boundaries. It's classic reinforcement of previous conditioning and a continuation of that feedback loop yet again. Every time- Every time he tested these boundaries, every time he took a risk and got a thrill, and every time he succeeded, it validated his belief that he could operate undetected, that he could control both environments and outsmart everyone around him. That creates a need to continue with those behaviors and over time, continue in escalation because the risk is now intoxicating and the secrecy is a reward of its own. So every time he succeeds,

• 28:57Tristin Engels?

  he feels more mastery and he wants to push his limits even further.

• 29:01Vanessa Richardson?

  What's the significance of those trophies that Dennis was taking from each place that he was breaking into?

• 29:07Tristin Engels?

  So when we talk about trophies, we typically are referring to objects that memorialize a violent act or victim. And because these objects are being taken in a context that doesn't involve violence or direct victimization, I wouldn't consider them trophies in that sense. Instead, I would consider them part of a developing paraphilic pattern and more of a transitional object. They were physical reminders of his secret world and, once again, reinforced that growing sense of mastery that I mentioned. This kind of behavior often appears in people with fetishistic or voyeuristic tendencies, which he has certainly been demonstrating, and where an object becomes erotically or emotionally charged because of its connection to secrecy and transgression.

• 29:53Vanessa Richardson?

  Eventually, Dennis realized that when it came to college, he'd gotten what he came for. He wasn't chasing a diploma like his classmates. He wasn't even ready to chase actual girls yet. Instead, his time away helped him learn to get away with greater risks. By June of 1966, after just a year at Kansas Wesleyan, Dennis dropped out. However, he was too used to his freedom to return home just yet. At the time, the Vietnam War was still raging and Dennis knew that he had to move quickly to avoid being drafted. Right after dropping out of school, he enlisted in the Air Force, which he figured would give him the best chance of avoiding active combat. His plan worked and after basic training,

• 30:38Vanessa Richardson?

  Dennis was stationed in Mobile, Alabama, where he worked on antenna installations. Once Dennis was settled into his new role, he started looking for ways to indulge his dark side. At the same time, his military training taught him how to exercise even more caution. Getting caught acting on deviant sexual impulses here would be even worse than before. So he began collecting BDSM magazines and finding places to hide them. Every time he was restationed, Dennis destroyed his magazine collection and started from scratch at his new location. He also maintained his private rituals of self-bondage whenever he had the chance to be alone,

• 31:20Vanessa Richardson?

  and continued dabbling in wearing women's makeup. Then, about a year and a half into his service, Dennis was sent to Japan. He welcomed the change. Being overseas meant new opportunities he hadn't had before, including easier access to sex workers. At the time, 22-year-old Dennis was still a virgin, so shortly after arriving, he wasted no time finding someone he could pay to give him that experience. But when it was over, Dennis was still unsatisfied. It wasn't at all as exciting as he'd always imagined.

• 31:58Tristin Engels?

  That's not really surprising to hear, because Dennis had spent years pairing sexual excitement with secrecy, and his fantasies were built on tension, fear, and dominance, not intimacy or affection. So when he finally experienced consensual sex, it lacked the emotional elements that had become essential to his excitement to begin with. Physically, he could respond. He could become aroused. But psychologically, he couldn't experience the same level of intensity without those sadistic elements. His brain has been conditioned to associate sexual gratification with power, risk, and secrecy, not connection. So normal intimacy could never compete, because the cues that drove his arousal weren't about closeness. They were about control.

• 32:43Vanessa Richardson?

  Dennis was definitely left wanting more, so eventually he found another sex worker who was willing to let Dennis bind her hands, for a higher price of course, which Dennis was willing to pay. He liked the idea that she was struggling and he was the one in control. This time, he found the experience much more gratifying. Dennis kept hiring the same woman, and the more he practiced binding her, the more confidence he gained. When his military contract ended after four years, Dennis felt ready to take his newfound confidence back home. He received an honorable discharge in August of 1970 and returned to Wichita, where he moved back in with his parents.

• 33:27Vanessa Richardson?

  However, he quickly put his fantasies on the backburner, because he met a woman from church named Paula Dietz. Dennis and Paula hit it off instantly. For a while, it seemed like he actually enjoyed living a normal, healthy life. He fell back into his typical routine. Dennis returned to his job at the grocery store, and even enrolled at Butler County Community College to study electronics. Now that he was busy again, Dennis was too distracted to tend to his dark alter ego. With a packed schedule, he had no time for the fantasies that once consumed him. But then, in February of 1971, they all came rushing back. That winter, Paula broke her back in a car accident.

• 34:12Vanessa Richardson?

  Afterwards, she stayed with her parents, who gave her around-the-clock care, which meant her and Dennis's physical relationship stalled. To satisfy his desires, Dennis bought a new collection of pulp crime and BDSM magazines, just like the ones that had kept him occupied during his early days in the Air Force. This time though, it doesn't seem like Dennis pushed his behavior as far as he did before. Paula recovered within a few months, and shortly after, the couple decided to get married. Soon after, they moved into a house together in the Wichita suburb of Park City.

• 34:49Vanessa Richardson?

  But if Dennis was trying to suppress his urges, he quickly realized it was impossible. They were too strong. Whenever he went to campus to attend a class, he couldn't help but watch the women there, and he couldn't silence the sinister thoughts he was having about them. At the same time, Dennis was finally living a normal, stable, and unsuspecting life. His military service, new marriage, and college studies were the perfect cover for his crimes, something he'd been working toward for a long time. Between his innocent facade and his newfound confidence, Dennis was finally ready to act on his most depraved

• 35:33Vanessa Richardson?

  and deadly fantasies.

• 35:38Speaker 04

  The police closed my sister's case in 2019. Last month, her killer commented on my post. "On Reddit, true crime doesn't come from journalists. It comes from the victims, the witnesses, and sometimes the suspects themselves."

• 35:53Speaker 05

  People post the things they'd never say out loud: anonymous, unfiltered, and completely real.

• 35:58Speaker 04

  And every Tuesday, on Crimes of Reddit, we read them out loud.

• 36:02Speaker 05

  I'm Sabrina Deanna-Roga from Two Girls One Ghost.

• 36:05Speaker 04

  And I'm Alexis Linkletter from The First Degree.

• 36:08Speaker 05

  Each week, one of us brings the most unhinged true crime stories the internet has to offer.

• 36:13Speaker 04

  And the other goes in completely blind. No prep, no spoilers, reacting in real time, same as you. And then we swap.

• 36:21Speaker 05

  And we pull every thread until the whole twisted picture comes into view.

• 36:25Speaker 04

  It's dark. It's messy. And the scariest part is that these are real stories, posted by real people.

• 36:31Speaker 05

  New episodes drop every Tuesday. Listen to and follow Crimes of Reddit, available now wherever you get your podcasts.

• 36:40Vanessa Richardson?

  By 1971, 26-year-old Dennis Rader had successfully built his image of a good, hard-working guy. He was married to a woman named Paula Dietz, who he'd met through church, and he was diligently working toward earning his associate's degree. Things got even better for him by early 1973, when he finally earned his degree. After that, Dennis left his job at the grocery store and began working at a company called Cessna Aircraft. Plus, now that Dennis wasn't in school, he and Paula became more active in their church as youth sponsors. On the outside, it seemed like Dennis was building the perfect wholesome life. Even though his fantasies burned in the back of his mind, he was too busy to

• 37:25Vanessa Richardson?

  put his plans into practice. But by the fall of that year, Dennis was suddenly lurched into a new reality when he was laid off from his job. He suddenly had a lot of time on his hands. So while Paula was at work, he started prowling the city of Wichita for potential victims. He spied on women while he was out running errands, and even while taking walks through his own neighborhood. He didn't know when he would find his perfect target, but he wanted to be ready when he did. So Dennis assembled what he called a "hit kit," which contained ropes, cords, plastic bags, and a knife. He kept the kit

• 38:06Vanessa Richardson?

  in his car so that he'd have it with him, ready to use no matter where he was. One day while he was out, Dennis finally spotted the person he wanted to become his first-ever murder. At first, he noticed a woman. Unbeknownst to Dennis, her name was Julie Otero, but then Dennis noticed Julie's 11-year-old daughter, Josephine. We don't know where Dennis first saw Julie and Josephine, but he followed them home and discovered they lived in a neighborhood just eight miles away from his house. He started stalking them regularly. This went on for weeks. Dennis learned that Julie had a husband, Joseph,

• 38:49Vanessa Richardson?

  plus four more children: two teenage boys named Charlie and Daniel, one teenage girl named Carmen, and a nine-year-old boy named Joseph Jr.

• 39:00Vanessa Richardson?

  Dennis often walked by their house and even waved hello when they were outside. Once, he called their house, and when someone picked up, he said he dialed the wrong number.

• 39:12Tristin Engels?

  This kind of behavior fits within the pattern of organized sadistic offenders, individuals who derive pleasure not only from the violent act itself, but also from the psychological tension leading up to it. This is where the fantasy and planning stages come into play. For Dennis, the longer he could stay close to his intended victim or victims without raising suspicion, the greater the anticipatory excitement. Sadistic offenders experience gratification through physical, psychological, or sexual domination. And in this case, at this moment, Dennis was deriving pleasure not only from their eventual fear, but from his own mastery of deception. Those interactions were, in essence, a form of psychological rehearsal.

• 39:54Tristin Engels?

  It's a way for him to test and perfect control long before the crime was ever to be committed.

• 40:01Vanessa Richardson?

  Do you think Dennis's job loss might have been the catalyst for him to hunt for his first victims?

• 40:07Tristin Engels?

  So here's the reality. His fantasies had been there all along. He'd been slowly escalating for years. Without intervention, it was only a matter of time before he reached this point. What likely pushed him over the edge was a combination of stress and opportunity. His job gave him structure, identity, and control, all things that helped keep his compulsions contained to some degree. Losing that was destabilizing for someone like him. It stripped away the last bit of order in his life, and so his internal world started to spill outward a bit. And suddenly, he had time, he had no structure, he had a little emotional stabilization, but now he had opportunity. So yes, in a sense, it played a role, but I think it would have gotten here either way.

• 40:54Vanessa Richardson?

  The more Dennis watched the Otero's, the more he learned about them. Over time, he pieced together the family's routines. Joseph and the three older children left the house at 8:00 a.m. on weekdays. To Dennis, that left the other members of the family, Julie, Josephine, and Joseph Jr., vulnerable. He quickly got to work planning his attack. He crudely named his scheme, quote, "Project Little Mex", based on the fact that the Otero's were Hispanic and Josephine was his main target. All the while, Paula had no idea what her husband was up to. While Dennis holed himself up alone in the house, she likely thought he was hard at work filling out job applications.

• 41:37Vanessa Richardson?

  In reality, he was about to commit the unthinkable. On the morning of January 15, 1974, after Paula went to work, Dennis drove to the Otero's neighborhood. He parked at a drugstore a few blocks away from their house. Then he grabbed his hit kit, which now included a gun, and walked the rest of the way. When Dennis arrived, he climbed the fence into the backyard and cut the phone line. As he did this, Dennis noticed something in the yard that he didn't expect: fresh paw prints in the snow. Despite all of Dennis's stalking, he never realized the Otero's had a dog. Now he wondered what else he had missed.

• 42:22Vanessa Richardson?

  For a split second, Dennis thought about leaving, but before he could, the back door swung open. Nine-year-old Joseph Jr. was letting the dog outside. Now, they were standing face to face. That's when Dennis made a decision. He burst through the door with his gun drawn. Julie was standing right inside. She screamed, and Joseph came running. Dennis was again surprised. He had no idea Joseph had been in a minor car accident and stayed home from work to recover.

• 42:56Tristin Engels?

  This is what happens to fantasy-driven killers. In their fantasy, they imagine control. They play this out with predictability and precision, and they overlook exceptions or possible risk. Dennis's fantasies hadn't prepared him for resistance, or real human reactions, or unexpected events. When confronted with that, instead of retreating, he doubled down. Psychologically, this was about restoring control, no matter the consequences. So that split second of shock likely triggered both panic and excitement. Panic because his plan was unraveling, not because he was afraid. And excitement because the emotional intensity mirrored the tension his fantasies had always promised him.

• 43:40Tristin Engels?

  So in that instant, Dennis's fantasy met reality. And rather than backing away, he chose to force that reality to conform to his fantasy. So that decision, that desperate need to reclaim control, I think, given it's his first murder, marks the chilling beginning of BTK.

• 44:01Vanessa Richardson?

  At that point, Dennis realized how unprepared he actually was, but he'd come too far to give up now. So he thought fast. He grabbed Joseph by the shirt collar and launched into a made-up story about what he was doing there. He claimed he was AWOL from the Air Force and was looking for food and money. It was his way of making his victims feel safe, so that maybe they'd trust him and be less defensive. And it seemed to work. Dennis forced Julie, Joseph, and Joseph Jr. into the living room and bound their hands with duct tape. Then he found Josephine and did the same to her. It seems like they all truly believed he wasn't there to hurt them, because at one point, someone complained that the duct tape was cutting off their circulation.

• 44:46Vanessa Richardson?

  Likely as a way to keep up his act, Dennis redid the binds with cords instead. After that, his demeanor quickly changed. He gagged each person with pillowcases and socks, saving Josephine for last. But before he could do anything else, Julie and Joseph began to stir. Dennis suddenly realized that he didn't actually know how long it took to strangle someone to death. His only point of reference was his own self-bondage games. Before they regained too much strength, Dennis placed plastic bags over Julie, Joseph, and Joseph Jr.'s heads to suffocate them, and fasten them with cords until they were no longer breathing.

• 45:31Vanessa Richardson?

  All three members of the family were dead. Next, Dennis turned his attention back to Josephine. He grabbed her and carried her to the basement. There, he removed her clothes before hanging her. As she died, he practiced self-gratification. Afterward, Dennis went back up to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of water. Then, he wiped the glass clean and put it back in the cabinet. Next, he found the thermostat and turned up the heat. He'd once read in one of his crime magazines that this would obscure the time of death. With renewed confidence in his plan, Dennis then stole a few trophies, including a transistor

• 46:15Vanessa Richardson?

  radio and Joseph's watch, before hopping into the Otero's car and driving a few blocks to a thrift store parking lot. However, when he got there, he realized things hadn't gone according to plan after all, because he couldn't find the knife he'd used to cut the telephone line. Panicked, Dennis ditched the car and hurried back to his own, which was parked nearby. He sped back to the Otero's house and went into the backyard where he found his knife. He then grabbed it and fled without anyone seeing him. When Dennis returned home, he was overcome with relief, and then pride.

• 46:56Vanessa Richardson?

  Paula wasn't home from work yet, so he pulled out an old journal and wrote about everything he'd just done. Finally, he scribbled some pictures of the crime scene that he'd left behind.

• 47:08Tristin Engels?

  Journaling and sketching the crime, I think, served a few purposes. Firstly, it was a form of cognitive reinforcement. Documenting what he did put him fully in control of it, and at the core, that was about ownership. And writing it, in his words, means he can change the narrative and the story can be refined without the risks or the mistakes that he made. And that serves a narcissistic function because he's essentially archiving his own legacy on his terms with a perverse sense of self-importance. And lastly, they allow him to sustain the fantasy long after the crime. They function as tangible and controlled reminders of the crime, in addition to the trophies he also took.

• 47:48Vanessa Richardson?

  Remember the collages of the girl who rejected him and then the magazines he was obsessed with? Does journaling like this kind of relate back to those things?

• 47:57Tristin Engels?

  That's a really sharp observation, actually. Dennis had long been obsessed with crime magazines, if you recall. He'd spend his entire allowance on them. So it's highly probable that his journaling and sketches were functioning as his own personalized crime magazine. Only now he didn't need external sources to fuel his fantasies. He didn't have to go buy crime magazines anymore because he could create the crime magazine himself with his own content. The collages that he made earlier in life operated in the same way. They were about control through reconstruction. When he felt powerless, like when he made that collage after being rejected, he rewrote the story in a way that gave him dominance.

• 48:38Tristin Engels?

  After the Otero murders, he likely felt a similar sense of powerlessness because of the mistakes he made and the panic he experienced. So turning back to journaling and sketching allowed him to reclaim control through the same strategy that always worked for him, which is, again, reconstructing the scene to fit how he wanted to memorialize it.

• 48:58Vanessa Richardson?

  When Dennis was done journaling, he stashed the notebook away so Paula wouldn't find it. Finally, he placed the trophies he stole in secret hiding spots around his house that he referred to as "hidey holes." Later, when Paula finally returned home that evening, Dennis acted completely normal. He snapped right back into the role of loving husband. His wife had no idea what he had just done, or what he was planning to do again. Dennis Rader had just committed one of the most gruesome murders Wichita had ever seen, and his string of depraved crimes had only just begun. At the same time, Dennis didn't realize he'd already begun leaving behind a trail

• 49:43Vanessa Richardson?

  of evidence, and it was only a matter of time before he walked into a trap of his own making.

• 50:08Vanessa Richardson?

  Thanks so much for listening. Come back next time for the conclusion of our deep dive on serial killer Dennis Rader.

• 50:15Tristin Engels?

  Killer Minds is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. Here at Crime House, we want to thank each and every one of you for your support. If you like what you heard today, reach out on all social media at @CrimeHouse. Don't forget to rate, review, and follow Killer Minds wherever you get your podcasts. Your feedback truly makes a difference.

• 50:35Vanessa Richardson?

  And to enhance your listening experience, subscribe to Crime House Plus on Apple Podcasts. You'll get every episode of Killer Minds ad-free, along with early access to each thrilling two-part series, and exciting bonus content. Killer Minds is hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson, and Dr. Tristin Engels, and is a Crime House original powered by Pave Studios. This episode was brought to life by the Killer Minds team: Max Cutler, Ron Shapiro, Alex Benedon, Sarah Camp, Sarah Bachelor, Marky Lee, Sarah Tardif, and Carrie Murphy. Thank you for listening.

• 51:20Speaker 06

  Did you know penicillin, the drug that has saved more lives than any other in history, was discovered because a scientist forgot to clean a Petri dish before going on vacation? I'm Connor Tomlinson and history is my thing, has been my whole life.

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