BTK Killer Dennis Rader Pleads Guilty To First-Degree Murder

I’m Jeffery Davis, son of Deloris Davis, BTK victim Jan 18, 1991. May it please the court to allow me to express my thoughts and feelings to all the victim’s survivors here among us today. In a hope that we can leave this courtroom with some sense of peace and legal resolution. For the last 5326 days, I have wondered what it would be like to confront the walking cesspool that took my mother’s precious life. Throughout that time I always envisioned this day as being one for avenging the past. I can think of nothing but savoring the bittersweet taste of revenge as justice is served upon this social sewage here before us today. Now that it has arrived, surprisingly I realize this day is not just about avenging past crimes. Sitting here before us is a depraved predator, a rabid animal that has murdered people, poisoned countless lives, and terrorized this community for 30 years. All the while relishing every minute of it. As such, there can be no justice harsh enough or revenge bitter enough, in this world at least, to cause the pain and suffering which a social malignancy like this has coming. Therefore, I have determined that for the sake of our innocent victims and their loving families and friends with us here today, for me this will be a day of celebration, not retribution.

If my focus were hatred, I would stare you down and call you a demon from hell who defiles this court at the very sight of its cancerous presence. If I embraced bitterness, I would remind you that you that you were nothing but a despicable, child murdering, cowardly, impotent, eunuch and pervert masquerading as a human being. If I were the animal that you are, I would say that I relish the thought of you being treated to the same despicable brutality, terror and agony at the hands of your soon to be fellow inmates that you relished inflicting on your defenseless victims. If I were spiteful, I would remind you that it is only fitting that a twisted, narcissistic psychopath, obsessed with public attention will soon have his world reduced to an isolated solitary existence in an 80 square foot cell. Doomed to languish away the rest of your miserable life alone. If I had your devil nature, I would delight in the fact that your congregation has turned it’s back on you, that your friends have deserted you, that your wife has divorced you, that your own children have disowned you. And then I would remind you that you will never have any warm loving human contact again for the remainder of your twisted existence. If I were cynical, I would remind this court that you would return to your murderous ways in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. So for the safety of society you must remain caged forever like any other vicious predatory animal. If I were to sink to your level, I would say that this world would have been much better off had your mother aborted your demon soul before you were unleashed on this world, sparing 10 innocent lives and avoiding untold heartache for this community. If I were vindictive, I would wish you many long, emotionally tortured years in your cage haunted every night by your victim’s hopeless pleas for mercy as you played God and pronounced their death sentences upon them. If I had your sadistic nature, I would delight in the pain you feel now in realizing your own arrogance and ego got you caught. That if you had just kept your big mouth shut, you would still be a free man today able to eat pizza and walk your dog Dudley. If I wanted revenge, I would pray that you develop a lingering illness from which you suffer for many, many years before you ultimately choke to death one lonely night on your own vomit. If I were judgmental, I would call you the most despicable form of hypocrite for profaning Christianity by daring to associate yourself with my faith and for blaspheming God’s house with your demonic actions. If I were unforgiving, I would tell you that I will accept any shameful meaningless attempts on your part to feign remorse by responding that I will grant you forgiveness the same day that hell freezes over, although I know that my mother, in her Christian grace, has already long since forgiven you. But I won’t hurl these invectives at you and I won’t rain these curses down upon you because you’re not smart enough to understand most of the words I would use anyway. Even if you could begin to fathom the depth of my hatred for you, I would still refuse to waste any breath on you because that would once again allow you the satisfaction of being in the limelight and that attention, I refuse to allow you.

As of today, you no longer exist. Today the focus finally moves out from under your depraved shadow of hell’s darkness into the light of your victims and their families. Speaking for my mother, with us in spirit, for my own family, and I hope for the entire family of survivors here today we dedicate this day to the memories of those who cannot be with us. Today we also celebrate, with this community, the relief in knowing that we will never again be terrorized by a monster’s demented fantasies. Today we will each silently remember a father, a brother, a wife, a mother, a sister, a daughter, a grandmother. All those we loved so deeply and miss so dearly still. Today we will quietly reminisce on all that they meant to us. We will smile at all the silly things they did that made us laugh and we will renew our pride in who they were. Today we will thank them for shaping our lives, for being there when we needed them, for setting the example of what we should be, for making us who we are, and for allowing us to be their living legacies. From this point on, we declare our independence from the tyranny of your actions. While you begin your slow and painful decent into hell, we will choose to rise above our pain. While you sink into an emotional abyss of hopelessness and despair, we will channel our grief into positive endeavors, those life activities which would please the ones we have lost. While you agonize over the reality that your last victims were ironically your own family, we will embrace the new family we now have with whom we will always share a common bond forged from the pain of adversity and loss. While your body wastes away in prison, we will renew ourselves by incorporating into our lives those characteristics modeled by our loved ones, humility, compassion, honor, integrity, kindness, selflessness, and love, traits which your twisted, cancerous mind cannot comprehend I realize. While your retched soul awaits pronouncement of the one true justice, your damnation to hell for eternity, we will thank God for every day he gives us realizing, as only we can, just how precious life really is.

Finally we want you to know that we, who could so easily have succumbed to your quagmire of madness, will not give you that satisfaction. Your despicable actions will not defeat us. Our very lives will be testimony that good can triumph over even the most hideous form of evil and perversion. Just as your days are now over, ours are just beginning. In the final analysis, you have to live with the cold reality that while all of us here will overcome your depravity, you have now lost everything and you will forever remain nothing. May that torment you for the rest of your tortured existence.

Thank you your honor.