The signs that he was tightly wound were there for many to see. He signaled his powerful need for control again and again, but even the people who say he bullied them had no inkling that he could be the man police are now calling a serial killer.
Dennis L. Rader, the government inspector charged with killing 10 people between 1974 and 1991, may have been a Boy Scout volunteer and active church leader. But he was also known as an arrogant and harassing neighbor who bullied single women on his street, and an unforgiving supervisor who made life miserable for at least one subordinate -- another single woman.
"He nitpicked people to death. He was a total control freak," said Dee Stuart, a mayoral candidate in nearby Park City, where Rader lived.
Stuart said a friend of hers, whom she declined to identify, worked with Rader, a Park City compliance officer, and "filed grievance after grievance" against him. "She suffered through a constant barrage of belittling attacks from him," Stuart said. "No one was as smart as Dennis Rader."
Accounts such as Stuart's stand in sharp contrast to the descriptions of Rader that emerged soon after he was arrested on Feb. 25. Rader has been depicted as a selfless, churchgoing family man, so well-liked that those who knew him were flabbergasted by the news that he is an accused serial killer.
Rader, however, exhibited some classic antisocial traits -- superiority, narcissism and anger -- and was seen by some as a man imprisoned in a life he believed was beneath him, associating with people he believed were not up to his intellect.
His job was to enforce city codes -- animal laws, trash regulations, property maintenance -- and Rader took it too far, some said.
"He was mean-spirited and a coward," said James Reno, a neighbor who did battle with Rader for years over his treatment of neighbors. Reno said he called City Hall to complain about Rader several times and was always told "we'll look into it."
"He never messed with me," Reno said. "He always picked on the single women on the street who he could bully."
Rader is accused of killing 10 people, including eight female victims.
After the first slayings in the '70s, police and the media received taunting letters and cryptic notes with clues. The killer labeled himself BTK, for "bind, torture, kill." He liked to torment his victims, tie them up and then strangle them.
After 25 years of silence, the killer began communicating with the media and police again last year, sending photographs of a victim's body and leaving the driver's license that belonged to another in a park.
Few close friends
Over the past 25 years, Rader raised two children, held steady jobs, volunteered in his son's Boy Scout troop, earned a college degree in criminal justice and became the president of his church's governing council. But no one here could name close personal friends -- people he might have socialized with outside work. And none has surfaced to defend him.
Rader's pastor, Michael Clark of Christ Lutheran Church, said in an interview that he views the man he visited in prison last week as his parishioner -- not a killer.
"Let me make it very clear that I'm not challenging law enforcement. It's very possible [it is he]. If that's a fact, we'll accept it and move on," Clark said. "All I am saying is I don't know the man they call BTK. I know Dennis Rader. . . . I could ask him to do anything at this church. He would light the candles, work the sound system, usher."
Paul Carlstedt, who worshiped with Rader for 30 years, said the arrest is "beyond comprehension for me. None of us will ever be the same again. I've thought back and asked myself, 'Is there something he did, some word, some deed that could shed light?' I can't find one thing.
". . . We prayed here for the capture of BTK. We didn't know he was among us."
Carlstedt said that he always viewed Rader as someone who could be counted on. "Here's the kind of guy he is: Last week, he couldn't make the Wednesday service because his mother was ill, so he and [his wife] Paula brought by the salad and the spaghetti sauce because he said he would."
Bob Smyser, who has known Rader for 35 years through the church, said that "every time I came up to the church to do stuff -- wash windows, fall cleaning, Dennis was there. I mean, how do you judge relations in your life after this? How do you deal with everybody?"
Neither Carlstedt nor Smyser socialized with Rader outside church. Both knew little about his personal life. Rader's brother, Jeff, did not return a reporter's telephone call seeking comment. At Rader's home, the shades were drawn, and no one answered a knock on the door.
Police investigators and psychologists had long concluded that the killer thrived on attention and the knowledge that he continued to elude law enforcement. If Rader is BTK, he became so cocky that he once killed a woman who lived on his street and on another occasion called 911 to report a slaying he had committed.
The killer's first known victims in January 1974 were members of the Otero family: a father, a mother and two of their children. Joseph Otero unexpectedly returned home after dropping another child at school and surprised the killer.
In later attacks, it is believed BTK waited for women in their homes, tied them up and strangled them. In April 1974, he killed again. This time the victim was a college student.
Three years later, when he strangled Nancy Fox, 25, in her Wichita home, he called 911 from a pay phone. "You will find a homicide at 843 South Pershing," he said.
Although the killer never sexually abused his victims, he masturbated near at least two of them, leaving semen that later helped authorities link him to the homicides, according to news reports.
Killer seeks attention
He first communicated through the media after the Otero killings; his writings contained poor grammar and spelling. "Its hard to control myself," he wrote. "You probably call me 'psychotic with sexual perversion hang-up.' When this monster enter my brain I will never know. . . . I can't stop it so the monster goes on."
BTK struck another time in 1977, and in 1985, 1986 and 1991. In one of his last communications, he sent a note to the Wichita Eagle-Beacon newspaper in early 1978; that note was not publicized.
Soon the angry killer sent this screed to a television station: "How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper or some national attention? How about some name for me, its time: 7 down and many more to go. I like the following . . . The B.T.K. STRANGLER, THE WICHITA HANGMAN . . . THE GAROTE PHANTOM, THE ASPHYXIATOR."
In 1979, he waited for a victim who never came home, and he communicated this to a television station. After that, there were no more letters -- leaving some to believe he had moved or died. But last year, on the 30th anniversary of the first killings, when commentators speculated that BTK was dead, he began a barrage of communications to prove them wrong.
BTK first sent a package to the Wichita Eagle containing photographs of one of the bodies and later left a package wrapped in plastic containing the driver's license of another.
For his last surreptitious communication, in February, BTK tried something new: He sent a Wichita television station a necklace, the cover of "Rules of Prey" -- a 1989 novel about a serial killer named "maddog" -- and a purple computer disk. The disk was immediately traced to Christ Lutheran Church.
If Rader is ultimately convicted of the BTK slayings, then he may have been undone by the very sanctuary that gave him decades of cover: his church.
Clark said it was apparently clear to investigators that the disk had been used in the church's computer. Clark recalled recently showing Rader how to print an agenda for the church council meeting. Rader's was among the names of people with access to the computer that Clark provided to police.
Little has emerged about Rader's wife, Paula, and his children. Paula Rader was a founding member of the church and sings in the choir. Rader's daughter, Kerri, is married and earned a degree in education from Kansas State University. His son, Brian, is in the Navy undergoing submarine training. Neither went to Wichita last week to see Rader, and Paula Rader has left town, Clark said.
Police have denied reports that Rader's daughter, who lives in Michigan, turned him in. But she reportedly gave her blood for a DNA test after Rader was arrested, and it matched DNA that was found at some of the crime scenes.
On the modest street of A-frame homes where the family lived, some neighbors said they despised Rader. He would harangue them for tall grass, loose dogs, branches piled in a driveway and once because a woman mistakenly brought her trash cans out front on the wrong day.
Two neighbors said that he was particularly hard on a woman dying of cancer, an arthritis sufferer. He repeatedly wrote her warnings and costly citations for not keeping her lawn properly cut.
"He knew my mother couldn't get around, and he would come down the street and measure her grass, and if it was a little bit over he'd write her a warning or a citation," said Joshua Thomas, who moved into the house after his mother died.
Neighbors' perspective
"What little power he had, he abused. He was a very petty man," Reno, another neighbor, said. "It's kind of curious that dogs that were in back yards suddenly came loose when he was around, and then there he was to write the ticket."
Margaret Farmer said her daughter's garage burned down a few years ago, and within a day Rader was demanding she pay to have the debris hauled off. "I don't know anyone on the street that didn't despise him," she said. "He acted like his word was the only law. Everyone else was supposed to do exactly as he said and when he said."
Stuart, the Park City mayoral candidate, said last week that her friend who had the run-ins with Rader was on the verge of quitting when Rader was arrested. Citing the ongoing investigation, Park City Mayor Emil Berquist declined in an interview to name the woman or discuss complaints that may have been filed against Rader.
Meanwhile, Rader, who turns 60 this week, sits in a county jail in lieu of $10 million bond. On Saturday, the Wichita Eagle reported that Rader had confessed to the killings. On Wednesday, the City Council voted to fire him for not showing up to work. He has consulted with his public defenders and received a visit from his pastor, after leaving a voice mail for Clark. Clark reported that Rader seems to be "holding up pretty well" considering the circumstances.
"I told Dennis that I will not abandon him," Clark said. "I told him that I will stand by his side as long as he wants me to. And people just don't want to hear that right now. We are no different than Dennis in our journey in life. Regardless of who we are, we are all sinners and we will all be judged."
Research editor Lucy Shackelford contributed to this report.
