Terror Talk: True Crime, Serial Killers and Horror

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss Luckiest Girl Alive, Abandoned, Mandrake, Hellhole, Unhuman, Bloody Muscle Body Builder in Hell, plus our very own trivia game Halloween Horror Facts with Cath.

Website: https://www.terrortalkpodcast.com

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

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Music by Mannequin Uprising

How do you build a second life to hide the first one?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode discusses sexual sadism, cruelty to animals, autoerotic asphyxiation, and serial murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Part two of a five-part series on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. Part One ended in his childhood; this one runs from his mid-teens to the edge of his first murders — and it's the episode about compartmentalization, which is the thing he was genuinely gifted at.

By his mid-teens he was fantasizing about binding and raping girls his own age, and he already knew he would eventually kill. To everyone in Wichita he was a polite, shy young man.

Therapists Shannon and Cathy follow him through the Air Force, a marriage he hoped would cure him, and the arrival of the alter ego he named and drew as a cartoon frog.

In this episode:

• Betty — the relative who hated cats, told stories of drowning them, and taught him poetry. Both halves of that come back.
• The emptied-out chicken house that became the place he rehearsed
• The water tank, the silos, and being hog-tied playing cowboys and Indians: "I was scared, but something felt good"
• "The one who holds power over life and death is in charge" — the line Cathy calls the motto of his work
• The story at twelve of a girl strangled with leaves down her throat, and the true detective magazines — the same ones Ted Bundy read
• His father's entire sex education: never lay down on the couch with a little girl
• Four years in the Air Force, sergeant, honorably discharged — and a period with almost no victim pool
• Marrying Paula Dietz in 1971, hoping "the love of a good woman" would heal him
• Why repression intensifies what it's trying to suppress
• Jack the Ripper as a role model — not for the killing, for never being caught
• Factor X, or "Rex" — the name he gave his urges, drawn as a devilish little frog
• The basement, the women's clothing, the cord, the Polaroids — and why he hoped acting it out on himself would purge it
• Why psychopaths are given risk management instead of talk therapy

Clinical concepts: compartmentalization · repression and rebound · autoerotic behavior and self-punishment · magical thinking · deprivation and withholding as arousal · why fantasy rehearsal escalates in therapy · marriage as attempted self-repair, and as cover

Sources: Katherine Ramsland, Confession of a Serial Killer · Stephen Singular, BTK: Unholy Messenger

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 (this episode)
• Part 3 — the Otero family, the victims, and the BTK letters
• 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 · BTK Factor X Rex · Jack the Ripper · Paula Dietz · Dennis Rader Air Force · compartmentalization · Katherine Ramsland · BTK Unholy Messenger

#DennisRader #BTK #BTKKiller #JackTheRipper #PaulaDietz #Compartmentalization #Wichita #TrueCrimePsychology #DarkPsychology #TerrorTalkPodcast

All horror is psychological. Today we discuss Deadstream, Pearl, Piggy, Old People, Kuso, Uncanny Annie 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

Was Dennis Rader born to kill or made?

⚠️ Trigger warning: This episode discusses child sexual development, cruelty to animals, sexual sadism, and serial murder. Listener discretion is advised.

Part one of a five-part series on Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer — bind, torture, kill, the name he gave himself in letters to the police.

Between 1974 and 1991 he murdered ten people in Wichita and Park City, Kansas, then stopped, and wasn't caught for another fourteen years. He was also a church council president, a Cub Scout leader, a husband and a father of two.

Cathy leads this series, and she does not open it lightly. She has evaluated sex offenders and violent predators and sat in rooms with psychopaths — and she says Katherine Ramsland's book on Rader is the most disturbing thing she has read. Where Dahmer felt impulsive and relational, Rader was calculated and controlled. Nobody feels for this one.

This first part goes back to Lynn Rader's childhood in Kansas, and the question the whole series is built on: is this a man who was born this way, or assembled?

In this episode:

• Fantasies from age three or four — "I first started seeing or thinking monsters… I didn't want to be helpless"
• Why forensic clinicians stop offenders describing their fantasies — fantasy isn't processing, it's rehearsal
• The diathesis-stress model: you can carry the predisposition and never express it
• Psychopathy versus sociopathy, and why Rader sits on the other side of that line from Bundy
• Two head injuries before adulthood — his mother thrown from a horse while pregnant, and dropping him on his head at six months
• Hanging turtles, then dogs and cats, after watching his mother kill chickens
• The teacher, the rope, and the window at age eleven — the first paired association, and arguably his first victim
• His mother telling him God would kill him if he masturbated
• The sofa, the Ferris wheel, and "the big G" — where a woman in bondage needing help came from
• The punctured eardrum, the warm oil, and the doctor he later stalked
• Zion Lutheran Church, the white robe, and bondage arriving at the same age as faith
• Why religion and bondage may have paired in the same power structure

Clinical concepts: psychopathy versus sociopathy · the diathesis-stress model · paired association and conditioning · fantasy as rehearsal in risk assessment · humiliation and abandonment as psychopathic triggers · the narcissistic mother and shame · why abuse comes to equal love · early sexual imprinting

Source: Katherine Ramsland, Confession of a Serial Killer: The Untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer

The Dennis Rader series — all five parts:

• Part 1 — the BTK Killer's childhood in Kansas (this episode)
• 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
• 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 Wichita Kansas · bind torture kill · Dennis Rader childhood · Katherine Ramsland · psychopathy vs sociopathy · paired association · sexual sadism

#DennisRader #BTK #BTKKiller #Wichita #KatherineRamsland #Psychopathy #SexualSadism #TrueCrimePsychology #DarkPsychology #TerrorTalkPodcast

All horror is psychological. Halloween fun. Today we discuss Wendell & Wild, Don't Worry Darling, Satan's Slaves 2: Communion, She Will, and Resurrection 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

Today we discuss true crime documentaries we've been watching including Keeper of the Ashes: The Girl Scout Murders, The Good Nurse, Captive Audience: A Real American Horror Story, Tiger King: Murder, Mayhem and Madness, Don't F**k with Cats: Hunting an Internet Killer, Bad Vegan, The Most Hated Man on the Internet, Amanda Knox (2016), Athlete A, and Who took Johnny.

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. Halloween fun. Today we discuss the book Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, The Invited, Head Full of Ghosts, plus our horror movies Barbarian, Grimcutty, Significant Other, and Mona Lisa and the Blood Moon, 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

A seven-part documentary series based on the book of the same name, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark explores writer Michelle McNamara’s investigation into the dark world of the violent predator she dubbed "The Golden State Killer," the man who terrorized California in the 1970s and 80s and is responsible for 50 home-invasion rapes and 13 murders.

The series is also a journey into the soul of McNamara, whose True Crime Diaries blog and years of relentless determination for justice for the victims helped keep the case alive and in the public eye, and who tragically died of an accidental overdose while writing her book. A meditation on obsession and loss, I’ll Be Gone in the Dark chronicles the unrelenting path of a mysterious killer and the fierce determination of one woman to bring the case to light.

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 Rob Zombie's Firefly Trilogy The House of 1000 Corpses, The Devil's Rejects and 3 From Hell, and Baby's female psychopathy, 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

The Deep End with Teal Swan on Hulu is a docu-series with 4 episodes. It is a look inside the world of one of today's most controversial spiritual teachers and her dedicated followers.

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