Kerri Rawson

Kerri Rawson (born 1978) is an American author and activist for the rights of crime victims. She is the daughter of serial killer Dennis Rader, known as BTK, who committed ten murders in Kansas between 1974 and 1991.

Rawson wrote two books about her father's crimes and her life, with one of them inspiring the Netflix documentary film My Father, the BTK Killer.

Life before Rader's arrest Rawson was born in 1978 in Wichita, Kansas, to Dennis Rader, a U.S. Air Force veteran, and Paula Dietz, a Kansas native who worked as a bookkeeper. By the time of Rawson's birth, Rader had murdered eight people, including two young children in 1974, when he massacred the Otero family in Wichita.

In April 1985, Rader murdered Marine Hedge, a neighbor of the Raders' home in Park City, Kansas. Rawson stated in interviews that she was six years old when she was informed of Hedge's killing, adding that she began to experience night terrors, telling her mother that there was "a bad man in the house".

While attending high school, Rawson recalled that Rader gave her his car to drive to school. After Rader's arrest, Kerri learned that he had killed his last known victim Dolores Davis, a 62-year-old native of Stella, Nebraska, who resided in Wichita in 1991, and that he had hidden Davis's body in the trunk of that car.

After her high school graduation, Rawson attended Kansas State University, where she obtained two degrees, one of them in education. She married a man named Darian Rawson in 2003, with Rader taking her down the aisle in the church ceremony. The Rawsons moved to Michigan to start their family there, while maintaining frequent contact with Kerri's parents. Kerri and Darian had a girl (born 2008), and a boy (born 2011). Keeping a low-profile investigation to avoid alerting Rader, detectives took DNA samples from Kerri's medical records at Kansas State University, which eventually linked her father to the BTK serial murders.

After Rader's arrest After Rader's arrest in February 2005, Paula Dietz was granted an emergency divorce by a judge, after which she moved out of Kansas, leading a private life. Rawson's brother, Brian, whom she says suffered physical violence by Rader, has always declined requests to speak about his father. When Rader was arrested, Brian was an Eagle Scout. He served in the Navy between 2004 and 2009, working in submarines on a base in Groton, Connecticut. In 2016, Rawson gave an interview, accusing horror author Stephen King of "exploiting" Rader's victims and their families with his novella A Good Marriage and its film adaptation of the same name. In 2023, she published another book, Breaking Free: Overcoming the Trauma of My Serial Killer Father, which Rawson wrote while dealing with long COVID symptoms and struggling with mental health issues, including post-traumatic stress disorder, anxiety, and depression. Rawson visited Rader in El Dorado Correctional Facility and tried to make him confess; she was advised by investigators to avoid direct accusations due to the risk of Rader shutting down and refusing to talk.

When questioned about cold cases and other possible crimes, Rawson said that her father asked her why she wanted to talk about that and that they have a "normal father-daughter" relationship. Rawson believes that it is "entirely" possible that her father and Kohberger were in touch via email or phone before Kohberger's murders and that Rader influenced Kohberger, explaining that Rader had problems with prison officials at El Dorado for sending his underpants, glasses, and other memorabilia to his "fans". Rawson met with Heuermann's wife, daughter, and stepson during the production.