Dennis Rader a.k.a. The BTK Killer has made his first public comments since he entered prison in 2005. The serial killer police caused great turmoil in and around Wichita, Kansas for more than 30 years as he avoided police capture and murdered 10 people.
Rader has decided to cooperate on a book about his grizzly crimes committed between 1974 and 1991. He hopes the book's profits will benefit his victims' families and the book's content will help law enforcement understand why people like him commit such crimes, according to The Wichita Eagle.
"I can never replace their love ones, my deeds too 'dark' to understand, the book or movies, etc. is the only way to help them," Rader wrote in a letter to the local newspaper.
The serial killer signed away his media rights to the victims' family in a court settlement signed after he went to the El Dorado Correctional Facility. He cannot profit from any product that he produces about his crimes, but the settlement does not bar him from working on the book involving the families, according to the Eagle.
"We could prohibit him from trying to do things like what (Serial killer Charles) Manson was doing," attorney James Thompson told the Eagle. The Wichita lawyer is one of the attorneys representing the families. "We can't control the facts of the case, so much of all that went into the public domain. But we can stop him from doing some things. Making any kind of a profit, for example."
Rader also addressed his family members briefly in the letter. His wife Paula divorced him shortly after his arrest, and his daughter Kerri Rader Rawson has never visited him in prison, although they recently started exchanging letters again. Rader also has a son Brian, a U.S. Navy veteran. He stressed his family had no idea about his heinous actions.
"The family knew nothing about my 'Dark Deeds.' I carried that secret until the day I was arrested," Rader wrote.
Katherine Ramsland, a professor of forensic psychology, is writing the nonfiction book. Ramsland is the program director of the master's program in criminal justice at DeSales University in Pennsylvania, and she wants to keep the book "academic and nonsensational," according to the Eagle.
In addition to helping the Victims Fund monetarily, he wants criminalists, investigators and other law enforcement operatives to understand his motivation. He's only stayed quiet this long, and turned down many media requests in the meantime, as to keep his promise to the families under their settlement.
"I mean to burn no bridges," Rader wrote, "and hope some day to open up. People like me, need to be under stood, so the criminal professional field, can better under stand, the criminal mind. That would be my way helping debt to society."
The BTK story and Paula Rader's ignorance to her husband's crimes inspired Stephen King's novella A Good Marriage published in the collection Full Dark, No Stars in 2010. The story is about a housewife who discovers her husband, a respected member of the community, is the elusive serial killer "Beadie."
Rader has read the book and King admits in his afterword that the Wichita killer directly inspired his character Bob Anderson. A film adaptation of the novella premiered on Oct. 3 and it stars Joan Allen and Anthony LaPaglia. King will visit Wichita to promote a separate book in November.
Rader's daughter Kerri has accused King of exploiting her family and the victims' families. She suggests the author donate the book's profits to charities for abused children or battered women.
"He's just going to give my father a big head, and he absolutely does not need that," Kerri told The Wichita Eagle last month. "Great - now Stephen King is giving my father a big head. Thanks for that. That's the last thing my dad should get."
Rader is serving 10 consecutive life sentences with a minimum of 175 years without parole.
