offering yourself up as someone who would be willing to communicate with this deranged mass murderer? well, you know, you want to help. if he wanted to write letters, and they came to my attention, why not? it was quite a risk. btk had already murdered seven people. and loewen could end up getting far more than just a letter in the mail. but there he sat what kind of leads do you have? asking questions of chief lamunyon for which there were no good answers. very honestly we have no solid leads at all. it was horrific news. it changed for me and everything changed for everyone in wichita. he says the effect of the bombshell announcement on this gentle, family-oriented city, was instantaneous. he absolutely terrorized the community. everyone was a suspect. girlfriends were concerned about their boyfriends. there were parents who turned in their children. the fear was palpable. hoping btk would contact him
pretty generous thing to tell the man that s going to kill you. that killed and tortured your family, and is about to do the same to her. yeah. rader eventually took young josephine otero down to the basement of her home and hanged her from a pipe. the police found semen near josephine s body. and going forward, recollections of what he had done with these victims fueled his desire to do it again. rader says now the whole experience left him quaking. i was really on a, not on a sexual high, i was on a scared high. i was really nervous. sweat running off me all over the place. i had gloves on. i had rubber gloves on, full of water, sweat. my clothes were soaked with sweat, very nervous. not like a master criminal at
range in our personality. and someone like dennis rader indeed has two different shades, sides to his personality. and he hides from the people in his life, the dark, negative, brutal. wouldn t those closest to dennis rader, his wife, his children, have had to know something? nope. we d like to believe that. we think it s incomprehensible that those closest wouldn t know. john wayne gacy was burying bodies in the crawl spaces of his home while he lived in that house with his wife. and there was a horrible odor coming from the crawlspace and she d ask him about it. what s that odor? and he would say it was sewer gases and he would take care of it. and she believed him. dennis rader s wife would never suspect. he gave no signs. they d find out eventually.
another life the police abruptly changed strategy. at that point we need to step up and say, yes, we recognize you as btk, and we do have a serial killer here. so police chief lamunyon and news director ron loewen appeared on tv that february 1978, side by side. btk claims to have strangled a total of seven women. it was loewen himself who broke the story of btk to the community. during that newscast, loewen, who never talked publicly about these events before discussing them with us, became, in effect, live bait. the police said, based on the talk with the behavioral people, this is a cry for help. this guy has more that he wants to say. we suggest that you do the story so that it has someone that he might choose to communicate with again. how did you feel about
that s him being interviewed by a local tv station, the killer himself right there on the screen for all wichita to see. who would ever suspect this public servant was actually the monster btk, whom everyone feared? but it was in that job that at least some people saw a darker side to dennis rader. dee stewart, a longtime acquaintance of rader s, has a good friend who reported to him in the compliance department. this friend, she says, found him controlling, and belligerent. there were times when he yelled at her in front of other employees. he demeaned her. he told her she would never be as smart as he was. but she says he could turn his good and bad sides on and off. he could be berating her, he could be screaming at her. and if the phone rang and it was a member of his family, he turned into ward cleaver. dr. fox says this apparent jekyll and hyde personality is classic for many serial killers. i don t believe there are two raders in one body. it s just that we all have