Stalked and Strangled: Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer: A True Story of Bondage, Torture, and Murder

By Charlie Lark

At the end of the twentieth century, over the span of three decades, the story of the BTK Killer was almost the same as the boogey man. A tale told to frighten women and children about an unknown beast who murdered the innocent. The boogey man, however, remains a figment in the imagination of many, while the BTK Killer is real. Taunting the media and police, the BTK Killer stalked potentially dozens of women and killed 10 people before he was finally caught. Unlike most serial killers, he went through waiting periods between kills, including one period that lasted eight years before he struck again. "Bind them. Torture them. Kill them." That was what the BTK Killer did, what he bragged about in his letters and poems to the media, and what he fantasized about. The BTK Killer gained fame and frightened the public through his taunting letters, using grammar so terrible authorities believed it was done on purpose or part of a code. Despite killing his last person in 1991, the BTK Killer wasn't caught until 2005, nearly 15 years later, when his massive ego led to his arrest. One of his taunting letters was sent in on a floppy disk containing metadata that led the authorities to his front door. In truth, the BTK Killer was in actually a man named Dennis Rader, a church-going family man leading a horrific double life. Rader later claimed he was forced to kill people because he had "a demon" inside him that made him kill, a demon he called "the Minotaur". A portion of the very first letter Rader wrote to the media claimed: "I can't stop it so the monster goes on ... the pressure is great and sometimes he run the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't ...""Good luck hunting."

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1521382964
• ISBN13: 9781521382967
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Independently published
• Length: 62 Pages
• Weight: 0.32 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.2" x 6.0"