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I have been listening to the Martha's Vineyard Beach and Book Club, which actually Elena recommended to me.
She did not listen to it, but she said, girl, this title sounds so you.
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Hey, weirdos. I'm Elena. I'm Ash. And this is a morbid you've been waiting for.
A lot of y'all have been asking for this Mormon.
And you know what? It's time. Here we are.
It's time. We've arrived at Dennis Raider.
BTK. I accidentally called him our guest earlier.
She did. She did. And I was like, guest on the podcast.
And you were like, you mean the fucking subject matter?
And I was like, the case? Yes. Because surprise, everybody, Dennis Rader's in the house.
No, he's not. He's not. Check your closets.
He is not in the house. Hint, hint, spoiler alert.
He's currently... He's in the big house.
Yeah, he's in the big house. So this is going to be at least a two-parter, most likely a three-parter.
One, two, three. When we've been, like, pushing him off for so long because there's many reasons.
I have, like, very complicated thoughts about PTK.
Number one, Elena. hates hates hates hates btk with a fiery i really do passion more fiery than her hair And there's like reason.
One, when I say I hate him and I'm going to call him like a loser and like stupid throughout this whole thing because he is.
He's all of those things. But that doesn't mean that he is not wholly terrifying.
Yeah, no, he's fun. He's a big conundrum of awfulness, but he's just so stupid and annoying that I hate him a lot.
And he does really bad things as most of these guys do.
But he really does bad things. He like hammers home the bad things.
Yeah. He's just. a bad guy. I know the overview of this case, but I don't know the gory details.
A lot of people... I realized they know this case, they know who he is, but they don't know the details.
And we're like, I never really looked into him.
Which surprised me, but now I'm excited because now I can give you like all the really gory details.
I think I remember seeing him covered on like forensic files or something.
Oh, I'm sure. I mean, he's like... He's one of those.
He's with the Ted Bundys and the John Wayne Gacy's and the Jeffrey Dahmer's.
So we only have like two items to just quickly go over with you.
The first one is really awesome. And we already announced it on our social media, but if you are just listening to the podcast, we want to let you know that we are officially doing our first live show we manifested it like close to a year ago and here we are and it is happening happening we did and it is going to be happening October 30th Halloween Eve which is almost the best night of the year 2019, so only in a couple months, guys.
And it's going to be happening at AS220 in Providence, Rhode Island.
We are very excited about it. Dude, I literally can't wait.
Tickets are on sale right now, and the link is in our Instagram bio.
So go there, click on the link, go buy tickets.
They're 20 bucks. They're 20 bucks. I promise you it's going to be worth your while because we got some spooky yuki awesomeness that we're ready to just vomit upon you.
It's going to be amazing. And a lot of people are asking if they need to buy like special tickets for a meet and greet.
Oh yeah. Guys. We're going to hang out when we're done and just say hi to every single one of you until everyone's gone.
Exactly. Like, I want to meet all of you.
Like, your $20 ticket will get you everywhere.
We're going to come hang out. We're excited to meet all of you.
We can't wait. You don't have to buy a special ticket to do any kind of like meeting or anything.
We're just going to come hang out with you.
Yeah. So get ready. Cause we're going to be all ready to chill to the extreme.
And we want to say a big thank you to Liz Moniz. the biggest thank you Liz Moon is because Liz is the one who reached out set this whole thing up for us she's been a huge help she's a comedian herself So go check her out, Liz Moniz, because she's hilarious.
I've already looked at some of her stuff.
And we just love her because she's been a huge help with this whole thing.
She really has. The tickets are on sale on Eventbrite and you can find the event that way or you can click the link in our bio.
But we'll be repeating this like, you know, in the next couple of weeks just so everybody knows where to go.
But go check those out. Yay. Woo. On a like less happy note, guys, I wanted to thank you so much for all your messages.
Hi, this is Ash because some people can't tell who's talking.
I posted on the morbid Instagram that I decided to make my own Instagram account, my personal one, private.
Unfortunately, I had a negative experience.
Like, a guy just kind of crossed the line, made me feel really uncomfortable, and just... it was like not cool.
It was like a breach of privacy. Yeah. So I just feel like it's better that I keep my personal account.
As much as I love you guys so much, I just want to interact with you on the Morbid page instead.
I love you guys. So and thank you to everybody because literally 99.99999% of you.
Are so respectful, so amazing, so awesome.
Never cross any kind of line of anything.
No, like literally 9 out of 10 people have never made me feel uncomfortable.
No. It was just this one thing. jerk head that kind of ruined it for everybody he like really crossed the line so it just kind of took it into like all right well that was that So don't need to deal with that anymore.
But I don't want you guys to think that I'm like, well, now I don't want to talk to any of them. because I love you all with my whole black soul.
Oh, yeah. And we're going to interact as much as we did before.
Ash just wanted to make her personal page personal.
Which is smart. Yeah. So, yeah. So thanks to everybody who reached out and was like, I hope you're okay.
I know. Thank you so much. You guys are beautiful.
We love our little morbid weirdo family.
You guys are the best. You made us feel all snuggly and warm after that like creepy experience.
So we really appreciate it. Yeah, I really, really did.
So I think we can just jump into the case this week because it's a long one.
Butika. Butika. I want to shout out my main source for this because it's a great source and it's been blowing my brain apart.
So it is the book Confessions of a Serial Killer, and it's by Katherine Ramsland.
And Catherine Ramsland, you would probably know who she is if you saw her and heard her.
If you've watched any kind of crime, true crime, anything, she's always one of those people.
She's a professor of forensic psychology at DeSales University.
She also teaches criminal justice. She is on like, again, ton of those true crime TV shows.
And she also assisted former FBI profiler John Douglas on his book. the cases that haunt us.
So she's a badass. And she's done about a zillion more things, so I'm actually thinking...
I'm going to just give you guys her background on our Instagram because she's just awesome.
And this book is really crazy. This book in particular has a lot of BTK's actual, like... him talking because they exchanged a lot of letters and she wrote this book based on their letters and included... tons of his actual first-hand accounts.
So a lot of this stuff is going to be directly from Dennis Rader's mouth.
Which is fucking wild. So Dennis Lynn Rader.
Lynn. Yeah. Lynn, you know, murdered 10 people in Wichita, Kansas between January 15th, 1974 and January 19th, 1991.
OK, so he's terrible and we're going to start out with.
So what I'm going to do here is I'm going to give you his first. technically his first quote murder but actually murders okay because it's his first foray into murdering but he killed four people at once Really starting off with like a lot He's really starting off with a bang That's fucked up So we're going to go through this first murder scenario, and then we're going to go back to his childhood, talk about what you know start that there if he has a head injury or whatever yeah in part two we'll start going into the rest of the murders So today will be, you know, background, all that good stuff, but we're going to start with the actual murder.
So you know what we're working with here.
I love that you were telling the listeners, but I was like, okay, cool.
You're like, oh, okay, cool. Thank you for letting me know.
I'm along for this ride. Even though we already played this out.
I'm like, all right, yep, sounds good. I'm in.
I'm strapped in. So Dennis Rader arrived at 803 North Edgemore Street in Wichita, Kansas. at approximately 8.20 a.m. on January 15, 1974.
A.M.? Yes. He did this in the morning. That's like my mid-morning.
He does a lot of this shit like broad daylight.
Oh, that really fucks with my life. And the reason I'm starting with this and then we're going backwards is because I just want you to get an idea of who this dude is because since a lot of people said...
I don't know a lot about him. I want you to know who he is right off the bat.
Let's do it. This was the home of the Otero family.
He had watched his family for weeks. He had learned their routines and the layout of their home.
And what had initially drawn him to this family was he saw Mrs. Otero, the mother.
And he thought she was cute? He became infatuated with her.
Oh. And he immediately kill someone because BTK has this whole thing where he's like, first I troll, then I, prowl or i prowl then i troll then i stalk then i plan like he's just he's a turd You're really important.
Go away. He was trolling, and that's when he saw her, and then he decided to stalk her, and then he decided a plan.
That's his whole thing. Now back to the case.
Yay. So this was meant to be his first murder.
And it would end up being four murders from one family.
Okay. At one time. At 8 o'clock a.m. Yes.
Essentially. Yeah. So the father is Joseph Otero.
He was 38 years old. The mother is Julie Otero.
She was 33. They were both home this day.
Uh, Joseph was, would normally be working, which threw Dennis off.
He thought Joseph was going to be out of the house.
Right. Right. Normally he would go to work, but he was home because he had hurt his ribs in a car accident like recently.
And so he was home like mending his ribs.
Two of their children, Joseph Otero Jr., who was nine years old.
Uh-huh. And Josephine Otero, who is 11 years old, was home at this time as well.
Okay. They have a couple of older kids, but they had already gone to school.
These two kids were not off at school yet.
Oh God. So when Dennis arrived, he jumped the fence.
I'm calling him Dennis because he loves being called BTK so much that I'm going to call him fucking Dennis.
I'm not calling him BTK. Yeah, you're stupid.
Because he's such a turd. So Dennis jumped the fence in their backyard.
He immediately cut the phone wires with a knife and he was wearing his Air Force parka because he was in the military previously.
And he thought it would give them a false sense of security seeing an Air Force parka.
Right. And he was planning to go in there, tell the family that he was an escaped criminal and just needed money.
And he figured that that's when he could get them all to chill, calm.
Just be like, take money, take whatever you need, and then he would do his thing.
Wow, that's even more fucked up. It really is.
To just make them be like, oh, okay, we're going to be fine.
Oh, cool. We're just going to be robbed.
And then kill them. So he said when he got in the backyard, he all of a sudden saw dog prints in the snow.
And he said he hesitated because he had not planned for a dog.
Right. So he said he actually almost backed out of the entire thing, which gives my heart. such I like I want to throw up for this family because for a moment he was thinking of backing out and it's like I wish he had just done it.
Yeah, exactly. But he went ahead anyways.
In his words, quote, I had my cords with me, and some were already pre-knotted.
I had a gun, a .22LR Woodsman auto-target pistol.
That means nothing to me. Me either. But he had even gone to the library before this and he had got their telephone number and he had called the house several times before this. because he wanted to hear the female pick up.
Why? And then he would just tell them it was the wrong number.
Because one, he was making sure that they were...
That that female was in the house and that he had the right thing.
And then two... What we're going to learn about Dennis is that he gets off on so many things.
Like he just needs, it's like, so him hearing the female voice pick up and knowing what he wanted to do to her, like got him all excited.
Gross. Like everything gets this dude all like jiggly wiggly.
Like he's real gross. Wiggly, wiggly. He's real gross.
He's jello. He's flan. He is flan. Mm-hmm.
He is flan. I fucking hate flan. so in his words again quote gun in hand i went in all except mr otero were present he came from the bedroom at the sound of his wife's voice Mr. Otero thought it was a joke put up by his brother-in-law.
He also noticed my Air Force parka. I quickly grabbed him by the back collar.
I showed him the gun and told him it was a .22LR with hollow points and a hair trigger.
He knew it was no joke. To ease the tension there was some friendly talk about the Air Force years, tech school, etc.
What? Yeah. So he just like talks to this dude like, oh, let's talk about the Air Force for a second.
Like gross. I'd be like, I don't really want to.
I told them I needed money and food and was wanted by police.
I was AWOL from the Air Force. I located the car keys the purse and his wallet.
They told me the car was empty on gas. I guess they didn't have very much money.
Mr. Otero said I could take the typewriter from the southwest bedroom and hawk it for gas money and just to leave them alone.
Oh, which it's like, can you even fathom this scenario right now?
Like 830 in the morning and this dude just like barges in your house.
There was no panic yet. After I got in the house, I lost control of it.
I basically panicked. The dog was a real problem, so I asked Mr. Otero to get the dog out.
It was a short-haired dog that didn't like the cold, so they first put him in a bedroom or basement, but it carried on, so it finally had to go outside.
Which, first of all, it's like, you shitbag.
There's a short-haired dog in here. It's in the middle of winter.
You know it's cold. And you're like, get it outside.
Well, he didn't like dogs, though. Like, you're a dick.
No, he did like dogs. Oh, he did like dogs?
He doesn't like cats, as we will find out later.
I held onto Mr. Otero's collar and watched Mrs. Otero closely, threatening them all if they didn't cooperate.
Mr. Otero told the family to be calm and do as I said.
So poor Mr. Otero's just being like, guys, like, calm down.
Just do what he says. Everything's going to be fine.
On this poor guy. Yeah. Now, his whole thing, Dennis Rader, and I'll read a quote in a little while about it from him. is he said the thing he loved to do was make people believe that they were out of harm's way. that he was not going to hurt them and then he said because then they will submit to you and he said and I loved the feeling of them not having any idea that this is all going to end.
Right. Which is so fucked, which is what he's doing here.
I'm not going to hurt you. Just give me money in this and everything's going to be fine.
Now, initially he bound them with a roll of first aid tape that he brought with them, but they all started saying that it hurt and their hands were numb.
So this bumbling idiot changed them all out to white clothes, clothing line cord.
What? And you'll, like, see this when we talk about in part two other murders that he does.
He like weirdly takes into consideration people's comfort sometimes.
That's weird. Which, again, I think is part of his whole thing of making them feel like he gives a shit or has empathy or has some kind of... weird human quality to him.
It's like, it's so bizarre to me because he makes people have this false sense of who he is.
So once he did the white clothes, clothesline cord because the tape was bothering them.
They were still complaining and he was loosening and retightening their bindings like over and over again.
And they're like, you're kind of bad at this.
Like he was just being like a general dumbass.
Like he was so bumbling. And I'm not saying this is funny in any way because it is absolutely not.
No matter what, I'm sure they did not find any of this, you know, anything but wholly terrifying.
I'm just saying he's so bad at everything.
He's just bad. And it's like, and what are you doing, dude?
He wasn't even doing this to prolong their terror.
He was just stupid. That just doesn't make any sense.
So I'm like, stop. And then he says, quote, this is even weirder.
He says, quote, Apparently, he had a cracked rib from a car accident.
So I put a pillow down for his head and a parka or a coat underneath him.
But dude, your ultimate end game is to kill this whole family.
Why are you making them comfortable in the process?
But he's like, let me just make this guy comfortable because he has a cracked rib.
Like what? But I'm still going to kill him later.
Exactly. That doesn't, I don't understand.
He doesn't make any sense. And this is when he was like well I guess I'll just gag them all with socks and t-shirts and pillowcases.
That's not comfortable. Yeah. Now that I've made them all comfortable, let me just gag them all.
First of all, before I go into this Quick little warning.
This is pretty rough. There are kids involved.
Just as a warning, guys. Yeah. But... Don't worry.
It's all being told. So I'm going to I'm telling you it in his in his own words.
So it's going to be rough and pretty graphic.
Quote, I think I wrapped the rope around Mr. Otero's neck.
I had never strangled before, didn't realize how long it took and the victim was fighting.
Then I strangled Mrs. Otero. Once she quit moving I let pressure up.
Next was Josephine. She asked what's going on.
I told her I had put her parents to sleep in your next.
I strangled her until she quit moving. By that time, Joseph Jr. was up and crying, and Mr. Otero was waking up.
I decided to use the plastic bags. I then proceeded to Joseph Jr. and placed a bag over his head.
By then, Mrs. Otero was awake. She realized the fatal threat to her and her family as Joseph struggled.
She pleaded with me to stop. So quick little cut.
This poor woman is watching her nine-year-olds be suffocated by a bag.
I just want to put that like that is making my heart literally leak out of my nose.
Yeah. Mrs. Otero was getting hysterical and making a lot of noise.
I about decided to leave. He almost left.
Those are the parts that just like, oh, it just like hurts because I'm like, maybe he also could have got caught. faster if he had left and at this point everyone's still alive right he had only strangled everyone because he doesn't know how to do fucking anything right So he had only strangled everybody into unconsciousness.
Right. That's what kills me about this. I about decided to leave, but since I had already crossed the quote death path, I strangled her with a clove hitch.
Before I applied pressure, she said, I covered her face with a flower print pillowcase.
I found a belt and applied to Mr. Otero's neck over the bag.
He quit moving. Mr. Otero, once he put the bag on his head while he was off trying to strangle everybody else...
Mr. Otero was starting to bite through the bag when he woke up to try to get out of there.
So now he said he realized that biting holes in the bags was going to be an issue.
He had not accounted for this before. So he took a T-shirt and another bag.
He picked up little Joseph Jr. he brought him to a bed and covered his head with the shirt and then the bag and then he tied it he said he struggled fell off the bed and then stopped moving Now, he did say that in many reports, and I have read this and heard this as well, so hearing him dispute this is interesting.
When they went to this crime scene, they found a chair sitting in the room where Joseph Jr. was strangled to death in.
Yeah. And what they surmised from this was that he had sat in the chair and watched this kid strangle to death.
Dennis claims that was not the case. He said, I would admit it if it was.
He said what had happened was he said, I think I used that chair to like subdue him for a second while I was doing something else.
He said I didn't sit in a chair and watch him do that.
Mm hmm. So what do you think? So good on you, Dennis.
Like you still killed an entire family. Exactly.
But you're not bad enough to like watch it.
Honestly, I don't think he did sit and watch it happen because I think he was so fucking bumbling and crazy.
Like he was crazy. He wasn't able to. I don't think this was like he was taking moments to savor things.
I think he didn't know what the fuck he was doing and was just...
He was just, like, winging it. Right. As a side, he also said, quote, tarots and killed them in a sadistic way by reviving them in which that's another thing i've read that he kept reviving them and then strangling them, reviving them and then strangling them.
But he says, but the multiple strangle marks were there because I hadn't learned how to strangle quickly.
The bags helped to kill faster, but I had used the bags in self-bondage and knew the helpless feeling of no air and no way to get the bag off.
I had strangled cats but had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn't know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take.
Both their hands and their feet were tied up.
So what he's saying is they saw these multiple marks.
They saw that they had been revived and re-strangled and they were like, holy shit, he was literally like torturing them for hours.
But what was happening, again, the media made him out to be way more scary than what he actually is.
As a killer, I mean. Yeah. But in reality, he just didn't know what the fuck he was doing.
So he was strangling them. They were going out, but then they were coming back.
Right. multiple times so he wasn't doing this to for some like master plan that he's this like you know, mastermind of I'm going to make this big torturous thing like without intent.
That's giving him way too much credit as a serial killer.
It's like he's just a fucking idiot and he doesn't know what he's doing.
And he admits it. He's like, I'm an idiot and I don't know what I'm doing.
And you're telling me he used to put bags over his own head?
Oh yeah, we'll get into that. I don't... Don't you worry.
I'm just like... This is Dennis. Wow. Dennis the Menace.
This is really rough, this next part. Awesome.
I want everyone to be aware of this. We are going to talk about another death of another child, Josephine, who is 11.
It's really awful, and it involves him masturbating during it.
So I just want everyone to be aware of what's coming next.
So was he like a child person too? Kind of.
I don't he's he doesn't make sense. He doesn't make sense.
Basically, like I was saying before, he strangled all of them and then they kept waking up and he just kept having to do it again because he sucks at everything.
So now everyone was gone except Josephine.
He had killed everyone else. So Josephine is the only one that's alive, but she's out cold.
He had strangled her into unconsciousness.
He said this is where his, quote, dark sadistic self, quote, came out to play.
Like you weren't already there. And I'm like, yo, you literally just suffocated a nine year old.
Right. you came to play already like you've been there yeah you arrived he's there So I'm going to do this one in his words because I don't even know how to put this in other words, so...
Quote, I wanted to hang her talking about Josephine.
I had made a rope noose prior a rough hemp rope and by chance had put four loops in the noose.
Which is really fucked. That is really fucked.
With hanging in mind, I searched the house, found the basement sewer pipe, and attached the hangman's rope to it.
I then returned to her. She was awake, but lethargic.
I picked her up and carried her to the basement rec room.
She was not crying or protesting or fighting me.
I removed her pants, pulled her panties down. either cut or tore her bra open, exposing her breasts, then pulled her knit shirt back down, retied her ankles and knees.
Ew, oh my god, gross. she said no so I moved her onto the floor below the hangman's noose I told her she would go to sleep and be in heaven with her folks and brother What the fuck?
Her eyes showed shock. I applied the noose and lifted her up and tightened the rope or tied it off.
Ew, ew, ew, ew. The act of hanging alone is bad, and the media played this up big with her toes only a few inches off the floor.
It just happened this way that she ended up like that.
It wasn't planned to look that way. Remember when we did palate cleansers?
Yeah, we could use one right there. So, yeah.
So that's a terrible one. How old was she?
She was 11. These are the only children he killed, these two.
There are children involved in other... murders like children that were home when other ones happened so it's not this won't be the end of that terrible stuff but he doesn't kill another child after this But those ones are really rough, especially Josephine.
You don't say. He then cleaned the home.
He took a watch of Mr. Otero's and a transistor radio. which he said he wore the watch for a while and then ended up throwing it in the lake somewhere.
He drank water from a glass in their house and then cleaned it, which is something he...
Well, it's something he liked to do because he said it gave him like, ooh, I could get in trouble for that.
You know what I mean? Like it's his little secret like bullshit.
Yeah. It's really just him being a stupid dumbass.
He turned up the thermostat to fuck with the time of death because he read it in a book.
Does that work? It's kind of. Yeah. But like, fuck him.
And he took the family car. That was kind of stupid, too.
Well, he ended up parking it in a Dillon's lot and leaving it there.
And then he realized, ready for Dennis to come back?
Oh, God. I know BTK just committed that, but are you ready for Dennis?
So then he realizes he was missing the knife he brought with him.
And he realized he left it there. At the house or in the car?
At the house. So instead of walking back there, like, trying to be, like, covert and shit.
Did he drive their car back? Because remember, it's broad-ass daylight.
Yeah, it's probably like mid-afternoon at this point or something.
He drove his own Chevy Impala back to the house.
In broad daylight and went looking for it around the house.
Where did he park? Like, are you kidding?
He just parked in their garage. Just pulled right into their driveway.
It's like a neighborhood. Yeah. He found the knife in the backyard.
He had left it on the ground after cutting the phone wires.
Wow. Fucking dumbass. Wow. Dumbass. You don't even have a reason to be distracted yet.
No. you haven't even like encountered a human yet like you're just that stupid wow i mean i'm glad that he's that stupid Well, speaking of how stupid he is, let me just start this off because now we're going to go back.
We're going to talk about his childhood so you can see what kind of Was he a dumb kid too?
Pretty much. But I'm just going to give you a couple of reasons that BTK is the biggest fucking loser to ever exist.
Hit me up. Number one. And this is one that will shock you to your core just because of how stupid he is.
Really? He made up his own nickname. Wait, really?
No one gave him that nickname. He gave it to himself.
And people were like, yeah, let's go with that.
Yeah. So what happens is he takes a long hiatus from serial killing after his last murder.
It is unheard of. He is a very unbelievably rare case.
And he came back after all that time because he suddenly was like, on attention because he's a little attention-seeking bitch and so he decided he started fucking with the police in the media he was sending like you know random coded letters and he was leaving Barbie dolls bound to like cereal boxes on the side of the road Like you started pulling all this shit trying to get everybody.
You have far too much time on your hands.
And literally it was just because you wanted everyone talking about it.
Right. And he was saying he was like ready to start again.
So now poor Wichita, Kansas is like, what the fuck?
Yeah. Like people probably thought he was long gone.
Who knows? So when he reappeared at this time and started trying to get that attention again, he said, hey, it's me, BTK.
Oh, you like that? It stands for bind them, torture them, kill them.
And like, that's what I do. Like he was literally like, hey guys.
So this is what I do. My new nickname. My name's BTK now. um i'm a big scary guy like my name is btk call me that please please please please And then it gets better.
Because also, he wasn't even confident enough to just land on that name and be like, call me that, bitches.
He was then like... But if you don't like that name, here are some other options.
No. I am not lying. And like choose your own adventure.
Literally. Do you want to know the options that he came up with?
I actually do. uh the btk strangler which is stupid because it's like bind torture kill strangler like it's it's like redundant It has an air of redundancy to it that I just don't like the Wichita Strangler. the poetic strangler no no btk had a tumblr i bet Oh, and you'll see why he wanted to be called the poetic strangler in a little bit.
The bondage strangler... Or the bondage psycho, which is so hilarious that I really wish they had landed on that one.
Just so he went down in history as the fucking bondage psycho.
That is really funny. The bonded psycho.
The Wichita Hangman, which admittedly is kind of cool.
I can, like that one, I can. Did he only, did he hang multiple people?
Not really. Okay, so it doesn't work. But that one's scary.
Scary, but doesn't work. Yeah. Doesn't apply.
No, it doesn't really apply. The Wichita Executioner.
Stupid. Like, goodbye. In my personal favor.
No, no. Oh, wait, no. The first before, I'll add my personal favorite.
The next one was The Asphyxiator. Which is just hard to say.
And, like, that just, like, no. And that just sounds, I don't even, that sounds like a pest control thing. yeah it does I don't even know and then my personal favorite tell me hit me with it the grot phantom No, no, no.
That's quite possibly the stupidest sentence I've ever typed in my life.
The grot phantom. You are not a phantom, sir.
The grot phantom. I think I like the poetic.
And they were like... We'll choose BTK.
I wish they had gone with Poetic Strangler.
And once even... better about this is not only did he do that but then he acted like the name was bestowed upon him Why wouldn't he?
Like he acted like he was like the Night Stalker or something like that.
They gave it to him. Like he was crowned with the name.
Yeah. He literally told the Herald Sun, quote, I embraced it.
I had a label on me. I was like the Green River Killer or Son of Sam.
But they didn't name themselves you moron.
Like, no, it wasn't you dumb cockroach. Like, you...
Did it. You gave yourself the nickname. Their names were like those people, the Son of Sam, Green River Killer.
They were dumb as fuck, too. But at least their names were given to them by the media.
His was like in Jawbreaker, how that chick nicknamed herself Foxy.
Yeah, that's like no one else gave her that nickname.
She just called herself Foxy. Or it's like high school kids picking their own yearbook superlatives.
Like of course they would pick like most hot person or like most likely to own their own island.
Right. This is the loser in school picking their own fucking superlatives.
That's what this is. It is. Wow. It really is.
That's a very good. It really is. What would you have picked for your superlative?
Oh, I don't even know. I'd pick most likely to succeed.
Most likely to host a true crime podcast.
That's far too obvious. And in reality, his superlative should have probably been like most likely to jack off to pictures of himself bound in ropes and wearing old lady's bras while lying in a hole in the ground he did that yep he he jacked off to himself yep That's a whole different kind of level of fucked up.
And don't you worry. We'll get into that later.
So is he like a narcissist? Yep. He's a huge narcissist.
And he's just got a lot going on. There's a lot going on.
There's a lot to unpack. His poor wife. Yeah.
Poor Paula. I feel bad for Paula. Angel.
And his daughter. His daughter, Carrie, who just wrote a book.
It's like... Damn. All right, tell me more.
So the second reason that he's the biggest loser to ever exist is he admired and tried to emulate other serial killers like a starstruck little bitch.
He lacks even one single creative cell in his entire body. he didn't come up with any of his own shit it's just regurgitated aspects of other infamous killers and their crimes that we're going to discuss throughout But he was such a fraud.
Like everything he did, he was like, well, Ted Bundy did this.
So I decided that I think I should do this.
Like you're a fucking fraud. Get out of here.
A visionary. of mean girls and she's like, you can't sit with us.
Yeah, you can. But I picture Ted Bundy screaming that while sitting next to Ed Kemper and the Green River Killer instead of Sam.
And BTK walks up and he's like, hey guys, can I sit with you?
You can't sit with us! Because Ted Bundy used to flip out all the time.
He would. He would. That was brilliant. That 100 percent.
My mind is a cinematic piece of amazing.
You know what? When he finally kicks the bucket, that's going to happen in hell.
Wait. Guys, I love you so much. Can somebody draw that for us?
Oh, my God. I will award you with... Oh my God, yes.
Endless love. All the love. Just endless love.
I need to see that with my eyeballs like one of the things so he loved a lot of murderers and we'll talk about Many of the ones that he was really like inspired by.
He really thought he was going to be like H.H.
Holmes. Like, was he gonna build a hotel?
Well, instead of a murder castle, he was planning a murder barn.
A murder... Barn. Are you kidding me? That is legitimately the off-brand version of a murder castle.
Like, it's the Mr. Pibb of murder castles.
It's the Hydrox of murder castles. I'm trying to come up with a joke and I've got nothing.
He is... The knockoff of like a murder barn.
He was going to have a murder barn straight up.
Red ass murder barn. That was his fantasy.
I don't have anything. Like my jaw dropped or not.
I mean the murder. Yeah. A murder barn. Wow.
And he used... This is the next reason. He used terms like Factor X and the Black Hat...
To describe his, like, gross-ass dark side.
He called, like, his alter ego? Like, whenever something would come out, he was like, that's Factor X.
Like, factor... Like, that's factor X. Like, fuck off, dude.
What? Like, what? Like what a fucking turd.
I just can't with this dude. I feel like he has like a really nerdy. voice.
Like, he's so... He's such a loser. I just can't.
I can't. He also calls... The orgasms that he would have when killing people.
No, no. Ready? Ready? Nope, nope. Are you ready?
Sparky big time. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up.
Not kidding. Sparky big time. Sparky big time.
Guys, do you see why I fucking hate spooky big time?
So he said I sparky big time? Yeah, like he was like, oops, that caused sparky big time.
I want. And then there's also the fact that he has orgasms while killing people.
That also makes him a big fucking loser.
There's that. He also literally said, quote, I was the world's worst speller.
Yet I feel I'm fairly smart and certainly have good common sense and self-control.
You think you have self-control. Like, I'm sorry, sir, what?
And common sense, because it doesn't seem like you have Like, what?
And he genuinely believes that. I have good self-control.
You drove your own car back to a murder scene.
Like, you have nothing of the sort. Mr. Sparky Big Time.
Mr. Dennis Lin, you do not have any of that.
You live in a fool's paradise. There's also, like I mentioned earlier, and we will get much more into later...
There's also the fact that he took pictures of himself dressed in bras and various negligees while bound or in other torturous and odd positions to jack off to later.
That is just truly weird as fuck to me. There's that.
I know there's a lot of weird things to get off to in the world, but yourself, that's top of the list.
Yeah, it really is. And then the last thing that I think makes him like the biggest loser to ever exist on planet Earth. is that he wrote this poem when he broke into a woman's house once.
Out the house. No, he did it later because she wasn't there.
He like sat around and waited for her and she never showed up.
So he just left. That's terrifying. And...
He decided to write a poem about it later.
Read it to me. Do you want to hear that poem?
Oh, I do. More than anything. It's called, Oh, Anna, Why Didn't You Appear?
Shut the fuck up. Yeah, he's just jumping right in.
He's just letting you know exactly what this is about.
Just, oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? It was the perfect plan of deviant pleasure, so bold on that spring night.
My inner feeling hot with propension of the new awakening season.
Warm, wet with inner fear and rapture, my pleasure of entanglement, like new vines at night.
Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? Drop of fear, fresh spring rain would roll down from your nakedness to scent to lofty fever that burns within.
I don't understand. In that small world of longing, fear, rapture, and desperation, the game we play fall on devil ears.
Fantasy spring forth, mounts to storm, fury.
Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? Alone now in another time span, I lay with sweet enrapture garments across most private thought.
Bed of spring, moist grass, clean before the sun, enslaved with control. warm winds scenting the air sunlight sparkle tears and eyes so deep and clear Alone again, I trod in past memory of mirrors and ponder why for number eight was not.
Oh, Anna, why didn't you appear? That was a poetry slam if I've ever been to one, which I haven't.
I don't have a lot to say about that. I feel like I was just in a creative writing class and the professor read that to me and that's like the reason I dropped out of college.
It's just, he's so excruciatingly pathetic.
You know that friend who reads a book about some inane subject and immediately is an expert and won't stop fucking inserting their stupid know-it-all regurgitation from from that one book.
Or like people that travel abroad and they're like, well, in Spain.
Exactly. And they do it like every day. They're like, oh my God, it's a lot.
11, 17. Exactly. American time, but not elsewhere.
Exactly. That's how beat like when Dennis describes a scene. he will reference something from another serial killer like they're all bros.
He's literally like... Oh yeah, so I did it this way like Bundy did.
Like, ever heard of him? Like Ted Bundy?
He said that. Like my bro. No, but like he says shit like that.
Like we said earlier, you would not be allowed at their lunch table, and their lunch table is already the loser fucking table at lunch.
So what the fuck does that make you, Deb?
It's like in Mean Girls when Damien puts the pastrami on his face.
Except that's way cooler than a bunch of serial killers.
Yeah. So I think we should now talk about Dennis Lynn Rader's upbringing.
What the fuck happened? Nothing? It's odd, man.
It's all odd. Did he have a mom and a dad?
He did. So Dennis Lynn Rader was born on March 9th, 1945, in the small southeast Kansas town of Columbus.
Okay. He was a shy kid for most of his life.
And he said he really didn't come out of his shell until he was like 20 years old.
Okay. His mom, Dorothea May Cook Rader, was 20 years old when... She had him.
What's that called? Yeah, when she had... When she got pregnant with Dennis.
By his own words, she was attractive. She was a high school cheerleader and majorette.
But she was also very skilled in math and bookkeeping, something Dennis says he thinks he got from her later in life because he liked to fuck with numbers himself and was really good at math.
He claims he loves his he loved his mother, but was like kind of whatever about like weird about their relationship.
He goes like back and forth. He'll be like.
Yeah, I loved my mom, but she could be a shithead sometimes.
It's very weird. Yeah, but everybody's mom could be a shithead sometimes.
And he said she liked the same things that he did, like scary books and movies, and they would like share these things together.
And but and she was very shy like him. But he also said that their relationship was kind of strained.
Which we'll get into. He also kind of attributes his bondage fantasy to her in a way that we will cover in a bit too.
I don't want to cover that. Yeah. His dad, William Elvin Rader, was 23 years old.
He was a Marine, and Dennis thinks he got a lot of his organizational... preparatory and like mechanical skills from him.
Okay. His dad was outgoing and social. Um, His dad and his mom met as high school sweethearts.
They married in 1943 when Dorothea was still a senior in high school.
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