Celebrating the music and artists you've loved on I heart radio over the past year and giving you an exclusive first look at the biggest new songs coming in the summer of 24. Witness Music history I Heart Innovator Award recipient, Beyonce I heart icon, award recipient, cher and performances by Justin Tipperley, Green Day TLC Jelly Roll Laney Wilson, Tate McRae and your host Ludacris our 2024 iHeartRadio Music Award Monday, April 1 Watch on far starting at 08:00 p.m. Seven Central. Bring a little optimism into your life with the bright side, a new kind of daily podcast from hello Sunshine, hosted by me, Danielle Robet and me, Simone Boyce. Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.

I am so excited about this podcast. The bright side. You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives. Shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.

Listen to the bright side on America's number one podcast network, I heart. Open your free iHeart app and search the bright side in the nineties, New York detective Louis Scarcella locked up the.

Worst criminals, putting bad guys away.

There's no feeling like it.

Then jailhouse lawyers took aim. Led by Derek Hamilton, Scarcella took me.

To the precinct and lied.

20 men eventually walked free. Now in the Burden podcast, after a decade of silence, Louis Scarcella finally tells his story. And so does Derek Hamilton. Listen to the burden on the iHeartRadio, Apple podcasts or wherever. Get your podcasts.

Figure out what we're going to talk about here. We take the interview. Benton County Sheriff's office times approximately 19 minutes till twelve. President Ernest interviews my self detective blanketship at the county sheriff's office and Detective Arnham with Bella Vista branch at the sheriff's office. And we're talking to he's a white male. We served you with what was called a prosecutor's subpoena, and at that time, you had agreed to come to the sheriff's office and answer some questions and ask some if you want to. During that time, you also gave us consent to search on your vehicle. Is that correct? You don't pick up a knife. It's okay.

During the summer of 2023, I spoke with a source about a BCSO suspect in Dana Stidham's murder. The man I am calling Jack Linney, who in my mind, was the only suspect anyone needed to focus on and either eliminate or go after with everything I had. My source mentioned a recorded interview with BCSO detectives conducted with Linney in the early 1990s that I needed to hear.

And also, you were advised your rights. Did you understand your rights? Yes. Was there any questions that you wanted to ask us? Did you understand your rights?

The more I had found out about Lennie, the more he fit into being the prime suspect in Dana Stidham's murder. And as I spoke to investigators who worked on Shawna Grace Doe Garber's murder, Linney's name was very much at the forefront of that investigation as well. And Jack Linney, well, he knew it.

Did you understand your rights? I'm trying to think, like, well, I need you where the law is now. I'm wondering whether all this. Stop right now and ask for a lawyer. That's something you'll have to consider. But what I want to go through is you understood your rights is why you're saying that now. Yes. Okay. If you don't want to answer any questions, you don't. That's totally up to you. It's very doubtful, because I don't really know why I'm here or fixing go into that. Okay? Okay. And if anytime you want to stop this interview and do what you think is right, like I said, you're not under arrest, but at any time you want to stop, just say stop. You know, fine. You're. You're a free man. You're not under arrest, and you can go and come as you please. You want a glass of water? Go get a coat. Go to lunch. Okay. Cooperate with us. I guess I don't know why I'm here. Well, that's. That's why we're going to get into it as we go on. And, well, what I want to do is ask you some background questions, and I want to go back, you know, say, four, five years, something like that.

Find out where all you've lived and what all you've done and what's been going on. If you remember that far back, the.

One consistent observation about this guy I had heard, beyond him being a serial sexual harasser or even worse, is that he's one cold son of a bitch who knows how to play the system. Facts that became increasingly more implicit throughout this old interview.

You drive a company car back in, or company truck, your own vehicle. What was that? Toyota pickup. What color was it, Mario. Like I remember it pick up after you had the little topper on it. You had little camper on it, if.

That was hard to hear on this time worn tape. He says yes to the camper question. In fact, photos I obtained of this vehicle match the exact description of the vehicle parked behind Dana's car on the morning after she was reported missing.

Why don't you tell me about the cars you've owned since this ranger you've got right now? How long you had it now, after I told out? Yeah, about two months after the.

It's hard to understand his answer because he mumbles.

Was that back in 1990 when you wrecked the Toyota? I really couldn't do it. That sounds about right.

All this discussion about his vehicles was small talk for detectives who were just looking to gage his level of participation and transparency. They had already pulled the history from the motor vehicle department to see which makes and models of vehicles he owned and when.

How long do you have that little Toyota? I think about a year, something like that. What'd you have before that one? Selling out a truck.

The amount of time he took to answer what are essentially basic questions spoke to how carefully he was thinking about what to say. At one point, he mentions an accident he was in back in the early eighties, which he claimed had caused a traumatic brain injury. Danny Varner, the detective you hear most prominently in the recordings, pushed him on it, but he refused to give any specifics. They moved on to his employment history during the time of Dana's abduction and murder. He not only worked within a mile of where Dana's body was found, but witnessed statements support how he had been sexually harassing women at the nearby Ozark beverage company, which, if you recall from an earlier episode, was just up the road from the Stidham crime scene.

Your wife's name is? Yes. Y'all still married? Yes. But separated?

No.

Still live together? Sometimes. Can you explain that to her?

He said they split their time between two different states, where he lived in Arkansas and the state where she lived.

You been married previously to her? No. First marriage went to her. He hadn't been married before? Yes.

They pressed him for his wife's first name and address. Simple things. What does he do? He plays the stupid card, of course, then recalled that she likely lived somewhere in the southwest. He had one daughter with her, he says, but hadn't seen her in many, many years. Guess why exactly. He was getting weird with her, too.

Is she living around here now or. No? I don't know.

Then they casually snuck in additional questions about his vehicle and a timeline associated with Dana's murder.

You're living over here in these apartments?

He nodded yes to the question. The point of this short interview was to rattle Lenny and lock down a few specifics. Beyond that, they wanted to get a feel for his overall demeanor. See how cocky he was? In other words, as an investigator conducting an initial interview like this, you allow the suspect to think he is in control. The BCSO walked away from that short interview with two major tasks ahead. To find and speak to Lenny's ex wife and daughter and begin to draft, secure, and execute two search warrants. One for his house and, of course, a second for his vehicles. Previously on Paper Ghosts.

If you got a child and you send them and take care of their teeth and all this and send them to school and everything, you keep track of your child. And the part that bothered me for years was somebody didn't report her missing.

I want you to talk to this man. I had no idea that he had something to offer, but he was here the night that he heard the screech. And I'm looking at my emails, and it says, lori, me, grace. And here she was.

There's a grace.

I didn't know her, but yet I knew her. And she looked exactly like what I thought she would look like. And I just knew. This is really who she is.

My name is Em William Phelps. I'm an investigative journalist and author of more than 40 true crime books. This is season four of paper ghosts, the Ozarks. It had taken 30 years to identify Grace Doe and learn her name, Shawna Garber. Three decades. In that sense, technology had caught up to Shaunas case, the same as it had in so many cold cases we see today. But if detective Lori Howard, Sheriff Rob Evenson, and detective Rhonda wise thought identifying Shawna was cause for celebration, the reality of the road ahead became abundantly clear right away, because as they began searching for information about her, it seemed as if, well, Shawna Garber had never existed to begin with. Okay, so who is Shawna Garber?

That's a good question. Because she had a tough go as a little girl. She. Her mother had some issues, and she was burned as a child due to her mother's. Well, her mother willfully burned her. So she went into foster care. But I think that she might have been bounced around for a little bit, and even in the foster care system. And of course, eventually she aged out. So she lost her relationships with her bio family and also with her stepfamily, and then she ultimately lost the relationships with her foster family.

And so she goes out on the street.

She does, yeah.

And she's 18 at that time.

Yeah, she's on her own now. I say on her own. I think she had a boyfriend at the time. I don't know the nature of that relationship, I'm told it's difficult to find any type of information on him at this point.

How does she end up in McDonald County?

I can surmise how that happened. I can't tell you factually, but she was actually working in Joplin, Missouri, but she was living in Coffeyville, Kansas, and she was making that commute from Coffeyville, Kansas, to Joplin, Missouri, and back.

And what kind of job was it that she was working?

I don't know.

I contacted Shawna's brother, Robert Ringwald, and started by asking him where they grew up.

We lived in several different places, but it was mostly in eastern Kansas between Topeka and Iola. Okay.

And what was the house like, the family like at the time, as kids?

At that time, it was our biological mother and my older brother, myself, and Shawna.

What was Shauna like then?

She was singing happy quite a bit, you know?

What did she like to do?

Play. I don't. Don't remember, you know, an awful lot. We used to play in the yard together.

So you and Shawna were taken away from your mom?

Yes.

Tell me a little bit about that. So how old were you?

Uh, six. And she would have been four.

This was about the same time, as you heard in the last episode, that Shawna's mother horribly disfigured her own little girl. It's hard to talk about this sort of abuse, but it's what Shawna and her family went through. Her mother poured lighter fluid on her, lit a match, and set the girl on fire. While she would never be the same, she was removed from the situation. It was also the moment in Shawna's life when she became part of the revolving door of the foster care system. So did you stay in contact with her?

No, we weren't allowed to. I wasn't allowed to. She was removed from several foster homes because our mother would interfere with everything. I mean, to the point. She even threatened to kill one foster family's kids. Wow. Yeah. She was evil.

And so, as time goes on, do you ever see Shauna again?

I saw our birthday after we were taken. We were taken to, you know, SRS office or something like that and celebrated our birthdays and then saw her one, one time after that in court when they severed our mother's parental rights, and I never saw her again.

And how come they severed the parental rights?

Because our mother was an evil, vindictive spawn of hell.

And then what did you hear about her as the years go on?

Not very much. We were trying to keep everything about her. A secret from everybody so that our biological mother wouldn't find her.

I see. And so time moves on. You grow into an adult. And I guess you sent some letters to Shawna. Can you tell me about that?

Yeah, I wrote two letters, and I gave them to the social worker. One was for them to give to her right away. Couldn't put anything but my first name in it, and nothing other than that, you know, just tell her that, you know, I was out here, and I was, you know, looking forward to meeting her. And then the second one was for him to give to her after she turned 18 and had my name, you know, my full name, my contact information, you know, how she could get ahold of me, you know, letting her know that if she wanted to meet me, that I was here and wanted to see her.

And you were confident that the social worker would forward those letters to Shawna, right?

Yes, I was.

And then what happened?

They were put in a drawer somewhere and left, never given to her.

It was as if a series of tragic events beginning almost on the day she was born, culminated in Shawna's murder. Imagine the frustration, horror, and. And emotional trauma rob felt when he discovered that those letters never made it to Shawna. All because some incompetent, lazy social worker forgot or just chose not to forward them. Which leads me to wonder, if Shawna had gotten those letters, if she had known there was someone out there who cared for her, loved her, and wanted a relationship with her, would I be talking about her now as a murder victim?

Celebrating the music and artists you've loved on I heart radio over the past year and giving you an exclusive first look at the biggest new songs coming in the summer of 24 music history. I heart innovator, award recipient, Beyonce I heart icon, award recipient, Cher. And performances by Justin Timberlake, Green Day, TLC, Jelly roll, Laney Wilson, Tate McRae, and your host, Ludacris. Our 2024 I Heart Radio Music Award Monday, April 1 Watch on Fox starting at 08:00 p.m. Seven central. Bring a little optimism into your life with the bright side, a new kind of daily podcast from hello Sunshine. Hosted by me, Danielle Robet, and me, Simone Boyce. Every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.

I am so excited about this podcast. The bright side. You guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives. Shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.

Listen to the bright side on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search the bright side.

In the 1980s and nineties, New York City needed a tough cop like detective Louis Scarcella.

Putting bad guys away. There's no feeling like it in the world. He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice.

That's one version this guy is a piece of. Derrick Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella in prison. Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend. This is my only way to freedom. Derrick and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same.

Cop in the case.

Scarcella.

We gotta show that he's a corrupt copy.

They can go themselves.

I'm Steve Fishman. And I'm Dax Devlin Ross. And this is the burden. Listen to new episodes of the burden on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content, subscribe to true crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts.

I've heard it said that tragedy and life are inseparable. I think maybe inevitable is a better word. We can't avoid pain. Yet we do put policies and programs in place in the hope that preventable tragedies stemming from the ugliest side of our humanity are avoided. But even those policies and programs can sometimes fail us. As I continued talking to Detective Lori Howard, the idea that Shawna Garber got swallowed up by the system, the same system that contributed in some ways to her death, hovered over our conversation, which makes investigating her murder that much more difficult from both an emotional and practical standpoint. It's hard to do victimology. It's hard to find people who knew her, right?

Correct. And even more so if you are a child, which I now have hindsight, but if you're a child that's growing up in the foster care system because she's not reported missing. So you can't go through a database of missing people in your area or even missing people in a four state area because she's not there now. Later I learned that supposedly she had been reported missing by the boyfriend in Joplin, Missouri, but there's no record of it.

I wondered if that elusive boyfriend had ever been considered a suspect in her murder.

I think you have to always. You kind of work from the victim out, the people that are closest to them, and certainly the boyfriend is where a paramour of any sort would be, where you would start. But I don't know that that could really easily or readily be developed because the boyfriend, again, is who took off. You took off, and he's not there, and we not sure where he is or even if he's alive.

So as an unsolved murder, this is a very difficult case, right?

It is. It's extremely difficult, but it's not impossible. None of them are impossible. If it was impossible, we'd probably stop trying. But this can be solved, and it will be. It's just a matter of keep plugging away. I mean, we started with nothing, and now we know who she is. So that's probably 90% of it is knowing who she is. We will continue to put things back to the lab and retest. And as new technology comes along.

Now, was this case looked at as possibly tied to Dana Stidham's case?

Absolutely. And the reason for that is because they are similar in appearance, but they are also similar geographically. And the timeline is really close. You're looking at that 89, 90 in years. So when you begin to put people together, you look okay. Geographically, how do they look? Are they similar in nature? Do they have anything in common? And then your timeline.

And the way they're found.

And the way they're found. Absolutely. Now, Dana. And again, Dana was tied, not to this degree, but she was certainly bound. She had the same color pair, which is kind of a dark auburn. There's a group of women in this area that are. That have been found that are similar in their appearance.

How do you even begin to solve a murder? Better yet, two, if one is connected to the other, when you know so very little about your victim. This was a problem for the McDonald County Sheriff's office and its ability to begin building a profile of Shauna's killer. If they have no idea about Shauna's movements near the time of her death, it becomes almost impossible to nail down not only those who might have known her, but the events leading up to her death. Here's Sheriff Rob Evenson.

Remember, you're going back to 1980, 919, 90, and that. And there's not, we have not been able to find those electronic, those records of that. So when, after she ages out of the foster system at age 18, there's not a whole lot that we've been able to find. She didn't have a lot of presence that left any kind of tangible record that we've been able to find.

Like friends, correct?

Yes, friends. We were able to identify a former boyfriend, but the best information we have is that those two had broken up quite some time before she would have ended up here in McDonald county, was.

There any indication that she was into drugs or that scene or anything like that?

We believe so, but if you ask us how certain we are, I couldn't tell you that we were 100%. But, yes, the likelihood is there, yes.

Did you begin to maybe think that her case was connected to some of the other cases in the area at all? Because there certainly was a lot of. Of cases during that time, yes.

I mean, anytime you have an unsolved homicide, you always look for other connections to other similar cases. So, of course, that was one of the things. There were so many leads that were. That were run down and followed. So, yes, I mean, there are other unsolved cases in this area, so that is something that we always would look into, but I don't know that we had any direct evidence that would connect her to anybody else or any other case.

I asked Detective Lori Howard about a cause of death if they were ever able to find out. The speculation is strangulation based on all the bindings and cords and ropes found. Now, you may wonder how law enforcement could possibly prove a skeletonized murder victim was strangled to death. After all, a pathologist cannot inspect bruising around the neck area, other soft tissue, or look for signs of petechial hemorrhage, burst blood vessels in the eyes. But there's a delicate bone called the hyoid in our throats that, when compressed during strangulation, usually snaps. So was Shauna's hyoid bone actually broken?

No. The answer to that is no. We believe very strongly that she was strangled just because she was badly decomposed. Her body was strewn across the lawn from animals and the natural process of decomposition. But we believe that she wasn't stabbed because normally in that type of thing, if you hit a bone, you might have a chip, and that wasn't necessarily there. The skeleton was intact. So you're not looking at blunt force trauma. We didn't see anything like that, really. There was nothing to tell us that there was any sort of trauma to her skeletal remains. So we believe she was more than likely strangled. And I think that the bindings would support that.

So the. How she's found is very important, right?

It is, absolutely. It tells you a great deal.

Tell me about that.

The crime scene, essentially, is your first picture of what happened, and so you can determine a lot, obviously, from that. Was it. Was there blood press, trauma? How was she left? Was she clothed? What clothing was missing? How long has she been there? And because she was bound in the manner that she was bound.

And how was she bound?

She was essentially what we call hogtied, which is your hands, your wrists are bound behind your back, and that then is bound to your feet. And in her case, it was bound to a shoelace and only one shoelace. So she had massive amounts of bindings.

What about the towel wrapped around Shawna's head with coaxial cable? What did it mean?

Normally, that would tell you that he wants to cover. He either one didn't want to see the look on his victim if she was alive at the time, and, or he wants to cover something up. And so it's.

It's.

It's almost exactly what you would think it is. They, and I've heard this from more than one serial killer, actually, and I'm not suggesting that's the case with Shawna, but we don't know, but they do tend to not want to see the look on their victim's face.

Yeah, strangulation is a very personal.

It is indeed if you're that close to someone, as opposed to just saying having shot someone from a distance. So it tells you a lot about the relationship generally. Power. It tells you a lot about power.

Still, three letters. Yes, letters loomed large in my mind. B t k. At this stage in my search for answers, I needed to either include or exclude Dennis Rader from Shaunas murder. If Jack Linney was to be viewed as a potential suspect in Danas and Shawnas cases, BTK had to be taken out of the equation. And there was only one person I knew of who could speak as the authority about Dennis Rader and his possible involvement in both cases.

Celebrating the music and artists you've loved on iHeartRadio over the past year and giving you an exclusive first look at the biggest new songs coming in the summer of 24. Witness music history. I heart Innovator award recipient I heart Icon award recipient Cher. And performances by Justin Timberlake, Green Day TLC, Jelly roll, Laney Wilson, Tate McCray, and your host, Ludacris. Our 2024 iHeartRadio Music Awards Monday, April 1 Watch on Fox starting at 08:00 p.m. Seven Central. Bring a little optimism into your life with the bright side, a new kind of daily podcast from hello Sunshine, hosted by me, Danielle Robet, and me, Sunny Timon. Voice every weekday, we're bringing you conversations about culture, the latest trends, inspiration, and so much more.

I am so excited about this podcast. The bright side, you guys are giving people a chance to shine a light on their lives, shine a light on a little advice that they want to share.

Listen to the bright side on America's number one podcast network, iHeart. Open your free iHeart app and search the bright side.

In the 1980s and nineties, New York City needed a tough copy. Like detective Louis Scarcella putting bad guys away.

There's no feeling like it in the world. He was the guy who made sure the worst killers were brought to justice.

That's one version this guy is a piece of. Derrick Hamilton was put away from murder by Detective Scarcella in prison. Derek turned himself into the best jailhouse lawyer of his generation. And the law was my girlfriend.

This is my only way to freedom.

Derek and other convicted murderers started a law firm behind bars. We never knew we had the same.

Cop in the case.

Scarcella.

We gotta show that he's a corrupt cop.

They can go themselves.

I'm Steve Fishman. And I'm Dax Devlin Ross. And this is the burden. Listen to new episodes of the burden on the iHeartRadio Apple podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. And to hear episodes one week early and ad free with exclusive bonus content. Subscribe to True Crime Clubhouse on Apple Podcasts.

Now that was part of my, I guess my, what you call fantasy. These people were selected by strangling misses Otero. And she went out or passed out. I thought she was dead. She passed out. Then I strangled Josephine. She passed out or I thought she was dead. Then I went over and put a bag on Junior's head.

That right there is who BTK is. The affect says it all. Cold, stark, stoic, but very real. He is talking there about murder, murdering a family. But the takeaway from me, I think, is that BTK is a serial killer unafraid to talk about who he has killed. In September 2023, Osage County, Oklahoma sheriff Eddie Verdon announced the formation of a BTK task force. This was in relation to two specific victims. The sheriff was looking to bring Dennis Rader into a grand jury on murder charges. For Cynthia Kinney, a 1976 unsolved homicide, and Shawna Garber, the local Oklahoma district attorney Mike Fisher, felt differently. In fact, the guy came out swinging, saying there was not enough evidence to prove Verdons theorem or press charges against BTK. Verdon persisted, releasing a sketch Rader had recently made of a woman bound, hogtied and sitting on a chair leaning up against a barn. Barnes played a profound role in Rader's murder fantasies. Some in law enforcement believed the barn close to where Shawna Garber was found had to be somehow connected to her murder. I reached out to the one person who knows BTK, in my opinion, better than anyone, but had also studied Shawna Garber's case.

I'm Doctor Kathryn Ramsland. I'm a professor of forensic psychology and I am a writer. I've written about 70 plus books, many of them on extreme offenders.

In 2016, Doctor Ramslin published the book Confessions of a serial killer, the untold Story of Dennis Rader, the BTK Killer. So how and when did you come across Shawna Garber's case?

Maybe a couple years ago. Someone had mentioned it and talked about, is there, these were cold cases in this area, like the whole state, and she was on a list and somebody mentioned maybe there was some kind of association with Dennis Rader. So that, of course, got me interested.

That interest in what is a longer story of a woman doctor Ramsland met and how her book was born turned into prison visits, telephone calls and letters between her and BTK. The book she produced with Rader is a kind of BTK confession manifesto.

It was a very intense journey, and I always wondered if there might be other victims. So when the grace Doe case came up, I wanted to see if there were any potential links.

To the dismay of many involved, Rader was suddenly thrust into the number one slot for Shawna's case. As of late 2023. I had it on solid law enforcement authority that Rader had no connection to Shauna's murder. I also uncovered information about a suspect other than Jack Linney for Shauna's case, which I will delve into more deeply in the next few episodes. Here's how Doctor Ramsland describes Rader's very distinctive, moving, invaluable insight into one of the darkest minds of the past half century.

Well, first he chose his own moniker, bind them, torture them, killed them, BTK. So that signals right off the bat what he's after is he wants that binding thing. That was highly erotic to him. He's a sexually compelled serial killer. The torture, probably not so much, even though that would sort of what he wanted to achieve was to terrorize Wichita, his hometown. He murdered ten people between 1974 and 1991, always with some kind of bondage aspect to it, because that would satisfy him. So if there's Mo to be had, it's really the idea that he used some kind of bindings in each of his cases. But he started by going into houses, picking out houses. Usually they had a number three or some kind of number that three would be divided into, like a six or nine, because three was a big deal to him.

It's a magical number, as Doctor Ramsland points out Rader was meticulous and methodical, his murders very much fantasy driven, but also torture could have been involved.

So he'd check out houses, he'd enter a lot of them where people weren't home, just to prove, I guess, that he could. And he was a voyeur. He stalked people. He found out about his victims, typically. So he usually had plenty of time to check out how safe it was. I mean, he was married. He had a job on the side, I guess, and so it was. He had to do this when he had opportunities. So if that's Mo, I mean, he went in. But then later he took two of his victims out of the house, one of which he posed in a church for pictures and various items of lingerie he had stolen from other women. And the other one he. He had meant to take to a barn, an abandoned barn, which is instrumental in what we're talking about, because that had always been a fantasy of his, is to murder somebody in an old barn. And he had already picked out some abandoned farmsteads around Wichita, but he lost his way that night because it was snowy and foggy. So he dumped her under, like, a culvert kind of bridge instead. But that.

And so that really breaks his mo.

If you noticed, the term mo, or modus operandi is not something Doctor Ramsland sounds all that excited about linking to BTK, or any serial killer, for that matter. And I'd have to agree. Serial killers can and will change their mo from murder to murder. I believe there is no typical serial killer, as much as the public wants to believe there is, based on the very small sample we see routinely on television.

He did enter her home, but he entered her home very differently than he had. And this is number ten. He entered her home very differently than he had any of the others. He broke in, he lifted a cinder block and just threw it through a sliding door, breaking the glass, which he'd never done before. But he used his typical ruse. I'm just here, I'm a fugitive, blah, blah, blah. Don't worry. Because he always believed if you put them at ease, that they would survive. That would make them obviously more vulnerable and easier to manage. And then he put her in her car. Well, he always had this thing with the people's cars, and that's always part of his mo as well. So it's hard to say mo. He certainly didn't have the same mo, but he had. There are similarities from one thing to another. Even when the mo changed and he.

Didn'T rape any of his victims? Right?

He did not rape any of his victims.

And what was his thought process behind that? If the crimes were sexual to him? What, what was going on with him?

Well, you can have a sexual crime without necessarily having any kind of sexual penetration. It can. Like for example, he hanged an eleven year old girl in the Otero case and masturbated onto her. Okay, so that's not rape physically, but it's certainly, you know, very sexual crime. He masturbated in a couple of others using their lingerie, but in many ways the binding was really about himself. He would bind himself in a lot of auto erotic kinds of incidents. So he'd take the thing, the items that he had removed from the victims and fantasize about them while he was having an auto erotic event.

BTK dehumanized and degraded his victims. It was a very important part of the psychology, however twisted, driving his murders.

So for him it was really reliving it. He had these motel parties where he'd take dolls and pictures and drawings he had made of the victims to relive it. And so he had this odd notion that if he raped his victims, it was somehow unfaithful to his wife.

Wow.

And yeah, it's an odd kind of mindset that certain things he's not going to cross a line, but other things more extreme, he will. Like when he first started working with me, one of the earliest things he said was, we're going to start playing chess by mail. And he said, don't cheat. I thought, what? What? How dare you? A serial killer moralized to me, yes, but, but that's. You see that in a number of these killers where they have these, these kind of odd compartments where they. Certain things are okay and other things are not okay.

And did he use the same type of bindings in each of his murders?

He liked to experiment sometimes because he was reading either a novel about a serial killer or some true crime case. And he sometimes would like to experiment. For example, getting back to moving, he strangled each of the oteros, but the next victim he stabbed and he found that he didn't like stabbing. So he then went back to strangulation. And sometimes he'd use a cord, but he always bound them. Sometimes he used duct tape. He had some thick rope. He had some like venetian cord, a parachute cord, had tape of all kinds. Twine. He liked twine. So he did have different kinds of bindings because ever since he was a kid, he would collect all different kinds of rope and string.

Was he ever known to be trolling around like Anderson or Pineville, Missouri, the Ozarks, at all during the nineties, early nineties.

So for me, when I saw that this one case was in the area of Missouri that was pretty close to an area where Dennis grew up and would sometimes take his kids, spend summers, I thought, you know, that made it a viable potential case.

And if Shawna Garber was hitchhiking, which a lot of law enforcement I've spoken to, think she might have been, would he be the type of serial killer to pick her up?

I've never heard Dennis Rader say he picked up a hitchhiker.

I had sent doctor Ramslin photos of the actual bindings used on Shauna and asked if those that Rader used were similar. The same photos. I should point out that detective Lori Howard had shown Rader when she interviewed him. And Rader was shocked by how messy and how many of them there were.

Some of the bindings on Shawna are very similar to the ropes found and confiscated by police when Dennis was arrested in 2005. Even he has commented to me because he's now seen the photos, too. He's commented, wow, those are like some of the ropes I use, but not all of them. And I can't think of a time he used coaxial cables.

Rader had, by now, also denied killing Shawna Garber. So Shawna Garber was found with a towel wrapped around her face and the coaxial wrapped around that. You know, in your professional opinion, what does that say about her killer?

A lot of people like to think a covered face means it was personal. They knew her. That's a formula. I personally don't like formulas because they tend to give us tunnel vision. This looked more like part of whatever this person was doing to her, and especially with the cable wrapped around it. That looks to me more like a suffocation mechanism. If you put your hand over her mouth with a towel, she can't bite.

It sounds like he adapted to the situations he needed.

He did, yeah. But I think you can say that about any serial killer, because you're always going to have circumstances. The variables are there. Their fantasy never actually matches what happens.

Thoughts in general about Shawna's case? I mean, what are you thinking about that case?

I think the Shawna case, one of the things that we see on the her is the multiple bindings on her legs. That is interesting, and that suggests captivity potentially, that somebody held her and bound her, because why would they. Why would they take her to an. Now, I know there's, there's theories that there were screams heard on Halloween night in that gentle area. But who's binding her all that much there on the farm that night? That doesn't make any sense to me. That's a lot of bindings, which that suggests it's not about keeping her captive so much as the binding itself. But that's. That's not something that rader would do. He wouldn't over bind. Like, even he's said that. Like, that. That's a lot of bindings.

Right?

And he would have bound her in other ways. A lot of it was focused on the legs and ankles. So that suggests somebody who perhaps overties things in other ways or overdoes things in other ways. Like, there's an obsessive quality to it.

Shawna's murder, what little is known about it, was anything but meticulous. I saw anger, haste, and retaliation in Shauna's murder. Those are not the trademarks of BTK. He planned. He fantasized. He took his time. He wanted his bindings to be just so. When I mentioned BTK had been shown photos of this crime scene, the distaste verging on disgust he emanated was palpable. Furthermore, the signatures he left behind at his crime scenes weren't found at Shaunas crime scene. Torture was likely involved, but we'll cover that in an upcoming episode. That's why I just don't buy BTK being behind Shaunas murder. And when I put it to law enforcement, they echoed my sentiments, specifically that Rader had no connection to Shauna's murder. I was convinced, after looking at all of the available evidence and conferring with law enforcement, that Dennis BTK, Rader should be moved far down on a list of potential suspects in Shawna Garber's murder, if he even deserves a place on the list at all. And Rader, remember, was not even close to being on the radar in the Dana Stidham homicide. Which brings me back to Jack. Lenny. The goal with that first interview the BCSO conducted with Lenny, the tape you heard at the top of the episode was to stir him up a bit, let him know they were focused on him, and see how he responded, as it were.

Linney had told investigators he was out of town at a family reunion on July 25, 1989, the day Dana went. Went missing. That was a lie. He had clocked 87 hours that week at a construction company he worked for in town, a job, remember, which put him on the road driving around Bella Vista and bordering towns, including those close to the Missouri state line. In fact, the more they found out about Lennie, the more he fit into the profile of Dana and Shawna's killer.

And, you know, from my perspective, there was some pretty incriminating evidence in that basement of that house.

The BCSO secured those search warrants for Jack Lenny's home and vehicles after they interviewed him a second time, and after finding a lot of blood and female hairs in one of his vehicles as they entered the basement of his house, what they found pointed in the direction of what I could say is a serial killer.

My recollection is that there was probably, like, 17 different types of twine that were used to encase cocoon this young lady after she had been murdered. I just remember being in the basement of this individual's house, and there had to been, like, over 100 spools of different cords. I mean, I don't know who keeps cords. I don't keep cords, but it just was pretty ominous.

With all of the new information I had developed on him, including all of that blood found in his vehicle, I decided it was time to come confront Jack Lenny, to knock on his door and see what this guy had to say for himself. If you're enjoying paper ghosts, check out my other podcasts, crossing the line with M. William Phelps and White Eagle. Wherever you get your favorite shows. Coming up next on paper for ghosts.

They were wanting to pin him down. Very surprised that he wanted to come in. You know, my initial reaction is, you know, this guy's coming in. Surely he's not the guy, right? I mean, who does that? Something is going on with this guy. I don't know what it is. I'm not a doctor. I'm not a psychologist. I'm just trying to get a read. But there was just something that was clinically off.

He probably destroyed her life ages, basically abused her emotionally, probably physically. And she did kill herself. Shortly after DCSO detectives spoke with her. I think probably she was at a breaking point. Are you listening, bitch? Did you hear me? Damn you, bitch. You better listen. I'll get my goddamn knife.

You.

They'll never find you.

Paper ghost season four is written and executive produced by me and Will William Phelps. Script consulting by Rose Bocce. Sound design by Matt Russell executive production by Kathryn Law and audio editing and mixing by Brandon Dicker. Taco Boom Productions. The series theme number 442, is written and performed by Thomas Phelps and Tom Moon.

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