Woman Says Dennis Rader Terrorized Her

Thursday, April 28, 2005

When Dennis Rader was first arrested as the suspect in the BTK murders, the media heard complaints about Rader’s role as the compliance officer in Park City. But none perhaps has been so shocking as the story told by a former Park City resident. The woman says she lived in fear.

Park City was a nice place for Misty King and her two children to live until something simple happened. She and her husband divorced and then she says something strange happened. Dennis Rader came knocking at her door.

“He said, ‘I read in the paper that your divorce was granted,’ and I was like, ‘OK,’” says King, a former Park City resident. “He asked me if I was going to move or if Greg was going to move and I said, ‘No, I was going to stay in the house and the kids were going to stay and Greg was moving.’”

She would be by herself.

Rader told her since she didn’t have a man in the house, he’d keep an eye on things and he did drive by frequently.

“No big deal,” King says. “We waived. He seemed fairly nice.”

That was until a male friend moved into her home. Then King says everything appeared to change.

“He came to the door and asked me if I had another man living in the house and then I [wondered] what is wrong with him?” King says. “I said, ‘Well, I have a person staying at my house,” and he said, ‘Another man?’ and I said, ‘Well, yeah. It’s a guy,’ and he just left.”

Rader was outside the next day, measuring the edge of her grass. It was too tall. She trimmed it. Then it was the woodpile out back. She got rid of that. Then it was the car that needed a tarp. She complied. Then, the color of her garden hose was too bright. King was getting the feeling there was no complying with Rader or Park City.

“And then, he started sitting outside the house,” King says. “Day after day and then I’d call the police and they’d say he’s in the neighborhood doing a job.”

Jack Whitson is the director of compliance for Park City. He was Rader’s boss.

“I don’t know why I was never notified of the situation,” says Whitson. “I was never notified of the situation, because had I been notified I would have taken it very seriously.”

King, who has worked for the same doctor for 10 years, says she started taking things very seriously when she says she caught Rader window peeping. Again, she called police.

“And, they said, ‘Mamm, there is a difference between looking in windows and walking by windows,’” says King. “I’m like, ‘Well, I think you know when someone steps in front of your windows.’”

King was then issued citation after citation, all for issues surrounding an inoperable vehicle in her driveway.

“I’d always ask him, ‘Why are you doing this? What did I do that was so wrong?’ says King. “And he just said, ‘Get rid of that boyfriend and everything will go back to the way it was.’”

Rader’s “explanation was he felt the boyfriend was working on these inoperable vehicles in the car and felt like if the boyfriend would leave, that so would her problems and complaints the city would have against her,” Whitson says.

Whitson says the Park City council got complaints about King’s property and asked Rader to investigate. But, King says there are other incidents that had nothing to do with vehicle violations.

“And then I came home from work one day and Dennis was outside and he said, ‘I just want you to know your side door must be broken, because it’s open’ and I said, ‘What do you mean?’ and he said, ‘It doesn’t shut,’” King says.

To this day, King says she doesn’t know how the door got open. Soon after, King didn’t open the front door when Rader came knocking with a citation.

“That’s when he’d walk around the house and bang on the windows,” King says. “’I know you are there, I need to talk to you.’”

As far as the city’s concerned, Whitson says it’s not procedure. He says he would’ve talked to Rader had he known about it.

King says the last straw came when Rader picked up her 8-year-old daughter’s dog, Jasmine. Three days later, when King went to pick up the dog, Jasmine had been put to sleep. That day, King packed up her kids and her belongings and left Park City for good.

“I didn’t know what he was going to do,” King says. “I figured he’d already killed my dog, so I just left.”

She says she never wants to go back.

It’s upsetting that King felt like she had to leave Park City, Whitson says. If some of King’s allegations are true and other complaints that have surfaced since Rader’s arrest, he wishes he would’ve known about them earlier.

“I’m angry because they allowed it to happen,” King says. They believed “if you work for the city, you can do no wrong.”