Dennis Lynn Rader

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Welcome to Ouch! Was that a ghost? This podcast may contain graphic material which some listeners may find disturbing. Listener discretion is advised. Is advised. Help me! Now that we covered that, here's your host, Liz. Welcome back to Outdoors At a Ghost.

This week we're diving into a serial killer, because we haven't done one of those in a while, and this one has been requested for a bit, but it took me a minute to do him, because he's super annoying. Today we're going to be talking about Dennis Lynn Raider.

He's a serial killer that named himself BTK for Bind Torture and Kill. He was responsible for terrorizing Kansas and surrounding states for decades. He lived this dual life as a husband, father, scout leader, president of his church's council. He worked many different jobs, including installing security systems with ADT for people

who were trying to keep little did they know at the time, they were trying to keep him out. all this while stalking and murdering at least 10 people, some of whom were children as young as 9 years old. There is children and animal murder in this, and if that's not for you,

I totally get it. Come back next week. As always, I'm not going to delve super into the details with the children or any of the victims. If you want to know specific details or look up photos, you can do that on your own. A big theme with Dennis is his air of superiority, his ego. He seemed to have derived pleasure by taunting his victims as well as the police and

the community. Later on we'll discuss how he even sends packages like cereal boxes with like a bound Barbie doll inside like Ohm's cereal killer and poems he writes he sucks. Dennis Lynn Rader was born to Dorothy M.A. and William Rader. On March 9th 1945 in Pittsburgh, Kansas he was the eldest of the four boys that the Raiders would have.

While Dennis was still young, the family moved to Wichita, Kansas. The boys were raised in a Lutheran church, the parents worked a lot, his mother was a bookkeeper for a local supermarket, and he would later say his mother didn't give him enough attention. And his father, who was an ex-marine, later worked at a Kansas gas company.

Dennis Lin was raised in a strict household. Not abusive, there's a big distinction. Dennis Lin was said to be an introvert at school. He would keep to himself. He enjoyed a lot of the things most boys do like comics, fishing, Cub scouts, which is where he learned to tie all sorts of knots. While he also had a lot of interests outside of the norm, like the famous

sign with harming and murdering animals. And he would later say that from a young age he had fantasies involving trapped and helpless women. He would spy on neighbors and he himself would cross-dress at times with undergarments he had stolen from the women he was spying on. There was talk of how he may have seen like a dirty magazine when he was a child and this may

have influenced him. He started acting out these autoerotic exfixiation, tying himself up, you know. And while he was in high school he worked in a grocery store. He graduated and went to Kansas Wesleyan University for a year and then he ended up dropping out. Dennis, following his father's footsteps, joined the military, the Air Force in 1966,

as a way to avoid being drafted by the army. And he would later say that while he was in the Air Force, he learned about sex, losing his virginity the first time to a sex worker. He was honorably discharged in 1970, and after his discharge, he purchased a house in Park City, Kansas,

which is a suburb of Wichita. He got a job at the supermarket where his mother worked. And Dennis went on to marry Paula Dietz on May 22nd, 1971, and they went on to have two children, a boy and a girl.

It was an ideal family from the outside, except for Dennis still spying on women through windows and still stealing some of their clothes and wearing them as he watched through their windows.

He went on to work for the Coleman Company, you know, like the outdoor stuff, like camping gear stuff in 1972 and in 73, which was where he probably crossed paths

with two of his later victims. Dennis Lin would go back to college and get an electrical engineering associate's degree. And he was also studying administration of justice.

Dennis got a job at an aviation company because Wichita was the aviation capital. They had all sorts of production coming out of there. They had big companies like Cezna where he worked.

And then he was eventually let go in 1973. and this gave him free time to go deeper into his, as he called them, fantasies. He began stalking or trolling,

as he called it, potential victims. He set his eyes on the Otero family, specifically the mother and daughter, and Dennis had actually worked at Cezna

with the mother before. The Otero family had only recently moved to Wichita, Kansas, so the father could work fixing aircrafts.

If that was the career you wanted, this was the place to do it. The Otero family consisted of Joseph Sr., who was born in Puerto Rico.

He was also a military man, retired Air Force, and he was said to be a very talented boxer. So he was in good shape. He was 38, and his wife Julia,

she was well liked in the community, like her husband. She was a great mom, and she trained in judo. She was 33 years old. And their children, Charlie the oldest who was 15,

then there was Danny, then there was Carmen, and then there was Josephine, who they called Josie, and Joseph II, or they called Joey, who was nine years old. Dennis spent days watching the girls, learning their routine,

all leading up to this day on January 15th, 1974, when Dennis could act out as he called it his fantasy.