on this edition of msnbc reports. >> something drove me to do this. normal people just don't do this. >> for more than 30 years he lived among us, father, scout leader, serial killer. >> i am bt killer. >> now exclusive jailhouse recordings obtained by nbc news reveal the twisted mind and motives of the notorious killer dennis raider, the man called btk. his own chilling words reveal the monster inside the man still craving attention. >> i really feel pretty good. i feel like a star right now. >> little remorse, little

emotion. >> he just talks like he's coming home from a day at the office. >> tears only for himself. [ inaudible ] >> a minute by minute, year by year account of raider's crimes and the shattered families left behind. >> a beautiful, loving, kind, gentle person being murdered and dumped out in a ditch like a bag of dirty laundry. >> sentenced to life. >> nancy and all of his victims will be waiting with god and watching him as he burns in hell. >> we'll hear new details about the capture of the killer who eluded police for three decades. >> what nailed him is he went too far. >> exclusive tapes take us inside the mind of btk. >> he's just. >> evil person. >> now here is stone phillips.

>> good evening. what was so remarkable about the capture of the serial killer btk is the man himself seemed so unremarkable. when police announced this father of two dennis rader was the killer who would prey on parents, children, women, the mystery only deepened. who is he? what drove him? tonight, videotapes of a conversation with a killer broadcast for the first time might provide some insight. this jailhouse interview might also offer insight to the families of btk victims who have struggled for decades with the question why. here's edie magnus. >> a champion boxer and air force veteran, killed at 38. his wife julie, proud mother of their five children, was 34. their daughter josephine was just 11 years old. and son joseph jr. was 9. kathy bright, pretty and popular, life ended when she was

21. shirley, 24, mother of three sang in her church choir. nancy fox worked two jobs to try to get ahead. she was 25. maureen hedge, mother of four, was 53. vikky cared for children in her home, including her own two, she was 28. delores davis, grandmother and secretary retired at age 62 just months before she was murdered. ten innocent people murdered to satisfy the twisted needs of one selfish man. a man who for more than 30 years frustrated police, taunted the media and terrorized the citizens of wichita, kansas. btk seemed uncatchable. everyone wondered who he was, where he was when a most unlikely man who'd lived among them all along, dennis rader, was arrested. >> i am btk.

i'm the guy they're after 100%. >> on this program you'll see new information that offers insight into the deviant mind of dennis rader. >> i had never gone into sexual fantasies really off the deep end. >> he is just the most unique, unprecedented combination of perversion packaged to look like a human being i've ever seen. >> you'll hear his excuses on why he says he had to kill. >> fantasies are what got me in trouble. i went from one fantasy to bigger and bigger and bigger. pretty soon that fueled the next one and just went on and on. >> there is one dennis rader and that's a murderer, a coward. >> all told in an appallingly matter of fact manner. >> put the garnet over his neck and pulled up. factor x whatever the monster

took over totally then. >> there is no monster in him. he is the monster himself. >> tonight, an exclusive jailhouse interview with the man who named himself btk for his propensity to bind, torture and kill his victims. we'll examine dennis rader's three decades long reign of terror and the exhaustive police investigation that finally caught him. we'll also get an inside look at a man with two lives, a husband, a father, a cub scout leader and church president living unassumingly in his community. but also a man who secretly hunted down and killed ten innocent people and then bragged about it in his insatiable thirst for attention. this interview obtained by nbc news after completed was conducted by a harvard trained forensic psychologist robert mendosa who performs more than 100 cases each year. he was hired by the defense team to assess rader's sanity.

>> why don't you just shut it down? >> i say i can't. >> this specific conversation took place just a couple hours after rader pleaded guilty to ten counts of murder in june and put on what many people thought was a chilling performance in court. as you listen to what he says from behind bars to see what light it may shed, keep in mind rader knew he was being taped and knew it might be seen on national television. if you're looking for remorse from the btk killer, you won't find it here. >> i was just a little embarrassed in front of the world. but not totally. you know, it didn't bother me too bad. you know, i could relax a little bit. i had water to drink. so i didn't really feel too bad. >> dennis rader was a hometown boy. one of four sons raised in the wichita area by church going lutheran parents. while appearing as a cool cut,

his writings already describe having bizarre sexual fantasies. he kept them hidden during the his service in the air force. but a couple years later he could not longer keep them locked in his mind. his obsessions evolved into acts carried out on real people and ultimately led to murder. >> i got this fantasy, started working out that fantasy in my mind. once that person became a fantasy, i could loop it over, lay in bed at night thinking about this person. the events and how it's going to happen and became almost like a picture show. i want to go ahead and produce it and direct it and go through with it no matter what the costs were -- the consequences. it was going to happen one way or the other. maybe not that day, but it was going to happen. >> no one knows for sure why rader had to kill to fulfill those fantasies, but in this interview with a psychologist,

rader says he picked his first victims utterly at random in late 1973. he recently had been laid off from a job and says he was feeling down and out at the time. and had begun trolling, as he put it, in certain neighborhoods including along edgemoor drive. >> that neighborhood became i guess what i call a hot, i had special appeal to it. i'd been there, started knowing the roads, knew the people. i drive by and watch cars, people pull in their homes and wrote telephone numbers down, wrote addresses down. this is how it really started right here, my haunts. that area was my first big haunt. >> julie, her husband and their five children lived on edgemoor then. and it was just mrs. oterro's misfortune she happened to catch dennis rader's eye. >> she came out of the house and

took the kids to school so i thought i'll follow them to school. well, that's a corner house, that's a possibility. and i was in between work. idle hands, what is it? idle hands -- >> the devil's workshop. >> yes. all these things seemed to happen most of the time when i had idle hands. i just lost a job. that was demoralizing to me. anyway, they became a potential target. >> so they were convenient. >> convenient. >> how did they fulfill the sexual fantasy though? >> mrs. oterro was attractive and i saw josephine too. >> josephine was their 11-year-old daughter. >> so i must have had that somewhere in my mind that younger person must have locked in on me. >> it would be nearly two months before rader acted on the sexual fantasy involving mrs. oterro and her daughter which he says began brewing in his brain. when he finally did it would

establish his pattern of brutality and exception toward his victims. rader broke into the home of the objects of his obsession in january 1974. he says he entered the home that day a very anxious man. though he recounts the story with a strange lack of emotion. >> i was extremely nervous. and all of a sudden -- i already cut the phone line. and it's funny because i left my knife, i left the cutters there. i had to come back for those later. but the door opened. so here i am. so do i just walk out the back door and they call the police? or i go for it. and i went for it. >> chilling details of his first killings and of his victims' final words. >> mrs. otero had woke up. and she actually said, god have mercy on your soul. >> when confessions of btk continues. ♪ (phone ringing) what's up mikey?

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we need to get our kids excited about those skills today. so show them how they could use those skills in the real world. they could build skyscrapers, design race cars, or even shoot movies. give them the best gift you could give any child: a good education. the more you know. msnbc reports returns to "confessions of btk". when dennis rader broke into the oteros home, even though he was brandishing a gun, he says the family didn't take him too seriously at first. >> what happened once they saw you? >> well, they thought it was a joke. i went in and i think it was the younger otero and they were all in the kitchen making sandwiches. >> male or female? >> it was younger, junior, joseph. >> rader says to keep the family calm he made up a story about

why he was there. >> mr. otero actually stepped up and i told him i was coming for some food. i was wanted and needed some food and water and some money and transportation. that was my rouse. he said who sent you over my brother-in-law? >> rader says the family bought the lie about being on the run from the law and not wanting to hurt him. so at gunpoint they acquiesce. >> so they were cooperating 100%. that's probably their demise that they probably struggled and fought with me would have been a different story. but they felt fairly comfortable that that's what i was going to do. >> as rader tells this story like he does so often, he paints his conduct in the best possible light. so he says he took pains to make his victims feel even more

comfortable by actually loosening some of the binds around their hands and feet. >> trying to comfort them as much as i could. >> to keep them quiet or because you were worried about it? >> both. i care for people. have concerns for people. and i hadn't really crossed that path yet where i was going to kill the people yet. so i was still in concern mode. >> what you're seeing here is very early form of a future serial killer who's still trying to decide what it is he's going to get out of these crimes. >> we asked james alan fox, one of the nation's leading krcrimil gists to give a study of this interview. he has studied for 25 years and written numerous books. his most recent one on serial killers includes btk. >> he wants to fulfill his fantasy, but it's not necessary for them to feel excessive suffering. at this stage he hadn't yet made

a decision to kill. >> i went in the other room and i thought do i just leave or what? they already know my face, so i went back and put a plastic bag over mr. otero's head and put a garment over his neck and pulled up on it. that's when hit the fan then because they could all see what i was doing. >> rader describes first strangling the mother and father while their 9-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter watched. although he is describing acts of unspeakable cruelty, his voice is utterly devoid of emotion, which makes listening to it that much harder. >> kids were watching this? >> yes, they were watching it and screaming and hollering. >> did you want to move them from the scene at all? >> no. i had to get control. it was really noisy. you know, they were screaming. >> the noise was bothering you? >> yeah, noises bothered me. i didn't know if the mailman would be out there. so i had to control very

quickly. >> he says he found the noise annoying. >> only looks at these events from his own perspective. this is all a script designed to please him. because remember it was almost like these people weren't real. they were just actors. they didn't matter. what mattered was his enjoyment and the kids screaming was just taking away from his enjoying all of this stuff. how can he -- how can he get aroused with all these kids screaming? >> he completely dehumanizes the kids. >> serial killers are very good at that. that makes it possible for them to kill. >> it was just something that i had to do. once i started with mr. otero, i knew i had to do all of them, i had to do all four of them. like an execution. once you start it, if there was witnesses you had to do it all the way around. >> for someone who seems so callus, you might assume rader was always a coolly efficient killer. but the way he tells it rader

didn't have a clue how much force it took to end a life. and so tried several times to strangle mrs. otero only to have her wake up again. during the woman's last desperate struggle for consciousness rader says she was fully aware he was snuffing out the lives of her husband and two children in what he says were her last words to him, mrs. otero's humanity shines against the killer's inhumanity. >> mrs. otero had woke up. and she actually said, have god -- god have mercy on your soul. that's what she said. and i put her down. permanently. >> this woman who probably knows now that she might be going to die, she is generous with you asking god have mercy on your soul. >> yeah.

yeah. >> pretty generous thing. >> somebody that's going to kill you. >> that's killed and tortured her family and is about to do the same to her. >> yeah. >> rader eventually took young josephine otero down to the basement of her home and hanged her from a pipe. the police found semen near josephine's body. >> and going forward recollections of what he had done with these victims fueled his desire to do it again. >> rader says now the whole experience left him quaking. >> oh, i was really not a sexual guy. i was just scared guy. i was really nervous. sweating. i had sweat running off me all over the place. just, you know, i had rubber gloves and they were just full of water, sweat. i was really -- my clothes were just soaked with sweat. very nervous. not like a master criminal at all.

this is my first -- my first time to ever cross that barrier. >> several hours later charlie otero, then 15, and his sister carmen, then 13 came home from school. >> as i walked through the back door i noticed the kitchen was in disarray. things were on the floor. didn't look right. and i yelled out is anybody home. that's when i heard my sister cry out, charlie, come quick. i ran through the hallway down to the bedroom and i found carmen with my parents. my father was tied up. his eyes were bulging. his tongue was about bit off. my mother was on the bed. she didn't even look like my mother. i looked at my dad and i could smell the death and the fear in the room. >> charlie and carmen had not seen what had happened to their younger brother and sister when they were taken to the police station. they say they told police to make sure joseph jr. and josephine did not enter the home. >> so i was telling the police the whole time go to josie and

joey's school and keep them from coming home. i do not want them to come home and find the house the way it is with police everywhere. >> we were afraid of what they would see. we were at the police department for quite a while. we kept asking them did you get hold of the little ones and finally they said you don't have to worry about that, they were killed also. >> when they told me about josie and joey, i just died inside. after that day i lost my religion instantly. the minute i saw my mother i said there cannot be a god. not only can there not be a god but i hate him if he is a god, if there is one. >> a despair not difficult to understand from a man whose mother, father, sister and brother were slaughtered in their own home horribly and inexplicably. while the oteros were the first, they would not be the last people to fall victim to dennis rader's hellish world.

more bodies, more suffering loved ones, more questions about who he was and why he was doing this. probing deeper into a dark mind. >> they all think the person i was after i think it was the dream, an object. >> a cat and mouse game with the police begins when "confessions of btk" continues. and her sensitive stomach didn't make things easier. it was hard to know why... the move...her food...? so we tried purina cat chow gentle... ...because it's specially formulated for easy digestion. she's loved it ever since. and as for her and ben... ...she's coming around. purina cat chow gentle. one hundred percent complete and balanced for everyday feeding of adult cats. ♪ [ female announcer ] everything kids touch at school sticks with them. make sure the germs they bring home don't stick around. use clorox disinfecting products.

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stories. the pontiff was greeted by cuban president raul castro and cheering crowds. he'll remain in cuba for the weekend before heading to the u.s. on tuesday. in new hampshire presidential candidate hillary clinton spoke to a crowd of more than 3,000 at the state democratic party's annual convention. the former secretary of state touched on a number of topics including this week's republican debate and the economy. authorities are confident they have the right man in several recent shootings along arizona's interstate. a press conference just moments ago the sheriff's office said that a weapon ties him to four shootings. israel carried out air strikes in the gaza strip this morning in retaliation for rockets fired by palestinian militants there overnight. israeli officials say the strikes targeted two hamas training camps. now back to our msnbc special.

we continue with "confessions of btk." here is anne curry. >> when wichita police learn two children and their parents have been murdered, they of course looked atliest suspects. people who knew the family. police were about to learn they were dealing with a serial killer, a man three decades later would offer details about his crimes in tapes never broadcast before. again, edie magnus. after murdering four members of the otero family, dennis rader spent the next several years killing again and again and again. his next three victims were all young women. in this interview with a psychologist rader dismisses each victim as a project. he says he began by stalking. >> the stalking stage is when you start learning more about your victims, potential victims. went to the library, looked up their names, address, cross referenced and called them a

couple times, drove by whenever i could. >> and each time he struck rader said he was armed with what he calls his hit kit. >> kit contained what? >> plastic bags, rope, tape, knife, gun, all those would be the kit where i could have them in the house. >> tools that would come to define the work of btk. the victims were often discovered bound with tape or rope tied in unusual knots. >> had to have control which is bonding, big thing with me. my sexual fantasy is if i'm going to kill a victim or do something a victim is have them bound and tied. now, somewhere along the line in my dreams i had what they call torture chambers. and to leave your sexual fantasies you have to go to the kill. >> three months after the otero murders in april of 1973,

rader's next victim was kathy bright. he selected her randomly while driving down her street as he told the court in june. >> i saw her go in the house with somebody else and i thought that's a possibility. >> rader's plan was to lie in wait and overtake kathy when she came home. but the plan went awry when she unexpectedly showed up with her brother kevin. rader said in court he was able to get brother and sister tied up, but the knots that bound kevin were not holding. >> were you armed with a handgun at that time? >> yes, i had a handgun. >> what happened? >> i actually had two handguns. well, i started to strangle him. either it broke or he broke his bonds and jumped up real quick like, pulled my gun and i took a shot at him. hit him in the head. he fell over. i could see the blood. >> rader said he thought kevin was dead and turned to strangle kathy.

the two men struggled again and rader shot him a second time in the head. he tried again to strangle kathy but was unsuccessful so stabbed her multiple times in the chest. meanwhile much to rader's surprise kevin managed to escape. though his head wounds from the gunshots left him unable to clearly describe the killer to police. >> i thought the police were coming at that time. i heard the door open, i thought that's it. and i stepped out there and he -- i could see him running down the street. so i quickly cleaned up everything that i could and left. >> six months later in october 1974 rader announced himself to authorities in the first of many letters he sent to newspapers and other media outlets. communiques that would come to include poems and puzzles. it began a campaign that would reveal his other motive to kill, publicity. a twisted desire for celebrity. a sick obsession that rader like some other serial killers had to be known and feared to get credit for all his handy work. it was rader who came up with

btk as a name for himself. >> i just put it in one of the first letters. i think it was just bind, torture, kill. now i had label on me. like the green river killer and son of sam and whole slew of others, the boston strangler. >> the police now knew the murders of the otero family and kathy bright were linked. they had a serial killer in their midst. for tactical reasons though it would be several years before they disclose that information to the public. still, they wanted to communicate with the mysterious strangler. police quietly placed a classified ad in the big hometown daily, btk, help is available. there was no response. and rader did not kill again for three years. >> it wasn't something i could just do all the time. so whenever it was convenient. it would have been easier probably if you were like a spy or something where you could go set there and watch, but i didn't have that. i had to work under camouflage.

>> then in march 1977 rader struck again. his victim shirley vian, 24 years old. he said in court he watched her young son walk into the house and spontaneously chose that family to victimize. >> kind of forced myself in. just walked in, opened the door and walked in and pulled a pistol. >> shirley vian was home with her three small children whom rader corralled into the bathroom. >> the kids were really banging on the door, hollering, screaming. >> it's horrifying to remember that rader himself was a young father at this time. his own son was not yet 2. but with the sounds of the vian children in the background, he said he simply worked as fast as he could. >> comforted a little bit and went ahead and tied her up and put a bag over her head and strangled her. >> in another admission that reveals rader's depravity, he told the psychologist the thrill had little to do with the kill, or for that matter with the

victim herself. >> i don't think it was actually the person that i was after. i think it was the dream. i know that's not really nice to say about a person, but they were basically an object. they were just an object. i had more satisfaction building up to it and afterwards than i did the actual killing of the person. >> many serial killers object fie their victim, they dehumanize them. they're tools for their own pleasures. >> how does someone who is a married, young father objectfy people and kill them. >> the process is called compartmentalization. many people are able to divide the world into those they care about and love truly and everyone else who's expendable. >> he says he had more satisfaction anticipating his kills and the aftermath of killing than he did in the actual killing. >> that's his fantasy. the planning process, the stalking, the hunting is very enjoyable to him.

and the aftermath once he's killed to see that he -- to see what he's done. that's fulfilling too. that's when he would literally climax. >> the sexual fantasies, the obsession with bondage, rader claims it's been swirling in his head since he was a child. he remembers being aroused as a young child when his mother would spank him. rader has written in letters which no one's sure are true that he secretly perused s and m magazines as a boy, stole panties, peeked in windows, writes of hanging a cat and then a dog. how does sexual fantasy and even an obsession with bondage lead to murder? >> it doesn't necessarily. what makes serial killers different than other people who might fantasize about power or dominance, control, is that they do not have a legitimate way to satisfy their need for power. so they take it. they take and grab that power in the most violent way.

>> at the end of 1977 in december dennis rader killed his seventh victim, nancy fox. >> broke in and waited for her to come home in the kitchen. >> this time rader's plans went smoothly as the single working girl who was just 25 came home alone. >> i confronted her. told her that i was a -- i had a problem, sexual problems that i would have to tie her up and have sex with her. >> rader said he handcuffed and tied nancy fox, strangled her with a belt, left his telltale semen by the body and got out without a hitch. then he called police. rader had the audacity to call 911 and alert authorities to his own crime. >> you will find a homicide at 843 south pershing. >> i'm sorry, sir. i can't understand you. what is the address. >> in the jailhouse interview

rader said in hindsight he thinks that call was dumb. >> that was kind of a -- that was kind of an impulsive or really stupid thing to do because i left my voice pattern and my voice on there. >> and still rader was not done communicating. the following month he sent a poem written with a child's printing set on an index card to the wichita eagle newspaper. the poem patterned after a nursery rhyme referred to shirley vian's murder. several days later he sent another letter. the most disturbing one yet. the one that finally put the killer on the news and put the community in a tailspin. >> what kind of leads do you have? >> we have absolutely nothing that will point us to any one particular individual. >> a killer now in the spotlight he craves. >> he absolutely terrorized the community. everyone was a suspect. the fear was palpable. >> when "confessions of btk" continues. plaque psoriasis...

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"confessions of btk" continues. when i sat in my office and read his account of what he had done, i wasn't ready for that. >> it was february 1978, and then-tv news director ron reading with disgust and revulsion a letter that had arrived in his newsroom. >> there was no doubt in my mind it was from btk. >> in a two-page single space letter rader using the name btk

again announced himself as a serial killer. and then went even further in his bid for publicity comparing himself to son of sam in new york, jack the ripper in london and the hillside strangler in los angeles, claiming they were all driven to kill by what he called factor x. it seems senseless, but we cannot help it, he wrote. there is no help. no cure except death or being caught and put away. >> he was making it clear that he wanted to be elevated to the serial killer hall of fame. this is the league that he said she should be in. he listed 15 to 17 additional serial killers, infamous serial killers. >> through the ages? >> through the ages. btk is a student was the first thing that flashed through my mind, of serial murderers. >> along with a lured description of the oteroink.

how many people do i have to kill until i get the recognition i deserve? >> i've always thought had the misfortune given his aspirations to live in a small media market. he never got the attention because he lived in wichita. if he'd done any of this in los angeles it'd been a different story. >> even more chilling, btk threatened he was bearing down on murder victim number eight. >> he said that in fact he was stalking a victim right now. he'd picked his next victim. he indicated how he was going to kill that person and then the last sentence was maybe it's you. >> he was trying to frighten people? >> oh, definitely. and he succeeded. >> it turned out the wichita police had been intentionally denying btk publicity for some time. profilers had warned them against caving into the killer's demands for attention on the grounds that if he got it he'd kill again. but that tactic clearly hadn't worked. btk kept on killing any way.

now faced with the strangler's written threat to take yet another life, the police abruptly changed strategy. >> at that point we need to step up and say, yes, we recognize you as btk. and we do have a serial killer here. >> so police chief and news director ron lowen appeared on tv that february 1978 side by side. >> btk claims to have strangled a total of seven women. >> it was lowen himself who broke the story of btk to the community. during that newscast loewen who never talked publicly about these events before discussing them with us became in effect live bait. >> the police said i guess based again on the talk with their behavioral people that this is a cry for help. this guy has more that he wants to say. we suggest that you do the story so that it has someone that he might choose to communicate with

again. >> how did you feel about offering yourself up as someone who would be willing to communicate with this deranged mass murderer? >> well, you know, you want to help. so if he wanted to write letters it came to my attention why not. >> it was quite a risk btk had already murdered seven people. and loewen could end up getting far more than just a letter in the mail. but there he sat. >> what kind of leads do you have? >> asking questions of the chief for which there were no good answers. >> very honestly we have no solid leads at all. >> it was horrific news. everything changed for me. and everything changed for everyone in witchitwichita. >> loewen says the announcement of this bombshell on the family oriented city was instantaneous. >> it terrorized the community. everyone was a suspect. girlfriends concerned about their boyfriends. parents turned in their

children. the fear was palpable. >> hoping btk would contact him, the police brought loewen inside the investigation. loewen was provided a photo of a possible suspect and a police revolver. >> that gun creeped me out. it was the tangible reminder that there was a killer out there and at some level the police thought he might be coming to see me. >> just what was it that drove dennis rader to bind, torture and kill so many innocent people? >> factor kpx is probably -- >> in his jailhouse interview rader blamed his murder spree on that mysterious force he has always claimed was way beyond his control, factor x. >> something that -- i use it. i actually think of maybe possessed with demons. i was dropped on my head when i was a kid. i've talked to some theological christian people and some of those people are really strong. they actually think, well, the bible says that. that there's demons within or

can come into you. that's the only thing i can figure out. i have -- you know, something drove me to do this. normal people just don't do this. >> you can't stop it? >> i can't stop it. it's just -- it controls me. it's like it's in the driver's seat. that's probably the reason we're sitting here. if i could say no, i don't want to do this and go crawl in a hole. but it's driving me. >> you've actually used the term monster. there's in monster inside of you. >> uh-huh. >> it almost sounds like something separate apart like a different person. >> yeah. it's like i can switch back and forth. once this character takes over, whatever it is that drives me over. i don't know what it is. >> but he knows what it is. >> it's bunk. >> don't blame me, i'm a good

guy, factor x, i couldn't resist, it's the monster inside of me. to use a technical term it's poppy --. it's just an excuse. it was dennis rader making decisions, not factor x. >> he explains he was dropped on his head and that might have done something. >> sure he'd like to believe that too. it's someone else's fault. there are lots of kids that fall out of tricycles and fall out of cribs and bang their heads and don't have factor kx or go on killing sprees. it's a way to deflect blame. dennis rader is someone who is selfish, narcissistic, committed to his own pleasures, committed to fulfilling his sexual fantasies no matter who he hurts in the process. >> in 1978 of course nobody knew what rader's excuses were. all they knew was that btk was out there, a seven-time murderer promising in his factor x

manifesto that he was about to take another innocent life. so the investigation went into high gear, unprecedented and yet unsuccessful for many years. even though he was right under their noses. >> desperate police devise an unusual plan, a secret message to btk. >> you were hoping that perhaps your killer might see it. >> yeah. >> did you get any phone calls? >> when "confessions of btk" continues. bring us your aching...

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>> he had broken a glass. he was in the basement waiting. >> the intended victim, a 63-year-old woman he had been stalking unexpectedly spent the fight out. saved her life. but he made shire everybody knew he was still prime to commit murder, sending the media that package containing some personal items he had stolen from her home and including one of his trademark poems. >> which is a poem of death. he said he was disappointed she didn't come home. >> that he intended to kill her. >> raider now claims in this interview with a psychologist that this woman wasn't the only one that got away. >> is it safe to say that there are at least a few hundred people out there. >> there are a lot of lucky people out there. >> that you didn't kill. >> i was in the back of the house. they come home or for some reason i didn't go in. there are a lot of lucky people out there. there would have been more if i had succeeded.

>> reporter: after that failed murder attempt, wichita's most famous and sought after strangleer seemed to disappear from the scene after five years and seven bodies, he stopped communicating in 1979 and the police simply couldn't find him, despite a manhunt unprecedented in scope that went on for years. >> we spent a lot of money working on this case. no one complained. not one bit. >> we first met the former police chief last year before dennis raider was arrested and he talked quite candidly about the failure to catch btk on his watch. >> i think the community was probably as frustrated as i was. i don't think they were mad. i think they had kind of the same feeling i had. hey, they're doing everything that they can possibly do to catch this guy. >> he says they tried everything, from old faxed detective work to ideas that sounded downright nutty. >> we were trying to get the guy to communicate. >> but did you feel at the time like i don't care how whacky it

sounds, let's try it? >> anything sort of psychics. i wasn't in psychings. >> but he was into trying a sec nikkei that farce we know never has been attempted by law enforcement or since. police arranged to have a sublittle nam message, one devised by profileers inserted into a local easy newscast at kake tv. to viewers, the sublittle nam message looked like this a flash of light. but slow it down, there it was. now, call the chief. >> and you were hoping perhaps your killer might see it? >> yeah. >> did you get any phone calls? did anybody's subconscious get tapped at all? >> no. >> wherever he was the killer could not or would not be reached. even when the police got a break and were able to track down a litter btk sent from a photocopier at wichita state university, they still couldn't catch him. it turns out he was a student there studying criminal justice.

>> we tracked the communication that he sends to that copy machine at the activity center. we had detectives go back to xerox company and they'd confirm that's where it came from. he was on a list with several thousand others. if you were a mate ewhale between 18 and 35, you were on that list. we couldn't match any other list . >> reporter: and they had the killer's voice on tape from that time he boldly called 11 to tell them he murdered nancy matts. in time, police were able to get the quality enhanded. it was played repeatedly on radio and the every. >> he said it was probably stupid. but he liked it. he liked the fact that it has been played over and over for years and years. >> reporter: yet even with all those exposure, nobody recognized the voice as a man dennis raider, another dead end. >> i think i was lucky.

i think i was lucky quite a bit. quite a lucky guy. >> that and i think i closed sometimes i was lucky. >> reporter: incredibly so for a willer that may have been seen several times a. hand. of eyewitnesses helped police make sketches of how they remember the suspect. but the drawings weren't especially helpful. nobody could quite agree on what btk looked like. as dna matching evolved during the 1980s, the police tried to use that technology. more than 200 samples were taken from men living near the victims who fit btk's profile compared to the semen they preserved from several of the crime scenes. nobody matched. >> you had dna everyday? >> yes. >> you had his voice on tape? >> yes. >> and you just couldn't get him? >> couldn't get him? >> you had the best behavioral science minds in the country helping you develop a profile of who he was and what he might do and you couldn't ever anticipate

him? >> could never anticipate him. >> reporter: still, they say while they didn't know anything about dennis raider, they knew a lot about btk. >> after he went dormant and stopped killing, the theory was and everyone was saying, he's if prison, maybe he has an illness or something happened. i never bought. that i was convinced that he was one of us. we had him penged in terms of the type of individual. we haed a name. >> in the jailhouse interview with the psychologist, dennis raider was openly scornful of local law enforcement. >> the police or the keystone cops. >> and disdainful of all tear years of effort. >> they traced a lot of stuff down, the copiers i used out at wsu. they didn't make a connection from there. they had 30 of smm years to break it and couldn't do it t. taxpayers really need to have i think a sharper bunch. although they tried and tried and tried.

>> reporter: were you offended when you heard him say the wichita cops couldn't close this case? >> i'm not offended by anything he says at all. it's all about him. i know the police officers did everything in their power. i know they finally caught him. >> with everything you know about him now, do you think that you should have been able get him. >> >> i'd like to tell you yes. i really don't think we could have done i don't remember we kid. >> he called the wichita police the keystone cops. >> i heard that again that's dennis raider. because what he was saying is to allow the wichita police to catch him, you know, would be demeaning to him. it just bugs him. it drives him crazy, so, therefore, he has to belittle the police department in order to elevate himself. >> the convention of wisdom was somehow he was so smart because he stayed one step ahead of the police. >> i don't think he's smart at all. we're not talking about a genius

here. we're not talking about a hannibal lecter type of individual. i think he was more lucky in terms of what he did. because he did it in some random fashion and because there was no connection between him and because he did it alone and it was so sporadic. it was over such a long period of time. >> and probably most important, he says, is raider apparently told absolutely no one about what he had done. >> i don't think he joked about it. i don't think he said, oh, i can beat this. i don't think so. >> year after year went by the once hot btk investigation eventually became a cold case. by the mid-80s, the elite police unit created to hunt down the killer closed down shop. once the city's public enemy number one, btk became a part of wichita legend and what was dennis raider doing all those years? hiding in plain sight