UPDATED: Dennis Rader's Daughter Has A Bone To Pick With Stephen King

photo credit: kansascity.com/news

I hesitate to post this tonight.  I think Kerri Rader really is a victim of her father's evil, and has shown amazing courage and faith in moving forward.  However, the story is directly related to Stephen King. I find her faith inspiring, and her comments about King misguided.  So, if you comment, be kind.  Don't nuke this lady.

Resposted, with update.

kansascity.com posted a sympathetic article about Kerri Rader Rawson, the daughter of  the Wichita, Kansas serial killer known as BTK.  Seems she has a bone to pick with Stephen King.  Apparently she just figured out that King's 2010 novella, "A Good Marriage" was based partly on Dennis Rader.

Instead of taking interest in the character study,  Rawson's moral compass spins on King and declares that he is exploiting the victims her father terrorized.  Apparently she is their spokesman.  Of course, she goes on to state that she and her family feel personally exploited.  In fact, she goes so far as to say that  she and her family are the "11th victim."  Of course, they are victims.  But it's not Stephen King who is victimizing them.

The movie, and story, discuss  the fact that people can live together in family while hiding terrible, sometimes horrific,  secrets  from one another.  Kinda like. . . DENNIS RADER!

The article notes that  until she figured out that her father was the source material for A Good Marriage, King was her favorite writer.  Again -- the story was released in 2010.  So  did she read the novella and not go, "hey, this seems familiar."  Or, did she not read the book?

Here is the meat of Rawson's complaints:

1. She thinks it'll give her father "a fat head." 
But honestly, I don't think Stephen King will be  responsible if Dennis Rader's ego gets out of control!

2. She is offended King will make money off the story.
Now, understand,  this is a fictional novel.  It's not a novelization of  Rader's life; King was simply interested in the fact that Rader's family was unaware of his evil activity.

This is from the article:

She said King will make money, as she said he always does, only this time from the grief of all the victim families. “How many millions does he already have?” she said.

It seems she thinks attacking Stephen King will give voice to her fathers victims.

The bottom-line is, King is not making money off her fathers story; he's making money from a novel her wrote.  The novel contained observations from real life -- which is how books are written.  Can you imagine banks being mad at John Steinbeck for The Grapes of Wrath?

Understand, King did not recreate  the entire family in his novel.  In the book, the couple are older and the entire family dynamic is quite different.

3. She suggests that reading Stephen King might have "influenced" some of the bad things her  father did.
That's vague, so get the full quote: "She said her father was also a huge King fan – she worries that King’s books might have influenced some of the bad things her father did in some of his later murders."  Apparently there was something in the "later" murders she feels came from the work of King.

Later in the article she confesses that she has no  idea what drove her father to do  what he did.  Her emotions are obviously still a whirlwind.

Why not leave the family out of it?

BTK's daughter acknowledges that King has a right to tell a story,but asks why he had to tell what the inspiration was. Why not leave the family out of it?  Well, the answer is two fold.

First, I'm not aware of King ever personally outing the family. He didn't give their names or say much about BTK's real family.  She's the one who got her photo on the cover of a story linked to BTK, not Stephen King.  It's in the article about Rawson that her husbands name is given, the number of years she's been married, her occupation, her former occupation, and the number of children she has, how long her brother was in the Navy, how many degrees she has;  Stephen King didn't give that information; she did.

In other words, she is revealing more of her personal details in her attack on King than King did in his book.  King used an IDEA -- she's actually the one who made it personal.

Second, King revealed the source of the story because he was asked what the inspiration for the novella was.  He answered a question.  He probably never  thought, "Gee, if I answer this question, I might offend BTK's family."

What is good about the article:

Rawson reveals some real kindness on the part of police, who helped the family "get through" the terror of what the head of  the family did.  She says that detectives on the BTK task force were "very kind" to her and the family.   “They helped us get through it, talked to us with a lot of kindness. I am sure they kept a lot of media crap away from us afterward. And there was a lot of that.”
She’s grateful to Landwehr for two other reasons.

I suspect she is right when she says that she probably suffers  from PTSD as a result of her father's actions the media's hounding.

Stephen King makes her case

Maybe she should read the novella.  The article points out that the family, and in particular Rader's wife Paula, knew all along what he was doing.  Which is the very heart of King's novella!  What if a spouse who had no idea their beloved was committing murder discovered the true character of the one they love?  Well, in King's novel, a very strong wife is able to take care of some serious business.  If the family really sees themselves that deeply in the story, they should  feel  complimented.

Rawson says, “The hardest thing: Once you find out this horrible stuff about someone you loved and live with, you had to really work through it."  Which is very much  what A Good Marriage is about.  What do you do with the information you have?  In A Good Marriage,  the evil is discovered and dealt with in a way much different than reality.  It's not the FBI who cracks the case, it's the wife.

I Feel For this Lady:

While Rawson's attack  on King is irritating, I feel real empathy with her.  She's wishing she had a way to defend those her father hurt;  and this is, she thinks, a way to protect them.  She admits to having "bad days" (I'll bet) and that it's tough to keep moving forward as a mom.  I respect her courage to tell her children the truth and work with them in dealing with it.

I also respect her  courage  to tell her story to 200 women in her church.   That takes guts.  As part of the talk to the women, she revealed that she had not forgiven her father.  However, that Christmas (after sharing her story), she said that on the way home from a movie, she found the power to forgive her  father.  "God gave me that forgiveness," she acknowledged.  I'll tell you, I believe that with all my heart.  Because we are  unable  to forgive  really big wounds in life without the power of God. “God gave me that forgiveness,” she said. “My faith is my rock under me.”  After choosing to forgive him, she then wrote a six page letter to Rader, explaining that  though she forgives him, she does not understand why he did what he did.

The article includes a letter to "to Stephen King, the media from Dennis Rader’s daughter.”  The part I like out of the letter, "My mom is the strongest & bravest woman I know." I think King's novel actually compliments this sentiment.

The letter reveals a person still tortured by the evil in the past; and some of those wounds will  be with her all of her life until the final day when tears are wiped away by the Creator.

UPDATE:

(Wednesday, October 1)

Stephen King posted this well worded response at his message board:

I don't think Mr. Rader's daughter has to worry about her father getting a big head; there's nothing glamorous about the portrayal of Bob Anderson in A GOOD MARRIAGE. He's depicted as a banal little man, and none of the murders are shown. As for making millions from the project…not going to happen. AGM is a very small, independently financed feature that is opening in less than two dozen venues. How it does as a video on demand feature film (VOD) is hard to predict, but we don't expect huge returns. The story isn't really about the killer husband at all, but about a brave and determined woman. And while I understand Ms. Rawson's distress, the BTK crimes have already been chronicled in no less than 4 feature films, and there may be more in the future. I grant there is a morbid interest in such crimes and such criminals--there have been at least a hundred films about Jack the Ripper, who claimed far fewer victims--but there's also a need to understand why they happen. That drive to understand is the basis of art, and that's what I strove for in A GOOD MARRIAGE. I maintain that the theme of both the novella and the movie--how some men are able to keep secrets from even their closest loved ones--is valid and deserves exploration.

 - Stephen King