Kerri Rawson has spent nearly 14 years trying to shake the memory of that morning in February 2005 when an FBI agent showed up at her front door with devastating news.
Dennis Rader, the doting, protective 59-year-old father she thought she knew, had just been arrested for 10 unimaginably savage murders — andunmasked as the serial killer known as “BTK,”for “bind, torture, kill,” a name he’d created for himself while terrorizing the family’s hometown of Wichita, Kan., between 1974 and 1991.
“It took more than 10 years before I could even sit across from someone and even talk about this,” Rawson tells PEOPLE in this week’s cover story. “Nobody wants to believe their father could be capable of such monstrous things.”
Julian Dufort
The sheer savagery of her father’s crimes hasn’t made her journey easy. Rader often stalked his victims — most of whom he strangled slowly after binding their arms and legs with rope — for months, then hid mementos from his kills in the floorboards beneath the family’s linen closet.
Memories of the morning her life was turned upside down still haunt Rawson, whose husband Darian was at work when the FBI agent appeared at the front door of their Detroit-area apartment.
• For more on how Kerri Rawson grapples with the horrible truth that her dad is the notorious BTK Killer,subscribe now to PEOPLEor pick up this week’s issue, on newsstands Friday.
Kerri on fishing trip with her father in 1982.Courtesy Kerri Rawson
As her mind raced and she tried to make sense of his words, she heard the agent say something about her father being a murderer. In her panic and confusion, Rawson began thinking, “My God, my father murdered my mom. … I felt like I was going to pass out. I was falling apart, holding onto the wall above the stove and I told him, ‘I need to sit down.'”
Over the next few hours the terrible truth began to sink in — and years would pass before any semblance of normalcy would return to her life. Her father would ultimately plead guilty to the 10 murders and is now serving a 175-year sentence.
“I was just trying to stay alive and breathe,” Rawson recalls of the day she learned the horrible truth. “Trying to recover from the shock, telling myself over and over that I’d do anything not to be the daughter of a serial killer.”
20/20will air an interview with Kerri Rawson on Friday, February 1 at 9pm ET on ABC.
source: people.com
