Where Is Dennis Rader’s Daughter Now? All About Kerri Rawson’s Life 20 Years After Discovering Her Father Was a Serial Killer

Dennis Rader, known as the BTK Killer, murdered 10 people over the course of 17 years in Wichita, Kan., and his daughter, Kerri Rawson, only found out after his arrest made the news in February 2005.

“Nobody wants to believe their father could be capable of such monstrous things,” she previously told PEOPLE.

She recalls her life growing up as the daughter of a serial killer in My Father, the BTK Killer, which premiered on Netflix on Oct. 10.

Rader, a Boy Scout leader and an active member of his local church, began his killing spree in 1974 and ended it in 1991. He gave himself the nickname “BTK,” for “Bind, Torture, Kill” in letters he sent to investigators and reporters after his crimes.

Rawson, now 46, is trying to distance herself from her father as best she can, but knows a part of her identity will always be tied to his.

“Every freaking headline for the last 10 years has said, ‘BTK’s daughter,’ and one got it right and said, ‘Kerri Rawson, daughter of Dennis Rader, the BTK killer.’ I want to be identified like Kerri Rawson,” she said. “That’s how I’m identified, but I’m so much more than that.”

Here’s everything to know about Kerri Rawson’s life today, over 20 years after her father was arrested.

Rader murdered 10 people when Rawson was a child

Rader’s murders began in 1974 and lasted through 1991.

His first known victims, according to his confession, were Joseph Otero, Julia Otero, Josephine Otero and Joseph Otero, who he murdered in January 1974. That April, he stabbed 21-year-old Kathryn Bright to death.

In March 1977, Rader strangled Shirley Vian, followed by Nancy Fox that December.

He murdered his neighbor, Marine Hedge, in April 1985, and Vicki Wegerle in September 1986. His last confirmed victim was Dolores Davis in January 1991.

Rader would often stalk his victims, some for months, before binding their arms and legs, then slowly strangling them (with the exception of Bright). Afterward, he’d sometimes take photos of himself wearing victims’ clothes or of the victims’ bodies, per NBC News, with which he’d often engage in acts of bondage and necrophilia.

Her DNA was used as evidence to catch her father

Police traced a computer disk that Rader sent them to a local Lutheran church where he volunteered, but they needed DNA evidence to connect him to the crime scenes. They didn’t have a sample of Rader’s DNA, so they instead used Rawson’s without her knowledge or consent.

“They found out I had had annual pap smears and they got a warrant for my medical records,” Rawson said in an ABC 20/20 documentary. “It would have been nice if somebody had asked me for my DNA. I would have willingly given it.”

Though she felt violated by the intrusion into her privacy, Rawson is glad that it helped investigators.

“I understand why nobody approached me,” she said in the 20/20 documentary. “They needed to catch my dad. They needed to be safe about it and needed to do it quickly.”

She later told PEOPLE, “They were just doing their job and they were heroes. They were trying to save the community [in Wichita] and prevent him from committing any more murders.”

Her family didn’t go to Rader’s court appearances

After Rader’s arrest, no one in his family went to his court appearances out of respect for the victims and their families, Rawson said in My Father, the BTK Killer.

“We wanted the families to have that time in court,” she said. “We didn’t want to cause a disruption. We really just could not handle it.”

Rader pleaded guilty to all 10 murders.

While they didn’t go to the courthouse, the family did follow the case closely, and when Rawson saw footage of his sentencing on TV, she was disgusted.

“After the victims’ statements … he’s now got a shot to apologize or say something meaningful or say that he regretted everything,” she said. “And instead, he gets up and he thanks everybody — so he thanks the police, he thanks the DA, he thanks the victims’ families, he thanks the judge. It’s like the most bizarre thing.”

Rader was sentenced to 175 years in prison with no chance of parole.

Stephen King inadvertently got her to speak out for the first time

Rawson is the only member of her family to issue any comment about Rader publicly.

It wasn’t until she saw legendary horror author Stephen King on CBS’s This Morning in September 2014 discussing his 2010 short story, A Good Marriage, which was loosely based on the Rader case, that she decided to interview him with the Wichita Eagle.

“He’s exploiting my father’s 10 victims and their families,” she said of King. “He’s just going to give my father a big head, and he absolutely does not need that. Great — now Stephen King is giving my father a big head. Thanks for that. That’s the last thing my dad should get.”

In 2019, she explained to PEOPLE why she stayed silent for as long as she did.

“I was just trying to stay alive and breathe, trying to recover from the shock,” she said. “Telling myself over and over that I’d do anything not to be the daughter of a serial killer.”

She had trouble reconciling her memories of her father with his BTK murders

After her father’s murderous ways were uncovered, Rawson spent seven years working with a therapist.

“He’s not psychotic. He’s very culpable,” she said of Rader. “If you can push him enough, get him to be honest enough, he will take culpability. But he’s also a psychopath and a narcissist, so there’s this disconnect in his brain, in my opinion. He just doesn’t seem to understand what he’s done. He doesn’t understand how much grief, pain and loss he’s caused to these families — and to ours.”

While experts have said they don’t believe Rader can feel real emotions, Rawson wants to believe that he can and did.

“The man I knew could be good and decent,” she told PEOPLE. “That’s why I have to hold on to the belief that he truly did love us. I’m not forgiving him for what he did to those other families, but I am forgiving him for what he did to our family.”

She believes her father may have sexually abused her

In 2023, the Osage County Sheriff’s Department enlisted Rawson in an effort to help their investigations into other murders for which they believed Rader may be a suspect. During her work with them, they let her see her father’s notebooks that had been in evidence, and she was horrified by what she found.

“I’m reading through my dad’s notes, and he has a notation, ’81’ for the year 1981. I would have been 2, 3 [years old],” she recalled in My Father the BTK Killer. “In all caps, he has ‘Kerri/B and D,’ which is ‘bondage/game.’ …’ Then there’s another one right after that that says, ‘Kids/bath/S,’ and that’s for ‘sex’ for my dad. Did dad molest me in the bath when I was 3? And why is my name on a bondage game?”

Rawson said she was “really confused” by the notes, and that it made her examine her childhood more closely and believes that her father may have been “practicing” on her.

“I had night terrors and issues in my bedroom growing up. Part of that night terror stuff, wetting the bed, [being] scared of the dark [and] terrified in my bed, had to do with a bad man in the house,” she said. “It was like a home invasion thing. That’s what he did to victims. I never knew where that came from. I think my subconscious was trying to get it out of me since I was a little girl, saying, ‘Hey, there’s a bad man in my house.’ ”

She visited him in prison for the first and likely last time in 2023

In 2023, Rawson visited Rader for the first time since his incarceration in an effort to mine information from her father about cold cases for the Osage County Sheriff’s Department.

“If my father has committed more murders, then we really need to get to the bottom of the truth, and we need to get to it before my father passes away,” she said of her motivation.

She and two investigators met with Rader, and she recalled the moment he first saw her.

“He’s frail, he’s in a wheelchair and he was literally crying, so happy to see me — like, over the moon to see his kid,” she said.

They spoke for about three hours, during which Rawson asked him about missing women and about open cases that matched his M.O.

“He goes, ‘What are you talking about? Can’t we just reminisce? Can’t we just have a father-daughter — can’t we just have memories?’ ” Rawson said.

“He was angry about the investigation, he was angry about the media,” she said. “He was just angry.”

Rawson said that investigators warned her not to bring up her suspicions of sexual abuse because it may cause Rader to shut down and refuse to answer further questions, but she did anyway.

“I said, ‘Dad, what does “Kerri/bondage/game” mean?’ And my dad goes, ‘Oh, that was just a fantasy. I never touched the family,’ ” she said. ” ‘You’re just making stuff up about me now to be famous.’ ”

Where is Kerri Rawson now?

Rawson is a married mother of two who lives in Michigan. She released her book, A Serial Killer’s Daughter, in 2019.

After visiting her father in 2023, she refuses to ever again.

“When everybody talks about him being a psychopath and narcissist and not wanting to be around him, I had still been able to find humanity in him, and then I wasn’t able to,” she explained in My Father the BTK Killer. “I don’t ever want to go near that person again. That’s not my dad. I don’t know who that is. I’ll grieve those memories, and that girl [I was] and that family. I lost all of it, but I just didn’t really want to give him any of me anymore, and I really didn’t want any of it in my life.”

Rawson uses her platform to advocate for crime victims and their families, as well as families of other serial killers who may have difficulty coping with not just the heaviness of the crimes themselves, but also the public scrutiny that comes with it. That includes bullying on social media, which she says happens to her often.

“I’ve had some problems on Facebook and I’ve had people email me, Instagram message me, stalk me, threaten to kill me, say things like they wish my dad had left an 11th victim, which is me,” she said.

She wants to be known as more than her father’s daughter.

“I’m a mom, I spend time with my kids and we go to the beach,” she said. “I like to read and watch TV and, like anybody, just chill out. I’m just a normal person. Most days, I don’t even really think about who my dad is. I don’t think about him. I’m just me.”