That creepy ADT guy on ‘Mindhunter’? He’s based on a Kansas serial killer!
If you spent any time checking out Netflix’s new “Mindhunter” television series over the weekend and you’re from Wichita, you might have gotten an eerie feeling from the ADT serviceman who showed up in Episode Two.
The uniform. The glasses. The mustache. His strictness about office supplies.
The fact that he’s from Kansas.
It all seems a little too familiar, right?
That’s because the ADT guy is based on Dennis Rader, the BTK serial killer who terrorized the Wichita area for more than 30 years.
The 10-episode series is based on the book “Mind Hunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit” co-written by former FBI Special Agent John Douglas, who pursued some of the country’s most notorious serial killers. Douglas is the real-life inspiration for Jack Crawford, the FBI agent-in-charge in “The Silence of the Lambs” and Thomas Harris’ other Hannibal Lecter novels.
“Mindhunter” premiered Friday on Netflix.
The series is set in 1977, after Rader had already murdered seven of his 10 victims – many of whom he stalked and strangled. Rader, who called himself BTK — for Bind Torture Kill — worked as an ADT Security Services installer from 1974 to 1988 in Wichita.
He lived in Park City until his arrest in 2005. His murder spree stretched from 1974 to 1991.
Mindhunter’s ADT serviceman first appears in the opening scene of Episode Two and continues making appearances throughout the show, including scenes where he’s shown mailing a letter and practicing tying a knot, according to reports about the show. (Rader sent graphic letters and riddles to Wichita news organizations and police while he evaded capture and used ropes to bind some of his victims.)
The series finale closes in Park City with the ADT serviceman tossing sketches of what appear to be bound victims into a burning barrel outside of a house.
Rader, who is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences in El Dorado Correctional Facility, kept souvenirs from his victims and is known to have a fondness for drawing.
There’s no official word yet on whether the character based on Rader will appear in a second season.
Who is BTK?
Dennis Rader was a husband, a sexual pervert, a Boy Scout volunteer, a murderer, church leader, child killer, stalker. He terrorized Wichita for 31 years.
One of the most diabolical serial killers in American history was forgotten to the ages. In the 1970s, Dennis Rader, the self-titled BTK (Bind ’em, Torture ’em, Kill ’em), terrified Wichita, Kansas with his horrifying murders. And then, just like that, he vanished. In 2004, he reemerged from his self-exile, and a year later he was behind bars for crimes that were barely remembered outside longtime Wichita residents. His desire for attention was a fascinating look inside the mind of a serial killer. How he became such a monster is an important case study to prevent others from taking his dark passage.
For a guy who fashioned himself as an evil genius killer terrorizing Wichita, Rader was pretty stupid. The 1977 pronunciation of “homicide” was seen as a clue, but it was only a clue to how dumb Rader was. His first communication to the press was so riddled with grammatical errors that most assumed it was done on purpose. It wasn’t. “I write this letter to you for the sake of the tax payer as well as your time. Those three dude you have in custody are just talking to get publicity for the Otero murders. They know nothing at all. I did it by myself and with no ones help. There has been no talk either. Let’s put this straight . . . ” That was Rader’s attempt to put forward his best grammar. Rader was a poor student in high school and college. He did eventually receive a degree from Wichita State, but it was when he was much older (and in his killing days). He once accidentally left a draft of a communication out for his wife to find. He explained it off as a writing experiment in one of his classes. Years later, after reading over a letter to one of his brothers, she noted, “You spell just like BTK.” No one ever put the two together despite the surprising fact that Rader didn’t try to hide his poor grammar when composing his BTK communications.
Dennis Rader is a coward and a vicious killer; there’s no doubt about that. He ruined the 10 lives he took and did untold damage to the surviving members of their families. Charlie Otero, the eldest Otero child, suffered greatly at the loss of his parents and two youngest siblings. He arrived home shortly after his two other siblings discovered the gruesome crime scene. Charlie’s life ended that day for all intents and purposes—he lost his faith, he lost his desire to achieve his career goals (Wichita State and a career in the Air Force, like his father), and became obsessed with finding out who killed his father. He didn’t learn until much later they were the victims of a serial killer.
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