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The Floppy Disk That Ended Thirty Years of Hiding
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
For thirty years, BTK killer Dennis Rader murdered ten people in Wichita while living as a church president, Cub Scout leader, and compliance officer — hiding in plain sight. One floppy disk, one lie from investigators, and the most notorious cold case in Kansas history was over.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
He asked the police a question that ended his freedom. In two thousand and four, the BTK killer, undetected for thirty years, sent a floppy disk to a television station.
Wichita, Kansas, in the nineteen seventies was not a city braced for a serial killer. It was an ordinary Midwestern city, the kind where neighborhoods had rhythms, where people knew their neighbors' schedules, where doors were sometimes left unlocked.
On January fifteenth, nineteen seventy-four, Dennis Rader murdered four members of the Otero family in their home. Joseph Otero.
This is where Rader's psychology becomes clearer. He didn't just kill.
What do you do with thirteen years of nothing? For investigators, it was an open wound.
In two thousand and four, Rader broke his silence. A local news station was preparing a story on the anniversary of one of his murders.
This is the moment where Rader's arrogance and his need for recognition finally cost him everything. He sent a floppy disk to a television station in late two thousand and four.
After his arrest, investigators began recovering what Rader had kept. He was a collector.
In June two thousand and five, Dennis Rader stood in a Wichita courtroom and entered guilty pleas on ten counts of first-degree murder. He gave detailed accounts of each killing.
There is another person whose story runs through all of this, and it doesn't get enough attention. Kerri Rawson, Rader's daughter, learned who her father was when FBI agents knocked on the door of her Michigan apartment in February two thousand and five.
Dennis Rader's case is often framed as a story about a monster hiding in plain sight. That framing isn't wrong, but it's incomplete.
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