Dennis Rader's Real Name: Dennis Lynn Rader

Quick answer: The serial killer known as BTK is Dennis Lynn Rader, born March 9, 1945, in Pittsburg, Kansas. He gave himself the name BTK, for "bind, torture, kill." He killed 10 people in and around Wichita, Kansas, between 1974 and 1991. He was arrested in February 2005, pleaded guilty that June, and was sentenced to 10 consecutive life terms (Britannica; Library of Congress).

Real name and early life

Britannica's quick facts give his name "in full" as Dennis Lynn Rader, with the byname "BTK or BTK Killer." The Library of Congress name authority files him as "Rader, Dennis, 1945-." It lists the variants "BTK Killer," "BTK Strangler," and "BTK," and describes him as a serial killer who "killed at least 10 people in Wichita, Kan. from 1974-1991." One LOC variant gives the middle name as "Lynch," but Britannica uses Lynn.

Britannica says he grew up in Wichita and served in the U.S. Air Force in the 1960s. He returned to Wichita in 1970, married, and had two children. He worked briefly at the Coleman Company and graduated from Wichita State University in 1979 with a criminal-justice degree. He also worked for the home-security company ADT. From 1991 he was a compliance officer in Park City, Kansas. He was active in his church and served as a Boy Scout leader.

Career highlights: the BTK case

Britannica reports that his first murders, in January 1974, killed four members of one Wichita family. Over the following years he killed six more people, mostly women attacked in their homes. Later in 1974 he left a letter in a Wichita library book that gave himself the name B.T.K. After a December 1977 killing, he wrote to a local TV station complaining about the lack of coverage. His last murder was in 1991, after which the cases went cold.

In 2004 a local newspaper speculated about the unsolved killings on their 30th anniversary. Rader responded by mailing material to the media and leaving packages around Wichita. In January 2005 he asked police in a note whether a floppy disk could be traced. When they implied it could not, he sent one, and investigators traced it to his church, where he was congregation president. DNA then linked him to the first crime scene. He confessed, pleaded guilty in June 2005, and was sentenced in August to 10 consecutive life terms.

His daughter, Kerri Rawson, shared her perspective in the 2025 Netflix documentary My Father, the BTK Killer.

Name notes for searchers

"BTK" is the self-chosen nickname from his letters. Dennis Lynn Rader is his legal name, and Rader is his family surname. LOC records BTK, BTK Killer, and BTK Strangler as other names for him.