Overview of Dennis Rader brutal killings
Whenever we see people obsessed with things such as music, art, math and science, we usually do not question their obsession. These people typically gain a sense of excitement and relaxation whenever they engage in these activities. Similarly, serial killers appear to achieve a similar feeling whenever they participate in the killing process emanating from various motives. A serial killer is an individual who kills unlawfully two or more victims in separate time frames. Dennis Rader is an excellent example of a serial killer whose motive for his actions was to gain control and power over his victims. To identify serial killers before a repeated killing, one needs to analyze the characteristics result in the buildup of this type of offenders (Lieber & Miller, 2012). Among the reasons which lead into an individual becoming a serial killer is being abandoned by parents, physical and emotional torture or mental illness issues. In this essay, we will provide a brief overview of the serial killer Dennis Rader and review the evidence and any available information. Also, we will describe processes used by investigators to process the crime scenes in the case and discuss the outcomes of the case.
Overview of Dennis Rader brutal killings
Rader was born in 1945 as a firstborn in a family of four sons as a kid people describe him as being unremarkable and outwardly ordinary which implied contradicting views. He joined the Air Force in 1966 after graduating with poor grades at the age of 21. While in school, his behaviours changed and always had fantasies of bondage and torture. He admitted after being arrested that he had ever had sexual fantasies on tying up girls and having his way. He also realized that as a young kid he began by strangling cats and dogs in his local area before the incident which happened in 1974 where he killed four people. The four people he died were from the same family.
Rader killed the four members of the Otero family on January 15, 1974, which was his first time to murder. He had strictly observed them adequately to what he would deal with before the killings. In this incident, he went through the back door and strangled them one by one and finally left through the backdoor. The event came into light later that night when the 15-year-old kid of the family came home and found the bodies. A close investigation of the crime scene revealed semen samples and also on the victim’s bodies. Through killing these people, Rader gained the feeling of power and a sense of pleasure as he also went ahead and claimed the murder indirectly through the Wichita Eagle’s. In the letter, he also assigned himself a code word “Bind them, torture them, kill them, BTK.
Three months later, after the Otero murders Kathryn, a 21-year-old body was found having being strangled similarly to the first event. The difference in this scenario was the stabbing on the victim’s body and survival of a witness named Kevin, Katheryn’s brother with two gun wounds. Three years later 26-year-old Shirley Vian was found dead by the police. The victim also was bound to a cord and partially undressed. Nine months later on December 8 1977, a call was made to the police which was traced to a phone booth in Wichita near Coleman industries. Citing details from the call police found 25 years old Nancy Jo Fox dead with a sample of semen on the crime scene again. However, in all incidences, there were no defensive wounds on the victims’ bodies, implying that the offender had superior control over his victims.
Rader went silent until April 1985 when Marine Hedge’s body was discovered. Later in different incidences, several murders were committed which put the police department in jeopardy trying to find a connection between the killings and BTK or maybe a copycat. For instance, Vicki Wegerle aged 28 was found dead with signs of strangulation in 1986. In 1991 in Sedgwick County the body of Delores Davis was found, but since the body of the victim was moved it was hard to associate it with the serial killer. The press played a significant role in Rader’s crimes as well as his arrest on February 25 2005. Rader was charged with first-degree murder of up to 10 counts where he surprisingly pleaded guilty to the accusations on June 27, 2005. He also gave a horrendous description of how he committed his crimes. Lucky for him he escaped the death sentence since it was not enforced until 1994.
Throughout the period when Rader was committing the crimes, he kept regular contact with both the media and the police. The tactic he was using of keeping in touch was exploited by the police who managed to track him down finally. However, the investigation concerning the serial killer went for almost 30 years, where nobody managed to get even the closest details concerning him.
Evidence review
Some weeks before Rader was arrested, he voluntarily asked the police if he could communicate with them through the floppy disk without being traced. The police responded by pulling out an ad in the local newspaper as Rader had suggested which implied it was alright to communicate using a floppy disk. Few weeks after Rader sent a floppy disk to the police it was traced back to a computer in the serial killer’s church, and he was finally arrested on February 25, 2005. Search for evidence in his house and vehicle revealed a piece of computer equipment, a cylindrical container and a pair of pantyhose from the shed.
Rader came into suspicion in 1974 after he sent the death fantasy letters and poetry to the press. The notes were taken as evidence and copied on a machine in Wichita State University which gave results of multiple students as suspects which included Rader. However the communication of BTK and the media ceased which left the police searching for evidence at large. All communication by Rader was anonymous until he used the floppy disk which linked the serial killer to Wichita State University again where BTK emerged as a suspect again. Additionally the local residents of the area were amazed at the access Rader had to the entire community as he worked by installing burglar alarms during the occurrence of most killings. Thus, the investigators attributed his wide access to the job he was performing. Evidence collected thirty years ago from the first crime was only linked to BTK by DNA through the floppy disk. As L. Ken Landwehr made a comment that had Rader decided to stay silent, then it would have been concluded either BTK was in prison or dead (Gray, 2010).
Description of the process investigators used to process crime scene in the case
Essentially, DNA samples were collected from the crime scenes associated with BTK serial killer. The evidence consisted of semen samples from BTK crime scenes precisely from Nancy Fox and Josephine from Otero family. Also, DNA was obtained from the fingernails of Vicki Wegerle who had probably scratched the killer. However a search as of that time using the DNA sample was somehow impossible for the forensic police department. For instance after the murder of Wegerle evidence from her fingernails provided the police with new information (Bartels & Parsons, 2009). They thus opted to test the DNA of multiple men to find the serial killer. However, a court order was given to cease the DNA testing after 1300 men had been tested without a match. It depicted another dead end for the search of the serial killer.
However, a sample of the evidence namely the floppy disk linked the killer to the initial evidence. Rader sent a floppy disk without the knowledge that it could be traced back to him after analysis by forensic scientists who specialize in computer forensics. The media used to communicate is the key to this type of analysis which could range from a list of websites visited through the computer to a call made via a cell phone. In the investigation the computer forensic scientists are not involved in identification of the origin of the evidence. Instead their concern is to obtain information from the evidence through its analysis step by step carefully.
After the disk was received by the computer forensics, it was immediately analyzed and information about a deleted document was obtained. The information showed that the floppy disk had be used earlier in a church in Wichita named Christ Lutheran Church. Additionally the document showed that it had been lastly modified by a user named Dennis. It was then narrowed down to the president of the church council Dennis Rader. However, this evidence only was not enough to link Racer with BTK. Therefore without the knowledge of Rader the police utilized a search warrant to secure a pap’s smear from Rader’s adult daughter which was in file with the medical office.
Since parents and children share a genetic patterns the sample showed a link to BTK crime samples indicating that she was the daughter of BTK. The available DNA evidence therefore played a huge role in arresting Rader and as Landwehr asserts, that during the killing of the Otero, an analysis using computer forensics was not available (Adamson, 2016). The process of finding digital media parallels investigates a crime scene in a manner that the lead investigators have no knowledge of what they are looking for. The first step in the analysis is usually making a copy of data to be analyzed in computer forensics. Tool like Guidance software Encase are used by experts in obtaining and analyzing the digital evidence. Throughout the process, special care must be taken to preserve data that is stored in the computer memory as it might disappear upon switching off the computer.
Furthermore, detailed notes must be taken by computer forensic experts in every step of the entire process. The notes are used later in wring of a comprehensive report with a detailed analysis and conclusion. In the event that computer evidence is taken to court, a computer forensic expert is sometimes required to give a testimony in the court.
Mistakes that were made in the case
The mistake which was made in this case was entirely by the offender. A major consideration was that nobody would have ever suspected that Dennis Rader was a serial killer. From the outside one could make an observation that Rader was a family man and also the president of his church council. Additionally, Rader was a city compliance officer who led a Cub Scout troop. As a serial killer Rader taunted the police and the media through the letter and various murders which began in 1974 and seemingly stopped in 1991. However, BTK’s ego and arrogance got the better part of him in 2004 where he made contact with the police again.
Making contact with the police was not the main mistake, in fact through his first contact where he was requesting to know whether he could make contact using a floppy disk he was still ‘invincible’. The only information that he conveyed to the police by sending the letter was that he was still alive and not yet incarcerated. However, as suggested by the psychodynamic approach which stipulates that behaviors and feelings are affected to a great deal by unconscious motives Rader followed the same trend. The theory further suggests that individual behavior is made up of three parts; id, ego and superego together with two distinct drives namely Eros consisting of sex and life instincts and Thanatos made of aggressive drive and death instinct.
Rader like any serial killer fell under this category which drove him into asking the police whether it was possible for them to trace him using a floppy disk which they obviously claimed they could not. The implication is that BTK took the entire crimes he had committed as a game with the police where he could stipulate rules of how it should be played. However, it was the floppy disk analysis which led to his arrest.
Outcome of the case
After Rader was arrested on February 25, 2005 he was charged with 10 counts of first degree murder. On March 1 Rader’s bail was set and a public defender was appointed to represent him. During his arraignment on 3rd may 2005 Rader did not speak where the trial date for the case was scheduled on June 27 2005. It was during the arraignment that he confessed to ten crimes which he described vividly and made no apologies and a date for his sentencing was set.
The set date for his sentencing was August 18 where the family members of the victims he had murdered made statements. Rader apologized at this instance in monologue for about 30 minutes. His apology speech depicted a common phenomenon in psychopaths which is the inability to grasp emotional content of language (Gray, 2010). Rader was imprisoned for a minimum of 175 years in 10 consecutive sentences. Currently the serial killer is in solitary confinement at the El Dorado Correctional Facility.
Analysis
What I would do differently or the same in the case
In the case the police played a good role especially in the last part of the crime analysis. One notable factor is that there was cooperation between the federal bureau of investigation and the police in the case. We see that the police dedicated to arresting the offender through heeding advice from the FBI which made them develop a strategy. Furthermore analysis of letters such as the one received titled “Chapter 8” from the BTK were analyzed by investigators and sent to the FBI. Furthermore, behind closed doors, the FBI and the police conversed everyday on how to develop a strategy that could lead to arrest of the serial killer.
Also, the idea of letting Landwehr become the sole spokesperson was meant to create a rapport with BTK. The cooperation finally paid off when the serial killer was arrested. Therefore, if I was a character in the case I would have preferred the same idea.
Whether there were issues in processing
The answer to the question of whether there was an issue in processing which could impact the outcome is no. as we observed the entire evidence analysis was performed a just basis where the serial killer could not have denied on the basis of bias. For instance, after the police requested the church leader for names of people who had access to the church computer, they never went ahead to arrest him. The police waited until there was enough evidence to implicate Rader as the serial killer BTK. Besides, the police obtained a warrant before they requested Rader’s daughter DNA sample from the medical office.
Consequently, they waited until the DNA test showed a match between Rader and the DNA samples obtained in the crime scenes. Thus there was no issue in processing which could have altered the outcome of the case. Furthermore the Rader himself admitted to the crimes where he gave a vivid description of he used to commit them. It implied that he was the real BTK and not a matter of self-implication.
Conclusion
In the essay we have provided an overview of the case where we considered the serial killer Dennis Rader who committed ten murders. We have also outlined the evidence which was in the case where the floppy disk was considered as what triggered the arrest of BTK. Additionally we have noted how DNA test analysis provided a reliable link in the case. Consequently, we have described the process used by investigators in the case and stated the outcome of the case. Besides, an opinion concerning the steps which were taken in the case was given. Furthermore we have analyzed the case where we found no issues which could alter the outcomes of the case.
References
Adamson, P. (2016). undefined. The Philosophers’ Magazine, (74), 50-55. https://doi.org/10.5840/tpm20167498
Bartels, R., & Parsons, C. (2009). undefined. Feminism & Psychology, 19(2), 267-280. https://doi.org/10.1177/0959353509102224
Gray, R. M. (2010). Psychopathy and will to power: Ted Bundy and Dennis Rader. Serial Killers – Philosophy for Everyone, 189-205. https://doi.org/10.1002/9781444324587.ch15
Lieberman, J., & Miller, J. (2012). Adam Lanza: Inside the mind of a killer. PsycEXTRA Dataset. https://doi.org/10.1037/e684632012-001