I cannot imagine what his wife must have endured. Judging from what we're learning about him, I think it's safe to say he has the stereotypical "anal personality."
Los Angeles Times
February 27, 2005 SundayFamily Man Arrested in 10 Slayings; Police in Kansas say he is the sadistic BTK serial killer who taunted Wichita for 30 years.
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Although some of his neighbors said he was friendly -- and he was well-respected enough to serve as president of his church council -- others called him mean and arrogant. "He wore a badge and would swagger around the street like he was above the law. I always considered him a bully," said James Reno, 42, who has lived across the street from Rader for more than a decade.
Maricela Cano, 23, who lived around the block from him for more than two years, said: "I can't tell you how many times he made me cry. If he was outside, I would stay indoors and hide." She said Rader constantly harassed her about her dogs, until she and her family moved across town.
On Saturday morning, her 5-year-old son was watching TV coverage of BTK when a picture of Rader flashed on the screen.
"He turned around and said, 'Mommy, look. It's the man who took away our dog,' " Cano said. "It freaked me out."
Rader was so rigid about code enforcement, neighbors said, that he carried around a ruler to measure the height of grass on lawns he thought looked unruly.
Investigators noted that BTK was meticulous: When he broke a window to get into a victim's house, he swept up the glass. In a few of his letters, he made a point of commenting on how tidy -- or dirty -- he found the victims' homes and cars.
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(BTK's habit of collecting souvenirs from his victims led some investigators to suspect he was single because they thought he would be unlikely to keep macabre trophies in a home where a wife or children could stumble across them.)
The flurry of recent communications from BTK captivated armchair detectives who noodled over every aspect of the case in Internet chat rooms. (Police paid close enough attention to the chatter that they subpoenaed information about several frequent contributors.)
http://www.abcnews.go.com/GMA/LegalCenter/story?id=535740&page=1
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Watched Him Shoot a Dog
Barry said that she once watched as Rader shot a neighbor's dog in front of the owners, Barry and her children.
"If he didn't like the way animals were being treated in the neighborhood, he was right there to push the law on making it go his way," Barry told "Good Morning America" in an exclusive interview.
Barry said she and her children were out on their front lawn one day, and a neighbor from across the street was outside with his dog. In his capacity as a dog catcher and ordinance officer, Barry said Rader approached the dog and allegedly tried to mace it.
But, according to Barry, the "wind blew the mace back in his face." She says Rader groped for his tranquilizer gun, but couldn't get to it. That's when he allegedly pulled out a gun and shot the dog.
Looking at Past Behavior
Despite the incident with the dog, Barry said she never would have suspected Rader capable of the BTK murders. He had, after all, been her brothers' Cub Scout leader years ago.
"He was generally a really nice gentleman," said Barry. "I've known him since I was probably four or five years old. You know, he was the kind of neighbor that you could go down the road and he would stay up and talk to you and open the door for you and hold a conversation."
But Barry added that looking back now and talking to other neighbors, it seemed there was something odd about some of Rader's behavior.
"I'm finding a lot of the same repeat stories about him showing up at [people's] jobs with their dog's leash and collars and … going through people's stuff on their property and just kind of stuff out of the unusual," said Barry.
Families of Victims React
The man who terrorized the Wichita area for more than three decades and is thought responsible for at least 10 murders seems to have had a streak of cruelty and narcissism, as he taunted the police by sending rambling letters to the media and dropping clues about his identity. In some of the notes, he referred to himself as not only BTK for "Bind, Torture, Kill," but also as the "Poetic Strangler" and the "Wichita Exterminator."