In a two-part “Crime Stories” special, a former Kansas nurse tells CrimeOnline’s Nancy Grace the harrowing experiences she had with the notorious BTK killer, Dennis Rader.
Former nurse Gina Rodriguez says met Rader in 1974 while at a disco bar connected to a Wichita hotel. Sporting a maroon suit and white shoes, Rader asked Rodriguez to dance, and she obliged.
He called himself “Bob White.”
Rader claimed he was from California but was in Kansas on business, Rodriguez told Grace. After some small talk, the pair made plans to meet up the following day for a date.
When she saw him again, Rader looked completely different, wearing what he called “work clothes” that included a heavy jacket, a hat with flappy ears, cargo pants, and an expensive wristwatch. He also held an “out of place” bag that he claimed had his books inside, Rodriguez said.
“It wasn’t like I remembered him at all,” Rodriquez recalled. “I even remember thinking, ‘Do I have the right man?’”
Rader, Rodriguez said, recognized her immediately and the pair set out for a coffee date. Soon after, however, she became afraid that Rader would somehow get her alone after he asked her to find an isolated spot where he could work on his photography.
Although she said she didn’t know of any place, Rader pushed the envelope and insisted.
“You find a place,” Rader demanded. “I do these things and I take pictures and record while I’m doing them.”
Rodriguez managed to escape after telling Rader she had to be at work and couldn’t be late, but ultimately, she agreed to another date, but with no plans of attending. When the time arrived, Rodriguez said she stalled Rader by claiming she had to take her children to her husband.
“Little lady can’t handle her kids so she has to take hubby back,” Rader replied.
Rodriguez said their first date was their last date and she moved on with her life and put the incident behind her.
Two years later, Rodriguez, who subsequently did end up reconciling with her with her husband, attended a Valentine’s Day party with him while a sitter watched their children.
When she returned home, the babysitter was in tears and said a man kept calling for Rodriguez all night long, Then, the babysitter said, she spotted a man that had been standing in the driveway.
The house seemed settled and everyone appeared safe, so Rodriguez and her husband settled into bed for the night.
At around 2 a.m., Rodriguez woke up after a car pulled into her driveway. Then, someone making an angry “growling sound” started pounding on the door. When that failed, he tried to get into the locked living room window. He then went to her daughter’s room and tried to get into her window.
Although Rodriguez couldn’t make the man out, she believed it to be Rader. When her husband yelled out that he was armed and to get off of the property, the man fled quickly.
Prank calls soon followed. Rodriguez said calls flooded in with the song, “Lay Down Sally” playing in the background. She told the caller, a man, numerous times that he had the wrong number.
The calls happened so frequently that she contacted the telephone company to make a complaint. The employee, according to Rodriguez, said, “I’m so sorry” after she explained the menacing calls.
Each time the prank call happened, a man on the other end of the line would say, “I’m so sorry,” and according to Rodriguez, in the same tone as the phone company employee. She later learned that someone had tapped into and manipulated her phone line after the phone company physically checked the wiring.
“In a lot of convicted cases, he [Rader] cut the phone line,” Sheriff Eddie Virden, who assembled the BTK task force, told Grace.
In 1977, Wichita police began talking about a serial killer on the loose who had been terrorizing the area. How police described the suspect was eerily similar to the man at the coffee date, prompting Rodriguez to contact investigators.
She couldn’t give his true name at the time, since he referred to himself by an alias, but when investigators released photos of the serial killer, Rodriguez’s suspicions were confirmed.
“He walks like him, talks like him…just looks older,” she said, adding that she “absolutely” knew the serial killer was the man she briefly dated.
In 2005, police arrested Rader, years after he eluded and taunted investigators and the media. His trail of digital evidence is what eventually helped police capture him. He then nicknamed himself “BTK.” which stands for “bind, torture, kill.”
Following Rader’s arrest, investigators retrieved numerous sketches from Rader’s belongings. CNN obtained several of the drawings, which could possibly reveal additional crimes and victims.
Kansas police found additional evidence in September 2023, while searching Rader’s former Park City, Kansas, home. Old Polaroid images taken by Rader before his arrest mirror the positions Rader placed his victims. The photos also reportedly showed clothing he wore during some shots.
Rader is now serving 10 consecutive life sentences for the deaths of 10 people between 1974 to 1991. The majority of the victims had been strangled.
Stayed tuned for part two of “I SURVIVED BTK SERIAL KILLER” on Crime Stories, airing Friday.
[Feature Photo: In this image made from video and provided by Court TV, Dennis Rader , 60, of Park City, Kan., speaks in court in Wichita, Kan., Monday, June 27, 2005. Rader, who admitted killing 10 people in the Wichita area between 1974 and 1991, taunted media and police with cryptic messages calling himself “BTK,” for “Bind, Torture, Kill.” (AP Photo/Court TV, Pool)]
