Did BTK Killer Dennis Rader Ask If The Disk Was Traceable Before Mailing It?

In a typewritten question left for the Wichita Police Department in January of 2005, Dennis Rader asked the cops, in writing, whether a floppy disk could be traced back to him. The question was inside an empty cereal box he had left for them in the bed of a pickup truck at a Home Depot parking lot. He signed it with his self-given initials. He asked them to be honest.

The Wichita Police Department answered through a small classified ad in the Wichita Eagle. They told him no. A floppy disk could not be traced.

That was not true.

In the fifth and final chapter of True Crime Today's BTK investigation, host Tony Brueski walks through the trap Lieutenant Ken Landwehr had been building since March of 2004. The thirteen-year silence Rader broke when he could no longer tolerate being ignored. The eleven separate communications that followed. The eleven months of polite, formal responses through classified ads that fed Rader's hunger for attention while the task force quietly built its case.

The episode covers the February 16, 2005, arrival of a purple Memorex floppy disk at KSAS-TV in Wichita. The Microsoft Word file metadata that named Christ Lutheran Church in Park City and a user account named Dennis. The phone call from Wichita Police to Pastor Michael Clark that ended the case in a single conversation. The DNA confirmation from Rader's daughter Kerri Rawson's medical records, obtained under warrant without her knowledge or consent at the time. The February 25, 2005, arrest. The thirty-plus-hour confession.

Dennis Rader was not caught by sketches, voice recordings, or FBI profiles. He was caught by his own vanity asking a question and his own ego believing the answer.

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This publication contains commentary and opinion based on publicly available information. All individuals are presumed innocent until proven guilty in a court of law. Nothing published here should be taken as a statement of fact, health or legal advice.


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