A Serial Killer’s Daughter

by Kerri Rawson

  “All right, breathe in and out slowly, like we have practiced. Now, tell me again.”

  I slowly opened my eyes and looked at her with uncertainty, brushing tears away from my face, twisting a crumbling wet tissue around my fingers. “Do I have to?”

  “Yes. This is how we get it to stop looping. Now, tell me again.”

  It was midmorning in June 2007, and I was sitting on my therapist’s couch. For the past four months, every week, I’d been seeing a psychologist, a trauma specialist. She was helping me.

  We were chasing after the big one today: the loop that wouldn’t stop replaying in my brain, starting from when I noticed the beat-up old car by the dumpster till the man with the badge left my apartment. Again and again.

  From when I noticed the beat-up old car . . .

  For two years and four months, again and again.

  . . . till the man with the badge left.

  It was preventing me from living.

  It was an intense memory, with a reddish-gray hue around it, like an aura. Strong. And I was full of fear. I was stuck in 2005, on February 25. I couldn’t shake it. Couldn’t escape it. Couldn’t get out from under it. It was killing me.

  I looked fine on the outside if you hadn’t known me before. But I wasn’t fine. My back was hunched over, my chest was tight—squeezed. It was hard for me to look in other people’s eyes, didn’t want to. Balled up tight within myself, shutting down, sleeping a lot, moving slow, gray-murky—nothing. Then seething with red-hot anger, wanting to lash out at nothing and everything. Hating myself. Wanting it to end, all of it.

  Trauma.

  It had changed me physically, emotionally, spiritually. It wouldn’t leave. Again and again, on replay, I experienced the day the world broke out from under my feet, and nothing had been the same or ever would be again.

  It’s called posttraumatic stress disorder.

  I’d been diagnosed four months before, when I finally decided to drag my butt back into therapy. I don’t exactly know why I landed back on a therapist’s couch. I wanted to point to the past year and a half as evidence I was coping. Although I guess switching jobs, trying to outrun grief in the desert, and sobbing in restaurants, airplanes, and churches might say otherwise. Oh, and the angry letter. And the stupid loop that wouldn’t go away.

  Or maybe it was due to the umpteen thoughts spinning in my head, like how Dad committed his first murders a few months before turning twenty-nine, and I was turning twenty-nine soon, and maybe something would change in me too?

  When I brought it up, Darian said, “No. Come on, you don’t flip a switch one day and become a serial killer.”1

  Yeah. But what if you do?

  I guess one could also argue I’d been struggling with depression and anxiety for several years, but I definitely wasn’t going to admit that out loud.

  Yeah, that too.

  Back in February, a couple of weeks before the second anniversary of the arrest, I ended up in a hospital after days of unexplained nausea and pain near my stomach. The ER served me two disgusting bottles of chalky-tasting barium so I’d light up like a Christmas tree for my CT scan. They didn’t find anything conclusive but kept me overnight on appendix watch, with a young roommate who wouldn’t stay off her cell phone. Thanks to the fancy drinks, I spent most of the night in the bathroom, clutching an IV pole, getting revenge on the roommate.

  The next morning, a priest came by and asked if he could pray for me. I mumbled my assent and sobbed while his words rested over me. What I really needed was an exorcism.

  Not long after the hospital stay, I got on the internet, googled trauma therapists, found one with a nearby office, and—fighting against everything in me—forced myself to go. With my stomach in knots and a great desire to flee, I sat in the therapist’s waiting room and marked the dumb “thoughts of suicide” box again.

  Dang tiny judgmental boxes. Dang therapist offices.

  “I need help.”

  “That’s why I’m here.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ve got an unusual thing going. And I’ve got privacy issues.” I said this to the nice lady with the yellow legal pad and pen who was patiently listening, perched on a chair by the door. The door I was eyeing as if something bad was going to burst through any second.

  “I will be the only one who sees your files; I’ll lock them in my cabinet, okay?”

  “Okay. My mom’s doctors do the same for her, back in Wichita. That’s where I’m from . . .”

  “So what’s going on?”

  “Well, uh, you see, my dad, is . . . is, uh, in jail. He’s in for murder.”

  The therapist didn’t flinch.

  “He’s known as B . . . T . . . K. Maybe you’ve heard of him? We were in the news a while back. My maiden name is Rader. Dad is . . .”

  Still no flinching. And she was trying to look me in the eyes even though I was doing my best to dodge hers.

  “I don’t like saying B . . . T . . . K.”

  “Why not?”

  Oh heck, this one means business.

  “’Cause of what it stands for, and because that’s not my dad, the man I knew.”

  I told her, “There’s something stuck in my head. Like a loop. I don’t understand it. I think I’m going crazy. It’s from the day my dad was arrested. I’ve got bad stranger danger: men in uniforms, maintenance men, delivery men. Even seeing a police officer causes me to jump and can send me into some kind of hyperalert. Like I’m waiting for great harm to happen to me. Bracing for it.

  “My stomach has been hurting bad—I ended up in the hospital from it a few weeks ago. And my chest is tight all the time, like it’s being squeezed. I’m not working much, sleeping a lot. And sometimes I’m very angry. I don’t like it. I’ve got bad night terrors—like, full-on haunting me. I’ve had them since I was a little girl.

  “I don’t want to live like this anymore. Can you help me?”

  “Yes,” she said. “It sounds like you might be dealing with anxiety and depression. Very common, especially with trauma. Your chest being squeezed can come from anxiety—we can work on some techniques to help with breathing. Sometimes we sleep a lot because it blocks out the pain for a while. Yes?”

  Right. Anxiety and depression. Someone finally called it that out loud. Off and on since Michelle—my first year of college. It took ten years, but now it had a name.

  “And a body can often react—know things, feel things the mind doesn’t or isn’t ready to face yet. Your stomach could be reacting to an old memory, old trauma.”

  Oh.

  “The anniversary of my dad’s arrest just passed.” I got a small smile of understanding from my therapist with that admission.

  “Also, it sounds like what you’re describing—the thing stuck in your head—is posttraumatic stress disorder. PTSD for short. And certain memories, situations, strangers, could be triggering you. Your night terrors could be from PTSD or they could be a more general sleep disorder.”

  “Oh, PTSD, so that’s what’s wrong. I didn’t know it had a name. I thought I was going crazy.”

  “Nope. I can help you.”

  “But no one died, like with my cousin’s accident. That was in 1996. It got stuck for a while replaying in my head, my first year in college.”

  “Were you in the accident?”

  “No. Just told about it, read about it. I could picture it, though. Imagine it, you know? That’s what got stuck.”

  “How did you get unstuck?”

  “I went to see a counselor on campus. She had me go through the day my cousin died in detail, desensitizing myself. Told me the replaying of the accident was a common reaction to trauma.”

  “Right. Desensitizing to trauma—smart. It sounds as if your mind—your body—perceived the visit by the FBI agent as a threat. And you understandably went into shock, hearing such devastating news. That’s all trauma.”

  She paused to let me absorb that.

  “What your father did, what you know about it—all that’s
traumatic. What you’ve been through since he was arrested—all trauma, and it sounds like it could go back into your childhood?”

  “Yeah.” I mumbled this quietly, dropping my head.

  “Let’s take some time getting to know one another. We’ll let you get comfortable here, get comfortable with me, and when you’re ready, we will work on it. I can help you. I have been able to help others.”

  Help. She kept saying that word—when I had no desire to ever utter it myself: I need help.

  Therapy came with homework. Requests I’d grimace and roll my eyes at.

  I was supposed to be walking regularly, to help my body fight off what it was under attack from. Walking outside was a chilly option in early March, and being alone outside could increase my anxiety, so I tried walking at the mall. I did walk a few times, following the snazzily dressed power walkers, but my instincts to be a bum overrode my attempts to exercise. Even stopping at the cookie kiosk wasn’t enough of an incentive.

  I went to a psychiatrist, who placed me on an antidepressant and a sleeping pill. But the sleeping pill made me see floaty things and caused me to walk into walls, which was less than helpful.

  I told my mom I’d gone back to therapy and she said, “PTSD. That’s what my therapist said I have too. From the day your father was arrested.”

  We experienced the same trauma, sixteen hours apart.

  Mom had been embroiled in the lawsuit, a lawyer working for her pro bono. The lawsuit against her got tossed out. Even with it cleared, Mom still couldn’t find a buyer for the house, till someone anonymously stepped forward and paid off her mortgage, donating the house to Park City to be torn down. It was a stunning, immensely kind, and generous thing for someone to do for my family.

  We were thankful Mom didn’t have to make the mortgage payments anymore, but it was sad to know the house was going to be knocked down. This was better, though, than folks filming third-rate horror films in it or taking it apart in pieces and hocking them on eBay.

  On March 7, two days before my dad’s sixty-second birthday, our old home was bulldozed. Thirty-four years of memories, gone like that. The land was supposed to be turned into an entrance to the park, but it never was. The next time I was in Kansas I drove by it slowly but didn’t stop. My trees were the only things left standing.

  APRIL

  In the spring, I was subbing in a sixth-grade classroom and went to use the copy machine during my planning period. Standing in the office were detectives with shiny badges on their hips and guns in holsters.

  Trying to hide my fear, I made my copies and tried not to stare. One of the detectives noticed my face and gently said, “It’s okay. We found a note threatening violence at the school but we stopped it in plenty of time.”

  I went back to the class and taught the rest of the afternoon, attempting to squelch the rampant rumors flying around my room and to keep my own fears in check. I went home and thought I was okay.

  I wasn’t.

  A few days later, after accepting a sub job at the same building, I didn’t go. I didn’t call anyone to explain my PTSD. I didn’t even call in absent till after the day was over—making up a lame excuse on an answering machine.

  I lay in my bed, frozen, full of fear for hours, ransacking my brain, and feeling terrible for not showing up. I was never actually told I lost my job—I just didn’t ever accept any more sub jobs with that district.

  At my next therapy session, I broke down in sobs, telling my therapist about the badges, the guns, and being unable to return to my job.

  Trauma. It was real.

  CHAPTER 42

  Therapy Might Just Save Your Life

  MAY 2007

  In May, ten years after committing my life to Christ in the canyon, I stood in front of an auditorium of cheering people and watched Darian be baptized. Then he stood and watched me do the same. I wore a black T-shirt and shorts and the tiny silver cross earrings my aunt Donna had given me for confirmation fifteen years before. It felt right—I’d come full circle.

  “‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts as you did in the rebellion.’”1

  When I went under the clear water, an immense warmth of knowing hit me square in the chest—home.

  God.

  I came up from the water with a huge grin on my face.

  A peace, a hope, a future.

  My baptism stood as a mark of remembrance—of what God had seen me through. It also stood as a testament to the future I desired: God’s path always under my feet. And to join the church and community we were coming to know and care about.

  JUNE

  On the day before my twenty-ninth birthday, a BTK book was released. Written by four Wichita Eagle journalists, it was about my dad’s crimes and the decades-long investigation around them.

  Happy birthday to me.

  Like the biggest idiot ever, I preordered it from Amazon. For the next many years, Amazon asked if I would like to see more books like the book about my dad with graphics on the cover of folks being tortured.

  I should have realized ordering from Amazon would trigger this. The company had already been asking for the past three years if I would like to purchase more garden tools like the ones I ordered back in 2004 and shipped for Father’s Day.

  No. I don’t believe so. Can’t ship tools to prison.

  When the book arrived, a few days after my birthday, I casually flipped through it. Big mistake. Nice pictures of smiling people my dad later murdered. Crime scene photos. Photos from court. Dad in bondage. I found my name in the index: Rader, Kerri. I tried to read small sections, but I quickly snapped the book closed and shut down.

  It all was swirling inside me—my head, my guts, my heart.

  I took the book into therapy and shook it slightly at my therapist; red-faced and livid, I read sections to her. When I got home, I turned the book so I couldn’t read the spine and stuck it on my bookshelf.

  A session or two later we tackled the loop, using exposure therapy: telling the story out loud and telling it again and again in detail, till it stopped having such a hold on me.

  “You’re safe here. Breathe, in and out. Again. Breathe. Good. Now, tell me again, from the start.”

  “On February twenty-fifth, I woke up late . . .”

  That was the last time I ever had to tell it to her.

  We got it. It was gone. From that day on, what happened on February 25 didn’t hold the same power over me. It settled into its correct place. My therapist was a God-sent genius.

  JULY

  After the loop was vanquished, I went off my antidepressant. It had helped me, but now Darian and I wanted to try to get pregnant—I didn’t have much desire while on it.

  I told Darian we needed to start trying because it took my mom three years with each kid. Two weeks later, we were pregnant.

  I calculated the math, bought pee-sticks, and took the test. Lying sprawled out on the floor next to the kitchen with a dumbfounded grin on my face, I pressed my hands lightly over my belly.

  Pregnant.

  Wow.

  The cats thought I’d finally lost it. So did Darian when he arrived home and I flung a pee-stick in his face.

  “I thought you said it could take years of trying?”

  Yeah, well. Surprise!

  As soon as I knew I was expecting, I ran out and bought maternity clothes—I was sure I was already showing.

  Not long after we found out about the baby, Molly fell ill. We took her to an emergency vet and were told her feline leukemia had caught up with her—Molly’s bone marrow was shutting down. We brought her home and I made a space for her in our linen closet, a spot she had never wanted to rest in before. For the next few days, we quietly walked by and lay next to her on the hallway floor, as Hammy stayed near—both cats sleeping curled up on our bath towels.

  Less than a week after she had fallen ill, we took her to our vet, said goodbye, and let her slip away. Grief crippled me once more.

  Too much loss,
too much death.

  AUGUST

  I spent six months in therapy, working through chunks of my pain, talking a lot about growing up with my father. I told the story of Dad screaming in a rage at Mom in Jackson Hole, Wyoming, in August 1995.

  We were visiting the Tetons, and Mom fell off a path, twisting her ankle and scraping her knee. Dad went ballistic. I don’t ever remember seeing him that insane: yelling at her, blaming her for falling and ruining his day.

  With blood running down Mom’s leg, Brian and I helped her up and got her to a forest ranger’s cabin, where she lay down on a first-aid cot. I sat with her, and I remember the ranger looking kindly at us and eyeing my dad cautiously. Dad was pacing outside, red-faced and steamed.

  Later Dad apologized and took us to a fancy restaurant for lunch, a place my mom liked. Mom hung back at the hotels even more that trip. I figured she needed to rest her leg and wanted to read—she wasn’t much into exploring with us adventurous souls anyway. I remember Dad asking me later in the trip, “I’m not sure what’s wrong with your mom. Do you think it’s because of her falling?” I don’t remember what I said to him, but in 2015 she told me, “Your father ruined my trip.”

  Looking back, I wonder if the ranger thought my dad was an abuser. He looked at him—through him—in a way other people didn’t. It hurt me then, and it hurts now, thinking about that day.

  Working through these incidents, I realized I suffered emotional abuse from my dad, likely my whole life—Mom and Brian too. Brian had been physically abused also. I knew this—inside me. It wasn’t easy to hear it said out loud, even from my own voice, but at least now I could work at coming to terms with it.

  I’d been an abuse victim since I was little. I’ve been a trauma victim since the day I found out I was a crime victim. I’ve been a crime victim since before I was born.

  Crime. Abuse. Trauma.

  Victim.

  Me?

  Me.

  Anxiety, depression, PTSD.

  Me.

  My therapist encouraged me to write my father, but I dragged my feet. Once I found out I was pregnant, I was torn. I wanted him to know he was going to be a grandfather, but I was growing protective of my baby and, frankly, of myself.