Dennis Rader Research Paper

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It took the Witchita police force over 30 years to capture the Bind, Torture, Kill murderer Dennis Rader. Dennis Rader committed these gruesome crimes while living a separate life with his wife and two children. Between the years of 1974 to 1991, BTK was actively involved in 10 murders. Dennis Rader was a serial killer with meticulous crime scenes that led the police on a long manhunt, ending with a floppy disk. The BTK’s crimes were carefully planned and unlike any other famous serial killer. BTK was extremely thorough and made it hard to trace anything back to him. Dennis Rader had no prior criminal record in the system except for traffic citations and a restraining order for stalking, which made him an unlikely suspect to police. Yes, Dennis …show more content…

One of Rader’s occupation’s in the past was a code compliance officer, a sworn-in inspector and investigator employed by a county or a city, so he would know the location of CCTV camera systems. Dennis even used forensic countermeasures when he was leaving taunting messages and images. He wore gloves while writing his notes, he didn’t allow any of his hair or fibers to be contained inside the clues, and his DNA was never traced in large enough quantities until after he was in custody. The most notable victims in BTK’s reign of terror were the Otero family due the the interesting, yet sloppy way Dennis went about killing them. Rader had strangled four members of the Otero family–Joseph and Julie, along with two of their children Josephine and Joseph Jr. to their death. Josephine got the worse of the end when the systematic strangulation didn’t work for them. BTK took her down into the basement, tied her to the water heater with rope and a drain pipe, and strangled and raped her. The DNA found on Josephine’s body later traced him to this horrendous …show more content…

He wrote a detailed letter about the murder of the Otero family and left it in a book at the Wichita library. He sent another letter to a radio station confessing to the murders of the Otero family, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian Renfold, and Nancy Fox. Dennis wrote “Oh, I’m a snooker! Death to Nancy is based on the 1920’s folk song “Oh, Death” to talk about how BTK was feeling about the killing of Nancy Fox. Dennis Rader’s most well-known clue was a cereal box filled with various items that would help explain the crimes that were committed. Their cereal boxes would be left out in corners or in parked cars to play on the term serial killer. One of the cereal boxes found contained the driver’s license of Nancy Fox and a doll bound the same way Nancy Fox was bound when she was killed. While Dennis was caught up in his fantasies of torture and the mind games he was playing on police, he ended up giving himself in with what he thought was a safe way to communicate. After a long back and forth battle between police and the BTK killer, they finally catch him in his own mind game. In a letter BTK sent the police, he asked if a floppy disk could be

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