Money Crimes with Nicole Lapin - BTK: The Killer Who Refused To Go Uncredited

Episode Date: October 10, 2026

In January 1974, a family of four was found bound and killed in their Wichita home. The killer left nothing behind. Four months later, a letter arrived at a local newspaper describing details only the murderer could know, signing off with a name he'd chosen for himself: BTK. In the first part of our 3-part series on BTK, Katie Ring traces the early murders, the taunting communications that made him notorious, and the investigation that kept coming up empty.Follow America's Most Infamous Crimes to hear the rest of the story: https://pod.link/1882861002If you’re new here, don’t forget to follow Scams, Money, & Murder to never miss a case! To hear episodes ad-free, subscribe to Crime House+. Join at crimehouseplus.com or if you’re listening on Apple Podcasts, tap “Try Free” at the top of this show’s page. Scams, Money, & Murder is a Crime House Original Podcast, powered by PAVE Studios.🎧 Need More to Binge? Listen to other Crime House Originals Clues, Crimes Of Reddit, Crime House 24/7, Serial Killers & Murderous Minds, Murder True Crime Stories, and more wherever you get your podcasts!Follow me on SocialInstagram: @CrimehouseTikTok: @CrimehouseFacebook: @crimehousestudiosX: @crimehousemediaYouTube: @crimehousestudios

Hi, everyone. Before today's episode, there's another show I want to tell you about. It's called What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. Plus, Connor's infectious energy that'll make you realize history is the most fascinating thing on Earth. Follow What The Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod. This is Crimehouse. It's January 15th, 1974 in Wichita, Kansas, and 15-year-old Charlie Otero, is trudging home from school through the snow. It's just another Tuesday in the middle of winter and he's headed for a warm house, a loud kitchen, and a loving family.

But when he turns onto his street, Charlie spots the family dog standing out in the backyard. He's outside and alone in the cold, which never happens. He takes the dog back inside and sees his mom's purse lying on the stove. Its contents dumped out, another thing out of place, because Julie Otero would never leave a mess like that. He hears his brother and sister call out from down the hall, and in an instant his life is changed forever. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's most infamous story.

crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. This week, we're covering the manhunt for a serial killer who called himself BTK, short for bind, torture, kill. Today, we are starting at the beginning, with a family of seven who just moved to Wichita, Kansas, and the murders that would change the town forever. In 1974, Wichita, Kansas was a factory town that everyone considered safe. About two hundred 277,000 people lived there, and one way or another, most of them were connected to the local industries. Airplanes, camping stoves, lanterns, and machine parts. It was a city of early shifts and packed churches, the kind of place where people left the car running outside the grocery

store and the back door unlocked at night. That January, the front pages were overtaken by the Watergate scandal, the country's problems, not Wichita's. There were petty crimes here and there, bar fights, a stolen truck, little things, but nothing big. The lack of big crimes was also reflected in the size of the police department. Wichita had exactly six homicide detectives. Most years, that was plenty. Murders here tended to solve themselves. By the time the police arrived, the suspect was usually in the next room, drunk and sorry.

But what was about to happen was a different kind of crime altogether. One, the people of Wichita had never seen before. The Oteros were new in town. Joseph and Julie Otero had moved their five kids to Wichita a few months earlier, after Joseph retired from the Air Force after 20 years of service. Military families learned to travel light and stick together, and the Oteros had done both. Five kids were born along the way,

but they could still pack up in a weekend without blinking an eye. But this move was supposed to be the last one, a brick house of their own on the east side of the city, in a neighborhood full of kids, with schools close enough to walk to. The kind of place you put roots down. 38-year-old Joseph was solid, strong, and quick to laugh. He'd boxed competitively growing up in Puerto Rico, where he and Julie were both born. He was the kind of dad who turned everything into a lesson or a game.

Julie was 34, and she was the backbone of the household. She had worked the production line at Coleman, the camping gear plant, where a ton of people in Wichita worked. and she ran her home the way she ran everything, clean, organized, and on time. Julie had extensive training in judo, and she insisted her kids be trained in it too. These were not helpless parents or kids. Charlie was the oldest, and he was 15. Then there was 14-year-old Danny, 13-year-old Carmen, 11-year-old Josephine, and 9-year-old Joseph Jr., who everybody called Joey.

Even in their short time in Wichita, they all made a huge impression on their friends and neighbors. As the oldest, Charlie was like a father figure. He walked his siblings to school, kept them in line, and backed his mom up when it came to keeping things in order. On the morning of Tuesday, January 15th, the family split up the way they did every weekday. The three oldest kids left for school around 8 a.m. Josephine and Joey went to the elementary school, which started later.

So when Charlie walked out of the door into the snow, the two youngest were still home with their parents, finishing breakfast at the kitchen table. It was the last time he saw any of them alive. That afternoon, Danny and Carmen left before Charlie, and Charlie walked home through what seemed like an ordinary winter day. Then Charlie spotted the family dog out in the backyard, alone in the cold. That was the first thing that felt wrong.

The dog was never out by itself. His first instinct was to explain it away. His mom had slipped up, and he was going to enjoy telling her about it. But that instinct disappeared as soon as he stepped inside. The house was too quiet and the kitchen was wrong. His mom's purse sat on the stove with its contents dumped out across the burners. She never left a mess like that. Then one of his siblings called out from down the hall,

saying their parents were playing some kind of bad trick on them. Charlie ran to his parents' bedroom. A quick warning here, what he found is disturbing, and I'm going to keep it brief. Joseph and Julia Otero were both dead. Both of them had been bound and strangled. There was no gunshot for a neighbor to hear, no sign anyone had forced the door open. Whoever did this had taken his time in that room and then walked out of that house with no one the wiser.

Charlie ran to call the police, but the line was dead. Someone had cut it from outside, so he did the only thing left to do. He got his brother and sister out of that house and ran them to a neighbor's, where an adult took one look at the three of them and called the authorities. When officers reached the house, they found out what the church, children mercifully hadn't. Down the hall in nine-year-old Joey's bedroom, the little boy was dead on the floor at the foot of his bed, bound and strangled like his parents. And in the basement, they found Josephine. She was 11 years old, and what was done to her was sexual in nature, which is as far as I'm

going to go. What matters is this. Whoever came into that house that morning without forcing his way in was able to overpower four other people and disappear without a trace. By nightfall, the street was packed with patrol cars, and by the next morning, there wasn't a parent in Wichita who didn't know the name Otero. In the space of one school day, Charlie, Danny, and Carmen had lost their mother, their father, their little brother, and their little sister. Relatives stepped in to take them, and soon the surviving Otero kids left Wichita forever. There was nothing left in that city for them, but a house they could never enter again. The residents may not have known it yet, but Wichita's age of unlocked doors would end that day.

Hey, Ontario, come on down to BetMGM Casino and see what our newest exclusive the Price's Right Fortune Pick has to offer. Don't miss out. Play exciting casino games based on the iconic game show only at BetMGM. Check out how we've reimagined three of the show's iconic games, like Plinko, Clifhanger, and the Big Wheel into fun casino game features. Don't forget to download the BedmGM Casino app for exclusive access and excitement on the Price's Right Fortune Pick. Pull up a seat and experience the Price's Right Fortune Pick only available at BetmGM Casino. BetmGM and Game Sense remind you to play responsibly. 19 plus to wager.

Ontario only. Please play responsibly. If you have questions or concerns about your gambling or someone close to you, please contact Connects Ontario at 1866-531-2600 to speak to an advisor. free of charge. BetmGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with Eye Gaming, Ontario. A woman once survived a fall for more than two miles up because she crashed landed on a nest of furious fire ants.

A 13th century pope once condemned black cats as these servants of Satan. A lumberjack once survived near decapitation by his own chainsaw. These aren't tall tales. They aren't urban legends. their real events. I want to take a quick moment to tell you about the unbelievable, a new podcast from the History Channel and Rewind Studios. Adapted from the hit TV show,

every episode opens a cabinet of curiosities to uncover the strangest but true stories in human history, then digs into the historical record to show you exactly how and why they happened. Strange people, odd places, peculiar events. When it comes to history, the truth is always more unbelievable than you think. Follow the unbelievable on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, wherever you listen to podcasts. The first officers through the Otero's door were stepping into something they weren't prepared to handle.

In 1974, Wichita didn't have scenes as terrifying and gruesome as that, and almost nobody who responded that afternoon, had ever worked anything close to it. Not the patrolmen, and honestly, not most of the detectives either. They were horrified, and unfortunately, horrified people can make mistakes. Somebody took an ice tray out of the freezer before the crime scene photographs were shot and never put it back. It may seem like a small thing, but because the tray showed up in the crime scene photos, investigators would later assume the murders had happened so recently the ice hadn't had time to melt. A seemingly small mistake completely skewed the timeline.

On top of that, some of the crime scene photographs were lost as well as some autopsy photos. None of it was malicious, although the air stacked up and put a huge dent into the investigation. But whatever the department lacked an experience, it didn't lack an effort. Within days, 75 people were assigned to the Otero case. They put together 10 teams of investigators, although that still only included the city's six homicide detectives. Early on, it went in the completely wrong direction. One of the first officers at the scene raised it with Charlie directly.

Maybe somebody inside the family had done this. Maybe his own father had killed them all, and then himself. Three kids who just lost their parents, their little brother and their little sister, were left to consider the possibility that their own dad had done this to them. But the crime scene didn't line up with a murder-suicide. Joseph Otero had been bound. A man can't tie himself up, strangle his family, strangle himself, and then get rid of the cord. Within days, the detectives moved on to other ideas.

And here's what made the case so hard to crack. There was no sign of forced entry. Whoever it was had gotten inside without breaking anything. On a weekday morning in a neighborhood where people noticed strangers. And he'd controlled four people, two of them adults who were trained to fight, and not a single person heard a commotion. To the detectives, that indicated some kind of weapon, and it pointed to someone who is calm and convincing enough that a family let its guard down inside its own home. As far as evidence,

they didn't have much to go on. Only a few things were missing from the house. The family's car, Joseph's watch, and a radio from Joey's room. A neighbor did report seeing a stranger drive away in the Otero's car that morning, though. Police found the vehicle shortly after abandoned in a grocery store parking law a short drive away, but the car didn't give them anything, no prints and no sighting of whoever had been behind the wheel. Because of those missing items, they worked it like a robbery gone wrong, but nobody really believed that. You don't cut a phone line, bring your own cord, and do what this man did for a watch and a radio. The scene was too controlled, too patient, and too personal. And there was physical evidence that pointed somewhere much darker. Seamen

recovered at the scene. But in 1974, DNA testing was still a decade away, so there was nothing to compare the evidence to, and no way to use it. Detectives preserved it anyway. It went into an evidence locker, and it stayed there, just in case new technology came along. With the physical evidence going nowhere, the investigators went back to the basics.

They dug through the family's past. Old friends, old debts, old enemies, even a possible drug connection that took the Wichita-Leworthold, police chief all the way to Panama and Puerto Rico. They looked at his time in the Air Force, at the neighbors, and at every stranger anyone remembered seeing on that street. But nothing held up, because there was nothing there. By every account, though, Terros were just an ordinary happy family. As the weeks passed with no progress, the police started getting nervous. The crime scene told them the killer was acting on a sexual compulsion. Those kind of compulsions don't go away,

and they knew that the longer he stayed free, the more likely he'd do it again. And just under three months later, they were right. He struck again on April 4, 1974. 21-year-old Catherine Bright had just come home from a factory shift. Catherine was hardworking, well-liked, and close with her family, which is why her 19-year-old brother Kevin was with her that afternoon. And when they walked into her house, a man was already inside. He was wearing a stocking cap and gloves.

and he was holding a gun. He told them he was on the run from the cops out in California and he just needed money in a car to get clear. If they stayed calm and cooperated, nobody would get hurt. Then he stopped telling stories and he attacked. He went for Kevin first trying to strangle him, but Kevin fought back and the man shot him. Catherine's brother went down, badly hurt but still alive. Although their attacker might not have known that because he turned his attention to Catherine. But when Kevin stirred again, he came back and shot him a second time. The second shot still didn't kill him, though. And while the attacker was occupied with his sister, Kevin somehow got himself up,

got to the front door, and staggered into the street bleeding and shouting for help. By the time the police got there, the man was gone. Catherine had been bound with a cord and stabbed three times in the abdomen. She was rushed to the hospital and she died about five hours later. Meanwhile, Kevin had somehow survived two gunshots, and he was able to give the police a description of the guy who'd done it. Mid-20s, white, with an orange jacket and a black stocking cap. It wasn't much, but it gave them somewhere to start. The police hadn't connected it to the Otero murders yet, though. They worked Catherine's death as its own case, maybe a burglary that got out of control,

maybe a drifter passing through. Either way, they saw it as a separate event. But here's the thing, Catherine Bright worked at the Coleman plant on the same assembly line as Julia O'Taro. The police did eventually learn that, but they never made it public. And it would take four more years and the killer himself to link the two cases. But by then, it was too late. Happy Halloween, Crime House listeners. I'm Vanessa Richardson. Did you know horror films like Abigail and Sinister were based on true stories? Join me every Sunday this month on Crime House.

24-7 for Crime House of Horrors, where I dive into four stories behind some of our favorite scary movies. From Abigail, The Autopsy of Jane Doe, Sinister, and The Taking of Deborah Logan, you'll find one thing in common. The truth is scarier than fiction. Listen every Sunday on Crimehouse 24-7 or join Crimehouse Plus for all four right now, ad-free. Subscribe on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or at Crimehouse, By the summer of 1974, the Otero murder case was going nowhere. Tips came in by the hundreds, but they were all dead ends. The Wichita Eagle newspaper kept the story alive, but there was less and less to print. Detectives ran down every man with a record who'd passed through the city's east side and cleared

them one by one. Then, in the fall, it seemed like they'd gotten a break. A local young man, described in reports at the time as mentally ill, told police that he'd killed the Oteros and that two friends had helped him do it. All three of them were arrested. When the news got out, the city breathed a sigh of relief. People let themselves believe it was over, that the worst thing that had ever happened in Wichita at least had an ending now. But somewhere in that same city, the real killer was reading those headlines, and he wasn't happy about it. On the morning of October 22nd, 1974, a phone ring at the Wichita Eagle. The paper ran a program

called Secret Witness, a hotline where people could anonymously pass along tips about crimes. The reporter who picked up got a caller who wouldn't identify himself, wouldn't answer questions, and wouldn't stay on the line. He only said there was a message about the Otero murders hidden inside a mechanical engineering textbook at the public library called Applied Engineering Mechanics. Then the line went dead, and the reporter called the police. detectives went to the library, pulled the book off the shelf, and found a letter folded inside. The message itself was badly typed and full of errors. It was so bad that some investigators wondered whether an educated man had written it badly

on purpose to throw them off. It opened almost politely. He said he was writing for the taxpayer's sake. Sure. Then it got to the point. The three men in custody were just after publicity. They weren't involved in the murders at all. The person who wrote the note said he'd done it himself with no one's help, and then he proved it.

The letter laid out details from inside the Otero House that had never been made public. It described the house, the family, the bindings, the positions, things you could only know if you were there. He wrote that something inside him drove him to do it. He called it a monster and said it couldn't be stopped. Maybe the police could stop him, but he couldn't, and he'd already chosen his next victim. and then he signed it off in capital letters, yours truly guiltily. Below that, he wrote that since sex criminals never changed their methods, the code words for him would be bind them, torture them, kill them, B.T.K.

After comparing the letter to their files, the cases' detectives were sure that the killer had written the letter, and the three men in custody were released. Then the police made a judgment call. They kept the letter secret. They were afraid that publishing something that strange would invite a wave of new false confessions, and it would give the writer exactly the attention he was clearly asking for. So instead of releasing it, they studied it.

A group of doctors and behavioral scientists reviewed the letter and built a profile off the man behind it, seriously, mentally ill, driven by a bondage fixation, probably incapable of holding down a real relationship or fitting into a community, maybe a drifter moving from city to city to kill, which meant he might already be gone. For about two months, the letter stayed secret. The public knew three men had been let go, but they didn't know why. And then the letter got out. In December, a copy of it reached a Wichita reporter named Kathy Henkel from a source she never named.

Kathy didn't work at the Eagle. She wrote for a paper called the Wichita Sun. And although the editors at the Eagle had agreed to keep the letter quiet, it. Kathy didn't. She was from Wichita herself. These were her streets, her neighbors, the women she'd grown up with. She decided the city had a right to know what it was living with, so she published part of the letter. Kathy left out the details from inside the Otero House, but she kept the threat, and she kept the name B.T.K. The story ran and it spread like wildfire. Wichita changed that week. Doors that had never been locked were suddenly closed, and porch lights stayed on.

started checking if their phone still had a dial tone when they walked in at night because word had gotten around about the cut line at the Otero House. And then nothing. Weeks went by without an arrest. Then months. No new letter, no new crime scene with his signature on it. 1975 came and went without a word from BTK. So did 1976.

Some detectives started to think the profile had it right. He was a drifter, already gone and wreaking havoc somewhere else. But not everyone felt that way, because the letter hadn't read like a goodbye. It read like a beginning, and the only thing the people of Wichita could do was wait. It's time for ring the alarm, and today the first thing I want to talk about is the reporter leaking the story. I understand that people and women especially deserve to know that there is still an active threat to them. It's important for people to practice situational awareness, especially in these cases. But the thing that makes me mad is that they publish exactly what the killer wanted them to publish.

They granted this perverted POS his wish by calling him by the sick name he requested. I hate that names like this give serial killers the notoriety they so desperately seek, because it's the last thing these guys deserve. The other thing is that I am very critical of police investigations and believe that every angle should be considered. But I feel like so many times cops get fixated on one theory and run with it. The way the bodies were presented made it very hard for murder-suicide to even be possible. But they were floating the theory within days. Charlie, Danny, and Carmen had just gone through the worst thing possible.

And the theory that was floating around was that their father did it. And there's proof that the department already knew better, because that same January police chief Floyd Hannon told the Wichita Eagle that the way this family had been killed pointed to a fetish on the part of the killer. They understood in the first week that this was a sexual crime, and they still spent months digging through the Otero's own lives. They investigated the victims, and it cost them time they never got back. Not just that, but it traumatized the surviving kids even more. They had to confront the possibility that their own dad was the one responsible. And as a kid, that's not something

you can just cross off and move on from, no matter how wrong you know it is. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. To enhance your list, listening experience, join Crimehouse Plus and get all three parts of each week's America's most infamous crime stories dropped at once every Monday and ad-free. You also get the rest of the crimehouse lineup ad-free and early and exclusive bonus episodes. To join, go to crimehouse.com or if you listen on Apple Podcasts, tap try-free at the top of the America's most infamous crime show page. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on BTK. Did you know a volcano once blocked out the sun and accidentally gave it?

us Frankenstein, or that the most feared pirate in the Atlantic, the man who terrorized an entire ocean, may never have actually killed anyone? Hi, I'm Connor Tomlinson. You might know me from love on the spectrum. History is my thing and has been my whole life. And I'm Carter Roy, and this is what the fact. Every week, we take three of the wildest true things ever recorded and tell you the whole story behind them.

The facts that sound made up, the stories that got buried, The moments that changed everything. Carter brings the history. Connor brings the facts, the tangents, and the occasional British accent. The wildest stuff is real. And the real stuff is wilder than you think. New episodes every Wednesday follow What the Fact on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod.

You know their names. You know their faces. But you've never heard these stories. On Celebrity Ghost Stories, an A&E original podcast presented by Rewind Studios, you'll hear spooky stories directly from the actors, musicians, and athletes you love in their own words. What do you do when a spirit saves you from the edge of death? When a single night in a strange hotel ends with you running for the door, from angry spirits to haunted houses to unexplainable magic. These are true first-person accounts told by the stars who lived through them.

Follow Celebrity Ghost Stories, available now on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen to podcasts. If you're looking for your next podcast, check out What the Fact with Connor Tomlinson from Netflix's Love on the Spectrum and Carter Roy. Every week, they take three unbelievable true facts from history and tell you the full story behind them. follow What The Fact wherever you listen or subscribe on YouTube at What The Fact Pod.