Notorious BTK Killer Rots in Prison as Daughter Visits After 18 Years

In October 2025, the Netflix documentary "My Father, the BTK Killer" revisits the crimes of Dennis Rader, the notorious serial killer who terrorized Wichita, Kansas, for over three decades. Rader, who gave himself the moniker "BTK" for his "bind, torture, kill" method, was finally arrested in 2005 and sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms.

For the past 20 years, Rader has been serving his life sentence at the El Dorado Correctional Facility. In 2023, his daughter Kerri visited him for the first time in 18 years, describing a dramatic change in his appearance. She said Rader had lost 7 inches in height and was now confined to a wheelchair, "rotting to his core." Kerri's visit was part of an effort to help investigators uncover if Rader had committed any other unsolved murders.

Rader's crimes were particularly heinous, with at least 10 confirmed victims between 1974 and 1991. He would stalk his targets, often women, for weeks, carefully planning his attacks. Rader would then bind, torture, and kill his victims, sometimes even returning to the crime scenes to photograph their bodies. Despite his seemingly normal life as a husband, father, and church member, Rader's dark side eventually consumed him, leading to his eventual capture and conviction.