A Serial Killer’s Daughter

by Kerri Rawson

  Let’s never land.

  It was a quick forty minutes to Chicago, and soon I was wandering O’Hare’s unending concourses for lunch and my next gate. I remember grabbing orange chicken and noodles from Panda Express and texting Darian, “Got through my first flight, have a pounding headache.”

  I don’t remember boarding the second plane or the flight.

  Maybe I slept.

  4:00 P.M.

  KANSAS CITY

  My stomach was in knots as I walked down the jet bridge in Kansas City late in the afternoon.

  I don’t know what comes next.

  Mom!

  She was in her cheerful navy-blue raincoat with the yellow liner, but her shoulders were hunched and a pallor hung over her face. She was standing right on the other side of the security divider at my gate with Uncle Urban and Aunt Donna.

  Family! Kansas!

  I rushed into my mom’s arms.

  Tears flowed down our faces, both mirror images of exhaustion and devastation.

  After I hugged my aunt and uncle, I walked, arm linked in arm, with Mom as we went to the carousel to get my bag.

  “I saw your father Friday morning. He stopped by Snacks for a cinnamon roll, gave me a kiss, told me he’d see me at lunch.”

  “I talked to him the night before. He reminded me to check the oil in the car.”

  Mom and I were debriefing each other, sitting in the back seat while headed westward.

  I’d forgotten my phone charger in the frenzied packing, so we made a side trip to Circuit City. My uncle helped me pick the charger I needed and paid for it.

  Granddad Palmer and Grandma Eileen were waiting for us that evening at my aunt and uncle’s home, and A. D. and Jason joined us for dinner. We had Kentucky Fried Chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy, and nothing had ever tasted better.

  I sat next to my mom as conversation fluttered in and out.

  “It’s like your dad has died,” Mom said.

  All of a sudden it was “your dad, your father,” like he now belonged to me and not so much her.

  Then with steeled eyes and determination, Mom said to all of us, “We’ve been through worse—we will get through this.”

  Worse referred to losing Michelle. I talked to Andrea that night on the phone, sobbing, rocking my body on the floor in the dining room.

  “I can’t stop shaking. I feel like I’ve been hit by a ten-ton truck.”

  “You’re in shock,” she said. “It’s completely understandable. You’re under a great weight of trauma still happening—ongoing.”

  Oh.

  Shock.

  I’d been physically and mentally in shock, to some degree, for four days. It took years for me to realize how badly I messed myself up those first days. I should have gotten help, gone to the hospital, had someone knock me out. I will regret it the rest of my life.

  Later that night, my aunt was checking her answering machine and I heard that voice again. “Hello? Anyone there? Can you pick up?”

  Dad.

  I froze inside, but outside, I lost control of the shaking.

  Your dad is BTK.

  We listened to the message, but we didn’t call him back.

  At bedtime, I curled up next to my mom in her bed. Just like when I was a little girl—seeking solace. We cried together for some time, and I kept saying, “I’m so sorry, Mom. I’m so sorry.”

  A little later, I went downstairs to sleep in the bed my uncle had set up for me. Maybe I shouldn’t have left her. But I couldn’t take any more—not tonight.

  CHAPTER 27

  There Is Safety in Numbers

  TUESDAY, MARCH 1, 2005

  KANSAS

  The shaking finally stopped on the fifth day.

  I woke up early Tuesday morning on a mattress in my aunt and uncle’s living room. Pale morning light was deepening in color, the house was still, and my body was at peace. I sat up and held my hands out in front of me—waiting for the shaking to return. They were still.

  Maybe, just maybe, I will survive this.

  Soon other folks were rising quietly. The smell of Folgers wafted from the kitchen, cereal bowls rattled, and newspapers rustled, pencils at the ready to fill in the day’s crossword.

  This was a home where I could stay barefoot in my pajamas for any length of time I desired. I could stretch out on the oversized leather couch, hide in Hogwarts for hours, and not be plied with questions I wasn’t ready to contemplate answers to yet.

  This was a quiet place, with gentle, kind voices that belonged to people with lives that would continue on as they had for the decades before my dad knocked a massive hole into all of it.

  This was God-sent respite, and I never wanted to leave.

  “Your uncle Paul was granted emergency leave from Iraq and is coming home,” Mom told me. Dad’s second-oldest brother had been called up to active duty from the reserves a few months before. I was glad he was coming home from the sand but not why.

  “Uncle Jeff was in the newspaper yesterday,” Grandma Eileen said, handing me the front section of yesterday’s Eagle, pointing to a story at the bottom of the page.

  On Sunday afternoon, my dad’s youngest brother, fed up with reporters driving by Grandma Dorothea’s home, stepped out on her porch to talk to two journalists from the Eagle. He told them Grandma was seventy-nine years old and frail. That he had to unplug the answering machine because folks were leaving harassing messages. “My mother still can’t believe it,” he said. “She’s still very much in denial. And so am I. But maybe, with me, acceptance is starting to creep in. I don’t think my brother is BTK. But if he is—if that is the truth—then let the truth be the truth.”1

  Let the truth be the truth. That’s what Grandpa Bill would say if he were here to guide us. But his heart would be shattered.

  Grandpa? Send aid—to us all.

  My uncle went on to tell the journalists that errors and false speculation were flying around. No one turned in my dad. “Grandma is loving, Grandpa was tough but decent. Grandpa had served as a marine and was a God-fearing man, strict, but not unreasonable. There was no trouble in the family, no abuse.”2

  The FBI had asked him if he or any of the boys had been sexually abused by my grandparents.

  Dear Jesus.

  My uncle said, “I told them no. And that’s the truth.”3

  That’s the truth.

  I read the article slowly, brushing my thumb over the newsprint, letting my tears fall where they would.

  Grandma Eileen handed me a couple of tissues and patted me on the arm. “Your uncle Jeff did a good, brave thing.”

  “Yes, yes, he did. My grandparents never, wouldn’t, didn’t—”

  “No. They were—are—very good people. You know strangers are making up stories.”

  My shoulders tightened, my jaw clenched, and anger flashed across my face. “This is all Dad’s doing. His fault.”

  “Your father loved and cared a lot for your grandparents, his brothers, all his family—your mother, you, Brian.”

  Yeah, well. We all loved my dad very much too. Love, however much there was, hadn’t been enough to stop him—to help him. And now he had left all of us to pick up the pieces.

  I stood up, my shoulders slumping, and went to the patio door. The grass was brown but the sky was bright Kansas blue, laced with wispy clouds.

  My eyes stung with tears again. Had someone abused my father when he was a boy? The thought seared right through me.

  Who? When?

  I racked my brain and couldn’t come up with any answers, nothing but empty despair, confusion.

  Then a flash of conviction, of knowing: Many people are abused as children and don’t grow up to harm a soul. No matter what had happened to my father—it wasn’t an excuse. There were no excuses for what my father had done. He was responsible for all of it. He chose this for himself—chose to harm others.

  Why? Why those ten innocents? Children?

  The headline on today’s paper said yeste
rday Dad had been charged in court with ten first-degree murders. I was flying while he faced one of the worst days of his life—alone. I wasn’t able to be with him. I wasn’t sure if I’d ever be able to be with him again.

  TUESDAY AFTERNOON

  He’s confessing.

  Mom was scribbling in shorthand on a yellow legal pad, her pen alternating between flying and pausing in midair. She wrote, “He’s confessing,” underling it twice and tapping at it to get my attention.

  Yeah, Mom. He’s been confessing for days.

  Let the truth be the truth.

  Pastor Mike, who shepherded my folks’ congregation, had called Mom after visiting my dad in jail. He was doing his best to try to relay a message to us from Dad—who had been trying to explain, grasp at what was wrong within him.

  Mom was sitting on my aunt and uncle’s bed, their homemade wedding quilt folded neatly at the foot. I was sitting cross-legged next to her, searching her face for signs of too much distress.

  She wrote, “Has something wrong with him.” Underlined, tapped again.

  Yeah, Mom. He definitely, totally, has a whole heck of a lot wrong with him.

  Mom wrote: “Monster. Hidden. Dark side. Black hat.”

  But Dad wasn’t the black hat. He’d been the white hat—the good guy. The guy who saved the day. The hero—my hero.

  Dad had grown up on cowboy lore: Gene Autry, Roy Rogers, the Lone Ranger. His love of the West had captured my childhood imagination. I’d watch him add oil and popcorn kernels to our red popper and wait for the pop-pop-pop while he poured us each a Pepsi over ice. Then after salt and butter was added to the crunchy white corn, we’d be on to John Wayne taking on the bad guys on a Saturday night.

  I wasn’t keen on being a damsel in distress. I wanted to be a cowgirl, wear jeans, ride horses, rustle up cattle, and pack a six-shooter. Cowgirls could rescue themselves. Mom would shoo my brother and me outside if we got too wild playing cowboys and Indians in her house. War cries, toy guns, and couches turned into forts led to exile till the supper bell rang.

  Mom nudged me, holding the legal pad so I could read: “Sexual. Can’t control. Bondage.”

  I winced at the words. My face blazing hot, I looked away.

  We don’t talk about religion, sex, or politics.

  Mom’s voice rose; it was direct but strained: “No, he never sexually abused me or the kids. He never hit us. The police asked the first day.”

  He never hit, but he still could be abusive physically. Brian. He tried to strangle Brian twice.

  The second time was a few years after the first. Dad pushed Brian up against the kitchen closet, putting his hands around my brother’s neck, like before. Dad told Brian, “My loyalty belongs to your mother; it’s time for you to move out of my home.”

  Mom pushed Dad off Brian, who was pale as a sheet. She stood up to Dad. She was brave, all five foot seven of her.

  Another time, Dad chased me down the hall when I was sixteen, threatening me within an inch of my life. I’d cussed at him in our living room, my eyes blazing fire. His face turned red with murderous rage, the angriest I’ve ever seen him. Mom stepped in, blocking him with her body—bought me a few seconds, kept me safe. He kicked a dent in my door, but I had it locked by then—I was safe.

  Dark side. Black hat. Monster.

  “The LORD is the stronghold of my life . . .”

  “I know. It’s right of you to ask, checking on us.” Mom’s tone softened. Her face was falling, turning pale. This was too much too soon for her.

  The man we knew. The man we didn’t. The man we thought we knew. The man who never really existed.

  “. . . of whom shall I be afraid?”4

  The pen dropped, the legal pad now lying discarded by her side. She ended the call soon after.

  “The police seem to think we were all abused. They asked; now the pastor is.”

  “I’m not sure they think it—they’re just making sure we’re okay. In these situations, often—”

  Mom stopped me. “I took care of you and your brother, changed your diapers, gave you baths. I would have seen if he caused any harm to either of you when you were little.”

  Ah, heck. People think—assume—Dad sexually abused us.

  Your Dad is BTK, you’re BTK’s daughter, he must . . .

  Mom looked down at her notes, said, “Your father is confessing, says . . .”

  I listened as she repeated the conversation from the phone. As she spoke, color slowly came back to her cheeks, and her eyes flashed with a spark I hadn’t seen since I’d come home. Anger, I reckoned.

  She repeated the conversation with the pastor to my aunt and my grandma. Each time growing stronger, gaining a bit more of herself. She knew the truth now—heard it directly. She was facing it, and it would eventually set her free.

  THURSDAY

  We fell into an easy, quiet routine at my aunt’s, whom we coaxed to return to her teaching job because we were strong enough to take care of each other during the day. Mom and I were eating and sleeping, taking the first hard steps on our way to recovery.

  We left the TV off, only turning it on to watch The Amazing Race or Survivor in the evenings. The only incoming news was from the day’s newspaper, which each of us would choose to read on our own.

  It was a safe place, far removed from the madness in Wichita and the camera-stalkers in Detroit. Earlier in the week, more news trucks were parked outside our apartment, and one followed Darian, who kept swinging Michigan lefts to shake it. Reporters showed up at his office, and his coworkers would answer the door for him. Reporters were calling him at his job and on his cell too: “I’m so-and-so, from so-and-so, and I would really like to speak with your wife. Do you know how we can contact her? Do you know where she is?”

  Grandma had taken me to the bookstore, buying Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix for me because I wanted to keep going in the story. At the checkout lane, we nudged each other, seeing my dad’s mug shot on the front of several magazines and national newspapers blaring BTK headlines.

  “Don’t tell your mother.”

  “No. I won’t.”

  My grandparents were a steady, constant presence, a reminder my roots ran deep and strong. Granddad spent his days reading or working crosswords from a corner recliner. He would lift his head occasionally and give me a small smile or ask, “What does the paper say today about your dad?” I’d move near his chair and tell him while he listened and shook his head, his eyes pained.

  Grandma flitted around the house, seeing to the dishes, taking care of everyone, making sure we were well fed. Mom and I often sat at the kitchen table, drifting in and out of conversation.

  I said, “Do you remember on my birthday five years ago, Dad waking up after his stomach scope and freaking out? He was acting nervous, saying, ‘Did I say anything crazy while I was out of it?’”

  Mom asked, “Was that the day we had a tornado warning when we got home?”

  “Yeah. That was a rough day—not birthday-like,” I replied. “I remember wishing I’d thought to bring the cupcakes we had picked up at the store with me to the hallway.”

  “Do you think your dad was worried he was going to say something? In the operating room?”

  I shrugged. Who knows?

  Mom said, “Did you know I was teasing him this fall that he spelled like that guy—BTK?”

  I grinned a bit at this, trying to stifle a laugh, as I checked Mom’s face. She was trying to hide a smirk, too, and when our eyes met, we both started giggling. It felt good to laugh.

  People died. I’m not supposed to be laughing ever again.

  “I asked your dad once why would BTK use a cereal box to communicate with the police—like it was reported in the news. He said, ‘Cereal—like a serial killer.’”

  I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at that one.

  “Where did he get those boxes? We don’t eat that type of cereal.”

  And that’s what my poor mom is wondering.
r />   Mom continued: “When I got interviewed, they asked what was behind our hidden door. I asked, ‘What door?’ They said the one in the kitchen behind the table. I said, ‘You mean the door the dryer is behind?’”

  I snorted, tried to contain it, and gave up, laughing out loud. Mom and Grandma followed.

  “The police asked me about safety-deposit boxes—I don’t know why.”

  Later, we learned that Dad used secret ones to store BTK items.

  Mom’s face turned serious, her voice lower. “Early last year, there was a special about the thirtieth anniversary of the first murders, what happened to the Oteros. It was on TV. Your dad watched it.”

  Oh. I didn’t know he had watched it.

  “The paper ran a large piece about the murders around then too.”

  I leaned over onto the table, laying my head on it, crossing my body with my arms.

  The first 2004 BTK communications showed up in March, on the twenty-seventh anniversary of Shirley Vian Relford’s death. What I was learning about my dad’s murders kept cutting in and out of my head, but I wouldn’t say these things out loud, trying to protect my mom from the worst.

  “I don’t understand why strangers are saying that we knew what your father was doing, we were somehow involved, or we must have known.” Her face was stretched and pained.

  She needs rest. Her own books and stories to escape in.

  As far back as I could remember, she had dozens of books with pretty covers depicting heroines full of hope stacked up against the wall next to her bed. They were quite the contrast to Dad’s dark-colored true-crime books, propped up above his head on his half of the headboard.

  “Mom, there is no way you would’ve stayed in that house with him, raised us kids with him. If we’d had the slightest inkling, we would’ve gone screaming out the front door and run straight to the police department.”

  Grandma said, “Your dad worked down the hall from a police department for fourteen years—they didn’t know either.”

  No one knew but Dad.

  SATURDAY

  My uncle and A. D. drove to our home Saturday, picking up clothes, books, and other things my mom needed.

  The thought of my house made my stomach tighten. It was the only home I’d ever known, and now I wasn’t sure that I was even brave enough to ever set foot in it again. Mom already determined she would never sleep there again. Not one of us blamed her.