Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss our favorite horror films from 2022 including A Wounded Fawn, Everything Everywhere All At Once, Glorious, Hatching, Barbarian, Scream 2022, Prey, Smile, The Black Phone, Nope, Hellraiser 2022, Moloch, Fresh, Virus - 32, Slash/back and more, plus our very own trivia game Horror Facts with Cath.

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Music by Mannequin Uprising

Why would a man who couldn't stop killing stop for thirteen years?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual sadism, serial murder described in the killer's own words, and self-injurious behavior. Listener discretion is advised.

Part four of a five-part series on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer — and the one that answers the question the timeline raised. He killed four people in one morning in 1974 and then went years at a stretch doing nothing. Why?

Cathy's answer, drawn from Katherine Ramsland's interviews with him, is that he was never dormant at all.

It's also the episode that goes back to his brain. Two head injuries before adulthood. A boy kept in from recess for not drinking his milk, who spent it drawing what Ramsland calls blackboard horror places and girl traps — while reading H.H. Holmes and Jack the Ripper in elementary school.

In this episode:

• The second head injury at seventeen — a car crash he lied about, and the line he uses for it: "This wreck was the start of the dark spin"
• "Cubing" — his own word for the split, and why Rocky and Bullwinkle is in this episode
• Over fifty-five "working projects" he was never able to carry out. Ramsland's conclusion: the quiet years were stalking years.
• "I was on a powerful train that I could not get off. Superman could stop it, but I was not Superman."
• "Project Lights Out" — the attack where he lost control, in his own words, and the vow he made afterward about knives
• The hidey holes in his house, and moving everything outside it before knee surgery in case he died on the table
• Why a compliance officer's badge in Park City was supplying him — and why he loved enforcing rules
• His claim that the public should be grateful for his fantasies, or he'd have killed more
• Why withholding was its own form of arousal — and why he was a masochist as much as a sadist
• Erotic enthrallment, dopamine, and why lust killers escalate like addicts
• Dr. Al Carlisle's three processes — fantasy, dissociation, compartmentalization — from the man who psychologically tested Ted Bundy

Clinical concepts: traumatic brain injury and behavior · erotic enthrallment and the dopamine curve · lust murder · fantasy, dissociation and compartmentalization · sadism and masochism in the same person · anticipation over consummation in addiction

Sources: Katherine Ramsland, Confession of a Serial Killer · Scott Bonn, Why We Love Serial Killers · Jill Sederstrom, "Why Did Dennis Rader Wait So Long Between His Murders?" (2018)

The Dennis Rader series — all five parts:

• Part 1 — the BTK Killer's childhood in Kansas
• Part 2 — Jack the Ripper, the double life, and the thing he called Rex
• Part 3 — the Otero family, the victims, and the BTK letters
• Part 4 — why he stopped for years at a time (this episode)
• Part 5 — Kerri Rawson, Paula Dietz, and prison

Also in this lane: our five-part series on Jim Jones, and our Season 9 premiere CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1.

Two licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴

🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.🌐 terrortalkpodcast.com | 💜 patreon.com/terrortalk📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Search terms: Dennis Rader · BTK Killer · BTK cubing · why BTK stopped killing · Katherine Ramsland · Scott Bonn · erotic enthrallment · lust killer · Al Carlisle · compartmentalization

#DennisRader #BTK #BTKKiller #LustMurder #Compartmentalization #KatherineRamsland #ForensicPsychology #TrueCrimePsychology #DarkPsychology #TerrorTalkPodcast

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss our favorite horror books from 2022 including The Exorcist, Audition, The Snowman, The Jigsaw Man, A Head Full of Ghosts, The Last House on Needless Street, Men Women and Chainsaws, Secrets in the Dark, The Troop, Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of the Dennis Radar, plus our very own trivia game Horror Facts with Cath.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com

Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/

Music by Mannequin Uprising

Casey Anthony: Where the Truth Lies, a peacock documentary. Shannon and Cathy discuss psychological impressions after watching this documentary.

For the first time on camera, Casey Anthony sits down to share her side of the story since her culture-defining trial and acquittal 11 years ago.

IMDB Storyline: Considered one of the first "trials of the century" that polarized conversation in living rooms across America, the Casey Anthony case is one that still leaves more questions than answers. There have been several movies and documentaries made to fill in the gaps, and yet, the woman at the center of it all remains the biggest mystery. Throughout the exclusive three-part documentary series, Casey Anthony finally tells her side of the story and addresses the public that has made so many assumptions for the past 13 years.

Shannon and Cathy discuss psychological impressions after watching this documentary. 

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/ Music by Mannequin Uprising

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss Christmas Horror Mythology including Krampus' Gang, Belschnickel, Frau Perchta and the Giant Christmas Cat  and we also discuss the movies Anna and the Apocalypse and Silent Night (2021),  plus Horror Facts with Cath.

One Resource: spirithalloween.com

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com

Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/

Music by Mannequin Uprising

A Netflix documentary by Lucie Jourdan.

After a woman's at-home DNA test reveals multiple half-siblings, she discovers a shocking scheme involving donor sperm and a popular fertility doctor.

IMDB Storyline: Jacoba Ballard decided to take a DNA test one day, in hopes of finding one or two half-siblings with the same sperm donor. "Growing up, I felt different," she says in the documentary's trailer. But when she found seven matches, she realized that she had stumbled across a major discovery: a shocking scheme involving donor sperm and a popular fertility doctor.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/ Music by Mannequin Uprising

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss Causeway, The Devil's Hour, 2-Headed Shark Attack, The Covenant, and the book The Invited, plus our very own trivia game Horror Facts with Cath.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com

Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/

Music by Mannequin Uprising

Interviews with friends, family and Sally McNeil herself chart a bodybuilding couple's rocky marriage and its shocking end in a Valentine's Day murder. We discuss the different psychological mechanisms at work including coercive control, trauma bonding, abuse, mutual combat and the justice systems bias.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/ Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/ Music by Mannequin Uprising

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss Troll, Wednesday, Slash/back, Smile, Killer Nurse (documentary) plus our very own trivia game Halloween Horror Facts with Cath.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com

Community Membership: https://www.patreon.com/terrortalk

Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/terrortalkpodcast/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/TalkTerror/

Music by Mannequin Uprising

He spent thirty years taunting the police and then handed them a floppy disk.

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode describes murders in detail, including the killing of children, strangulation, and sexual violence. Listener discretion is advised.

Part three of a five-part series on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. Parts one and two built the man. This one is the timeline: the victims, the letters, and the mistake that ended it.

Unlike Bundy he never cruised for strangers. He stalked for weeks, and he installed home alarm systems for a living.

January 15, 1974 — he entered the Wichita home of the Otero family and killed four of them: Joseph and Julie, and their children Josie and Joseph Jr. He had planned for two. Dad was home. A nine-year-old let the dog out. His hands were shaking and he was sweating in a Kansas January. Their fifteen-year-old son Charlie came home and found them.

Then Kathryn Bright, whose brother Kevin survived a gunshot to the head. Shirley Vian, whose three children he locked in a bathroom. Nancy Fox, after which he called 911 from a payphone to report his own work. Marine Hedge, his own neighbor. Vicki Wegerle, for whose murder her husband became the prime suspect. Dolores Davis, in 1991 — and then he stopped for thirteen years.

In this episode:

• "Project Little Mex" — the name he gave the Otero plan, based on an assumption that was wrong
• Strangulation and souvenir-taking becoming his signature, and why he left semen deliberately before DNA existed
• The book planted in Wichita Public Library: "the code words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them"
• "How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper?" — and the nicknames he suggested for himself
• The poems — and where he learned to write them
• Why the 1985 and 1986 murders were never connected to BTK at the time
• January 2004: a newspaper says BTK has faded from memory, and he comes back to prove otherwise
• The cereal box, the Home Depot postcard, and the ad that read "Rex, it will be okay"
• The metadata — a deleted Word document, Christ Lutheran Church, last modified by Dennis
• His daughter's pap smear, a familial DNA match, and a black Jeep Cherokee
• Why 1980s police couldn't see a pattern in their own city

Clinical concepts: organized versus disorganized offenders · signature versus modus operandi · stalking as the primary gratification · grandiosity as the route to capture · trophy-taking · the double life and the locked room

Sources: Katherine Ramsland, Confession of a Serial Killer · The BTK Killer: Born to Kill (2022) · Kerri Rawson, A Serial Killer's Daughter

The Dennis Rader series — all five parts:

• Part 1 — the BTK Killer's childhood in Kansas
• Part 2 — Jack the Ripper, the double life, and the thing he called Rex
• Part 3 — the Otero family, the victims, and the BTK letters (this episode)
• Part 4 — why he stopped for years at a time
• Part 5 — Kerri Rawson, Paula Dietz, and prison

Also in this lane: our five-part series on Jim Jones, and our Season 9 premiere CULTS: Heaven's Gate, the Zizians & Jonestown Part 1.

Two licensed therapists — one forensic psychologist, one clinical LMFT.

Until then... sleep safe. 😴

🎧 Follow Terror Talk wherever you get your podcasts and join us on Patreon for bonus content and access to the compound.🌐 terrortalkpodcast.com | 💜 patreon.com/terrortalk📸 Instagram: @terrortalkpodcast | 🎥 YouTube: Terror Talk Podcast | 📘 Facebook: Terror Talk Podcast | 🎵 TikTok: @dark.psychology.girls🎶 Music by Mannequin Uprising

Search terms: Dennis Rader · BTK Killer · Otero family murders · Kathryn Bright · Nancy Fox · Vicki Wegerle · Dolores Davis · BTK letters · BTK floppy disk · Wichita Kansas

#DennisRader #BTK #BTKKiller #OteroFamily #Wichita #BTKLetters #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePsychology #DarkPsychology #TerrorTalkPodcast