♪ ♪ welcome to "very scary people." i'm donnie wahlberg. the serial killer known as btk began terrorizing the city of wichita, kansas, in 1974, stalking and savagely killing his victims in their homes, then taunting police and reporters with disturbing letters detailing the carnage. demented, elusive, btk was actually hiding in plain sight, but his true identity and motive would remain a mystery for decades. it all began on an ordinary day with the otero family. this is part one of "btk: bind, torture, kill." ♪ ♪ ♪ rader: i came to the back door, cut the phone lines, waited at the back door -- had reservations about even going or just walking away, but pretty soon, the door opened and i was in. ♪ jordan: the otero family was a family of seven, headed by father joseph and his wife, julie. they had both been born in puerto rico, but they moved to new york as children and there, they met in high school. otero: my family was your typical military family. my father was an air force sergeant, and my mom was a stay-at-home mother, good catholic woman. -they had five children, ranging in age from 15 all the way down to 9. we were all into school. my father expected us to get good grades, and we stayed pretty athletic and into sports. hard workers, good parents, kids doing well in school -- really, not a care in the world. otero: we came to wichita, kansas, in the '70s because my father had retired overseas and was looking for work. he worked on jet engines, and that was the reason the otero family moved here in 1973, was the number of airplane factories we have in wichita. otero: my dad found a job at cook airfield. it was a small, family-owned airfield on the outskirts of wichita, and he was hired as a mechanic. hatteberg: wichita, kansas, was in the middle of america, and nobody locked their doors. it was a great little town to be from. ♪ january 15, 1974 started out different. i asked my dad to take me to school early that day so that i could get an extra study hall in. my brother and sisters, danny and carmen, they went with me. joe drops those three older kids at school, and he returns back home and joins his wife, julie, in getting the two younger kids ready for school. they're doing typical stuff -- making school lunches, gathering backpacks, getting ready for julie to drop those kids off, when the unthinkable happens. ♪ singular: he goes into the house. he draws his gun. one of the first things that he does is cut the telephone cord, and then he tells them that he just wants their car and some money and if he can tie them up and he can get the money in the car, he'll leave them alone. relph: the killer bound mr. otero and then neutralized him pretty quickly. singular: he tied up the parents, and then he tied up the kids, and then, when they were all in his control, he started to strangle the father. he strangled the mother. they were both in bedrooms. and then he strangled the boy, and then he took the young girl down into the basement. ♪ otero: i walked home by myself that day, ♪ and it was a very long, cold, windy walk, as is typical of wichita winters. i went into the back door through the kitchen, and i opened up the door, walked in the house, and i saw my mother's purse. it was thrown over. all the belongings were strewn about, which was totally out of character for my mother, and i yelled out, "is anybody home?" ♪ at that point, one of my siblings yelled out, "charlie, come quick! mom and dad are playing a bad trick on us." ♪ i saw my brother and my sister, daniel and carmen, with my parent's bodies, and my heart -- it just felt like somebody had ripped my chest wide open and pulled my heart out. we tried to use the phone, it didn't work, so i took carmen and danny outside. and we stayed out in the front yard, and danny went next door to use a phone, called the police. when the first police officer pulled up, he came out to us and asked what was going on. i said, "go inside the house. you'll see." he went inside, came back out, looked at me and said, "could your father have done this?" ♪ i was told my small business wouldn't qualify for an erc tax refund. you should get a second opinion from innovation refunds at no upfront cost. sometimes you need a second opinion. 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what is this?" there was just no reason to slaughter this family. otero: from what i understand, the police were wondering if my father's activities overseas had anything to do with their demise and what had happened to him, so there was a lot of questions about overseas contacts. hatteberg: as the days progressed, our police reporters were all over it, trying to get information. i remember the police chief checking on that somehow that this could be related to drugs, but it wasn't. so they abandoned that lead. singular: they put 75 officers on the case. they contacted other police departments. they interrogated 800 people in the first few weeks of it. they set up roadblocks and were stopping all kinds of people, and they came up empty on everything. ♪ jordan: the perpetrator begins to come down from the high of the otero family, and he needs the thrill to come back. he focuses on a particular young woman, 21-year-old kathryn bright. ♪ the best advice i ever got was to invest with vanguard for my retirement. the second best? 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because it doesn't bring any attention to him. ♪ singular: kathryn -- she's able to crawl out of her room, crawl into another room, bleeding profusely, get to the phone. she calls the operator, and the police come and they get her. jordan: an ambulance is dispatched to the address to gather up kathryn and take her to the hospital, but sadly, within hours, she dies at that hospital while kevin is trying to give a statement to the police describing the perpetrator. foulston: there was a picture that was drawn of the person -- mustache and a beanie kind of winter hat. ♪ hatteberg: when kathryn bright was murdered, no one had a clue that it was related to the oteros in any way. otis: the bright case had appeared to be more of an aggravated robbery, a home-invasion robbery where it was chaos. there was gunshots fired, there was stabbing. it really did not compare, crime-scene wise, to the oteros. jordan: so, other than the common denominator of a home invasion in the middle of the day, the police had no real reason to link this to the same person. morton: btk studied a lot about police techniques. he knew that the police, basically, were looking for a common m.o., a method of operation. he would wear disguises, so if witnesses saw him, he would look different. he would speak with an accent if he talked to anybody so there would be misinformation out there because he didn't want to get caught. ♪ otis: later in 1974, towards the fall, two brothers and a friend of theirs claimed knowledge of the otero homicides. eagle reporters found out about it and wrote a story about it. otis: and then, one day, a wichita eagle reporter took a phone call at his desk. the caller advised him that there was a letter at the wichita public library and named a library book that the letter would be in, told the reporter, "if you go get that letter and read it, i think you'll enjoy it." hatteberg: and in that letter was a description of the scene at the otero house that only the killer would know about. the public didn't know about them, but the police knew about it, and they knew, "oh, this guy's real. this is the guy who did it." ♪ this letter was sent by the killer to make it clear, "you don't have the right people." this killer didn't want anybody taking credit. jordan: he is beginning to toy with the police, basically mocking them. that's all part of his craving need for power at all times. mattingly: he had some very detailed words about what he wanted people to know about it. he said, "when this monster entered my brain, i will never know, but it is here to stay. maybe you can stop him. i can't. he has already chosen his next victim." when you read, "there's a monster inside of him," that's really not true, at least in my experience. what you see is you have somebody who has psychopathic traits there, total lack of empathy for victims. why? how do we know he he has lack of empathy for his victims? because he kills them. people like that -- they call them psychopaths. ♪ in that same letter, btk gave himself a name. btk: you'll know me by the way i bind them and i'll torture them and i'll kill them. the btk nomenclature -- "bind, torture, kill." and that's how he wanted to be known. jordan: he is telling you what to call him, which is simply a demonstration of his need for power and control. singular: once the wichita police department realize that they're communicating with the killer, they make the decision not to publicize it because they think maybe that will keep him from killing again. they all turn out to be wrong. morton: he had another potential target. that one wasn't home. he was feeling very frustrated, and then, up the street comes this little kid carrying a grocery bag. ♪ i'm currently out of the office [typing] focusing on a little blue-sky thinking. i'll be taking meetings with family and friends. and checking voicemail as my activities permit. i'll connect with you after reconnecting with me. ♪ get 1.9% apr for 36 months plus $1,500 purchase allowance on a 2023 xt5 and xt6 when you finance through cadillac financial. ♪ with the new straight talk multiline plan... ...more lines mean more savings. get unlimited data, talk and text for just $25 dollars a line ...all on nationwide 5g. plus, no hidden fees. no contracts. no compromises. that's the straight talk talki'' from straight talk. available at walmart and walmart.com. 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(fisher investments) yep. we do better when our clients do better. at fisher investments, we're clearly different. ♪ hit it ♪ ♪ it takes two to make a thing go right ♪ ♪ it takes two to make it outta sight ♪ ♪ one, two, get loose now ♪ ♪ it takes two to make a... ♪ stay two nights and get a $ 50 best western gift card. book now at bestwestern.com. ♪ welcome back to "very scary people." btk, "bind, torture, kill," was the name he gave himself after confessing to the otero family murders. btk threatened he would kill again, but as time passed and there were no new victims, police wondered if he had moved on to torment another city -- until march 1977. ♪ singular: almost three years after he committed the kathryn bright murder, he has gone out again for a kill. again, the m.o. is slightly different here. morton: he targeted a house where there was two females, and he wanted to see if he could kill two females at the same time. he went there. they weren't home. he had another potential target. that one wasn't home. he was feeling very frustrated. ♪ btk: so i just started going through the neighborhood. i'd been through back alleys, knew where some certain people live. while i was walking, i met a young boy. ♪ jordan: it's march 17, 1977, and shirley vian, a 26-year-old mom with three young children, is sick in bed with the flu. because she's so sick, all of the children have stayed at home that day. she sends her 5-year-old son, steven, down the street to the local grocery store to pick up some soup for her and the kids to eat. ♪ relph: on his return, he's walking back, and he's approached by a man who shows him a picture of a mother and a child, says, "do you know where these people live?" he says he's a private investigator working a case. he now watches this 5-year-old boy named steven walk up to his own home and enter the door. and he decides impulsively this is going to be his next target. ♪ morton: he watched him walk into the house. [ knock on door ] a minute later, he knocks on the door. ♪ ♪ [ gasps ] has a gun, forces his way in. now, this is completely spontaneous. i mean, anybody could've been inside that house. jordan: shirley vian's extremely confused. why is this man in her living room? the children seem confused and upset, as well, and she tries to cooperate... when he suddenly announces that he has a problem with sexual fantasies that she needs to help him with, that she can't get out of this, things are going to happen, they won't be pleasant, but she can survive if she cooperates. she actually helps him shepherd the children into the bathroom and lock the door... thinking, of course, that the children will be protected if they can't see or experience what's about to happen to her. ♪ morton: he then takes shirley vian into the bedroom to assault her. ♪ in the meantime, the kids are yelling, and the phone rings. [ telephone rings ] jordan: it interrupts the fantasy of btk -- the children screaming and crying, the phone ringing. the fantasy is not there. btk: the kids were really banging on the door, hollering and screaming, and then the telephone rang. so i cleaned everything up real quick-like and got out of there, left and went back into my car. ♪ jordan: the children actually manage to break the bathroom window and crawl out, running for help to the neighbors. relph: her neighbor comes over, and shirley is found. she has a bag over her head. she's got a ligature around her neck. there's attempts to save her, but she's gone. there will be a letter that arrives later on that specifically says the vian kids were very lucky. he had every intention of killing those kids, too. the phone call and breaking the window basically saved the little kids' lives. ♪ jordan: btk has now struck for the third time, and police who would be working these cases would be looking for patterns and similarities. once again, there was no real physical evidence. the child who witnessed the intruder come in gave a fairly vanilla description of a white man dressed in a suit. the victimology is completely different. the killer's behavior is completely different. other than strangulation in the first and the third, it just doesn't seem that the same person would be responsible for all three attacks. otis: however, the binding of the victim on her legs and her arms are what keyed the police department in to matching that one to the otero case. the knots were the same. the rope was kind of the same. so that one was lumped into the btk cases at that point. relph: we knew of m.o., but certainly, we hadn't come to appreciate what's called "signatures," things that a killer does just for themselves. certainly, some of the binding of some of his victims was just for him. it didn't further the completion of the crime. otis: i believed this guy had to be just as smart as us when it came to ways to catch him -- fingerprints and hairs and fibers -- because he was being very, very careful not to give us any. jordan: with this third attack, it wasn't well-planned. these were not his intended victims. shirley vian was outside of his normal, careful procedures. jordan: one of the more baffling aspects is that this is a man who had cased the home of two young women and had his sexual fantasy and his plan all worked out. when it went south, why didn't he just pack his briefcase and go back to work? it really doesn't make sense that he would impulsively and randomly pick on the home of a 5-year-old child. when we finally asked him about that, i said, "why did you veer so far from your very strict discipline?" and he said, "well, i was just all wound up that day." ♪ burgess: that happens, where they will plan something, it doesn't work out, but they're on a high and they have to find someone. and so that's where the impulsive aspect comes. it moves from a plan, and that fails, and then they're really angry, so the anger gets built up, and they just find a situation where they can strike. foulston: it was unpredictable, and that really was so disruptive to our community because nobody knew where, when, why, or who was gonna be next. ♪ hatteberg: when he made the phone call from a public pay phone, a firefighter came up right after him and was able to have a description of him. ♪ at pnc bank, you can find us in big cities and small towns across the us, where our focus is to always support the people who live and work there. because you call these communities home, and we do too. pnc bank. ♪ (upbeat music) ♪ ( ♪ ) constant contact's advanced automation lets you send the right message at the right time, every time. 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(soft music) ♪ should i be selling right now? ♪ let me take a look at the numbers for you. ♪ ♪ jordan: a serial killer is preying on wichita, kansas. in march of 1977, after a three-year hiatus, he returned to claim his sixth victim. by december, he's on the hunt again. ♪ btk had an elaborate system for finding his victims. trolling came first, then stalking, then naming a project. he would start with the process of trolling, which might just be riding around neighborhoods, looking for women. hatteberg: i asked him, i said, "so, how did you pick your victims?" and he said, "i would be driving down the street, and i would see a woman standing on her porch or i'd see a woman walking down the street." ♪ "and i'd point my finger at her, and i'd say, 'she's next.'" singular: so then he would start the process of stalking. stalking would involve an individual, and he would settle in on her. ♪ hatteberg: and then he would stalk these people for a period of time. he wanted to know all the information that he could get publicly about them. singular: he would then name his project -- again, a very organized process for him. ♪ when he gets to nancy fox, it will be called "project fox hunt." btk: at first, she was spotted, and then i did a little homework. i dropped by once to check the mailbox to see what her name was, found out where she worked. i stopped by there once, at helzberg, kind of sized her up. the more i knew about a person, the more i felt comfortable with it, so i did that a couple times. and then i just selected a night. ♪ jordan: nancy fox is a 25-year-old single woman. she has her own place, lives alone, and really is in control of her life. she has a full-time job at an architectural company, a part-time job at night. ♪ singular: before nancy has come home, he breaks in. he goes into her closet. ♪ she does come home. she's eating a hamburger. ♪ and he bolts out of the closet. when nancy finds this man standing in front of her, she actually tells him to get out of her house. relph: he thought she was spunky because she was like, "i'm gonna call the police." and he said, "that ain't gonna do you no good. the phone's already taken care of." jordan: she stands up to him. this really just feeds his fantasy because he is going to make sure she knows who's boss. he tells her that he's suffering from sexual problems and that she needs to help him with that and that if she cooperates, nothing bad will happen to her. singular: and this is the first time really that he is actually in control of the situation and he can actually act out what he had fantasized about doing. and she was like, "well, let's get this over with so i can go call the police." i think at the time, women were taught to submit to sexual assaults, rather than try to fight off an attacker, which it's different now. singular: so he ties her up. he does very elaborate knots, and he does the btk routine again. he tortures her through the strangulation process. he brings her up to the point of dying. ♪ then he whispered in her ear... "i'm btk." jordan: don't forget that "btk" stands for "bind, torture, and kill." he has her bound, he's in the process of killing her, but the torture is the whispering in her ear. "i'm btk. i killed the otero family. i am now killing you and strangling you." this is psychological torture. it would leave her dying in absolute terror. o'connor: he will describe that she put up a hell of a fight that actually turned him on even more. ♪ once she is dead, then he will masturbate at the crime scene. he will leave behind semen and dna. when btk killed nancy fox, he left her bound, strangled, and deceased on her bed, left the house. the next morning, he realized that nobody had found her body. he wanted the police to know that he had struck again. so btk went to a pay phone, called the operator, because in those days, there was no 911. he called the operator and asked to be transferred to the police. the police responded to that address and found her body on the bed. jordan: it wasn't that he wanted to get caught. he wanted the cat-and-mouse game to begin, and if he has to call in the murder himself and report it so that the police can be on the hunt for him, that he will do so that he can gain the upper hand, a feeling of superiority. "you don't even know i killed somebody, and you're not gonna catch me." when he made the phone call from a public pay phone, a firefighter came up right after him and was able to have a description of him, and the phone was just dangling there. so he was almost caught at that point. ♪ otis: when the crime-scene investigators found the dna stain on the female clothing on the bed, they collected it, bagged it properly, once again, sealed the bag. they knew that it was semen, but there was no dna testing at that time. and so they packaged it properly, sealed it up, and put it with the rest of the evidence of that case. singular: this is the second time that he's done this. he did it at the otero crime scene in '74. he's now doing it in '77. he doesn't really know or understand that genetic material can be preserved over decades. o'connor: nancy fox is the first one where he will take a driver's license, a memento, which is consistent with serial killers. the souvenir, taking a driver's license, was really about him reliving the moment. burgess: i work with criminal-personality research studies on serial killers. that's the way it keeps the fantasy alive, and a lot of times, that can work. he can look at the driver's license, and that reminds him of that and can be used as a sexual stimulus for him -- until that starts to wane and then he has to go and find another victim. morton: btk was interesting because he basically created his own pornography. he would draw pictures of women in bondage, tied up, looks of fear on their face. that's what he was trying to capture was that terror, that terror that excited him. hatteberg: so i called him at home and said, "you need to get in here now. i think we have a letter from a killer." ♪ only at vanguard, you're more than just an investor, you're an owner. our financial planning tools and advice can help you prepare for today's longer retirement. hi mom. that's the value of ownership. known as a passionate artist. known for 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masterpiece in taste. subway's now slicing their meats fresh. that's why subway's proffered by this champ. and this future champ. and if we proffer it, we know you'll proffer it too. he's cocky for a nineteen year old. it's almost two months since btk called in to the local police, self-reporting the homicide he committed on nancy fox, and there just doesn't seem to be any attention being paid to this murder. not only that, the police have never linked all three of them together. so on january 31, 1978, btk sends a cryptic little child's rhyme to the local paper, the wichita eagle. he creates a poem called "shirley locks" about the murder of shirley vian, based on the poem called "curly locks." ♪ it ended up in the classified department of the eagle. singular: he thinks that this is somehow going to draw attention. there's no report about it. there's no story about it. ♪ after 10 days, he finally sends a new letter to the local tv station. if the newspaper's not going to pay attention to him, maybe the tv station will. ♪ hatteberg: it was february 10, 1978, and i get a call from a receptionist. and her voice is quivering just a little bit. and she says, "i think i have something that maybe could be important." so i walked out front, and she's holding up this letter just by the edges. it turned out to be a letter from btk. jordan: there was a poem titled "oh! death to nancy." to the left of the poem was typed "btk" four times, and beside each, he added tiny hangman nooses. there was also a pencil drawing of a woman bound and gagged and a two-page letter with some of the words misspelled. btk wrote, "i find the newspaper not writing about the poem on vian unamusing. there's a psycho running loose, strangling mostly women. there are seven in the ground. who will be next? the writer, who claimed to be btk, admitted to the murders of the otero family, shirley vian, nancy fox. he admitted to and gave details of all of those homicides. relph: there was no confusion anymore that all these cases were connected. singular: kake realized they had a big story, but they took it to the police department. hatteberg: chief lamunyon looked at the letter, and he said basically that it was time to release the letter because we now had a serial killer. singular: lamunyon made the decision at that point to go on television and announce that there was a serial killer in wichita by the name of btk. this morning, kake-tv was contacted by the person who police say they believe murdered four members of the joseph otero family in january of 1974. so, that evening, the police chief of wichita appeared on our air at 6:00. we have an individual who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times. he is not a rational person during that frame of mind. as your letter indicates, he tries to fight off the demons in his head but is unable to do so, so there's just no question in the police's mind as to the fact that this individual is responsible for seven murders in our city. hatteberg: we didn't know we had a serial killer. we knew we had a bad guy. serial killer, we didn't know about. that was a terrifying and clarifying moment for the people of wichita. nobody expected a serial killer here. foulston: people were really concerned about having locks on their doors, about who might be calling them or them not having the telephone or just walking into the house and finding the telephone wires had been cut. btk was utterly the bogeyman to all of us. he was the bogeyman made real. jordan: btk is finally in his glory. it's been four years since the otero murder, and finally, he's on the news. this is important because he's launched the investigation, actually giving police the clues they need to try to catch him. and this is just going to make him feel like he is god. ♪ there was criticism in the community -- "why can't you catch this guy?" jordan: what's different about him and what's unusual is the randomness of the victims, which is why he was able to get away with it. he's perfecting his craft. he's trying to be very good at what he does. jordan: for a serial killer's power and control, they're very often not able to control their compulsions. the cooling-off period usually gets shorter and shorter and shorter. the thrill is gone. they have to get out there. they have to kill again. ♪ gagliano: these homicidal maniacs, they think they're smarter than the rest of us, and they think that they're going to pull off the perfect crime, and it doesn't exist. the arrogance was part of his downfall. hatteberg: we're not getting any communication from the police departments. something is happening. something is going on. woman: this guy? this is the killer? so i finally looked at him and said, "come on, just tell us who you are." and he said, "i'm btk." btk had killed seven people, including two children. he was taunting law enforcement with clues, but police were no closer to discovering his identity. although he left his dna at two murder scenes, dna testing and tracing did not yet exist, so the killing would go on -- until a stunning twist that would finally end the terror. that's in part two of "btk." i'm donnie wahlberg. thanks for watching. goodnight. ♪ rader: she was chosen. since she lived down the street from me, i could watch the coming and going quite easily. snuck into the house. she wasn't there. i went back to one of the bedrooms and hid. ♪ ♪