Dennis Rader: the BTK killer, the floppy disk and the Park City code officer

• BornDennis Lynn Rader, 9 March 1945, Pittsburg, Kansas
• Known asBTK, his own name, for ‘bind, torture, kill’
• KillingsTen, in and around Wichita, Kansas, 1974–1991
• Arrested25 February 2005, near his home in Park City, Kansas
• PleaGuilty to ten counts of first-degree murder, 27 June 2005
• SentenceTen consecutive life terms, 18 August 2005
• StatusAlive and in prison in Kansas; not charged in any other case

Dennis Rader killed ten people in and around Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991, and signed the letters he sent to police and newspapers with the initials BTK. The killings stopped, the case went cold, and for years no one knew who he was. In 2004 he began writing again, and in February 2005 a computer disk he had sent was traced to his church, where he was president of the congregation. He was arrested on 25 February 2005, pleaded guilty to ten counts of first-degree murder that June, and in August was sentenced to ten consecutive life terms. He is alive and serving that sentence in Kansas.

What made the case notorious was less the killer than the man. At the time of his arrest Rader was 59, married with two children, a former Scout leader and a municipal compliance officer in Park City, a suburb north of Wichita, whose job included enforcing rules on lawns and stray animals. In 2023 an Oklahoma sheriff’s office named him a suspect in two other cases; he denied involvement, he has not been charged, and one of the two cases has since been closed with a different suspect.

This account rests on contemporary reports by the Associated Press, NPR and USA Today, later reporting by KWCH in Wichita and NBC News, and the Britannica and Biography.com profiles, listed at the end. Where they disagree, it says so. In line with this site’s rules, the people Rader killed, their families, the survivors and his own family are not named, and his letters are not quoted.

A city official with a second life

Rader was born on 9 March 1945 in Pittsburg, Kansas, and grew up in Wichita. He served in the US Air Force in the 1960s, returned to Wichita in 1970 and married. He went on to work for ADT, the home-security company, and in 1979 he graduated from Wichita State University, where he had studied criminal justice.

In 1991, the year of his last killing, he became a compliance officer for Park City. USA Today later called him a suburban dogcatcher; Biography.com describes a man who measured the height of residents’ lawns and chased stray animals. He was active in his Lutheran church, where he was president of the congregation council, and was a Scout leader. His neighbours and fellow church members were stunned by his arrest, according to the AP and Biography.com.

Ten killings, 1974–1991

The first killings, on 15 January 1974, were of four members of one family, two parents and two of their children, in their Wichita home. In April that year he killed a young woman in her house and shot her brother, who survived. Two more women were killed in their homes in 1977, one in March and one in December. Then came a gap of eight years: a neighbour in 1985, a young mother in 1986, and a woman in her sixties in January 1991. Most of the victims were tied up and strangled; by his own later account, sexual fantasies drove him to kill.

Police did not connect all ten deaths at the time. When he was arrested, according to the AP, BTK was suspected of eight murders in the 1970s and 1980s; authorities linked two more to him in the days that followed, one of them the 1991 killing.

The letters

BTK was named by the killer himself. Later in 1974 he wrote a letter describing the January killings, gave himself the initials, and left it in a book at the Wichita Public Library, where police recovered it. After the 1977 killings he wrote to a local television station complaining that he had not had enough attention. The killings of 1985, 1986 and 1991 were not publicly tied to BTK when they happened, and the case went cold.

Back in the newspapers

In March 2004, around the 30th anniversary of the first killings, a letter reached the Wichita media containing photographs and a copy of the driving licence of the woman killed in 1986. Over the following months he sent or left a series of messages and packages around the city, some holding items taken from his victims, including another victim’s driving licence.

Early in 2005, in one of these messages, he asked police whether a floppy disk could be traced to a computer. Police indicated that it could not. In February a disk arrived, in a package sent to a Wichita television station according to the AP. Data left on it pointed to his church, and from there to Rader, its congregation president.

The arrest

Rader was arrested near his home in Park City on 25 February 2005. The investigation was led by Lt. Ken Landwehr of the Wichita police, whom the current Sedgwick County district attorney, speaking to KWCH twenty years later, credited with keeping the case alive. According to the AP, investigators also used DNA from a relative’s medical sample to link Rader to the crime scenes; accounts differ on when that happened (see below).

On 1 March 2005 he was charged with ten counts of first-degree murder. In interviews after his arrest he confessed to all ten killings, and, according to NPR, directed investigators to a large hoard of photographs, drawings and writings about his crimes that he kept at home and at work.

Plea and sentence

Rader did not go to trial. On 27 June 2005 he waived his right to a jury trial and pleaded guilty to all ten counts. In court he described each killing in turn, calmly and without visible emotion.

Kansas had no death penalty when the killings took place, so the maximum available was life imprisonment. At a two-day sentencing hearing in Wichita in August 2005, prosecutors under District Attorney Nola Foulston set out the evidence in detail, and about a dozen relatives of the victims spoke. Rader then made a long statement in which he apologised to the families; a number of them walked out when he rose to speak. On 18 August 2005 the judge sentenced him to ten consecutive life terms, which the AP and USA Today reported as a minimum of 175 years before parole. His marriage had ended in divorce the previous month.

Rader was taken to the state’s maximum-security prison at El Dorado, the El Dorado Correctional Facility, where he has served his sentence since.

The Oklahoma and Missouri cases

In August 2023 the Osage County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma said Rader was a prime suspect in two unsolved cases: the 1976 disappearance of a 16-year-old girl last seen at a laundromat in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, and the death of a 22-year-old woman whose body was found in McDonald County, Missouri, in December 1990. On 22 August 2023 the sheriff’s investigators dug at the site of his former home in Park City and said they had recovered items of interest. The sheriff’s office pointed to a journal entry of Rader’s about a laundromat, and to the fact that he worked in the region as an ADT installer at the time, though the sheriff said, according to the AP, that he had not been able to confirm that Rader installed alarms at the bank across the street from the laundromat.

Rader denied involvement in both cases. In September 2023 the district attorney for the area, Mike Fisher, said the information he had seen was not enough to charge Rader, asked the Oklahoma State Bureau of Investigation to open a formal inquiry, and said he would file charges if evidence warranted it. He and the sheriff’s office publicly disagreed over how the investigation had been handled. In March 2024 investigators in Missouri closed the case of the woman found in 1990, saying they had ruled Rader out and that the man they believed responsible had since died. As of the latest reports, Rader has not been charged in either case.

Where the accounts differ

• Parole: the AP and USA Today reported the ten life terms as a minimum of 175 years without parole; NPR’s report the next morning said no possibility of parole for 40 years, describing the ‘hard 40’ the defence had agreed not to contest.
• The DNA: an AP report of 4 March 2005, citing the Wichita Eagle, said investigators obtained DNA before the arrest from a tissue sample in a close relative’s medical records; an AP report three days earlier, also citing the Eagle, said FBI agents took a sample from that relative only on the day of the arrest, suggesting it confirmed his identity rather than broke the case. Britannica mentions only a match to the first crime scene; Biography.com says the relative’s sample ‘cemented’ the case.
• Where the disk went: the AP reported that it was sent to a Wichita television station; Britannica says he sent it to the police.
• When he was caught: NPR’s sentencing report refers to his capture ‘in January’; the AP, KWCH and Biography.com all give 25 February 2005.
• The ADT years: Biography.com says he joined ADT in 1974; Britannica places the job around the time of his 1979 graduation; the AP, reporting the Oklahoma investigation in 2023, said he was a regional ADT installer in 1976.
• The last victim’s age: 63 in the AP’s sentencing report; 62 in Britannica.
• The courtroom walkout: ‘most’ of the relatives walked out when Rader rose to speak, according to USA Today; ‘some’, according to the AP.
• How many killings police knew of: the AP reported in March 2005 that BTK had been suspected of eight deaths before the arrest, with two linked afterwards; a KWCH retrospective in 2025 said investigators believed before the arrest that he had killed at least ten.
• The Missouri death: the Osage County sheriff’s office called Rader the prime suspect in August 2023, KWCH and the AP reported; Missouri investigators said in March 2024 that he had been ruled out (KWCH, Biography.com).
• The Oklahoma disappearance: the Osage County sheriff’s office told KWCH in August 2023 that it was ‘100%’ certain Rader was involved; a month later the district attorney said, according to the AP, that he had seen nothing amounting even to reasonable suspicion.

The portrait

The portrait above is a detail of the coloring page drawn for Bloody America, which gives one killer to each state. The full page shows Rader in glasses, moustache, shirt and tie, set against a wall of envelopes, letters and postmarked mail with a few rolled scrolls among them. In one corner is a map of the United States with Kansas shaded and labelled; in the other, a hooded reaper with a scythe beside the number 10. A large folding knife runs down one side, and a fishnet stocking down the other, next to two medallions holding a coil of rope and a fixed-blade knife. The nameplate reads “Dennis Lynn Rader”, “The BTK Killer” and “1974 – 1991”, with a judge’s gavel and a figure behind bars beneath it. For other case files, see the Zodiac case, Ed Gein and Richard Ramirez.

If you find an error in this account, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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Questions people ask

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Sources

Every date and name on this page was checked against at least two of the following. Where they disagree, the disagreement is stated in the text rather than resolved silently.

1. 10 murder counts for BTK suspectCBS News / Associated Press, 1 March 2005
2. Computer trail led to BTK suspectCBS News / Associated Press, 4 March 2005
3. Rader skips trial, pleads guilty as BTKNPR, 27 June 2005
4. BTK gets 175 yearsAssociated Press (Lawrence Journal-World), 19 August 2005
5. BTK killer receives 10 life sentencesUSA Today (The Spokesman-Review), 19 August 2005
6. Victims’ families reject Kansas killer’s apologyNPR, 19 August 2005
7. Okla. sheriff’s office ‘100% certain’ of Dennis Rader’s ties to teen’s 1976 disappearanceKWCH, 23 August 2023
8. Prosecutor: Evidence insufficient to charge BTK killer in Oklahoma cold caseAssociated Press (Court TV), 11 September 2023
9. Sheriff and district attorney feud over BTK killer’s possible involvement in cold caseNBC News, 12 September 2023
10. On This Day: Dennis Rader arrested 20 years ago, Feb. 25, 2005KWCH, 25 February 2025
11. Dennis RaderEncyclopaedia Britannica, revised 26 September 2026
12. Dennis RaderBiography.com, updated 21 January 2025

The facts on this page come from public records and the published sources above. If you find an error, write to hello@truecrimeart.com and it will be corrected.

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