Dennis Rader Essay Example
Dennis Rader Essay Example

Dennis Rader Essay Example

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  • Pages: 6 (1600 words)
  • Published: April 18, 2017
  • Type: Essay
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Dennis Rader was a Christian man that lived his life as a normal person to everyone’s eyes, with a wife and children but on the inside he was a psychotic man. He had 10 known victims in a span of 25 years before the silence was broken and brought to justice. Dennis Radar was the first of four boys born to William and Dorothea Rader.

He was baptized at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsburg, Kansas. As a child, Dennis appeared to be a normal and average boy. He was a Boy Scout and participated in church youth group activities. He confessed that as a child he was fascinated by bondage, control and torture while he was still in grade school.Dennis Rader admits to killing cats and dogs he would hang and torture them.

He knew that he needed t

...

o keep his obsession a secret from everyone. He was having all these fantasies as a young boy. In 1974 Rader was between jobs and would drive his wife to work when it would snow or there was ice on the roads since she didn’t like driving in these conditions. Dennis’s wife, Paula, worked at the VA hospital in Wichita. Dennis didn’t mind driving her because he liked to “troll” for women and observe them and fantasize about what he would do to them.

One day there was a new Hispanic family that had moved into the corner house on Rader’s block.Rader like Hispanic women, he admired their beauty. On day Dennis dropped off Paula off at the hospital and went back to spy on his new neighbors. He would watch their schedules of when people left

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and returned home. This was not enough for Dennis so he devised a plan. He put together a “hit kit” consisting of a gun, knives, cords, and tools to break into their home.

On January 15, 1974 he had watched long enough around 8 a. m. he snuck around the back yard and cut the phone wires. He barged into the back door but to his surprise Julie and Josephine were not the only two home.The husband Joe Otero was home along with their 9 year old son Joey. Rader seized control of the situation by holding them at gun point.

He ordered them to get into the bedroom and he bound them all. Joe was the first to die he put a bag over his head and synched it with a cord and suffocated him. He attempted to strangle Julie but it took too long and was a lot more work than he thought from the movies. She begged for him not to harm the children as she died.

Next was Joey he suffocated and strangled him as he got a chair to sit and watch him die. Sadly Josephine was the final one.Rader strangled her but failed because she revived. He forced her to walk down into the basement he put a noose around her neck and she was hung from a sewer pipe and left partially undressed. He masturbated on her legs and left her there to die. Rader’s next victim was a 21 year old women who he had been stalking her name was Kathryn Bright.

Dennis parked a few blocks away and broke into her house and waited for her

to come home. She did not come home alone she was accompanied by her 19 year old brother, Kevin. Rader came out with his gun and ordered them into separate bedrooms.He shot Kevin when he began to put up a fight first hitting him in the face but Kevin would not give up he continued to fight. Rader shot him a second time in the head and left him for dead to go and take care of Kathryn he didn’t bring with his kit so he had to improvise. He attempted strangulation but wanted to leave quickly so he used a knife and began to stab her in her stomach and other places.

At this point Kevin ran out of the house bleeding looking for help he exited quickly and ran to his car and took off. Kathryn died in a hospital a few hours later and Kevin is still alive but bears the damage done to him to this day.Dennis wanted recognition for his killings. He wrote a letter of grave detail about the two murders and put it in a library book in the Wichita Public Library. He wrote “I did it myself with noone’s help the code words for me will be…. Bind them, toture them, kill them, B.

T. K…” It was written in poor English with numerous misspelled words. In 1977 Rader decided that it was time for another murder to take place he had met a women named Cheryl in a bar and found her very interesting. Cheryl rented a home with another woman and often they would have parties there.Rader decided that this was the next victim’s. On

the day that Rader chose to make his appearance Cheryl and her friends were not home.

Rader states that he had also checked out some other homes in the neighborhood but no one was home there either. He continued on foot and found a 5 year old boy out running an errand for his mother. He proceeded to go to the boys home where there were three other children. The mother was home and came out in a bathrobe demanding to know what was going on.

Rader proceeded to bind and strangle her and left when the phone rang and didn’t have time to kill the children.Another female that Rader stalked was Nancy Fox she was a single lady who worked nights at a jewelry store. The confrontation took place in her kitchen at gun point. Rader told her he had a sexual issue that he needed to tie her up and rape her. Nancy did not fight back she got undressed in the bathroom.

He strangled her and left semen on the night gown next to the bed. The next day he called from a payphone to the police station and told them that they would find Nancy Fox dead at 843 S. Pershing. In 1978 Rader started sending letters to the Wichita Eagle newspaper telling about the murders that he had committed.It mentioned the”factor x” that suggested this was his reason for killing people. Not until 1985 did Dennis Rader strike again.

His next victim was a Marine Hedge a 70 year old women he strangled and took her to the basement of the church he went to and took photos of her

in different posses and drove her body and dumped it in the ditch. In 1986 Dennis had his eye on Vicki Wegerle a 28 year old women mother of two. He pretended to be phone repair man and she let him in he informed her that she would be tied up. Vickie gave him a battle she scratch him in the process.He left her for dead and drove off in her car to dispose of evidence.

The husband came home and found her dead. Dennis would wait until 1991 to kill again. This time focusing on older women since the younger ones would fight back. He chose Dolores Davis 62 year old women who lived alone.

He planned this well he was out of town on a Scouting camping trip and used an excuse to go into to town for something. He strangled her and dragged her body outside and drove her a short distance away and left the body under some trees and drove the car back to the Davis house wiped it down for fingerprints and tossed the keys on the roof.He went back to where he left her and put her in his car and dumped her somewhere else and took photos of her posed lifeless body. In 2004 Rader began sending letters to the police and to the television station in Wichita about all killings and how he had done them.

His last drop was a disc that he had given them the detectives found Christ Lutheran Church software on the disc and the name Dennis on it. Rader was thought he erased the original contents of the disk. Dennis was

placed under surveillance while a subpoena was secretly obtained for a DNA sample of his daughter from medical records.The DNA was a match to the crime scenes of the BTK killer. On February 25, 2005 Dennis Rader was arrested as a suspect to several murders that were happening in Wichita, KS since 1974. A self-named serial killer he wanted to be known as the BTK killer, bind, torture, and kill.

Dennis wanted his fame for the murders he wanted press there for his sentencing. But unlike some of his peers he did not receive this acknowledgement. At Rader’s trial he pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder. He explained in explicit detail on the murders that he committed.He explained that “Once you lock in on a certain person, you become a stalker. There might be several of them, but you really hone in on one person.

They basically become the ... victim. Or, at least that’s what you want it to be.

” Dennis was sentenced to 175 years in prison without parole. This was the maximum sentence that the Judge Gregory Waller could deliver. There was no death penalty at the time that the killings were committed. Dennis will die in prison hopefully feeling some remorse for the crimes that he committed.References www. dennisraderbtk.

blogspot. com www. kansas. com/news www. foxnews.

com

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