A serial killer known by the initials BTK—for Bind, Torture, Kill—claimed the lives of at least 10 people between 1974 and 1991 in the Wichita area of Kansas and for a while it looked like the case would never be solved. Then a man by the name of Dennis Rader was arrested for the crimes and everyone who knew him was stunned. Rader was, for all anyone knew, a good and upstanding man they’d known for decades. He was a former president of the church council at Christ Lutheran Church as well as a Boy Scout leader and most folks who knew him would’ve vouched for him without question. Now that he’s been arrested he’s pled guilty to all counts. Rader went into some detail at his hearing about the people he killed and his methods:
Referring to his victims as “projects,” Rader laid out for the court how he would “troll” for victims on his off-time, then stalk them and kill them.
“I had never strangled anyone before, so I really didn’t know how much pressure you had to put on a person or how long it would take,” he told the court in describing his first killings in 1974, a couple and two of their children.
…
“The whole family just panicked on me. I worked pretty quick,” he said. “I strangled Mrs. Otero. She passed out. I thought she was dead. I strangled Josephine. She passed out. I thought she was dead. Then I went over and put a bag on Junior’s head.”He later said about Mrs. Otero: “I went back and strangled her again.”
…
He described to the court how he chose his victims.“If you’ve read much about serial killers, they go through what they call different phases. In the trolling stage, basically, you’re looking for a victim at that time. You can be trolling for months or years, but once you lock in on a certain person, you become a stalker. That might be several of them but you really hone in on one person. They basically become the … that’s the victim. Or at least that’s what you want it to be.”
No one ever suspected this man could ever be the serial killer they lived in fear of for decades and the police had no leads until Rader made the fatal mistake of using an old floppy from his Church’s computer which ended up being traced back to him. He’s 60 years old now. Been married for 34 years and has two fully grown kids. He shows no signs of being insane or possessed by evil supernatural entities. He was loved, trusted, and accepted by his community and church.
I point all this out because I’m sometimes told by True Believers™ that the power of faith in God is so great that it can turn the worst of murderers into shining saints. Or that true evil of the sort that supposedly drives men such as Rader to do the terrible things they do can not survive in the light of God. Rader would seem to put the lie to those claims; he survived and prospered just fine for most of his life. The truly scary thing about him is that it didn’t take Satan for him to do the things he did, just a desire to see what it was like to emulate his God in a small fashion.
Les,
Take a look around you, man. That’s how a great majority of your members act, especially when they start out posting to me by calling me a “small towned retard”, “moron” and “sociopathic”. I debated and discussed this particular issue until I was blue in the face without ever once stooping to that level so don’t even go there. I responded in kind when appropriate-shana called my sources biased and then refused to even consider them so I pointed out the fact that many of hers were as well. As I have said, both here and in im, I thought you were fair. Now I am seeing a different side of you. You are fair to a point, obviously until your members get their feathers ruffled.
Oh sounds familiar. But becareful admitting that lest the resident psychoanalyst tries to “figger” you out and pin a bunch of nonsense on you without having the benefit of actually knowing you.
But before I log out of this thread I wanted to point something out to you:
And don’t think it went unnoticed that you say nothing when this person calls me a babbling twitand refers to my OPINIONS as “moronic”. I am referred to as a moron because I don’t want to see women jailed for making desperate choices. This person never once attempted intellectual, fair and calm debate with me about that view-they started right off the bat calling me sociopathic and now moronic for having it. Yes, we did chat in im Les and I guess I thought you of all people would understand why I hold this view and would at least come to me defense instead of also joining in the fray of attacking me.
Karen, I think it’s important that we get past this “I know I am but what are you” childishness. You’re right in that you have been treated somewhat poorly at times and I probably did my part to make you feel unwelcome.
I’ll make you a deal then: I for one will try to address your points without ever resorting to psycho-analysis and belittling if you’ll try to be considerate enough to put all your responses in one comment. If you’ll prove to me that you’re gracious enough to try a simple suggestion like that, you’ll go a long way toward affecting my current opinion of you.
Also, try to get your quote tags placed correctly. It seems that you’ve assigned comments to me that weren’t mine toward the end of your last entry.
Well thankyou for at least admitting this, Brock. I have to say, I am shocked someone did.
I’m sorry that your idea of a man seems to be one that needs to slap his bitch into place. Some don’t consider women subservient to men, which means we’ll argue with them the same as we would a man.
You whine about being psychoanalyzed, then turn around and do the same.
Les is likely to be the only one left on this board who takes you any credit, and you’re bagging on him, too.
You seem to be really stuck on that one. It wasn’t meant as a personal affront. It’s actually a rather conventional rhetorical device. Reductio ad Absurdum I’ve never had anybody actually get offended by it before. I’ll chalk it up to the hormones, and leave it at that.
And what do you have against skin cells? Or other single human cells for that matter? They process information via RNA and DNA, they ‘drink’ by regulating water levels via osmosis, mitochondria allow them to ‘breathe’ ie: cellular respiration, and some cells are even capable of rudimentary locomotion.
You have yet to explain what it is that makes fetus[es?] (is the plural feti or fetuses? ‘us’ is first declension nominative singular masculine, for which the plural is usually formed by adding ‘i’to the stem, but I’m not sure if it’s even Latin, so that may be irrelevant. Of course, if it’s fifth declension, the plural is ‘a,’ so it might well be feta. But that’s a stinky cheese, so that can’t be right. Oh well, forgive the imprecision, I’m sure y’all know what I’m trying to say. Did I mention I can also sing ‘Mary Had a Little Lamb’ while standing on my head? Uh oh. My immaturity is showing again! Damnit! Just when I thought I could act like I was all growed up!)
Where was I? Oh yes. Karen’s argument. You have yet to explain what, specifically, makes these precious little bundles of tissue so special, so distinct, that crushing them up and siphoning them into a drain is somehow equivalent to murder. What is it precisely? You’ve been quite free with throwing around the label ‘murderer’ but you have yet to explain why abortion warrants the label.
The fact is that you have already recognized, implicitly, if not openly, that the issue is not black and white, and that there is room for debate, as evidenced by 1) the post where you said you didn’t have any particular problem with the morning-after pill, and 2)the post where you took umbrage at having the early stages of conception compared to a six-week old fetus. I don’t remember what unfortunate soul had the temerity to suggest such a ludicrous comparison [bad Les!], but I’m sure you gave him ‘what for.’
So why do you draw a distinction between the two stages?
Please articulate your position fully. It is tiresome when you fling around epithets like ‘murderer,’ while simultaneously exhibiting an apparent indifference about the ‘morning after pill’s’ horrifying capacity to terminate countless ‘potential’ people.
So far, the extent of your argument seems to be that a six week old fetus has ‘got hands and feet and a brain and a heart.’
There’s more, right? I mean, that’s not all you’ve got? I mean, you were just setting us up with the jab, and the right hook is coming, correct?
I’m bracing myself for it! Go ahead! Do your worst mighty-Mom!
(nota bene. In an argument, it’s traditional to either support your primary assertion with statistics, or use specific examples to create a syllogism that illustrates the conditional truth of your premise.)
***********
Oh. Not to be a noodge or anything, but how come you never tore apart the statistics I gave you? I’m rather disappointed. I mean, you went to all the trouble to tell me I was talking out of my ass, and that I didn’t have ANY statistical proof, (your word, actually, ANY) and I went to all the trouble to spend ten minutes on the internet, linking to the statistics, and you didn’t even come back to call me a doody-head, or nothin’.
I’m starting to think you like Geekmom and OB better than me.
I’d like to close with a shout-out to my peeps, Brock, Les, GeekMom, Dof, elwed, the rest of ya . . . y’all know who ya are! Peace!
You might be on to something there. The Ellies, Karens, and whatnots seems to reserve the worst of their invective for females of an opposing point of view.
elwedriddsche:
I suppose it is a good thing then they also often presume I am a “pal,” or a “dude,” or otherwise, a “man.”
I’ve noticed that, too… and not just here at SEB. It would appear that many anti-choice women see us pro-choice women as traitors to our gender if we don’t subscribe to the “motherhood is magical” mindset whereby one’s goals in life are rendered secondary to the needs of the fetus as soon as pregnancy occurs. They simply can’t conceive of a woman not being thrilled to be part of the “miracle” of bringing forth life, as our culture insists any “good” woman should be. As the only ones who can biologically incubate and birth children, those of us who don’t necessarily consider it such a sacred gift that it should be done regardless of our current circumstances are seen as monsters on the same level as mothers who kill their already-born children. To some women’s (and men’s) minds, we ARE exactly the same, because they consider potential life as valuable as actual life. To them, if a woman doesn’t consider her ability to populate it her primary function on the planet, above and beyond any other personal or professional goals, something’s wrong with her on a fundamental level. Motherhood has been elevated to a mythic status, and no small number of women go bonkers trying to live up to such lofty expectations; a much smaller number of us call bullshit and choose to define for ourselves what a “good mother” is, where it falls, if at all, on our list of life’s goals and when it should happen. After all, the power and control IS ours to wield as we see fit.
Disclaimer: I’m neither a psychoanalyst nor cultural anthropologist or any other sort of professional or academic; I’m just an observant bit of self-educated White Trash.
And FWIW, Karen, I completely agree that of the two options, I’d much prefer to see the morning-after pill employed far more often than abortions.
Back to the original topic… Last night I watched BTK: Killer Next Door? on TLC. Unbelievably creepy guy.
Smart thinking.
By and large, though, there’s not much left to say. Adherence to a particular religion does not confer immunity against heineous behaviour – although I’ve encountered religious believers that earnestly make that very claim – and somebody already played the No True Christian card.
I believe DOF mentioned Gavin DeBecker, who in one of this books made the point that the answer to the question “who could have suspected” is often “anybody with half a mind”. I do not know if this is true in this case, but it wouldn’t surprise me if the signs had been there all the time, but that nobody coutenanced to connect the dots.
Hey, OB, that’s me too! Let’s hear it for self-educated trash of all colors!
As far as you being a “good” woman goes- well, the four arms take some getting used to…
I did not play any cards. What I did say is that if one accepts the requirements a True Believer maintains for entry into the club, Rader is excluded in spite of the trappings of membership. It is not an arguement that a True Christian is incapable of evil, but rather that Rader as a sociopath is incapable of relationships.
As a result he is incapable of a personal relationship with Jesus Christ. Accordingly, he lacks the requisite capability for admission to the club.
The positions are distinct. Mine is unassailable unless you want to monkey with the TB’s own definition for being a Christian or take issue with a sociopath being capable of forming a meaningful relationship.
(Of course, there is the caveat that if Jesus Christ is not part of the Trinity and is not the Son, he does not exist. If that is the case then there is no such thing as a Christian. In which case Rader is in the same position that other members of his church.)
Consigliere, the doctrine of the Trinity does not claim that jesus is “The Son”. The Trinity states that jesus is “God the Son” or God #2 in a godhead. 3 gods in 1. 3=1. Triune god. Belief in the trinity is not necessary, despite what many well meaning, misguided chritians might think and say, to being christian or believing in the Almighty God.
Just thought I would clarify that.
Elwed writes…
I’d be fascinated to see a lengthy interview on the whys and hows with Rader to see what he has to say. Particularly on how difficult (or not) it was to keep everyone he knew and interacted with in the dark. The snippets of Rader talking I’ve seen so far left me with the impression that he’s not terribly charismatic so I doubt it was his ability to dazzle his friends and family that allowed him to blend in so well.
Consi writes…
You claim Rader wasn’t capable of having relationships and yet he was married for 34 years and raised two children to adulthood. Granted, we don’t know much about what his family life was like, but on the surface that would seem to indicate that Rader was more than capable of having and maintaining close relationships in spite of his being a sociopath.
I appreciate your clarification. I thought that the use of Son with a capital S was sufficiently clear for readers here who may not believe in the Trinity. Most of the non-believing members here have studied the Bible and have a background in the theological underpinnings of most versions of Christianity, including the doctrines of the Lutheran Church. A few having even gone so far as to study to become pastors.
Les,
All the material I see about sociopaths indicates that they are incapable of relationships with emotional attachments. That is not to say that his children or wife did not have feelings for him, but rather that he was incapable of having feelings for them. I would proffer that he was engaged only superficially in those relationships and the relationships with his wife and children were one-sided.
Consi, my comment was based on a very cursory reading of this thread and may have been hasty. It doesn’t matter to me whether or not the confessed perpetrator is a True Christian, or indeed a Christian. However, the manner in which you try to distance Rader from Christianity is telling…
Having watched that Discovery Channel piece on BTK, I can tell you that all of the people who were interviewed who had worked closely with Dennis Rader either at a job or in his church (some for 30 years or more) were absolutely STUNNED and couldn’t believe that the guy they knew was the same guy who pled guilty to being BTK.
I have the misfortune of being closely related to a sociopath, and it’s not so much that they can’t HAVE relationships with others, it’s that those relationships simply will just never get in the way of what the sociopath decides s/he wants. There is no one or nothing more important than the desire of the sociopath at that moment in time.
It IS rather interesting that you distance Rader from “real Christians” by claiming that his sociopathic tendencies would preclude him from having a relationship with Jesus. I could never wrap my head around the concept of having a “personal relationship” with an invisible being, and in truth I consider anyone who has conversations or relationships with “people” who aren’t physically there to have a few screws loose anyway – although I’m quite sure most of them don’t bind, torture and kill living people as a means of sexual release, either.
One other interesting tidbit from the show last night was a comment from the surviving son of the first family that BTK murdered (the Oteros). He was 15 years old when he found his mother, father and siblings… he said, and I’m paraphrasing, “That was the day I lost my religion. When I looked at my mother, and couldn’t even recognize her as my mother, I thought ‘There is no God, because if there was, this would not have happened.’” I’ll say!
Even if the signs were there all the time, he publically coded himself as honorable and good by associating himself with Christianity, the church, civic associations, etc. Given that coding, there was no reason for anyone to try to connect the dots. The frame affects the picture.
Christianity attracts good people and people who want to appear good. It is not always easy to tell the difference.
I’m absolutely baffled vy the current press on BTK. When he was first arrested I read all the online news on the guy and most of the co-worker and neighbor interviews decribed an absolutely miserable prick who used his public works job to manipulate and annoy everone he came across, including going as far as measuring his neighbor’s grass and siting him for being half an inch too high.
That differs radically from the current “we’re all stunned” crap that we’re being fed now. What gives?
The co-workers and neighbors may not be telling the same story. Would you want to tell one news creature after another that he was a miserable prick but you never suspected anything was wrong? Most people’s stories about their own actions morph over time to the most easily explainable and forgivable version.
Or, maybe the news outlets just decided to only give the surprised ones airtime because that would draw more viewers.
I think that it is probably a mix of the two, DOF, but especially the latter. You know the whole “Who would have thought” angle is hopefully boosting the news ratings- at least the CEOs and ad execs are hoping so. lol
I do remember during the program there was a shot of a newspaper headline saying something like, “BTK: some loved him, some loathed him.”
As a Compliance Officer he had the perfect job for a perfectionistic prick – which a co-worker from his former job at ADT security company said he was (not the “prick” part though
). There’s no question he craved attention, and what better way to get it in his “regular” life (vs. the life of his persona, BTK) than to always be in a position of authority (supervisor, civil authority, scoutmaster, church president)?
It’d sure be interesting to see what it was in his life/brain/whatever that motivated him, or turned him into such a freak. It’s clear there was a sexual element to it… what the fuck has to happen to someone that murder becomes a component of their sexual fantasies? And not just murder, but torture first?
While I don’t advocate capital punishment, for guys like Dennis Rader, I’d fully support handing him over to the victims’ families and letting them decide and mete out what they feel is just punishment – no quarter given.
I work in the news media—newspapers—and the secret we never tell to outsiders is this: The stories you read are STORIES. They relate tidbits of news here and there, but they are meant to be ENTERTAINING.
There was a local story that went national a year or two back about a couple of hockey dads who got into a tiff at a game. The big dad socked the little dad and killed him. The followup stories all focused on the inexcusable violence, the ain’t-it-awful nature of sports parents, and the bully-factor of this huge muscley guy killing with his bare hands the little defenseless guy, etc., etc.
BUT what the later stories NEVER contained was a fact that came out in the very first story—that the little guy was a viciously aggressive little prick with a severe case of ‘short-guy syndome’ and a mouth on him like a buzz saw, and he expertly goaded the big guy into the fight.
The first story, “Vicious Little Prick Sort of Gets What’s Coming to Him” has less reader appeal than the shotgun array of all the OTHER stories: inexcusable violence/ain’t it awful/big bully.
It may be you’re reading different stuff in these stories because the story itself is changing while you watch.
And now that I’ve told you about our media “news as entertainment” secret, I’m going to have to kill you all. But it’s okay, because I’ve been Driven Mad by Exposure to Violent Rap Music Lyrics.
Film at Eleven.
I’ve always suspected as much! But not FOX, right? I mean, they’re “Fair And Balanced,” aren’t they?
I just read this column on Dallas News.
Psychologist sees same traits in power brokers and hard-core criminals.
(Free reg req’d)
On bias in news, I read about a discussion on how difficult it was to be objective in news reporting, what with reporters having some kind of bias, and that news should just go with a bias instead. This was in the 1930’s, if I remember correctly. My jaw dropped when I read about reporters in general dropping any pretense at objectivity. I understand that bias can’t be completely eliminated, but to not strive for objectivity at all…
I found it looking up data on Matthew Josephson for a book review, but I didn’t keep a copy of it. I’ll see if I could find it later, when I have time.
I’ve been enjoying summer too much to find the time to be fully engaged in this debate but something strikes me regarding the exchange between Consi, DOF, and Elwed. It seems that there real matter of the debate is the membership conditions for being considered “a Christian”. Elwed and DOF have been, so far, using membership to a particular social organization while Consi has been using a property based condition. I think this actually warrants a bit more discussion. What does it mean to be Christian (Muslim, Buddhist, or Jew for that matter) membership to a group or possessing various character traits? Okay, now I’m going to enjoy the warmth and greeness again.
Oh, I almost forgot. Karen you’re a small town retard. There, I wouldn’t want to disappoint you, I know it’s difficult and confusing when people don’t meet your expectation.
This was the first paragragh from an article by Thomas Reeves found here.
Okay, it was 2003, not 1930’s. In my defense, I was looking for Josephson bio data at the time, whose “The Robber Barons” was released in 1934. I saw “1934” a LOT while looking for enough data to fill the bio requirement for my paper.
Awards, prizes, and ratings. And when you’re short on time, dump the facts, keep the hype. That’s why I rarely watch tv/cable news. Factual news on a news channel is about as abundant as music videos on MTV. I need a Fuse news channel.
Four more comments and this thread’ll break into the most commented list. I’m sure if we piss Karen off again it’ll make sixth in short order.
I think Hovind’s pretty secure in the top spot, though.
That’s easy, SS: both. If you’re a member, and you’re nice, then you’re a Christian, Muslim, Jew, or whatever. But if you’re not nice, say by being a serial murderer, then you weren’t really a member in the first place. Doing something no “true” believer would do reverberates back in time and cancels your membership retroactively. Understand?
Well, enjoy. Here in Vienna it’s neither warm nor gree. Actually I’m not even sure I know what “gree” means- is this some kind of Canadian satori?
“Gree! Gree! Watch out- Scree!”
“Talus all about it!”
I apologize for being so flippant, porker. But I was under the impression that your posslq was a capitalist pig, not a Green party member. Lots of Greens and Greenesses here in Austria- why, my own posslq is a Greeness.
One spelling mistake and I never hear the end of it…. As Propagandhi says, “with friends like these who needs cointelpro?”