Why We Love Serial Killers

by Scott Bonn

  Rader was arrested on February 25, 2005, and was later charged with ten counts of first-degree murder. Friends, neighbors, and members of his church were stunned by the news and could not believe that the innocuous-seeming man they knew was actually the stone-cold serial killer that had haunted the area for so many years. To the surprise of many, Rader pled guilty to all of the charges on June 27, 2005. Shortly thereafter, his wife of more than thirty years ended their marriage, and the judge, understandably, waved the usual waiting period in order to grant her an immediate divorce. Paula subsequently went into seclusion. The enormity of her ordeal is almost unimaginable. Hopefully, she can take some comfort from the fact that if Rader had not been married and a father he would have been free—and likely compelled—to stalk and kill more frequently than he actually did.

  Rader escaped the death penalty because he committed his crimes before the state of Kansas reinstated capital punishment in 1994. His sentencing hearing in August 2005 was the first opportunity for relatives of his victims to confront him in person as they made their impact statements to the court. The hearing revealed more gruesome details about his murders. Many courtroom observers noted that Rader described the horrible events in an emotionally detached manner and without any sign of remorse—almost like he was giving a presentation. He explained, for example, that he threw the body of his last victim, Dolores Davis, under a bridge but returned to it later. Although her corpse was decomposed by the time he returned, he placed a feminine mask over her face and photographed her body for later use in his autoerotic fantasies.

  His courtroom testimony about his crimes provided disturbing insights into his psychopathic belief system. Rader said that the Otero family will serve him in the afterlife as his sex slaves. He claimed that the same will happen to Shirley Vian and he added that he would have killed her daughter and other children, too, if the phone had not rung and hastened his exit from their house. He said, “I probably would have hung the little girl. Like I said, I’m pretty mean or could be. But on the other hand I’m very, you know, I’m a nice guy.” The glaring contradiction in this statement is completely lost on Rader. It reveals how he was able to compartmentalize his killings as BTK and separate them in his mind from his otherwise normal activities as Dennis Rader. His compartmentalized life kept him from suffering any psychological discomfort or feelings of guilt for decades.

  In contrast to the cold and emotionless demeanor he displayed while describing his murders to the court, Rader appeared to be upset when family members of his victims called him a coward during their impact statements. Prior to sentencing, he delivered a narcissistic twenty-minute final statement to the court that was likened by observers to an Oscar acceptance speech. In it he tearfully admitted his faults, thanked his supporters, and astonishingly compared his situation to that of his victims. His perfunctory claims of remorse rang hollow in the courtroom. Fortunately for many relatives of the victims, they came to the sentencing hearing only to make their impact statements and left before Rader gave his self-serving final comments to the court. Following his statement, he was given ten consecutive life sentences for his crimes.

  Rader has been located at the maximum security El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas since 2005. He resides in total isolation in an eight-foot-by-ten-foot cell, except for one hour, five days a week, when he is allowed to shower and exercise. He refers to his solitary confinement cell as his cave. He sometimes sits in the cave in boxer shorts with his hairy back exposed. Other times he wears a two-piece uniform consisting of brown scrubs with a white T-shirt and blue slip-on shoes. His cell is furnished with a metal desk, a metal stool bolted to the floor, a combination toilet-sink–water fountain, and a concrete bed covered with a two-inch slab of foam. His view consists of a porthole window from which he can see but not touch the sky. Rader never leaves his cell without wearing restraints. Guards pass his food trays to him through a hinged slot called a “bean hole.” He has no contact with the other inmates who call him “child molester.” He lives in isolation for his own protection. Rader would probably be killed—just like Jeffrey Dahmer—if he was ever moved into the general prison population.

  Dennis Rader speaks in court prior to his sentencing in 2005. (photo credit: Associated Press)

  My Personal Reflections on Dennis Rader

  I began to write to Rader in June 2011 to get his unique insights for this book. Prior to contacting him, it occurred to me that he virtually personifies the narcissistic predator that is obsessed with his own criminal celebrity status. Therefore, I believed that he could provide me with important insights into the social construction of the serial killer identity. After all, he was the principle architect of his own public image when he told law enforcement authorities to refer to him as “Bind, Torture, Kill” in his first taunting letter to them. I believed that Rader would agree to correspond with me if I appealed to his ego and told him that I wanted to learn from him. I was not disappointed. He promptly wrote back to me and we corresponded regularly through letters for a couple of years. He considers us to be friends and we certainly became well acquainted via our extensive written correspondence.

  Rader is quite fascinating. His letters to me read like business correspondence from the desk of Dennis Rader in prison. They are meticulous in their details, including bibliographical references and numbered enclosures, but curiously filled with misspellings and incorrect grammar. When he writes about his life in prison today, he does so in the first person. When he describes the past actions of his alter ego BTK, it is in the third person. His letters are often lengthy and always hand-written in small print because he is not allowed access to a computer or typewriter. Rader customizes and personalizes his prison stationery using colored pencils. He has created a letterhead for himself in the shape of a cave using his initials DLR. The cave drawing appears on the first page of each letter from him and it always contains a little nature scene that changes seasonally, so it might be a jolly snowman in the winter and a bright sun overlooking playful animals or flowers in the summer. I received a pretty handmade Christmas card from Rader with bells and doves that wished me the joys of the holiday season. Interestingly, there are never people in his drawings. He sometimes sent me his original poetry about things he enjoys such as butterflies and springtime. Rader and I played chess by sending each other one move at a time, back-and-forth, through the mail. His signature (or more accurately his trademark) at the end of each letter is drawn in the shape and form of a shark with imposing teeth.

  Rewarding a Psychopathic Killer

  Back in 2006, to the chagrin of prosecutors and his victims’ family members, Rader earned the privilege to watch television, listen to the radio, read, and draw in his prison cell due to his good behavior. Prosecutors sought to restrict his activities in prison because they said he would relive his sexual fantasies by viewing images, photographs, and news accounts of his murders. Similarly, Georgia Mason, the mother of Nancy Fox, who was killed by Rader in 1977, also objected to his increased privileges. “I just don’t think he needs anything in that little cell,” she said. Kansas Department of Corrections spokesman Bill Miskell said that Rader had earned his privileges in a system designed to encourage good behavior in inmates. He further said that Rader is not allowed to have sexually explicit materials and his reading is monitored so that he is not exposed to any images that might trigger his sexual fantasies such as lingerie or swimsuit advertisements.

  Reward-based treatment is being used effectively with prisoners who have incurable antisocial personality disorders. Rader has been diagnosed with at least two incurable personality disorders—psychopathy (explained in chapter 4) and malignant narcissism—by forensic psychologists and criminal profilers. Neither disorder is considered a mental illness by either psychologists or the criminal justice system. Malignant narcissism has been described by psychologist Dr. Richard Kocsis as:

  An extreme form of antisocial personality disorder combined with narcissistic elements that is ma
nifested in a person who is pathologically grandiose, lacking in conscience and behavioral regulation, and with characteristic demonstrations of joyful cruelty and sadism.80

  Rader’s psychopathy and malignant narcissism were on display in an interview with NBC News on August 12, 2005, when Rader called his victims “objects.” He said:

  I had what they called torture chambers. And to relieve your sexual fantasies you have to go to the kill . . . I don’t think it was actually the person that I was after. I think it was the dream. I know that’s not really nice to say about a person, but they were basically an object. They were just an object. That’s all they were.

  Retired FBI agent and expert profiler Roy Hazelwood, who is now a researcher, teacher, and private consultant, told me that Rader may be the most fascinating serial killer he has ever interviewed and studied. While most serial killers exhibit just one or two types of sexual deviation, Rader has at least seven, which are the most Hazelwood has ever seen in one person. The two antisocial personality disorders that Rader exhibits are common among other organized serial killers and they manifest themselves in an exaggerated sense of self, a lack of empathy for others, and no feelings of guilt, remorse, or fear.

  Rader has responded very well to reward-based treatment behind bars and he has been a model prisoner since 2005. Although he remains in solitary confinement twenty-three hours per day, he has received increasing privileges, including food he likes, in exchange for his continued good behavior. Rader looks forward to his little rewards such as chocolate pudding. He also loves hamburgers and French fries which he often gets on Saturdays. Even with the increased privileges, however, Rader remains in isolation in the prison’s most restrictive environment. He would have to serve a minimum of 175 years behind bars even to be eligible for parole. In other words, he isn’t going anywhere.

  A Rich Fantasy Life Behind Bars

  With nothing but time on his hands, Rader has managed to maintain a fantasy life in prison, although it is now engaged in a very different pursuit than it was on the outside. He proudly oversees a fantasy stock and real estate portfolio that he says has yielded a fortune in profits since its inception. He follows the investment markets compulsively every business day on the radio, television, and in the newspaper. He carefully monitors each one of his fantasy investments and tracks its progress. Rader keeps meticulous performance records and charts which I have seen. He brags about his investment skills and the excellent performance of his portfolio as if every detail he shares is a fact. He likens his obsession with the stock market to a drug addiction. Investing has thus become an elaborate new fantasy and escape for him. I believe that financial investing appeals to his perfectionism, grandiosity, and risk-taking nature. His narcissism is also well served when he boasts to me about how good he is at this endeavor.

  As a result of our discourse, I have come to believe that Rader is content with his isolated life in prison as long as his mind is occupied. Because he is a psychopath, he does not long for emotional bonding or companionship as would a normal person in his situation. What he craves more than human contact is intellectual stimulation. Rader lives inside of his own mind and, for the most part, I believe that he always has. He appears to be meticulous in everything he does and I can see that he puts great time and effort into the letters he has written to me. As long as he has numerous interesting things to read and do, including his drawing and writing, I believe that he is content because he is intellectually stimulated. Moreover, by contacting him to be a resource for this book, although I did so for educational purposes, I became one of his intellectual diversions, and my interest in him clearly feeds his ego. This curious paradox does not escape me.

  Indications of Extreme Narcissism

  The aspect of his complex antisocial personality that has been most apparent to me throughout our correspondence is his extreme narcissism. It is manifested in numerous ways. For example, Rader admits that he eagerly contributed to the social construction of his own gruesome public identity when he instructed his pursuers to call him “Bind, Torture, Kill” in October 1974. He concluded his first letter to authorities with the postscript:

  P.S. Since sex criminals do not change their M.O. or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code word for me will be . . . Bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K., you see he at it again. They will be on the next victim.

  His chilling and self-assigned pseudonym of BTK described both his modus operandi (bind, kill) and his signature (torture). A self-proclaimed student of the killing game, Rader read the accounts and techniques of notorious serial killers that preceded him. He craved the infamy attained by the Zodiac Killer, the Boston Strangler and Jack the Ripper, so he created a brand name for himself that would shock and terrorize society. His creation of a unique BTK symbol (which he hand-draws) to authenticate his communications with the police, while unusual, is similar to David Berkowitz, who drew an occult symbol on one of his Son of Sam letters to the news media.

  Following his seventh murder, Rader sent a letter to authorities where he asked, “How many do I have to kill before I get a name in the paper or some national recognition?” This statement indicates just how much he craved attention for himself. He was also fully aware of society’s fascination with the macabre, given the notoriety attained by other serial killers. Rader has said that he knew the public would be riveted by his crimes and would demand to know his motivations. Therefore, he deliberately appealed to society’s appetite for murder. Through his taunting letters and clues, Rader was speaking directly to his public audience. (I provide more insights into the social construction of serial killers gained from my discourse with Rader in chapter 10.)

  Another indication of his narcissism is that Rader rejects the classification of serial killer for himself. He sees it as too limiting to encompass the many accomplishments of BTK. Rader has explained to me that unlike most serial killers who target a particular type of victim, such as a young female prostitute, BTK killed men, women, and children with equal pleasure and disdain. He reasons that no one in society could feel safe while he was on the loose because literally anyone could become his next victim. Rader believes that his BTK alter ego was more like an armed terrorist (such as Osama bin Laden) than a serial killer. He also fancies himself a natural born predator who is no more responsible for killing than a venomous snake or a shark (his prison signature). In fact, he attempts to neutralize any responsibility for his murders by claiming that he was compelled to kill by something he calls “Factor X”—that is, an insatiable and undeniable urge to kill that he does not comprehend. Rader is completely unrepentant today and has no remorse or regrets, except for having been caught.

  One more compelling example of his narcissism was revealed to me when I received a postcard from Rader that features a colorful and striking original painting of a floral arrangement. It was a gift to me from Rader that has a fascinating little history. It seems that he received this postcard from a female admirer, Dana Sue Gray, who just happens to be a female serial killer serving a life sentence without the possibility of parole in California. She apparently is lonely and somewhat smitten with Rader, so she made contact with him through the mail by way of the postcard. Rader, however, is not equally impressed by her. Therefore, he re-gifted the postcard to me and explained that she simply is not in his league. Dana Sue Gray “only” killed three people and wounded another before being caught, Rader contends. Apparently, a prolific serial killer such as Rader needs to have certain minimum standards.

  Rader’s narcissism is also manifested in his musings about the cooling off period between his murders. Unlike most serial killers, BTK had a reign of terror that lasted an unusually long time. He started killing in 1974, when he was twenty-nine, and was planning another murder at the time of his arrest in 2005, when he was fifty-nine. What is particularly unusual for a serial killer was the amount of time that passed between his crimes. As former profiler Roy Hazelwood said, “Most serial killers kill far more fr
equently than he did.” As previously discussed, Rader used autoerotic fantasy and masturbation aided by his “mother lode” of trophies to relive his crimes and satisfy his sexual cravings between murders. As a result of his autoerotic fantasy life, the length of time or cooling off period between BTK’s murders was highly variable and generally much longer than most other serial killers. Incredibly, Rader takes credit for his fantasy rituals and even claims that they saved lives. He has explained to me that he likely would have killed more people if he had not discovered a way to satisfy his urges. In one of his letters to authorities he wrote:

  I can’t stop it so, the monster goes on, and hurt me as well as society. Society can be thankful that there are ways for people like me to relieve myself at time by day dreams of some victims being torture and being mine.

  In his psychopathic delusions, Rader seems to believe that society owes him a debt of gratitude for not killing more frequently than he did. Such twisted reasoning almost defies comprehension.

  I have also gained new insights into the cooling off period between his murders through my correspondence with Rader. It is commonly assumed that the cooling off period is a time of de-escalation of arousal for a serial killer—almost like a time-out from murder—in which they return to their normal everyday routines. Stated differently, the cooling off period is often compared to coming down from a narcotic high or basking in the glow following sex. However, Rader indicates that for him the cooling off period was actually a time of trolling for the next perfect victim combined with intensive autoerotic fantasy as he followed his intended future prey and planned his abduction strategy. For BTK, the so-called cooling off period was anything but that as he got to know the routines and habits of his intended victim and became increasingly aroused and compelled to kill. In that regard, it was more like a courting ritual or foreplay for BTK. Although this new perspective on the cooling off period may not apply to all serial killers, it certainly contributes to our understanding of the pathology of BTK.