For almost 30 years, the city of Wichita, Kansas was terrorized by a serial killer. He called himself BTK, a nickname patterned after the phrase “bind, torture, kill” — the signature way he would leave bodies for police to find. His victims varied, first a young family, then women of varying ages and economic backgrounds — sometimes going years between murders. Investigators were assigned and reassigned to the case, poring over clues and evidence. These included letters from BTK himself, taunting police on being unable to catch him.
By 2005, BTK was considered one of the biggest cold cases in the entire state. Kerri Rawson — who had grown up in Wichita — was living in Michigan but hadn’t forgotten the moniker of the wanted murder. But when FBI agents showed up to her door on a snowy morning that February she couldn’t reconcile her knowledge of the serial killer with what the people in front of her were saying. BTK wasn’t a cold case anymore. A suspect had just been arrested, and it was her father, Dennis Rader.
In June 2005, Rader pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first degree murder. He is incarcerated in the El Dorado Correctional Facility in El Dorado, Kansas, serving 10 consecutive life sentences. But for Rawson, her father’s secret double life — a religious family man in public and a sadistic serial killer in private — has haunted her since the police’s discovery. Now, she’s trying to reckon the man she knew with the murderer she despises. In the new Netflix documentary My Father, the BTK Killer, the investigators, media, neighbors walk through their memories of the search for BTK — all while Rawson tries to plan out what her future looks like without him.
Here are four things we learned from the new Netflix documentary My Father, the BTK Killer.
Stephen King’s interview about his book A Good Marriage inspired Kerri Rawson to break her family’s year long silence.
Even after the FBI informed Rawson of her father’s arrest and history as a serial killer, there was a part of the Kansas native that didn’t believe her father could have done it. While reckoning with the news, neither Rawson nor her mother believed that police had the right person. Following the media storm, Rawson says in the documentary that she turned down major interviews with people like Diane Sawyer and Oprah.
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“I spent almost 10 years rotting inside after he was arrested. Not being able to speak, not thinking I was allowed to speak,” she says in the documentary. “In the Midwest code, you don’t ever air your dirty laundry publicly. You just keep it inside and you look appropriate on the outside.”
But one night, while she was watching television, Rawson caught a 2014 interview with thriller author Stephen King. King was promoting his novella A Good Marriage, about a happy wife whose life is thrown into disarray when she discovers her husband is secretly a serial killer. King said he was inspired in part by Rader’s arrest, more specifically, by his ability to keep his murderous tendencies completely unknown to the rest of his family. Rawson felt like the book was exploitative of her father’s victims, and decided that it was finally time for her to share her own perspective.
“I had been silent for so long,” she says. “And there was so much stuff that needed to come out.”
Rader was known in his community as a kind and quiet man, but his family said he had a vicious temper.
One of the biggest shocks after Rader’s arrest was how long the convicted killer was able to plan and execute serial killings in his own community without being arrested or even suspected. People in his community of Park City, Kansas — a small town outside Wichita — remembered Rader as a quiet, kind, and rule-following man. He worked as a compliance officer for the city, and was known by many people as the official dogcatcher. In addition to being a stickler for city ordinances, Rader was known to participate heavily in outside activities like leading his son’s Cub Scout group and doing administrative tasks at the Christ Lutheran Church.
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“He didn’t just fool his family,” family friend and neighbor Andrea Rogers says in the documentary. “He fooled a church. He fooled an entire city. He literally fooled everybody.”
But even before his family was told about his extracurriculars, Rawson says that she, her mother, and brother were all aware that her father had an angry personality that the rest of the world couldn’t see. In the documentary, Rawson says that the family often left Rader choose everything from their activities to the movies they watched to where the children went in their free time, for fear of upsetting him. And they also knew that even the smallest of mistakes, like leaving their shoes out or someone taking his assigned seat at the kitchen table, could result in massive outbursts.
“My father, on the outside, looked like a very well-behaved, mild-mannered man. But there’s these moments of Dad, [where] something will trigger him and he can flip on a dime,” Rawson says in the documentary. “And it can be dangerous.”
Rader often used his family life as a cover for his murders.
When police interviewed him following his arrest, Rader admitted that he used his family events as helpful cover for his murders, but noted that his busy schedule most likely kept him from killing more people.
Though none of his family say they had any idea he was a serial killer, the clues were hidden in plain sight. When police first searched Rader’s house, they found his kill bag — a bag complete with a gun, ropes, and other break-in items — stored prominently in the entryway’s coat closet. In Rader’s office, evidence of his kills including personal items belonging to the victims, were kept accessible in an unlocked filing cabinet.
Rader and his family were active and often took vacations and trips in popular tourist destinations like the Grand Canyon and the National Parks. They were also avid fishers, campers, and hikers, with Rawson noting she and her father both loved the outdoors. “He said later on that having kids slowed down his murders,” Rawson says in the documentary. “Dad said he got busy raising kids. I think he got busy chasing me.” One of the last letters of clues Rader sent police before his longest hiatus was mailed on the night of Rawson’s first birthday party.
But many of those activities also helped Rader avoid initial suspicion in the murders. On Jan. 18, 1991, Rader went to a Cub Scout event before sneaking away to kill 62-year-old Dolores Davis. After using his station wagon to store bodies and murder gear, he later gave it to Rawson in high school for her own personal use. “That was not okay,” Rawson says.
Rawson helped police name Rader as the suspect for at least one additional murder.
After Rawson learned that her father was the BTK killer, she says in the documentary that she went through a very long period of emotional upheaval. Days after Rader’s arrest, she and a large group of her extended family gathered in the same house, eating food and telling stories about their treasured memories while the media circus continued to swarm outside. Rawson says it was like a funeral but she still loved her father. Instead, she focused her anger on the media attention and people who were hounding her family.
“Our lives were just gone,” she says in the documentary. “It was upheaval, totally insane. I was just mad at everybody.”
After her father was convicted, Rawson reached out to him in prison and tried to continue some aspect of their relationship, letting him know she was always available to talk but that she desperately wanted answers. He didn’t answer her questions, but he did say he loved her and thought of her. Since Rawson and Rader had an open line of communication, police asked Rawson to aid them in finding if there were any more victims then the 10 he had claimed. Rawson not only went through Rader’s personal notes and diaries, but met with him and asked him point blank about the possibility of other victims. Rader denied being involved.
After going through his notes and personal belongings, police named Rader as the prime suspect in the 1976 disappearance of one other woman: 16-year-old Cynthia Kinney from Pawhuska, Oklahoma. Kinney was working at a laundromat when she went missing, a fantasy detailed extensively in one of Rader’s journals. Police have never found Kinney’s body, so any conviction would require stronger evidence linking Rader with Kinney. Rader still denies it.
Rawson says she can’t reconcile her father with BTK — and she’s done trying to.
According to Rawson, the Kansas native has spent much of her adult life trying to cope with the trauma of learning her father’s real nature. For a while, this was alleviated by trying to help police with their investigations, corresponding with her father, and working with organizations meant to help victims of violent and high profile crimes. In 2019, she wrote A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love, and Overcoming, her first memoir. Her second, Breaking Free: Overcoming the Trauma of My Serial Killer Father, was published in 2023. Both of the books were national best sellers.
But even after helping the police and victims advocacy groups, Rawson says she still struggled with her own repressed memories from her childhood. In the documentary, she describes having a period of night terrors and fearful periods where she was constantly paranoid of a home invasion. These lasted for months, often resulting in her wetting the bed and crying out for help. Now, Rawson thinks part of that may have been her somehow understanding her father’s actions. “I think my subconscious [has been] trying to get it out of me since I was a little girl,” she says. “Saying, ‘Hey, there’s a bad man in my house.’”
Rader kept detailed notes about his victims and killings, but many of them were interspersed among writings about daydreams and fantasies. In one of his notebooks, Rawson found her own name next to a date and his codes for bondage and sex. Rawson confronted her father during a visit to his prison. He denied ever sexually assaulting her or any member of her family — saying he only fantasized about it — but Rawson says she exploded. She berated him about how intertwined his serial killing life and her life were. And when she was done, she left. She says the person sitting across from her at that table wasn’t a father she recognized. So she’s done spending so much time trying to make sense of why her father committed his crimes.
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Rawson says that she will always continue her work with victim advocacy groups, but for now, she’s exploring what her life, memories, and career look like without her father or his impact. At 80 years old, Rader is still serving consecutive life sentences and will never be released. Rawson doubts she will ever visit him again.
“I’ll grieve those memories and that girl and that family. I lost all of it,” she says. “But I just didn’t really want to give him any of me anymore.”
