KILLER PROFILES: Dennis Radar - "The BTK Killer"
Dennis Radar’s lust for notoriety as the BTK Killer was only rivaled by his desire to torture.
Was it the violence he craved—or the attention? Somewhere in the deranged mind of the assailant who called himself the BTK Killer- the initials standing for “bind them, torture them, and kill them”—the two became intertwined, and it seemed that Dennis Radar couldn’t have one without the other.
Between 1974 and 1991, this vicios man killed 10 people in Kansas, then bragged about his murderous exploits in taunting letters to the police and newspapers.
“It’s hard to control myself,” said the first letter, following the January 1974 strangulation of the Otero family—two parents and their two children. “You probably call me ‘psychotic’ with sexual perversion hang-up.”
“I think I may be possessed by demons.”
As the evidence attested, psychological motivations lurked behind the murders. The killer took only a radio and a watch. apparently as souvenirs, and left behind semen.
He would go on to murder three more women and all three members of another family, his only regret being what he saw as the lack of his notoriety. As he wrote in one letter, “How many people do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national attention?”
After a women’s murder in 1991, the killings—and the correspondence—mysteriously stopped for 10 years. Then in 2004, as local media marked the 30th anniversary of the first murder, the BTK Killer inundated news outlets with letters, photos, and other materials. He photographed himself posed as his victims, even wearing women’s clothes and masks.
A floppy disk sent to a TV station was traced to of all places a church computer, and DNA analysis from blood under one of the victims fingernails matched Radar, a church member.
The 59-year-old father of two, who was a Boy Scout troop leader, church council president, and compliance supervisor for a Wichita suburb, was arrested and pleaded guilty in 2005 to 10 counts of murder.
He is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences for his ghastly crimes.
