Boy Scout [5]

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I graduated in May nineteen seventy nine, and it was easy to slip back into the Christian world. The kids were growing like weeds and ahead of the household was needed. Paula needed to be home, so all responsibility landed on me. I had no time to be away from home. Being busy with the family kept the dark side at bay. The next year, we got a pet dog, Patches, a Britney Spaniel. I built a fence in the backyard and I did a lot of gardening and enjoyed life with

Someone killed four members of a family.

Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her phone lines had been cut, her door left open.

You see the victim playing there with flashing bags over their heads, strangled. You could tell it was a plan scenario.

Well, police have said no more about the contents of the letter.

It does contain some sort of threat and implies the killer may strike again.

He's going to play with these victims.

He'd get him to the point of death and then bring them back and then brings them back to the point of death.

From My Heart podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters and this is Monster BTK. In nineteen seventy nine, sixty three year old Anna Williams just barely escaped to becoming btk's eighth victim. He had broken into her home and waited for her, leaving in a huff when she didn't arrive home at her normal time. Soon after, he sent a nineteen line poem titled oh Anna, why didn't you appear to both Williams and to Cake TV. Police wondered why BTK had targeted Williams. She was, after all, older

Well, Annie, she left Wichita, she moved, and again the community still on high alert.

If you will This is former Wichita Police Chief Richard Lemonnion. He says that after the Williams attempt, the BTK trail went dark. In May of nineteen seventy nine, Raider graduated from Wichita State with a bachelor's degree in Administration of Justice. This resulted in the loss of his cover story for being out late in the evenings, another reason. He put the monster to rest, but he started practicing bondage more often. Eventually he was caught by his wife, which you heard

These incidents were perfect times to seek professional help. I know, but I don't recall if Paula asked me to do anything like this. Maybe she did, and I told her I would work it out. But I thought if I told someone about the other things I was doing in order to really get help, they would be obligated to tell the police.

Nineteen eighty four marked ten years since the Otero killings, and btk's five year absence hadn't put Leamonnion's feares to bed like it had for other Witchitans.

There was a sense of that was in our history. It doesn't exist anymore, at least to the community. To me, it was very real.

So with special permission from city manager Jene Denton and Al kirk A County Commissioner. Lamnion planned the most sophisticated investigation in city history. The technological advancements of the nineteen eighties re energized the investigation gation.

In eighty four, we put together a special task force. I handpicked a group of investigators to be a part of that. I had senior detectives, I had new detectives. I had patrol officers that were assigned, and that was the only thing they were working on. The media found out about it. We didn't tell them what was going on, but they dubbed it ghostbusters. The idea was of this group was number one to identify and arrest the guy.

Promising young detectives like Kenny land Where were brought in to give this case.

There all we weren't done, We hadn't put everything together, and I thought to myself, this is the type of thing we need to do, get behind closed doors. We've got computers, now, we've got DNA, we've got semen, we've got everything else. And as a result of that, it took several months, but it proved at least in our mind that we knew the person we're looking for is local. The reason we can't find him is he's one of us. He goes to the same grocery store that we go to,

The BTK task Force was made up of eight men, Captain Gary Fulton, Lieutenant Al Stewart, and Officers Paul Dotson, ed Nass, Mark Richardson, Jerry Harper, and Paul Holmes, along with land Where. Throughout nineteen eighty four, the Ghostbusters would search high and low for clues about the identity of BTK. For the first month of their work with the task force. They did nothing but read reports. They spent hundreds of man hours re examining an index of previously eliminated suspects

We call the Wichita police. Come on in here, guys, and bring a tape recorders. We won't be able to have time at the written profile, but we'll work with you for day or two whatever takes to help you people out.

This is John Douglas, former FBI special agent.

And then we did this kind of a mind bust, me and three other profiles with the cops there going around and evaluating, the analyzing the case things that they should be doing. And I came up with the idea, when you have an offender who starts to communicate, rather communicate with a department, I want him to communicate with a person affiliated with the investigation, and I want that guy to be the focal point I called a super coop.

In time, Kenny Landware would become that focal point. The initial FBI profile, delivered in part by criminal profile or Roy Hazelwood, provided cops with their first detailed impressions of BTK. Here is an excerpt from the book bind Tour Kill.

Hazelwood thought BTK practiced bondage in everyday life, that he was a sexual sadist, a control freak, and could interact with others only on a superficial level. You know him, but you don't really know him. The profiler felt that although BTK would do well at work, he wouldn't like anyone telling him what to do. Hazelwood also thought BTK collected bondage materials and read crime books and detective magazines.

From then on, every time BTK Task Force member Paul Holmes entered someone's home, he looked around for detective magazines. When Raider's daughter Carrie made it to kindergarten, he decided he was ready to kill again, but he was older. Now he had more responsibilities and less time to prowl. This time, he would pick a target closer to home again. A snippet from Confession of a serial Killer.

Raider had noticed a neighbor, Marine Hedge, a fifty three year old woman who lived just down the street and often gave a friendly wave. She lived alone and was just the right size.

I thought about what her neck would look like with a rope around it.

It was time, Raider thought to re energize his secret identity.

It had been a long time since the last time Factor X exploded in my world and shattered someone else's.

Targeting someone so close to home went against his code for how to be a successful serial killer, but the challenge excited him.

Breaking my own rules sort of gave me a rush. I lived on the knife edge for a long time with this, Following newspaper, TV or neighbor talk. By reading other cases, I knew this was a high gamble. To me, hedge took a lot of thinking and planning. This was the first time I had decided to use the Boy Scouts as my cover.

The target day arrived April twenty sixth, nineteen eighty five, Raider went to the Boy Scout camp, where he typically helped set up He had become a leader when his son Brian joined. He parked his car on the hill by the roadside so that he could leave and come back unnoticed.

In the end of April nineteen eighty five, I'm almost seven.

My dad was.

On a cub Scout camp out with my brother Brian at Camp Tewakany. My dad feigns that he's like ill or has a headache. He says he's going to his ted, knowing my daddy probably even stuffed something in his sleeping bag.

This is Dennis Raider's daughter Carrie.

Raw and he then using the cub Scout camp out for an alibi, he goes to a bowling alley, goes and slashes some beer in his mouth and make it seem like he was drinking. He leaves our family chavette at the bowling alley and he takes a taxi out to my neighbor. He gets out of the taxi and he has a bowling bag with him that's maroon and white.

That's like his hit kit.

And he walks past my grandparents house and he goes through Missus Hedges' backyard. Missus hedges house is built exactly like my house and exactly like my grandparents' house, three bedroom ranch.

This meant he'd have no trouble figuring out the best way to get into the home. He cut her phone line, broke into the home, and then yet another one of his plans hit a snag.

He broke into her house, expecting her to be home because her car was there, but she had gone with this man. She's not, so he's disappointed and mad, so he hides in her closet. Then they come home, and now she's come home with a man. While he doesn't want to have to deal with two people. It's messy, and he's not there for the man. He's there for her. So he's getting frustrated and he's hanging on in the closet and he's like waiting forever for the man to leave.

It's eighty five, so he's wet.

He's forty at that point, and he hadn't murdered anybody in my eight years. So he waits for her to fall asleep, and he jumps into bed and starts strangling her.

He manually suffocated Marine until she died. In his words, he throttled her. What happened next is a departure from btk's usual mo In a disturbing turn of events, Rayder decided taking photos of Marine's body in her house wasn't enough. He wanted to do something special.

Since I was in the sexual fantasy, I went ahead and stripped her and tied her up. I put handcuffs on. I put her on a blanket, and I went through her purse. I needed the car key and took some personal items in the house while I figured out how I was going to get her out of there. Eventually, I moved her to the trunk of the car. I took the car over to christ Lutheran Church, where I had stashed some items. I tied her up in different positions and took pictures. I did not use the altar.

Daylight was coming fast. He had to hide Marine's body and make it back to the boy scout camp before anyone noticed he was gone. He left her body in a ditch on fifty third Street. Police wouldn't find her until over a week later.

The body was discovered here at fifty third Street North, just east of Webb Road, a bit west of the area that police had been searching all weekend for some clue to the disappearance of fifty three year old Marine Hedge. Hedge vanished from her home suddenly last weekend. Her phone lines had been cut, her door left open, and police

Marine Hedge's murder was not connected to BTK at the time. It had taken place outside of Wichita, and despite the cut phone lines, didn't fit the usual BTKM.

Keep in mind, this is a county case, different investigators, different crime unit. However, we work very closely with him, and even after discussion the fact that her body was thrown out, if you will, at an intersection fifty third and Web, we just did not see a connection with it whatsoever.

The body was nude and police say badly decomposed. A pair of knotted pantyhose were found lying in the ditch beside it, and the evergreen branches covering the body may match pine needles found in the trunk of Marine Hatches car but police say that's about all the evidence they have to go on.

Raider's big risk had panned out. No one suspected BTK all eyes were on Marine's date as the prime suspect. Psychologist Catherine Ramsland says Raider had to play it safe after this.

He enjoyed that kind of cat and mouse game to a point. When he killed a woman in his own neighborhood, he'd not make any communication at all because, first of all, that violated his own rules don't kill close to home, and second, he didn't want to bring the police, you know, give them any sense that this is related to the other murders, So that stopped his communications.

Breaking his no killing close to home rule also had ripple effects that impacted his family's sense of safety.

Somehow. I know that missus Hedge she's been strangled. A week or so later, I am running around at Christ Lutheran after a church and I fall and I break my arm. So I have a bone sticking out of my arm. I'm bleeding and I'm screaming. Now I've had this like pretty major injury for a kid. My dad gets a cookie tray from the church kitchen and a towel to secure my arm, and he puts me in the back of our station wagon instead of calling an ambulance.

Hospital for five days.

So my six year old self cemitted missus Hedge's murder with my broken arm, and it was just like big trauma ball and so literally I started having night terrors, and the best we know, my night terrors started around the time missus Hedge was murdered.

Talking with Payne Lindsey in the Tenderfoot Studio, Carrie says she thought her fear emboldened her father.

As a six year old.

Did you know that this was related to Henny's death? No, I mean, there's no way I realized I had combined like the trauma over my arm and the hospital and Missus Hedge. He's quoted as saying, like, at that time, when I started getting scared like that, that it worried him that I was messed up basically from the murder he had committed down the street. But it also empowered him. It may feel empowered like he was terrifying me.

So your dad was aware that you, like, even if you weren't, your dad was aware that you were being affected by hedges death.

Yeah. He's quoted in twenty sixteen as saying he was sure it was from there. I mean, I've talked to criminologists, I've talked to detectives, talked to trauma therapists. Nobody knows how to fix this night terra stuff, and nobody knows. Why is it the bad guy in the room trying and kill me? Do you feel like the bad guy is your dad?

Oh?

Yeah.

In June of nineteen eighty five, nearly seventeen hundred miles away from Wichita in San Francisco, California, a man named Leonard Lake was connected to more than two dozen deaths and disappearances.

This tape, what you're hearing now is going to be the lead end building, which hopefully will be the first of a series of underground buildings. The main emphasis of the building will be a cell. The purpose of that cell and the main purpose hens of the building will be the imprisonment.

For the young lady, a remote cabin where cops say some of the most gruesome serial killings in California, history took place twelve.

It was in big Dums.

Three women, seven men, two babies.

Raider was fascinated. He saw a lot of parallels between himself and Lake. Here are his words from Confession of a serial Killer.

I had clippings about him and his partner in my Heidi Hole folders, but killing babies was off my list. After the oteros and by random chance with Vianne, I decided that no young children would be involved in my hits.

It wouldn't be long before Rader betrayed this newly formed rule.

I can't imagine any woman.

Harming her, not knowing her.

She was a good person to know.

And a good friend to have had.

Vicky Wiggery was a young mother who lived at twenty four oh four West thirteenth Street with her husband Bill and children Brandon and Stephanie. Dennis Rader spotted her in the fall of nineteen eighty six. As he spied on her home, he would listen as she played the piano.

Raider had modified a business card to look like a phone company identification card. He had a yellow hard hat provided by ADT. He had cut out a segment of the cover of a Southwestern Bell repair manual and pasted it on the hard hat, hoping to pass himself off as a telephone repairman. The briefcase he would carry looked official, but would contain his hit kit supplies.

It was the morning of September sixteenth, nineteen eighty six. Rader parked the security company van in the Indian Hills Shopping Center parking lot, donned his costume and crossed the street towards Vicki's house, but first to strengthen his cover, he went the home of her elderly neighbors, who led him in to check their phone lines.

When he left the older couple's house, he walked to the blond woman's door. He heard the piano. When he knocked the music stopped.

Vicky opened the door, and Rader led with the same line he had used on the neighbors. She was weary and asked whether it was really necessary for him to come in. Wasn't the phone line in the backyard, Vicky asked. Eventually she relented after pretending to test her telephone. He dropped the act and told Vicki to go to the bedroom. She cried out, what about my kid, she asked. My husband is going to be home soon, she said. Rader hoped not.

He made her lie down on the waterbed. As she cried and tried to argue, He tied her wrists and ankles with leather shoelaces. Vicki began to pray out loud. Suddenly she ched her hands, broke her bonds, and began to fight. And then everything became noise and fear. Btk hit Picky in the face again and again, then grabbed at her throat, she thought, nicking him on the neck with a fingernail. He tried to use his strangling rig but couldn't get a grip. He saw a pair of

He killed her and left the baby did not kill the baby. The baby was just a toddler, a little little bitty thing. The husband found her when he got home. The crime scene was pretty much destroyed, if you will, by the husband and by others trying to revive her and things of that nature.

When Bill Wiggerly arrived home on his lunch break, it would take him forty five minutes before he discovered his wife's body in their bedroom, and.

By the time police got to Vicky Weggerly's house on West Thirteenth, her heart had already stopped beating. She died within fifteen minutes at Riverside Hospital. Her husband Bill supposedly found Vicky with a noose around her neck. Their two year old son, Brandon, was playing in another bedroom at the time of the murder. And now, after hours of interviewing family members and searching for evidence, police have a few leads on who killed Vicky Weggerly.

Per standard police procedure, Bill Weggery became the prime suspect in his wife's murder. Unfortunately, as Richard Lemunien says, his initial panic upon discovering his wife's body only made the situation worse.

The crime chain was really meshed up. I mean, here's a husband. He comes to old Panny, here's his wife. He's trying to do everything he can to shave her. You can't visualize walking into a situation like that. And when ems gets there, everyone else gets there. You got a baby screaming. I mean, you're trying to do everything you can. You're trying to get her to the hospital.

Detectives were trying to move fast. The first few hours in a homicide investigation are crucial. They grilled Bill. Was he having an affair?

Was she?

What took him so long to find his wife's body. They suggested a lie detector test, and he agreed. They tested him twice. He failed both times. Years later, Wichita police would come to the conclusion that lie detector tests should never be given to a spouse. In the immediate aftermath of the murder, It's likely Bill's distress led to the two false positives. Raiders sent no communication about the murder of Vicki Weggerly, and so yet another BTK murder

At first, it was questionable whether or not that was a BTK case, A couple of investigators didn't think so, A couple of other investigators did think so, and I agreed with them. But we can't prove it one.

Way or the other.

There just won't any evidence like the other ones had been in the past. And to keep in mind, it had been a while now since we had had a BTK quote murder credit. It's kind of unusual because my brother lived like four doors down from that particular house on thirteenth Street. What are the irony of that?

By the year following the Weggerly murder, all the Ghostbusters but Kenny Landweer had been reassigned. Then just before the end of nineteen eighty seven, Landwear was assigned to the homicide unit. While the BTK Task Force never truly disbanded, the which atop police force and the greater Wichita community moved on. BTK outlasted entire cop careers. Richard Lemunien retired in nineteen eighty eight.

I still remember some of the tragedies, you know that I went to some of the homicide, the rape cases and the bused children are pulling people out of rerection, saying you remember those kind of things, And of course you don't forget a BGK case at all.

Throughout the rest of the nineteen eighties, Raider picked out various projects, none of which panned out. He estimated to Catherine Ramsland that more than thirty could have resulted in murder victims. At the end of nineteen eighty seven, a Wichita woman named Mary Fager came home to find her husband and two daughters had been murdered. Here's an excerpt from a January nineteen eighty eight news article.

Bodies of Sherry and Kelly Faker were found in a newly installed hot tub in the Solarium. Kelly, who was nude, was drowned. Police were investigating the possibility she was sexually assaulted. Lemnion said Sherry was found with her hands bound behind her back with black electrical tape. She had been strangled with an electrical cord and also drowned. Philip Fager was shot twice in the back of the head.

A few days after the murders, an envelope arrived at the Faker's house. In it was a drawing of a young girl bound and lying next to a tub. The envelope also contained a poem entitled Oh God, he put Kelly Sherry in the tub. Investigators guessed the letter had come from BTK. They were right. Part of the letter reads.

Another one prowls of the deep abyss of lewd thoughts and deeds.

Raider didn't kill the Fager family. He was just a fan of whoever had. In confession of a serial killer, Raider said he mailed Missus Fager the letter as a safe way to let a little bit of the monster out.

Compare it to a volcano. The molten lava couldn't find the time, the hidden hours and time away from home was simply not there, so it had to find a different way to erupt.

In the summer of nineteen eighty eight, Raider lost his job with ADT. The pressure continued to build. Carrie says he found other ways to let the pressure out. When he had opportunities to go out of town, he would relive his various hints.

For him, it really wasn't about who he was murdering, or even the murder or the fan fantasy of wanting it. He said, it was always like this letown like now they're dead. Now wept, but he could always replay it. So he's known to like dress up and do this bondage to re enact what he was doing to these people, and most of the time that was enough for him.

After getting a job as a census field supervisor in nineteen eighty nine, he had another reason to travel, allowing Raider to gratify himself away from the prying eyes of Paula.

My first major motel party was in Elk City, Oklahoma. I worked it there on off days in between trainings. Before I was able to travel, I was limited on extravagance. Usually it was in barns or such places, and I had little time. As the trips increased and became more lavish, the motel parties became a sex struck. I looked forward to them a reward after a long day, a hot date with a sex fantasy victim. For bondage. I used all kinds of gadgets on me. I had my favorite

While Raider was hiding out in motel rooms, serial killers were gaining cultural prominence.

Year old drifter with no record of violence, yet he's accused of being one of California's most brutal killers. Richard Ramirez was captured today. Police say he is the walk in killer.

Police removed boxes and boxes of body parts evidence of what appears to be a psychopathic mass murder.

Horrible truth to suburban contractor John Gacy's rambling statements to police last week is becoming more and more evident with each passing day.

Street The strangler case makes one fact vividly clear. People can never totally protect themselves from unknown killers who choose their victims at random, leaving behind virtually no clues and even less understanding of their motives.

Reader hated that so many other serial killers were getting famous while BTK was not. He wondered if it was time to strike again. At forty six years old, Dennis Raider's urge to kill was as strong as ever. His motel parties and bondage toys were no longer cutting it. By nineteen ninety, over four years had passed since his last successful hit. No one had connected BTK to a murder since nineteen seventy seven. In the fall of nineteen ninety, he spotted Delores Davis.

Mom was a real giving person. She always was worried about the underdog, as she always was concerned about the other person. I honestly always put other people's needs ahead of her own. My name is Jeff Davis and I'm the son of Doloris Davis. Mom was a very sacrificing person. She was a pretty optimistic person for the most part, even during the hard times. She tried to be optimistic. She's lived by Christian values and she tried to make

In nineteen ninety one, Dolores Davis was a single woman living alone in Wichitama. Dolores and her husband split in nineteen sixty one. Jeff went to live with his dad, while his sister stayed in Wichital with their mom. Delores's daughter graduated high school in the mid nineteen seventies, and Dolores was then on her own.

She drew up on a farm, so failways had a farm mentality, and farmers don't lock their doors. I would face seems probably a little more cautious because it was with her, and she didn't have a dog, she'd have any kind of alarm system.

Like every other person in Wichital, Delores and her children had heard about the BTK murders. Jeff at least feared what could happen, but Dolores's habits didn't change much.

Mom was always very independent and she pretty much face could handle herself. Now I wanted her to get a dog, and she was gonna get a dog, and she did get one, and then the landlord made her give it up. That I have a real problem with. Sure, he's been pretty self sufficient too. I don't think they hit home with them. I think it was an abtract concept that most people in town realized something bad is going on out there. I don't think anybody personalized. There was no

Huh.

Reader had seen Davis not far from where he lived in Park City. Carrie Rawson says he became obsessed with her.

Now he had been stalking her. He was moonlighting at Leeker's Grocery. Now, my grandma had worked there and my dad had worked there in high school. My mom was a bookkeeper there at some point. It's where we always grocery shopped. Everybody knew our family. They were trying to help my dad out with money, and they were having him do security and install some cameras and stuff, you know, just help him out. Well, that's where he got fixated on Dolores.

She was a widow.

He's depressed, and so he decides to murder her.

He set a target date for January of nineteen ninety one.

He's forty six years old now, and he's depressed and he's miserable because he doesn't have a job and we don't have much money. And I'm in seventh grade. And in December of ninety my mom falls ill. She had asthma and she gets pneumonia, and so she's at Saint Francis for like ten or twelve days. So he's like sir stressed out, and I'm trying to manage my dad, keep him calm and under control, and don't worry. Dad and Mom will be okay and there'll be money. And

Murder again Raider's words from Confession of a Serial Killer.

I arrived early and got camp all set up. When the others arrived, I fabricated a story that I had to go back to town for something. I went to my parents' house and dressed in my hit clothes in the basement. I checked my hit list and drove to the Baptist Church on East sixty first Street in Park City. The Scout Troop had a place there where they store equipment, so I had a cover story in case someone happened by. I also had some Heidi holes there on Pancake Scout Day.

Raider picked up a cinder block and threw it through the window of her home. Delores ran out of her bedroom, asking if he had her home with his car. He tried to use his usual rousse to disarm her. When Delores told him to leave, he informed her he was carrying a club, a gun, and a knife.

She said she was expecting someone. I could not believe my luck in these places. I've always got someone coming.

Raider then strangled Dolores with a pair of pantyhose.

And that was it with her. I didn't take any pictures because I thought, well, this guy is coming. I don't want to be in this house. I need to get out of here. I put her in the trunk. That was not a smart move. The police could have connected her to Hedge. I opened the garage door, backed out, closed it and drove straight down hillside to fifty third Street North, then west to Hydraulic, then south to the k Dot Lakes.

He left her body there in the bushes. He drove her car to Christ Lutheran Church and disposed of some items under the church's shed, before realizing he had misplaced his gun. He drove back to Dolores's house, retrieved his gun and a few souvenirs, including her jewelry box and a thirty five millimeter camera. He couldn't stop thinking about her body. Catherine Ramslin says he wanted to give his biggest fantasy another try.

With Deloris Davis. He wanted to do something different. He wanted to take her body and take it to a barn, which had been his fantasy for a very long time and he'd never managed.

To do it.

It was a foggy, snowy night, so he got lost and he had to finally just dump the body out under a bridge.

He left her body under the bridge at one hundred and seventeenth Street North, then rushed to get back to the Boy's Out camp, but Carrie says he still couldn't let Dolores rest.

Then he goes back to the camp out and he keeps thinking about her and her body, and he can't let it go, and he thinks that it was not the best place. It's just not set staged right the way he wants it, and he stages her with a mask like probably one of the ones he was burying in some of his bondage fantasies, because he doesn't like that she's decaying right, like you'll hear these other guys talk about this, like they don't like the way they

Doing next time on Monster BTK.

But my daughter came to me and said, Dad, you know, Dennis showed up in our backyard of customers.

He gave me a list of fifty five different projects of women he had seen and stopped.

You can't help himself. It's like an iceberg, right, like you're only seeing the very tip of somebody with him, He thought.

You know, I'm the smartest guy in the room and they're never going to catch me.

My dad snaps and he just lunges out of his chair at my brother. He starts strangling him from the front.

Cops say, the case that was once cold may be warm yet again.

I just got this feelily, I want to know this guy.

Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts. The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young, and Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on behalf of iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers