Postcards seeming to be a reliable way of directing attention to his communications, the killer adopted that method again in early February. On February 3, KAKE-TV got another postcard from BTK.
“Thank you for your quick response on #7 and 8,” the killer typed. “Sorry about Susan’s and Jeff’s colds.” Two of the KAKE anchors had recently complained of the usual winter respiratory affliction.
Under a heading he made—“business issues”—BTK advised, “tell WPD that I receive [sic] the newspaper tip for a go. Test run soon. Thanks.”
That night, on the air, KAKE reporter Larry Hatteberg addressed the killer directly, telling him that his message had been received and passed on to the appropriate parties.
The discovery of the two cereal boxes in north Wichita sparked speculation that the killer had expanded his base of operations from downtown Wichita to the outlying areas. Beattie was asked what he thought it meant. Not much, he said. He pointed out that most of the locations for recent drops had been fairly close to 1-135, the major freeway that bisected the city. The only significance of the locations, Beattie suggested, was that it was quick and easy to get off and back on the freeway after making a drop, thus lessening the chance of being caught in the act.
Others, however, wondered if the killer might have some connection to the northern part of the city, or even its outlying suburbs. The Eagle noted that Park City had had two murders, both strangulations, in the past two decades: Marine Hedge in 1985, and Dee Davis in 1991.
Both murders bore some similarities to the BTK killings, reporters Tim Potter and Hurst Laviana noted, including some apparent bondage. But they differed in that all the known BTK murder victims had been left in their residences, while both Hedge and Davis had apparently been kidnapped before being murdered. Beattie, in his research for his book, had already decided that the characteristics of the Hedge and Davis murders, with the obvious bondage, were so similar to the known BTK cases that they had to be the work of BTK, despite the public denials by the police, who discounted any connection because the bodies had been moved.
“In retrospect, both the Marine Hedge and Delores Davis murders should have stood out under the glare of lights,” Beattie said later. “Their bodies were bound, moved miles away from their homes, but were not buried.” The bodies of several other female murder victims in the Wichita area, Beattie realized, had been moved, but in those cases, the bodies were buried. Not in the cases of Hedge and Davis—Beattie thought that was significant.
“Why?” Beattie wondered. Why would the killer take the time, trouble and risk of moving two victims, when previously he was perfectly content to leave them where he killed them? It was only later that the answer became obvious: the killer lived in the same neighborhood as the last two victims, and wanted to get those crimes as far away from where he lived as he could.
“I imagine future geographic profilers might add Dennis Rader’s behavior to their analysis,” Beattie said later. “If a body is moved, ask ‘Why?’ Is it because the murderer lives or works near the victim?”
But if the police were in agreement with Beattie’s reasoning at this point, they weren’t letting anyone else in on it.
Then the killer mailed again.
On Wednesday, February 16, Marcine Andrews, a receptionist for KSAS-TV—the Fox affiliate in Wichita—opened a large padded envelope that had come in the mail. The envelope contained three index cards, a gold chain with a locket, and a purple computer disk. The sender identified himself as “P.J. Fox,” and listed a downtown Wichita return address.
Andrews took the envelope and its contents to station manager Tom Gdisis. Gdisis recognized this as a probable mailing from BTK, and immediately called the police.
A WPD detective, Dana Gouge, retrieved the envelope from the television station. One index card contained a photocopy of the cover of John Sandford’s novel about a serial killer, Rules of Prey. Another card had the title “COMMUNICATION-11,” and contained a list of communications #7 through #11. Apparently the killer didn’t want anyone to miss anything.
The last index card referred to the computer disk, and provided further instructions for future communications through more newspaper advertisements. “Test Floppy for WPD review,” the killer had identified it.
This was what the detectives had been waiting and hoping for. The disk was taken to an expert in the department’s computer crimes section, Detective Randy Stone, who discovered that it held only one file: “TestA.rtf.” Opening the file, Stone read the words on the screen:
“This is a test. See 3 × 5 Card for details on Communication with me in the newspaper.”
The killer did not seem to understand that every computer file contains a record of who created it and when. Stone examined the “properties” section of the file. And there it was: the author name “Dennis,” and the owner of the computer—Christ Lutheran Church in Park City.
Stone put “Christ Lutheran Church” into the Google search engine, and came up with a webpage for the church. The Congregational President was a man named Dennis Rader.
A further computer search showed that Dennis Rader lived in Park City. In fact, some noticed, he lived only a few houses away from Marine Hedge’s address in 1985.
Rader, detectives now discovered, was employed as the Park City “compliance officer.” A compliance officer enforced the city’s ordinances—an almost-cop, exactly as had been predicted for nearly thirty years.
In other words, Dennis Rader, apparently the man who had written “This is a test,” and promised further communications by way of ads in the newspaper, was the town dogcatcher.
He was also BTK.
Maybe.
Was it possible that the congregation president of a long-established church in suburban Park City was really a secret serial killer? A quasi–law enforcement officer? What if someone else had used his name to gain access to the church computer? It was certainly possible. Before rushing out the door to put a respected member of the community in handcuffs, the detectives had to make doubly sure. True, Rader was 59 years old—the right age for BTK. And he’d graduated from WSU with a degree in criminal justice in 1979. He’d previously worked for a burglar alarm company in Wichita—exactly the sort of occupation that might give someone access to people’s homes. But this was on paper—in reality, Rader seemed like the last person anyone would suspect of being a homicidal maniac. And the police department was still smarting from the December fiasco, when Chief Norman Williams had had to eat crow in front of a national television audience.
More information was needed before detectives could be sure.
That afternoon, Detectives Clint Snyder and Tim Relph cruised by the Rader home in Park City. There, parked in the driveway, was a black Jeep Cherokee—registered to Rader’s son.
This fit. Obviously, the son couldn’t be BTK—he would only have been a toddler when the Oteros were killed. From this point forward, detectives put Rader under loose surveillance—not only to prevent him from escaping in case he got wind of their interest, but also to make sure he didn’t kill again.
At the same time, the detectives cast around for a way to get Rader’s DNA. After some research and consideration, the detectives decided to get a court order to obtain a biological sample from Rader’s daughter. The court order allowed them to obtain the sample from her medical files without her knowledge. This sample was submitted under conditions of great secrecy to the Kansas Bureau of Investigation forensic laboratory in Topeka on February 22, 2005. The lab analysis showed that the DNA from Rader’s daughter matched in a statistically unique way the DNA recovered from the Otero house more than 30 years earlier.
“Now I know,” Landwehr said later, accurately but carefully, “that the father of Dennis Rader’s daughter is BTK.”