Childhood |
Teenage/Adult Life |
Dennis Rader was born on March 9, 1945. He was born in the Northern part of the state of Kansas In the United States. Dennis was the first child of four children from his parents Dorothea and Williams Rader. At home Dennis had an okay life since his father did not make a lot a money to support his family from his job of being in the marines and working for a electric utility company. In school Dennis was a mediocre student with okay grades but also a awkward kid in school. His friends would describe him as a nice and polite young man most of the time. As a kid his friends and parents found it odd that Dennis would love to talk about torturing people and animals. Dennis to this day admitted that as a kid he killed cats and dogs because he thought it was fun. These events and his childhood would only be the beginning to what he will become in the future.
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As Dennis grew to be older he graduated from Wichita Heights High School in 1963. Throughout his high school career and after he worked at a local supermarket in his area. In 1965 Dennis entered Wesleyan college in Saline Kansas. Dennis seemed to struggle through college with poor grades because he also had to work a lot to support himself through college. Dennis never made it through college and decided to drop out about a year later. After dropping out of college Dennis joined the US Air Force in 1966. Dennis spent many years there training and being stationed at different bases all across the nation. He was also sent overseas to be stationed at other bases. While overseas he was known to commit crimes and steal because of this he was discharged and sent home in 1970. After getting back Dennis got married to Paula Dietz and went back to college to receive a associates degree. He continued his life with Paula for many years until he changed it forever.
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Acts of Crime
Dennis rader's first major crime was the murder of four people that lived in his neighborhood. Dennis was spying on the family for many weeks before hand and devised a plan to take place on January 15th in 1974. He planned to torture them and kill them and he did just that in the early morning of January 15th 1974. His victims in his first killing were Josie, Joey, Joe, and Josephine, but this was just the start. Dennis was never found to have any connection to the crime and so therefore was never arrested. Later that Year Dennis committed another crime by killing a young woman in her home. Dennis was said to be stalking her for days until he went inside her home tutoring and killing her. Dennis would go on to commit many more killings and crimes throughout his life and the motive for all the crimes was mainly because he found it fun and because he was attracted to the women.
ConvictionDennis Rader at this point had killed over ten people and was still on the run. He was able to get away from and leave little to no evidence physical to his involvement in his crime. The little physical evidence they found of Dennis involvement was Letters written to police, a floppy disk with info about the people he killed, other computer equipment, clothes of the victims that he killed, and a lot of fingerprint identification evidence that he left behind. With all this evidence gathered over decades of searching Dennis Rader was finally found and arrested. He was arrested on February 25, 2005 near his home. Sooner or later Dennis was sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences to prison for the killing of ten people and to this day Dennis is still In prison. |