Last Update on the Left - Episode 12 - BTK Returns w/ Katherine Ramsland

Live on your blade. That's when the cannibalism started. Last update on the left. Oh, yeah! Welcome to the last update on the left, ladies and gentlemen. We got a special treat for you today. Big update on a big piece of shit. Yeah, it's last up in the left. I was going to say a big dumper. Yeah, big time killer. Big time killer. You could say dumper. He's a dumper. You're Marcus Parks. I'm Henry Zabrowski. We're sitting here with Ed Larson. Hello. We talked with, she's a pip. Yeah, she's great. This woman is incredible. And what I like is there's something about a classy, like, lady doctor that just hangs out with serial killers all day. Yeah. That's all she does. That's very frightening. It's Catherine Ramsland. We talked to her about BTK, about Dennis Rader, the new victims that are supposedly Dennis Rader's, the ones that are being tied to Dennis Rader. But Catherine Ramsland has many opinions on whether or not there's any truth to that. So all you Rader heads. Yeah, I get ready. You strapped in. And also, I'll just tell you up front, we found out Dennis Rader not getting fillers. No, not getting fillers. Yeah. Not getting dentures. No, I asked. Rotting away in prison. The Wichita Raiders. Wow! That was the family. All right, here's an interview with Dr. Ramsland. Right from your grave. All right, we are here with Dr. Catherine Ramsland. You've probably seen her on countless serial killer documentaries. She's written one of the best books about a serial killer that I've ever read, Confessions of the BTK Killer. Catherine Ramsland, doctor, thank you so much for joining us today. I'm glad to be here. Thank you for having me. Of course. Well, part of the reason why we're bringing you on is that we're here on our update show. And the big update is that it seems like there are new victims of Dennis Rader being discovered, or at least people are assuming that they are Dennis Rader's victims. I guess our first question is how much validity are you giving as someone who's spoken personally to Dennis Rander many times? How much validity are you giving to these claims? Well, you know, it's been a progression of stuff for the past year. I think Sheriff Eddie Burden is who you're talking about because he's kind of leading the way. He's an Oklahoma sheriff. Yeah. He laid out the whole case that he had to me in May, and I didn't think he had evidence for some of the things that he was saying. And certainly everything that he's offered has an alternative interpretation. Sure. And Rader's interpretation is, no, it's not me. And he's been given immunity to confess, to close the cases. He still says no. And the main question that he asked, which I think somebody has to answer, why wouldn't I confess? Right. He loves fame. And he said, I'd go out like a, you know, a fading star. It'd be amazing if I had more victims. And he said, but I'm not going to confess to something I didn't do. And he just told that to, you know, just for example, one of the victims that they had linked to him was the Garber case in Missouri. So her body was bound, I mean, heavily bound with six different ropes and cords and whatnot and dumped on a band of farm property. So that all sounds very Raider. It does. Like the multiple different styles of rope, like the overdoing it, like almost like an artistic way, the way he viewed his quote unquote work. He actually said it was sloppy, kind of insulted that people thought it was his work. Wow. The detective team went to interview him. Lori Howard was the one that I've been working with. and the woman was found in 1990 on Halloween weekend. It was unclear how she came to be there. It took them a long time to identify her. Once they did through genetic genealogy, they found two relatives who were able to give them more of a sense of where she had been working, where she'd been living, which put her in that area. and then their chief suspect was killed in a motorcycle accident and suddenly people came forward who had been scared of him and they told the story of what they saw and what they knew and it turns out it was not Dennis Rader yes you know so you know that's an important case to show that despite all the things that looked very much like it was Dennis Rader, it wasn't. Can I backtrack a little bit? The reason why, I want to just clear this up for myself, was the reason why they even began to think he might be connected to more cases was because he insinuated something along the lines of there might be some trophies left in the bar. No, no, no. Yes, no, explain. I know that they moved to shit. Okay, I can tell you what happened. Yes, please, please, please. It's all very confusing. It can all be very confusing. I started reading and I was just like, how did we even get to this point? Because I know they got to his journals and they got to his letters. But how did we get to there? It kind of started because in Oklahoma and Paul Heska, Oklahoma, this young woman went missing from a laundromat. Witnesses put her in the company of two people, which is not the way Dennis Rader operates. She's never been found. We don't even have a body. We don't know what happened to her. But Sheriff Verdon decided to read through some journals that Rader had written that were in the custody of Wichita police. And he saw a little short entry called Bad Wash Day. Yes. And he went to talk to Rader and Rader even said, yes, I used to fantasize about that was a good way to get victims, but it never it never worked out. So essentially, bad wash day might be bad wash day for him instead of the victim. That's what I mean by the ambiguity. Yeah, it's like how they said in Woodstock, the bad acid wasn't that it wasn't driving people insane. It was that it was that it was extremely weak acid. It just didn't do its job. So Sheriff Verdon went to the former property where Raiders House had been. It had been torn down. It's just an empty lot now. been that way since 2006 or so. And he found a knotted pantyhose. He's like, oh, well, yeah, he would have left this behind. This is his favorite thing. There's a number of things, first of all, maybe not connected to Raider at all because it's been a vacant lot that leads into a park and who knows. Or do you think people go and screw around there at night because it was BTK's old house? Maybe. Or Rader said he used to tie plants to stakes with knotted pantyhose, as many people do, actually. Oh, wow. So, or it is one of his pieces from a hit kit, but it's to a victim we already know about. Interesting. So there's a number of things here that don't lead us to think he's got another victim. There was also a letter that he wrote to the woman who had initially gotten me involved in writing this book. And he had said to her, he thought there were some trophies from known victims. He didn't say these were new victims or she would have never, you know, she would turn that over to the police immediately. He said he thought he had moved them. They had been buried under his shed. He had a lot of hidey holes, really a lot of them. That's what he called them, hidey holes. And he thought he had moved them, but could she just go see? So Sheriff Burden has that letter. So he decides to dig on the property where the shed had once been. And he claims that he had items of interest. Okay. And that was back in, I think, September of 2023. so he formed task force among the people in that task force are criminalists including top dna experts so here we are may you know almost june 2024 why haven't they been tested so instead of coming out with results of a dna test especially on the pantyhose well but he couldn't really do that because he's handling them with his bare hands so but he still set kept telling me he was going to get it tested and by now you should have test results and now they came out with now last week they came out with um this word puzzle that yes later had sent in 2004 so yeah what's this all about OK, so if you had the puzzle, you can see how he writes these lines. Yeah. So my name's in there, if you do it that way. Yeah, yeah, it's busy. About me in 2004. We found a number of people's names in there. If you make enough of those kinds of connections. It's like the Torah codes where people say they can find damn near anything in the Bible through numerology. You can find anything in Dennis Rader's cypress. Yeah, except that I will say this. Rader had put his own street number in from his at-home address, and he had put it in an odd way, 6220, and then another zero was underneath the middle two. So Sheriff Vernon took that to mean, oh, well, then it isn't just straight lines. Oh, yeah. So I'm free to draw these lines in this variety of ways. the way because of what Rader did. But I'm going to tell you, if all those victim names are in there, Rader is a master at coding. I don't think that he is, actually. He's got free time. Yeah. And then the Arkansas team of detectives came to talk to him about a woman named Dana Stidham, who around the time of Garber, You know, she also had been bound and killed and her body dumped. And if you put D-A-N-A and the A is below D-A-N, like Rader did with his address, Dana is there. Because they had shown, just for our listeners that don't know, there was one of the pieces of evidence that came out that said the name, they used it to spell out the name of the missing girl that they were looking for out of, and then it said the words laundromat, right? Then he did a whole, you could see that, and then it said the name of the town she had went missing from. But then now that makes a lot of sense, saying like, oh, it's just a bunch of letters. Anybody can make anything. In order to get some of those names and words, I mean, when was the name of the street or something? You had to do all this sort of crisscrossing. Yes. And you can find anything if you try hard enough with that puzzle. It's Yahtzee. And I still say, if that is evidence, bring charges. Yeah. Don't just play this out in the media. You have a task force full of experts. bring charges. So why aren't they like, why are they going to the media? No, I don't. He doesn't talk to me anymore. Ask too many uncomfortable questions. Well, you know, the thing is I've been put in this weird position of being Dennis Raider's spokesperson which is not to say I I his advocate for innocence in this but I agree with him He shouldn confess to something he didn do Because also why would he And if they sure that they have evidence against him bring it So is the only reason why they're bringing these charges or at least hinting that or saying that BTK is responsible is just because of the way the bodies were found? The bodies were found bound or that? But it's sort of confusing because I know one of the you said one of the bodies was found and one of them was never found. Yeah. The original victim that started this all has never been found. Right. So why do you think they chose Dennis Rader of all people? Well, because the way the sheriff puts it is it was a revelation he had while watching TV late one night that, you know, Raider, Oklahoma, that borders, Kansas, and that area of southeastern Kansas is where he grew up. He traveled during 1990, early 90s for the census from one state to another. He had a lot of projects on his project list, only 10 of which resulted in murder. But he stalked a lot of victims. He has the bad wash day journal entry. He liked abandoned barns. And apparently, according to the sheriff, some anonymous caller said that Rader had left a body in an abandoned barn on the border of Oklahoma and Kansas. Did he or didn't he? I don't know. You know, he never put that on his project list that he gave to me. And when I've talked with him, you know, I've kind of been the recipient of him talking to me about all the different law enforcement people coming in. The FBI came in. He had Arkansas, I think two teams from Missouri, Oklahoma and Kansas. And yet no charges brought. And when I was one of the things that did kind of bother me was Sheriff Burden was sure he knew that the reason Dennis wouldn't confess is he didn't want to be moved from the prison he was in. Because then he'd have to go to Oklahoma. So that's his abiding, that is his most, the strongest motivation to say nothing. And I said, no, it isn't. His strong, it's in the book, but Sheriff wouldn't read the book. It's in the book. His strongest motivation is to be famous. Yeah. So, and he has told them, you want to move me, bring charges. Would you say that's the grand function of his, like, instigating communication with the police and stuff like making a word game? Like, he has no, like what you say, he's not an expert at making cryptograms. Like, he's not a puzzle expert. What drives somebody like Dennis Rader to do something like that? Because he liked codes. And during 2004, before he was arrested, he was playing this cat and mouse game. Yeah. And he enjoyed the media attention to what he was doing. So he was putting things in cereal boxes like. Yes. Serial killer. He would have been great on TikTok. I think that Dennis Rader honestly would have really appreciated the NPC culture. I think so, because he really liked the idea that he had a fan base that he was entertaining. At the same time, he was he was showing the cops that he was superior to them. And, you know, he was ordering them about here's what you will do. And if you want to get further communications from me, he made up stories about victims. he'd mix similar to that word puzzle he'd mix facts about his life with fictions to keep him guessing and to keep them looking, you know, running around looking for leads and whatnot. Does he have a book? Did he write a book? Is he never a book or a journal? Are we ever going to see any? He had lots of journals. He kept journals of what he was doing. Do you think we'll ever see any of that or that's just going to go? That's what Eddie's putting out there. Oh, that's the next. That's where the wash day, bad wash day. Oh, you know, that I know. But I mean, like, I mean, I'm talking about like the compendium. Are we getting the full? No, I don't. I mean, it's hard. It's scribbly. It's not like a narrative that's articulate and well put together. Just scribbly little notes here and there. Is it kind of boring? No, because some of it was when he was talking about the murders, he put those in detail. And then he used that to create these chapters. Yeah. And here's actually what happened, because I was working for Court TV at the time, their crime library website. And we had written a case, written up the BTK case before a raider was caught. So it was laid out, you know. And then this author, this attorney in Wichita, decided that he was going to write a book about the unsolved BTK killings. and he had seven and Rader knew there were 10. So he read an interview with the author and did not want his story told by this guy because it would be the wrong story. And he wanted to control the narrative. So he then started writing these long chapters. He wrote 13 chapter titles. And then in each of these cereal boxes, he put a chapter in of the murders. and the funny thing is though he wanted and he denies this but he's wrong because his chapter titles were our chapter titles yes he like yeah he adds a word here or there no i i never saw any of that i said oh yes you did yeah yeah so um but yeah so he did write a lengthy piece and he didn't get all of them to the police because he was arrested, but they found more of them. Then he would take the originals and copy them and then copy the copies to erase any track from a copy machine because they had figured out he'd been copying things in Wichita State University, so he was much more careful. And that was his downfall because he didn't have a lot of time to go running around to these copy machines. So he knew how to use a computer. And he asked, he asked a cyber cop, can you trace an anonymous, like a, you know, disk or anonymous email? And the cyber cop said no. Not because, no, he accidentally, he did not know the answer to that. And he has written his own article about how his mistake actually led to this. But so what happened is Rader then put an ad. Then he wrote to the. Wrote a postcard to the. Task force and said, put an ad in the paper to let me know that I can send you a computer disk. And and it's safe for me. And they thought this is for real. So they you know, he did. But it was a disk that he had been using as the president of his church council. on the church's computer. And had he used a clean disk at a library computer, he probably would have gotten away with it. But he didn't. He used one with his name in some of the data that he erased, and they were able to track it back to that church. And the pastor said, yes, Dennis Rader is the president of our congregation, and he's been using the computer. And that's what his downfall was, is that he didn't have time to make these copies of copies. So you mentioned that you'd written up the BTK story before Dennis Rader was caught. So when Dennis, when it was finally released, that it was a regular family man, a civil servant, you know, somebody like a, you know, Pastor Dennis, when it was released, you know, when his identity was released, like, what were your first thoughts? Well, I didn't write it was one of our we had a stable of writers who wrote for the court TV. But I remember media calling me and saying, oh, first of all, they were kind of disappointed that he was such a like a doughy old family man. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They all wanted the next Ted Bundy. Right. It didn't surprise me that much because because I study serial killers. We have a lot of serial killers with families and jobs and whatnot. That that formula that they're the loners and whatnot, that that's old from the 1990s based on very poor data. And so it didn't it wasn't that big of a surprise to me. The idea that a man lives a double life, honestly, that's no surprise. So do you think that there are more or there have been more Dennis Raiders out there than we really know? Like it's Dennis Raider is just he's not a rare case. He's not a rare case. And look, remember Sam Little? Yes. Who claimed 93 victims over the course of several decades because he knew how to choose victims that he knew would be well under the radar for police to put any resources into it. He specifically looked for victims who were sex workers, drug addicts, hitchhikers, people that just would not draw resources. And he got away with it for a long time. And so when we discover him, right, but all that time he was operating. So we don't know how many other people might be like that. How do we reconcile the differences between somebody like Samuel Little, who will say nothing about his crimes, right? Like, he is now there trying to sort of attach murders to him. But it does sort of like, because he says that he drew pictures of a lot of his victims. But I have no idea, like, what you can corroborate, what's real or what's not. And then there's somebody like Samuel Little, who says very little, truly very little. And then Dennis Rader, who says everything, who's also probably one of the most unreliable people. because he's a serial killer. Like, how do you trust a serial killer that what they're saying is true? Well, because you do use corroborating evidence. Yes. And the Raider also drew a lot of pictures, and that's what some of these task force is trying to use pictures to identify victims. I mean, you can't identify a victim from a picture, from a drawing. No, because how would they know? Like, even Samuel Little after all these years. But the way they did with Sam Little, was he would say locations, times, use the drawing, and then the officers would be able to see, did they find a body there at that time that looked like this drawing? That's how you corroborate it. And Rader, certainly with all of the 10 victims he took credit for, it's all corroborated. Everything he said he did is corroborated by the scenes, by the evidence. So he's not a totally unreliable person. I mean, what I find fascinating about all this is that you say that, you know, Dennis Rader, of course, his big motivation is to be famous. You know, he wanted to be seen on par with the Zodiac Killer and, you know, and Jack the Ripper. What is it that keeps him from claiming more victim? Like, what is it a sense of pride that he has that keeps him from saying, like, because 11 victims, 12 victims would make him more notorious than 10. What is it that keeps him from claiming more in order to get more fame, in order for people to keep talking about BTK? Where his morality lies? They do have some sense of morality, oddly enough. I mean, it's each one of them has weird lines they won't cross. Ted Bundy I was just listening to a bunch of his interviews over the weekend for a documentary and he had some John Wayne Gacy had they do It not like they totally devoid of you know any sense of integrity It's just not as developed as it is for most other people. But I think that's the big question. Why isn't Dennis Rader confessing to and getting more fame? he says to me and to those associates of his who've known him for a while and i've known him for 14 so 14 years yeah he says i'm not going to admit to something i didn't do he he even said i'm going to have the number 10 tattooed on me so that if i die it'll still be there and nobody can change it very interesting because also you could see him not wanting to claim something that he wasn't necessarily proud of. But it is he is a it's weird. This is a massive pride for him. This was his life's work. Well, and here's why the Missouri detective team, when they went over and talked to him for hours, I mean, he was willing to talk with them. But they said the difference between when he talked about his own murders and then when he discussed the one we were interested in, The difference in his demeanor, his interest level, his excitement told us he was not our guy. Yeah. Yeah. Do you think like an officer would try to tie a cold case to someone famous like Rader just to get more eyeballs on the investigation in general? Could be. I'm not going to accuse anybody of that, but it does get eyes on it in a way that it wouldn't in any other context. Well, earlier you said that you've known Dennis Rader for 14 years, but what does it mean to know Dennis Rader? Well, he says that I probably know him better than anybody. I've spent many, many, many hours in conversation with him in a lot of contexts and also know the entire police interrogation. I knew the DA before I ever met Dennis Rader. She was a friend of mine. So she gave me access to files she had. I know many of his correspondents and I see letters he wrote, he writes to them. So I know him from a lot of different angles, not just what the face he shows to me. I've seen him in a lot of moods. I don't know what, what do you think it takes to know someone like that? So funny, guys, I guess it's really, you get to know someone. And we talked with Karen Conti, who worked with John Wayne Gacy for years. And I guess with on my end. Well, it wasn't that many years. Well, yeah, but like she got to know him in that way. I agree. But when in her book, she details the time she spent with him. It wasn't years. Yeah. But, you know, the idea of like for us as people on the outside, I view somebody like Dennis Rader as like a Batman villain inside of Arkham Asylum. He's in a glass. He's a Hannibal Lecter. he's in a glass cell but it's like it really is just asking the general questions of like what's it like to just hang out with the guy like what's it like to go at like because you probably ate lunch with him you know what I mean like it's very interesting for us to know that he's walking around still just an old man I related to her but I know her and related to her book in that like Raider and I would watch TV shows and discuss them like anybody oh did you catch that episode So what did you think? You know, we talk about politics. We talk about what's going on in the world. We talk about things that matter to him. He would count me as a friend. Yeah, I'm sure he thinks that I've been he thinks I'm a good friend because I have helped to advise him on some of this when he thought that it would be fun to play games with these officers. um that's initially what why he would meet with them for hours because he thought he always had the upper hand and then found out he really doesn't yeah because he can't walk out of there and they can make whatever they want with whatever he says so he he's i think been kind of humbled by what has happened in the media with these cases being linked to him and doesn't like it it's not like he's going, whoa, look at me. I'm in the press. He doesn't like it. But I don't know. I don't think he's that deep, frankly, that you have to spend, you know, it's not like getting to know a philosopher or something. Henry needs to know, what is his favorite television show? He loves watching American movie classics. Oh, sure. I could see him be a classics guy Yeah I could see westerns Yeah he's always talking about whatever Old movie he's seen that Reminded him of his childhood Sure meet me in St. Louis I imagine he was a big Judy Garland Guy I could see him be I don't think he was He liked Annette Funicello From the Mouseketeers that was a big one for him Yes that's really weird Because my mom is like a dead ringer for Annette Funicello So that's scary Well, I think his mother was probably very, looked very close to her as well. And that's something that I wanted to ask you about is that you mentioned, you know, Annette Funicello. And I know that he, when he was younger, had a lot of very dark fantasies about Annette Funicello. And one of the things that has always fascinated me about BTK is that, you know, a lot of every serial killer that you read, you know, every biography starts off with the horrific childhood, starts off with the abuse. with Dennis Rader, there wasn't really any, there hasn't been any evidence. Like all the evidence points towards Dennis Rader having a normal childhood, no abnormalities at all. So, I mean, is there something hidden there, do you think? Or is he just like this? Well, it's one of the reasons I wanted to work with him is he's an outlier to the formulas, but he's not the only one. I mean, I know of others that do not have any kind of horrific childhood. that is a formula that's a an idea that they all have yeah yeah and to the point where i've been told by some experts in the field oh he just lied to you well okay but i talked to other people who knew him as a kid too and there wasn't really his family was like all american middle class kansas religious family, both parents, both sets of grandparents, you know, a farm kid, oldest of four brothers, had buddies in high school, had girlfriends. I mean, he didn't have abuse in his background. Do you weirdly think that that's why, I hate to again, use this term, that was what made him quote unquote successful, what he did for so long, and then sort of like fell apart, is that this almost because there wasn't a sort of like insane comorbidity in his brain. You know what I mean? Like the idea that he wasn't a completely, totally crazy person. Success had a lot to do with luck. Yeah. Yeah. Because he made mistakes and he knew he did and he was scared, but the police didn't pick up on it. And, you know, it's the 70s. They didn't have all the things we have today. They didn't have databases. They didn't have forensic instruments. They didn't have DNA. There's all kinds of things they did not have as an aid in investigation. And serial murder in 1974, my Lord, they hardly knew anything. So you say you wanted to study him because he was an outlier. What did you find? Well, he was an outlier in that he studied killers from the 1950s and 60s through two detective magazines to adopt these role models. There aren't many serial killers who have done that. So that was unusual. And that he was more of, you know, he wasn't a reactive serial killer. It wasn't anger. It wasn't the lust was certainly part of it, but he wasn't. It wasn't the murders that were part of what turned him on. It was the bondage. Yeah. So once he's done things to people, he's got to kill him because otherwise they'll identify him and turn him in. But to some serial killers, the murder is the highlight. That is not true for Raiders. Yeah. So he had a number of things that were at least different enough for me to want to track this, track his trajectory to try to figure out how do we get somebody who's an all-American kid who becomes this family man, church leader, Boy Scout, volunteer, holding down jobs, and also has this dark life of serial murder because he wants to be an elite serial killer like Jack the Ripper, Ted Bundy, people like that. I have a question. This is extremely stupid, Dr. Ramsland. So please, I'm going to ask this question. Just you can answer it or not. But I have a thought in my head. I'm nervous. It's going to come out just like this. Let's say there was a world where you could make these types of like live dolls. You've seen these live dolls, right? They look just like people. They're like silicone and big. What if there was a world where somebody got like BTK could you give them five of them and you go go to town on like he's a bunch of ropes. Here's all the stuff like you go to town. We'll send them back after. Do you think that that would actually help somebody like that? I didn't mean to make that the thumbs up emoji go because it's just inappropriate. I didn't know where that came from. Would that be like, you think that would ever fix any of these guys or help any of these guys? Or is it just like, you know, you know what I mean? Am I crazy? The idea of like going to a place where you can get it out of your system. I'm not sure I'm following you. Are you trying to say, how do we use this for intervention? Is that what you're turning out? Essentially like robot mannequins that you can do your BTK thing to. And then you leave them like an escape room. You want a smashing room for serial killers. Yes. do you think i would get it out of their system he thought he thought so he said that had there been s&m clubs that he could go to or something like that where he had a way to to vent and you know just let off some of the pressure of the the kinds of fantasies he had he thought that would actually have made a difference for him but there were s&m clubs he could have no i guess not in Wichita. In Kansas? I mean, it's good. I actually feel like a lot of it is just, you just have to ask Farmer John. You'd be surprised who likes getting spanked down the hills. No, we're talking 1970s, 1980s, in a very religious community. He can't be, it's going to have to be somewhere else. He can't be seen going into something like that. You've got to go to the Ozarks for that. Yeah, I know. President of, I think he's vice president and president. And I mean, he's he's got a family. He's got appearances to keep up. So it's not as if he can just go join some S&M club. But I don't think there were any in Wichita at the time. Not in Wichita, but I was just reading about David Parker Ray and, you know, in his life. And there was some wild shit going down in Albuquerque in the 70s and 80s that he was a part of. He was in a very isolated place, too, with his toy box. Yeah. He also had accomplices who were bringing people to him. Yeah. Yeah. So he was in a very different kind of situation. It's a different situation, but I also found myself seeing some similarities between David Parker Ray and Dennis Rader. But he didn't have that middle class wife and kids and church and he didn't have that wasn't him. David Parker Ray technically was living the dream. Yeah. You know what I mean? Did Dennis Rader wish he could have lived the life that David Parker Ray did? I think so. I think that's true. I think he would have preferred to have been a different in a different environment than he ended up in. Do you don think he still would have ended up killing that it would have gone too far for him That if let say he was in Sanford like literally like choose a city a modern city now where you could go and live life in any way you want and you can go live whatever life cell you want do you think that in the end that would actually have been enough for him it depends on the direction his fantasies would have taken him yes because the first murder the Otero family it was supposed to only be two people yeah he He planned badly that day. But he had just been fired from a job he really liked. He was feeling like a failure because now his wife was supporting him. You know, the values of the middle America in the 1970s. The wife is not supporting the husband. And he felt like a failure. He was angry. And he was acting out. Had that not happened, and he had a way to discharge his fantasies, I think it's possible that he wouldn't have done something like that. And after he got the first taste of it, I guess it was just all downhill from there. Yeah, pretty much. And to that point, I mean, you know, of course, the big thing about BTK is that, you know, he would pop up every once in a while and then just suddenly stopped and went dormant and didn't do anything else until he finally resurfaced. That's not true. It's not. Those are the other true crime books. he says he gave me a list of 55 projects of people he stopped whose homes he entered where he waited they would have died had they come home or had he had enough time to fully stop them the way he wanted to he had a lot of people in his scope and he has said i didn't stop i just didn't succeed Wow. Were those people notified? Some. You came close? Yeah, some were. I never want to know. And people to this day ask me, am I on that list? Did he visit my house at such and such a street? Would you please ask him? I don't know why they want to know. Yeah, yeah. Don't tell me. I don't want to know how many times I almost died. I also hear, you know, along with all this new potential, new victims for him, I now have a number of women who claim he picked them up or he, you know, there was one on Nancy Grace who claimed he danced with her in a nice suit. And I thought, well, that's not him. But for some reason, she got, you know, enough believers to get on a show. I've had women claim that he sat with them at their kitchen table and they and and then left all of a sudden said, if that were him, you would be dead. You would not be telling me this story. And he's not that memorable of a guy. I don't think you I don't know. So ordinary that I'm amazed that people think they're so right. They know a car he drove. He never had that kind of car. So it's but there's a whole book on people who think Ted Bundy stopped them or picked them up or did this and that and it wasn't physically possible for him to have been with them at that time and yet they persist in their claims that it was ted bundy famously yeah debbie harry the lead singer of blotty she's one of them yeah she's one of them he wasn't anywhere near where she was all this btk talk has made me happy i have a small closet Yes, it is very, no walk-ins. You know, and I don't mean this as a criticism, but as a person that's looking from the side, I'm going to say I saw some recent pictures of Dennis and he's not looking good. Have you talked with him about fillers? Or have you talked with him about any sort of cosmetic fixes or anything? Because he's, honestly, he's not looking great. No teeth. None. He's got scoliosis. So he's all bent over. He's lost something like six inches from his height. Wow. Geez. He's not in good shape. No. He knows it. He's 78. I mean, he's not young. People change when they get older. Yeah, yeah, of course. And he doesn't have great care either or exercise or great nutrition or any of that. Yeah, right. Because they just kind of like watch him, essentially. Yeah. Do you think, because when you say he doesn't have great care or anything like that, I guess, what do you think Dennis Rader deserves? Is it just like any other human being? That's not really within my scope of expertise. I don't study prison systems or any of that. And I don't really, I don't know. I don't want to even take a stand on that. Sure. Fair enough. Absolutely. And I'm about to go to crime con. Oh, yeah, exactly. We stopped going to crime cons because, like, honestly, I get scared of the other true crime podcasters. Why are you guys going to crime? Are you going to be there? Well, the last time we went, to be honest, the last time we went to CrimeCon was a very, very early CrimeCon. One of the very first ones. Which one? Indianapolis. It was in Indianapolis. Oh, I think that was the first one. It was. I'm pretty certain. And I just remember it was a lot of Nancy Grace at 845 in the morning. Like, seeing her live in person in a hotel lobby when you haven't had coffee yet, like, it's a lot. Yeah. She's pretty much a star with CrimeCon. everywhere she goes it's the nancy grace show no she walked through with a massive entourage bodyguards wearing her uggs she's on she's on the task force for all this she's the head of the task force oh she is yeah she most of the people on eddie burden's task force are people associated with nancy grace in a media capacity damn she must lift weights too she's strong No. You haven't sat her down and asked her about her exercise routine? Nope. This is awesome. Thank you so much for talking with us, Dr. Rims. You're the best. Thank you for putting up with me. Thank you so much. And before we go, what's your latest project? What's your newest book that you have out? Well, the one I finished today. Holy shit. You finished a book today? I did. Congrats. I published a book for my horse. For your horse? You wrote a book for your horse? Who did your horse kill? I ride a horse. And he said, he says, enough of this crime. Right. My boy. Do you actually, can I ask that one thing about like your personal life in terms of serial killers and all this stuff? Does it affect, like, we've now been in the quote unquote serial killer business for like almost 15 years and it's hurting me emotionally and mentally every day. What do you do? Like, what do you do to sort of like. I groom a horse. Yeah. I groom a horse and ride a horse. I work, I actually volunteer in a horse farm. I drag the field. I drive tractors. I do. Yeah, it's great. I'm about to retire from my current job, which I'm very happy about. Yeah. I will continue to teach online graduate courses, but I'm about to end my academic career. Well, congratulations. Which is great. But in terms of the most recent book that's relevant to you all is The Serial Killer's Apprentice, where I spent a year talking to Elmer Wayne Henley Jr. about his being an accomplice to Dean Corll. We need to have a further conversation. So much more to the story than what Jack Olson wrote in his, you know, Candyman book from 1974. There's so much more to the story that has never been put out there. And it was very interesting. I'll tell you, Wayne Henley is a really smart person, easy to talk to, very articulate and has a lot to say about what happened. So can we have you back to talk about that after we've read that book? I would absolutely love to. I am fascinated about the possibilities of John Wayne Gacy, Dean Corll, and all of them kind of like, maybe not knowing each other, but being like one degree. Well, that's part of the book. It's because my co-author is Tracy Ullman, who did 10 years of work on the Gacy case. Yes. Hilarious. She did a lot of the work on the networking that Corll talked about. And we know that Gacy was fascinated with the Corll case. so but that's tracy oldman's part and i can have her on the show as well we can both be on the show but what she brings to the to it was um this the bigger picture that the police never investigated that's awesome i mean not awesome but you know i'm excited about the book this is like that is a fact that is like right down my street right now i've got i've that and rupaul's drag race yeah are really the two things I focus on quite a bit. Thank you so much, Dr. Ramsland. Thank you so much. We really do appreciate it. And yeah, we'll get on reading the book together and then we'll have you back to talk about it because it's very- It's right here behind me. That's incredible. Oh, and that's out now? Yeah. Oh, so we should plug your book. Well, we just did. That's why I'm going to CrimeCon is to speak about this book and my experience of talking with Wayne. That's fascinating. Well, I'll see you at HorseCon. Oh, yeah. No kidding. Oh, good idea. Thank you so much. All right. Thanks. We'll be released. Bye. Thank you. Right from your grave. What an amazing interview that just was. My God. Because, you know, I guess we always hesitate favor. That's always. But, you know, Dennis Rader, I find fascinating. Of course. And it was so great to talk to somebody who arguably the person who knows Dennis Rader the best. And Dr. Ramsland has a very interesting approach. It's also kind of reminds me all the time of why we do what we do here at Last Podcast on the Left, reminding ourselves all the time that serial killers are people. Yeah. And there are humans in there. And it's so weird to just imagining just like with Dr. Ramsland just talking TV. Yeah. With Rader talking about. Talking about whatever's on TCM. I wanted to ask if he was a Biden voter. But I didn't want to get in trouble. You're not allowed to vote in there. Oh, yeah, he can't vote, right? Yeah, he can't vote. Non-voting felons. Oh, man, he can't rock the boat. No, I want him to fuck the boat. I want him to talk about, like, did you see last night? There was Sudden Fear. It's an underrated Betty Davis film. I absolutely loved Palm Royale. Kristen Wiig is a revelation. You know what I took away from it was when she said the person that they were trying to pin the murder on, on him, one of them, there was someone who died in a motorcycle crash and everyone said that was the person who killed him. We were just all scared of him. We should start looking at all these motorcycle crashes. You've got to be careful. But her new book, we mentioned it at the very end. She talked about it at the very end. It just came out last month. It's called The Serial Killer's Apprentice. We are absolutely going to be reading this book and bringing her back on the show to talk about this. Oh, yes. It is about Elmer Wayne Henley. Elmer Wayne Henley. His assistant. I mean, yeah, because it's the Candyman murders that predated John Wayne Gacy. They were the number one highest body count in American zero killing history until John Wayne Gacy. And there was only one book ever written about this that was written years ago. Oh, yeah. It's older than us. Yeah, it's older than us. I think she said it was written in 1978. So this is incredible that there's a new book out about Dean Corll and what actually happened way back in Houston in the 1970s. I can't wait because this is extremely fascinating. It talks about my little pet interest about Dean Corll and the connection to John Wayne Gacy and the various snuff film. I guess there was literally a mail-order snuff film system that was happening for a long time. We'll talk about this. A legend. A legend. Well, hmm. What else, Nathan? Hair gene. Hair Catherine Ramsden. It's good work, guys. You just said hair. You just said hair. Well, hailer too. Thank you for enjoying the last update on the left. You can find other shows that you'll enjoy from the Last Podcast Network on lastpodcastontheleft.com. See you there.