Photo by Carly Pearson
The BTK killer's public defender Steve Osburn, talks about the case Monday night at the Flint Hills Techinical College. Osburn also described the personality and habits of the BTK killer.
Steve Osburn knew nothing about the BTK strangler when he moved from Emporia to Wichita in 1998. And if it had been up to him, it would have stayed that way.
Instead, he ended up being the court-appointed defender for Dennis Rader, the man who was BTK.
“I found out way more than I ever wanted to know,” Osburn said.
“I don’t like to talk about it,” he told an audience of about 35 at a Monday night event sponsored by the Lyon County Crime Stoppers. “Quite frankly, I’ve done my best to forget a lot of it. But it’s back.”
The BTK presentation at Flint Hills Technical College marked the 20th anniversary of the Lyon County Crime Stoppers, a group that helps the police gather anonymous tips about crimes in the area. Since its formation, the group has helped solve over 400 crimes, recover $400,000 in stolen property and take $1.2 million in drugs off the street.
Joining Osburn for the presentation was Senior Special Agent Ray Lundin of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, the first man to lay hands on Rader at his arrest in 2005.
Together, Osburn and Lundin described the case from the first killing through the final confession and how the man that had seemed to be a shadowy mastermind ended up a blabbermouth convict with far more luck than skill.
That wasn’t apparent at first, Lundin noted. He recalled one doll that BTK had sent long after one killing, complete with the victim’s pristine driver’s license and bindings that were the same colors as the clothes Rader had used to tie her.
“When we received this thing, I think we all looked at it and said ‘What kind of mastermind criminal are we dealing with? Is this Superman’s Lex Luthor here?’” Lundin said. “In fact, we really overestimated his intelligence.”
“He described Vicki Fox as his ‘best’ because that was the only one where he didn’t have some sort of problem,” Osburn agreed. “He stumbled and bumbled his way through all of them.”
From 1974 through 1991, Rader killed 10 people under the guise of “BTK,” a nickname that stood for his method: bind, torture and kill. Many of the victims were women in their 20s. He often used deception and stealth to enter homes, claiming once to be a police detective and another time to be a telephone repairman in order to gain entry. But that subtlety wasn’t an absolute — he entered one home by throwing a chunk of concrete through a sliding glass door.
“That is one dangerous area when you’re trying to protect yourself from intruders,” Lundin said of the glass door. ‘"They’re beautiful. They work. But they’re an area I focus a lot of attention on: alarms, lights, the works.”
For a while, investigators followed a number of false trails. The first family killed by Rader had recently arrived in Wichita from Panama and police spent time investigating for possible drug connections. Another victim’s husband was a suspect for a while when it took him 30 minutes after arriving home to find his wife’s body and call police.
But as it turned out later, Rader made more than his share of mistakes. When he murdered Kathryn Bright in 1974, he failed to tie her brother securely and had to fight him off repeatedly, despite strangling him once and shooting him twice. At another murder scene, the children that he had barricaded in the bathroom got out, prompting him to leave quickly.
Fittingly, it was still another mistake that got him caught. After a long silence, BTK began sending messages again in 2004. Lundin said he probably wanted the chance to tell his own story: Robert Beattie’s “Nightmare in Wichita” had just come out and Rader may have wanted to grab the spotlight back. On top of that, Rader’s mother had Alzheimer’s and he may have feared he was forgetting the details of his murders.
But at one point, the killer told authorities he’d like to send them a message on a floppy disk, so long as they couldn’t trace it. They assured him they couldn’t, then proceeded to once the disk arrived. It wasn’t hard. He had wiped off the data from several files relating to Christ Lutheran Church, where he had been church council president, but left the file names in place. His user name, “Dennis,” could still be found and it was clear he had formatted the disk at a local library. From that point, investigators typed the name and church into Google and quickly found Dennis Rader.
“They Googled him?” audience member Lee Schroeder asked in disbelief.
“I think he got caught up by his lack of knowledge,” Lundin said.
When Osburn was assigned to Rader, pleading innocent was not an option. By then, Rader was talking. And talking. And talking.
“For 20 hours, he wouldn’t shut up,” Osburn said. “Even when they wanted him to shut up, he wouldn’t.”
Doing his job, Osburn looked to see if the police had made any mistake or if Rader would qualify as legally insane. Neither was the case. That was something of a relief, Osburn said — he really didn’t want to spend the next year in a full-bore trial with everything that entailed
“If you had had to defend him,” a man in the audience asked, “would that have bothered you as a human being?”
“Some,” Osburn said. “I’ve often had to do things I don’t like in my job. But it is my job. And it’s essential for defendants to have proper representation in our legal system.”
Getting Rader to wait for his moment in court to tell his story was a challenge, Osburn said. And when it finally came, beginning with a 45-minute interview between the judge and Rader, it came in far more detail than Osburn had imagined ... or wanted.
“I have never seen anyone like Dennis Rader before,” he said. “I hope I never do again.”
It’s tricky to give advice based on the case, Osburn and Lundin said, because Rader wore his mask so well, appearing to be just another neighbor.
“The last thing I’d do is tell you to look at your neighbors and see if there’s a serial killer living on your block,” Osburn said. “He was a freak.”
Still, some basics were emphasized. Don’t open the door to anyone you don’t know — even the storm door can be a life-saving barrier, Lundin said. Examine any credentials or badges carefully and don’t be satisfied with a quick flash. If the door is ajar when you come home or the phone isn’t working, don’t stop to examine the situation — just get out at once and call police.
Most importantly, they said, pay attention and listen to your intuition. If you think something is wrong, it probably is.
“God gave you great instincts, but you learn to ignore it,” Lundin said. “People may look as saintly as Paul and Peter, but you never know what they have in mind.”
In the year and a half since Rader’s arrest, things have settled down a bit. And Osburn’s not complaining about that at all.
“I never wanted to be a celebrity. I didn’t like it at all,” Osburn said. “Thankfully, things are back to normal now. People look at me and say ‘Do I know you?’ and I’ll say ‘Nope.’”
Comments
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
Posted by Lioness (anonymous) on November 7, 2006 at 6:08 p.m. (Suggest removal)
Mr. Osburn is prohibited from speaking about this case. His client has NOT given him permission. An ethical complaint WILL be filed against him, this paper and the CRIMESTOPPERs. The Victims' families now own total rights to this information as Dennis Rader signed them over on 10/31.
Post a comment
We allow registered users to post comments on this Web site. Our goal with this feature is to encourage thoughtful discussions about the news stories. Using the comment feature to make random attacks on people is not acceptable. Emporiagazette.com neither endorses nor guarantees the accuracy of any user contribution. Responsibility for what is posted or contributed to this site is the sole responsibility of each user. To learn more about our posting policies please read our User Poster Agreement Policy.
(Requires free registration.)