BTK KILLER CONFESSES, the Eagle headlined the following day. SILENT CITY LISTENS AS RADER DETAILS MURDERS SPURRED BY SEXUAL FANTASIES.
Eagle reporter Ron Sylvester captured the meaning of the moment and the mood of the city perfectly.
“Dennis Rader dropped his mask Monday,” Sylvester wrote. “With no apology or visible remorse, the former church and Boy Scout leader pleaded guilty as Wichita’s notorious BTK serial killer. Then he gave an extraordinarily detailed recollection of how he selected, stalked and strangled 10 people.”
Osburn said the decision to plead guilty was made by Rader on his own. He said he hoped that the city could rest easier knowing that BTK was going to prison for the rest of his life.
“He has left no doubt that the BTK killer has been caught,” Osburn said.
But while Osburn hoped that his most infamous client would be shuffled off to prison with a minimum of fuss after formal sentencing, District Attorney Foulston had other ideas. She wanted to drive a stake through the beast’s heart, at least legally speaking, by presenting evidence of aggravation at Rader’s sentencing, to make sure Rader got the “Hard Forty.” This would require a full-dress hearing, with witnesses, who would be called to lay out in graphic detail all of Rader’s perversities.
“When a community is deprived of information about what happened, it never rests,” Foulston said. Getting the details out to the public, trying to answer questions about what happened, was vital to the administration of justice.
“I’m sure if it was up to the defense, they would rather skip the sentencing entirely and just get an e-mail from the judge,” Foulston told the Eagle. “I think all defendants would rather it just go away and quietly slither out of town and off to the penitentiary. But that’s not going to happen.”
Foulston was right—Osburn thought an extended hearing, replete with crime-scene photographs, videos and horrid details, was not only unnecessary from a legal standpoint, but calculated by the district attorney to improve her chances in the next election. It was grandstanding, Osburn said. His side had offered to stipulate that aggravation existed—to accept the “Hard Forty” sentence—but Foulston’s office had rejected the offer.
“I think personally hearing Mr. Rader stand up and say, ‘I did it,’ and give some very graphic details as to why people were selected and how he went about it—if that doesn’t give closure, I certainly don’t know what the state can add to that,” Osburn said. Rader’s plea statement was enough to satisfy the law, Osburn said, and having a lurid sentencing hearing was just overkill.
Osburn’s main problem with the prosecution of Dennis Rader had nothing to do with the evidence against his client, or even Rader’s weird desire to embrace the notoriety of being named the murderer. Osburn’s problem—or at least, the thing that stuck sideways in his throat—was how the politicians had clamored to get in front of the cameras, now that BTK had been brought to book. Osburn in particular objected to District Attorney Foulston. It had bothered him when Foulston had insisted on serving Rader personally, while in court in March, with her decision to ask for the Hard Forty. All that did was get Foulston on the evening news, in dramatic accusatory fashion. It wasn’t really necessary, although it was what one might expect from a politician who wanted to be identified with ending the worst murder case in Wichita’s history.
But more substantively, Osburn objected to the district attorney’s insistence that this full-scale evidentiary hearing was necessary to demonstrate the aggravation required for the Hard Forty. Rader was willing to stipulate—to agree to accept the Hard Forty—without any hearing, but Foulston had insisted that the public needed to know what had really happened, which meant all the gory, perverse details would come pouring out to the public. Osburn suspected that what was really in Foulston’s mind was the opportunity to get massive amounts of publicity as she described, in detail, all of Rader’s depredations and predilections. Such a hearing, Osburn knew, would probably be broadcast, maybe even nationally, which would hardly hurt Nola Foulston’s political ambitions.
He could object, Osburn knew, but it would only make his public defender’s office look bad. Dennis Rader was, at least is this sense, a sitting duck—but who would care? There was no real percentage in complaining about it for Osburn, his office or—and this was the most important—any of his future clients, if the public began to perceive the public defender’s office as legalistic obstructionists. So Foulston had Osburn over a barrel, and there wasn’t any real way to stop the district attorney from stripping a pound or two of flesh off Dennis Rader in some sort of show proceeding, the principal benefit of which would accrue to the future political desires of Nola Foulston. All Osburn could do was take it. As for Rader—chances were, this was something that he would really enjoy.
The district attorney’s office was within its authority to reject the offered stipulation, though, and Judge Waller scheduled three days for a formal sentencing hearing for mid-August 2005. Rader was now in yet another race for publicity, this one with Foulston herself. By insisting on a hearing, Osburn thought, Foulston was giving Rader exactly what he most desired.
“We cannot let this just close the book and walk away. That would be so unfair to our victims and their families and to the community and the public that we serve.” It wasn’t just about the killer and his victims, or even his victims’ survivors, but about the whole community, Foulston said.
In the wake of BTK’s plea, Beattie received congratulations and appreciation from people all over town. There was no doubt, former chief LaMunyon said, that Beattie’s decision to write a book about the case had caused Rader to resume contact after all the years, the development that had led directly to BTK’s capture. Rader simply couldn’t stand it that Beattie might get more attention than the long-sought killer. Others noted that the search of Rader’s “motherlode” at the Park City City Hall had turned up a copy of the March 2004 issue of ReTIRED COPPER, the newsletter that had featured the item about Beattie’s book—that meant that Rader had read it just before resuming his communications in March 2004. And in a jailhouse interview with KAKE reporter Larry Hatteberg, Rader had said simply, if revealingly: “I’ll bet Beattie’s gloating now.”
As for Beattie himself, he now had a chance to tell the whole story—he’d calculated from the start to get BTK’s goat, to stimulate him to communicate again, he told the Eagle. It was all because of the killer’s intense narcissism, so obvious from the years of communications, beginning with the library letter of 1974. It was clear that BTK simply couldn’t abide anyone taking attention away from him, even the three half-wits the police had first arrested in the autumn of that year.
“The ancient Greeks taught that the gods punished hubris,” Beattie told the paper. “I thought that if BTK continued to communicate, he would eventually be caught.”
On August 17, 2005, the Sedgwick County District Attorney’s Office began presenting the aggravation evidence against Dennis Rader. This proceeding, too, was broadcast on national television, by Court TV. For weeks before the hearing, news media people from across the country had been making their reservations for Wichita, to be there for the denouement of the long-running case. Regardless of Foulston’s intent—whether legal or political—Rader knew that once more he would be the star of the show. Even better, from Rader’s point of view, the tape of his final interview with Dr. Mendoza had somehow been furnished to NBC’s Dateline, which broadcast portions of it to the nation the week before the sentencing was to take place. He was the star, of course.
Foulston’s plan was to call as witnesses each detective who had been assigned to investigate the long-dormant BTK cases once Rader had resurfaced the previous year. That way, she and her associates could explain to the public exactly what BTK had done during every crime, and what Dennis Rader had later said about it. To bolster this testimony, the district attorney’s office had prepared a lengthy PowerPoint demonstration, illustrated with highly disturbing crime-scene and autopsy photographs, pictures of things seized during the searches, and excerpts from the statements Rader had made to the detectives during his interrogations. Members of the victims’ families were given reserved seats in Judge Waller’s courtroom, and were warned that the presentation contained a large number of unpleasant details. Among those in attendance were the surviving Oteros—Charlie, Danny and Carmen. Also there were Steve Relford and Kevin Bright, along with Dee Davis’ son and members of the Fox, Hedge and Wegerle families.
Rader sat quietly at the counsel table as each detective took the stand, recounting the vile crimes, and what Rader had said about them.
Assistant District Attorney Kevin O’Connor led off with the Otero case. He asked Ray Lundin, an agent of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, if he’d interviewed Rader about the Otero murders.
He had, Lundin said.
“Okay. And how—What did he refer to this family that he murdered? How did he refer to them?”
“That was his ‘PJ Little-Mex’ or ‘Project Little-Mex.’ ”
“And these ‘projects,’ what does the projects mean? What did that mean to Rader?”
“These were his undertakings that he—the things that he was working on. They were people. They were, you know, potential victims of his that he would work on. Some of them he ended up killing, and some of them he didn’t, but—”
“And he had—he literally had hundreds of projects, is that correct?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And he kept detailed records about his little projects, didn’t he?”
“Yes, he did.”
“And these projects again—these projects that Rader called ‘projects,’ were actually people, living, breathing human beings?”
“Yes, they were.”
Lundin recounted Rader’s description of how he’d killed the four Oteros.
“And did he tell you what Josie was doing as she watched what he was doing to her family?” O’Connor asked.
“She was, you know, screaming for her mother,” Lundin said that Rader had told him. “And, as you can only imagine, and I remember how he kind of callously said, you know, ‘She was over there yelling . . . “Momma, Momma, Momma,”’ something like that, and—”
“And during the interview, he actually mimicked a little girl yelling, ‘Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,’ is that correct?”
Yes, Lundin said, that’s what Rader had done.
O’Connor called another KBI agent, Larry Thomas, who had also re-investigated the Otero ease, once BTK had resurfaced. The assistant DA wanted to get some additional testimony on the callousness of Rader’s behavior, necessary to demonstrate the aggravation.
“And, again, there’s been some testimony that—when he talked about what Josie would say, would he mimic a little girl?”
“Yes, he would—he actually would change his voice to mimic the voice, and, also, use some animation of his body to show the positions of the bodies.”
“And so, when he’d describe it, he’d actually get up and demonstrate it, right?”
“Yes, that’s correct.”
“And during the course of this interview, did it appear to you that he seemed to be extremely proud of what he had done?”
“Yes, it was very matter-of-fact, and used the animation, and, also, drawing pictures to help illustrate the details.”
“Now, there are some photographs here that are going to depict Josie down in the basement. This is a crime-scene photograph of Josie as she appeared down in the basement?”
“Yes, it is.”
“Okay. And she is—she has a gag over her mouth, is that correct?”
“Yes, she does.”
“And her lips were swollen in that?”
“Yes.”
“And her tongue was—what about her tongue?”
“Her tongue was protruding aside of the gag.”
“Now, did you specifically ask Rader why he took Josie to the basement?”
“We asked—during the course of his explanation of this particular crime scene—why he chose the basement.”
“And there is a quote behind you from Rader about his fascination with bondage in a basement, is that correct?”
“Yes, that is his statement.”
“Okay. And he indicated to you it’s the best place to hang somebody, because it’s solid?”
“Yes.”
“And it’s like a dungeon?”
“Correct.”
“And he indicated to you that at his parents’ house, his folks’ home, as he calls it, he would do—he would do this when they weren’t around?”
“Correct.”
“Okay. He’d find— There was a sewer pipe down in his basement that was similar to the one in the Oteros’?”
“Yes.”
“Now, did you find anything in his stash—or what he would call his motherlode—that supported this statement here, that he actually hung himself in his parents’ basement?”
“Yes. There were photographs.”
“Now, this is a photograph here to my left. It is a Polaroid photograph, the one I have the cursor on; is that right?”
“That’s correct.”
“And this was located in Rader’s stash?”
“Yes.”
“All right. And who is this person here that’s wearing women’s pantyhose, has binding over him, has a gag over him, and is wearing a women’s bra? Who is that?”
“That’s Dennis Rader.”