NASHVILLE — After working with Oklahoma cold case investigators and finding entries in serial killer Dennis Rader’s diary that indicated Rader had abused her when she was too young to remember, she confronted him in prison.
Kelly Lawson visited her father, known as BTK, or “Bind, Torture, Kill,” in a Kansas prison in October. It was the fifth time she’d spoken with him since he pleaded guilty to killing 10 people in 2005.
“I was sitting right across from you, and while you slumped and decayed in your wheelchair, I stood tall and brave, confronting you with the harsh truths you’d hidden for over 40 years,” she revealed while onstage at CrimeCon 2024 in Nashville, Tenn. “You denied it, gassed me, emotionally and verbally abused me, asked me what PTSD was, and when I explained, told me I’d brought this all on myself.”
Ms Lawson, who became a victim advocate after her father’s serial killings, said her father raged in his wheelchair.
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Kelly Lawson speaks at CrimeCon (Michael Lewis/Fox News)
Dennis Rader, known as BTK, sits in a county courthouse in Wichita, Kansas. (Photo by Bo Rader-Pool/Getty Images)
“For a second I thought I was 16 again, running away from your angry fists. I stood up and ran for a little while in prison,” she said, “but then I came back, sat down and confronted you even harder.”
Lawson agreed to voluntarily cooperate with the Osage County, Oklahoma, Sheriff’s Office last year in the decades-old death of Cynthia Dawn Kinney. Sheriff Eddie Varden has said he believes Rader may be the culprit.
Investigators asked Lawson to help them decipher a difficult-to-read section of the note, and she found her own name written in capital letters: “KERRI/BND/GAME 1981.”
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El Dorado Correctional Facility in El Dorado, Kansas, where Dennis Rader, also known as the BTK Killer, is serving his sentence. (Photo by Larry W. Smith/Getty Images)
“BND” stands for Bondage, as her father bound and killed 10 innocent people.
“My stomach twisted like white-hot lightning,” she said. “Forty years later, it was solid evidence that my father had sexually abused me when I was a toddler.”
She said she has since found more similar accounts.
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BTS murderer Dennis Rader is taken to El Dorado Correctional Facility in El Dorado, Kansas. (Photo by Larry W. Smith/Getty Images)
After reading them, she said she believes her father assaulted more than 10 victims, whom he admitted to killing.
Rader kept notes on all of his victims and others, calling them “projects.” Varden suspects that the project, titled “Bad Laundry Day,” may be a reference to the Kinney case, a girl last seen alive in her aunt and uncle’s laundromat.
In an earlier letter to Fox News Digital, Rader denied any involvement in the murders other than the one he pleaded guilty to. He could not immediately be reached for comment on his daughter’s confession.
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Her daughter said her husband was in poor health, used a wheelchair and was recovering from a broken hip and other ailments.
“Soon you will meet God,” she said, addressing her absent father from the stage, “there will be some things we will discuss. You will soon be gone, and my final request to you is that if you have any ghosts remaining, please let them go.”
