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Dennis Rader - BTK killer - A biography
Childhood, Adolescence, Adulthood pre-1974
Dennis Rader was born in a quiet corner of Kansas, close to where
Kansas, Oklahoma and Missouri all meet, on March 9, 1945. He was the
first of four sons born to William and Dorothea Rader. He was baptized
at Zion Lutheran Church in Pittsburg, Kansas. His father was a member of
the US Marine Corps, who later worked for the electric utility KG&E
starting in 1948. The family moved to the largest city in Kansas,
Wichita, when Dennis was a young boy. The Raders settled into a modest
but pleasant home at 4815 N. Seneca, which remained continually as a
Rader household until sold in 2005.
Not much is known about Rader's childhood. Is said to have joined
the Boy Scouts as a youth. He attended Riverview Elementary School. By
his own admission, he says he developed fantasies about bondage, control
and torture from an early age, while still in grade school. As he became
pubic he dreamed of tying girls up and having his way with them. The
Mouseketeer Annette Funicello was one of his favorite targets for
imaginary bondage. He admits to having killed cats and dogs such as by
hanging them as a youth.
Those who knew him personally describe a quiet and polite young man
who preferred to keep to himself. Dennis Rader was not a joiner or known
to be very socially active in high school. The young Dennis showed no
interest in the music of the times. One friend described him as utterly
lacking a sense of humor, but tending to be studious and focused. He was
described as a person who chose his words before speaking, and who would
give you his full attention as he spoke.
Dennis Rader graduated from Wichita Heights High School, class of
1963. In his latter adolescence he appears to have had employment, such
as working in a grocery store. It wasn't until the fall of 1965 that he
entered Kansas Wesleyan College in Salina, too far away from Wichita to
live at home. He only did two semesters there. In the summer of 1966 at
age 21 Rader joined the US Air Force.
Rader was first sent to Lackland Air Force Base in San Antonio,
Texas for basic training. He spent time at Sheppard Air Force Base in
Wichita Falls, Texas while doing technical training there. In early 1967
Rader was stationed at Brookley Air Force Base in Mobile, Alabama and
appears to have been there until January, 1968, when he was sent to
Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa in the west Pacific. (Keep in mind that
Air Force personnel typically travel quite a bit regardless of where
they are based.)
Rader remained stationed in tropical Okinawa for six months. In July
1968 he was moved to mainland Japan, stationed at the large Tachikawa
Air Base located near Tokyo. He appears to have been based there until
the end of his service in 1970. By his own description, he also spent
time in Korea, Greece and Turkey while serving in the Air Force.
Rader's four years on active duty in the Air Force appear to have
been unremarkble. He attained the rank of sargeant and worked in the
installation of antenna equipment, among other tasks. One former buddy
from those times was totally shocked when he found out Rader was BTK in
2005.
Dennis was just one of the guys, he said, just sort of blended in.
Rader received the Air Force Good Conduct Medal, the Small Arms Expert
Marksmanship Ribbon and the National Defense Service Medal, was
discharged from active duty in the summer of 1970 and returned to his
home town of Wichita, Kansas. He would serve two more years in the
reserves.
Less than a year after his return to Wichita, on May 22, 1971 Dennis
Rader and Paula Dietz were married. Paula was also from the same area
and had attended the same high school. She was also a fellow Lutheran.
Dennis was 26, Paula was 23 when they got married. They settled in Park
City, not far from the Rader home in north Wichita. Dennis was working
in the meat department of an IGA supermarket, Paula was a bookkeeper.
In 1972 Rader went to work at the Coleman Co., a manufacturer of
camping supplies and Wichita's largest employer at the time. He lasted
13 months there until July 1973. He was also attending Butler County
Community College in El Dorado, and earned an Associate's (2 year)
degree in Electronics in 1973.
In the fall of 1973 Rader began his studies at Wichita State
University. It would take him six more years of night school to earn his
degree. He was a poor student, even by his own description, a chronic C
minus or D level. He couldn't spell and may have had a learning
disability reflected in his unusually bad written grammar.
In late 1973 or early 1974 he appears to have had a brief stint
working for Cessna, the aircraft manufacturer, but says he was fired
from that job. He found himself in a low frame of mind, unemployed,
unhappy, with time on his hands. He slipped deeper into the fantasy
world he had known since childhood and wanted to know: what would it
feel like to strangle somebody to death?
1974
In January, 1974 Dennis Rader was in between jobs and restless. His
wife worked at the VA Hospital in Wichita and didn't like driving in
snow and ice, so Dennis would sometimes drive her to and from work.
He enjoyed "trolling", which consisted of driving or walking around
certain neighborhoods or school campuses where there would be women to
observe. He would focus in on a good prospect and enter into his fantasy
realm of bondage, torture and death, imagining what he would do to her.
Bind them, torture them, kill them.
There was a new Hispanic family that had moved into a corner house
at Edgemoor and Murdock, and one day while dropping Paula off he spied
Julie Otero, age 34, and her daughter Josephine, age 11. He had a thing
for Hispanic women, admired their beauty and dark hair.
Rader devised a plan. He gathered together his hit kit, consisting
of a gun, cords, knives, various tools for breaking and entering. He
observed the Otero house for a time, getting an idea of when people left
or returned, what their daily schedule was like.
On the morning of January 15, he could wait no longer. After 8 a.m.
he came around the house, snuck into the yard and cut the phone line.
Hesitating at the back door, unsure if he could go through with it, he
barged in. Things were not as he had expected.
The man of the house, Joe Otero, 38, was still home, as were Julie,
Josephine and Joey, the 9 year old son. Their rather vicious dog was in
the house also. Rader seized control of the situation, ordering Joey to
put the dog in the back yard at gunpoint. He somehow was able to control
all four people using the gun. He told them he was a wanted criminal and
needed money, food and a car to escape.
At first Joe was dumbfounded and asked him if this was some kind of
a joke set up by his brother-in-law. Rader ordered everyone to lie down
in the living room, then changed his mind and sent them all into a
bedroom. Using his vagrant ruse, he was able to disalarm the Oteros
enough to get them all tied up.
However everything changed when Rader put a bag over Joe's head. Joe
fought hard, tearing holes in the bag. Rader had to devise a cord
ligature to subdue him and kill him.
He attempted to manually strangle Julie, but it took considerably
longer and much more effort to strangle someone than it did in the
movies. Julie passed out, but revived after a time. The second
strangulation attempt worked. She had begged Rader not to kill the
children, and told him, "God have mercy on your soul".
Nine year old Joey was the next one to die. Rader herded him into
his bedroom and did him in through strangulation and suffocation. He
apparently rolled off the bed and died facedown on the bedroom floor.
Rader says he brought a chair into the bedroom and sat there to watch
the boy die.
Eleven year old Josie was the final one. After a failed attempt at
strangulation she revived. Rader forced her to walk down to the basement.
He put a noose around her neck and informed her she would be going to
heaven to join the others.
He had asked her for a camera, but she said they didn't have one.
Josie was hanged from a sewer pipe in the basement, left partially
disrobed. Rader then masturbated over her bare legs, leaving some semen
on the pipe behind her.
Afterwards Rader tidied up a bit, collected his things and left
after a time. He took Joe's watch and a small radio. He got into their
Oldsmobile station wagon, backed out onto Murdock Street and nearly had
a collision with an oncoming vehicle. Rader drove to a nearby
supermarket, Dillon's, and parked the car.
A lady saw him exiting the car shaking like a leaf. He stealthily
tossed the car keys onto the roof of Dillon's and exited the area on
foot. After that he claims he walked to his own car, but realized his
knife was missing. He claims to have driven back to the Otero house,
parked his car in their garage, and then retrieved the knife from the
yard.
Rader had no idea that the Oteros had three other older children,
all of whom had left for school before his arrival. Charlie, 15, Daniel,
14 and Carmen, 13 were the ones who found their parents dead when they
arrived home from school that afternoon. (Photo and a story of the
surviving Oteros from KSN.com).
In April, 1974 Rader was stalking a woman named Kathryn Bright, 21.
He had seen her one day entering the home she rented in Wichita. On
April 4 he broke into the home via the back porch door. He hid in a
bedroom.
Around 2 pm Kathryn arrived home, accompanied by her brother Kevin
who was 19 years old. Kevin didn't live there, but had gone with his
sister that day to the bank. Rader startled them by emerging from the
bedroom pointing a gun at them.
He recited the same story he had told the Oteros, he was a wanted
criminal from California on his way to New York, and needed a car and
money. Rader forced the two of them in a bedroom, where Kathryn was tied
up by Kevin forced at gunpoint and/or by Rader himself.
He attempted to tie Kevin up in another room, but he hadn't brought
his best hit kit materials that day and had to improvise from materials
found in the home. Kevin worked his way loose and got into a vicious
fight for his life with Rader, nearly succeeding in taking the gun from
him.
Rader grabbed back the gun and got off a shot that hit Kevin in the
face. Still fighting, Kevin made one more attempt to overpower Rader but
got shot a second time in the head. Stunned and bleeding, Kevin appeared
to be dead or dying and Rader went back to work on Kathryn.
She gave him a powerful fight also, but in order to end the scene
quickly Rader switched from attempted strangulation to stabbing, getting
her with deep cuts to the abdomen and other areas.
Meanwhile Kevin had revived and ran out of the house screaming for
help. This necessitated Rader having to make a hasty exit, and he did,
running from the scene on foot. He ran the many blocks to where his car
was parked and drove off. He was all cleaned up by the time his wife got
off work, and no one suspected him.
Kathryn died in the hospital a few hours later despite urgent
attempts to save her with surgery and blood transfusions. Kevin was left
in critical condition with his head wounds but survived. He still bears
the damage done to him that day. (Photo and a story about Kevin
Bright from CNN.com).
In October, 1974 an editor of the Wichita Eagle newspaper received a
phone call directing him to a letter hidden in an engineering book at
the Wichita Public Library. He notified police instead, who found the
letter at the library. It was a gruesome description of the unsolved
Otero murders by someone with a good knowledge of the crime scene.
It was written in poor English with numerous misspellings. The
writer was concerned that the police had recently arrested the wrong men
for the Otero murders, and proudly proclaimed, " I did it myself
with noone's help". He said, "the code words for me will be...
Bind them, toture them, kill them, B.T.K..."
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