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KS KS - DENNIS LYNN RADER, BTK Serial Killer
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mysteriew
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Stone says there's an adage in her field: Not all psychopaths are serial killers, but all serial killers are psychopaths. While psychopaths as serial killers are a relatively rare phenomenon, there are people functioning in society who exhibit various degrees of psychopathic behavior in their daily lives, she said.
Psychopaths demonstrate antisocial behavior and an aggressive narcissism -- they use people through charm, intimidation or violence, she said.
"They have a parasitic lifestyle -- they live off people. Their whole mindset is domination over other people," she said. "Psychopaths are not necessarily criminal in their activities, but they are attracted to positions of power. In the corporate world, there are examples of psychopathic behavior where people use up their employees' life savings with no genuine concern about it. They have no anxiety about their behavior.
"Psychopaths see themselves as wronged. They can be paranoid, feel persecuted, feel a need for revenge. They harbor a lot of persecutory beliefs."
There also is a lot of thrill-seeking with psychopathic behavior, Stone said. Over time, there will be an escalation of their behavior because they've gotten sensitized to a certain act, but then have to "up the ante" to capture the thrill they seek, she said.
That may be the case with the alleged BTK Killer, who resurfaced with letters to the media after not being heard from in a while, Stone said.
"Psychopaths have a need for recognition, not just a need for attention," she said. "They have a sense of being invincible, of 'I can outsmart you.' They're taken in by their own narcissism. It's almost like a game."
Serial killers often take "souvenirs" from their victims -- a picture, jewelry, lock of hair -- to remind them later, Stone said. "They want to keep that image, the fantasy of that control going," she said.
"It's a misnomer to think that if we saw a psychopath, he would look odd. Often, that's not the case," she said. "A psychopathic individual can be a chameleon and learn to act a certain way. That advances their opportunity to engage in certain behaviors because who would suspect?"
Often, people think that childhood abuse can create psychopathy in adults, Stone said. Childhood trauma certainly can aggravate psychopathic tendencies, but it's not a cause-effect relationship, she said. Research over the last 10-15 years is supporting the notion that psychopathy is related to a genotype, she said.
Psychopaths also differ in that their intellectual and emotional understanding of things don't match. Stone said psychologist Robert Hare has a saying for this condition: Psychopaths know the words but don't know the music when it comes to emotions.
"They know intellectually what it is to be sad, but their empathy and regard for other people is not there," Stone said. "They can mimic the feeling, but they really can't put words to how they feel because they don't have that internal experience."
There is no known treatment for psychopaths; rather, behavior management is the course of action, Stone said. Psychopaths don't say, "I need help" because they see others as the cause of their problems; they don't have anxiety to prohibit their behavior, she said.
And studies have shown that group therapy not only doesn't work for psychopaths, it makes their behavior worse, Stone said. They use the therapy setting as practice for manipulating people.
One percent of the general population in the United States meets the criteria for psychopaths, Stone said. But the percentage is 15-20 percent in prisons because of the criminal activity psychopaths often engage in.
http://www.news-star.com/stories/041005/New_56.shtml
Psychopaths demonstrate antisocial behavior and an aggressive narcissism -- they use people through charm, intimidation or violence, she said.
"They have a parasitic lifestyle -- they live off people. Their whole mindset is domination over other people," she said. "Psychopaths are not necessarily criminal in their activities, but they are attracted to positions of power. In the corporate world, there are examples of psychopathic behavior where people use up their employees' life savings with no genuine concern about it. They have no anxiety about their behavior.
"Psychopaths see themselves as wronged. They can be paranoid, feel persecuted, feel a need for revenge. They harbor a lot of persecutory beliefs."
There also is a lot of thrill-seeking with psychopathic behavior, Stone said. Over time, there will be an escalation of their behavior because they've gotten sensitized to a certain act, but then have to "up the ante" to capture the thrill they seek, she said.
That may be the case with the alleged BTK Killer, who resurfaced with letters to the media after not being heard from in a while, Stone said.
"Psychopaths have a need for recognition, not just a need for attention," she said. "They have a sense of being invincible, of 'I can outsmart you.' They're taken in by their own narcissism. It's almost like a game."
Serial killers often take "souvenirs" from their victims -- a picture, jewelry, lock of hair -- to remind them later, Stone said. "They want to keep that image, the fantasy of that control going," she said.
"It's a misnomer to think that if we saw a psychopath, he would look odd. Often, that's not the case," she said. "A psychopathic individual can be a chameleon and learn to act a certain way. That advances their opportunity to engage in certain behaviors because who would suspect?"
Often, people think that childhood abuse can create psychopathy in adults, Stone said. Childhood trauma certainly can aggravate psychopathic tendencies, but it's not a cause-effect relationship, she said. Research over the last 10-15 years is supporting the notion that psychopathy is related to a genotype, she said.
Psychopaths also differ in that their intellectual and emotional understanding of things don't match. Stone said psychologist Robert Hare has a saying for this condition: Psychopaths know the words but don't know the music when it comes to emotions.
"They know intellectually what it is to be sad, but their empathy and regard for other people is not there," Stone said. "They can mimic the feeling, but they really can't put words to how they feel because they don't have that internal experience."
There is no known treatment for psychopaths; rather, behavior management is the course of action, Stone said. Psychopaths don't say, "I need help" because they see others as the cause of their problems; they don't have anxiety to prohibit their behavior, she said.
And studies have shown that group therapy not only doesn't work for psychopaths, it makes their behavior worse, Stone said. They use the therapy setting as practice for manipulating people.
One percent of the general population in the United States meets the criteria for psychopaths, Stone said. But the percentage is 15-20 percent in prisons because of the criminal activity psychopaths often engage in.
http://www.news-star.com/stories/041005/New_56.shtml
LazyCat08
I may not be Glenn Beck, but I am a thinker......
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So scary!
I swear - I'm not even saying this to be mean.
When I read profiles of Scott Peterson, I realized that I was dating someone with psychotic personality traits!
Especially when it comes to the manipulative controlling behavior and the absence of emotions....
Don't need to explain why I'm not with him anymore, huh?:loser:
He tried to get me to move across the country and marry him - yeah - all I could think was ... I'm going to end up one of these wives murdered by her husband.....
I swear - I'm not even saying this to be mean.
When I read profiles of Scott Peterson, I realized that I was dating someone with psychotic personality traits!
Especially when it comes to the manipulative controlling behavior and the absence of emotions....
Don't need to explain why I'm not with him anymore, huh?:loser:
He tried to get me to move across the country and marry him - yeah - all I could think was ... I'm going to end up one of these wives murdered by her husband.....
Jack
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Dark Knight said:
I read that the jails booking documents have his height listed at 5'11" and 195 lbs.
mysteriew
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The serial killer told her the draft was for a college class, according to court records. She didn't suspect him of being BTK, authorities say.
Once, years ago, Paula Rader, the wife of Dennis Rader, became scared when she found a draft of a disturbing poem in their home. It was about Shirley Vian Relford, a young mother strangled in 1977.
And right before her husband's arrest this past February, she told him he spelled "just like BTK."
That's part of what Rader told investigators about his wife after they arrested him, according to a 92-page court document filed by prosecutors Thursday. It details Rader's crimes and interviews with investigators after his arrest.
But authorities said Friday that there's no indication Paula Rader knew her husband was BTK.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/12431373.htm
Once, years ago, Paula Rader, the wife of Dennis Rader, became scared when she found a draft of a disturbing poem in their home. It was about Shirley Vian Relford, a young mother strangled in 1977.
And right before her husband's arrest this past February, she told him he spelled "just like BTK."
That's part of what Rader told investigators about his wife after they arrested him, according to a 92-page court document filed by prosecutors Thursday. It details Rader's crimes and interviews with investigators after his arrest.
But authorities said Friday that there's no indication Paula Rader knew her husband was BTK.
http://www.kansas.com/mld/kansas/12431373.htm
concernedperson
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Thanks for that link. It was very revealing to me and showed how Rader set boundaries for his family..."his closet"...."his classes". It also showed he would have preferred to be a lone wolf but needed that mask of a family for his purposes.
Mrs. Rader was disturbed when she found the poem but he reconciled that for her and then later she mentioned he spelled just like BTK. I will bet deep in the recesses of her mind something was starting to jive but she must of thought herself horrible to even think that way. A form of denial.
The most chilling thing is that he had another victim lined up and if it hadn't been for road work she might not be alive now.He had it rescheduled for spring or fall of 05.....he did have a lot of patience and will to carry this "projects" through fruition. Plodding and relentless!!! So scary...
Mrs. Rader was disturbed when she found the poem but he reconciled that for her and then later she mentioned he spelled just like BTK. I will bet deep in the recesses of her mind something was starting to jive but she must of thought herself horrible to even think that way. A form of denial.
The most chilling thing is that he had another victim lined up and if it hadn't been for road work she might not be alive now.He had it rescheduled for spring or fall of 05.....he did have a lot of patience and will to carry this "projects" through fruition. Plodding and relentless!!! So scary...
First of all, thanks so much, mysteriew, for all your discoveries and insights about this case.mysteriew said:
I think that wives often manifest major league denial when they stumble on indications that their hubby might have a secret life. A social worker once told me that wives were much more likely to side with their husbands rather than accept their child's account of sexual abuse. And, without demeaning Mrs. Rader, I suspect that a woman who married a very formal, regimented person like DR would inclined to accept their version of almost anything.
spygirl
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This is how I see it too, CP. Wouldn't something like that linger in the back of your mind forever? What about the murders which became public after Vian's, when hubby wasn't home while they were committed? Weren't some of his taunts and letters to LE made public? Certainly if she had seen them in the paper, she would have recognized his writing.concernedperson said:
That's really weird. Gosh, I hope that she was just blissfully ignorant to all of this.
mysteriew
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spygirl said:
She told him shortly before his arrest that he spelled just like BTK. But he presented such an "upright" image that I think she just didn't connect the dots. He had reasonable reasons for being out at those times. He used his church and scout activities to cover his absences. It is even speculated that the majority of the murders that took place during the day, were because that was time that he was supposedly accounted for. Even the night he spent at the church taking pictures of his victim- he was at a scout campout and sneaked out.
spygirl
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True; especially because he said the poem was part of a (criminal justice?) class he was taking. I wonder if they had discussed any of the other murders after they occurred. I wonder if he expressed any faux concern for his wife's safety after he murdered the woman down the street. Wasn't she the one he hid in the church basement after sneaking away from the scout campout? Marine Hedge, I think was her name.mysteriew said:
spygirl
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I wanted to add, also, that any woman who has posted or read at crime sleuthing websites for a reasonable length of time, is naturally suspicious! So, in that respect, Mrs. Rader wouldn't be like us.
My dad was a lot like Rader.... ruled his home with an *iron fist* so to speak, never to be questioned. No one dared create any ripples in his pond. So I can understand Mrs. R's hesitancy to go through his things. He had to be exceptionally organized, so that anything she needed to look for, such as important papers, would be in an accessible place where she wouldn't need to rummage around.
Some women stay with men like that. It's hard to understand though, him being the sociopath he is. He doesn't strike me as being a warm, sensitive individual, even behind closed doors. 30 years she spent with him! Wow. Talk about tenacity.
I hope she can move on after all of this. I wonder if she will ever trust another man again, enough to become intimate. I hope that she will go public with her story. This has to be so hard on her, with so many skeptics scrutinizing her life with him. Did she work outside the home? If not, that presents a whole new set of challenges, especially for a woman accustomed to a certain lifestyle before all of this. I hope her kids are able to regain some semblance of normalcy.
I'm sure the community will be supportive of whatever efforts she makes to put this behind her, though in reality, she never, ever will be able to in full.
I'm glad that this forum doesn't attract a whole lot of attention, because it's just what he would have wanted. I watched most of Wednesday and Thursday's sentencing. He has such soulless eyes. Pits of emptiness.
My dad was a lot like Rader.... ruled his home with an *iron fist* so to speak, never to be questioned. No one dared create any ripples in his pond. So I can understand Mrs. R's hesitancy to go through his things. He had to be exceptionally organized, so that anything she needed to look for, such as important papers, would be in an accessible place where she wouldn't need to rummage around.
Some women stay with men like that. It's hard to understand though, him being the sociopath he is. He doesn't strike me as being a warm, sensitive individual, even behind closed doors. 30 years she spent with him! Wow. Talk about tenacity.
I hope she can move on after all of this. I wonder if she will ever trust another man again, enough to become intimate. I hope that she will go public with her story. This has to be so hard on her, with so many skeptics scrutinizing her life with him. Did she work outside the home? If not, that presents a whole new set of challenges, especially for a woman accustomed to a certain lifestyle before all of this. I hope her kids are able to regain some semblance of normalcy.
I'm sure the community will be supportive of whatever efforts she makes to put this behind her, though in reality, she never, ever will be able to in full.
I'm glad that this forum doesn't attract a whole lot of attention, because it's just what he would have wanted. I watched most of Wednesday and Thursday's sentencing. He has such soulless eyes. Pits of emptiness.
concernedperson
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Spygirl, Mrs. Rader did work. I believe she did bookkeeping for a grocery store, if I am not mistaken she was working at his arrest time. She did not go back to work,however.
Greta's blog today mentions how she would love to interview Mrs. Rader. I would like to hear her take on it too but not until she is good and ready and for it benefit her.
ETA Greta's blog.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166216,00.html
Greta's blog today mentions how she would love to interview Mrs. Rader. I would like to hear her take on it too but not until she is good and ready and for it benefit her.
ETA Greta's blog.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,166216,00.html
Maybe So
The one and only
I don't know. Don't want to point fingers but the more I hear the more I think that his wife had an inkling....but just couldn't believe it was true. Too bad she wasn't curious enough to dig a little deeper into his secret places and absenses from home a little bit more. Of course perhaps she would have become his next project if she had said anything further to him than she already had.
If she had even bothered to compare his spelling to BTKs then I think she had some sort of suspicion in her mind. Perhaps if she had thought back she would have realized that he was away from the house at the time of every murder.
Certainly she was not convinced or she surely could not have fallen asleep at night knowing she was laying next to a monster.
I do feel sorry for her though...thinking back to being married to him and sleeping next to him must now be so repulsive.
If she had even bothered to compare his spelling to BTKs then I think she had some sort of suspicion in her mind. Perhaps if she had thought back she would have realized that he was away from the house at the time of every murder.
Certainly she was not convinced or she surely could not have fallen asleep at night knowing she was laying next to a monster.
I do feel sorry for her though...thinking back to being married to him and sleeping next to him must now be so repulsive.
I think that the murder incidents were infrequent; just seven events with ghastly consequences. We're all news junkies, so we probably have an exaggerated sense of how closely average people are following these cases. Most of us accept the essential honesty of the people we spend time with; we've all heard of stories of spouses being blindsided by the discovery that their husband or wife is having an affair. A woman I met was married to a pilot moonlighting as a drug smuggler; she had no inkling of his double life until his plane crashed with all the evidence aboard.
Similarly, the comment about Rader's spelling resembling BTKs is fascinating, but not suspicious, I think. Rader's transposition of letters is shared by a sizeable portion of the population. Apparently, she didn't recognize the handwriting.
Rader's notes and his bizarre final speech raise a fascinating point. Even if one disregards Rader's other proclivities and deeds, his brain circuitry is a mess. I'm not talking about his belief system, I'm talking about the way he forms even simple sentences and connects thoughts. Even though he had been preparing his "emotional" speech for weeks and spoke from notes, his monologue reads like the meanderings of somebody with a brain injury, not a college graduate. I wonder whether he has always been this way or whether his mental condition is degenerating.
Similarly, the comment about Rader's spelling resembling BTKs is fascinating, but not suspicious, I think. Rader's transposition of letters is shared by a sizeable portion of the population. Apparently, she didn't recognize the handwriting.
Rader's notes and his bizarre final speech raise a fascinating point. Even if one disregards Rader's other proclivities and deeds, his brain circuitry is a mess. I'm not talking about his belief system, I'm talking about the way he forms even simple sentences and connects thoughts. Even though he had been preparing his "emotional" speech for weeks and spoke from notes, his monologue reads like the meanderings of somebody with a brain injury, not a college graduate. I wonder whether he has always been this way or whether his mental condition is degenerating.
concernedperson
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Chanler said:
Yes, your observations are correct. He is experiencing some kind of burn out. The energy it took for years and years to keep up the facade and now to turn to meanderings is significant. Maybe he recognized the shortcomings and felt his lifes work was going to be diminished but he is on the decline.
I am seeing the same thing with my brother. I am 100% positive he is sociopath. He has been institutionalized earlier in June but I can't find him now. The system allows for anonymity.
These sociopaths can only run on regular for so long.
mysteriew
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Unless a wife is faced with concrete proof, she won't suspect the husband. Look at all the husbands who have affairs and wife is oblivious. To Rader that home image he presented was essential. Essential to his freedom and his fantasies. And to his personal image of perfect family.
What Paula saw, she probably looked at as quirks of his behavior. He liked his own space and didn't like anyone messing with his things. He kept it clean and organized, so she left it alone. She found the poem, but he had an excuse for it. Working on something for class- weird, but not alarming. He spelled like BTK (I actually wonder if that wasn't said jokingly). A lot of people can't spell. He went to work and church and scouting activities (with his son). A lot of men do. Nothing alarming there.
I'm sure she is probably kicking herself now, wondering about everything that was said and done since she had met him. Wondering why she didn't know. Looking back now, she may even see some things that were questionable. But really, if there is a serial in your city- would you be analyzing your hubby's behavior in comparision? A man you know, have kids with, argue with, eat with, sleep with? And those behaviors would be spread out over a number of years. Very slight hints, but nothing concrete vs. a man she thinks she knows very well.
What Paula saw, she probably looked at as quirks of his behavior. He liked his own space and didn't like anyone messing with his things. He kept it clean and organized, so she left it alone. She found the poem, but he had an excuse for it. Working on something for class- weird, but not alarming. He spelled like BTK (I actually wonder if that wasn't said jokingly). A lot of people can't spell. He went to work and church and scouting activities (with his son). A lot of men do. Nothing alarming there.
I'm sure she is probably kicking herself now, wondering about everything that was said and done since she had met him. Wondering why she didn't know. Looking back now, she may even see some things that were questionable. But really, if there is a serial in your city- would you be analyzing your hubby's behavior in comparision? A man you know, have kids with, argue with, eat with, sleep with? And those behaviors would be spread out over a number of years. Very slight hints, but nothing concrete vs. a man she thinks she knows very well.
concernedperson
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spygirl said:Ty, CP!
We always need to help when we can.
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