How Did BTK Use A Church Council Seat To Hide In Plain Sight?

**Tony Brueski** (0:01)
This is History's Hidden Killers. Here now, Tony Brueski.

**Tony Brueski** (0:09)
Dennis Rader sent letters to the press, left his voice on a 911 tape, hid evidence in library books, waited in older women's houses with lights off. He did this for 31 years. And the question I want to start with is how did nobody who actually knew him in his daily life ever once connect any of that to the man Wichita was hunting? How did that not happen?
I'm not saying people were derelict in their duty or observational skills. It's just how? How? Because that's the part of the BTK case that does not add up until you understand the costumes. The standard answer that you're going to hear in every documentary out there about him is he's hiding in plain sight. It implies Dennis Rader was performing some kind of elaborate deception. And he was a chameleon. That he had a public persona he switched on for show and a private persona he switched on at home. And there's elements to that are true. But at the end of the day, when you really look at Dennis Rader, nah, he didn't. He was the same man at all times. The man who killed Nancy Fox was the same man who attended church board meetings. The man who killed Vicki Mergel was the same man who took his daughter to school.
The man at your front door in 1995 with a clipboard and a city badge was the same man who in 1979 had been sitting inside a 63 year old widow's kitchen with the phone line cut waiting in the dark. There was no second persona. There was one man with a stack of legitimate official roles doing what he was going to do anyway. The roles were the cover. The cover was also the access. This is the third of five conversations about Dennis Rader and a case the country has been telling wrong for 20 years. The first conversation was about the legend he wrote about himself. The second was about the chase that didn't close. This one is a room that pulls the whole case into focus because it is the one that tells you why a 30 year manhunt could happen in a metro area of 500,000 people without anybody once turning around to look hard at the alarm installer with the badge. And as we go through it, your thoughts in the comment section on Substack and YouTube, those links are in the description. Let me ground this with a specific story. There was a woman in Park City named Misty King, divorced two kids sometime in the mid 1990s. The man at her front door with a clipboard.
Dennis Rader, by the way, if you re just joining us Park City, just north of Wichita, right there, same ecosystem. He has come by his own description of his job to cite her for code violations, grass too tall, a tarp on her car, a vehicle in the driveway he s calling inoperable, a woodpile he says, she s stacked wrong. He had been there the day before, he'd be there the day after. He kept coming back.
On the record, after his arrest, Misty King told Cake TV reporter Susan Peters what happened next. Started showing up at her windows. He banged at her door late at night. She suspected at one point he had tried to get inside her house. She called the police. The police dismissed the complaint. The last thing Dennis Rader did before Misty King fled Park City was take her family dog.
He had it put to sleep.
Yeah, took her family dog. He was the enforcement officer of Park City.
She moved out of state. On the record, after his arrest, she said the police had let it happen. Misty King's story is the one nobody in Park City could deny after his arrest because she was already in print. And a reporter's notes on tape, while Dennis Rader was still in his city truck. She is not the only Park City resident who lived in fear of the man with the clipboard. She is the one though, with the documentation. Let me walk you through what each of those costumes actually gave him. Because the roles weren't just camouflage, they were operational. Let's start with the ADT installer. That mask, if you will, of Dennis Rader, a role that he used for access. 1974 through 1988, 14 years, the same 14 years that contained nine of his ten murders. The sentence, or that sentence, I should say, does not get less obscene the longer you sit with it. He was, for 14 straight years, employed by a company whose entire product is protecting people from people like him. He drove into their driveways in a marked van. He went into their houses legally. He installed alarm systems. He noted floor plans. He learned schedules. Who was home when? Which back doors latched properly? Which bedroom windows faced the street?