Preview

Biological Criminal Behavior Of Dennis Rader: BTK Killer

Better Essays
Open Document
Open Document
1458 Words
Grammar
Grammar
Plagiarism
Plagiarism
Writing
Writing
Score
Score
Biological Criminal Behavior Of Dennis Rader: BTK Killer
Biological Criminal Behavior
CJA/ 314
Monday 19, 2012
Biological Criminal Behavior
Biological Criminal Behavior of Dennis Rader, known as the "BTK Killer" which stands for "bind, torture, and kill". Dennis Rader terrorized the Witchita, Kansas, area from the 1970s to the '90s. Over time, today’s society reflects that genetic and biological factors play an equal role in crimes committed in the criminal justice system ("Bio.", 2014). It is believed that an individual’s environment and state of mind contributed to his or her behavior pattern. According to J. Reid Meloy, antisocial personality disorder affects around 2 percent to 5 percent of the population. Only about 1 percent of the population can be described as having psychopathic
…show more content…
Dennis Rader committed his first murders in 1974, strangling four members of the Otero family in their home. Later that year he began seeking fame for his killings, writing letters and reporting his crimes. His final crime was in 1991, but he resurfaced in 2004 and again sought media attention. This eventually led to his arrest. He pled guilty and was ordered to serve 10 life sentences in prison ("Bio.", 2014). In 2005, he was finally caught and revealed to be Dennis Rader, a seemingly average married father of two. The oldest of four sons, Rader grew up in Wichita, Kansas. He was a family man a church leader and a psychopathic murderer. There may have been signs of trouble early on as a Los Angeles Times report stated that he used to hang stray cats as a child. Rader served in the U.S. Air Force from the mid to late 1960s. He married his wife Paula in 1971 and worked for a camping gear company for a few years. He went to work for ADT Security Services in …show more content…
On January 15, 1974, Rader killed four members of the Otero family in their home, Joseph and Julie Otero and two of their children, Josephine and Joseph Jr. They died by strangulation, and Rader took a watch and a radio from the home. Strangulation and taking souvenirs would become part of his modus operandi, or pattern of behavior. He also left semen at the scene and later said that he derived sexual pleasure from killing. The Oteros ' 15-year-old son, Charlie, came home later that day and discovered the bodies ("Bio.", 2014). The BTK Killer struck again a few months later. Waiting in their apartment on April 4, 1974, Rader killed Kathryn Bright by stabbing and strangling, and attempted to kill her brother, Kevin. Kevin was shot twice, but survived. He described Rader as "an average-sized guy, bushy mustache, 'psychotic ' eyes," according to a TIME magazine

You May Also Find These Documents Helpful

  • Good Essays

    The perpetrator in this case is Jeffrey Dahmer. Dahmer, born May 21st, 1960 in Ohio, Illinois. Dahmer, a white male, is classified as a serial killer and a multiple murderer after discovering that he killed seventeen men over the course of twenty years. Although Dahmer was born in Ohio, his family moved to Milwaukee, Wisconsin when he was just a teen. This is also where he committed the majority of his murders.…

    • 322 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    After being accused of murder in February, David Tarloff was being kept in a locked ward three stories up in Bellevue Hospital. David Tarloff, 39, is under evaluation after his arrest in the killing of psychologist, Kathryn Faughey with a meat-cleaver on the Upper East Side. The police said after he killed Kathryn he then went on to stab Dr. Kent D. Shinbach. Tarloff, diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic in 1991, has a very long psychiatric history. After years and years of his family trying to get…

    • 536 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    A few months after James Doxtator was dead Dahmer took his fourth victim, twenty-one year old, Richard Guerrero (1996). Dahmer meant Guerrero at a gay bar, in Milwaukee. Jeffrey Dahmer did the same form of killing his victims to the fourth victim, he drugged and strangled Guerrero. However the method for disposing the body was different (1996). Dahmer throw the body in a trash bag, and bu it out for garbage collection…

    • 451 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    In 2004 Rader began sending letters to the police and to the television station in Wichita about all killings and how he had done them. His last drop was a disc that he had given them the detectives found Christ Lutheran Church software on the disc and the name Dennis on it. Rader was thought he erased the original contents of the disk. Dennis was placed under surveillance while a subpoena was secretly obtained for a DNA sample of his daughter from medical records. The DNA was a match to the crime scenes of the BTK…

    • 1601 Words
    • 7 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    The BTK Killer

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages

    “The floppy did me in.” Words from notorious serial killer Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK killer. Rader’s spree of violence lasted nearly 30 years and included 10 victims. Raider’s actions were strange, in the way that he communicated to the police. He truly enjoyed taunting the police and gloating about his crimes. His usual way of communicating with the police was through letters or 3x5 cards that he would send to the police directly or to the local television station. In one communication to the police department Raider stated “Would it be secure for the murderer to communicate with police via a floppy disk?” Knowing that having a different form of evidence to analyze the police told Dennis Raider that would…

    • 654 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    On August 27, 1964 Edmund Kemper, when arguing with his grandmother, took his rifle and shot her in the head once and twice in the back. As soon as his grandfather arrived he was shot getting out of the car. After killing his grandparents, he phoned the police and turned himself in. This however was not the only time he killed in his life. After being released to his mother’s care, against the psychologist’s wishes, it was only three years before he killed again. May 7, 1972 Kemper picks up two hitch-hikers named, Mary Ann Pesce and Anita Luchessa. Instead of taking them to their destination he brutally murders the two women and stores their bodies in his car boot. Then, he takes the bodies to his apartment and dissects, photographs, and has sex with the body parts. Another 4 months pass before he kills again. On September 14 of the same year he raped and murdered Aiko Koo, who was 15, while she was…

    • 1069 Words
    • 5 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Jeffrey Dahmer

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages

    From then all the way until his last arrest in 1991 his life was filled with secret killings and homosexual relationships which led to multiple killing. The one that stands out most of all is his final killing of a fourteen year old boy named Konerak. This one is the most insane of all because it could have been prevented if it were not for the drugs that Mr. Dahmer slipped his victim. He would have been caught immediately, had the symptoms of the chemical Dahmer gave his victim been more apparent to the common observer. The drugs used made his victim seem more intoxicated then under the influence of a narcotic. As Konerak attempted to run, police came across him naked making little sense when talking, so it was believed the boy was merely intoxicated. Upon Dahmer´s request they returned him to his care, claiming the boy was his nineteen year old homosexual lover. Later the police would find out the mistake they had made.…

    • 606 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    David Richard Berkowitz

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages

    David Berkowitz also known as the “Son of Sam” and “The .44Caliber Killer” was born on June 1, 1953. Berkowitz was born Richard David Falco in Brooklyn, New York. His parents were Betty Broder and Joseph Kleinman. Broder was married to Tony Falco and had a daughter with him but Falco left her. She later had an affair with Kleinman and got pregnant, he told her to get rid of the baby but she had it anyway and put the baby under Falco’s name. A few days after his birth, he was adopted by Nathan and Pearl Berkowtiz. At an early age Berkowitz had an above average intelligence, but lost interest and became an infatuation with petty larceny and pyromania. He earned a reputation as the neighborhood bully. David was especially shy around girls. His mother Pearl, the only person he was ever close to, died of breast cancer in 1967. David wasn’t close to his father very well and disliked the woman his father later married. Berkowitz joined the U.S army in 1971, and was active until 1974. He wanted to die a glorious death in Vietnam but instead got shipped to Korea. He qualified as a sharpshooter especially with the M16 rifle. He was discharged and returned back to New York. Afterward he tried to search for his birth mother what he had found will then propel him on to the streets in search for blood. He learned his conception and birth, and soon he and his birth mother lost contact with one another. Berkowitz then joined a cult of Satan worshipers.…

    • 758 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Lucian Staniak

    • 697 Words
    • 3 Pages

    Not much is known about his life prior to his murders so there was no way of knowing this could happen. Typically as a child you can tell apart the psychopaths from the…

    • 697 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Ted Bundy Research Paper

    • 926 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Ted Bundy and Joshua Boren; on opposite ends of the moral spectrum yet both ended their lives with the title murderer. Ted Bundy a psychopath slighted by the love of his life, started his journey to become one of the most renowned serial killers in Americas history eventually finding his way to Utah where he would brutally murder and rape 7 girls and attempt an 8th, carol DaRonch the only girl to ever escape. By contrast Joshua Boren a respected police officer ended his life after ending the lives of his wife, mother-in-law, and 2 children after deciding the was the sole person able to protect his children from molestation. Later it would be found that Joshua had a troubled dark side in which his childhood molestation experience would be a…

    • 926 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Good Essays

    Known as the "BTK Killer" - which stands for "bind, torture, kill"- Dennis Rader terrorized the Wichita, Kansas, area from the 1970s to the 90s. ( Dennis Rader Biography). "Rader killed four members of the Otero family in their home - Joseph and Julie Otero and two of their children Josephine and Joseph Jr" (Dennis Rader Biography). "Rader confessed to at least 8 of the 10 murders that people and police say he committed"(Thomas). There was a 10 year gap when he disappeared and didn't kill anyone. "There may have been signs of trouble early on as Los Angeles Time reports stated that he used to hang stray cats as a child"(Dennis Rader Biography). " Rader was a poor student in high school and in college"(Dennis Rader a Biography). The way BTK was caught is because he put a floppy disk into a church computer and the cops tracked the location of the floppy disk and found him in the church. " How he became such a monster is an important case study to prevent others from taking his dark passage" (Dennis Rader Biography). BTK is still alive in the El Dorado Correctional Center serving many life…

    • 686 Words
    • 3 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Satisfactory Essays

    Richard Nature Vs Nurture

    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages

    able to record conversations that he and Richard had talking about previous crimes he had committed, including details about how he killed with cyanide poison in spray bottles and freezing bodies to mask the time of death. Richard was ultimately charged with 5 murders and sentenced to life in prison, ineligible for parole until age 110.…

    • 331 Words
    • 2 Pages
    Satisfactory Essays
  • Good Essays

    Goblet Of Fire Analysis

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages

    Persons with the cluster “B” disorder can be characterized by more dramatic, emotional, and erratic behaviors. The four cluster “B” personality disorders include antisocial, narcissistic, borderline, and histrionic disorders. These are also the most common of all personality disorders. Antisocial personality disorder is expressed by a continued pattern of neglect for other people’s rights, and also for violating those rights. It typically begins during childhood or as a teenager and continues into adulthood. Jeffrey Dahmer had antisocial personality disorder, he was arrested in February 1992 for multiple charges of rape and murder. He was very unstable and showed his neglect for other people’s rights through the years 1978-1991. Next in cluster…

    • 887 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays
  • Powerful Essays

    This research article discusses psychopathy as a personality disorder that has certain elements that the offender must meet before being clarified as psychopathic. This further helps to define and understand the role in which psychopathy plays within criminal profiling. This article coincides with other articles to further back up the findings from them as well.…

    • 1865 Words
    • 8 Pages
    Powerful Essays
  • Good Essays

    Psychopaths

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages

    When one thinks of psychopaths, they may think of serial killers such as Ted Bundy or Albert Fish. The reality is that psychopaths come in all forms and are much more common than one would think. A psychopath can be defined by a combination of multiple traits, such as lacking conscience, empathy and remorse, and irresponsibility and impulsiveness. This disorder is a type of antisocial personality disorder. Psychopathy is also a spectrum disorder, where psychopaths can exist anywhere on the spectrum using the 20-item Hare Psychopathy Checklist: a tool used to measure psychopathy (Kiehl & Hoffman, 2011). Psychopaths are affected in every aspect of their life due to this disorder, such as family and relationships, which causes issues as it prevents sufferers from functioning well in society. Issues with this disorder also include the fact that it is among the most difficult disorders to spot, yet psychopaths make up 1-2% of the population (Rogers, 2012), and 20-25% of the criminals in prison (Cohen, 2011).…

    • 901 Words
    • 4 Pages
    Good Essays