A quiet man in a quiet town killed ten people over thirty-one years — and nobody around him ever suspected a thing. BTK: Bind. Torture. Kill. traces the double life of Dennis Rader, a Kansas husband, father, Cub Scout leader, church council president, and compliance officer who secretly stalked, bound, and murdered his neighbours while installing their home alarm systems for a living. Told entirely through narration across twenty episodes, this micro-drama series follows Rader from his disturbed childhood fantasies through his methodical first kills, his decades of hiding in plain sight, his fatal need for public recognition, and the two words buried in a floppy disk's metadata that ended everything. No dramatised dialogue. No sensationalism. Just the facts of how an ordinary-looking man became one of the most chilling serial killers in American history — and how his own ego delivered him to justice.

As a teenager, Rader gives his dark impulses a name — Factor X — and treats them like a separate entity living inside him. He indexes his fantasies into 'projects,' collects bondage imagery, and graduates high school without anyone noticing. After a brief college stint he joins the U.S. Air Force and spends four years overseas, letting Factor X grow quietly behind a military uniform.

In 1971, Rader marries Paula Dietz, a devout Christian woman, and settles into a small ranch house in Park City, Kansas. He takes a factory job, enrols in a criminal justice degree at Wichita State, and begins attending Christ Lutheran Church every Sunday. Behind the new-husband routine, he is already following women in his car at night and selecting targets. Paula is three months pregnant when he commits his first murder.

January 15, 1974. Rader cuts the phone line at 803 North Edgemoor Street and walks into the home of the Otero family — recently arrived from Panama. Armed with a pistol and his pre-assembled 'hit kit,' he ties up Joseph, Julie, nine-year-old Joseph Jr., and eleven-year-old Josephine, then kills them one by one. He photographs the youngest victim before leaving through the back door into a quiet Wichita morning.

A clinical breakdown of what happened inside the Otero house. Joseph fights through a plastic bag and nearly breaks free. Julie begs for her children. The two youngest are bound and killed in separate rooms. Rader poses Josephine's body in the basement and takes photographs. He walks out with a wristwatch and a radio. The older Otero brothers come home from school and find everything. Wichita police have no leads.

Three months later, Rader breaks into the apartment of twenty-one-year-old Kathryn Bright — but her nineteen-year-old brother Kevin is unexpectedly home. Kevin fights back and is shot twice in the head but survives, becoming the only living eyewitness to BTK during a kill. Rader stabs and strangles Kathryn before fleeing. Kevin's description — 'psychotic eyes' — becomes the first physical profile of the killer.

Nine months after the Otero murders, Rader hides a letter inside a library textbook and calls the Wichita Eagle to tell them where to find it. The letter describes the killings in detail only the murderer could know and introduces the name he has chosen for himself: Bind. Torture. Kill. — B.T.K. He has branded his own identity as a serial killer, then goes home to his wife and Cub Scout meetings.

March 1977. Rader breaks into the home of twenty-six-year-old Shirley Vian Relford while her three young children — ages five, six, and eight — are present. He locks the children in the bathroom with toys and snacks, then slowly strangles their mother in the next room. When the phone rings he panics and runs. The eight-year-old breaks the bathroom door open and finds his mother's body.

December 1977. Rader breaks into the home of twenty-five-year-old Nancy Fox while she is at work and waits for her inside. He strangles her with her own belt, takes her driver's licence, then walks to a payphone and dials 911 to report his own crime. The flat, calm recording of his voice is played on local news. His own mother hears it and tells him it sounds like him. He laughs it off.

April 1979. Rader breaks into the home of sixty-three-year-old Anna Williams and waits in the dark for hours with his bondage kit. She never arrives — her car has broken down and she stays with a friend. Weeks later, she receives a letter from BTK describing exactly what he had planned for her, with a piece of her own jewellery enclosed as proof. Anna Williams moves away from Wichita and lives another thirty years.

Between 1979 and 1985, Rader raises two children, coaches Cub Scouts, installs home alarm systems for ADT Security, and rises to president of his church council — all while maintaining secret 'projects' with code names like 'Cookie,' 'Doll,' and 'Light,' each representing a woman in Wichita he is planning to kill. By April 1985, Project Cookie — a fifty-three-year-old neighbour seven doors down — is ready.

April 1985. Rader leaves a Cub Scout campout with his ten-year-old son, faking a migraine, and drives home to kill Marine Hedge — a woman who has lived seven houses away from his family for years. After strangling her, he loads her body into his car, drives to Christ Lutheran Church in the middle of the night, carries her into the sanctuary, and photographs her in bondage poses. He is back at the campout before his son wakes up.

September 1986. Rader arrives at the door of twenty-eight-year-old Vicki Wegerle wearing a fake phone-company uniform. She lets him in. Her two-year-old son is playing on the floor. Rader strangles her in the bedroom, photographs her body, takes her driver's licence, and walks past the toddler on his way out. He will keep that licence for eighteen years — and it will eventually help convict him.

January 1991. Rader breaks into the home of sixty-two-year-old Dolores Davis, a recently widowed woman on his compliance officer route in Park City. He strangles her with pantyhose, drives her body to a rural drainage area, then returns two weeks later to move and photograph her wearing a handmade mask. After Dolores Davis, Rader does not kill again. He could have lived out his life uncaught. He chooses not to stay silent.

From 1991 to 2004, BTK goes completely dark. Rader serves as a model citizen — compliance officer, church president, devoted father. His son joins the Navy. His daughter grows up. The trophies from ten victims remain hidden inside the walls of his house. Wichita police assume BTK is dead. Then in March 2004, the Wichita Eagle publishes a thirtieth-anniversary article on the Otero murders — and doesn't give him enough credit.

The newspaper article breaks Rader's silence. He mails the Wichita Eagle a letter along with Vicki Wegerle's driver's licence and crime-scene photographs no one outside the police had ever seen. Over the next eleven months he floods the city with packages, puzzles, bound dolls, autobiography chapters, and postcards — enjoying the attention and leaving evidence with every envelope. Then he asks the police a fatal question.

January 2005. Rader places a coded classified ad asking Wichita police whether a floppy disk can be traced to a specific computer. Lieutenant Ken Landwehr, head of the BTK task force, lies — telling him through the newspaper that a disk is completely safe. Rader believes him. On February 16, he types a document on his church computer, saves it to a purple floppy disk, wipes the file, and mails the disk to a local TV station.

Wichita PD's forensic specialist recovers the floppy disk's metadata: last modified by 'Dennis,' last edited at 'Christ Lutheran Church.' A Google search returns the church website with Dennis Rader listed as council president. Security footage confirms his vehicle. Police obtain a DNA sample from his daughter's university medical records without her knowledge. The DNA matches. On February 25, 2005, Rader is surrounded by police on his own street.

Paula Rader learns what her husband is at the same moment as the rest of the world. She files for emergency divorce. Their son is serving in the Navy when his father's face appears on every news channel. Their daughter Kerri — whose DNA was used without her consent to catch him — later writes a memoir titled 'A Serial Killer's Daughter,' struggling to reconcile the father who raised her with the man who killed ten people.

June 27, 2005. Dennis Rader pleads guilty to ten counts of first-degree murder and stands at the podium for over an hour, narrating each killing in the same flat, procedural tone he used to write parking tickets. The judge sentences him to ten consecutive life sentences — 175 years minimum. Earliest possible release: February 26, 2180. Ten lives taken. Thirty-one years undetected. Caught by two words in a file he thought he had deleted.