Episode 5: BTK — He Asked If He Could Be Caught

He lived a completely normal life.

Husband. Father. Church member. Nothing about him stood out.

But over time, something else was happening—something hidden, controlled, and deliberate.

And eventually…

he started communicating.

Not to confess.

But to be known.

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Hey, let's do that again.

SPEAKER_02 0:11

Tell me the crime. Tell me the crime.

SPEAKER_00 0:15

Yeah, tell me. Come on, tell me the crime. Yeah, yeah. Well, be before we get to that, um I gotta let everyone know that uh I screwed this up twice already. I said I said to you, because you're like, get it on with, get it on with because uh the well the last one I I tried to record it, but I pressed play and we only realized like a couple minutes in. She was like, God damn it. Like, what are you doing? You idiot. Um okay, so uh we're back, and this is episode five, and I apologize sincerely for missing uh uh Friday's release, and that was completely my fault, but uh I was sick for a couple of days and then we had to leave to Chicago for a conference.

SPEAKER_02 1:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 1:01

So uh we were out for a few days. Yes, yep, we were there on Saturday. But anyway, uh apologies, but because of that, I will release um two episodes uh well tomorrow. This one yes, you will be the narrator, and I will be the narrator. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. She's like, yeah, you're not. You you're gonna take this one because you messed up.

SPEAKER_02 1:28

And plus I'm busy.

SPEAKER_00 1:29

Yeah, she's super busy because this one is uh trying to wrap up her PhD. I know. What a little smarty pants. Yeah, so she's a little bit busy. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:42

A little bit.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

So tell me the crime. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 1:46

Tell me the crime. What's the story about today?

SPEAKER_00 1:49

Okay. Today, the story is about BTK.

SPEAKER_02 1:55

BTK. What does that stand for?

SPEAKER_00 1:58

It is bind torture kill. So it's a very famous um serial killer in uh in North America that a lot of North Americans are very familiar with, but I figured it'd be nice to do sort of a more well-known case.

SPEAKER_02 2:14

Okay. Well, I have to do that.

SPEAKER_00 2:16

And you don't know on any of them, so that's so this is these are legit reactions.

SPEAKER_02 2:20

So that's well, I was actually trying to steal some information from you.

SPEAKER_00 2:24

Yeah, I know. Yeah, you were. Yeah, today we're at the grocery store. Yeah, she we were walking into the grocery store, she's like, so what's the podcast today about? And I was like, nice try. Like, come on, bro.

SPEAKER_02 2:37

I'm trying.

SPEAKER_00 2:38

Well, that's the yeah, but that's the whole point of this show.

SPEAKER_02 2:42

I know.

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Okay. Well, not the whole point, but you know, that's our that's our dynamic. All right. So before we start, I want you to picture someone very specific.

SPEAKER_02 2:53

You.

SPEAKER_00 2:54

Me, not me. Not me. Um okay, so this person is standing in a church. He's talking to people after the service, he's shaking hands, he's smiling, right? A kind person. Kind, normal guy, right? Yeah. He goes home, sits down for dinner, talks about his day. Nothing about him seems to stand out at all. Right, nothing weird. Nothing weird, nothing feels wrong, right?

SPEAKER_02 3:21

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 3:21

Okay. So you're just like, okay, so what's- this guy's the murderer. This guy is the murderer. You stole the line from me. No. So at some point during the same week, right, he's inside someone else's home. And he's not breaking in. He's already inside.

SPEAKER_02 3:39

How?

SPEAKER_00 3:40

And he's waiting. Well, because he has done his planning, right? He has planned this out meticulously.

SPEAKER_02 3:49

If he did not break in someone's house, how how could he be inside?

SPEAKER_00 3:54

Well, I mean, he did break in, right? But I mean, it's not like that was a break and break in. It's not a break-in break, yeah, because he case he cases these places and he does detailed analyses before he actually does anything with it, right? He goes in and he's very careful, he's very methodical. Okay, so um now, because tonight's story is about a man who didn't look dangerous uh and who built his entire identity around control, he gave himself a name. Right? So the guy's saying exactly, right? So how how obnoxious do you have to be to give yourself a name? Um, so BTK, bind, torture, kill.

SPEAKER_02 4:41

Oh a noun phrase.

SPEAKER_00 4:44

A noun phrase, you mean. That's a noun phrase. How did I mention she's doing her PhD in linguistics?

SPEAKER_02 4:51

Sorry.

SPEAKER_00 4:52

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 4:52

I like to think about that kind of stuff.

SPEAKER_00 4:56

Yeah, why not? Um okay, so Dennis Rader is the real name. Is is the real name of this serial killer, right? He's born in 1945. And yeah, by the time he's caught in 2005, he's a 59-year-old man. And nothing about his life suggests what he's been doing. He's married, he has two children, he works for the city, he's active in his church. So he's not hiding, he's completely visible. And if you met him, you'd probably forget him, right? You'd probably think, yeah, it's just a normal regular guy, right? He's he's nothing to to nothing really standing out of the way. No, nothing suspicious about him. Nothing suspicious, right? So um let me give you some uh some context on the first murder, right? Because he did do quite a few um murders, right? There's at least 10 confirmed victims in total, right, before he was caught.

SPEAKER_02 5:57

When was his first time?

SPEAKER_00 5:59

When was his first time? Well, this is the first time was in 1974, January 1974, and that was in Wichita, Texas. Uh sorry, Wichita, Kansas.

SPEAKER_02 6:10

Um when he was around 30 years.

SPEAKER_00 6:14

Um something, yeah. Yeah, so I guess he would be around there. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 6:18

Yeah. Okay.

SPEAKER_00 6:19

Okay. So um, yeah, 29. I guess it would be exactly almost 30. Almost 30. So the Otero family is at home. Okay, it's a normal day, it's routine, nothing unusual. And at some point, Dennis Rader enters the house. He later explains that he has been planning this, watching, choosing. He doesn't rush, he takes control of the situation. And when police arrive later, they find four people dead.

SPEAKER_02 6:51

But the police when they when they arrive, they do not see him, right?

SPEAKER_00 6:58

No, no, no. They didn't see the body. The police just saw the figure. They just saw they just saw the four dead bodies. They were bound and clearly strangled.

SPEAKER_02 7:06

Did he take anything from the house?

SPEAKER_00 7:09

Uh no. This was not about this was not about robbery, that's not the motive at all, right? And this wasn't fast, right? Strangulation actually takes quite a bit of time. It requires presence, it requires control. Okay, so this is one of the most personal forms of killing. There's really no distance, right? So if you think about um a gun, for example, and you shoot a person with a gun, that's a lot easier to do than stabbing someone, let's say, right? Because there's there's more distance, right? Yeah. You can sort of you can think of it this way, too. If if you were to push a button to kill someone on the other side of the world, that'd be a lot easier to do if you didn't have to see it, right? There's the more and more distance, the easier it gets to do something like that. But strangulation is one of the most personal ways to kill someone because you have to have your hands around the person's neck looking them in the eyes.

SPEAKER_02 8:09

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 8:10

And you have to be like so, so personal. And in order to do that, it takes a certain mindset. Right? Especially if you're doing this for to those four people. I don't know. I mean that you and I are not those type of people. So we we I don't think we'll ever really understand, you know, people that do this. We can we can try to understand psychologically what's going on, but I don't think we'll fully ever understand.

SPEAKER_02 8:39

Like, did he drag them or did he lock some of them when he was doing it to one person?

SPEAKER_00 8:44

You know, well, he b he tied them up, right? So he bound them. I don't I don't remember hearing anything about drugs, but um it is possible. And it was in 1974 or two. Well, I guess there would probably be a lot of drugs around then, but um okay. So so let's talk about after the murders. Nothing happens publicly, there's no suspect, there's no clear direction, and months go by. So, you know, there's there's no clear direction for one reason being that he's not he, you know, there's nothing really attaching him to any of these crimes. Right?

SPEAKER_02 9:25

So yeah, but what about like fingerprints, you know, footprints.

SPEAKER_00 9:29

Fingerprints and all that stuff. That's you know, that that all the forensic evidence at the time was not as well um it was not as good, right? I mean, y DNA testing was was not really a thing then. I can't even remember when DNA testing came out, but it it you know it wouldn't have been great then for sure if it was even around at all. Um so months go by and then something unusual happens. Okay, a letter is found. Where well it's not mailed uh normally, and it's actually hidden, okay? It's left where it would be discovered, and it's inside a message, okay, from the killer. Two? He describes the crime in detail, and it's to um it's really to the public, but it's directed towards the police and the public, right? So he wants to communicate his crime, he wants recognition for this. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 10:31

And he sent it to like the police office or no, no.

SPEAKER_00 10:35

So this is this is what I was saying, it was hidden inside of a message, right? So he he sent it to a newspaper in a hidden message for people to find. And there were details of the crime that you know that hadn't been released, and so they knew that it was him. Okay, so he describes the crime in detail and and and information only the killer would know. And uh then he writes something about how these people were selected. Okay, now this is important. Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 11:11

So what's why did he select? Why?

SPEAKER_00 11:16

Well, I I don't think that it has anything to do with the particular people themselves. I think that he's he's just random selections. Yes, but he's but exact which is scarier, right? It's like they didn't do anything wrong.

SPEAKER_01 11:30

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 11:31

Um, it could be anyone, but he he selects people and then he does his research and makes sure that things are carefully planned out. Because he needs control, right? But he wants it understood that this wasn't random, this was intentional, and then he gives himself a name. So BTK, bind, torture, kill.

SPEAKER_02 11:55

So that's how he always did the murderer.

SPEAKER_00 11:58

Yep, exactly. And that's why he gave himself that name. So he, you know, it's it's it's interesting that he would give himself that name, right? Like, what do you think that might indicate about a person? If if if you heard someone like give themselves a name after they did something really good, you know, like I don't know.

SPEAKER_02 12:19

It's an award, it's a recognition, it's something that I wanted the people to know.

SPEAKER_00 12:25

Yeah, I want I want to be called this because I want to be recognized.

SPEAKER_02 12:29

Yeah, but it's usually for something positive, though. Like recognition is for something positive.

SPEAKER_00 12:34

I think so, yeah. You think so. But people want attention, right? You think about little kids too when they you know throw they throw little temper tantrums or or they they do stupid things when they're not being paid attention to uh because they they're getting some attention that's better than nothing, I guess, right? So so um, but this was clearly um a lot about recognition and control.

SPEAKER_02 13:00

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 13:01

Um and how he communicated, right? Uh you know, uh he he didn't call the police, right? I I mentioned he had a hidden message in in the newspaper, right? So he uses letters to newspapers and he left them in like public places. And communications were absolutely designed to be found. So um he wanted to make sure that everything uh in the interaction between the public and police was controlled. Right? He was a control freak, right? So he decides when to speak and he decides the complete narrative.

SPEAKER_02 13:40

So he uh would probably be satisfied when the police talk to the media that, oh, we found this. Yeah, we're looking for uh BTK.

SPEAKER_00 13:50

BTK, yeah. Yeah, I mean if I were the police, I probably would have just like not called them BTK just to piss them off. Like, wouldn't you? You'd be like, no, I'm not calling you that.

SPEAKER_02 14:00

So give me a real name.

SPEAKER_00 14:01

Yeah, we'll call you shit stain.

SPEAKER_02 14:06

Yeah, okay.

SPEAKER_00 14:07

Okay, anyway. So um so this is how he operates. He selects a vi a victim, he studies them, he watches their routines, knows when they're alone.

unknown 14:22

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:22

Right? So then so so so, like I said, he's very methodical, makes sure that he knows when he can go in and get them, right?

SPEAKER_02 14:32

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 14:33

Then one day he enters the home, sometimes before they arrive, and he just waits.

SPEAKER_02 14:41

Oh. But those people will be no that that would question why you here.

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Well, yeah, but that's the whole point. He's not gonna tell them he's there until he, you know, shows himself. They're gonna imagine coming home. You're not expecting a stranger in your house.

SPEAKER_02 14:59

Okay, that is a guess here. Yeah, but if that happens to me, I'm gonna find out.

SPEAKER_00 15:03

He's gonna be hiding in like the closet.

SPEAKER_02 15:05

I see. Oh no.

SPEAKER_00 15:06

Yeah, yeah. Like you you like hiding behind something or hide-up. I was screwed. You would have yeah, but again, remember, he's he's planned this out so that he knows they're alone, he knows probably the neighbors' routines, he probably knows when he can get someone and make sure he can get away with it. So it's very, very thought out.

SPEAKER_01 15:29

Mm-hmm.

SPEAKER_00 15:30

Okay, so when the moment actually comes, he doesn't act attack immediately, he establishes control first. So he ties them up, he restrains the movement, and then he removes any resistance.

unknown 15:44

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 15:45

Only then does the killing happen. So this is you know what people call an a very organized offense or uh offender, right? Some someone who who requires planning, control, and sequencing. Now here's the peep the part that like really makes people uncomfortable is that during all of this he's living a completely normal life. He's going to work, he's raising children, and he's participating in church. So at one point he's even working in home security.

SPEAKER_01 16:20

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 16:20

Yeah. Yeah, right? So the same man breaking into homes is helping other people protect theirs.

SPEAKER_02 16:29

That's his uh access, right? To go to the Well, yeah, that that's also good access.

SPEAKER_00 16:35

I mean, if if one of his victims that he was casing, um you know, happened to want a security system at some point and he installed it, he could install it in places that he knew, oh, I could enter through here and not be detected, or I could enter through here. That's scary. That's really scary to think of, like someone coming into your house installing things, you feeling safer because of that, but really that's the person that you should be afraid of. Yeah, so so this is not, you know, the you know, the if we if we talk a little bit about the psychology behind this, this is not anger, it's not revenge, it's something else entirely, right? It's it's control.

SPEAKER_02 17:22

Yeah, when you mention about, you know, an example of a kid who's crying or wants to get attention.

SPEAKER_00 17:29

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 17:29

Do you think it's something related to maybe childhood wound or you know that's that's the interesting thing, right?

SPEAKER_00 17:37

And um in this case, there wasn't like any childhood trauma or anything like that. It wasn't necessarily anything to do with that. It was more about sort of fantasy, and we'll go a little bit more into that, and reinforcement. But um control was really the experience here, right? It wasn't the killing, um, it was dominance and the ability to decide what happens next, when it happens, and how it ends.

SPEAKER_02 18:07

Right.

SPEAKER_00 18:07

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 18:08

Interesting.

SPEAKER_00 18:09

Yeah, so it it didn't just begin with murder, right? Um and and this is kind of true of a lot of cases of serial killers, right? Or you know, um people that eventually go on to kill um in a methodical manner like that. It's usually something that is reinforced and developed over time. So Rader later described um violent fantasies, control-based scenarios, and sexual arousal tied to dominance. Okay. So he got turned on by the idea of controlling someone and not letting them move, right? And and deciding when it is that they get to live or die, right? So that's that's something that was somehow a turn-on to him.

SPEAKER_02 19:01

Yeah, well, anything that is too much is not great, right?

SPEAKER_00 19:04

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 19:04

Like wants to have a lot of control and uh everything. It's like, no, right, we can't.

SPEAKER_00 19:12

Right, and this is and this is something that like again, this this started early, right, with just violent fantasies, and it would turn him on, and then he would think about it more and more and more. And that kind of strengthened that association. And eventually the fantasy just wasn't enough. And that usually happens, right? They progress into something where they start out with just the fantasy, and then they might test the waters a little bit with something, um, and then eventually it'll get to to killing because it kind of escalates over time. But so this is this is interesting, right? The the the man disappears at some point. He stops.

SPEAKER_02 19:58

He stopped killing people?

SPEAKER_00 19:59

He stops killing, yeah. So there's time goes on, right, and and no one is no one has any suspects. They can't well, I mean, I'm sure they have suspects, but they can't find the killer, they have no like good leads, nothing, right? And he out of nowhere just stops, and no one has any idea why. It's in the late 1970s, there's just no more killings, and years pass, then decades.

SPEAKER_02 20:25

Wow.

SPEAKER_00 20:26

Yeah, right? It's crazy, it's a long time. It's like he was he was uh turned on by all of this, he was doing all of these killings, and I think there's there's ten confirmed killings, right? And uh all of a sudden he just disappears for a couple for a couple of decades, right? So people are assuming that he is gone, that he's maybe dead, or maybe he moved, right? Or maybe, you know, he um maybe he encountered someone that fought back too hard, right? Uh you can imagine something like that would be a little bit hard for someone who needs that control, right?

SPEAKER_02 21:05

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Yeah, so so I don't know, maybe that's maybe that's something that maybe that's something that people are thinking, but but he's actually still there and he's living normally. He's just living his normal family life.

SPEAKER_02 21:18

Did he do the research for those decades uh for what he could do next?

SPEAKER_00 21:24

Well, that's that's the thing, right? I I mean he he could be, right? He could have planned out some elaborate set of schemes to you know for his next victims. Um but um we don't actually know because um and we'll get to that in a in a second. Um two thousand and four he reappears.

SPEAKER_02 21:50

What so that's from nineteen seventies to two thousand and four.

SPEAKER_00 21:58

So like it was like I said it was a It was a long, long hiatus, right? Um and he reappears, but not with violence, with communication. And he sends letters to the media again. He reintroduces himself. He reminds people, BTK is still here.

SPEAKER_02 22:15

And BTK is back. But he did not do the killing. It was more about, hey, I'm still here.

SPEAKER_00 22:20

Not yet, right? But saying that he's back is kind of an indication that, hey, I'm going to kill again soon. But he won and why why say that, right? Like why warn people that you're back and you want to do that? Well, it's probably because he wants to get recognized for all of that and he wants to control the narrative again.

SPEAKER_02 22:42

Yeah, I don't really understand though.

SPEAKER_00 22:44

Yeah. So this is where everything actually changes, though, and and this is why we don't really know how much of how many plans he still had for, you know, his next victims because of a mistake. Right. So this is um he wants to communicate again, right? He he's trying to communicate a little bit more easily this time, more efficiently, but he's cautious. So he sends a message to police through the media channels like he's done before, and he asks, if I use a floppy disk, can I be traced?

SPEAKER_02 23:20

He asks that to the police.

SPEAKER_00 23:22

He asks that to the police.

SPEAKER_02 23:23

The answer will be yeah. Like you don't even need to ask.

SPEAKER_00 23:26

Well, yeah, but they're not gonna say yeah, right? They'll say no, obviously, right? Because why would you tell a serial?

SPEAKER_02 23:33

Yeah, no, but why what did you ask? The police. Yeah, why would you even ask?

SPEAKER_00 23:36

Yeah, obviously, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 23:38

I mean with without asking that people could trace where you produce something.

SPEAKER_01 23:44

Yeah, like if you take a floppy disk.

SPEAKER_02 23:46

A picture, for example, like using your camera, you could see the pixels, you could see the date. Yeah. And uh I think it's similar to to yeah, for like a floppy disk, yeah.

SPEAKER_00 23:58

There there's something called metadata, right? That a lot of these things have.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 24:03

Um, you know, on on CDs and on on computers and everywhere, right? There's there's metadata that gives away identifying information. But when he sent this message, it was it was um it was not casual, he was really just testing them. And police respond publicly through the newspapers, like they've been doing, and they say no. You know, surprise, surprise, they said no. They didn't say, Yeah, we can we we can trace you, so you shouldn't send it to us. What an idiot. Like if for someone who you know thinks he's smart, like what an idiot.

SPEAKER_02 24:41

Yeah, he probably knew that. It's just he just wanted to have the communication with the police, maybe.

SPEAKER_00 24:47

Yeah, but but then but then the next part's not gonna make sense then, right? So they're trying to they're trying to bait him, right? They say no, but he doesn't fully trust them yet, understandably, right? He's gonna he's gonna think, okay, well, like like we would hope. We'd say, well, you know, well, I don't actually hope any serial killer is smart enough to realize that, but but he he doesn't fully trust them yet, and he responds again, short, direct, be honest. Okay.

SPEAKER_02 25:18

But he asks the police to be honest with him. Oh yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:21

Okay. I know, right? Like, again, not even he's you know, he's so dumb that he asks, like, you know, like, hey, can this be traced? Like, as if they're gonna tell him like no, like, or like yes, like they would never in any world say yes, be honest. And and he does this because he needs reassurance.

SPEAKER_01 25:44

Uh-huh.

SPEAKER_00 25:44

Because if he's wrong, then everything ends, right? So it wasn't very fault. They obviously say that it can't be, right? So at this point, he has a choice. He could walk away or continue, right? He chooses to continue. Now why? Well, because he believes he's smarter and he wants interaction, he wants that recognition again.

SPEAKER_02 26:11

And what you mean by continue is continue killing people or sending the message to the police. Yeah, well, he did get some killings both.

SPEAKER_00 26:18

Right, like he does want to continue both. Um, I rem I I I watched uh a little clip from an interview in a documentary where they were interviewing him, and he said that you know the killings. Uh I think the the um the interviewer asked him, you know, was once you killed, did the urge kind of go away? And he said, well, he said it kind of did for a little bit, but he said he thinks it's kind of like a drug. He said, I I imagine it's kind of like a drug where you know you take the drug, it feels great, but once it wears off, you want the drug again. And so, yeah, he that that was the analogy that BTK used himself. Um, his need to be seen is stronger than his fear of being caught here. Okay. This is why he sends it. Yeah, he's such an idiot, and he yeah. So so it's kind of ironic that he thinks he's smarter, and then you know, he asks those dumb questions that everyone knows the answer to. But he sends the disk, police analyze it, and inside the file there's like we discussed, metadata, um, information he didn't remove, and it leads to a church, a computer, and a username.

SPEAKER_02 27:45

Well, it definitely is easy.

SPEAKER_00 27:46

Yeah, of course. Dennis Rader, right? So the arrest was in 2005. He's arrested, no chase, no dramatic escape, just a normal man. Long time, right? Just a normal man suddenly exposed. Now in court, he actually doesn't deny anything. He explains step by step, calmly, without any emotion, as if describing a process, not people, right? So this level of detachment is often associated with psychopathy, right? With psychopaths.

SPEAKER_02 28:30

It's like something is of, like one of your wires in the brain is of.

SPEAKER_00 28:33

Well, yeah, I mean, if you be if people with psychopathy or psychopaths tend to um not be able to, well, they their their one of the biggest characteristics is that they they do not have empathy, right? They cannot see um from the other person's perspective, right, how that might make them feel, right? And so they tend to, you know, there's a lot of psychopaths in this world actually, and we just are unaware of it. But they tend to get a get far in life because they don't consider other people's perspectives, right? They'll manipulate and they'll use people and uh because they don't feel bad, they don't feel bad about it because they don't know what it's like to feel to be that other person, they don't consider their feelings.

SPEAKER_02 29:24

Well, is it something that usually people got when they were born, or was that something that was some kind of developed through experience or what psychopathy?

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Yeah, and uh psychopathy is is often uh I I I mean I'm pretty sure I I would have to check my sources on this, but I'm pretty sure that it's um uh there pretty early on, usually. Usually it's uh identified early in childhood, right? A lot of them will start off with hurting animals and um and things like that, and and they'll you know, and at least the serial killers, right, that have been caught and then go to things, they escalate things until they're not satisfied, right? They're they sort of they have that fantasy until it's just not enough. Um, but usually um yeah, it starts pretty early, so I would imagine that it's uh a genetic.

SPEAKER_02 30:20

Can it be cured though?

SPEAKER_00 30:21

No.

unknown 30:22

No.

SPEAKER_00 30:23

No, it's not uh it's not a thing that has a cure. It's uh yeah, I'm pretty sure it's a genetic.

SPEAKER_02 30:29

But maybe it's that'll be I can't help.

SPEAKER_00 30:33

Um Is that any Yeah, I mean you you you can I I I don't know if you can really help that. I mean it if really here's the thing about that, right? Is if you go to someone who doesn't have empathy, and a lot of their motives are just self-serving, right? And they um and it's not that they're not capable of of loving someone or loving something, you know, it's just that they um do a lot of things in a self-serving way, right? And so um if you go to a therapist and they diagnose you with psychopathy or something like that, and the therapist tries to um basically tells that person, okay, here's the things you can do, and these are the things gonna help you, and then can show that that person is improving and all of that. Um, that might be something that he can use to his advantage, right? To say, hey, look, everyone, I'm I'm cured, or you know, I'm doing so well, even you know, whatever, if if he had previously been exposed as a psychopath or something like that, right? Um, but anyway, it's it's an interesting case.

SPEAKER_02 31:46

And wow, yeah. Well, a human's personality is very complex.

SPEAKER_00 31:50

Mm-hmm. It really is, yeah, it really is. So, I mean, in the end, he really didn't hide because he was invisible at all. Um, he hid because he looked exactly like everyone else, right? That's the scary part, is that he he was able to to blend in with everyone.

SPEAKER_02 32:12

Yeah, he's got family, he works.

SPEAKER_00 32:16

Exactly, exactly.

SPEAKER_02 32:17

He socializes.

SPEAKER_00 32:18

Yeah, and again, those are all things that he can use to his advantage to blend in in order to do all of these crazy things, right? Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 32:29

So well, the outsiders will think which one is actually real him. Is that the one when he has the role as you know the family guy? Yeah, well, that's a husband or dead.

SPEAKER_00 32:41

That's a good point, but that's um one of the things that he said in an interview was that he's kind of sees his um personality or his he kind of sees himself in in different ways like a cube. And he says, think about it as multiple different faces of a cube, right? On one face of the cube, um, he's a family man, on the other, he's a father, on the other, he's a husband, on the other, he's a churchgoer, and then on the other one, you know, on one of the other ones, he uh he has this dark side, and he says that dark side is very, very strong, right? So So yeah, so um I guess that dark side ultimately ended up getting him caught because he needed that recognition and that um you know that that feeling of of of controlling things.

SPEAKER_02 33:43

I guess did he regret at all um of the setting the disc because the police caught the metadata? Did he mention anything during the interview about that?

SPEAKER_00 33:53

Uh about regret. I can't recall anything about regret, but um but he didn't seem to regret anything. I mean it he certainly didn't interesting he certainly didn't care that he killed all of those people and he would have continued.

SPEAKER_02 34:08

And he didn't care uh 'cause he got caught. Like, well, this is the end game for me.

SPEAKER_00 34:15

Well, I'm sure it bothered him that he can't be out, you know, free, right? Um that he he probably sees it more as something like Well, I made a grave mistake there. If I had another chance, I'd do it differently so I wouldn't get caught. It's not that I shouldn't have done it in the first place, right? It's more of like, yeah.

SPEAKER_02 34:36

Yeah, because that happened after he uh had a very long hiatus, right?

SPEAKER_00 34:40

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Anyway, all right, well, yeah, that's the story of uh of today's Tell Me the Crime episode, and I'm gonna have to record another one right after this because we have to have two out for tomorrow because I screwed up for first.

SPEAKER_02 34:56

Thank you for doing that, and thank you everyone for listening.

SPEAKER_00 34:59

Thank you so much, everyone.

SPEAKER_02 35:01

Great weekend.

SPEAKER_00 35:02

Bye.