A Serial Killer's Daughter

Publisher's Summary

What is it like to learn that your ordinary, loving father is a serial killer? Kerri Rawson, the daughter of the notorious serial killer known as BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill), tells the nightmarish story of that discovery and of her long journey of faith and healing.

In 2005, Dennis Rader confessed without remorse to the murders of 10 people, including two children - acts that destroyed seven families and wrecked countless lives in the process. As the town of Wichita, Kansas, celebrated the end of a 31-year nightmare, another was just beginning for his daughter, Kerri Rawson.

Suffering from unexplainable night terrors for much of her childhood and young adult years, Kerri was unaware of her father's crimes until the FBI knocked on her apartment door, plunging Kerri into a black hole of horror and disbelief. Her dad had been leading a double life. The same man who had been a loving father, devoted husband, church president, Boy Scout leader, and public servant had been using his family as a cover for his heinous crimes since before she was born.

Telling her story with candor and courage, Kerri writes for all who carry unhealed wounds and who struggle to protect themselves and their families from the crippling effects of violence, betrayal, anger, and loss. A Serial Killer's Daughter is an intimate and honest exploration of life with one of America's most notorious serial killers. For anyone grappling with how to forgive the unforgivable, rebuild lives in the shadow of death, and hold on to sanity in the midst of madness, Kerri's story will shock, astound, and ultimately encourage.

©2019 Kerri Rawson (P)2019 Thomas Nelson

Couldn't Get Through it

The story is about her finding Jesus with her dad's murders thrown in as asides. Also, the narrator sounds as if she is reading to children. I just couldn't finish it.

63 of 70 people found this review helpful

Extremely Boring!

As much as I feel so bad for this woman and her family, her story is a big snooze-fest. The narrator puts no dynamic in her reading. Very, very boring. If you're looking for a story about Dennis Rader/BTK... this is not the book for you. I would not recommend this to anyone.

41 of 46 people found this review helpful

Can’t bring myself to finish this mess

I was so excited about this book but after forcing myself to listen to a few hours I can’t go any further. There is very little talk about her father. If you want a book where she describes the color of everything she sees and uses this platform to tell her story of becoming a Christian then this is for you. The narration is awkward and reads more like a children’s book than a book about a serial killer.

47 of 54 people found this review helpful

Can you love a monster?

I've grown to love what memoirs can reveal about our shared humanity when the author is willing to dig deep. True crime, on the other hand, has always given me nightmares. Enter the true crime memoir. It turns out I love true crime memoirs! When super creepy, criminal acts are filtered through the very personal, introspective lens of a memoir, I can handle it. I can stop covering my eyes. I can peer a little more closely into the depths of humanity.

Kerri Rawson's astonishingly candid book about learning her beloved father had been leading a double life as a serial killer her entire life is the mother of all true crime memoirs. It touched me to my core. I'm all for the "complicated father-daughter-relationship" memoir, and it doesn't get any more complicated than "my dad is a serial killer." What I love about this book is how she fully explores the heart's confusion around knowing someone's a monster yet loving them anyway. She's so honest and pure in these moments, and her voice truly moved me.

I also really appreciated the thread of dark humor that she weaves into her story. Being able to laugh at your pain is such a hallmark of surviving crime, trauma, and abuse, and Kerri Rawson has all that in spades. Even in the darkest moments of her story, she tosses out unexpected one liners that endeared her to me even more. She's funny, and it turns out she's also a very talented writer and storyteller.

The first half of the book moves a bit slowly as she describes her family's life "pre-BTK," as in before anyone knew about her dad's double life. But this part of the story still has lots of payoff as it establishes the close relationship she had with her dad, as well as lays the foundations for her religious beliefs that would ultimately see her through her darkest hours. When she finally gets to "after-BTK" about halfway through the book, the story accelerates to lightning speeds, and I had to give myself a few little breaks only because it had gotten so intense.

Even though the cover puts this story squarely in the "true crime" camp, I hope this memoir will find a wide audience as I truly loved it and found it to be a deft and moving account of a life that most of us can hardly even begin to imagine.

25 of 29 people found this review helpful

Not For Everyone, But...

I found this book fascinating, but it’s not for everyone. Listeners with a generalized interest in true crime will probably be disappointed. If you can’t at least tolerate the Christian worldview (regardless of your personal beliefs) you’ll find this to be unlistenable. However, for patient listeners, I assure you there could be no weirder listening experience than listening to this book and “Inside the Mind of BTK” by John Douglas back to back. I’ve listened to this book twice now, and all I can say at this point is that I’m seriously fearful the author of this book might one day read “Inside the Mind”. It’s clear she hasn’t, for understandable reasons, but I just....I don’t know. The two books together leave me with so many questions I would be afraid to ask this author (who is, no doubt, a remarkable and courageous woman). If you can read this with a compassionate heart this is well worth your time, but to “get it” you definitely need to know the details of the BTK case from another source/criminological perspective. I’ll be listening to both several more times trying to reconcile the elements of truth both contain.

9 of 10 people found this review helpful

Who do you turn to when the bogeyman is your own father?

When Kerri Rawson moved into her first apartment, her dad, Dennis Rader, showed her how to keep its sliding-glass door secure at night. It wasn’t until years later that she learned her father—better known as the BTK Killer—once threw a brick through a neighbor’s sliding-glass door and killed the woman inside.

Such devastating, irreconcilable memories haunt this extraordinary memoir—the most soul-searching, insightful, and compelling account by a serial killer’s loved one (and victim) I’ve ever come across. Rawson’s life was upended when Rader, a Boy Scout leader and church president, was exposed as the cruel predator who had tortured and murdered 10 people in Kansas over nearly two decades. What happened to her after that—the trauma and PTSD, the publicity, the fracturing of her family and entire world—can hardly be overstated. You’re unlikely to hear a memoir this jaw-dropping…ever. But Rawson’s nervy humor, her spiritual candor, and her capacity for compassion make her an endearing, even relatable, heroine—warmly voiced by narrator Devon O’Day.

I congratulate Rawson on writing a terrific memoir that must have taken immeasurable courage. Forget the monster; I want to know where this remarkable survivor is going next.

38 of 45 people found this review helpful

The book I needed and I didn’t even know it

What a powerful life account. I laughed with the author and cried along side her as she recounted memories and life’s journey. In tragedy, there’s always another side to the story. Thankful to hear this one and how much it relates in ways I can’t even explain.

8 of 9 people found this review helpful

Children’s Book Narrator

Unlistenable! what should have been a dramatically -interesting and hearty read was ruined by a narration, only suited for the children’s fairy tale genre. what a huge letdown and what a huge shame -
Once upon a time....

26 of 31 people found this review helpful

Very good read.

This story was better than I thought it would be. I finished it in one weekend. The narration wasn't the best, but the story made up for it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Great book

I loved listening to this. I did it in 2 days. I always wondered how the serial killers family felt. This gave awesome insight. I'm a true crime junkie. I heard about the article done on his daughter on people. I just looked the book up knowing I was going to love it.

3 of 3 people found this review helpful

Just wanted to write an autobiography

“A Serial Killer’s Daughter”
Synopsis: although the title leads people to believe it’ll be about the heartbreak of the author’s discovery that her Dad is BTK, actually is the autobiography she wouldn’t have been famous enough to publish without using the name Dennis Rader.
This comes after recent digs at established authors and documentary makers for giving her Dad the attention he “doesn’t deserve” and profiting from the heartbreak of the victims’ families. Guess she wanted in on those profits.
I mean, none of us would turn down the chance to make some cash and she’s doing it the only way she can, but she could at least TRY and make the content match the title and she really should have asked someone to write it for her because she never was and never will be a writer. And to be honest, I think she’s said too much about how she feels about giving BTK any more notoriety to suddenly appear with her book and it’s just too late.

True crime? Nope!!

Honestly the worst audiobook I’ve ever had the misfortune of listening to.
I’m not sure what I expected with this book, as a true crime ‘enthusiast’ I at least expected to learn something about the BTK case I hadn’t already known. I finished this book not having gained a single fact. About anything.
I cannot stress enoughthat this is NOT for fans of true crime, if that’s you, keep moving, this book is not for you. You will be extremely disappointed, it shouldn’t be listed in true crime, because apart from the fact the authors father is Dennis Rader, it may as well be listed in cooking for all the similaries it shares with true crime!
This book starts out like a bad entry into a teenage girls diary and the only time it diverts from that narrative is when it segways into bible verses! Neither of these areas hold any interest for me!
I have read other books by relatives/friends of serial killers and found them a fascinating insight into the struggles to accept, understand or even forgive what their loved one has done, this book? Any time that she begins to face any kind of peril she simply recites verses of the bible.
Four years ago she publicly attacked Steven King for basing one of his books on her parents marriage, she said that King was ‘exploiting my father’s 10 victims’, I should have known this book was utter rubbish when she personified hypocrisy by writing the damn thing!