they pulled the bags off their faces. they went to the phone to call for help. the phone line was dead. upon returning from school, the oteros teenage children discovered their parents bodies. the police are the ones who find the mutilated body of 9-year-old joseph jr. little joseph was found in a bedroom, fully clothed, but he was bound extremely tight with his hands behind his back. was lying on his stomach. and he had bags over his head. he d been strangled around his throat. and there was semen found in his room. the otero s 11-year-old daughter josephine is found in the basement. the officer literally bumped into josie otero who was hanging just immediately inside the door. so he walked in, it was dark, with a flashlight, he wasn t touching anything, and he bumped into her. little josephine had been bound with her hands behind her back and her ankles were bound.
we didn t worry about where we went out at night. it was just a very innocent time. no real fears. things that happened in new york, things that happened in l.a. did not happen in wichita, kansas. we basically thought we were insulated from everything else. well, that all changed when the oteros were murdered. we lost our innocence in 1974, and we ve never gained it back. on the cold winter morning of january 15th, a murder shocked the community of wichita. well, the oteros parents were found in the bedroom fully clothed. they were strangled. they were lying face down. 38-year-old mechanic and former air force master sergeant joseph otero and his wife are savagely killed. joseph was on the floor. the mother was on the bed. they had both been strangled. they had bags over their heads. and they were bound with their hands behind them, and their feet were bound.
calm he made up a story about why he was there. mr. otero actually stepped up and told them i was coming for some food, i was wanted in california, i needed some food and water and some money and transportation. that was my ruse to kind of calm them down. he kind of laughed a little bit. is this a joke? who sent you? my brother-in-law? rader says the family bought his lie about being on the run from the law and not wanting to hurt them. and so at gunpoint, they acquiesced to his tying up all four of them, mother and father, and younger son and daughter, without a struggle. they were cooperating with me 100%. that probably was their demise. if they struggled, it probably would have been a different story. they felt fairly comfortable that is what i was going to do. as rader tells the story, like he does so often, he paints his own conduct in the best possible light. he says he took pains to make his victims feel even more
psychologist, rader says that he picked his first victims, members of the otero family, utterly at random in late 1973. he recently had been laid off from a job and says he was feeling down and out at the time. had begun trolling, as he put it, in certain neighborhoods. including along edgemore drive where the oteros lived. that neighborhood, i guess became a what i call a haunt. as i call it. i had special appeal to it. i had been there, knew the roads, the people. i drive by, watch cars. people pull out of their homes. people go. wrote telephone numbers down, wrote addresses down. this is how i started. right here. my haunts. that area, the edgemore area, that was my first big haunt. julie otero, her husband and their five children lived on edgemore then. it was just mrs. otero s terrible misfortune that she happened to catch dennis rader s eye when he was driving down her street.
first letters. i was surprised i put it out there. i think it was just, bind, torture, kill, and then i had a label on me. like the green river killer, son of sam, a whole slew of others. the boston strangler. the police now knew the murders of the otero family and kathy bright were linked. but they had a serial killer in their midst. for tactical reasons, it would be several years before they disclosed the information to the public. still, they wanted to communicate with the mysterious strangler. police quietly placed a classified ad in the big hometown daily, btk, help is available. there was no response. and rader did not kill again for three years. it wasn t something i could do all the time. whenever it was convenient. it would have been easier, probably, if you were like a spy or somewhere where you could go sit there and watch. but i didn t have that. i had to work under camouflage. then in march 1977, rader