July 22, 2026

50 Shades of Evil: KANSAS - “BTK” Dennis Rader

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series For more than three decades, Wichita, Kansas lived under the shadow of a killer who named himself. He called himself BTK—Bind, Torture, Kill—and he made sure the police and the public never forgot it. Between 1974 and 1991,...

Show Notes
Transcript

Part 1 of a 2 Part Series
For more than three decades, Wichita, Kansas lived under the shadow of a killer who named himself. He called himself BTK—Bind, Torture, Kill—and he made sure the police and the public never forgot it. Between 1974 and 1991, Dennis Rader murdered at least ten people, often in their own homes, binding them, torturing them, and strangling or suffocating them while living a completely ordinary suburban life.
This episode traces the full arc of the BTK case: the brutal first murders of the Otero family in 1974, the years of taunting letters and packages, the long silences that turned the case into one of America’s most infamous cold cases, and the arrogant return to communication in 2004 that finally undid him. We’ll examine how a single floppy disk and a digital metadata trail led investigators straight to a church computer… and how familial DNA sealed the identification.
It’s the story of a man who believed he could control everything—his victims, the police, the narrative—until one careless slip proved him wrong. A deep dive into the double life, the psychology of control, and the painstaking investigation that finally stopped BTK.

Timestamps
00:38 BTK’s Hidden Childhood
02:45 The Otero Murders
06:06 Early Signs of Obsession
12:10 The Double Life Deepens
18:19 First Kill Revealed
19:42 The Otero Home Attack
26:07 Catherine Bright’s Fight
32:29 Shirley Vian’s Final Hours
35:40 Nancy Fox and BTK
42:35 The Next Victim Awaits

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Hey everyone, and welcome back to Bloody Angola. I'm your host,

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Jim Chapman, and today we are continuing with the fifty

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Shades of Evil series and we're going to be traveling

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to the heart of the American Midwest, Wichita, Kansas to

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examine one of the most chilling and deceptive serial killers

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in United States history, Dennis Rader, better known as the

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BTK Killer. Now, I know what you're thinking, Jim. We

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already went to Kansas, and you would be correct. Although,

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when I released Fifty Shades of Evil Kansas, and I

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told you the story of the Car Brothers way back

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in February of this year, I had tons of people

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from Kansas reach out and they let me know that

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while the car Brothers for sure fit the profile evil,

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if I wanted to cover the most evil monster from

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that state, I needed to cover Dennis Rader, also known

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as BTK. Well, you requested it, and I am delivering

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it now. For more than thirty years, this man walked

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among his neighbors as a trusted family man, a church leader,

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a Boy Scout troop leader, and seemingly an upstanding citizen.

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But behind that ordinary facade, there was a predator who bound, tortured,

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and killed at least ten innocent people, and then tormented

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an entire city with tawny letters and packages that he

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would send a police In media. He even chose the

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name himself BTK Bind Torture, Kill, and for decades he

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would get away with it. I'm going to cover everything

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in this episode, the investigation that spanned generations of detectives,

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his dramatic capture in two thousand and five, the trial,

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his life behind bars, and by the end of this episode,

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you're gonna have a complete picture of how evil can

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hide in plain sight in America's heartland. But before I begin,

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I want to take a moment in respect, in remembrance

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of the ten victims whose lives were stolen in the

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families who still carry that pain today. Their names are

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Joseph O'tero, Julie O'tero, Joseph O'tero the Second, Josephine Otero,

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Catherine Bright, Shirley Vann, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vicky Wiggerly,

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and Dolores Davis. These were real people, mother's fathers, sons,

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daughter's friends whose story deserves to fully be told. And

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that is exactly what I am going to do. So

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let's get into it with fifty shades of evil. Kansas

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beat Now. Dennis Raider was born on March ninth of

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nineteen forty five in Columbus, Kansas. Columbus, a small town

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in Cherokee County. It's not far from the Oklahoma and

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Missouri borders, and he would be the oldest of four

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sons born to William and Dorothea Raider. His father worked

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as a Marine Corps veteran who took a job with

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the Kansas Gas and Electric Company, and his mother would

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be a stay at home mom raising boys in what

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appeared from the outside to be a working class, normal

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Midwestern household. The Raider family eventually would move to Wichita, Kansas.

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This was when Dennis was still very young, and they

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settled into what was a rapidly growing city that would

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later become a central hub for all of its horrific crimes. Now.

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Wichita in post World War two times was a booming

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town aircraft manufacturing, draw military presence, and the tight knick

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neighborhoods that made up Wichita. It was where people knew

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their neighbors, or at least they thought they knew them. Now.

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As a child, Dennis was described by those who knew

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the family is quiet and somewhat reserved. He attended Riverview

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Elementary School in later Wichita Heights High School, and teachers

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and neighbors would recall a boy who didn't stand out,

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either in a good way or a bad way. He

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wasn't the class clown, and he wasn't the troublemaker. He

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was just someone who kind of kept to himself more

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than most kids his age. He was an average student.

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He participated in boy Scouts and seemed on the outside

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very shy, but a normal everyday kid when you coupled

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all the other extra stuff that he would do. But

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even in those early years, there were glimpses that would

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later take on a much darker meaning. Writer himself would

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later admit in interviews in court statements that he developed

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unusual sexual fantasies at a very young age. He spoke

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of being fascinated by bondage and restraint as early as

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the age of nine or ten. He described fantasies involving

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tripping animals and imagining himself binding them with rope and

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torturing them. He later would recount an incident in which

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he became sexually aroused watching his grandmother ring the neck

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of a chicken, and he also claimed to have engaged

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in choking experiments with animals, where he would say, choke

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a cat until it passed out, but not kill the animal.

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He would also experiment in voyeurism and secretly watch neighbors

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through windows. And keep in mind, this started in his

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preteen years, and I can tell you, as would any

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psychologist or criminologists, these behaviors are prototypical of someone who's

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going to grow up a serial killer. Most always starts

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with animal torture and peeping Tom incidents at an early age.

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So Dennis Rader's relationship with his father it was reportedly strict,

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but it wasn't considered unusually abusive by standards of that era.

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William Rader would expect his sons to be disciplined and

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hard working, and Dennis would learn early how to compartmentalize.

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He would present one face to the world, and he

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would have a whole another face, a whole secret inner

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life that was filled with these dark fantasies. This ability

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to compartmentalize it would become his greatest weapon as an adult.

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Now in school, he showed interest in technical subjects and mechanics.

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He was known to be very smart, with an IQ

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later estimated in the above average range, although his academic

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report card, if you will, wouldn't reflect it. He also

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enjoyed drawing and created sketches, and he was actually very

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good at that. But this was a hobby that would

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resurface decades letter when he sent hand drawn images to police,

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very disturbing images along with letters that he would send

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and we'll get into that later. Now, by his early teens,

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Dennis would attend church all the time with his family.

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He was baptized and he became an active Lutheran. And

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what's really shocking when you look back at Dennis Writer's

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childhood is outside of the issues that nobody knew about,

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some of them I just told you about, on paper,

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it just seemed like an ordinary upbringing. There were no

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major trauma incidents, no extreme poverty in this family. And

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that's what makes his story unique. He wasn't created by

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horrific abuse or broken home in the way that a

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lot of your serial killers would claim. Instead, something inside

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of his wife hiring was just way off. He learned

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very early in life how to be one person privately

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and one person publicly, and before we move on, I

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want to go a little deeper into the incidents as

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it relates to BTK in childhood that if you were

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someone who knew what you were looking for, really screamed

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warning signs. So there's a classic warning sign in the

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criminology world that's known as the homicidal triad, which, alongside

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bed wedding and fire starting, was cruelty toward animals. Now.

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According to Raiter's own accounts, an investigative reporting drawn from

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his journals and police interviews, he started out by targeting

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stray cats and an occasional dog in his Wichita neighborhood

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and the surrounding rural areas of town. He would spot, lure,

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capture these animals, often carrying them to an abandoned barn

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or in isolated spa where no one could see him,

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and there he would practice binding their legs with rope

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or baling wire. He would restrain them in ways that

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let them completely helpless, exactly the kind of domination and

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control that fueled his sexual fantasies. He would describe later

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that he would tighten wires or ropes around their necks,

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slowly strangling them while watching them struggle, and he would

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sometimes loosen the pressure only to tighten it again, prolonging

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that suffering. In some instances, he actually would hang the animals.

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He would then dispose of the bodies casually, just tossing

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them into the ditch or leaving them on the roadside,

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and forensic psychologists who would later evaluate him they would

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note that these early experiences appeared to be the first

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time Raider connected sexual pleasure with watching a living creature

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so for or die. Just like the story I told

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you above where he talked about watching his grandmother wring

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the neck of that chicken. Same thing. Rather than feeling

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horror or disgusted like most any child would, he actually

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became aroused by the sight of That tells you how

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sick this guy was. And these incidents weren't isolated where

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he did it and then he freaked himself out because

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he did it and he didn't do it again. Dennis

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Rader would do this with animals over and over and

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over again. Raider estimated he killed dozens of cats and

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dogs this way throughout his early childhood and early teens,

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and as I also said, he was very into voyeurism

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during this time as well. He would spy on female

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neighbors through windows while he was dressed in stolen women's clothing,

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and he would suffocate himself by binding his own hands,

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his own hands and his own ankles, and placing bags

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over his head to restrict his own freaking breathing. Now,

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everything I just told you to me, it demonstrates how

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scary this guy was. This kid wasn't just being cruel

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for cruelty's sake. He was practicing. He was actually rehearsing

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these rituals of binding, torturing, and killing that would define

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his signature later on as bt K. The helplessness of

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these animals, the power he felt in controlling their final moments,

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and that sexual release that followed it would become a

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drive for every single human murder he would create later

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on in life. And of course, no one knew this

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on the outside. Dennis was attending school, he made good grades,

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he participated in the Boy Scouts, he was fishing, reading

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comic books, going to church, all the things kids do.

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No one had a clue how crazy this kid was.

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He kept this part of his life completely hidden, just

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as he would later hide those stalking incidents, planning, and

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killings from his wife and his kids. So by the

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time Dennis Rader entered his teenage years this is in

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the late nineteen fifties and early nineteen sixties, these dark

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fantasies would take root and really grab him. He would

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attend Wichita Heights High School, where he was an average

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student academically, but he managed to stay out of trouble.

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He would work part time jobs. He worked as a

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bad boy in a stoker at a local grocery store,

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and he would save money to buy his first car himself.

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It seemed like he was maturing pretty good on the outside.

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It was also during these years that his secret life

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would expand significantly. His voyeurism really got worse. He would

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drive around Wichita neighborhoods and night y'all, a behavior he

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would call trolling, and he would just look for when

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to watch through windows. He would steal women's underwear from clotheslines,

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and he began collecting items that really fueled this fantasy.

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At home, he would continue to experiment with self bondage

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and raiders' sexual fantasies became increasingly detailed and increasingly violent.

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By puberty, he was already dreaming of tying up girls

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and women assaulting them while they were bound and terrified,

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and he would later tell investigators these fantasies that played

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out in his mind were like a movie that he

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was directing. He developed a celebrity fixation on a popular

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actress at the time. Her name was a Net Finochello,

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and she was a Mickey Mouse Club star, and he

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said he couldn't help but imagine her bound and at

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his mercy, and he would start cutting out pictures of

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her in magazines and he would take them and he

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would draw ropes and gags onto her images. Now, during

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all of this, Raider continued to be involved in church

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and Boy Scouts, and he seemed to enjoy the structure

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of that. And after high school he would briefly attend college.

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He would drop out to go to the Air Force

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at the age of twenty one and he would serve

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as an aircraft mechanic, travel all over the world doing that.

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When he gets back, he did eventually get his degree

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in college. And military life was kind of scary for

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Rader because when he would travel overseas, he would actually

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get hookers and stuff and he would do all this

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bondage to them as part of the pay I guess

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you could say. So he gets back from the Air

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Force and he actually takes a job with the Coleman Company.

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Now Coleman it's just who you're thinking. They are the

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largest supporter of outdoor and camping equipment in the United

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States now and they were then. And it was during

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this time. He was also still involved heavily with his church,

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and it was a local Lutheran church, and that's where

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he met Paula Deet's now Paula was a few years

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younger than Dennis, and she came from a stable religious family.

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She worked as a bookkeeper and friends and family they

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would say that she was quiet, kind, devoted, someone who

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valued faith, family and stability. And in nineteen seventy they

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start dating, and by all accounts, it was a pretty

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traditional courtship. They attended church together, they spent time with family,

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and they presented like they were a wholesome Midwestern couple.

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Writer would propose, and they were married on May twenty second,

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nineteen seventy one, in a Lutheran ceremony. Now Paula was

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twenty three, Dennis was twenty six, and photos from that

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marriage from the wedding actually would show a smiling young couple.

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Dennis in a dark suit, Paula in a modest wedding dress,

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and they looked like any other newly weds you would

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see anywhere else in the country. But what makes this

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marriage interesting in hindsight is how completely Rader was able

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to hide who he was from his wife. To Paula

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and their families, he was a hard working, church going husband.

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He held steady jobs, first with the Coleman Company and

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then later with ADT Security Services installing home alarm systems,

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a position that would ironically give him intimate knowledge of

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home security vulnerabilities that he would later exploit, and he

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was able to hide all of who he was from

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these people. Now. Shortly after marriage, the couple moved into

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a modest home in Wichita, Kansas. On the surface, everything

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seemed great. Raider work days, came home in the evenings,

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participated in church. Paula would manage that household. They attended

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church regular and Dennis ber He came very active in

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the church leadership over that time. Yet during this exact

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period the early years of the marriage, Raiders fantasies would

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intensify dramatically. He would continue trolling neighborhoods stealing lingerie, practicing

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bondage on himself, and scouting potential victims. His job with

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Ady t that would allow him to case those homes

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under the guise of professional work, and the mass that

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he wore for Paula was nearly perfect. In nineteen seventy five,

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they welcomed their first child, a son named Brian. Three

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years later, in nineteen seventy eight, their daughter, Carrie was born,

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and Raider often spoke later about how much he loved

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his children, how pride he was of his family life,

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and he participated in typical fatherly activities boy scouts with

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his son, family outings, holidays. Paula raised the children primarily

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while he worked, but when he was off of work,

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he would do a lot of things with them. Just

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seemed very typical, and Raider would claim in later interviews

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that he truly loved Paula and his children, and that

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that other side was completely separate. He described as double

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life as two different people sharing the same body. Now.

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By the time their first child was born in nineteen

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seventy five, Dennis Rader had already committed his first murders.

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By the early nineteen seventies, his fantasies. They just were

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no longer enough, y'all. He began planning and scouting potential victims.

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He installed alarm systems for ADT starting in nineteen seventy four,

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and that job gave him the access that he needed

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and it was perfect as far as a professional role

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to cover for these dark activities. Now, psychologically, Rader was

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developing what experts would describe as a narcissistic and sadist personality.

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He craved power, he craved attention, but was also highly

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organized and very patient, and these traits allowed him to

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operate undetected for so long. He learned to compartmentalize perfectly,

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loving father and husband at home, church, council member, compliance officer,

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all the things, while secretly nurturing a predator's mindset. Now,

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by nineteen seventy four, at the age of twenty eight,

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Dennis Raider was ready to cross from fantasy into reality.

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The ordinary Kansas boy with the secret life of cruelty

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and control was about to unleash horror in a city

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he called home. So I'm going to take you to

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the morning of January fifteenth, nineteen seventy four, a quiet

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Wichita neighborhood and Dennis Raider is going to take the

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irreversible step from fantasy to reality. What happened inside that

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small home at eight three North Edgemore Drive that day

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would shock the city and mark the beginning of a

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reign of terror that would last decades. The Otero family

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had moved from Wichitaal from Puerto Rico just a few

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years earlier. Joseph O'tero, who was thirty eight, was a

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US Air Force veteran who worked as a mechanic, very

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similar to Dennis Rader. His wife, Julie O'tero, she was

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thirty four and she was a stay at home mom,

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and they had five kids in total, but on that

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morning four were home. Joseph Joey O'tero he was nine,

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Josephine Otero she was eleven, Danny who was five, and

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Carmen who was four. Now, Raider had been stalking this

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family for weeks. He later admitted he chose them partly

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because of their ethnicity. He nicknamed the case and he

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would call these cases. He nicknamed this one project Little Max,

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and he had driven by the house multiple times, noting

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the routines of the family, what time they got home,

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what time they went to work, what time they woke up,

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what time they had visitors there, all the things. This

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guy was methodical with that, and on that very cold

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January morning, he would cut the phone lines, approach the

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back door, and force his way inside that home at

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eight thirty am. He would claim he was a fugitive

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who needed food, money in a car, and he didn't

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realize that Joseph O'tero Senior was still at home during

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this time. What followed was a calculated brutal attack. It

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lasted for two to three hours. Raider would use cords

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from Venetian blinds and other items in the home to

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bind those family members, and he would separate them strategically.

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He put Joseph Senior in Julie in the bedroom. The

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children were moved in other bedrooms, and he first focused

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on Joseph's senior, obviously being the biggest threat. He placed

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a plastic bag over his head and tightened it while

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also using a chord around his neck. Now Joseph fought desperately,

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but he would eventually succumb to that suffocation. Julie Otero

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she was strangled next her hands bound behind her back,

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and Rader would later describe in court how Julie briefly

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regained consciousness after he thought she was dead, forcing him

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to strangle her again. The children they witnessed this unimaginable horror.

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Nine year old Joey was suffocated with a bag and

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a chord in the same room as his parents, because

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Raider then brought him into that room. Eleven year old

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Josephine she was taken into the basement and hanged from

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a pipe using a chord around neck, and he later

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admitted to masturbating over her body as she died, a

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signature that would appear in several of his later crimes.

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Simply horrific. Now, the family was left bound and partially covered,

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and Raider would attempt to clean up some evidence, but

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he left behind critical clues, including seamen and fibers that

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would link him to the scene years later when DNA

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would become a thing, and like almost all serial killers,

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he also took some personal items with him as trophies. Now,

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the surviving Otero children returned home later that day and

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they actually discovered this nightmare, and of course police were called.

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All those things the community shot at this. This was

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a city, Wichitaal that prided itself on safety during this time,

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and suddenly they felt very vulnerable. This wasn't a random

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burglary gone wrong. It was too brutal to be and

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everyone sensed it. And Raider's planning on this, y'all, was meticulous.

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He used his knowledge from ADT in his military background.

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He wore gloves, he brought some tools with him, and

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he used some tools around the house because he didn't

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expect that many people to be there. But he did

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make some mistakes. He stayed in that house far too long,

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literally hours, and he left DNA evidence on the scene

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as well. He later would send letters about that crime,

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and those letters would eventually help to catch him. Now.

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In later confessions, Raider would describe the Otran murders with

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a detached, his clinical tone. He admitted the sexual gratification

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he got from the power in control and with the family,

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representing his first full realization of the fantasies that he

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had held since childhood. Binding dominating, taking life while watching

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terror in his victim's eyes. That was intoxicating to this monster.

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After this quadruple homicide, Raider goes home to his own

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young family as if nothing has ever happened, and he

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would later say he felt a rush of power after that.

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He felt like he had completed his quote project and

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that would only fuel his confidence. He had crossed the

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line and there was no going back. And the police,

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of course, they started investigating this. But because the killer

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had disabled the phone lines and he had effectively subdued

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an entire family at gunpoint, he also didn't leave any

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signs of fourth century, detectives thought, man, this is too

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professional to be just some random murder of an entire family,

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the Otero family. Somewhere in there. The police were convinced

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there was some ties to like gangs or some sort

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of cartel, and that's what they thought this was. They

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thought it was a professional hit. They thought it had

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to be because they had no other evidence on the scene,

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and that's kind of the direction they took the investigation,

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which we knew it wasn't. Three months later, after the

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brutal murder of the Otero family, Dennis Raider would strike again.

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On April fourth of nineteen seventy four, he targeted twenty

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one year old by the name of Katherine Bright now

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Catherine just a young lady trying to build her life

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in Wichita. She worked at a local company in the

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area and everybody knew her as a friendly personality. She

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was close with her family, especially her brother Kevin, and

387
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she had recently moved into a house at thirty two

388
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seventeen East thirteenth Street with her brother. Now, her brother

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and her had went shopping this particular morning. Unbeknownst to Rayder,

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So Raider had been trawling neighborhoods looking for opportunities, and

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he later admitted he chose Katherine partly because she lived

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relatively close to the previous targets and she fit his

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victim profile. She was a young woman, she appeared to

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be living in a vulnerable situation, and he started scouting

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her home in advance. So Raider enters that home through

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