BTK: Dr. Katherine Ramsland

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No one who knew him guessed his dark secret. He nearly got away with his crimes, but in two thousand and four he began to play risky games with the police. He made a mistake. When he was arrested. Raider's family, friends, and coworkers were shocked to discover that BTK had been among them, going to work, raising his children, and acting normal.

This case stands out both for the brutal treatment of victims and for the ordinary public face that Raider, a church council president, had shown to the outside world through jailhouse visits, telephone calls, and written correspondents. Katherine Ramslin worked with Raider himself to analyze the layers of his psyche. Using his drawings, letters, interviews, and Raiders' unique codes. She presents in meticulous detail the childhood roots and development of

one man's motivation the stock, torture, and kill. He reveals aspects of the dark motivations of this most famous of living serial killers that have never before been revealed. The documentary BTK Confession of a Serial Killer premiers January eighth and ninth on A and E. The two night event sheds new light on Raider's double life as both an

upstanding citizen and a heartless killer. Doctor Katherlin Ramslin, the renowned professor of forensic psychology and author, leads the examination of raiders transformation from an American boy to an American monster who wreak havoc in Wichita Canvas and went uncaptured for thirty years. With exclusive conversations with Raider himself, eye opening new archival, comprehensive interviews, and access to raiders drawings

and coded diaries. All paired with doctor Ramslin's expertise, Viewers get to know the man behind the moniker, the truth behind the headline, and a glimpse at the secrets Raider is still holding onto. The documentary we are discussing tonight is BTK Confession of a Serial Killer, with my special guests, journalist and author and professor doctor Katherine Ramslin. Welcome back to program, and thank you so much for this interview.

Doctor Katherine Ramseln always enjoy being here. Thanks for having me. It's always a fantastic pleasure and a great thrill.

We sold the option a couple of times, and then the pandemic, so right, the pandemic was a pretty big interruption because we did have somebody who was going to do it, and then A and E decided that they wanted to do it as a four part documentary, which that's pretty daunting, and there was a lot of work involved, but in the end, the director's vision and the vision of all the production people really came through in terms of the goal I had had for the book, and

I thought that was really quite an achievement because my goal is kind of academic. I really wanted this to use what a serial killer has to say about himself to benefit law enforcement, criminal justice, and forensic psychology. So it wasn't just a serial killer lathering on. It was formed for a specific purpose, and the documentary achieves that, which I'm very pleased to bet.

very important project that you undertook with Dennis Raider. Tell us a little bit about some of the people that were including Jim Thompson, some of the people that were involved in the very beginning of the book. That you say that wouldn't happened otherwise.

her than she imagined it to be. She had been under attack a lot from because she was kind of

the gatekeeper for Rader. And I saw her on Facebook and asked her whatever happened to her book, because I had heard about her through news reports, And she asked me if I would take it over, which was not as simple as it sounds, because it was an easy yes for me because I had already written a book about how health experts over the past century had spent a lot of time with extreme offenders to learn about their development and their crimes and their attitudes, et cetera.

So I already had a template and it was a great opportunity, but I needed to be approved by this concertium of the victim's family members, their surviving family members, because they wanted to have some control over the kind of thing that would be put out that they didn't want anything out there. Certainly something was going to be and they wanted some control over it and as well as benefiting from it, which was fine with me. So

I wrote a proposal. I sent it to the attorney Jim Thompson for the families and told them what I wanted to do, and they did like what I wanted to do. They liked my credentials and you know, in the academic world in terms of teaching forensic psychology and being very prominent in the research arena for serial killers and mass murderers. So they liked all that. But still

it was a long drawn out process. And during this time I also got to know Raider, who wasn't so keen about transferring all this from the original person because he really liked to someone he didn't know. So we ended up playing chess, and he also wanted me to solve a series of codes in part because he liked to communicate with codes, because he founded himself as kind of a spy, and it was also a way to keep prison guards from knowing what he was saying doing. But also it was a test for me to see

what I play. But I played the code game, and of course I will because my interest in him was the whole picture. Who is this guy? What motivates him? How does he create these codes and respond to them? And so fine. I mean, it was actually pretty intriguing to be sent these weird codes to see if I could figure them out. And I needed the other person true grit to help me because she had He had sent part to me in part to her, and you know, kind of a zoniac thing. Everybody get together and figure

this out. But for me, that was all behavior. I was interested in everything that he would do, whether it was manipulating, lying, telling the truth, whatever, it didn't matter. I wanted to see all the layers.

in his own fantasies. So those are the two that many people are aware he uses role models. But along the way, as we were talking and reading and looking at comparisons to others, you know, he honed some of that, and he got interested in some that he didn't know about before, and talked more about some of the readings he had done, and it was pretty clear that most of what he did wasn't really original to him. He had gotten it either out of true crime magazines or fiction.

He read about what some serial killers had done in novels, and some of the things he was doing was trying to replicate all of that. So he wasn't really that imaginative, and you know, unfortunately in fiction and film, we get this notion of this mastermind mentality, you know, the great puppeteer, manipulator, and most of that just isn't what these serial killers are like. They're just out to achieve their goals and

get it the way they need to get it. So he would find ideas in these various sources and try them out.

back at the clippings. And for example, one of the most puzzling to me was when he talked about that my interest in recipes of the three layer kind, and I thought, what, I don't cook the talking about. But then I realized as I saw what he circled would have a B, a T, or a K, and so I realized, oh, that's the that's the three layer thing.

And subsequently I learned about his magical number three. He thinks the whole world is sort of organized around threes and that threes had somehow protected him, and so he has this attunement to threes. So there was that, and then then he had some metaphors like castles and trains

and such things as that, but it became unwieldy. I mean we'd be talking along about, you know, using trains and canyons and passengers and whatnot, as we were talking about whether this book was even going to sell or not, because I did have a lot of issues with that, and then we had finally, when the book did sell, I decided I would make the metaphor the codes that we would use. So it's kind of an irony because he did not want any woman kind of dominating him

in any way. That was That was one of his key issues is how females threw him off ballots. And there I was making the code, but I used threes, and I used the cave and all the stuff that was appealing to him. And also he sometimes would forget what sort of this code's meant. So well, you know, so this way we had a record, you know, that we could both refer to. And but in the end the irony is that I to the book to my codes using when I knew it would be his preferential style.

not to the degree that those professionals had done. So they really gave me role models in terms of the persistence and the kinds of things you had to put up with the way to approach somebody who's very egotistical

or narcissistic, you know. And I also trained. I have one master's degree in clinical psychology that has a specific type of training of really bracketing your preconceptions and your biases so that you could listen and let that person's world be what it is, rather than you imposing some theoretical perspective on them. But it's listening to them. So I already had really been solidly trained in that approach, and that's certainly the one I used to with Rader

and would use with anybody else. Is what is your world? It doesn't matter if it corresponds to reality or corresponds to morality. It matters that you yield to me, what your experience is, what your perspective is, and how you came to be this way. So that's I learned from looking to others as well as my own training in clinical psychology.

I had the way he presented himself to them. I had letters from the first person, I had letters from other people, so I had this multiple perspectives on him in terms of the way, you know, he'd spent doctor really everything for you know, whoever he was talking to. So this way I had. If you wanted to talk about torturing animals, for example, I already knew some things that I knew he didn't want to tell me, so

then I could call him out on it. But I didn't call him out on it in a confrontational way. I would simply say, oh, well, you know you told them this, so you're telling me something a little different. How do you how do you make sense of that? And then and he'd sometimes get upset if we're on the phone, but then he'd write a long letter justifying everything'sid And again, for me, that's behavior. It's not necessarily that I'm after the truth, because really you can look

at any of us. We all form our narratives to serve our purposes out of earth system. So I'm looking at how does he approach being confronted, how does he approach being told, well, I know that you also tortured rabbits? What was he going to do with that? Since he didn't tell it to me, but I knew about it, so it really was. And again you're looking at a very extended investment of time, which very few people can do. And psychologists they charge and they know nobody's paying them

for this kind of time. So you have to see this as an opportunity the way I did and be willing to take the hit in terms of the investment of time and money. And I was because I really believe in this kind of work. I think it's very valuable and beneficial. It helps us to prevent us from seeing the serial killers as all collected under a profile where it's a coopee cutter approach, and I think that's a mistake that I'm hoping this book can rectify.

a bunch of things. But Carlile's task was to decide if Bundy might be a danger if he were released, and so he did a lot of work. He interviewed a number of people in knew Bundy and really again gave us a very nice approach to how do you look at someone like this. You can't just go with what they say because they're going to put themselves in the very best light. And Bundy was a master at that.

So Carlisle had not just done this assessment of Bundy, but he also had interviewed a few other serial killers while there, and so he came up with this idea of how are they able to pass as if they are like us and yet have this very very dark, awful side to them and then not have any remorse and etc. So, because he had come up with this very interesting description of a compartmentalized person, I asked him if I could show this to Raider, as I want

to see Raider's response to it, because one of the things I was trying to do is get Raider to not just say what he knew, but to look at one of the people had said and reflect on that in terms of how it applied to him. And he worked hard at it. I have to give him a lot of credit. When he saw Harlysle's analysis of Bundy as being like an actor taken on a lot of different roles, he said, yeah, that's that's very very accurate.

That really captures it. But then he responded with what I thought was even more interesting than what Al gave me, which was this idea of cubing instead of compartmentalizing, because when you think about like compartments on the shelving unit, for example, right, and as if they're all distinctly different and almost unrelated to one another, it's just a bunch of different personalities and similar to an actor. They take on different roles, but those roles aren't related to one another.

When Raider came up with his metaphor, which is cubing, it's the idea that all the faces are there, but you only show one face at a time in any given circumstance. So if you need to be the good father or good husband or churchgoer, you show that face and then but if you see someone you want to stalk, you immediately can switch out. Because all the faces are part of you, they are all connected and associated to you.

And because people like Rater are not emotionally rooted in the notion of integrity or truth or morality, they can make that switch very easily. They're really mentally dexterous in terms of being able to adopt a different persona for

a different circumstance. So to me, not only is c being easier to spell than compartmentalizing, I think it gets out of better and I kind of wish I could have talked with Carlisle about that, but orsay has passed on, and I think you would have really appreciated that metaphor because I think it works very well.

not do this, you may not do that. Well, they have to always be careful about the how he'll contraband angle, And so I think he adopted that. But also he had read about it in a novel and he liked the image of that, of this this beast that's inside this maze, that's that's fed these innocent virgins, and you know, he just he liked that to use to describe what a serial killer was like. And then for him that

would be a cave like a cave monster. And he thinks that these cave monsters are part of him, not like he's demon possessed. That was a that was a narrative he initially had used after his minister had visited him and spaid to him. The only way I can make sense of this is if your demon possessed, so ritogred on to that. He does that. He immediately absorbs things that make sense, and then for a little while he'll use he'll use the narrative, but he doesn't any

longer think of it that way. But he does think about that there is this monstrous part of him that he himself doesn't understand. Well. It's really compulsion that comes from his fantasy life, from a very vivid fantasy life in which he's highly invested for his identity. So he has more control than he often will say. But the minotaur image or metaphor peeled to him in that way.

that would read this material. So there was an underlying reason, but also he was being clever and getting you to work a little bit what about which was really the crux of what you're doing, to try to find out what his cycle sexual development was when he was young, how murder and sexuality got all mixed up and saw these fantasies and this murderous rampage.

he might never have this opportunity again. And all of a sudden, and the letters just turned many shades darker in terms of the things he wanted to explore. Part of that was he had done through a lot of the papers he keeps in his cell, and he had found original police reports. They were summaries of police reports, and he sent them to me, all marked up with what they got wrong and what this meant or what that meant. So here's the whole description of when they

went into the Otaro's and what they saw. And he then elaborate on what did that mean? And that's basically how I presented in the book. Here's the report, and here are the things that he had to say about various aspects of this report. How about his experience of stalking a particular victim, or what did he do afterward? And how did he feel after it? So it was like all of a sudden, he felt the pressure of

a deadline. Oh my god, I have to get busy because I wanted this to be my dark journey, and all of the other stuff that was about his family dropped away, but he then began to start thinking about where does this originate. He talked a lot about his boyhood, and then it was up to me really to look at the themes of that and see how they related to potential development. The kind of dark fantasies he had that then really led the dance for him. So it was really kind of figuring out he needed to do

some work and me finding through this. I mean lots and lots of lots of detail the things that would be useful for my goals. So hard thing about doing a book of this length is all the data UMSS and keeping your goals always in front, so you know what you're focusing on, but not to the point where you're working with tunnel vision or you know, a cognitive bias that limits the world. So I had to watch my own expectations and what I was hoping to see, but also I needed to guide him away from all

the minutia. Like one of the earliest letters he sent me had a journal of his day and it was like minute by minute, Oh, getting up at this time, and this is what they gave me for breakfast. And then I did this, and then I did that, and he and he kept one for every single day, thinking someone was going to really find this to be very important. He's just sitting in a single prison cell. He's not in general population. He doesn't interact with anybody. You know,

he'll read he was at the time. He's listening to the stock report because he had imaginary stocks and listened to the farmer's reports.

are directly related to his sexual fantasies. What did he tell you about his early childhood and bullying and the barn tell us a little bit about some of the things that he finally divorced to you.

movies he had watched. So I watched them to get a sense of that little voice perspective sitting with his beautiful mother. And there was one the House of Wax.

at railroad tracks or building girl traps for them. And so here he is with his mother who's already humiliated him, and he's seen her stuck helpless, and he's seen the look on her face that made him feel powerful. And now he's watching this movie with it clearly showing obviously full frontal nudity back in those days. But oh, the suggestion of it was very strong in that movie, And I thought, whoa right there? That's the kind of thing. And the weird wolf who can shape shift, and that's

the kind of thing. What's a little boy thinking about. So he's seen, not just seeing these movies, but they haunt him. He has nightmares, he has dreams about them, he thinks about them. And how is that affecting the kinds of fantasy fantasy life he is going to develop as he enters into puberty, and it does become all about sexual arousal. So he had the sexual arousal as a boy getting tied up playing the cowboy games, and he got trapped once in a silo and it was scared,

but also it was exciting. So he had some of those experiences early to the point where he would tie ropes around his waist because it felt good. And as he's developing into his sexual being, it feels very good. It's the kind of thing he's not going to give up.

That was highly exciting to him. And we do know that when certain stimuli are paired with masturbation as a young boy is becoming a young man, that becomes part of the sexual fetish, and it might need something that less the rest of his life because it gets paired and it gets fused together with the process of sexual development. And for him, that was the image he wanted to replicate in his own victims, so.

would kidnap somebody. And he did make an attempt to kidnap a bank clerk and it failed utterly, and he got scared and he was going to get identified. So he began to break into houses and when he did that,

it made him feel very powerful. Were the people who lived there, I mean often they weren't home, but just he would take something like a hammer, you know, whatever, just because he had invaded their space, he owned the place, he had a position over them, and so that then became he's not going to try to capture someone and kidnap her. He's going to go into a house and subdue the person he wants. And then that leads, of course to the Otero murders.

You'll see drawings that he's done. For example, he drew for me what he had hoped one day to build was the silo filled with torture instruments similar to aj toungs and his castle, right, and so it's very meticulous, full color. And you know, he said to me it wasn't He really had not wanted to do this because it took him back into the world he knew he had to avoid. And yet when you look at all the detail, you see how much Funny had doing it. He did want to do it. He wanted to do

it very much. And so that's the interesting dynamic I had with him, as he had a verbal narrative and he's kind of like Ted Bundy in that thinking when he says something that controls reality, right, language controls reality, and Bundy was very much like that too. But then you see he's presenting one thing and he's showing in his behavior something altogether different. For me, that's the most interesting and intriguing aspect of him is how does he

not see? How does he develop these blind spots, these walls between what he says about him so up and what he's showing about himself. Well, we all do it. It's a human tendency, but in a serial killer's particularly interesting.

And at the end of the book I talk about this, it's it's not that he's such a different creature, but as you use the word profound, he's profoundly different in some ways. But all of those ways are attached to who we all are to some degree. But he just doesn't have the emotional rootedness in wanting a sense of integrity of presenting. You know, a lot of us want to present ourselves with uniformity. Whatever I do in this situation would come through in a different situation because I'm

who I am. That's often how we think of ourselves. That isn't the way someone like him operates is whatever I need for this situation is what matters, not presenting myself in the same way all the time.

thinking was convoluted. What was his reaction to some of this if there was some of this discovery of the connection the psycho sexual development, was there any recognition that he had learned something from this and what was that reaction?

but he does do it. And also I used a few books like Adrian Raine's Things anatomy of violence that helped him frame it out. Al Carlisle's ideas helped him to articulate things that he had really been able to understand. But in the end he did his own self analysis, which I thought was, you know, to some extent, insightful. I mean, he's not he's a particularly bright guy. He didn't do well in school, but he's certainly worked at

trying to understand this. And of course I will hear from people saying, oh, he just he's just squirrel with you. He's manipulating him. Certainly he's manipulating me to some extent. But I think everybody wants to try to understand themselves, particularly narcissists, And I think he did want to take advantage of the fact that he had someone here with crudentials, with the sense of structure, who could possibly guide him

through some of this. And I think I think I guided him through some I don't know that I have the whole truth and nothing but the truth, but I have a lot from him for which I think he needs, he deserves some credit.

and anyway. So it's it's on A and E January eighth and ninth, four parts, so two hours each night. And I think it personally, I think that's very it's multifaceted. There's there's a lot there that may never have heard or read before about Dennis Raider.