Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - “BTK Killer” - Dennis Rader

Episode Date: September 24, 2018

By all accounts, he was a loving family man, Scoutmaster, and church leader. None of his family members or colleagues ever suspected that he was also a sadistic killer. His M.O. was simple. He would bind, torture, and kill his victims. And that’s how Dennis Rader got his nickname.  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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that some people may find offensive. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. On October 22nd, 1974, a reporter named Don Granger received a mysterious phone call at the offices of the Wichita Eagle. The rasping voice at the other end of the line claimed that he had information

on the Otero family murders. quote, there's a letter about the Otero case in a book in the public library, end quote. Granger called the police, who quickly searched the library. In a book titled Applied Engineering Mechanics, they found a typo-riddled letter from the murderer. Quote, it's hard to control myself. You'd probably call me psychotic with sexual perversion hang up. Where this monster entered my brain, I will never know. But it's here to stay.

How does one cure himself? If you ask for help that you have killed four people, they'll laugh or hit the panic button and call the cops. I can't stop it, so the monster goes on and hurts me as well as society. It's a big, complicated game, my friend. The monster plays putting victims' numbers down, following them, checking up on them, waiting in the dark. Waiting, waiting.

The pressure is great, and sometimes he runs the game to his liking. Maybe you can stop him. I can't. He has already chosen his next victim or victims. Good luck hunting. Yours truly, guiltily. End quote. The letter was chilling, and the killer's post script promised more horrors to come. He wrote, quote, P.S., since sex criminals do not change their MO, or by nature cannot do so, I will not change mine. The code will, words for me will be, bind them, torture them, kill them. B.T.K. Hi, I'm Vanessa Richardson. And I'm Greg Polson. And this is serial killers. Today, we're going to take a deep dive into the life of Dennis Rader, the serial killer who signed his letters with the moniker, B.TK. Bind, torture, kill. Many of you have been asking us how you can support the podcast. If you enjoy the show, one of the best ways to help us is to leave a five-star review wherever you listen

to podcasts. While you're there, you can listen to previous episodes of serial killers, as well as Parcast, other podcasts. A new episode comes out every Monday. You can also find us on Facebook and Instagram at Parcast, and on Twitter at Parcast Network, or on our website, parkast.com. Dennis Raider murdered 10 victims in Wichita, Kansas, over a period of two decades from 1974 to 1991. He killed to satisfy his disturbed sexual fantasies of strangling and tormenting helpless women. He also longed for media attention.

Starting in 1974, he spent three decades sending mocking letters to the press. He also maintained a double life as a loving family man, scoutmaster, and church leader. None of his colleagues are family members. suspected him of being a sadistic killer. Listen as Jeffrey Davis, the son of one of Raiders' victims, describes how Raider hid his murderous nature behind a facade of normalcy.

He looks like us, he talks like us, he goes to the same grocery store, he goes to church, surely he's okay. Evil exists in many forms, and that's the most classic case of evil I've ever seen in what limited law enforcement experience I've got and what mental health counseling experience, None of the others put together can equal him. I'm serious. He is just absolutely so off the scale.

It's scary. Raiders' thirst for media attention eventually proved to be his downfall. In 2004, he began sending cryptic clues and evidence of his murders to local newspapers and television stations in Wichita. Raiders' own letters allowed police to finally arrest him and deliver a measure of justice to his 10 victims.

Rader's parents had no idea that their father first-born son would grow up to be a killer. His mother, Dorothea May Cook, and his father, William Elvin Rader, began dating as teens. They got married in 1943 when Dorothea was still a senior at her Kansas high school. William Rader joined the Marines and spent World War II fighting on the Pacific Front. After the war ended, William and Dorothea moved next door to Dorothea's parents' farm in Columbus, Kansas. Dorothea soon became pregnant with their first child, Dennis. But while she was pregnant, she suffered a terrible fall off a horse.

Rader later wondered if his mother's fall during pregnancy contributed to his murderous tendencies, which he nicknamed Factor X. Vanessa is going to take over on the psychology here and throughout the episode. Please note, Vanessa is not a licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but she has done a lot of research for the show. Thanks, Greg. A 2013 study by doctors Tala, Narsalia, Khalid, and Ali in Sudan, found that seemingly insignificant blunt-force trauma injuries can cause lasting damage to a developing fetus, particularly if a

pregnant mother is injured in the second or third trimester. It's certainly possible that Raiders suffered a head injury while he was in the womb due to his mother's fall and that this negatively affected his development. And this wasn't the only head injury that Rader suffered. Rader was born on March 9, 1945. And in the fall of that year, when Rader was about six months old, his mother dropped him. He allegedly banged the right side of his head so badly that he turned blue, but he never saw a doctor. Rader later discussed the incident with Catherine Ramsland, a psychology professor who wrote a biography on the killer.

He mentioned that this drop on the head might have scrambled the nether. network. It's true that scientists have found a link between certain types of brain lesions and criminal behavior. A study published in the National Academy of Sciences Journal in December 2017 found that injuries to the area of the brain responsible for moral decision-making were associated with increased criminal behavior. According to the recent study, these brain injuries could even be the reason that previously law-abiding citizens turned to crime. Neuropsychologist Hugh Williams explained to the independent, quote, This study is fascinating and important as it shows how particular types of brain lesions

may have contributed to criminality in people who were not known to have a tendency to offend before they suffered the lesion, end quote. If Raider suffered a brain injury either in utero or as an infant, this could have been one of the reasons why he went down what he calls the dark path, his road to murder. However, it's also important to note that Rader, like many serial killers, also has a tendency to lie and make exaggerations. So we have to take his claims about his life with a grain of salt. Rader enjoyed his early years living next door to his maternal grandparents. His maternal grandfather owned a combo barbershop pool hall. Rader felt his grandfather was

amicable, but was also convinced that his grandfather had a dark side to his personality. According to Rader, his grandmother wasn't very warm either. She often seemed as though she was lost in her own thoughts or imagining herself somewhere else. Rader later wondered if he inherited his tendency to compartmentalize different aspects of his life from his grandmother. Rader's ability to compartmentalize his murder aside is what allowed him to lead a double life for decades and eventually raise a family that had no idea he was a killer. According to Dr. Marissa Beretta, a licensed social worker, compartmentalizing is a technique everyone uses to some degree in order to stay mentally healthy. For example, mentally separating

your work life and your home life is a normal type of compartmentalizing. But Raider used compartmentalization to hide his sadistic desires from everyone around him. The seeds of Raiders' disturbing fantasies were planted at an early age. At around age, at around age, three or four, he became terrified of monsters and imagined them everywhere. He saw monsters all over his home, including on the walls, the floors, and in the interplay of light and shadows. This may have been due in part to paroidolia, a psychological condition which describes some people's innate tendency to interpret shapes as faces. Rader later speculated that his fear of monsters surrounding him was connected to his desire to kill.

Perhaps murder was his way of coping with feeling afraid and vulnerable. From a young age, Rader was also oddly aroused by his own fear of the monsters he imagined. He remembered that any time he saw a monster, quote, for some strange reason, I'd feel a tightness in my crotch, end quote. This could have been the beginnings of Rader's paraphylia. You may remember from past episodes that parapheria can involve an intense attraction to abnormal scenarios and fantasies. As a very young child, Rader was aroused by imagining frightening scenarios

wherein he was helpless as monsters hunted him down. This connection in Rader's mind between helplessness and arousal was further cemented through an incident that occurred when he was about four years old. His mother, Dorothea, was searching under the couch cushions for something and got her wedding ring caught in the couch springs. She couldn't free her hand and soon became. frantic. She cried and begged her young son to run next door to get his grandmother. Raiders' reaction to his mother's distress was aberrant, to say the least. He remembered,

quote, I was scared yet excited. I stared at her. I had a strange feeling in the pit of my stomach and in the groin area. I ran next door to Grandma's house for help. I often wonder if the early emotions of this triggered some inner dark feeling about a woman in bondage needing help. End quote. Around 1949, Rader's family moved from Columbus to Wichita, Kansas biggest city. The family started out downtown. Then they moved to a two-bedroom house at 4815 North Seneca Street, with a yard in a chicken coop that fascinated Rader.

He loved watching his parents and grandparents tie up the chickens in the coop for the slaughter. The chicken's inability to free themselves sexually excited him. He enjoyed the animal's torment, watching them struggle in the moments before they were beheaded. Already as a young child, Rader was developing a parapherilia known as erratophonophilia, which you may remember refers to someone who is sexually excited by murder. Rader was very close to his mother as a child. She was a source of both affection and abuse.

She often punished him by beating him with the belt, but she was also tender with him when he was sick or had an earache. For Rader, pleasure and pain were intermingled. He vividly recalled suffering an earache when he was somewhere between the ages of five to seven. His mother pinned him down while a female doctor punctured his ears to help drain the infection. Rader believed this incident contributed to his fondness for bondage and tying up his victims. Rader started first grade in 1951. He struggled academically and socially.

He was withdrawn and didn't make him. friends easily with the other kids. Instead, Rader became increasingly obsessed with horror movies, a trait he apparently shared with his mother. He was entranced by movies that involved helpless women trapped by serial killers, like House of Wax, a 3D film which came out in 1953 when he was eight years old. He found himself aroused by the fictional murders in the horror movies. This was a milestone in the development of his erratophonophilia, or sexual attraction to killing. Rader also seemingly developed a perverse sexual attraction to his mother. He masturbated into his mother's undergarments. He was aroused when she beat him after his first

nocturnal omission at age 10. Rader was also becoming increasingly obsessed with bondage. It's important to note that most people who practice BDSM or bondage are perfectly healthy individuals in their normal lives. Psychology professor Joe Magliano points out that part of partners who participate in BDSM often feel more connected to each other, and the BDSM provides stress relief. But Raiders' love for bondage was intertwined with a disturbed desire to render his victims helpless and kill them. As a child, he also began sneaking off to isolated locations like the family barn and experimenting with erotic asphyxiation. This was both an extension of his obsession with bondage and a sign that Raiders suffered. from sexual masochism disorder. People with this disorder achieve arousal by hurting and torturing

themselves. Asphyxiophylia is one of the most deadly types of sexual masochism. Suffers like Rader will often hang themselves, breathe deadly fumes, or suffocate themselves to reach orgasm. Many accidentally kill themselves while engaging in this behavior. According to an article on the dangers of asphyxiaphylia published in the National Library of Medicine, in September 2016, 250 to 1,000 people in the United States die each year from erotic asphyxiation. In the mid-1950s, when Raider was about 11 years old, he became a peeping Tom. He stalked his fifth grade teacher and climbed up a tree to spy on her while she was in the privacy of her own home. He brought ropes with him because he was contemplating sneaking into her house and binding her with them.

Instead, he stayed in his tree and tied the ropes tightly around himself until he ejaculated. Rader also found enjoyment in being tied up by other children. He recalled an incident that occurred around 1957 when he was about 12 years old. After Rader and his friends snuck onto a farm, the kid who lived there led a group of bullies in tying up Rader and his friends for trespassing. Rader explained, quote, being tied up and threatened like this aroused me. and quote. Also around age 12, he was turned on by a murder mystery story he read where a man strangled his girlfriend. Clearly the mental link between helplessness, murder, and arousal was growing stronger

with age. Raider was aware of the growing darkness within him. He often referred to it as wearing the black hat. And apparently he understood it was something he needed to keep hidden. He continued to faithfully attend his Lutheran church, apparently hoping to quell the monster within. Around 1957, when Raider was 12, he had a religious experience. He remembered, quote, during one service I felt the Holy Spirit move me. This enlightenment may have been a good spirit pivotal point in my life to become a church and boy scot leader and wear the white hat, end quote.

And in that moment, Raider decided to devote himself to being a good person. He wouldn't drink or smoke. He wouldn't even curse like the other kids. But he wasn't able to maintain his pledge for long. And it's unclear if he really tried, despite his insistence that he was a good Christian. In his early adolescent years, he began to strangle and torture cats and other small animals, paving the way for his gruesome murders to come. We'll return to our story in just a moment.

And now, let's continue the story. In 1959, Dennis Rader was a teenager living at his family's Wichita home. Part of him wanted to be a good Christian, but part of him was growing increasingly excited by thoughts of strangulation and murder. Rader attributed his ability to hide his murderous desires to his knack for compartmentalizing, which he referred to as cubing. He later recalled, quote, I would do what I call cubing.

It started in childhood as make-believe, those words. white-hat fantasies turned dark. They probably started before I can remember. I would cube into a storyteller for my brother, mostly at night. I cubed into a cowboy when we played. As I got darker fantasies, I cubed into a lone wolf. I spent endless time inventing my make-believe fort. As I grew up, the mental cubing was an escape from a boring class or job. I found time to day dream each day because it was my best time. It always recharged me. When I felt alone, my cubing made me feel better.

It was easy to cube into the dark side as my secret. I wasn't hurting anyone, only in my mind. Over the course of 1959, Rader became increasingly obsessed with other serial killers. The 14-year-old found a magazine article about a serial killer named Harvey Glatman in his father's car and couldn't take his eyes off the photos of Harvey's bound female victim. The women's despair and powerlessness were appealing to him. He wanted to be just like Gladman, tying up his female victims and killing them. Rader would spend the next several decades fantasizing about variations on this scenario.

As psychology professor Lewis Schlesinger explains, Rader was aroused by torture and murder. It is very sexually stimulating for someone like Rader to control, dominate, torture and then kill somebody else. In 1959, 14-year-old Raider was also excited to learn about another pair of killers. On November 15th, he was riding in a car with the girl he had a crush on, when he heard on the radio that two men had tied four family members up with ropes and then slaughtered them. Rader's immediate reaction was to wish that he could tie up the girl sitting with him in the car, a disturbing sign that he would eventually want to play out his dark fantasies in real life.

That winter, Rader decided he needed to commit more exciting crimes. It was no longer enough for him to spy on the girls and women in his neighborhood. He needed to up the ante by stealing their belongings. Around the beginning of 1960, Rader broke into an elementary school and contemplated stealing things from a girl's school desk, but he lost his nerve and left without taking anything. Rader started breaking into the homes of female neighbors and stealing their stuff. He liked taking their stockings and then masturbating with them later.

He began fantasizing about imprisoning women in secret barns and dungeons, then torturing them and killing them. He had special imaginary torture rooms devoted to the pretty and social girls he felt he didn't have a chance with. He nicknamed these rooms DTPG or Death to Pretty Girls. In 1960, 15-year-old Raider became obsessed with the cartoon segment called Dudley Duhryder the Mounties on the Rocky and Bullwinkle show. Dudley was a Canadian police officer who had to keep rescuing his boss's daughter,

Nell, after the villain tied her to the railroad tracks. The cartoon represented the dueling aspects of Raiders' personality. On the surface, he could pretend to be a sincere, religious young man, a good person like Dudley Duh Right. But secretly, he was the villain, consumed by his desire to tie women up and kill them. In 1959, Rader began attending Wichita Heights High School. He started working a part-time job at a welding shop to save up for a car. He struggled academically, but wasn't particularly concerned about his poor grades.

Catherine Ramsland suggests in her biopic on Rader that he may suffer from a learning disability. More specifically, he may have been dealing with hypergraphia, which involves an intense urge to constantly write and draw. Many sufferers are so consumed by this need to write that they scribble nonsense or draw constantly, thus stealing focus from his studies. We can't know for sure, though, if Rader had a disability. He has never been diagnosed with one. Although he faced difficulties in school, Rader stayed active in his church. In 1962, 17-year-old Rader got into a bad accident after he failed to navigate a curve and crashed his family's car while racing with other young church members. His head slammed into the windshield, and the broken glass cut his face open.

He had to go to the hospital for stitches and missed a couple of days of school. It's tempting to wonder if this head injury also contributed to Raider's murderous tendencies. But Raider was already killing animals and fantasizing about tying up and murdering his female neighbors for years before this accident. It's unlikely that this accident was the key incident that led him down his dark path. Raider managed to graduate from high school in the spring of 1963, although he barely passed most of his classes. That summer, he bought a blue 1958 Ford for $800 with the money he had saved from his part-time job. That's over $6,000 in today's currency.

He kept himself busy in the latter half of 1963 working at Leekers Family Food, where his mother also worked as a bookkeeper. Whenever he could, he went on dates with women. He enjoyed chatting with these women. He even found himself a primary girlfriend while dating several other women on the side. By keeping himself occupied, Rader was able to somewhat tamper down his darker urges. He remembered, quote,

The dark side was not big at that time. I was too busy at work, and dating may have helped, end quote. But its darker urges couldn't be fully suppressed. He cut models out of advertisements and drew them, tied up and bound in notebooks. And he bought a book with a girl being strangled on the cover. He wanted to do more than drawbound women. He wanted to tie up a real-life victim, but his busy

social life didn't leave much time to indulge in these dark urges. Sometime in 1964, Rader moved out of his parents' house and in with a roommate on North Salina Street. His friend John was attending college at Wesleyan, and he convinced Rader to give college a try. So Rader began attending Wesleyan in 1965 when he was 20 years old. He continued working part-time and began building what he called a hit kit, a collection of tools he would eventually use to murder his victims. But he was too preoccupied with college life to commit his first murder just yet. Rader had been shy as a kid, but now he was constantly partying and going out with girls. But just like in elementary and high school, he continued.

to struggle academically in college. Meanwhile, the U.S. military was drafting students who did poorly in school into the Army to fight in the Vietnam War. He knew his bad grades put him at risk of getting drafted and fighting on the front lines in Vietnam. So he decided to avoid the fighting by signing up for the Air Force in 1966.

In August, Rader traveled to the Lackland Air Force Base, where he began his military training. He continued to cut female models out of mass. to create his bondage fantasies. After his training was complete in the late 1960s, Raiders shipped out to Okinawa, Japan. He snuck a 32-caliber barretta with him. While he was in Japan,

he'd secretly take the gun out with him to bars and clubs and imagine that he was James Bond. Unsurprisingly, he was already enamored with the idea of a double life. He had sex for the first time with a prostitute when he was 22 in 1967. He claimed that he wasn't very good, so he hired a woman to teach him how to perform in bed. He continued to cut models out of advertisements while he was in Japan, but structured military life kept him occupied enough that he didn't feel as strong of an urge to kill.

He remembered, quote, being busy seemed to stall the dark side. I received letters from my mother, which made me feel very good, end quote. In August, 1969, he learned about the men. Manson murders while he was still completing his military service in Japan. Even though he had idolized murderers as a teen, for some reason he felt empathy for Manson's victims, particularly pregnant Sharon Tate. For a short time, this reduced his own desire to bind up women and murder them. Rader finished his military service in 1970 and went back to Wichita, Kansas. He began attending church again, and his mother set him up with a fellow

member of the church, Paula Dietz. Rader later claimed that he was so in love with Paula that he temporarily lost all desire to kill. He said, quote, in the fall of 1970, I had little time or thoughts about the dark side. I was in love. You've heard the expression, love sick. That's how I felt, end quote. The pair dated for a few months before Rader proposed in January of 1971. Rader and Paula married a few months later on May 22nd. But despite Raiders claim that he had suppressed his dark side, he was still collecting models from advertisements for his homemade bondage porn. He began sneaking off to abandoned barns to strangle himself for his own sexual pleasure.

In the spring of 1971, he put together another hit kit, which he kept in his car. He didn't have a particular victim in mind yet, but he was ready to kill if the opportunity arose. He later said, quote, The knife, guns, and hit kit were with me. So if an unlucky female had stopped, the murder spree would have started before 1974, end quote. Meanwhile, Rader played the happy husband to his new wife. They bought a home with a nice backyard in Park City.

Rader got a job working at a Coleman plant and then at the Cessna Aircraft Company in 1973. Everything seemed to be going well. Rader and Paula began to contemplate having kids. But then Rader lost his job at Sessna in October 1973. He no longer had anything to keep him occupied. As Paula worked to support the two of them, Rader spent all of his time absorbed in his twisted fantasies of bondage and murder.

He later recalled, quote, I was home alone, depressed and mad at the world. I decided to go out and do something bad. With the loss of a job, my mind slipped into sex, end quote. He broke into a house on Old Manor Road that night and stole some tools. But breaking into homes wasn't enough to excite Rader anymore. He needed to escalate his crimes. Rader went searching for a potential victim.

Sometime in the winter of 1973, Rader attempted to kidnap a bank teller. Her comings and goings were predictable, making her an easy target. Raider stalked her, memorized when she left the bank, and then attacked her as she got into her car. The woman struggled against Rader, and he gave up and ran. But he continued to use the bank where the teller worked, wearing dark sunglasses and the hope that she wouldn't recognize him. His ploy was successful, and the teller never identified him. Since he had failed to kidnap and murder the bank teller, Rader began to search for new victims. That winter, Rader's wife asked him to drive her to work at the veteran.

administration. She'd had a car accident before driving in the snow, and she didn't want to drive to work with snow on the ground. On one such snowy evening, Rader was driving his wife to work when he spotted a car on Murdoch Avenue. Inside the car was a Latin American woman and her 11-year-old daughter. Rader decided that this child would be his next PJ, or project, his codename for the women and children he planned to kill. Rader derived sexual satisfaction. out of murdering his victims of all ages, including young children. There is some debate over whether Rader should be described as a pedophile. While he did target an 11-year-old and later expressed regret that he missed out on opportunities

to torture and kill other children, most of his victims were adult women. Rader began stalking the young girl and her family. The 11-year-old girl's name was Josephine Otero, although everyone called her Josie. Josie was a sweet child and a stellar student who liked writing poetry. She adored her three older siblings, Charlie 15, Danny, 14, and Carmen 13. And she doted on her youngest brother, Joey, nine. When Raider stalked Josie in January 1974, he called his new project the offensive nickname Little Mex. Ironically, the Oteros were from Puerto Rico.

Josie's parents, Julie 34 and Joe 36, had moved the family around the country before Joe took a job as a flight instructor at Wichita. Even though there wasn't a lot of crime in Wichita, the Oteros took precautions to keep the family safe. Julie instructed her kids in judo, and they bought a protective dog named Lucky. They had no idea they were being stalked by a budding serial killer, determined to get past their defenses. Raiders spent weeks memorizing their patterns, watching the Oteros come and go at their house on 803 North Edgemore Drive. On the morning of January 15th,

he was ready to kill. Our story will continue in a moment after a brief message. We gather here tonight to bring women back to their rightful place. The Testaments, a new Hulu original series from the executive producers of The Handmaid's Tale. It's easier to accept a story than believe that The people around you are monsters. The battle isn't over.

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daughter Josie. He planned to kidnap both Josie and her mother and torture them both to death in an isolated location. He would later tell psychology professor Catherine Ramsland that one of the reasons he targeted the little girl was because her address ended in a three. He had an obsession with threes and looked for them in everything. He noted, quote, I'm partial to the number three. I tried to pick houses with three or six in the number." According to psychology professor Susan Krause, it's actually normal for humans to be obsessed with numbers and lists, which may explain why we think the number seven is lucky.

However, some people can develop an obsession with numbers that goes beyond the norm. Raiders' belief in the magical power of the number three was certainly out of the ordinary. He explained to Catherine Ramsland why he felt the number three. three was significant. He said, quote, I first became aware of threes in my life in my late 20s, but have always had a tendency to do things in threes or multiples of three. I would buy three pairs of slacks, for example, or three of the same color of sock. Maybe it relates to the Bible, the father, son, and holy ghost. The number three is mystical to me, end quote.

Rader studied the Otero's morning routine. He knew that Joseph Otero always got his car and drove to work at 8 in the morning. The three Elgest Otero children, Danny, Carmen, and Charlie were also dropped off at school well before 8 a.m. On most weekdays, by 8.20 in the morning, the only people in the house were the mother, Julie, and her two youngest children, 11-year-old Josie and 9-year-old Joey. Raider's plan was to murder the boy, tie up the mother and daughter, and take them to an abandoned farm where he could torture and kill them, slow. In early January, Raider bought supplies at a drugstore for his hit kit. He armed himself with rope, window blind cords, tape, a buck knife, and a 22-cult pistol.

By the middle of January, he was ready to strike. As January 15th dawned, Raider dressed for the cold in a hooded Air Force jacket and drove with the supplies over to the Otero's home. He parked his Impala a few blocks away and crunched the Through the snow to Edgemore Drive. The Oteros were going about their normal morning routine. Joe Otero dropped his three teenage children off at school in his wife's station wagon. The Oteros usually had two cars at their disposal,

but Joe had gotten into a car accident recently, and his car was at the shop. Julie began preparing lunches for her two youngest kids, Josie and Joey, as they dressed for school. Josie put on a light blue shirt, while Joey dressed colorfully and, a yellow t-shirt and white-striped purple pants. Joe returned to the house in the station wagon so his wife could drive Josie and Joey to school later that morning. Normally, Joe would be driving to work at this point, but his recent car accident had left him with several cracked ribs. He planned to spend the day resting at home. Rader arrived at the Oteros at 8.20 and vaulted over the fence. He cut the phone lines

so his victims wouldn't be able to call for help. Then he crept towards the back door, but it was locked. That's when he saw something that made him stop in his tracks. Fresh paw prints in the snow. Somehow, despite all that time stalking the family, Rader hadn't managed to figure out that they owned a dog. Rader briefly considered running away and giving up. As he was debating what to do, the back door opened.

Nine-year-old Joey stood in the doorway. staring at Rader. Next to him was the beloved family dog, Lucky. Lucky barked at the intruder. Rader was frightened by the dog. He needed to act quickly. He drew his gun on Joey and forced his way into the kitchen, where he found Julie and Josie Otero. Josie began to cry when she saw Rader's gun. Joe Otero was in the bedroom, but he ran into the kitchen when he hurt his family's distress. Rader hadn't realized that Joe was home. Now he was truly frightened. He figured he could handle the mother and the two children. He didn't know if he could subdue both adults. He decided the best way to handle everything was to convince them that he

was just a wanted man in need of food and a getaway car. To make sure Joe and Julie Otero didn't fight back, Rader engaged in casual banter with them to persuade them that he was an ordinary and relatively harmless thief. Both Otero and Rader had been in the Air Force, and they chatted about their military days. The Oteros didn't realize they were dealing with an aspiring serial killer. The term serial killer wasn't even in common parlance yet. Joe was initially convinced that his brother-in-law had hired Rader to play a tasteless joke on him. But then Rader showed Joe his gun, and the father realized that this really was a home invasion.

He told his family to cooperate with Rader. Joe likely hoped that if they all cooperated, then Rader would take what he wanted. and leave. Unfortunately, what Raider wanted was to torture them. He was a psychopath who could fake empathy. Forensic psychiatrist Michael Wellner explains why it was so easy for Raider to dupe others, including his own victims. Wellner said, quote, psychopaths wear the mask of sanity. Nobody would have called Dennis Raider a psychopath before he got arrested. People who are true psychopaths really are cold and callous and lack empathy and have a detached way of feeling emotion. If they exhibit emotion, it's an effort to create an impression, end quote.

In other words, Rader was a psychopath who feigned emotions to manipulate his victims. All of the kitchen banter that Rader engaged in with the Oteros was just to make sure they dropped their guard. Lucky continued to bark, which made Rader panic. He ordered the Oteros to put the dog out. He took the family into the parents' bedroom and tied them up with first aid tape. But the family members found the bindings painful, so he redid the bindings with duct tape. This may not actually have been for charitable reasons.

Raider later noted that he found it especially arousing to tie up his victims with duct tape. Rader had learned to tie all different kinds of knots during his years in the Boy Scouts, and he used so many different kinds of knots to tie up the Tarrows, that police would later need to use an instruction manual to identify all of them. Next, he gagged all of his victims. Julie began to get nervous at this point and demanded to know what Raider's intentions were. Rader lied and promised that he'd call the police after he left, so someone would come and untie them. With all of the family members tied up and gagged, Rader was ready to engage in his murderous fantasies.

He wasn't interested in Joe Otero, so he decided to make. murder him first. This would get the most threatening member of the Otero family out of Raiders' way. Raider strangled Joe Otero, as the father struggled against the tape binding his hands. Then he beat Julie Otero across the face and strangled her as well. Next, he choked 11-year-old Josie until she fell unconscious. Joey, the youngest, was sobbing at this point, so Rader put a bag over the little boy's head, preparing to kill him. But then, Julie and Joe Otero began to wake up. Rader hadn't strangled them effectively, and they were both still alive.

Julie Otero began to panic as she realized that Rader was murdering her children, but Rader was unmoved. In fact, he likely enjoyed watching her beg for her young children's lives. Criminology professor Jack Levin explains why psychopathic killers, like Rader, get a thrill from hearing their victims beg. He notes that psychopaths and particularly sexually oriented killers, quote, enjoy the suffering of their victims. It makes them feel special and important, like big shots. The last thing they would want to do is distance themselves, so they typically, like Rader, use up close and personal methods to kill,

whether strangulation, stabbing, or bludgeoning. The killing is a mere footnote. The text has to do with the torture of the victim, hearing. her scream. Pleading and begging for mercy makes the killer feel good, end quote. Raider strangled Julie Otero again. This time he used a double hitch knot and placed a pillowcase over her head. Julie died. She was Raider's first victim. Raider killed Joe Otero next, strangling him with a belt. With the parents finally out of the way, Raider decided to take his time slowly murdering the two children. He picked up nine-year-old Joey Otero and dragged the boy from his parents' bedroom into

the child's own bedroom. Rader placed T-shirts and a plastic bag over Joey's head and tied a cord tightly around the child's neck so he couldn't breathe. Then Rader brought in a chair and placed it next to the boy. Police later found the chair's imprints on the bedroom floor and realized that Rader had wanted to watch as the child slowly suffocated to death. He enjoyed it. seeing the child suffer in his final moments. Rader later insisted this wasn't the case. He told Catherine Ramslin, quote, The police report mentioned a chair that maybe I sat on to watch him die,

but that's not true. It could be that I placed it there to keep him still while putting on the T-shirt and bag in place or against the bed to keep him from rolling off. Many people think I tortured the Oteros and killed them in a sadistic way by reviving them. but the multiple strangle marks were there because I hadn't learned how to strangle quickly, end quote.

We have to remember that Rader was a psychopath who spent three decades lying to everyone around him. While it may be true that he didn't know how to efficiently strangle yet, we also know that he found immense pleasure in torturing his victims. With Joey, Joe, and Giulio Taro dead, Raider was able to take his time

killing 11-year-old Josie. The young girl, was still lying unconscious in her parents' bedroom. Rader roused her, then dragged Josie down into the basement. He hung Josie on a sewer pipe. As the little girl slowly strangled to death, he sexually assaulted her and ejaculated on her leg. It had taken less than two hours for Rader to murder all four family members.

All he had to do now was clean up the crime scene. Rader had spent years reading detective novels and studying other serial killers. He figured he could use what he read to throw detectives off his trail. He cleaned up the crime scene and turned up the heat in the house, convinced this would obscure the time of death for the police.

Then he took the Otero's car and drove it to a nearby grocery store. He pulled the seat up before he abandoned it, so police would look for a shorter killer. He walked back to his own Chevy and Paula. That's when he realized he'd made a crucial mistake. He left his hunting knife behind at the crime scene. Rader rushed back to the house where he managed to find the knife.

Then he drove home and settled right back to his normal morning routine. His wife had no idea that her church-going husband had just murdered four people. And this was just the start of Rader's dark path. Rader was initially terrified that the police would figure out he was responsible for the Otero's murders. But that fear soon turned to elation as the days passed and the police grew no closer to catching him. But the thrill that filled Rader after successfully murdering the Oteros didn't last for long. He needed another fix. A few weeks after the January 15th murder of the Oteros, he began hunting for a new victim.

He spent everyday stalking women, trying to decide on his next project. Sometime in February or March, Rader was taking his wife to lunch when he spotted a young blonde woman checking her mailbox on East 13th Street. She captivated him, and he soon began to stalk her. He memorized her daily routine, pinpointing her vulnerabilities. She was a college student who lived alone, who would be easy to overtake, and had a predictable schedule. She was the perfect target.

By March 1974, he had made up his mind about Catherine Bright. He would hide in her bedroom closet, bind her with rope, then play out any fantasy that crossed his twisted mind. Thanks again for tuning in to serial killers. You can find more episodes of serial killers, as well as all of Parcast's other podcasts, on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Google Play, CastBox, Tune-in, or your favorite podcast directory.

Several of you have asked how to help the show. And if you enjoy the show, the best way to help is to leave a five-star review. We'll see you next time. Serial Killers was created by Max Cutler, is a production of Cutler Media and is part of the Parcast Network. It is produced by Max and Ron Cutler,

sound design by Michael Langsner, with production assistants by Ron Shapiro and Paul Mahler. Additional production assistance by Carly Macon, Madden and Maggie Admeyer. Serial Killers is written by Jeanette Manning and stars Greg Paulson and Vanessa Richardson. I want to hear something spooky.

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