i had them controlled completely. then went into the other room and i thought, do i just leave or what? they already know my face. so i went back and put a plastic bag over mr. otero s head, put a gauntlet over his neck and pulled up on it and that s when the rope hit the fan. because they could all see what i was doing. rader describes first strangling the mother and father, while their 9-year-old son and 11-year-old daughter watched. although he is describing acts of unspeakable cruelty, his voice is utterly devoid of emotion, which makes listening to it that much harder. the kids were watching it? yes, they were watching it and screaming and hollering. did you want to move them from the scene involved? no. no. i had to get control. it was really noisy. they were screaming. the noise was bothering you. yeah, the noise was bothering me. i thought the mailman would be out there or somebody would be walking by so i had to control it very quickly. he said he found the n
then married a girl from home in 1971. a couple of years later, rader could no longer keep those fantasies locked only in his mind. his obsession with sex and bondage evolved into deviant violent acts carried out on real people, and ultimately led to murder. i got this fantasy, i started working out this fantasy in my mind. once it became a fantasy, i could loop it over, lay in bed at night, thinking about the person, the events and how it s going to happen. it became like a picture show. i want to go ahead and produce it and direct it and go through with it, no matter what the costs were and the consequences. it was going to happen. one way or another. maybe not that day but it was going to happen. no one knows for sure why rader had to kill to fulfill those fantasies. but in this interview with the psychologist, rader says that he picked his first victims, members of the otero family,
i thought that s a possibility. rader s plan was to lie in wait and overtake kathy when she came home. but the plan went awry when she unexpectedly showed up with her brother kevin. rader said in court he was able to get brother and sister tied up, but the knots that bound kevin were not holding. were you armed with a handgun? yes. i had a handgun. i actually had two handguns. well, i started strangling, either the wrap broke or he broke his bonds and broke up and i pulled my gun and shot him, hit him in the head, he fell over. i could see the blood. rader said he thought kevin was dead and turned to strangle kathy when he heard kevin move. the two men struggled again and rader shot him for a second time in the head. he then continued trying to strangle kathy, but was unsuccessful, and so stabbed her multiple times in the chest. meanwhile much to rader s surprise, kevin had somehow managed to escape though his
but where would i have ran if they were after me? i just took a calculated guess that that was something else and hoped for it. then at midday, the killer went home for lunch. drove home, and as soon as i started to turn down the frontage road, i saw this whole line of police cars, and thought oh, that s not good. and it s just they were right on me that quick. i thought maybe it was a traffic stop or something. but once one of them was behind me with the red lights and sirens, i knew that was it. with that, dennis lynn rader, the man police believed to be btk, was finally in custody, after 31 years. they arrested me. i got out of the car. they pulled guns on me, told me to lay down. and i sprawled out, and grabbed real quick like with handcuffs and stuck me in a car. mr. rader, do you know why you re going downtown? i said, i have suspicions why. at first, i was hoping that it was kind of a cat-and-mouse game, that they had a suspect.
knife, gun, all those would be a kit where i could have them in the house and gather them up. tools that would come to define the work of btk. victims were often discovered bound with tape tied in unusual knots. control was a big thing with me. my sexual fantasy is if i m going to kill a victim or do something to a victim is have them bound and tied. now, similar along the line, in my dreams i could have what they call torture chambers and to relieve your sexual fantasies, you have to go to the kill. three months after the otero murders, in april of 1974, rader s next victim was kathy bright, a 21-year-old college student. once again, he selected her randomly while driving down her street as he told the court in june. i saw her go into the house, with somebody else.