serial killers
Chapter 1 ● There were 5 of the Otero siblings: Charlie (15), Danny (14),
Carmen (13), Josie (11), Joey (9). ● The parents: Julie (Mom-34) and Joey (Dad-38). ● They had lived in Camden, NJ, Panama Canal Zone (for
seven years), and their native Puerto Rico for a few months with family.
● They just moved to Wichita, ten weeks before they were murdered.
● They moved to Wichita because it was a major airplane manufacturing center, which had opportunity for the father (Joe).
● Joe was a retired Tech Sgt. in the U.S. Air Force of 20 years. ● Joe worked on airplanes and taught flying at Cook Field a
few miles outside of Wichita. ● Boeing, Cessna, Beech, and Learjet all have factories in
Cook Field and is/was the air capital of the world. ● Julie (mom) had taken a job at Coleman (a camping
equipment factory). But got laid off a few weeks later due to downsizing.
● Even though Wichita was the kind of neighborhood where you didn’t lock your doors at night, the Otero’s brought a dog (Lucky) who didn’t like strangers.
● Joe (dad) had street smarts and was still wiry and strong, but still playful. He often mocked his own accent at work.
● He was a champion boxer in Spanish Harlem. ● Julie (mom) practiced Judo and taught it to the kids. ● The house was 6 rooms and an unfinished basement. ● Dennis Rader had seen Julie (mom) and Josie while driving
his wife to the VA. ● Rader stalked them for weeks after he initially saw them
and even took notes. ● He (Rader) stalked them enough to realize that Julie (mom)
took Joey and Josie to school and left around 8:45 and took 7 minutes to come home.
● He knew that Joe left for work around 8:00am. ● However, he didn’t want to confront the father so he timed
his arrival to around 8:20 am. ● He would kill Joey but he was only collateral and he only
wanted to get to Josie to kill her. ● He didn’t know that Joe had wrecked the other family car a
few days before and now the family was down one car. ● Joe had to take the family station wagon to get the older
kids (Charlie, Danny, Carmen) to school before 8 am. ● With his broken ribs from the car wreck, Joe wasn’t able to
work. ● Charlie was going to close the garage door, but Joe told
him not too because he was coming back out there to work.
● Dennis Rader: 28, dark hair, green eyes, liked porn, he liked to daydream, he nicknamed his penis “Sparky”. He fancied himself a secret agent, and/or assassin/shadow.
● SBT “Sparky Big Time” ● Rader selected this family because Hispanic women turned
him on. ● He fantasized about sex and trained himself how to kill, he
tied nooses and hanged dogs and cats in barns. ● Dennis Rader was in the Air Force. ● As a teen and in the military he peered through blinds to
watch women undress and broke into homes and stole panties.
● He stalked lone women that shopped in grocery stores. ● He planned to hide in the backseat of their cars and
kidnap them at gunpoint. He always chickened out until he saw the Otero’s.
● He pulled a knife severing the telephone line. ● He pulled his gun on Joey when he heard the back door
opening. He hustled Joey in the kitchen, and came face-to-face with Joe (which was a surprise to him).
● He towered seven inches over Joe and told them that it was a stickup.
Chapter 2 ● Carmen and Danny walked home from Robinson Junior
Highschool. ● They saw several odd things:
-The station wagon was gone. -The garage door was up. -The back door was locked. -Lucky was staring at them from the backyard. Which got their attention because their parents never left the dog out. ● Danny and Carmen went into the house, it was ransacked
with things thrown all over the house. ● They also found their parents' bodies, with their hands tied
behind their backs. Their bodies are stiff and cold. ● Charlie came home next, and decided to tease his mom for
being forgetful. ● When he went into the house he heard his siblings yelling
and that made him go into the kitchen for a knife. ● He went to a neighbor’s house and banged on the door. ● Officers Robert Bulla and Jim Lindeburg responded at 3:42
pm. Charlie ran to them and told them what they would find in the house.
● Julie (mom) was laid over the edge of the bed bare legs bent, her face was streaked with blood from her nose, the rope around her neck had been cut (Carmen had cut it with toenail clippers trying to revive her mother).
● Officers found both Josie and Joey dead and radioed that there were 4 homicide victims in the house.
● Josie was nearly naked, hanging by a rough hemp noose from a sewer pipe, her dark hair was draped across one cheek and her tongue was protruding past a gag.
● Rader used a variety of knots to tie wrists, ankles and throats and might have run out of cord because he used tape to bound the wrists.
● Joey died by his bunk bed in his room, and the officers found chair imprints in his room on the carpet.
● Rader had suffocated the boy and watched him choke. ● It looked like Rader had suffocated them, let them get air
and then finished them off. ● Rader masturbated on Josie’s leg. ● None of the neighbors could give an accurate description
of Rader to the police. ● Police found the station wagon in a grocery store parking
lot a half mile away. ● Police thought the driver was short due to the position of
the driver’s seat chair. ● Clove hitches, half hitches, slipknots, square knots,
overhand knots, and blood knots were all used on the Otero’s.
● Julie's autopsy showed: bruising on her face, she was beaten before she died.
● Joe’s showed deep indentations around his wrists (he tried to get out).
● There were ligature marks and broken capillaries on joey’s neck and face. He died of strangulation and suffocation.
● Josie weighed 115 pounds and died of a hangman’s noose with her hands tied behind her back. She was bound by her ankles and knees with a cord that snaked up to her waist. The killer had cut her bra in the front and pulled her panties down to her ankles.
● After a week the police ran out of energy and ideas so they hired a psychic to see if she could help but nothing came of it.
● Someone lost most of the crime scene and autopsy photos. But there was still enough to study.
● Josie and Joey were model students, Joe and Julie had taken out a $16,850 mortgage on their “junior ranch “ home.
● Killings indicated some kind of fetish. Chapter 3
● The Otero’s were buried in Puerto Rico. ● The surviving children left Wichita for good and moved
with family in Albuquerque. ● Charlie's future would include depression, anger, a rift with
his siblings, and prison time for domestic assault. ● Dennis Rader spent two hours with the Otero’s after the
murder then went to the grocery store in their vista crusier. ● Rader kept the hood of his parka up to hide his face and
adjusted the seat to disguise his height. ● He realized he left his knife at the Otero house and went
back for it. ● He went into woods he played in as a boy and burned
sketches he’d made of the otero murders during his planning.
● He also burned things he used to kill the family with. ● Wichita citizens began to lock their doors, get alarm
systems, shotguns and develop new routines. ● Rader had been married for almost 3 years, and attended
church with their parents and he helped with the youth group.
● Rader liked to study crime novels and detective magazines and liked to masturbate while playing with handcuffs.
● In their 960 square foot house Rader hid trophies, like Joe Otero’s watch which he wore to help him get to school on time at Wichita State University.
● Rader’s major was Administration of Justice, which let him get access to the police to study them. He enjoyed the irony.
● He began to write about what he did to the Otero’s and put it in a notebook so that he could go back and read it later. “B.T.K.-Blind, Torture, Kill”.
● He knew he did things that would eventually lead to him getting caught (letting himself be seen, going back for the knife etc.) so he decided that next time he’d do better.
● He enjoyed his time with Josie.
Chapter 4 ● He started inventing new abbreviations and names now.
BTK for who he was, trolling= hunting women, female targets=projects (pjs for short). He called Josie “Little Mex”
● After the murders he went trolling everyday after the high of the murders went away.
● He did this to multiple women and followed them to work and back home and kept track of each one, but he broke it off to those he deemed “not safe”.
● Spring of 1974 he settled on “project lights out” =Kathryne Bright.
● Kathy Bright= 21, university of kansas student, she left her family but then came back to work at coleman’s.
● She had 4 other siblings and they were all close. ● She had a church trio with her sister and her cousin. ● His plan still didn’t go right with Kathy, he knocked on the
door, no answer. He impulsively broke the back window to get in, and he panicked, cleaned the glass and hid in the closet.
● He accidentally fired his gun when he hid in the closet. ● Kathy came home with her brother and BTK panicked and
forced them at gunpoint to a bedroom. But he had nothing to bind them with.
● BTK forced Kevin (brother) to tie up his sister’s hands with bandannas, belts, nylons, and T-shirts.
● He wanted them to think that this was a robbery and they were going to be okay if they cooperated and gave him money.
● The killing fell apart when Rader went to turn up the stereo and Kevin broke from his bindings and he shot him in the head.
● BTK shot Kevin 2 times in the face/head before he died. ● Kevin fought a second time, and Kathy fought and got
stabbed 11 times. Chapter 5
● Kathy died 4 hours after getting to the hospital ● Kevin escaped. ● Kevin lived in Valley Center but stayed at his sister’s
because it had snowed the day before. ● The bullet hit his upper jaw and knocked out two teeth and
that’s why when he wanted to talk he spit up blood. ● Kevin put up a fight when Rader tried to kill him, even
though he weighed the same as Julie Otero (115 pounds 5’6) .
● Kevin gave the police a description of Rader and identified the colors that he was wearing was that of Witchita State colors.
● Even though Kevin tried his best to give the police answers he couldn’t keep the story straight and gave conflicting answers, whcuh created doubt in the police officers working the case.
● There was a difference between the Otero murder and Kevin and Kathy’s attack/muder: the Otero’s were strangled and suffocated, the Brights were strangled, shot, and stabbed.
● The police thought there was a connection with the LAtin American drug cartels in the Otero case.
● There was a big connection: Julie Otero and Kathryn Bright work at the same Coleman store.
● Rader ran several blocks in his blood stained shoes to his car and went to his parents house, who lived near him.
● He hid his weapons in a toolbox in a shed and stripped off his clothes and shoes putting them in a chicken coop (planning to burn them later).
● He went home to his wife like usual. ● Rader believed that he would get caught with this murder
(he was sloppy with this one). But as time went by he knew the cops didn’t figure it was him.
● He wrote a seven page single spaced document called “An April Death”
● He believed he was too smart to get caught so he decided to flunt himself to the newspaper.