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Speaker 3: I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was
Speaker 3: walking home. The snow is knee deep and the wind
Speaker 3: was blowing pretty hard, and I walked into the backyard.
Speaker 4: We had a wood fence with a gate, so I
Speaker 4: went through the yard and.
Speaker 3: My dog, Lucky, he was outside in the snow and
Speaker 3: he was never outside.
Speaker 4: I'm like, what are you doing out here?
Speaker 5: Boy?
Speaker 3: He looked at me and wagged his tail, and I
Speaker 3: opened up a kitchen door and went into the back.
Speaker 4: When I walked to the house, I looked at the stove.
Speaker 4: It had my mom's purse on it. All the stuff
Speaker 4: was stowed out.
Speaker 3: That's not how my mom kept the house. She was
Speaker 3: very adamant about keeping our house super clean. I yelled out,
Speaker 3: anybody home, and I heard a voice yelled, Charlie, come quick,
Speaker 3: Mom and Dad are playing a bad trick on us.
Speaker 3: I ran down the hall and I could just sense
Speaker 3: something was wrong already.
Speaker 4: I could just feel it.
Speaker 3: And I opened up the door and saw my mom
Speaker 3: and my dad, and I saw my mom on the bed,
Speaker 3: and my heart broke. It felt like somebody had actually
Speaker 3: ripped my chest open and pulled my heart out. It
Speaker 3: was a physical pain. I tried to undo the ropes
Speaker 3: that were on him. My dad's tongue was half bit
Speaker 3: off hanging. The ropes were so tight there was no
Speaker 3: way to untie them.
Speaker 4: To this day, I can smell fear and death.
Speaker 3: I can smell fear on a person because when you
Speaker 3: walked in the house, you could smell it.
Speaker 4: You could smell the death in the house.
Speaker 6: My name is Susan Peters. I'm a journalist and former
Speaker 6: news anchor for Kake TV also known as Cake TV,
Speaker 6: in Wichita, Kansas. I started out as a reporter in
Speaker 6: Illinois and then anchored the news in San Diego. When
Speaker 6: I moved to Kansas in nineteen eighty three, people would
Speaker 6: ask me if I knew about the serial killer BTK.
Speaker 6: At the time, I didn't know much, but my coworkers
Speaker 6: told me about the seven people he killed in the
Speaker 6: nineteen seventies. His first victims were the Otero family.
Speaker 3: We moved to Puerto Rico to stay with my grandparents
Speaker 3: while my dad looked for his future. He just spent
Speaker 3: twenty years of his life in the Air Force since
Speaker 3: he was seventeen, and he was searching for the best opportunity.
Speaker 3: My name is Charlie O'tero. I am a surviving son
Speaker 3: of Joseph and Julia O'tero. One day he got ahold
Speaker 3: of us and said, you're coming to Wichita. You'd found
Speaker 3: the job here at a small airfield, Cook Airfield, And
Speaker 3: we hopped on a plane and flew to Wichita. And
Speaker 3: I left the beautiful tropical island of Puerto Rico and
Speaker 3: landed in the wheatfields of Kansas and mill of snowstorm.
Speaker 4: And we were just getting used to the neighborhood. It
Speaker 4: was totally different from what I was used to.
Speaker 6: It was January of nineteen seventy four. The Otero family
Speaker 6: had recently moved into a small home at eight oh
Speaker 6: three North Edgemore on the east side of Wichita. In
Speaker 6: some ways, it was the picture perfect American dream, with
Speaker 6: a fenced in backyard, for the children and the dog
Speaker 6: to play in. The parent were Julie and Joseph and
Speaker 6: they had five children from oldest to youngest. There was Charlie, Danny, Carmen,
Speaker 6: Josephine nicknamed Josie, and Joseph Junior, who they also called Joey.
Speaker 6: They were a close knit family, supported by two hard
Speaker 6: working parents from Spanish Harlem in New York.
Speaker 3: You really hadn't got a chance to meet other people
Speaker 3: in the neighborhood yet, and it was winter, so we
Speaker 3: were pretty home bound and we just spent a lot
Speaker 3: of time together. Don't get me wrong. We had our moments,
Speaker 3: but there was always love in the house.
Speaker 5: Always.
Speaker 4: My mom didn't cause he was in the church. I mean,
Speaker 4: she was a kind of woman that would bring orphans
Speaker 4: home for Christmas to our house.
Speaker 6: Over the years, I've developed a deep relationship with Charlie.
Speaker 6: He's told me all about his mother and how she
Speaker 6: kept the family together. When they were new to Wichita.
Speaker 6: Wichita was a quiet and calm town for the family
Speaker 6: to settle into. It was a stable community, or so
Speaker 6: it seemed. As the Otos made their home, evil was
Speaker 6: brewing and it was about to boil over. A monster
Speaker 6: was watching them, stalking them and learning their daily routine.
Speaker 6: He knew when the mother, Julie, took the kids to
Speaker 6: school each day, and he knew the exact time that
Speaker 6: the father, Joseph Sr. Usually left for work. But on
Speaker 6: the morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, the family
Speaker 6: routine was different.
Speaker 3: I remember asking my father to take me to school
Speaker 3: early that day. My mom used to usually give me
Speaker 3: a ride because it was like two miles away Southeast
Speaker 3: High from where we lived. That day, my dad stayed
Speaker 3: home because he had an appointment with somebody or some thing,
Speaker 3: and so he gave me a ride.
Speaker 4: He also took me to school early because I.
Speaker 3: Asked him to because it was finals day for the
Speaker 3: nine week period and I wanted an extra study hall
Speaker 3: to bone up a little bit more on some of
Speaker 3: the classes I.
Speaker 4: Was taking tests in.
Speaker 3: And that's probably what saved me Ang, Danny, and Carmen's lives,
Speaker 3: because they had to go with me.
Speaker 6: Joseph Otero Senior dropped his three eldest children off and
Speaker 6: returned home in his wife's car. No matter how many
Speaker 6: times I walk through this story, it's very hard to
Speaker 6: talk about what happened next as Julie and joe Otaro
Speaker 6: got their youngest Josie and Joey ready for school that day.
Speaker 6: It was twenty degrees in Wichita and snow coated the
Speaker 6: frozen ground. Around eight twenty am, as planned, the stalker
Speaker 6: unlatched the door on the family's wooden gate and let
Speaker 6: himself into the back yard of the Otero's home on
Speaker 6: Edgemore Street. In the pockets of his jacket, he carried
Speaker 6: rope Venetian blind cord, gags, white adhesive tape, plastic bags,
Speaker 6: and a knife. The man inched slowly toward the back door.
Speaker 6: He jiggled the door knob, but it was locked, so
Speaker 6: instead he found a telephone line tacked to the outside
Speaker 6: wall and cut it with a hunting knife. Just then,
Speaker 6: the man heard the back door open, and he was
Speaker 6: surprised to find a small boy looking directly at him.
Speaker 6: This was nine year old Joey O'teraro. By the boy's
Speaker 6: side was a large dog. As the man stood there,
Speaker 6: he felt his plan start to unravel. Not only did
Speaker 6: the family have a dog he hadn't planned for, but
Speaker 6: the young boy was home, and as he soon learned,
Speaker 6: the father was home as well. He panicked and pulled
Speaker 6: out his gun. Inside, he found the mother and daughter.
Speaker 6: The young girl began to cry. The man dealt with
Speaker 6: the dog, first telling Joey to put him in the yard. Then,
Speaker 6: still holding the family at gunpoint, he backed them into
Speaker 6: the main bedroom and began to tie each of them up.
Speaker 6: One by one, he killed each of them. He strangled
Speaker 6: Joseph with a rolled up T shirt, followed by Julie
Speaker 6: with a rope. The man struggled, he had never done
Speaker 6: this before. The man then took Joseph Junior into a
Speaker 6: different bedroom and strangled him as well. Finally, he took
Speaker 6: eleven year old Josephine downstairs to the basement and hung
Speaker 6: her from a sewage pipe. The man tried to cover
Speaker 6: his tracks. He drove the Otaro's Vista cruiser to Dylan's
Speaker 6: grocery store. Before he got out, he adjusted the seat
Speaker 6: forward to disguise his height. Then he walked to his
Speaker 6: own car down the street. He took inventory and realized
Speaker 6: he had forgotten his knife. He drove back to the
Speaker 6: house in his own car and picked up the knife. Quickly,
Speaker 6: he sped off, and just like that, he was gone.
Speaker 6: That afternoon, Charlie Otero was finishing up his finals two
Speaker 6: miles away at Southeast High School. The school bell rang
Speaker 6: and he walked home with a two younger siblings, Danny
Speaker 6: and Carmen. They were expecting to reunite with the rest
Speaker 6: of their family, as they had always done. They had
Speaker 6: no idea what was waiting for them at home.
Speaker 3: I took all my tests, aced all of them, and
Speaker 3: then I was walking home. I remember walking through the snow,
Speaker 3: thinking this really sucks. Kansas sucks. I get across the
Speaker 3: street from my house. The garage door was up and
Speaker 3: the car was gone. So I'm like, here's my chance
Speaker 3: to rag my mom. Because I never get to rag
Speaker 3: my mom. You didn't get to say anything bad to her,
Speaker 3: and this is my chance to say, why do you
Speaker 3: the garage door open? Now I got to clean the
Speaker 3: snow out, so I'm already practicing my spiel.
Speaker 6: This is when Charlie and his siblings entered the home
Speaker 6: to the gruesome scene you heard about at the top
Speaker 6: of the episode. I can imagine the horror as they
Speaker 6: pieced together that their parents were not in fact playing
Speaker 6: a cruel trick on them, the fear as they figured
Speaker 6: out what to do next.
Speaker 4: You try to use a phone. It was dead.
Speaker 3: Me and Danny and Carmen went outside and I told
Speaker 3: Danny to go next door to the neighbor's house and
Speaker 3: use their phone to call the police. And we waited
Speaker 3: outside together in the snow, huddled up, and a police
Speaker 3: officer came and he goes, what's going on here?
Speaker 4: I said, go inside, you'll see.
Speaker 6: Officers Robert Bulla and Jim Lindeberg of the Wichita Police
Speaker 6: Department arrived at the Otero household at three forty two pm.
Speaker 6: The police report describes what the officers initially found. Read
Speaker 6: here by a voice actor.
Speaker 2: Officers checked the bedrooms. The door to the southwest bedroom
Speaker 2: stood halfway open. The officers pushed the door open and
Speaker 2: saw a man on the floor. A cut white rope
Speaker 2: and a butcher's knife were on the floor next to them,
Speaker 2: and the woman was on the bed. The woman's legs
Speaker 2: were bent and hanging over the edge of the bed.
Speaker 2: The officers noticed blood on her nose and mouth. Officer
Speaker 2: Bulla found no pulse. The woman's hands appeared to be
Speaker 2: tied behind her back. A white cloth gag covered with
Speaker 2: blood was found next to her head.
Speaker 6: Officers Bulla and Lindabergh found Joseph and Julie in the
Speaker 6: main bedroom. They radio dispatch two possible homicide victims. Then
Speaker 6: Officer Lindenburgh left the house to check back in with
Speaker 6: the children.
Speaker 3: He came back out and looked at me and said,
Speaker 3: could your father have done this? I knew what he
Speaker 3: was insinuating right away. He was insinuating that.
Speaker 4: My dad had come home and found my mom with
Speaker 4: another man.
Speaker 3: Because my dad was dark, dark, dark, almost Negro, and
Speaker 3: my mom was white, white, white, as white as you
Speaker 3: can be without.
Speaker 4: Being seen through. My Dad's in there, his hands tied
Speaker 4: and he's dead. How could he have killed himself and
Speaker 4: tied himself up? I knew it was insinuating. I had
Speaker 4: that knife in my hand when he said that, and
Speaker 4: I almost stuck.
Speaker 5: It in him.
Speaker 4: And at that instant I lost all respect for authority.
Speaker 4: I hated the police. I hated the world.
Speaker 3: At that moment when I first saw my mother, I
Speaker 3: lost my religion instantly.
Speaker 4: I hated God.
Speaker 3: We were in a state of shock, and I kept
Speaker 3: telling the police officer I said, I got to stop
Speaker 3: Joey and Josie.
Speaker 4: From coming home.
Speaker 3: He called the station and had a bunch of cops coming,
Speaker 3: and I told himself, I do not want Joey and
Speaker 3: Josie to get here and see all these cops.
Speaker 4: And I want him here with me.
Speaker 3: Now, I knew it was my job to take over
Speaker 3: and take care of my siblings, and I didn't know
Speaker 3: Joey and Josie in the house, so I.
Speaker 4: Kept telling him I need Joey and Josie with me,
Speaker 4: over and over.
Speaker 6: Again, seemingly, all of Whichitas police force made their way
Speaker 6: to the Otero household on North Edgemore in what was
Speaker 6: generally a quiet neighborhood, to begin solving a quadruple homage side.
Speaker 6: The children told the officers that when they arrived home
Speaker 6: to find their parents, they attempted to cut the ropes
Speaker 6: and desperately tried to perform CPR. As Officer Bulla interviewed
Speaker 6: the Otero children, Lieutenant Jack Watkins arrived at the house.
Speaker 6: It was he and Officer Bulla who discovered little Joey
Speaker 6: in the upstairs bedroom and Josie in the basement. Here
Speaker 6: again is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2: While Officer Bulla was outside of the home, Lieutenant Jack
Speaker 2: Watkins discovered the body of Joseph Otero Junior in another
Speaker 2: upstairs bedroom. Lieutenant Watkins and Officer Bulla searched the rest
Speaker 2: of the home. Josephino Taro was found in the northwest
Speaker 2: storage area of the basement. Josephino Taro was hanging by
Speaker 2: a rope that had been tied to a sewer pipe.
Speaker 2: A white cloth was tied around her mouth. Josephino Taro
Speaker 2: was wearing a blue, short sleeved knit sweater and was
Speaker 2: naked from the waist down.
Speaker 6: As the eldest, Charlie pleaded for answers about his little
Speaker 6: sister and brother, Josie and Joey. It's Charlie's nature to
Speaker 6: protect his family, and he wanted to protect the two
Speaker 6: youngest from what the three of them had already seen.
Speaker 3: I kept telling him when we got to the police station,
Speaker 3: I kept saying, where's Joey and Josie. I need him
Speaker 3: here now, I need him here now. I can't even
Speaker 3: tell you how long we were there. It could have
Speaker 3: been an hour, it could have been ten hours, it
Speaker 3: could have been ten seconds. At that point, the world
Speaker 3: is upside down inside out for me. Finally, police chaplain
Speaker 3: pulled me over and says, Charlie.
Speaker 4: We got to tell you Joey and Josie were in
Speaker 4: the house. They're dead too. After that, I pretty much
Speaker 4: went blank.
Speaker 6: Back in East which a tall local police officers, detectives,
Speaker 6: and other officials were gathered in mass at the Oteo household.
Speaker 6: They immediately set up a headquarters in the school across
Speaker 6: the street from the Otero home. The police report states
Speaker 6: that Chief of Police Floyd Hannon assigned ten teams of
Speaker 6: detectives to investigate the murders and search for the family's
Speaker 6: missing car. Again. Here is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2: At five forty six pm, Detective Lewis Brown located the
Speaker 2: Otero car in the parking lot of the Dylan's Grocery
Speaker 2: store at Central and Oliver. The keys to the Beiges
Speaker 2: nineteen sixty six Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser were missing. Steve Christian,
Speaker 2: the brother of the former owner of the Otto home,
Speaker 2: reported seeing the car backing out of the driveway at
Speaker 2: approximately ten thirty am.
Speaker 6: At the Otero home. Officer Bulla assisted lab director Ron
Speaker 6: Eggleston in processing the scene. Notably, Eggleston found stains on
Speaker 6: the concrete floor directly in front of young Josephine in
Speaker 6: the basement. He collected samples of those stains. The local
Speaker 6: newspapers and television stations caught wind of the killings and
Speaker 6: also set up shop by the O'to home. They had
Speaker 6: very little to go on.
Speaker 7: Back in that day and to this day, we monitor
Speaker 7: the police frequencies, the fire frequencies and that type of thing.
Speaker 7: We didn't know what had happened, but we knew that
Speaker 7: they had sent a lot of detectives to this one
Speaker 7: particular address in East Wichita. Nobody was talking about it
Speaker 7: on the frequencies that we were monitoring, so we didn't
Speaker 7: know what was going on, but we thought, you know,
Speaker 7: there's something going on there, and I was sent out
Speaker 7: to see what was happening.
Speaker 6: This is my longtime colleague and friend Larry Hatdiberg, who
Speaker 6: was on the scene reporting for KKE TV on the
Speaker 6: day the Otaros were murdered.
Speaker 7: None of the detectives, no one would talk to me.
Speaker 7: They just say, you know, we'll have information later, But
Speaker 7: no one would talk to me. And it was until
Speaker 7: hours and hours and hours after I arrived that we
Speaker 7: found out that there were four dead bodies inside the house.
Speaker 4: And it wasn't.
Speaker 7: Until later that we found out that two of those
Speaker 7: bodies were children, and it was shocking. All we knew
Speaker 7: is that some crazy person had gone in and killed
Speaker 7: an entire family. That was the shocking part that just
Speaker 7: didn't happen in Wichita, Kansas. Even the police department, I think,
Speaker 7: were shocked by the murder. They never had really a
Speaker 7: murder of that size happened before.
Speaker 6: Detectives went to work studying the crime scene. For ten days,
Speaker 6: seventy five officers and detectives worked eighteen hours a day.
Speaker 6: At the end of the first week, sleep deprived, out
Speaker 6: of energy and out of ideas, the police and all
Speaker 6: of Wichita were left with the same questions.
Speaker 7: We wondered, what kind of crazy person do we have?
Speaker 7: Is it somebody on drugs that did it, as somebody
Speaker 7: who had a vendetta against this people.
Speaker 6: During the investigation, police Chief Floyd Hannen held press conferences
Speaker 6: at least twice a day where he would disclose specifics,
Speaker 6: speculate about motives and possible suspects. Newspapers like the Wichita
Speaker 6: Eagle and The Beacon covered every development. The police began
Speaker 6: with a handful of different possibilities. The first was that
Speaker 6: the killer could be someone within the family, as Officer
Speaker 6: Bullet suggested to Charlie upon initially securing the scene. Investigators
Speaker 6: quickly ruled that theory out. The second was that there
Speaker 6: was a possible drug connection. Chief Hannon himself flew to
Speaker 6: Panama and to Puerto Rico to follow this idea. The
Speaker 6: third was that someone was out to get Julie.
Speaker 8: Usually there's a connection of something, and in this particular case,
Speaker 8: there was no connection. We didn't know anything. What caused this,
Speaker 8: what's the background of the Oteo's, who would do this?
Speaker 8: What was it? The investigators their immediate reaction was this
Speaker 8: was a revenge killing of some kind, whether it be
Speaker 8: drug related, whether it be a business thing. We didn't
Speaker 8: know what it was. My name is Richard Lamunion. I'm
Speaker 8: currently the city manager for the City of Maze. At
Speaker 8: the time of the Otero murders, I was a member
Speaker 8: of the Witchdaw Police Department. I joined the department in
Speaker 8: nineteen sixty three. I was a police chief from nineteen
Speaker 8: seventy six through nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 6: Leamunion says they did have very much to go on
Speaker 6: at the start of the investigation, but that from the
Speaker 6: get go police could tell this had not been a
Speaker 6: random killing.
Speaker 8: It was a planned scenario. There was a script at
Speaker 8: least if not written in this individual's mind. Are individuals.
Speaker 8: We didn't know if it was one two or twenty two,
Speaker 8: but there was definitely a plan premeditated and that's why
Speaker 8: it threw us back to this has to be a revenge.
Speaker 8: The Chief authorized some of the detectives to make some trips.
Speaker 8: One of them was even made to Mexico, so there
Speaker 8: were some special efforts made. It's not unusual to send
Speaker 8: out detectives and things to other places, but when you
Speaker 8: send them out of the country or something, that's unusual.
Speaker 6: A week had passed since the Otero murders, and the
Speaker 6: investigators assigned to the case weren't getting any answers. Chief
Speaker 6: Hannah pulled out all the stops, signing off on any
Speaker 6: and all ideas detectives came up with for solving the murders.
Speaker 6: One night, detectives Gary Caldwell and Bernie Drowotsky hired a
Speaker 6: psychic to stay in the house with police. The detectives
Speaker 6: were desperate, and the psychic had claimed she helped solve
Speaker 6: a crime by leading police to a body and a trunk.
Speaker 6: One overnight, stay with the psychic later, and Caldwell and
Speaker 6: Drowatsky still had nothing to bring back to Chief Hannan.
Speaker 6: With each lead running into a dead end, pressure was
Speaker 6: mounting on the department as the community feared what would
Speaker 6: come next. The officers themselves struggled to come to terms
Speaker 6: with the tragedy. Lemonnion describes the department's turmoil as they
Speaker 6: worked the case.
Speaker 8: You know, police officers, even though you deal with tragedy
Speaker 8: every day and everything, you're still a human being. When
Speaker 8: you see a situation like this, you see the victims
Speaker 8: laying there with plastic bags over their head, strangled, and
Speaker 8: then you see children. In your mind you think back, well,
Speaker 8: I have children, I have sisters, I have brothers, I
Speaker 8: have other things. So it does impact you, but you
Speaker 8: can't let that influence you at the time.
Speaker 6: The first week of the investigation was difficult. In hindsight,
Speaker 6: we can say that the Witchital Police Department was not
Speaker 6: equipped to deal with this kind of murder in nineteen
Speaker 6: seventy four. In fact, they made multiple mistakes. Someone in
Speaker 6: the department lost several crime scene photos and most of
Speaker 6: the autopsy photos. Through crime scene photographs, they discovered that
Speaker 6: a responding officer opened to the Otero freezer and left
Speaker 6: the ice tray on the counter. This mistake set the
Speaker 6: department back as they worked to piece together the timeline
Speaker 6: of the crime. Yet, there was one big thing that
Speaker 6: the investigators did correctly on the first day.
Speaker 8: When it came to preserving evidence. You know, we had
Speaker 8: preserved evidence before. In this particular case, there was semen
Speaker 8: found on the little girl in the basement where he
Speaker 8: had literally brushed up against her, and there was a
Speaker 8: little bit of her leg. Now, how do you preserve that?
Speaker 8: And this is nineteen seventy four. We didn't have computers,
Speaker 8: we didn't have DNA, we didn't have any.
Speaker 4: Of that stuff.
Speaker 8: However, our crime investigation unit, what they ended up doing
Speaker 8: was they did three things. Number One, they dried part
Speaker 8: of it, they kept part of it and fluid, and
Speaker 8: then they froze part of it, all three of them.
Speaker 6: As the investigation unfolded, tensions were understandably high in the city.
Speaker 6: The close knit community of Wichita was starting to fall apart.
Speaker 6: People were becoming suspicious of their names, fearing that the
Speaker 6: killer could live next door. Following the murder, the O'tero
Speaker 6: children were once again swept off to a new location,
Speaker 6: leaving a city in which they had not spent long
Speaker 6: enough to consider home, one that would remind them only
Speaker 6: of darkness for decades to come.
Speaker 3: We had known a family in Panama that was stationed
Speaker 3: at McConnell, Sergeant Joques. So we called them up and
Speaker 3: they said, yeah, I get your butts over here. So
Speaker 3: police took us to McConnell. I remember being in the
Speaker 3: Jaquesz house with armed guards all around, and I remember
Speaker 3: getting a phone call and it was Senator Kennedy's office.
Speaker 3: He was determined the Armed Forces Committe at that time,
Speaker 3: and they called and said, well, what can we do
Speaker 3: for you?
Speaker 4: I told him, I.
Speaker 3: Said, I have four bodies to bury, and I don't
Speaker 3: want him in Wichita. I'll be damned if I'm bury
Speaker 3: my family here in Wichita. So he said, what do
Speaker 3: you want to do. I said, I want my family
Speaker 3: buried in Puerto Rico. And he said done, And they
Speaker 3: buried my family in a national military cemetery in Puerto Rico,
Speaker 3: in my dad's hometown of Santurse.
Speaker 6: At just fifteen years old, Charlie took on this responsibility,
Speaker 6: shouldering the immense weight of this tragedy. Out of love
Speaker 6: for his siblings.
Speaker 3: I kept telling myself, you know, if I came on glued,
Speaker 3: what would Danny and Carmen do. I had to be
Speaker 3: that pillar of strength for them to hold on to
Speaker 3: because we.
Speaker 4: Didn't have anything at that point. You got to remember, we.
Speaker 3: Had just spent our whole lives as the family unit,
Speaker 3: traveling all over and now there wasn't one.
Speaker 4: We had no mom.
Speaker 3: One minute, my mom is bringing orphans and giving him
Speaker 3: my bedroom for Christmas, and the next minute, I'm the orphan.
Speaker 3: So I got on the phone. I called my uncle John.
Speaker 3: He became my guardian, our guardian. To this day, I'm
Speaker 3: still very close to them in the family.
Speaker 4: He was there. The next day I called them.
Speaker 3: They got in the car and drove straight to Wichita
Speaker 3: from New Mexico from Albuquerque. And that's when our life
Speaker 3: turned around again.
Speaker 6: After the funeral, the surviving Otarot children tried to settle
Speaker 6: into life in New Mexico with their parents and siblings gone.
Speaker 6: It was understandably difficult to adjust.
Speaker 3: We had a hard time. PTSD was kicking in, Danny
Speaker 3: was acting up. I started racing motorcycles to release my aggression.
Speaker 3: I was very aggressive, very careless with my life, with
Speaker 3: my body.
Speaker 4: I got in a bike wreck right.
Speaker 3: After I graduated from high school and I had a
Speaker 3: handlebar go through my helmet and down my throat. Saw
Speaker 3: my whole life pass before me, and my life kind
Speaker 3: of changed at that point.
Speaker 4: Its like, who cares? Why build a future if somebody's
Speaker 4: just going to come take it from you just maintained
Speaker 4: an existence.
Speaker 6: While Charlie and his siblings carried on, the city of
Speaker 6: Wichita was still in shock. As Cake anker Larry Haddiberg says,
Speaker 6: this was a level of violence that seemed inconceivable in
Speaker 6: a small town like Wichita, Kansas.
Speaker 7: And that in itself, I think turned this quiet town
Speaker 7: that never had anything happen into a town that for
Speaker 7: a period of time was really on edge because they
Speaker 7: didn't know what was going to happen next. They didn't
Speaker 7: know who was going to be next, and it was
Speaker 7: a terrifying time for an awful lot of people. Someone
Speaker 7: killed four members of a family, two children and two adults,
Speaker 7: and that had really never happened before in Wichita, particularly
Speaker 7: the children. I mean, they've had double murders, but to
Speaker 7: include the children in that, that was shocking to a
Speaker 7: Kansas town. It just didn't happen here, and yet it did.
Speaker 6: But this was just the beginning. Over the next five years,
Speaker 6: the killer would continue to terrorize witch It tak He
Speaker 6: targeted dozens of women and stalked them at night. He
Speaker 6: watched them come and go from work, and for many
Speaker 6: of them, he broke into their homes and murdered them.
Speaker 6: In the seventies alone, he killed seven people. But even
Speaker 6: that wasn't enough for him. He also started writing taunting
Speaker 6: letters to the media. Larry Hattiburd talks about one letter
Speaker 6: that arrived to Cake. In February of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 7: Eight, KTV received a postcard from someone who indicated that
Speaker 7: they had information about the killing.
Speaker 4: I will never forget this.
Speaker 7: It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
Speaker 7: into our mail room.
Speaker 5: How many people do have to kill before I get
Speaker 5: my name in the paper or some national attention. I
Speaker 5: am compelled to kill by factor X, the same factor
Speaker 5: the motivated son of Sam in New York, Jack the
Speaker 5: Ripper in London, and the Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles.
Speaker 5: It seems senseless, but we cannot help it. There is
Speaker 5: no help, no cure except death or being caught and
Speaker 5: put away. A little paragraph in the newspaper would have
Speaker 5: been enough.
Speaker 6: In one of these letters, he even named himself BTK,
Speaker 6: which stands for buying torture Kill. Then, in April of
Speaker 6: nineteen seventy nine, BTK seemingly disappear. He committed his last
Speaker 6: murder and cut off all communication, or so we thought.
Speaker 7: For a period of time, everything just shut down, weird.
Speaker 7: Nothing from BTK, not a word, and so all of
Speaker 7: the rumors started to fly.
Speaker 4: What has happened to BTK? Is he dead? Is he incarcerated?
Speaker 4: What's the deal with BTK?
Speaker 6: As suddenly as he appeared, he was simply gone. To outsiders,
Speaker 6: it may have seemed as though Wichita had finally been
Speaker 6: freed of its boogieman, but the presence of BTK was
Speaker 6: always felt. I initially moved here in the eighties. People
Speaker 6: no longer left their doors unlocked, and there were always
Speaker 6: nervous whispers. No one felt safe in Wichita anymore.
Speaker 7: This was not a community that locked its door so
Speaker 7: much after BTK. This was a community that locked its doors.
Speaker 7: This is a community where young women were terrified. They
Speaker 7: didn't go out alone at night. If they were going out,
Speaker 7: they let everybody know where they were going and what
Speaker 7: time they would be arriving.
Speaker 6: It turns out that feeling was justified because BTK hadn't
Speaker 6: gone anywhere. He was just lain dormant, waiting for his
Speaker 6: time to rise again. In this case, it would be
Speaker 6: decades later. Fast forward to two thousand and four, when
Speaker 6: this story culminated in one of the most dramatic turn
Speaker 6: of events in Kansas history.
Speaker 4: Eight minutes past.
Speaker 9: Now in decades after a serial killer terrorized Wichita, Kansas
Speaker 9: cops say the case that was once cold may be
Speaker 9: warm yet again. Today. Wichita paper says it received another
Speaker 9: letter claiming responsibility for an eighth victim who was killed
Speaker 9: in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 6: It was spring of two thousand and four. No one
Speaker 6: had heard from BTK in twenty five years. Most of
Speaker 6: us had moved on with our lives assuming he was gone.
Speaker 6: But on March nineteenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita
Speaker 6: Eagle received a letter from someone claiming to be Bill
Speaker 6: Thomas Kilman initials BTK. In it, he claimed to have
Speaker 6: killed a new victim. Investigators believe the letter is from
Speaker 6: BTK because it has information about a two decade old
Speaker 6: homicide link to BTK that only the killer would know.
Speaker 6: At KTV, of course, this became our top story and
Speaker 6: for a whole year it remained our top story because
Speaker 6: the letters didn't stop there. A few months after this
Speaker 6: first correspondence, a letter arrived at our TV station. A
Speaker 6: letter received by KTV was turned over to us last Wednesday,
Speaker 6: and we are treated as it possibly being sent by BTK.
Speaker 7: He started writing to us. He wrote to k TV
Speaker 7: my employer. We knew that he was watching us every night,
Speaker 7: which was a little terrifying, and for the female anchors
Speaker 7: at our television station, it was getting pretty close because
Speaker 7: we were concerned that he could strike them, that he
Speaker 7: could kill them, make them a target.
Speaker 6: One of those people was me, as the most visible
Speaker 6: female anchor at CAKE. I knew I was at high risk.
Speaker 6: In fact, in one of his letters, BTK even mentioned
Speaker 6: my name. This is from the BTK letter received on
Speaker 6: February third, two thousand and five.
Speaker 5: Thanks to the news team for their efforts. Sorry about
Speaker 5: Susan and Jeff's coolds.
Speaker 6: During a newscast, I had mentioned on the air that
Speaker 6: my co anchor and I were feeling under the weather.
Speaker 6: Just two days later, this letter arrived. It hit me
Speaker 6: like a punch to the gut, because that meant he
Speaker 6: was watching me.
Speaker 7: So we had extra security on our on air females.
Speaker 7: It was a terrifying time.
Speaker 5: I know.
Speaker 7: I would walk co anchor out to the station, out
Speaker 7: to the parking lot every night and get her in
Speaker 7: her card, just to make sure that there wasn't anybody
Speaker 7: waiting around there. It was a scary time, particularly for
Speaker 7: the women in our television.
Speaker 6: Station throughout two thousand and four. In early two thousand
Speaker 6: and five, BTK continued to send letters threatening to kill again,
Speaker 6: presumably at random. His letters made it very clear he
Speaker 6: was once again targeting women across Wichita. Here is his
Speaker 6: letter from July seventeenth, two thousand and four, a poem id,
Speaker 6: oh death to Nancy.
Speaker 5: I'll stuff your jaws till you can't talk. I'll bind
Speaker 5: your legs till you can't walk. I'll tie your hands
Speaker 5: still you can't make a stand. And finally I'll close
Speaker 5: your eyes so you can't see. I'll bring sexual death
Speaker 5: one too you for me.
Speaker 6: I mean it when I tell you every woman in
Speaker 6: Wichita was scared to death. You can imagine how terrified
Speaker 6: everybody was looking behind themselves wondering if they were going
Speaker 6: to be next afraid to walk out of the grocery
Speaker 6: store at night, afraid to be alone in their own homes.
Speaker 10: February twenty, fifteen, thousand and five. I was home. It's snowy,
Speaker 10: and I see that dad. So I'm home in these
Speaker 10: mint green fuzzy pajamas. It's like getting close to noon,
Speaker 10: and I see this strange car parked out underneath this window.
Speaker 10: It was maroon for a door, like a old cow
Speaker 10: lac or something. You know, it seemed out of place.
Speaker 10: It was parked there for a long time. I'm getting
Speaker 10: scared because, like my dad had instilled such a stranger
Speaker 10: danger fair into me. You know, be wary of strangers.
Speaker 10: Don't let strange people into your house. Make them show
Speaker 10: you their badge, you know, question their uniform if you're
Speaker 10: not expecting them. I literally called my husband like once
Speaker 10: or twice. I said, there's a strange car with a
Speaker 10: man sitting in it. He's not moving. I don't know
Speaker 10: what he's doing.
Speaker 2: I said, should I.
Speaker 10: Call the police? It almost felt like he was there
Speaker 10: for me. I hare a knock on my door, and
Speaker 10: it was like something in me knew that the man
Speaker 10: in the car was now on the other side of
Speaker 10: the door, and then he said, on the other side
Speaker 10: of the door, I'm with the FBI and I need
Speaker 10: to question you. And so that can I see your
Speaker 10: badge and so he like clashes his badge.
Speaker 7: It looks legit.
Speaker 10: He didn't have a gun, which I thought was weird.
Speaker 10: BALI had was like a yellow legal pad and like
Speaker 10: a pencil. It was a very small apartment, very narrow hallway,
Speaker 10: and I remember I was comfortable enough that I turned
Speaker 10: my back to him to walk the few steps into
Speaker 10: the kitchen, and he just drops it. He's like, do
Speaker 10: you know about BTK? And now I'm thinking, like what
Speaker 10: I knew BTK had been active in like the seventies,
Speaker 10: but I knew that BTK murdered women that lived alone.
Speaker 10: So instantly I thought my dad's mom, Dorothea, had been
Speaker 10: murdered because she was a widow and living alone. So
Speaker 10: I instantly went there thinking, Grandma Dorothia has been murdered
Speaker 10: by this BTK. So I said, is my grandma Okay?
Speaker 10: He's perplexed. He's like, why is she talking to me
Speaker 10: about Grandma? He's like, your grandma, she's fine, And then
Speaker 10: he drops it.
Speaker 9: Your dad is.
Speaker 7: Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 10: Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
Speaker 10: phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8: You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
Speaker 8: their heads, strangled. You could tell there was a plan scenario.
Speaker 10: Well, police have said no more about the contents of
Speaker 10: the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
Speaker 10: implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 4: He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2: He'd get him to the point of death and then
Speaker 2: bring them back.
Speaker 7: And then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 6: From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
Speaker 6: and this is Monster BTK.
Speaker 2: Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
Speaker 2: The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young and
Speaker 2: Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Speaker 2: Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
Speaker 2: alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
Speaker 2: iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Speaker 2: Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing
Speaker 2: support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts
Speaker 2: and Caroline Origemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico,
Speaker 2: original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original music by
Speaker 2: Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and
Speaker 2: the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more
Speaker 2: podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Speaker 2: Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
Speaker 2: Thanks for listening.