The compelling true story of the BTK serial killer, Dennis Rader, who bound, tortured and killed his victims during a spree in Wichita in the middle 1970s. He was finally captured in 2005 after a chance newspaper report in 2004 set him off again.
In February 2005, the residents of the small town of Park City in Kansas reeled in horror as one of their model citizens a former Boy Scout leader, president of the Lutheran church congregation and town compliance officer was revealed to be the BTK serial killer who had eluded police for more than thirty years. Dennis Rader, ordinary father and husband, had killed ten people between 1974 and 1991. He earned his moniker by branding his victims' bodies with 'BTK', his own symbol for Bind, Torture, Kill.
Not only had Rader catalogued and archived his crimes with meticulous precision, he had taunted police about their ineptitude during the original investigations. Yet he remained undetected, hiding behind a veneer of extreme normality. When a newspaper article appeared in 2004 suggesting that the identity of BTK may never be known, the dormant killer could not resist the challenge. He resumed his audacious correspondence with police and ultimately fell victim to his own ego.
Drawing from the killer's chilling 32-hour confession, and including extensive interviews with Rader's pastor, his fellow Lutherans, and detectives and psychologists who worked on the case, best-selling author Stephen Singular creates a disturbing portrait of BTK, the most dangerous and complex serial killer of our times.
'Unholy Messenger' is a powerful examination of the boundaries of good and evil, and of the psychology and spirituality of a killer in whom faith and bloodshed converged.
