She thought she had a normal family, but she learned the truth when she was 26 years old.. “I am the daughter of a serial killer.”

Kerri Rawson divides her life into two parts: before she learned the truth and after.

Before we learn the truth, it is very normal… There are camps that the family goes to, the tree house built with the father and flowers planted in the garden, and also verbal and emotional abuse… What happens after we learn the truth is unbelievable…

Rawson was introduced to the truth in 2005. He was 26 years old at the time. An FBI agent knocked on his door to tell Rawson that his father, Dennis Rader, had been arrested.

The FBI agent said Ryder was accused of being a ruthless serial killer. He was said to have killed many people over the years. He sent letters and poems to press organizations and the police, presenting himself as the BTK killer.

BTK was the initials for “bind,” “torture,” and “kill,” which was Ryder’s gruesome killing method.

Kerry Rawson

They were like a normal family

Rawson, who grew up near Wichita, Kansas, USA, described his family as “normal” in an interview with The New York Times.

His father led scout groups. He would shine his shoes on Saturday nights, put on his smartest suit on Sunday mornings and head to church with his wife, Paula Dietz, and their two children. It looked, as Rawson put it, “flawless.”

Ryder often warned his children not to get into trouble or go down the wrong path. According to Rawson, he also raised his children to be strong-willed and resilient individuals.

He committed his first murders in 1974

According to police records, Rader began committing the murders in 1974, before Rawson was born. The first people he killed were a family of four in Wichita. He strangled his victims with a blind rope.

He killed a lot of people from then until 1991. His next victims were always women. Rader recorded his murders in full detail in his diary.

He was arrested in 2005. Police traced the floppy disk he sent to the media to the church headed by Rader. On the other hand, the police accessed the records of the hospital where Rawson underwent the swab test and took his DNA sample without his knowledge. In this way the connection between Ryder and the victims of the BTK killer was confirmed.

Rader, who was convicted of 10 murders and sentenced to life in prison for each, is currently being held at El Dorado Prison in Kansas.

Ryder and his family home in Kansas

“My family was abused”

As he told the New York Times, when Rawson thought about his childhood before he learned his father’s true identity, he always thought of good times, family vacations, and cheerful times. However, the shock treatment he received after learning the facts made him remember the abuse he suffered as a family.

“My family was subjected to physical, verbal, mental and emotional abuse,” Rawson said.

“My father would get very angry when one of us got hurt. One time, my mother hurt her ankle and hurt her knee while walking in nature. My father started yelling at her, ‘You ruined our day.’ He kept telling me not to do that.” Pick up the scales of my wounds and say: No one will want you, you will be ugly.

Furthermore, Rader twice tried to strangle Rawson’s brother, Brian, and Rawson and his mother barely intervened.

“There’s a bad man in the house”

In fact, Rawson has been having nightmares at night since he was 6 years old. The disappearance of their neighbour, Marine Hedge, had an impact.

“I knew she was missing, and somehow I knew her body was found near our church later. I was 6 years old, but I also knew she drowned,” Rawson said, adding that she remembers her father blaming him. Hedge’s friend.

Rawson, who also said he shouted “there’s a bad guy in the house” when he woke up from his nightmares, didn’t learn the truth about the bad guy until 20 years later.

Marin Hedge’s killer was none other than her father.

She has accepted being the daughter of a serial killer

After years of therapy sessions, Rawson, now 45, decided to cooperate with police. Thanks to Rawson, who shared with investigators detailed information about his father that no one knew, important developments occurred in two cases, one of which was murder and the other of which was missing, during the past months, and Rader was added to the top of the list of suspects.

Rawson stated that presenting the missing pieces of the puzzle to investigators also contributed to her healing process, and said that adopting the title “daughter of a serial killer” helped her remove herself from the position of bystander and victim and regain control of her life.

They met for the first time after 18 years

Kerry Rawson and her then-husband spent the Christmas holiday with Rawson’s parents in 2004. The day they left and went home, Rader hugged his daughter and said “I love you” goodbye to her as he went to work in the morning.

A few months after this incident, an FBI agent knocked on his door and told Rawson the truth. Rawson then cut off all contact with his father and never met Ryder.

But this situation changed last June. The Osage County Sheriff’s Office in Oklahoma asked Rawson to assist in the investigation into the disappearance of Cynthia Kenney.

Kinney, 16, was last seen at a laundromat in Pawhuska, Oklahoma, in 1976. It is believed Ryder may have been involved in her disappearance.

He meets his father in prison and asks the inspectors questions

Osage County Sheriff’s Deputy Gary Upton credited Rawson with helping fill in gaps in the timeline.

They examined Ryder’s diaries, maps, drawings and photographs together, Upton said, and “talking to the person who was in the next room or under the same roof while he wrote these notes made sense of everything.”

The hardest thing for Rawson is facing his father, whom he has not seen for 18 years. Rawson, whose world came crashing down when he learned what kind of monster his father was, cuts all ties with Ryder. The only reason he agreed to meet after 18 years was to help investigators.

Rawson stated that when he entered the prison interview room, he found a 78-year-old man tied to a wheelchair. He said: “I didn’t feel anything when he hugged me. It seemed like he wasn’t the same man who was with me.” The one who hugged me in 2004.”

“I went there with a very clear goal.”

Rawson, who visited Ryder twice, called his father along with Kenny and other potential victims; He asked questions about the places that were under the spotlight by inspectors. Rawson, who also raised questions about the “project names” Ryder chose for his crimes in the pages of his memoirs, never used the word “murder.”

Rawson described their conversations as follows:

“I just used the abbreviation BTK. ‘Are you doing BTK at the moment?’” I asked. We were talking very frankly. I think he was happy too. He knew I was doing the research and studying to have these conversations. If you don’t know what you’re talking about when you go there, I’ll just throw it in your face and not talk to you.”

Noting that he was better prepared for the second meeting, Rawson said: “If I had been sad or angry, it wouldn’t have worked. I went there with a very clear goal.”

Photo from inspections conducted in August

He takes the cops to the places he went with his father

In August, Rader was named as a prime suspect in two unsolved cases. Officials stated that this was achieved in part through Rawson’s contributions.

In addition to Cynthia Kenney, Osage County authorities believe Rader is also responsible for the murder of a woman named Shawna Beth Garber. The body of 22-year-old Garber was found in McDonald County, Missouri, in 1990.

During his excursions with law enforcement in Kansas and Missouri, Rawson also took officers to places he remembered from his childhood. One of them was in a creek where he fished with his father. Garber’s body was discovered near this stream.

He also became a target of criticism

Rawson also became the target of some criticism while assisting police. There are those who accused him of diverting the focus of investigations or trying to make money from his father’s crimes.

Cheryl McCollum, director of the Cold Case Investigative Research Institute, said Rawson’s role in the case, which she described as “courageous,” was “absolutely unique” and added:

“I’ve never met anyone who went through what she went through and turned it into an advocate for people you’ve never met before. Keri can tell you things about BTK that no one else can. When people talk about BTK as ‘it was like that,’ that was That Kerry can fix it. She’s an expert. Can you imagine someone living with a serial killer for 26 years and telling you everything about that person?“

“I didn’t get a chance to choose.”

Rawson currently lives in Florida. She is raising her two children, aged 15 and 12.

A former teacher, Rawson lives on the income from her book “The Serial Killer’s Daughter,” in which she recounts her experiences in recent years, and is also a speaker at conferences such as CrimeCon. Rawson, who has also been asked to comment on other murders, talks mostly about his father.

“I think most people listening to me will think this is crazy, but this is all I know. This is my life. I didn’t get to choose,” said Rawson, who is continuing to work on his second book.

New York Times “Her father is the BTK killer. It helps close more cases.” Copied from the news item titled .