BTK suspect's stable life defies stereotype among serial killers

WICHITA, Kan. -- He was trusted as a Cub Scout leader, respected as a churchgoing family man and accepted as a regular guy with a secure marriage, a steady job and all the other trappings of middle-class success.\nHe was also, according to police, an insatiable murderer who tortured and killed strangers over 17 years, boasting about his crimes in taunting, gruesome letters and poems that he mailed to police and the news media.\nDennis L. Rader, a 59-year-old municipal worker suspected of being the BTK killer responsible for 10 murders, is believed by authorities to have led a Jekyll-and-Hyde existence.\nExperts on the criminal mind say that is not unusual for serial killers. But what sets Rader apart is his remarkably stable life and deep roots in the community.\n"Mostly, serial killer are drifters," said Michael Rustigan, a California criminologist. "Typically they're single, have problems with women, are in and out of jobs, in and out of relationships." But in Rader's case, he said, "We've rarely seen serial killers so well-integrated into the community."\nRader has called the Wichita area home almost his entire life, earning a criminal justice degree at a local university. The father of two -- he has a grown daughter and son -- had been married for nearly 34 years and held jobs for long periods, including a position at a home security firm for 15 years, part of the time as an installation manager.\nRader was arrested Friday by police, who said they were confident he is BTK -- the killer's self-coined name that stands for "Bind, Torture and Kill." He was charged Tuesday with 10 murders committed between 1974 and 1991 and is being held on $10 million bail.\nThe BTK killer terrified the Wichita area from the late 1970s through the mid-1980s; most of the victims were strangled, others were stabbed or shot. In one instance, the killer called 911 to report the homicide; in another, The Wichita Eagle-Beacon was alerted to a letter in a library book that provided details of some murders only the killer could have known.\nThe killer resurfaced last March -- the 30th anniversary of his first murders -- with a series of letters to police and the media. One included a photocopy of the driver's license of one of his victims.\nPolice will not say what led them to Rader, but his arrest stunned many in suburban Park City, where he lived for more than 25 years and worked as a compliance officer, handling code violations and stray dogs.\nSome described him as a friendly, solicitous man who helped neighbors and recently brought spaghetti sauce and a salad to a supper at Christ Lutheran Church, where he was an usher, president of the council and a member for 30 years.\n"Dennis was in church as often as I was," said pastor Michael Clark.\nBut others say he could be a nitpicker and a bully, always looking to cite his neighbors for petty violations, once using a tape measure to determine if a neighbor's grass was too long.\nIf Rader turns out to be BTK, he will not be the first serial killer to engage in what some experts call doubling -- leading two lives. They cite other examples: Gary Ridgeway, the Green River killer, was a truck painter. Jeffrey Dahmer worked in a candy factory. John W. Gacy was a building contractor who sometimes performed as a clown.\n"They lead a benign, if not friendly and helpful, life with family and friends. Then they kill strangers," said Jack Levin, author of several books on serial killers and the director of the Brudnick Center on Violence at Northeastern University in Boston. "It's almost like the death camp doctor who goes home and plays with his children."\nThese two lives are "the way they survive. That's the way they're not detected," said Steve Egger, a serial killer expert and associate professor of criminology at the University of Houston-Clear Lake. "Their actions with people who love them, with people they associate with, are very natural. But they're able to split off and compartmentalize these fantasies they have ... then they go out and have to act on them."\nRustigan, the California criminologist, said he wonders how Rader, if he is the BTK killer, could hide a sinister life from his wife.\n"You can fake 'nice guy' at work," he said. "But how do you fake 'nice guy' when you're married? That's a very powerful question in this case"