New BTK documentary on Netflix tells story from daughter’s point of view
The latest entry into the BTK-verse is a documentary that was released on Netflix on Friday and is based on a recent book by the serial killer’s daughter.
The hour-and-a-half-long film, called “My Father: The BTK Killer,” was inspired by Kerri Rawson’s 2019 book, “A Serial Killer’s Daughter: My Story of Faith, Love and Overcoming.” It’s directed by Skye Borgman, a true-crime documentarian also known for the recent Netflix talker “Unknown Number: The High School Catfish.”
Though the film doesn’t break any new ground, it’s told from Rawson’s point of view: She was a young mother living in Michigan when, in February 2005, her father — Park City church president and Cub Scout leader Dennis Rader — was arrested and identified as the BTK serial killer, responsible for 10 murders between 1971 and 1994.
During a phone interview this week, Borgman said that she first became interested in the case after visiting Wichita in 2017 for the Tallgrass Film Festival. Her film “Abducted in Plain Sight” — about an Idaho family whose 12-year-old daughter was targeted by a sociopathic neighbor — was highlighted that year in a Tallgrass showcase of woman-directed feature-length documentaries.
“It was what all the people in Wichita talked about: BTK,” she said. “After that, I started doing some research. I’d heard about BTK before but didn’t know all the details.”
A couple of years later, Rawson released her book, which was a New York Times bestseller. Borgman said that she then realized that an important voice had been missing in all the other books and documentaries made about the crimes.
“I started at that moment kind of thinking about how we need to hear this story from a different perspective — from a daughter’s perspective — and about how different it makes it than a typical serial killer story,” Borgman said.
The film includes interviews with many recognizable local figures, including Police Chief Richard LaMunyon, former KBI agent Ray Lundin, and former KAKE anchors Susan Peters and Larry Hatteberg.
The filmmakers also spend considerable time interviewing Rawson and having her show them around Wichita and Park City. And The Wichita Eagle also is a main character in the film, which recounts the day BTK first reappeared in 2004 after 25 years of silence by sending a letter to the newspaper. Countless Eagle front pages are shown in the film, and Borgman said she relied on The Eagle’s 2008 book “Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door” to help her put pieces of the story together.
She was back-and-forth between her home in Los Angeles and Wichita over the course of about a year to film the documentary, she said. Filming wrapped up in 2024.
For Wichitans, many of whom know all too well the details of Rader’s crimes, the film won’t offer any big surprises. Using old news reports and footage, it recounts in chronological order the crimes, BTK’s reemergence in 2004 and his eventual arrest in 2005. It also revisits the press conference that Wichita police held after the arrest, Rader’s bizarre recounting of his crimes at his sentencing hearing, and the painful impact statements the victim’s relatives delivered.
The film does contain some interesting and often emotional footage.
Borgman’s archivists were able to dig up some fascinating footage from inside The Wichita Eagle newsroom and KAKE TV in the 1970s. They also found some street-scene and crime-scene footage captured when the killings first began.
One jarring scene in the middle of the film shows Rawson revisiting the site of her childhood home in Park City and pointing out to film crews where her father had planted vegetables and flowers. The house was torn down in 2007 to keep sightseers away, and it’s now just an empty lot.
As Rawson and the crews begin to leave, a next-door neighbor shouts at them from her front yard.
“You guys don’t have any respect for other people’s privacy,” the woman yells as Rawson returns to her car, her head down. “She don’t live here no more. She doesn’t have to go through this on a daily basis. You understand that?”
Borgman said that her film is different from other BTK exposes because it gives an up-close look at the effect Radar’s actions had on his own family.
“That’s a voice that we’re not hearing from,” she said. “In so many moments, when I’m thinking about stories I want to be telling, I think, ‘Whose voices aren’t we hearing? And it was really, really clear that we weren’t hearing from Kerri.”
The film leaves viewers with a message from Rawson: She wants to be seen as more than “BTK’s daughter,” which is what most people call her. Most days, she says, she doesn’t even think about who her father is.
“I want to be identified by Kerri Rawson,” she says in the film.
She’s a regular person who likes to play with her kids, read and watch television — just like everybody else.
“I’m just me.”
This story was originally published October 10, 2025 at 5:05 AM.
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