Unholy Messenger

The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer

By: Stephen Singular

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

To all appearances, Dennis Rader was a model citizen in the small town of Park City, Kansas, where he had lived with his family almost his entire life. He was a town compliance officer, a former Boy Scout leader, the president of his church congregation, and a seemingly ordinary father and husband. But Rader's average life belied the existence of his dark, sadistic other self: he was the BTK serial killer.

The self-named BTK (for Bind, Torture, Kill) had terrorized Wichita for 31 years, not only with his brutal, sexually motivated crimes, but also through his taunting, elusive communications with the media and law enforcement. In 1974, BTK committed his first murders, torturing and strangling four members of the Otero family, and wrote the police an audacious letter declaring his responsibility for the Oteros' deaths and labeling himself, for the first time, BTK. Thus he established a pattern, stalking and killing a series of 10 victims, then bragging and claiming ownership of his crimes, that ended in 1991 but left law enforcement confounded and the public with deeply troubling memories. Until, that is, he resurfaced in 2004 with another string of letters that would finally lead to his arrest.

Drawing from extensive interviews with Rader's pastor, congregation, detectives, and psychologists who worked the case, and from his unnervingly detailed 32-hour confession, best-selling author Stephen Singular delves into the disturbing life and crimes of BTK to explore fully, for the first time, the most dangerous and complex serial killer of our generation and the man who embodied, at once, astonishing extremes of normality and abnormality.

©2006 Stephen Singular (P)2006 Tantor Media Inc

Critic reviews

"Singular has written a solid account that will both fascinate and terrify." (Publishers Weekly)

good read but repetition of subject matter

overall i enjoyed the book. but I had a couple of pet peeves! what's up with the constant repetition of subject matter? Also it does jump all over in terms of dates quite a bit. it is.

very good

vVery good depiction of a monster.. not sure if you could really stop this or any of this as they say in the book where you might be able to study ptk and stop it from happening. These were heinous crimes.

Buy the abridged version

This book goes into excruciating detail about issues that hardly relate to the BTK case. I found myself tuning out for large portions of the text, and I found the level of detail about unrelated topics to be frustrating. About 10-20 chapters could have been completely eliminated. Definitely buy the abridged version if there is one - you're not missing anything. The relevant detail on the BTK case was interesting and worth the purchase.

loved it!

the narrators voice and inflections s are superb! and even though I have read other books on btk this one had things in it I didn't know. and the story is well told. I highly recommend this book.

Good True Crime

Many of the current reviews kept me from picking this book. This book is a great read with lots of detail. Several reviewers mention the parts about BTK's pastor as boring or distracting and I'd argue the opposite is the case. BTK was very devoted in his Christianity. The author, clearly intrigued by this, delves into how BTK was able to kill 10 people without remorse and still call himself a man of God.

I really enjoyed this book and I bet you will too!

recommended

informative. nice exploration of the underlying social and moral issues. narrator gave a nice performance.

Informative and compelling...

but not as good as Graysmith's ZODIAC. Singular's insinuation that supposedly repressive midwestern Kansas culture and Bible-belt relgiion were partially to blame for Radar's behavior and "inability to seek help" is really too easy and heavy-handed and seriously overlooks the serial killer process and psyche. He puts a lot of thoughts in Radar's head from thirty years ago that seem a bit more than assumed

Great story telling and narration

I was going to go for another audiobook on Dennis Rader due to popularity and more ratings than this one, however I enjoyed the narrators voice and the story telling of this audiobook when listening to the sample, compared to the other. I’m glad I did.

Facinating

Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?

Yes, if that person was also a true crime reader also.

What did you like best about this story?

I really liked the in depth physiological profile that was used in the book. I thought at first that is was only the imagination of the author until you learn about the confession and how Dennis talked non-stop about the murders. Since I was not very familiar with this case, I did not know that he had divulged that much information to the cops.

Have you listened to any of Alan Sklar’s other performances before? How does this one compare?

Alan Sklar is great with these true crime books. He can sound very evil.

Any additional comments?

For any true crime enthusiast, a good read.

Detailed, but Interesting

Others have complained that this book has entirely too much detail and seemingly tangential exposition. As a Kansan familiar with both Kansas culture and the Wichita area, I find these details relevant and fascinating. My only real criticism of the narration is that Mr. Sklar mispronounces several regional names (Arkansas River, Menninger Clinic), which is, I suppose, understandable. Less forgivable is his mispronunciation of the word "synod." Otherwise, the narration is very good.