There’s a true-crime doc that may not have made it onto your radar in 2025, so you need to correct that now. We’ve all seen a million shows about serial killers, but we usually see them through the eyes of the FBI or the victims. Netflix’s My Father, The BTK Killer flips the script in a genuinely haunting way: it shows us the monster through the eyes of the person who loved him most.
“Dad, He Writes Just Like You”
Imagine sitting on the couch with your father, watching a news report about a local serial killer. You notice the killer’s handwriting on the screen and joke, “Wow, Dad, he writes just like you.” That actually happened to Kerri Rawson. At the time, she had no idea her “boring” dad, Dennis Rader, was actually the BTK Killer (which, charmingly, stands for “Bind, Torture, Kill”). The documentary follows the moment her world shattered when the police knocked on her door to tell her that her father wasn’t just a church leader and a Boy Scout troop founder—he was a monster.
Why This Isn’t Your Average Slasher Doc
Most true-crime docs treat family members like side characters or “talking heads” used to fill time between gore shots. However, this doc is different.
The story belongs to Kerri, not Dennis. It’s about her survival, her trauma, and the impossible task of reconciling the “good dad” who taught her life skills with the man who kept a “murder kit” hidden in plain sight among his DIY tools.
Critics are raving about the film’s respectful approach. It doesn’t sensationalize the murders; instead, it looks at the trail of emotional destruction Rader left behind for his own flesh and blood.
We see how Kerri eventually turned her pain into a mission, working with investigators to link cold cases to her father and ensuring he never sees the light of day again.
Imagine that you wake up one day only to learn that the man who raised you, who you look up to, who you love, isn’t who you thought he was. He’s a cruel butcher. That has to mess someone up.
The Identity Crisis
The most chilling part of the documentary is the “DIY” horror. Rader was so boringly normal that his murder gear looked like standard household equipment. The film dives deep into Kerri’s inner conflict—how do you deal with the fact that half of your DNA comes from a serial killer? It’s a perspective we rarely get to see, and it makes for some of the most essential true-crime viewing in years.
The Mind of BTK
It’s confirmed that he murdered 10 people between 1974 and 1991, beginning with killing four members of the Otero family, including two children.
He worked for ADT Security, meaning people literally paid him to install the locks he would later bypass to kill them. He “retired” in 1991 to focus on being a “good” dad and church leader, but he kept “murder kits” hidden in his shed and detailed journals of his “projects.”
After 13 years of silence, his ego got the best of him. He resumed taunting the police in 2004, asking whether they could trace a floppy disk. The cops lied and said “No,” he sent the disk, and they tracked the metadata straight to his church computer. He was finally caught when police used his daughter Kerri’s medical DNA records to prove he was the killer.
Currently, Denis Rader is in his 80s and is serving ten life sentences in the El Dorado Correctional Facility in Kansas.
Watch It Tonight
My Father, The BTK Killer is smart, it’s heartbreaking, and it’ll make you look at your neighbors (and your dad’s toolbox) a little differently.
