Psychologist in BTK case settles suit over tape

Another psychologist refuses to admit he did anything wrong as he settles a lawsuit.

As background information, here's a snippet from The Witchita Eagle, as reported on April 15th 2005:

As a two-hour special about BTK aired Friday on national television, dozens of Wichita criminal justice officials were questioning the ethics of a psychologist whose interview with the confessed killer turned out to be the basis for the show. [..] The interview was conducted by Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza immediately after Rader pleaded guilty to 10 counts of first-degree murder. “Quite frankly, we trusted this guy,” Rader’s lawyer, Steve Osburn said Friday. “This is very surprising, very disappointing.”

So the psych has settled a lawsuit and is paying back some money. As reported here:

The state's lawsuit against a psychologist hired to evaluate the BTK serial killer at times took on the absurdities of reality television before it finally ended this week with money for the families of 10 people Dennis Rader killed.

Massachusetts psychologist Robert Mendoza, who faced claims that he broke contracts and breached professional ethics, settled the case for $30,000 and did not admit wrongdoing.

Mendoza received more than $50,000 from Rader's court-appointed public defenders to interview the killer in a holding cell at the Sedgwick County Courthouse within minutes of the guilty plea detailing his grisly murders.

The psychologist said in a court deposition that he hired former reality television star Omarosa Manigault Stallworth -- who gained fleeting fame on the first season of "The Apprentice" with Donald Trump -- to produce a "high-quality" video of Rader to "humanize" him at sentencing.

Instead, the tape ended up on the television show "Dateline NBC."
Attorney General Paul Morrison said Thursday the big win for the state came through a legal agreement preventing Mendoza or his associates from personally benefiting from their role in the Rader case. They may not use the case to publish academic or professional papers or use it in any other form of media, and they've agreed to return all materials they have that are related to Rader's case to the state of Kansas.

"I'm just glad it's behind me," Mendoza said in a telephone interview from his office in suburban Boston.

Mendoza reached a settlement after the state tried to add a negligence claim against him.

During his deposition, Mendoza claimed that he never had possession of the taped interview and that the video crew absconded with it. Mendoza also said he did not know the crew's identity. But he said Omarosa, who goes professionally by her first name, last had the tape before it ended up on national television.

Omarosa now makes personal appearances and runs a service advising beauty pageant contestants, according to her Web site. But back in the summer of 2005, Mendoza said, Omarosa hired the crew to tape the psychologist's interview with Rader in Wichita.

Mendoza said in the deposition that Rader was prone to violent emotional outbursts in jail. The video was meant to show him in a calmer light.

Omarosa, Mendoza said, assured him tape was "locked up."

"I understand it is confidential, and I will get it to you shortly," Mendoza remembered Omarosa saying in about 10 phone calls.

Two weeks before Rader's sentencing, the video turned up on "Dateline."

Omarosa was not deposed as a witness.

Pat Scalia, director of the State Board of Indigents' Defense Services, said Thursday the budget that pays for the defense of poor people has made up for the money it paid Mendoza. Scalia said she received from the Legislature all the funds she requested this year.

"It was agreed from the outset of this lawsuit that any money collected would go to the crime victims," Scalia said. "We did not want this office to be at cross purposes with the families of crime victims."

During the legislative wrap-up session, Morrison asked state lawmakers to add a proviso to the budget allowing the state to give the settlement money to the victims' families.

"It will not ease their pain, but will provide them with some financial assistance," Morrison said in a statement released by his office.

Rader, who called himself BTK for the way he would "bind, torture and kill," is serving 10 life sentences in the El Dorado Correctional Facility.

See a report on the TV special here