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Due to the nature of this case, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of sexual assault and murder. Consider this when deciding how and when you'll listen. He caused me to challenge my faith, changed my future forever, and separated me from the rest of my loved ones for over 30 years. Yet I have never allowed his actions to send me to the dark side.
That's Charlie Otero at Dennis Rader's sentencing in August 2005. On January 15th, 1974, exactly 50 years ago from this episode's air date, Rader committed his first known murders. The victims were Charlie's mother, father, and two of his four siblings.
Including the Oteros, Rader murdered 10 people in Wichita, Kansas over nearly 20 years from 1974 to 1991. He gave himself the nickname BTK because he bound, tortured, and killed his victims. Rader longed for media attention. He spent three decades sending mocking letters to the press while maintaining a double life as a family man, Boy Scout leader,
an active member of his church. But Rader's thirst for media attention proved to be his downfall. In 2004, he began sending cryptic clues and evidence of his murders to local media outlets in Wichita. And it was Rader's own letters that allowed police to finally find him and put him behind bars.
I'm Vanessa Richardson, and this is Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. You can find us here every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts.
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Hi there, Carter Roy here. If you're interested in true crime, especially unsolved murders, serial killers, and cold cases, you'll love my brand new show, Murder True Crime Stories. Each episode covers a notorious murder or murders with a special focus on those who were impacted the most. We'll always leave with the knowledge of why these stories need to be heard. You can listen to Murder True Crime Stories wherever you get your podcasts.
Hello there, I'm Mike Flanagan, and welcome to Spectre Vision Radio's production of Director's Commentary. Director's Commentary is a deep dive into a film through the eyes of the filmmaker or filmmakers who made it. It combines an in-depth interview format with a classic Director's Commentary track, the likes of which used to be common on physical media releases, but sadly are becoming more and more rare these days. Filmmakers talking about film with filmmakers. For people who love film.
and filmmakers. Before we get into this story, amongst the many sources we used, we found Catherine Ramsland's book, Confession of a Serial Killer, as well as Roy Wenzel, Tim Potter, Elle Kelly, and Hearst Laviana's book, Bind, Torture, Kill, extremely helpful to our research.
By January 1974, 15-year-old Charlie Otero had started to find his groove. He and his family of seven had been living in Wichita, Kansas for just 10 weeks, and Charlie was already getting straight A's and making friends. After serving in the Air Force for two decades, Charlie's father, Joseph, took a job at a local airfield. His mother, Julie, was out of work. She'd recently been laid off from her factory job.
The Oteros took precautions to keep the family safe. They adopted a dog named Lucky, who was very protective of the family, and the kids took judo classes. But on January 15th, 1974, they had no idea they were being stalked by a budding serial killer determined to get past their defenses.
That brisk morning, the Oteros experienced a small interruption in their normal routine. The family usually had two cars at their disposal, but Joseph had recently gotten into an accident, so his car was in the shop. He took his three oldest children to school in his wife's station wagon.
Normally, Joseph would head straight to work after dropping off his children, but the accident had left him with several cracked ribs, so he planned to spend the day resting at home. The idea was for Julie to take the station wagon and drop the two youngest kids off at school, but she never got the chance.
After the dismissal bell rang, Charlie Otero walked back to his family home. It had been a long day at school, but a successful one. He'd gotten a perfect score on his biology exam. Charlie arrived at the family's white bungalow at around 3.30 in the afternoon. He noticed the garage door was open and his mother's station wagon was missing. Stranger still, Lucky was outside alone.
Charlie walked into a normally tidy kitchen in disarray. His mother's purse had been tossed to the ground, its contents spilling out onto the tile. Credit cards from Joseph's wallet were strewn across the stovetop. As Charlie assessed the scene, he heard his brother and sister shout, "'Come quick! Mom and Dad are playing a bad trick on us!'
But when Charlie followed the voices and crossed the threshold of his parents' bedroom, he could see it wasn't a trick at all.
Joseph was lying on the floor, his hands and ankles bound with white cord. A belt was fastened tightly around his neck. Julie was positioned on the bed, her face bloody, her neck and ankles bound. Charlie tried to dial 911, but the line was dead, so he sent his little brother to a neighbor's home to call the police.
Once they were safely removed from the scene, a chaplain sat down with the three surviving siblings and told them their younger brother and sister had also been killed in the house. Charlie later told ABC News, "I thank God every day that I didn't find Joey and Josie, because I don't know how I would have handled it."
The crime scene was unlike anything the officers from the Wichita Police Department had ever seen, but they worked quickly to try and find the killer. Autopsies showed all four family members had been bound and strangled sometime between 8:15 and 9:00 in the morning.
The phone lines had been cut. Semen was present at the scene. The killer had used so many different kinds of knots to restrain the Oteros, the police needed to use an instruction manual to identify all of them. The only items missing from the crime scene were Joseph's watch, a set of car keys, and Joey's radio.
Some witnesses claimed they noticed a man around 6 feet tall with dark hair and an overcoat lingering outside the Otero home around 8 in the morning of the murders. Others saw the Oteros' station wagon being driven away at around 10:30.
The car was found later that night at a grocery store half a mile away from the Otero home. There were fingerprints on the vehicle's door, but there was not a match in the system. Detectives spent days combing through the evidence. They released composite drawings of their suspect and received tips from local citizens. But by January 23rd, officials announced they'd exhausted all significant leads.
Less than 10 miles away, as police combed through the evidence at the Otero home, Dennis Rader wrote down a detailed description of the Otero family murders, filed it in a hidden binder, and welcomed his wife home from work.
Dennis Rader grew up in Wichita, Kansas. From an early age, he showed a sexual predilection toward bondage. He enjoyed watching his parents and grandparents tie up the chickens in the coop for the slaughter. As a Boy Scout, he studied knots. He cut images of models out of advertisements and drew rope around their bodies so it looked like they were bound. He fantasized about murder.
But when Rader met Paula Dietz, a member of his church, he found his desire to kill temporarily fade. The pair dated for a few months before Rader proposed in January 1971, and they got married in May. They had a beautiful home with a nice backyard in Park City, Kansas. Rader got a job at the Cessna Aircraft Company in early 1973.
Around this time, Rader and Paula contemplated having kids, but just nine months after securing the job, Rader was laid off and no longer had work to keep him occupied. As Paula worked to support the two of them, Rader spent all of his time absorbed in twisted fantasies. But eventually, the fantasies alone weren't enough for Rader. He later recalled to forensic psychologist and author Catherine Ramsland,
In late 1973, Rader began building hit kits to keep in his car. They contained tools he thought might be useful to commit murder. He'd never killed before, but he was ready if the opportunity arose.
In the winter of 1973, he decided to look for a victim. Rader targeted a bank teller in the Twin Lakes neighborhood of Wichita. He stalked her, memorized her comings and goings, and prepared a hit kit. Once he learned her routine, he planned his strike. During her lunch break one day, the teller parked her car near the bank. Wearing a ski mask, Rader jumped in and attacked her.
But when the woman screamed and fought back, Rader decided it wasn't worth the struggle and fled. It was broad daylight. It wasn't long before Rader was back on the hunt for a new victim. The same week he'd failed to kidnap the bank teller, he identified Julie Otero as his next target.
Rader spent days memorizing Julie and her family's patterns. He prepared another hit kit. Soon enough, four members of the Otero family were dead, and Rader was just getting started.
After killing the Oteros in January of 1974, Rader started hunting women for his next kill. And as he silently stalked the women of Wichita, he kept up appearances as a doting husband and diligent student at Wichita State University. In fact, Rader found his next victim, Catherine Bright, while he was taking his wife Paula out for lunch in the early spring of 1974.
That April, the Wichita Police Department responded to a call in the north central region of the city and found Catherine Bright collapsed on the floor. Her wrists and ankles were bound with nylon stockings and she had a cord tied around her neck. She'd been repeatedly stabbed, but she was still alive when medics arrived at the scene. Catherine was rushed to the hospital but didn't make it through surgery.
Catherine's 19-year-old brother, Kevin, told police he and his sister encountered an intruder shortly after walking into Catherine's home. The man, who they said had dark hair and a mustache, claimed to be a wanted fugitive looking for money. The man kept Catherine and Kevin at gunpoint and ordered them into Catherine's bedroom. He forced Kevin to tie his sister's hands so she wouldn't fight back.
Then, he bound Kevin to the bedpost and dragged Katherine into a separate bedroom before returning to Kevin. Rader turned on the radio and blasted music so Katherine wouldn't hear him killing her brother in the next room. But as he wrapped a cord around Kevin's throat, the young man ripped free of his bindings.
Kevin fought for his life, but Rader whipped out his gun and fired at the teenager's head. Kevin collapsed to the ground.
Catherine heard the gunshot from the next room and screamed for her brother. She assumed he must have been dead. But incredibly, Kevin was still alive. He was only playing dead. The next opportunity he had, he lunged at the intruder and fought for control of the gun. Amidst the chaos, the man overpowered Kevin and fired the gun.
The bullet hit Kevin in the face, but even with two gunshot wounds, Kevin managed to escape, run out the front door, and call 911.
Detectives from the Wichita Police Department considered the possibility that the Bright and Otero murders may have been perpetrated by the same killer. The murders occurred within a two-mile radius, and Catherine, Kevin, and Julie all worked for the same company. But the authorities changed their minds after detailing the differences. The Oteros were strangled, while Kevin and Catherine were shot and stabbed.
The Oteros' phone lines were cut, but Catherine's was still intact.
Rader was thrilled when he realized that the police had no idea who he was, and soon enough, three men were taken in for questioning in the Otero family murders. It looked like Rader might never be held responsible. But rather than celebrate the bizarre misdirect, Rader became enraged that he wasn't getting the fame and credit for the murders.
So in October 1974, Rader directed police to a taunting letter he'd left in a library book. It contained shocking details about the Otero murders that only the killer could know. Rader ended the letter with his code name and modus operandi. Bind them, torture them, kill them. B.T.K.
Rader continued to live his double life. He attended college classes at night in the fall of 1974 and became a youth leader at his church. During the day, he started working for a home security systems company, which he found amusing. He installed security systems in the homes of people afraid of the BTK killer.
All the while, he kept playing the role of loving husband. In July 1975, Rader and his wife Paula welcomed a son. Paula stayed home with the new baby while Rader worked. Nearly two and a half years passed without another letter from BTK or another murder. The people of Wichita started to breathe a little easier.
until spring 1977, when BTK struck again. On March 17th, Officer Raymond Fletcher responded to a report of a homicide in a South Central Wichita neighborhood. He'd been one of the responding officers to the Catherine Bright murder.
When he pulled into the neighborhood, James Burnett flagged him down and told Officer Fletcher he'd called in the homicide. Two young neighbor boys had come running to his house screaming. The boys, we'll call them Adam and Sam, told James a man with a gun had been in their house and their mother was tied up on her bed.
James' wife Sharon went to check on the home and found Adam and Sam's little sister crying. Sharon discovered her neighbor, Shirley Vian, dead in her bedroom. She was bound with black tape and had a plastic bag over her head.
Adam told detectives that a man with a suitcase knocked on the door of their home. When Adam answered, the man shoved all three children in a bathroom. They wept and pounded their fists uselessly against the door as the man strangled their mother.
The high from killing Shirley Vianne didn't last long, and Rader spent the rest of 1977 looking for his next victim. He often scoped out women during the day while installing security systems. In December 1977, Rader spotted his next target, 25-year-old Nancy Fox,
He was pleased to learn that Nancy lived alone in southeast Wichita. That meant there would hopefully be no kids, siblings, or husbands to contend with. On December 8th, he warned his wife he would be studying late at the library. He spent a couple hours there working on a paper for one of his college classes, but around 9 p.m., he left the library and drove to Nancy's duplex with his hit kit.
He knocked on Nancy's door to make sure she wasn't home, then went out back and cut the phone line. He smashed open a window and scrambled into the apartment, where he waited for her to return from her evening shift at Helzberg Jewelers. He'd memorized her entire schedule and knew precisely what time she would arrive home.
Rader drank a glass of water, then put Nancy's phone to his ear to double check that it was dead. Right then, Nancy walked into her apartment.
Rader told Nancy that he just wanted to have sex with her and then let her go. Nancy then asked to use the bathroom first. When Nancy came out of the bathroom, Rader handcuffed her and forced her to lie face down on the bed, then strangled her with a belt until she was unconscious.
But Rader didn't leave the room. He waited until Nancy stirred again, then leaned close to her ear and whispered that he was BTK. Nancy fought desperately, but she couldn't overpower her attacker. Rader strangled her to death. He masturbated at the scene and left semen on her blue nightgown. He then cleaned up and stole some of Nancy's belongings as trophies.
Rader was proud of this murder. Everything had gone according to plan. So proud that he couldn't wait for someone to discover the crime scene. So the next day, he called the police on himself.
On December 9th, 1977, Dennis Rader dialed 911 from a payphone. He told the dispatcher where to find Nancy Fox's body. The dispatcher tried to ask follow-up questions, but Rader walked away and left the receiver hanging off its hook.
By chance, a firefighter entered the phone booth just as Rader was leaving. He later tried to describe Rader to the police, but said he didn't get a good look. He estimated that Rader was maybe six feet tall and had blonde hair. It wasn't enough for detectives to go on, so the case went cold. Which made Rader infallible and cocky enough to take more chances.
He sent a poem he had written about Shirley Vian to the local paper, the Wichita Eagle, on January 31st, 1978. But he was disappointed when they didn't publish the poem. There was no mention of BTK.
So, Rader sent a second poem about Nancy's death to local television station KAKE 11 days later. Rader had slightly rewritten the folk song O Death to reference Nancy's murder and titled it O Death to Nancy. Along with the revised song lyrics, he sent a drawing of Nancy signed with his initials, B-T-K.
Rader was frustrated the police didn't seem to realize they were dealing with a serial killer, so he decided to connect the dots for them. He laid out the similarities between his seven victims in his typo-filled letter to KAKE. We've edited some of those typos for clarity. He wrote...
They were very lucky. Phone call saved them.
Rader later admitted to Catherine Ramsland that he got a thrill out of playing cat and mouse games with the police. The risk, and the subsequent media attention he received, was intoxicating.
But Rader still had a life and an image to maintain. He soon became preoccupied. His daughter Carrie was born on June 13th, 1978. His growing family now took up most of his time. As a result, Wichita didn't hear from the BTK killer for nearly seven years.
By April 1985, Dennis Rader was 40 years old and not as spry as he used to be. He picked an easy target that didn't require much stalking or detective work. His 53-year-old neighbor, Maureen Hedge.
Rader's nine-year-old son had been in the Boy Scouts for two years, and Rader had become a scout leader. On April 26th, his troop was going on a camping trip where Rader knew he'd have the opportunity to murder again.
He spent the evening of April 26th at the campgrounds with the other Boy Scout fathers. Then he told them he was tired and going to bed. With no one watching, he snuck away and drove to a local bowling alley. From there, he hired a taxi to drive him a block away from Maureen's home. When he finally arrived, he cut her phone line, broke in, and waited.
But when Maureen finally returned home, she wasn't alone. She had a male friend with her, so Rader scurried to a closet to hide. After an hour, the friend left and Maureen went to bed. She had no idea Rader was hiding just a few feet away.
Maureen woke up to her neighbor choking her. After Rader strangled Maureen to death, he tied her up to engage in his sexual fantasies. Rader disposed of Maureen's body in a ditch, abandoned her car, and drove his own back to the Boy Scout camp before anyone noticed he was missing.
With the police still at a loss, Rader's next victim came a year later in September 1986. On September 16th, he knocked on 28-year-old Vicki Wegerle's door, posing as a telephone repairman. When she let him inside, Rader pulled his gun on her and forced her into the bedroom. He strangled her, but Vicki fought back, scratching Rader's face and permanently scarring him.
Nevertheless, he managed to kill her. He took three photos of Vicky's body as trophies and grabbed her driver's license before leaving. Sadly, the police didn't realize that Vicky was killed by BTK, and for decades they suspected that her husband, Bill, had murdered her.
After killing Vicki in 1986, Rader struggled to keep his murderous compulsions under control. But police were starting to make use of DNA evidence by the late 1980s, and Rader knew he needed to be careful. But he could only tamp down his desire to kill for so long.
On January 18th, 1991, Rader committed his final murder. Once again, he used one of his son's Boy Scout camping trips as a cover. He snuck away from the camp and drove to the house of 62-year-old Dolores Davis, a beloved mother and grandmother. He broke in and strangled her with a pair of pantyhose.
Rader dumped Dolores' body under a bridge, where a young boy discovered her weeks later. The police had no leads and still didn't definitively connect the case to the ongoing BTK murders. Dolores Davis was Rader's tenth victim, but authorities believed BTK hadn't killed anyone since Nancy Fox in 1977.
Around 1994 or 95, Rader began stalking women again, contemplating potential victims. But familial obligations soon inhibited him from murder. His father died in 1996, so Rader became his mother's primary caretaker. Rader even started shedding the remains of his double life.
As DNA evidence led to the capture of other serial killers like Gary Ridgway in 2001, Rader tossed out some of the evidence he'd been holding for decades. All was quiet for nearly ten years. He may have completely gotten away with his crimes, but a bruised ego soon renewed his interest in cat-and-mouse games.
In January 2004, reporter Hurst Laviana published an article about BTK in the Wichita Eagle on the 30-year anniversary of the Otero family murders. He described BTK as a killer that few in Wichita even remembered.
Dennis Rader wasn't going to let that stand. So he sent a package to the Wichita Eagle on March 19, 2004, under the pseudonym Bill Thomas Killman, a name whose initials spell out BTK. Inside the package was Vicki Wegerle's driver's license.
Over the course of 2004, Rader sent several more packages to the media, reveling in the renewed attention BTK now received from reporters. He even contemplated upping the ante by murdering an eleventh victim in October of 2004. But he backed out at the last minute after he noticed a construction crew working outside her home.
In February of 2005, Rader found his games with police to be a lot of work, and he was sick of photocopying notes. He figured he could simplify things by sending his taunting messages on a floppy disk. Rader left police a message in a trash bin near a Home Depot in Wichita. The note asked, "'Can I communicate with floppy and not be traced to a computer?' Be honest."
Per Rader's request, the police then left a coded message in the local paper that indicated a floppy disk would be untraceable. Rader naively assumed the police wouldn't lie. On February 16, 2005, he sent a floppy disk to KSAS-TV, who turned it over to officials.
Thanks to that floppy disk, police were able to find Dennis' name, the computer he used, and the church where he was just elected president. They then learned his daughter's DNA was on file at Kansas State University, where she'd undergone a medical exam. They subpoenaed the DNA and used that to connect him to the killings.
In June 2005, Rader pleaded guilty to all 10 murders. He was sentenced to 10 life sentences, or 175 years in a maximum security prison. And that's where he sits today.
In 2023, authorities began investigating a possible connection between Rader and two unsolved cases. Detectives have re-interviewed Rader and searched his former Park City home, but as of this recording, he's not been conclusively tied to the murders.
After the 1974 murder of his parents and two siblings, Charlie Otero's life completely changed. He and his surviving siblings were sent to live with relatives in New Mexico. He'd once been a straight-A student destined for a top college, but his grades started to slip and he isolated himself from his family.
Charlie graduated from a technical school but had trouble holding down a job. He struggled with survivor's guilt and experienced PTSD. He used drugs to temper his intrusive thoughts. In 2005, Charlie received a call that again changed his life. The person who killed his family had been arrested and his name was Dennis Rader.
Charlie attended the trial, intent on getting his hands on Rader to exact his revenge. But when his son fell into a coma after an accident, his need for vengeance waned, and he focused on his son, who eventually made a full recovery.
Charlie had the opportunity to deliver a victim impact statement at Rader's sentencing hearing. Facing toward the man who killed his family, Charlie read, Despite Dennis Rader's efforts to destroy my family, we survived, stronger and closer now more than ever. As far as I'm concerned, when it is all done, Dennis Rader has failed in his effort to kill the Oteros.
Thanks for listening to Serial Killers, a Spotify podcast. We're here with a new episode every Monday. Be sure to check us out on Instagram at Serial Killers Podcast. And we'd love to hear from you. So if you're listening on the Spotify app, swipe up and give us your thoughts. Remember not to judge a book by its cover and stay safe out there.
Serial Killers is a Spotify podcast. We release a new episode every Monday. This episode was written by Jeanette Manning and Chelsea Wood, edited by Chelsea Wood and Connor Sampson, researched by Jeanette Manning, fact-checked by Laurie Siegel, and sound designed by Alex Button. Our head of programming is Julian Boirot. Our head of production is Nick Johnson,
and Spencer Howard is our post-production supervisor. This episode was hosted by me, Vanessa Richardson.