says the script was going their way now. were they, in fact, playing him? absolutely. these officers that were interviewing him were hand picked. they had studied him. they knew the characteristics. they were playing to his ego, to his strength. they were bringing him up, making him think that, hey, we re buddy buddies. then just as quickly, they shut him down. the interview ended. the attention stopped, and the officers went home. it was only then rader tells the psychologist that the reality of his past and the impact on his future finally started to sink in. was there any way of getting out of this? you know, is there any possible way? i thought, no. there isn t any way. they ve just got too much on me. most of my thoughts went back to my family, how were they taking it? the thing is just, you know, you re caught, and all of those things that you enjoyed, they re gone. you know, you just you know,
you never caught me. and i ve been here all along. his need for attention is apparently unquenched. i absolutely thought that this was the tip of the iceberg. former wichita tv news director ron loewen made that prediction to us almost a year before dennis rader was caught. and sadly, when it was over, he would be proven right. there had been two more murders never before connected to btk that brought the total number of his victims to ten. in 2004, rader was still hiding evidence about his murder of maureen hedge. she lived on his block, and they knew each other. in court, rader described how after bowling one evening in 1985, he broke into her house and waited for her to come home. she screamed. i jumped on the bed and strangled her manually. rather than leaving her body in her home, rader changed his m.o., confusing police at the time. killed her in her house, put her in the trunk of her car,
i don t know. i think i was just starting to mellow out a little bit. fox believes it s not probably not coincidence that rader stopped committing murder around the time he got that job as a compliance officer. now he really had some power. now he could really push people around. so, he didn t have to do it with physical violence. he could do it through his job. the killer still lusted for notoriety, however. so after first revealing himself in that letter to the wichita eagle, he sent a slew of letters and packages throughout 2004 and into early 2005, to local tv stations, to police. even leaving clues in a public park, a doll with dark hair, her face colored with makeup. her arms bound behind her by a pair of pantyhose. her head contained in a plastic bag. and next to the doll was a copy of the driver s license of one of btk s victims, nancy fox. a handmade word puzzle, which investigators now see contains a group of letters spelling d.
i definitely didn t want to get on his wrong side. i was intimidated by him when i first started working. but fitch says he saw no hint of rader s violent side. we d sit around and have popcorn before going home. what could be more american than being active in his young son s boy scouts? i signed dennis up as a cub scout leader. bob monroe says dennis rader always set a good example for the boys in his troop, and for rader s own son who went on to be an eagle scout. he took part in everything we did in scouting with his son, which is very important in cub scouting, as you do work with your boys. so, i considered him to be a very good parent and a very good scout leader at that time, of course. contrary to the common assumption that serial killers are generally loners or social outcasts, criminologist james fox says they can often seem to be one of us. many serial killers have
he said he found the noise annoying. only looks at the events from his own perspective. this is a script designed to please him. because remember, it was almost like these people weren t real. they were just actors, and they didn t matter. what mattered was his enjoyment. the kids screaming was taking away from his enjoying all of this stuff. how can he get aroused with the kids screaming? he completely dehumanizes the kids? yes. serial killers are very good at that. that makes it possible for them to kill. it was something i had to do. once i started with mr. otero i knew i had to do all four of them. it was like an execution. once you start it, if there s witnesses, you had to do it all the way around. for someone who seemed so callous, you might assume rader was always a coolly efficient killer. but the way he tells it, rader