January 13, 2025 • 41 mins
January 1974. Four members of a family are killed in their home in Wichita, Kansas. Investigators are mystified. Nothing like this has ever happened before in Wichita. Little did they know, this was just the beginning.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
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the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was
walking home. The snow is knee deep and the wind
was blowing pretty hard, and I walked into the backyard.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
We had a wood fence with a gate, so I
went through the yard and.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
My dog, Lucky, he was outside in the snow and
he was never outside.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I'm like, what are you doing out here?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
He looked at me and wagged his tail, and I
opened up a kitchen door and went into the back.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
When I walked to the house, I looked at the stove.
It had my mom's purse on it. All the stuff
was stowed out.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
That's not how my mom kept the house. She was
very adamant about keeping our house super clean. I yelled out,
anybody home, and I heard a voice yelled, Charlie, come quick,
Mom and Dad are playing a bad trick on us.
I ran down the hall and I could just sense
something was wrong already.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I could just feel it.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And I opened up the door and saw my mom
and my dad, and I saw my mom on the bed,
and my heart broke. It felt like somebody had actually
ripped my chest open and pulled my heart out. It
was a physical pain. I tried to undo the ropes
that were on him. My dad's tongue was half bit
off hanging. The ropes were so tight there was no
(01:56):
way to untie them.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
To this day, I can smell fear and death.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I can smell fear on a person because when you
walked in the house, you could smell it.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
You could smell the death in the house.
Speaker 6 (02:15):
My name is Susan Peters. I'm a journalist and former
news anchor for Kake TV also known as Cake TV,
in Wichita, Kansas. I started out as a reporter in
Illinois and then anchored the news in San Diego. When
I moved to Kansas in nineteen eighty three, people would
(02:35):
ask me if I knew about the serial killer BTK.
At the time, I didn't know much, but my coworkers
told me about the seven people he killed in the
nineteen seventies. His first victims were the Otero family.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
We moved to Puerto Rico to stay with my grandparents
while my dad looked for his future. He just spent
twenty years of his life in the Air Force since
he was seventeen, and he was searching for the best opportunity.
My name is Charlie O'tero. I am a surviving son
of Joseph and Julia O'tero. One day he got ahold
(03:15):
of us and said, you're coming to Wichita. You'd found
the job here at a small airfield, Cook Airfield, And
we hopped on a plane and flew to Wichita. And
I left the beautiful tropical island of Puerto Rico and
landed in the wheatfields of Kansas and mill of snowstorm.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And we were just getting used to the neighborhood. It
was totally different from what I was used to.
Speaker 6 (03:39):
It was January of nineteen seventy four. The Otero family
had recently moved into a small home at eight oh
three North Edgemore on the east side of Wichita. In
some ways, it was the picture perfect American dream, with
a fenced in backyard, for the children and the dog
to play in. The parent were Julie and Joseph and
(04:02):
they had five children from oldest to youngest. There was Charlie, Danny, Carmen,
Josephine nicknamed Josie, and Joseph Junior, who they also called Joey.
They were a close knit family, supported by two hard
working parents from Spanish Harlem in New York.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You really hadn't got a chance to meet other people
in the neighborhood yet, and it was winter, so we
were pretty home bound and we just spent a lot
of time together. Don't get me wrong. We had our moments,
but there was always love in the house.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Always.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
My mom didn't cause he was in the church. I mean,
she was a kind of woman that would bring orphans
home for Christmas to our house.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Over the years, I've developed a deep relationship with Charlie.
He's told me all about his mother and how she
kept the family together. When they were new to Wichita.
Wichita was a quiet and calm town for the family
to settle into. It was a stable community, or so
it seemed. As the Otos made their home, evil was
(05:14):
brewing and it was about to boil over. A monster
was watching them, stalking them and learning their daily routine.
He knew when the mother, Julie, took the kids to
school each day, and he knew the exact time that
the father, Joseph Sr. Usually left for work. But on
(05:38):
the morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, the family
routine was different.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I remember asking my father to take me to school
early that day. My mom used to usually give me
a ride because it was like two miles away Southeast
High from where we lived. That day, my dad stayed
home because he had an appointment with somebody or some thing,
and so he gave me a ride.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
He also took me to school early because I.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Asked him to because it was finals day for the
nine week period and I wanted an extra study hall
to bone up a little bit more on some of
the classes I.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Was taking tests in.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And that's probably what saved me Ang, Danny, and Carmen's lives,
because they had to go with me.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Joseph Otero Senior dropped his three eldest children off and
returned home in his wife's car. No matter how many
times I walk through this story, it's very hard to
talk about what happened next as Julie and joe Otaro
got their youngest Josie and Joey ready for school that day.
(06:51):
It was twenty degrees in Wichita and snow coated the
frozen ground. Around eight twenty am, as planned, the stalker
unlatched the door on the family's wooden gate and let
himself into the back yard of the Otero's home on
Edgemore Street. In the pockets of his jacket, he carried
(07:14):
rope Venetian blind cord, gags, white adhesive tape, plastic bags,
and a knife. The man inched slowly toward the back door.
He jiggled the door knob, but it was locked, so
instead he found a telephone line tacked to the outside
(07:34):
wall and cut it with a hunting knife. Just then,
the man heard the back door open, and he was
surprised to find a small boy looking directly at him.
This was nine year old Joey O'teraro. By the boy's
side was a large dog. As the man stood there,
(07:58):
he felt his plan start to unravel. Not only did
the family have a dog he hadn't planned for, but
the young boy was home, and as he soon learned,
the father was home as well. He panicked and pulled
out his gun. Inside, he found the mother and daughter.
The young girl began to cry. The man dealt with
(08:22):
the dog, first telling Joey to put him in the yard. Then,
still holding the family at gunpoint, he backed them into
the main bedroom and began to tie each of them up.
One by one, he killed each of them. He strangled
(08:42):
Joseph with a rolled up T shirt, followed by Julie
with a rope. The man struggled, he had never done
this before. The man then took Joseph Junior into a
different bedroom and strangled him as well. Finally, he took
eleven year old Josephine downstairs to the basement and hung
(09:04):
her from a sewage pipe. The man tried to cover
his tracks. He drove the Otaro's Vista cruiser to Dylan's
grocery store. Before he got out, he adjusted the seat
forward to disguise his height. Then he walked to his
own car down the street. He took inventory and realized
(09:24):
he had forgotten his knife. He drove back to the
house in his own car and picked up the knife. Quickly,
he sped off, and just like that, he was gone.
(09:51):
That afternoon, Charlie Otero was finishing up his finals two
miles away at Southeast High School. The school bell rang
and he walked home with a two younger siblings, Danny
and Carmen. They were expecting to reunite with the rest
of their family, as they had always done. They had
no idea what was waiting for them at home.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I took all my tests, aced all of them, and
then I was walking home. I remember walking through the snow,
thinking this really sucks. Kansas sucks. I get across the
street from my house. The garage door was up and
the car was gone. So I'm like, here's my chance
to rag my mom. Because I never get to rag
(10:36):
my mom. You didn't get to say anything bad to her,
and this is my chance to say, why do you
the garage door open? Now I got to clean the
snow out, so I'm already practicing my spiel.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
This is when Charlie and his siblings entered the home
to the gruesome scene you heard about at the top
of the episode. I can imagine the horror as they
pieced together that their parents were not in fact playing
a cruel trick on them, the fear as they figured
out what to do next.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
You try to use a phone. It was dead.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Me and Danny and Carmen went outside and I told
Danny to go next door to the neighbor's house and
use their phone to call the police. And we waited
outside together in the snow, huddled up, and a police
officer came and he goes, what's going on here?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I said, go inside, you'll see.
Speaker 6 (11:30):
Officers Robert Bulla and Jim Lindeberg of the Wichita Police
Department arrived at the Otero household at three forty two pm.
The police report describes what the officers initially found. Read
here by a voice actor.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Officers checked the bedrooms. The door to the southwest bedroom
stood halfway open. The officers pushed the door open and
saw a man on the floor. A cut white rope
and a butcher's knife were on the floor next to them,
and the woman was on the bed. The woman's legs
were bent and hanging over the edge of the bed.
The officers noticed blood on her nose and mouth. Officer
(12:09):
Bulla found no pulse. The woman's hands appeared to be
tied behind her back. A white cloth gag covered with
blood was found next to her head.
Speaker 6 (12:20):
Officers Bulla and Lindabergh found Joseph and Julie in the
main bedroom. They radio dispatch two possible homicide victims. Then
Officer Lindenburgh left the house to check back in with
the children.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
He came back out and looked at me and said,
could your father have done this? I knew what he
was insinuating right away. He was insinuating that.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
My dad had come home and found my mom with
another man.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Because my dad was dark, dark, dark, almost Negro, and
my mom was white, white, white, as white as you
can be without.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Being seen through. My Dad's in there, his hands tied
and he's dead. How could he have killed himself and
tied himself up? I knew it was insinuating. I had
that knife in my hand when he said that, and
I almost stuck.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
It in him.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And at that instant I lost all respect for authority.
I hated the police. I hated the world.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
At that moment when I first saw my mother, I
lost my religion instantly.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I hated God.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
We were in a state of shock, and I kept
telling the police officer I said, I got to stop
Joey and Josie.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
From coming home.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
He called the station and had a bunch of cops coming,
and I told himself, I do not want Joey and
Josie to get here and see all these cops.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
And I want him here with me.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Now, I knew it was my job to take over
and take care of my siblings, and I didn't know
Joey and Josie in the house, so I.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Kept telling him I need Joey and Josie with me,
over and over.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
Again, seemingly, all of Whichitas police force made their way
to the Otero household on North Edgemore in what was
generally a quiet neighborhood, to begin solving a quadruple homage side.
The children told the officers that when they arrived home
to find their parents, they attempted to cut the ropes
(14:08):
and desperately tried to perform CPR. As Officer Bulla interviewed
the Otero children, Lieutenant Jack Watkins arrived at the house.
It was he and Officer Bulla who discovered little Joey
in the upstairs bedroom and Josie in the basement. Here
again is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
While Officer Bulla was outside of the home, Lieutenant Jack
Watkins discovered the body of Joseph Otero Junior in another
upstairs bedroom. Lieutenant Watkins and Officer Bulla searched the rest
of the home. Josephino Taro was found in the northwest
storage area of the basement. Josephino Taro was hanging by
a rope that had been tied to a sewer pipe.
(14:54):
A white cloth was tied around her mouth. Josephino Taro
was wearing a blue, short sleeved knit sweater and was
naked from the waist down.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
As the eldest, Charlie pleaded for answers about his little
sister and brother, Josie and Joey. It's Charlie's nature to
protect his family, and he wanted to protect the two
youngest from what the three of them had already seen.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I kept telling him when we got to the police station,
I kept saying, where's Joey and Josie. I need him
here now, I need him here now. I can't even
tell you how long we were there. It could have
been an hour, it could have been ten hours, it
could have been ten seconds. At that point, the world
is upside down inside out for me. Finally, police chaplain
pulled me over and says, Charlie.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
We got to tell you Joey and Josie were in
the house. They're dead too. After that, I pretty much
went blank.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
Back in East which a tall local police officers, detectives,
and other officials were gathered in mass at the Oteo household.
They immediately set up a headquarters in the school across
the street from the Otero home. The police report states
that Chief of Police Floyd Hannon assigned ten teams of
(16:12):
detectives to investigate the murders and search for the family's
missing car. Again. Here is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
At five forty six pm, Detective Lewis Brown located the
Otero car in the parking lot of the Dylan's Grocery
store at Central and Oliver. The keys to the Beiges
nineteen sixty six Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser were missing. Steve Christian,
the brother of the former owner of the Otto home,
reported seeing the car backing out of the driveway at
(16:44):
approximately ten thirty am.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
At the Otero home. Officer Bulla assisted lab director Ron
Eggleston in processing the scene. Notably, Eggleston found stains on
the concrete floor directly in front of young Josephine in
the basement. He collected samples of those stains. The local
(17:10):
newspapers and television stations caught wind of the killings and
also set up shop by the O'to home. They had
very little to go on.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Back in that day and to this day, we monitor
the police frequencies, the fire frequencies and that type of thing.
We didn't know what had happened, but we knew that
they had sent a lot of detectives to this one
particular address in East Wichita. Nobody was talking about it
on the frequencies that we were monitoring, so we didn't
(17:43):
know what was going on, but we thought, you know,
there's something going on there, and I was sent out
to see what was happening.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
This is my longtime colleague and friend Larry Hatdiberg, who
was on the scene reporting for KKE TV on the
day the Otaros were murdered.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
None of the detectives, no one would talk to me.
They just say, you know, we'll have information later, But
no one would talk to me. And it was until
hours and hours and hours after I arrived that we
found out that there were four dead bodies inside the house.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And it wasn't.
Speaker 7 (18:20):
Until later that we found out that two of those
bodies were children, and it was shocking. All we knew
is that some crazy person had gone in and killed
an entire family. That was the shocking part that just
didn't happen in Wichita, Kansas. Even the police department, I think,
were shocked by the murder. They never had really a
(18:43):
murder of that size happened before.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Detectives went to work studying the crime scene. For ten days,
seventy five officers and detectives worked eighteen hours a day.
At the end of the first week, sleep deprived, out
of energy and out of ideas, the police and all
of Wichita were left with the same questions.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
We wondered, what kind of crazy person do we have?
Is it somebody on drugs that did it, as somebody
who had a vendetta against this people.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
During the investigation, police Chief Floyd Hannen held press conferences
at least twice a day where he would disclose specifics,
speculate about motives and possible suspects. Newspapers like the Wichita
Eagle and The Beacon covered every development. The police began
(19:42):
with a handful of different possibilities. The first was that
the killer could be someone within the family, as Officer
Bullet suggested to Charlie upon initially securing the scene. Investigators
quickly ruled that theory out. The second was that there
was a possible drug connection. Chief Hannon himself flew to
(20:04):
Panama and to Puerto Rico to follow this idea. The
third was that someone was out to get Julie.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
Usually there's a connection of something, and in this particular case,
there was no connection. We didn't know anything. What caused this,
what's the background of the Oteo's, who would do this?
What was it? The investigators their immediate reaction was this
was a revenge killing of some kind, whether it be
(20:32):
drug related, whether it be a business thing. We didn't
know what it was. My name is Richard Lamunion. I'm
currently the city manager for the City of Maze. At
the time of the Otero murders, I was a member
of the Witchdaw Police Department. I joined the department in
nineteen sixty three. I was a police chief from nineteen
(20:54):
seventy six through nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
Leamunion says they did have very much to go on
at the start of the investigation, but that from the
get go police could tell this had not been a
random killing.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
It was a planned scenario. There was a script at
least if not written in this individual's mind. Are individuals.
We didn't know if it was one two or twenty two,
but there was definitely a plan premeditated and that's why
it threw us back to this has to be a revenge.
(21:29):
The Chief authorized some of the detectives to make some trips.
One of them was even made to Mexico, so there
were some special efforts made. It's not unusual to send
out detectives and things to other places, but when you
send them out of the country or something, that's unusual.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
A week had passed since the Otero murders, and the
investigators assigned to the case weren't getting any answers. Chief
Hannah pulled out all the stops, signing off on any
and all ideas detectives came up with for solving the murders.
One night, detectives Gary Caldwell and Bernie Drowotsky hired a
(22:12):
psychic to stay in the house with police. The detectives
were desperate, and the psychic had claimed she helped solve
a crime by leading police to a body and a trunk.
One overnight, stay with the psychic later, and Caldwell and
Drowatsky still had nothing to bring back to Chief Hannan.
(22:33):
With each lead running into a dead end, pressure was
mounting on the department as the community feared what would
come next. The officers themselves struggled to come to terms
with the tragedy. Lemonnion describes the department's turmoil as they
worked the case.
Speaker 8 (22:51):
You know, police officers, even though you deal with tragedy
every day and everything, you're still a human being. When
you see a situation like this, you see the victims
laying there with plastic bags over their head, strangled, and
then you see children. In your mind you think back, well,
I have children, I have sisters, I have brothers, I
(23:13):
have other things. So it does impact you, but you
can't let that influence you at the time.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
The first week of the investigation was difficult. In hindsight,
we can say that the Witchital Police Department was not
equipped to deal with this kind of murder in nineteen
seventy four. In fact, they made multiple mistakes. Someone in
the department lost several crime scene photos and most of
the autopsy photos. Through crime scene photographs, they discovered that
(23:44):
a responding officer opened to the Otero freezer and left
the ice tray on the counter. This mistake set the
department back as they worked to piece together the timeline
of the crime. Yet, there was one big thing that
the investigators did correctly on the first day.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
When it came to preserving evidence. You know, we had
preserved evidence before. In this particular case, there was semen
found on the little girl in the basement where he
had literally brushed up against her, and there was a
little bit of her leg. Now, how do you preserve that?
And this is nineteen seventy four. We didn't have computers,
we didn't have DNA, we didn't have any.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Of that stuff.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
However, our crime investigation unit, what they ended up doing
was they did three things. Number One, they dried part
of it, they kept part of it and fluid, and
then they froze part of it, all three of them.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
As the investigation unfolded, tensions were understandably high in the city.
The close knit community of Wichita was starting to fall apart.
People were becoming suspicious of their names, fearing that the
killer could live next door. Following the murder, the O'tero
(25:17):
children were once again swept off to a new location,
leaving a city in which they had not spent long
enough to consider home, one that would remind them only
of darkness for decades to come.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
We had known a family in Panama that was stationed
at McConnell, Sergeant Joques. So we called them up and
they said, yeah, I get your butts over here. So
police took us to McConnell. I remember being in the
Jaquesz house with armed guards all around, and I remember
getting a phone call and it was Senator Kennedy's office.
(25:55):
He was determined the Armed Forces Committe at that time,
and they called and said, well, what can we do
for you?
Speaker 4 (26:01):
I told him, I.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Said, I have four bodies to bury, and I don't
want him in Wichita. I'll be damned if I'm bury
my family here in Wichita. So he said, what do
you want to do. I said, I want my family
buried in Puerto Rico. And he said done, And they
buried my family in a national military cemetery in Puerto Rico,
in my dad's hometown of Santurse.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
At just fifteen years old, Charlie took on this responsibility,
shouldering the immense weight of this tragedy. Out of love
for his siblings.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I kept telling myself, you know, if I came on glued,
what would Danny and Carmen do. I had to be
that pillar of strength for them to hold on to
because we.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Didn't have anything at that point. You got to remember, we.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Had just spent our whole lives as the family unit,
traveling all over and now there wasn't one.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
We had no mom.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
One minute, my mom is bringing orphans and giving him
my bedroom for Christmas, and the next minute, I'm the orphan.
So I got on the phone. I called my uncle John.
He became my guardian, our guardian. To this day, I'm
still very close to them in the family.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
He was there. The next day I called them.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
They got in the car and drove straight to Wichita
from New Mexico from Albuquerque. And that's when our life
turned around again.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
After the funeral, the surviving Otarot children tried to settle
into life in New Mexico with their parents and siblings gone.
It was understandably difficult to adjust.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
We had a hard time. PTSD was kicking in, Danny
was acting up. I started racing motorcycles to release my aggression.
I was very aggressive, very careless with my life, with
my body.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I got in a bike wreck right.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
After I graduated from high school and I had a
handlebar go through my helmet and down my throat. Saw
my whole life pass before me, and my life kind
of changed at that point.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Its like, who cares? Why build a future if somebody's
just going to come take it from you just maintained
an existence.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
While Charlie and his siblings carried on, the city of
Wichita was still in shock. As Cake anker Larry Haddiberg says,
this was a level of violence that seemed inconceivable in
a small town like Wichita, Kansas.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
And that in itself, I think turned this quiet town
that never had anything happen into a town that for
a period of time was really on edge because they
didn't know what was going to happen next. They didn't
know who was going to be next, and it was
a terrifying time for an awful lot of people. Someone
(28:44):
killed four members of a family, two children and two adults,
and that had really never happened before in Wichita, particularly
the children. I mean, they've had double murders, but to
include the children in that, that was shocking to a
Kansas town. It just didn't happen here, and yet it did.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
But this was just the beginning. Over the next five years,
the killer would continue to terrorize witch It tak He
targeted dozens of women and stalked them at night. He
watched them come and go from work, and for many
of them, he broke into their homes and murdered them.
(29:31):
In the seventies alone, he killed seven people. But even
that wasn't enough for him. He also started writing taunting
letters to the media. Larry Hattiburd talks about one letter
that arrived to Cake. In February of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Eight, KTV received a postcard from someone who indicated that
they had information about the killing.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I will never forget this.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
into our mail room.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
How many people do have to kill before I get
my name in the paper or some national attention. I
am compelled to kill by factor X, the same factor
the motivated son of Sam in New York, Jack the
Ripper in London, and the Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles.
It seems senseless, but we cannot help it. There is
(30:32):
no help, no cure except death or being caught and
put away. A little paragraph in the newspaper would have
been enough.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
In one of these letters, he even named himself BTK,
which stands for buying torture Kill. Then, in April of
nineteen seventy nine, BTK seemingly disappear. He committed his last
murder and cut off all communication, or so we thought.
Speaker 7 (31:08):
For a period of time, everything just shut down, weird.
Nothing from BTK, not a word, and so all of
the rumors started to fly.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
What has happened to BTK? Is he dead? Is he incarcerated?
What's the deal with BTK?
Speaker 6 (31:24):
As suddenly as he appeared, he was simply gone. To outsiders,
it may have seemed as though Wichita had finally been
freed of its boogieman, but the presence of BTK was
always felt. I initially moved here in the eighties. People
no longer left their doors unlocked, and there were always
(31:45):
nervous whispers. No one felt safe in Wichita anymore.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
This was not a community that locked its door so
much after BTK. This was a community that locked its doors.
This is a community where young women were terrified. They
didn't go out alone at night. If they were going out,
they let everybody know where they were going and what
time they would be arriving.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
It turns out that feeling was justified because BTK hadn't
gone anywhere. He was just lain dormant, waiting for his
time to rise again. In this case, it would be
decades later. Fast forward to two thousand and four, when
(32:32):
this story culminated in one of the most dramatic turn
of events in Kansas history.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Eight minutes past.
Speaker 9 (32:44):
Now in decades after a serial killer terrorized Wichita, Kansas
cops say the case that was once cold may be
warm yet again. Today. Wichita paper says it received another
letter claiming responsibility for an eighth victim who was killed
in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
It was spring of two thousand and four. No one
had heard from BTK in twenty five years. Most of
us had moved on with our lives assuming he was gone.
But on March nineteenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita
Eagle received a letter from someone claiming to be Bill
Thomas Kilman initials BTK. In it, he claimed to have
(33:29):
killed a new victim. Investigators believe the letter is from
BTK because it has information about a two decade old
homicide link to BTK that only the killer would know.
At KTV, of course, this became our top story and
for a whole year it remained our top story because
the letters didn't stop there. A few months after this
(33:52):
first correspondence, a letter arrived at our TV station. A
letter received by KTV was turned over to us last Wednesday,
and we are treated as it possibly being sent by BTK.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
He started writing to us. He wrote to k TV
my employer. We knew that he was watching us every night,
which was a little terrifying, and for the female anchors
at our television station, it was getting pretty close because
we were concerned that he could strike them, that he
could kill them, make them a target.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
One of those people was me, as the most visible
female anchor at CAKE. I knew I was at high risk.
In fact, in one of his letters, BTK even mentioned
my name. This is from the BTK letter received on
February third, two thousand and five.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Thanks to the news team for their efforts. Sorry about
Susan and Jeff's coolds.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
During a newscast, I had mentioned on the air that
my co anchor and I were feeling under the weather.
Just two days later, this letter arrived. It hit me
like a punch to the gut, because that meant he
was watching me.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
So we had extra security on our on air females.
It was a terrifying time.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
I know.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
I would walk co anchor out to the station, out
to the parking lot every night and get her in
her card, just to make sure that there wasn't anybody
waiting around there. It was a scary time, particularly for
the women in our television.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Station throughout two thousand and four. In early two thousand
and five, BTK continued to send letters threatening to kill again,
presumably at random. His letters made it very clear he
was once again targeting women across Wichita. Here is his
letter from July seventeenth, two thousand and four, a poem id,
(36:01):
oh death to Nancy.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
I'll stuff your jaws till you can't talk. I'll bind
your legs till you can't walk. I'll tie your hands
still you can't make a stand. And finally I'll close
your eyes so you can't see. I'll bring sexual death
one too you for me.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
I mean it when I tell you every woman in
Wichita was scared to death. You can imagine how terrified
everybody was looking behind themselves wondering if they were going
to be next afraid to walk out of the grocery
store at night, afraid to be alone in their own homes.
Speaker 10 (36:48):
February twenty, fifteen, thousand and five. I was home. It's snowy,
and I see that dad. So I'm home in these
mint green fuzzy pajamas. It's like getting close to noon,
and I see this strange car parked out underneath this window.
It was maroon for a door, like a old cow
(37:08):
lac or something. You know, it seemed out of place.
It was parked there for a long time. I'm getting
scared because, like my dad had instilled such a stranger
danger fair into me. You know, be wary of strangers.
Don't let strange people into your house. Make them show
you their badge, you know, question their uniform if you're
not expecting them. I literally called my husband like once
(37:31):
or twice. I said, there's a strange car with a
man sitting in it. He's not moving. I don't know
what he's doing.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I said, should I.
Speaker 10 (37:39):
Call the police? It almost felt like he was there
for me. I hare a knock on my door, and
it was like something in me knew that the man
in the car was now on the other side of
the door, and then he said, on the other side
of the door, I'm with the FBI and I need
to question you. And so that can I see your
(38:00):
badge and so he like clashes his badge.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
It looks legit.
Speaker 10 (38:04):
He didn't have a gun, which I thought was weird.
BALI had was like a yellow legal pad and like
a pencil. It was a very small apartment, very narrow hallway,
and I remember I was comfortable enough that I turned
my back to him to walk the few steps into
the kitchen, and he just drops it. He's like, do
you know about BTK? And now I'm thinking, like what
(38:28):
I knew BTK had been active in like the seventies,
but I knew that BTK murdered women that lived alone.
So instantly I thought my dad's mom, Dorothea, had been
murdered because she was a widow and living alone. So
I instantly went there thinking, Grandma Dorothia has been murdered
by this BTK. So I said, is my grandma Okay?
(38:51):
He's perplexed. He's like, why is she talking to me
about Grandma? He's like, your grandma, she's fine, And then
he drops it.
Speaker 9 (38:59):
Your dad is.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 10 (39:10):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8 (39:16):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell there was a plan scenario.
Speaker 10 (39:24):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back.
Speaker 7 (39:38):
And then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 6 (39:41):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
(40:23):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing
support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts
and Caroline Origemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico,
(40:46):
original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and
the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(41:08):
Thanks for listening.
New episodes of Monster BTK are released every Monday and
brought to you absolutely free. But if you want to
hear the whole season right now, it's available ad free
on iHeart True Crime Plus. For more information, check out
the show notes. Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 2 (00:24):
You're listening to Monster BTK, a production of iHeart Podcasts
and Tenderfoot TV. Listener discretion is advised.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
I remember that day like it was yesterday. I was
walking home. The snow is knee deep and the wind
was blowing pretty hard, and I walked into the backyard.
Speaker 4 (00:51):
We had a wood fence with a gate, so I
went through the yard and.
Speaker 3 (00:55):
My dog, Lucky, he was outside in the snow and
he was never outside.
Speaker 4 (01:00):
I'm like, what are you doing out here?
Speaker 5 (01:01):
Boy?
Speaker 3 (01:02):
He looked at me and wagged his tail, and I
opened up a kitchen door and went into the back.
Speaker 4 (01:07):
When I walked to the house, I looked at the stove.
It had my mom's purse on it. All the stuff
was stowed out.
Speaker 3 (01:13):
That's not how my mom kept the house. She was
very adamant about keeping our house super clean. I yelled out,
anybody home, and I heard a voice yelled, Charlie, come quick,
Mom and Dad are playing a bad trick on us.
I ran down the hall and I could just sense
something was wrong already.
Speaker 4 (01:30):
I could just feel it.
Speaker 3 (01:32):
And I opened up the door and saw my mom
and my dad, and I saw my mom on the bed,
and my heart broke. It felt like somebody had actually
ripped my chest open and pulled my heart out. It
was a physical pain. I tried to undo the ropes
that were on him. My dad's tongue was half bit
off hanging. The ropes were so tight there was no
(01:56):
way to untie them.
Speaker 4 (01:59):
To this day, I can smell fear and death.
Speaker 3 (02:01):
I can smell fear on a person because when you
walked in the house, you could smell it.
Speaker 4 (02:07):
You could smell the death in the house.
Speaker 6 (02:15):
My name is Susan Peters. I'm a journalist and former
news anchor for Kake TV also known as Cake TV,
in Wichita, Kansas. I started out as a reporter in
Illinois and then anchored the news in San Diego. When
I moved to Kansas in nineteen eighty three, people would
(02:35):
ask me if I knew about the serial killer BTK.
At the time, I didn't know much, but my coworkers
told me about the seven people he killed in the
nineteen seventies. His first victims were the Otero family.
Speaker 3 (02:52):
We moved to Puerto Rico to stay with my grandparents
while my dad looked for his future. He just spent
twenty years of his life in the Air Force since
he was seventeen, and he was searching for the best opportunity.
My name is Charlie O'tero. I am a surviving son
of Joseph and Julia O'tero. One day he got ahold
(03:15):
of us and said, you're coming to Wichita. You'd found
the job here at a small airfield, Cook Airfield, And
we hopped on a plane and flew to Wichita. And
I left the beautiful tropical island of Puerto Rico and
landed in the wheatfields of Kansas and mill of snowstorm.
Speaker 4 (03:31):
And we were just getting used to the neighborhood. It
was totally different from what I was used to.
Speaker 6 (03:39):
It was January of nineteen seventy four. The Otero family
had recently moved into a small home at eight oh
three North Edgemore on the east side of Wichita. In
some ways, it was the picture perfect American dream, with
a fenced in backyard, for the children and the dog
to play in. The parent were Julie and Joseph and
(04:02):
they had five children from oldest to youngest. There was Charlie, Danny, Carmen,
Josephine nicknamed Josie, and Joseph Junior, who they also called Joey.
They were a close knit family, supported by two hard
working parents from Spanish Harlem in New York.
Speaker 3 (04:24):
You really hadn't got a chance to meet other people
in the neighborhood yet, and it was winter, so we
were pretty home bound and we just spent a lot
of time together. Don't get me wrong. We had our moments,
but there was always love in the house.
Speaker 5 (04:40):
Always.
Speaker 4 (04:41):
My mom didn't cause he was in the church. I mean,
she was a kind of woman that would bring orphans
home for Christmas to our house.
Speaker 6 (04:50):
Over the years, I've developed a deep relationship with Charlie.
He's told me all about his mother and how she
kept the family together. When they were new to Wichita.
Wichita was a quiet and calm town for the family
to settle into. It was a stable community, or so
it seemed. As the Otos made their home, evil was
(05:14):
brewing and it was about to boil over. A monster
was watching them, stalking them and learning their daily routine.
He knew when the mother, Julie, took the kids to
school each day, and he knew the exact time that
the father, Joseph Sr. Usually left for work. But on
(05:38):
the morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, the family
routine was different.
Speaker 3 (05:46):
I remember asking my father to take me to school
early that day. My mom used to usually give me
a ride because it was like two miles away Southeast
High from where we lived. That day, my dad stayed
home because he had an appointment with somebody or some thing,
and so he gave me a ride.
Speaker 4 (06:04):
He also took me to school early because I.
Speaker 3 (06:06):
Asked him to because it was finals day for the
nine week period and I wanted an extra study hall
to bone up a little bit more on some of
the classes I.
Speaker 4 (06:16):
Was taking tests in.
Speaker 3 (06:19):
And that's probably what saved me Ang, Danny, and Carmen's lives,
because they had to go with me.
Speaker 6 (06:26):
Joseph Otero Senior dropped his three eldest children off and
returned home in his wife's car. No matter how many
times I walk through this story, it's very hard to
talk about what happened next as Julie and joe Otaro
got their youngest Josie and Joey ready for school that day.
(06:51):
It was twenty degrees in Wichita and snow coated the
frozen ground. Around eight twenty am, as planned, the stalker
unlatched the door on the family's wooden gate and let
himself into the back yard of the Otero's home on
Edgemore Street. In the pockets of his jacket, he carried
(07:14):
rope Venetian blind cord, gags, white adhesive tape, plastic bags,
and a knife. The man inched slowly toward the back door.
He jiggled the door knob, but it was locked, so
instead he found a telephone line tacked to the outside
(07:34):
wall and cut it with a hunting knife. Just then,
the man heard the back door open, and he was
surprised to find a small boy looking directly at him.
This was nine year old Joey O'teraro. By the boy's
side was a large dog. As the man stood there,
(07:58):
he felt his plan start to unravel. Not only did
the family have a dog he hadn't planned for, but
the young boy was home, and as he soon learned,
the father was home as well. He panicked and pulled
out his gun. Inside, he found the mother and daughter.
The young girl began to cry. The man dealt with
(08:22):
the dog, first telling Joey to put him in the yard. Then,
still holding the family at gunpoint, he backed them into
the main bedroom and began to tie each of them up.
One by one, he killed each of them. He strangled
(08:42):
Joseph with a rolled up T shirt, followed by Julie
with a rope. The man struggled, he had never done
this before. The man then took Joseph Junior into a
different bedroom and strangled him as well. Finally, he took
eleven year old Josephine downstairs to the basement and hung
(09:04):
her from a sewage pipe. The man tried to cover
his tracks. He drove the Otaro's Vista cruiser to Dylan's
grocery store. Before he got out, he adjusted the seat
forward to disguise his height. Then he walked to his
own car down the street. He took inventory and realized
(09:24):
he had forgotten his knife. He drove back to the
house in his own car and picked up the knife. Quickly,
he sped off, and just like that, he was gone.
(09:51):
That afternoon, Charlie Otero was finishing up his finals two
miles away at Southeast High School. The school bell rang
and he walked home with a two younger siblings, Danny
and Carmen. They were expecting to reunite with the rest
of their family, as they had always done. They had
no idea what was waiting for them at home.
Speaker 3 (10:14):
I took all my tests, aced all of them, and
then I was walking home. I remember walking through the snow,
thinking this really sucks. Kansas sucks. I get across the
street from my house. The garage door was up and
the car was gone. So I'm like, here's my chance
to rag my mom. Because I never get to rag
(10:36):
my mom. You didn't get to say anything bad to her,
and this is my chance to say, why do you
the garage door open? Now I got to clean the
snow out, so I'm already practicing my spiel.
Speaker 6 (10:45):
This is when Charlie and his siblings entered the home
to the gruesome scene you heard about at the top
of the episode. I can imagine the horror as they
pieced together that their parents were not in fact playing
a cruel trick on them, the fear as they figured
out what to do next.
Speaker 4 (11:09):
You try to use a phone. It was dead.
Speaker 3 (11:11):
Me and Danny and Carmen went outside and I told
Danny to go next door to the neighbor's house and
use their phone to call the police. And we waited
outside together in the snow, huddled up, and a police
officer came and he goes, what's going on here?
Speaker 4 (11:27):
I said, go inside, you'll see.
Speaker 6 (11:30):
Officers Robert Bulla and Jim Lindeberg of the Wichita Police
Department arrived at the Otero household at three forty two pm.
The police report describes what the officers initially found. Read
here by a voice actor.
Speaker 2 (11:48):
Officers checked the bedrooms. The door to the southwest bedroom
stood halfway open. The officers pushed the door open and
saw a man on the floor. A cut white rope
and a butcher's knife were on the floor next to them,
and the woman was on the bed. The woman's legs
were bent and hanging over the edge of the bed.
The officers noticed blood on her nose and mouth. Officer
(12:09):
Bulla found no pulse. The woman's hands appeared to be
tied behind her back. A white cloth gag covered with
blood was found next to her head.
Speaker 6 (12:20):
Officers Bulla and Lindabergh found Joseph and Julie in the
main bedroom. They radio dispatch two possible homicide victims. Then
Officer Lindenburgh left the house to check back in with
the children.
Speaker 3 (12:36):
He came back out and looked at me and said,
could your father have done this? I knew what he
was insinuating right away. He was insinuating that.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
My dad had come home and found my mom with
another man.
Speaker 3 (12:47):
Because my dad was dark, dark, dark, almost Negro, and
my mom was white, white, white, as white as you
can be without.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
Being seen through. My Dad's in there, his hands tied
and he's dead. How could he have killed himself and
tied himself up? I knew it was insinuating. I had
that knife in my hand when he said that, and
I almost stuck.
Speaker 5 (13:05):
It in him.
Speaker 4 (13:06):
And at that instant I lost all respect for authority.
I hated the police. I hated the world.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
At that moment when I first saw my mother, I
lost my religion instantly.
Speaker 4 (13:18):
I hated God.
Speaker 3 (13:19):
We were in a state of shock, and I kept
telling the police officer I said, I got to stop
Joey and Josie.
Speaker 4 (13:25):
From coming home.
Speaker 3 (13:27):
He called the station and had a bunch of cops coming,
and I told himself, I do not want Joey and
Josie to get here and see all these cops.
Speaker 4 (13:33):
And I want him here with me.
Speaker 3 (13:35):
Now, I knew it was my job to take over
and take care of my siblings, and I didn't know
Joey and Josie in the house, so I.
Speaker 4 (13:42):
Kept telling him I need Joey and Josie with me,
over and over.
Speaker 6 (13:44):
Again, seemingly, all of Whichitas police force made their way
to the Otero household on North Edgemore in what was
generally a quiet neighborhood, to begin solving a quadruple homage side.
The children told the officers that when they arrived home
to find their parents, they attempted to cut the ropes
(14:08):
and desperately tried to perform CPR. As Officer Bulla interviewed
the Otero children, Lieutenant Jack Watkins arrived at the house.
It was he and Officer Bulla who discovered little Joey
in the upstairs bedroom and Josie in the basement. Here
again is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2 (14:31):
While Officer Bulla was outside of the home, Lieutenant Jack
Watkins discovered the body of Joseph Otero Junior in another
upstairs bedroom. Lieutenant Watkins and Officer Bulla searched the rest
of the home. Josephino Taro was found in the northwest
storage area of the basement. Josephino Taro was hanging by
a rope that had been tied to a sewer pipe.
(14:54):
A white cloth was tied around her mouth. Josephino Taro
was wearing a blue, short sleeved knit sweater and was
naked from the waist down.
Speaker 6 (15:05):
As the eldest, Charlie pleaded for answers about his little
sister and brother, Josie and Joey. It's Charlie's nature to
protect his family, and he wanted to protect the two
youngest from what the three of them had already seen.
Speaker 3 (15:22):
I kept telling him when we got to the police station,
I kept saying, where's Joey and Josie. I need him
here now, I need him here now. I can't even
tell you how long we were there. It could have
been an hour, it could have been ten hours, it
could have been ten seconds. At that point, the world
is upside down inside out for me. Finally, police chaplain
pulled me over and says, Charlie.
Speaker 4 (15:41):
We got to tell you Joey and Josie were in
the house. They're dead too. After that, I pretty much
went blank.
Speaker 6 (15:52):
Back in East which a tall local police officers, detectives,
and other officials were gathered in mass at the Oteo household.
They immediately set up a headquarters in the school across
the street from the Otero home. The police report states
that Chief of Police Floyd Hannon assigned ten teams of
(16:12):
detectives to investigate the murders and search for the family's
missing car. Again. Here is an excerpt from the police report.
Speaker 2 (16:23):
At five forty six pm, Detective Lewis Brown located the
Otero car in the parking lot of the Dylan's Grocery
store at Central and Oliver. The keys to the Beiges
nineteen sixty six Oldsmobile Vista Cruiser were missing. Steve Christian,
the brother of the former owner of the Otto home,
reported seeing the car backing out of the driveway at
(16:44):
approximately ten thirty am.
Speaker 6 (16:47):
At the Otero home. Officer Bulla assisted lab director Ron
Eggleston in processing the scene. Notably, Eggleston found stains on
the concrete floor directly in front of young Josephine in
the basement. He collected samples of those stains. The local
(17:10):
newspapers and television stations caught wind of the killings and
also set up shop by the O'to home. They had
very little to go on.
Speaker 7 (17:21):
Back in that day and to this day, we monitor
the police frequencies, the fire frequencies and that type of thing.
We didn't know what had happened, but we knew that
they had sent a lot of detectives to this one
particular address in East Wichita. Nobody was talking about it
on the frequencies that we were monitoring, so we didn't
(17:43):
know what was going on, but we thought, you know,
there's something going on there, and I was sent out
to see what was happening.
Speaker 6 (17:51):
This is my longtime colleague and friend Larry Hatdiberg, who
was on the scene reporting for KKE TV on the
day the Otaros were murdered.
Speaker 7 (18:01):
None of the detectives, no one would talk to me.
They just say, you know, we'll have information later, But
no one would talk to me. And it was until
hours and hours and hours after I arrived that we
found out that there were four dead bodies inside the house.
Speaker 4 (18:19):
And it wasn't.
Speaker 7 (18:20):
Until later that we found out that two of those
bodies were children, and it was shocking. All we knew
is that some crazy person had gone in and killed
an entire family. That was the shocking part that just
didn't happen in Wichita, Kansas. Even the police department, I think,
were shocked by the murder. They never had really a
(18:43):
murder of that size happened before.
Speaker 6 (18:46):
Detectives went to work studying the crime scene. For ten days,
seventy five officers and detectives worked eighteen hours a day.
At the end of the first week, sleep deprived, out
of energy and out of ideas, the police and all
of Wichita were left with the same questions.
Speaker 7 (19:10):
We wondered, what kind of crazy person do we have?
Is it somebody on drugs that did it, as somebody
who had a vendetta against this people.
Speaker 6 (19:22):
During the investigation, police Chief Floyd Hannen held press conferences
at least twice a day where he would disclose specifics,
speculate about motives and possible suspects. Newspapers like the Wichita
Eagle and The Beacon covered every development. The police began
(19:42):
with a handful of different possibilities. The first was that
the killer could be someone within the family, as Officer
Bullet suggested to Charlie upon initially securing the scene. Investigators
quickly ruled that theory out. The second was that there
was a possible drug connection. Chief Hannon himself flew to
(20:04):
Panama and to Puerto Rico to follow this idea. The
third was that someone was out to get Julie.
Speaker 8 (20:12):
Usually there's a connection of something, and in this particular case,
there was no connection. We didn't know anything. What caused this,
what's the background of the Oteo's, who would do this?
What was it? The investigators their immediate reaction was this
was a revenge killing of some kind, whether it be
(20:32):
drug related, whether it be a business thing. We didn't
know what it was. My name is Richard Lamunion. I'm
currently the city manager for the City of Maze. At
the time of the Otero murders, I was a member
of the Witchdaw Police Department. I joined the department in
nineteen sixty three. I was a police chief from nineteen
(20:54):
seventy six through nineteen eighty nine.
Speaker 6 (20:58):
Leamunion says they did have very much to go on
at the start of the investigation, but that from the
get go police could tell this had not been a
random killing.
Speaker 8 (21:09):
It was a planned scenario. There was a script at
least if not written in this individual's mind. Are individuals.
We didn't know if it was one two or twenty two,
but there was definitely a plan premeditated and that's why
it threw us back to this has to be a revenge.
(21:29):
The Chief authorized some of the detectives to make some trips.
One of them was even made to Mexico, so there
were some special efforts made. It's not unusual to send
out detectives and things to other places, but when you
send them out of the country or something, that's unusual.
Speaker 6 (21:52):
A week had passed since the Otero murders, and the
investigators assigned to the case weren't getting any answers. Chief
Hannah pulled out all the stops, signing off on any
and all ideas detectives came up with for solving the murders.
One night, detectives Gary Caldwell and Bernie Drowotsky hired a
(22:12):
psychic to stay in the house with police. The detectives
were desperate, and the psychic had claimed she helped solve
a crime by leading police to a body and a trunk.
One overnight, stay with the psychic later, and Caldwell and
Drowatsky still had nothing to bring back to Chief Hannan.
(22:33):
With each lead running into a dead end, pressure was
mounting on the department as the community feared what would
come next. The officers themselves struggled to come to terms
with the tragedy. Lemonnion describes the department's turmoil as they
worked the case.
Speaker 8 (22:51):
You know, police officers, even though you deal with tragedy
every day and everything, you're still a human being. When
you see a situation like this, you see the victims
laying there with plastic bags over their head, strangled, and
then you see children. In your mind you think back, well,
I have children, I have sisters, I have brothers, I
(23:13):
have other things. So it does impact you, but you
can't let that influence you at the time.
Speaker 6 (23:20):
The first week of the investigation was difficult. In hindsight,
we can say that the Witchital Police Department was not
equipped to deal with this kind of murder in nineteen
seventy four. In fact, they made multiple mistakes. Someone in
the department lost several crime scene photos and most of
the autopsy photos. Through crime scene photographs, they discovered that
(23:44):
a responding officer opened to the Otero freezer and left
the ice tray on the counter. This mistake set the
department back as they worked to piece together the timeline
of the crime. Yet, there was one big thing that
the investigators did correctly on the first day.
Speaker 8 (24:08):
When it came to preserving evidence. You know, we had
preserved evidence before. In this particular case, there was semen
found on the little girl in the basement where he
had literally brushed up against her, and there was a
little bit of her leg. Now, how do you preserve that?
And this is nineteen seventy four. We didn't have computers,
we didn't have DNA, we didn't have any.
Speaker 4 (24:29):
Of that stuff.
Speaker 8 (24:30):
However, our crime investigation unit, what they ended up doing
was they did three things. Number One, they dried part
of it, they kept part of it and fluid, and
then they froze part of it, all three of them.
Speaker 6 (24:47):
As the investigation unfolded, tensions were understandably high in the city.
The close knit community of Wichita was starting to fall apart.
People were becoming suspicious of their names, fearing that the
killer could live next door. Following the murder, the O'tero
(25:17):
children were once again swept off to a new location,
leaving a city in which they had not spent long
enough to consider home, one that would remind them only
of darkness for decades to come.
Speaker 3 (25:33):
We had known a family in Panama that was stationed
at McConnell, Sergeant Joques. So we called them up and
they said, yeah, I get your butts over here. So
police took us to McConnell. I remember being in the
Jaquesz house with armed guards all around, and I remember
getting a phone call and it was Senator Kennedy's office.
(25:55):
He was determined the Armed Forces Committe at that time,
and they called and said, well, what can we do
for you?
Speaker 4 (26:01):
I told him, I.
Speaker 3 (26:01):
Said, I have four bodies to bury, and I don't
want him in Wichita. I'll be damned if I'm bury
my family here in Wichita. So he said, what do
you want to do. I said, I want my family
buried in Puerto Rico. And he said done, And they
buried my family in a national military cemetery in Puerto Rico,
in my dad's hometown of Santurse.
Speaker 6 (26:20):
At just fifteen years old, Charlie took on this responsibility,
shouldering the immense weight of this tragedy. Out of love
for his siblings.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
I kept telling myself, you know, if I came on glued,
what would Danny and Carmen do. I had to be
that pillar of strength for them to hold on to
because we.
Speaker 4 (26:41):
Didn't have anything at that point. You got to remember, we.
Speaker 3 (26:43):
Had just spent our whole lives as the family unit,
traveling all over and now there wasn't one.
Speaker 4 (26:49):
We had no mom.
Speaker 3 (26:51):
One minute, my mom is bringing orphans and giving him
my bedroom for Christmas, and the next minute, I'm the orphan.
So I got on the phone. I called my uncle John.
He became my guardian, our guardian. To this day, I'm
still very close to them in the family.
Speaker 4 (27:06):
He was there. The next day I called them.
Speaker 3 (27:09):
They got in the car and drove straight to Wichita
from New Mexico from Albuquerque. And that's when our life
turned around again.
Speaker 6 (27:18):
After the funeral, the surviving Otarot children tried to settle
into life in New Mexico with their parents and siblings gone.
It was understandably difficult to adjust.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
We had a hard time. PTSD was kicking in, Danny
was acting up. I started racing motorcycles to release my aggression.
I was very aggressive, very careless with my life, with
my body.
Speaker 4 (27:44):
I got in a bike wreck right.
Speaker 3 (27:46):
After I graduated from high school and I had a
handlebar go through my helmet and down my throat. Saw
my whole life pass before me, and my life kind
of changed at that point.
Speaker 4 (27:54):
Its like, who cares? Why build a future if somebody's
just going to come take it from you just maintained
an existence.
Speaker 6 (28:06):
While Charlie and his siblings carried on, the city of
Wichita was still in shock. As Cake anker Larry Haddiberg says,
this was a level of violence that seemed inconceivable in
a small town like Wichita, Kansas.
Speaker 7 (28:22):
And that in itself, I think turned this quiet town
that never had anything happen into a town that for
a period of time was really on edge because they
didn't know what was going to happen next. They didn't
know who was going to be next, and it was
a terrifying time for an awful lot of people. Someone
(28:44):
killed four members of a family, two children and two adults,
and that had really never happened before in Wichita, particularly
the children. I mean, they've had double murders, but to
include the children in that, that was shocking to a
Kansas town. It just didn't happen here, and yet it did.
Speaker 6 (29:11):
But this was just the beginning. Over the next five years,
the killer would continue to terrorize witch It tak He
targeted dozens of women and stalked them at night. He
watched them come and go from work, and for many
of them, he broke into their homes and murdered them.
(29:31):
In the seventies alone, he killed seven people. But even
that wasn't enough for him. He also started writing taunting
letters to the media. Larry Hattiburd talks about one letter
that arrived to Cake. In February of nineteen seventy.
Speaker 7 (29:50):
Eight, KTV received a postcard from someone who indicated that
they had information about the killing.
Speaker 4 (30:00):
I will never forget this.
Speaker 7 (30:02):
It was a Saturday morning and the postcard had come
into our mail room.
Speaker 5 (30:07):
How many people do have to kill before I get
my name in the paper or some national attention. I
am compelled to kill by factor X, the same factor
the motivated son of Sam in New York, Jack the
Ripper in London, and the Hillside Strangler in Los Angeles.
It seems senseless, but we cannot help it. There is
(30:32):
no help, no cure except death or being caught and
put away. A little paragraph in the newspaper would have
been enough.
Speaker 6 (30:42):
In one of these letters, he even named himself BTK,
which stands for buying torture Kill. Then, in April of
nineteen seventy nine, BTK seemingly disappear. He committed his last
murder and cut off all communication, or so we thought.
Speaker 7 (31:08):
For a period of time, everything just shut down, weird.
Nothing from BTK, not a word, and so all of
the rumors started to fly.
Speaker 4 (31:17):
What has happened to BTK? Is he dead? Is he incarcerated?
What's the deal with BTK?
Speaker 6 (31:24):
As suddenly as he appeared, he was simply gone. To outsiders,
it may have seemed as though Wichita had finally been
freed of its boogieman, but the presence of BTK was
always felt. I initially moved here in the eighties. People
no longer left their doors unlocked, and there were always
(31:45):
nervous whispers. No one felt safe in Wichita anymore.
Speaker 7 (31:51):
This was not a community that locked its door so
much after BTK. This was a community that locked its doors.
This is a community where young women were terrified. They
didn't go out alone at night. If they were going out,
they let everybody know where they were going and what
time they would be arriving.
Speaker 6 (32:10):
It turns out that feeling was justified because BTK hadn't
gone anywhere. He was just lain dormant, waiting for his
time to rise again. In this case, it would be
decades later. Fast forward to two thousand and four, when
(32:32):
this story culminated in one of the most dramatic turn
of events in Kansas history.
Speaker 4 (32:43):
Eight minutes past.
Speaker 9 (32:44):
Now in decades after a serial killer terrorized Wichita, Kansas
cops say the case that was once cold may be
warm yet again. Today. Wichita paper says it received another
letter claiming responsibility for an eighth victim who was killed
in nineteen eighty six.
Speaker 6 (33:02):
It was spring of two thousand and four. No one
had heard from BTK in twenty five years. Most of
us had moved on with our lives assuming he was gone.
But on March nineteenth, two thousand and four, the Wichita
Eagle received a letter from someone claiming to be Bill
Thomas Kilman initials BTK. In it, he claimed to have
(33:29):
killed a new victim. Investigators believe the letter is from
BTK because it has information about a two decade old
homicide link to BTK that only the killer would know.
At KTV, of course, this became our top story and
for a whole year it remained our top story because
the letters didn't stop there. A few months after this
(33:52):
first correspondence, a letter arrived at our TV station. A
letter received by KTV was turned over to us last Wednesday,
and we are treated as it possibly being sent by BTK.
Speaker 7 (34:06):
He started writing to us. He wrote to k TV
my employer. We knew that he was watching us every night,
which was a little terrifying, and for the female anchors
at our television station, it was getting pretty close because
we were concerned that he could strike them, that he
could kill them, make them a target.
Speaker 6 (34:30):
One of those people was me, as the most visible
female anchor at CAKE. I knew I was at high risk.
In fact, in one of his letters, BTK even mentioned
my name. This is from the BTK letter received on
February third, two thousand and five.
Speaker 5 (34:50):
Thanks to the news team for their efforts. Sorry about
Susan and Jeff's coolds.
Speaker 6 (34:58):
During a newscast, I had mentioned on the air that
my co anchor and I were feeling under the weather.
Just two days later, this letter arrived. It hit me
like a punch to the gut, because that meant he
was watching me.
Speaker 7 (35:15):
So we had extra security on our on air females.
It was a terrifying time.
Speaker 5 (35:21):
I know.
Speaker 7 (35:22):
I would walk co anchor out to the station, out
to the parking lot every night and get her in
her card, just to make sure that there wasn't anybody
waiting around there. It was a scary time, particularly for
the women in our television.
Speaker 6 (35:36):
Station throughout two thousand and four. In early two thousand
and five, BTK continued to send letters threatening to kill again,
presumably at random. His letters made it very clear he
was once again targeting women across Wichita. Here is his
letter from July seventeenth, two thousand and four, a poem id,
(36:01):
oh death to Nancy.
Speaker 5 (36:04):
I'll stuff your jaws till you can't talk. I'll bind
your legs till you can't walk. I'll tie your hands
still you can't make a stand. And finally I'll close
your eyes so you can't see. I'll bring sexual death
one too you for me.
Speaker 6 (36:26):
I mean it when I tell you every woman in
Wichita was scared to death. You can imagine how terrified
everybody was looking behind themselves wondering if they were going
to be next afraid to walk out of the grocery
store at night, afraid to be alone in their own homes.
Speaker 10 (36:48):
February twenty, fifteen, thousand and five. I was home. It's snowy,
and I see that dad. So I'm home in these
mint green fuzzy pajamas. It's like getting close to noon,
and I see this strange car parked out underneath this window.
It was maroon for a door, like a old cow
(37:08):
lac or something. You know, it seemed out of place.
It was parked there for a long time. I'm getting
scared because, like my dad had instilled such a stranger
danger fair into me. You know, be wary of strangers.
Don't let strange people into your house. Make them show
you their badge, you know, question their uniform if you're
not expecting them. I literally called my husband like once
(37:31):
or twice. I said, there's a strange car with a
man sitting in it. He's not moving. I don't know
what he's doing.
Speaker 2 (37:38):
I said, should I.
Speaker 10 (37:39):
Call the police? It almost felt like he was there
for me. I hare a knock on my door, and
it was like something in me knew that the man
in the car was now on the other side of
the door, and then he said, on the other side
of the door, I'm with the FBI and I need
to question you. And so that can I see your
(38:00):
badge and so he like clashes his badge.
Speaker 7 (38:03):
It looks legit.
Speaker 10 (38:04):
He didn't have a gun, which I thought was weird.
BALI had was like a yellow legal pad and like
a pencil. It was a very small apartment, very narrow hallway,
and I remember I was comfortable enough that I turned
my back to him to walk the few steps into
the kitchen, and he just drops it. He's like, do
you know about BTK? And now I'm thinking, like what
(38:28):
I knew BTK had been active in like the seventies,
but I knew that BTK murdered women that lived alone.
So instantly I thought my dad's mom, Dorothea, had been
murdered because she was a widow and living alone. So
I instantly went there thinking, Grandma Dorothia has been murdered
by this BTK. So I said, is my grandma Okay?
(38:51):
He's perplexed. He's like, why is she talking to me
about Grandma? He's like, your grandma, she's fine, And then
he drops it.
Speaker 9 (38:59):
Your dad is.
Speaker 7 (39:07):
Someone killed four members of a family.
Speaker 10 (39:10):
Had you vanished from her home suddenly last weekend? Her
phone lines had been cut, her door left open.
Speaker 8 (39:16):
You see the victim playing there with plastic bags over
their heads, strangled. You could tell there was a plan scenario.
Speaker 10 (39:24):
Well, police have said no more about the contents of
the letter. It does contain some sort of threat and
implies the killer may strike again.
Speaker 4 (39:31):
He's going to play with these victims.
Speaker 2 (39:34):
He'd get him to the point of death and then
bring them back.
Speaker 7 (39:38):
And then brings them back to the point of death.
Speaker 6 (39:41):
From My Heart Podcasts and Tenderfoot TV. I'm Susan Peters
and this is Monster BTK.
Speaker 2 (39:58):
Monster BTK is a production of Tenderfoot TV and iHeart Podcasts.
The show is written by Nomes Griffin, Trevor Young and
Jesse Funk. Our host is Susan Peters. Executive producers on
Behalf of Tenderfoot TV include Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay,
alongside supervising producer Tracy Kaplan. Executive producers on Behalf of
(40:23):
iHeart Podcasts include Matt Frederick and Trevor Young, alongside producers
Nomes Griffin and Jesse Funk and supervising Producerrima Ilkali. Marketing
support by David Wasserman and Alison Wright at iHeart Podcasts
and Caroline Origemma at Tenderfoot TV. Auditional research by Claudia Dafrico,
(40:46):
original artwork by Kevin Mister Soul Harp, original music by
Makeup and Vanity Set. Special thanks to Orrin Rosenbaum and
the team at UTA and the Nord Group. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio and Tenderfoot TV, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
(41:08):
Thanks for listening.
Host
Susan Peters
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