7. DENNIS RADER, A.K.A. THE ‘B.T.K. KILLER’
“BTK (Mr. Rader as I knew him) went to my nana’s church. My whole mom’s side knew/met him. He once gave me a cookie and complimented my dress at a bake sale. My mom would go to his house when she was younger to do church stuff, my uncles knew him from their scouts group. He’d drive everyone home before their 6pm curfew they had because BTK was still out there.
Everyone flipped their shit when he got caught.
I was still living with my mom when he was caught. She got a call from my Oma frantically telling her to put on the news. The rest of the night was spent listening to my mom playing phone tag with everyone. No one could believe it, my mom was the most freaked out because as the only girl out of 5 kids and she had gotten lots of rides from him alone… He easily could have done something, you know?
I didn’t know Mr Rader well, just saw him every couple years when we would pack up and stay with family in Kansas for school breaks. He seemed like a quiet old dude from Nanas church, just like every other old dude there.”
8. AMY HERRERA, A.K.A. THE ‘ALBUQUERQUE BLACK WIDOW’
“The woman known as the Albuquerque Black Widow.
BG: She killed her second husband (my uncle, a med student and medic in Vietnam), after a nasty separation. He had borrowed a truck from a friend to take her belongings to her new house. Story has it they argued, resulting in her shooting him multiple times. She claimed that he showed up drunk and beat her, but the coroner’s toxicity report found no trace of drugs or alcohol. Also, after he had been shot, she beat his face with a pistol so badly it broke the pistol butt. Her uncle, a prominent local attorney, was the first on scene and helped craft the self-defense narrative with the police. She was never charged with a crime.
Twenty years later, she killed her 3rd husband, a local politician when she discovered that he had been having an affair with another woman and was planning to leave her. She hid in the basement of their shared home (ironically, the same house inherited from my uncle), and shot him when he came home. She claimed self-defense, that she thought it was a burglar. The police didn’t buy it and she was charged with a crime, although once again her high-powered attorney made mincemeat of the prosecution.
To my knowledge, no one ever found out what happened to her first husband.
What she was like: She was a large woman with a very intense presence. When she was around the family, she made an effort to be saccharin-sweet, but her intensity put everyone on edge. She was constantly telling small lies and obsessing over defending/justifying them. She absolutely had to control the narrative and her image. One of the most shamelessly manipulative people I’ve ever met. I distinctly remember her vibe – as soon as she walked into the room you knew there was something not right with this person.
In private, she would wait at home for my uncle to return from school or work and ambush him with any kind of grievance she had. They lived close by, so it was easy to hear them arguing. One day, a nurse from the hospital called and tried to leave a message. When my uncle returned, she accused him of having an affair and flew into a rage which ended with her locking herself in a bathroom with a pistol, threatening to kill herself. The local sheriff was called (she actually fired the gun a few times in the bathroom) but did nothing until my uncle broke down the door and talked her down. But after that, things changed. My uncle had legally adopted her daughter from her first marriage and was hesitant to leave them, but it became apparent that it was the only course of action. And then she killed him. But yeah, the warning signs were everywhere.
Last I heard, she was working in a hospice somewhere in British Columbia. The thought of that creature around patients sends shivers through the spine.”
