An expectation of law enforcement officers is that a desire to share what they have done eventually will aid in identifying those who commit crimes. RALPH RECALLED thinking that a generation of police officers had spent their lives working on the serial murder and “Now, we’re going to get him.” RALPH SAID Rader escaped detection for so long because he planned the crimes meticulously and in everyday life was a perfect employee, father and husband.
That, together with advances in crime-fighting technology, led to the arrest of Dennis Rader, Wichita’s infamous BTK killer, 31 years after he killed four members of the Otero family. He murdered six others over the next 17 years, the last being Doloris Davis, a Park City neighbor, in 1991.
Tim Ralph, a lead Wichita detective in Rader’s arrest, gave a spellbinding four-hour presentation to about 50 people from around Kansas gathered here Monday for a Midwest Crime Stoppers Training Conference and state meeting.
Mike Ford, an Iola police officer, was elected president of the Kansas Crime Stoppers Association during the session. He had been vice president.
On Jan. 15, 2004, the 30th anniversary of the Otero killings — Joseph 38, Julie 34, Josephine 22 and Joseph Jr. 9 — the Wichita Eagle ran a story about the serial killings, as it had done intermittently in previous years.
That triggered a response from the BTK Killer, so-named from a missive he had sent years earlier describing the murders as “bind them, torture them and kill them.”
Rader toyed with investigators, Ralph said in his appraisal, but became a little careless and gave tips about the crimes that led officers to determine some materials he used in the grisly killings came from ACE Hardware and Dollar General stores, a set of which was in Park City.
Rader also gave a personal history in one long letter. Much was false, but it contained enough valid information to help officers.
When he sent a floppy disc, computer experts quickly determined it had been used in computers at Park City’s Christ Lutheran Church and city library, and even more to the point, had been inserted by a person named Dennis. Lt. Ken Landwehr, head of Wichita’s homicide division, had told Rader in a message disguised as a news release, that the disc would hold no personal information, while knowing there were indelible earmarks that would be helpful.
The clincher was when Rader left a cereal box in a pickup truck parked near Home Depot with a doll, meant to represent one of his victims and with personal effects.
One of several fortuitous breaks came when video from surveillance cameras at the hardware store showed a Jeep Cherokee pulling up next to the pickup truck and the driver putting a package in the truck.
The Cherokee was one of many in Kansas with military licenses, including one that checked to Rader at 6220 N. Independence in Park City.
As evidence mounted, officers knew Rader was the killer.
“The hunter became the hunted,” Ralph said.
Rather than make the arrest immediately, Ralph and other officers keen to put Rader in handcuffs had to wait an agonizing nine days while Rader’s DNA was checked through a sample of his daughter’s found at a clinic in Manhattan, where she was a Kansas State University student. Also, officers obtained search warrants for Rader’s home, his office in the Park City Police Department, church and several other haunts.
“That was nine painful days,” Ralph said.
Finally, all was choreographed, and at 12:15 p.m. on Feb. 25, 2005, several unmarked police cars stopped Rader’s Jeep Cherokee near his home and he was arrested.
Once in custody and back at police headquarters in Wichita, Rader began talking and spent more than 31 straight hours giving interrogators detailed information about the murders.
“He needed to feel he was important,” Ralph said of Rader’s willingness to tell all. “He talked casually and matter-of-factly about the murders, without emotion.”
Rader’s question to officers: “How’d you catch me?”
When Landwehr explained much of it was the information obtained from the floppy, Rader asked why he was lied to, about the disc’s users not being traceable.
“Because we were trying to catch a serial killer,” Ralph said Landwehr replied.
Much of the physical evidence officers found to support Rader’s arrest was in a plastic storage tub next to his desk at Park City police headquarters, which he called the “Mother Lode.” It contained hundreds of photographs of victims, copies of news story written about the crimes, plans Rader had drawn to execute the killings and journals in which he documented each.
He was a Boy Scout leader, never missed any events that his son and daughter participated in and was president of the congregation at his church.
His wife, now divorced, never had any indication of Rader’s nefarious activities and only his son, who once found some of his father’s pornography, had any reason to doubt he was anything but what he seemed, Ralph said. He never abused his wife or children.
Rader, while toying with police by sending packages and letters to them and news outlet, had no intention of doing more than tantalizing investigators, Ralph added.
“He didn’t want to get caught. He had plans for retirement,” he said.
Even though Rader pleaded guilty, his sentencing hearing lasted three days, during which the prosecution presented much of the evidence it would have in the trial.
“Normally the sentencing phase would take about 30 minutes,” Ralph estimated.
Rader was sentenced to 175 years and at age 73 has no possibility of parole. He is in the most secure part of the state penitentiary at El Dorado. He is locked down 23 hours a day, with one hour out of his cell for exercise.
Not unlike the lion’s share of his time before arrest, Rader “is a model prisoner,” Ralph said.
Perseverance led to BTK arrest
