Unseen - The Boy Who Survived BTK | The Case of Charlie Otero | UNSEEN

Episode Date: March 19, 2024

“Why did you lie to me?” -- January 15th, 1974, 15-year-old Charlie Otero is dropped off at school by his dad just as every other day, but only a few hours later, he would come home to unimaginable horror: his family was the first target of the BTK killer. With no evidence on who did this, nightmares follow Charlie as he fears for his own safety, while the BTK attacks more and more people. It would take 30 years to finally catch him, after taunting the police repeatedly, where Charlie would finally be able to confront his family’s killer face to face and get his revenge. External Footage from: "Mark Of A Serial Killer: Bound To Kill (NBC)", Invisibles Monsters: Serial Killers In America (AETV)", "I Survived BTK: BTK And The Otero Family Murders (Unsub Filmes, LLC)", BTK: Confession Of A Serial Killer (AETV)", "2020 Extra (ABC NEWS)", BTK: A Killer Among Us (Cream Production)". Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is 15-year-old Charlie Otero. On the morning of January 15, 1974, Charlie left for school early to study for a test. He had a loving family and a bright future ahead, and his only care in the world was to make his parents proud. That same night, all of it would be taken away, as he returned home and found his family murdered. Four members of the Otero family were found bound, gagged, and strangled. The investigators looked shaken.

What they saw, they would shake anybody. Fear spread quickly in the community. Doors and windows were locked tight. We thought it was a one-off, a one-time deal. We were wrong. April 4th, three months later, 21-year-old Catherine Bright is found stabbed in her home, just two miles away from the Oteros.

There's a pattern developing here. What kind of leads do you have? Well, very honestly, we have no solid leads at all. Every woman in Wichita was scared to death. December 1977, receive a letter from the killer himself. How many people do I have to kill before I get my name in the paper? Good evening. We have exclusive details.

A new communication that could be from the killer. Those releases weren't meant for the public. They were meant for BTK. BTK. We truly feel that he is trying to communicate with us. Letters that contain puzzles, postcards that contain clues. It was very shocking to see a doll

with the exact same bondage from 30 years before. This is one of the most challenging things. cases that I've ever been involved with. For over 30 years, a serial killer spreads terror across Wichita, Kansas, evading police at every turn. Where is he? Where did he go? If we don't get him fast, we're never going to get him. But one man will do whatever it takes.

No matter what happened to me, I didn't care. To get revenge. I was going to shank him if I could. It's for my family. That's all I could think about. It's 1974. family are new in Wichita, Kansas. Joseph Otero, a military man with a zest for life and his wife Julia, loving mother to their five children, do their best to build a future for the kids.

Charlie Otero is the oldest, and the young boy admires his parents. My mom and dad had this relationship of unbelievable love. He adored her. It's a kind of love you wish you could find. Charlie is 15 years old, a grade A student, with a bright future ahead. He helps look after his younger siblings and only wishes to make his parents proud. My mother cared for everybody. She didn't have a mean bone in her body.

My mother had told me that the only thing she ever prayed for for herself was to die peacefully in her sleep, and that's the one thing she did not get. It had been snowing. It was a day of testing for school. I asked my dad to take me to school early that day so that I could get to that early study Hall. Danny and Carmen had to go with me because they were riding with him also. After school is over, Charlie walks home with his two young siblings, excited to tell his mom and dad about the perfect score he got on his test. As he approached the house, Charlie

notices the gate to the backyard is open. He can sense something is wrong. Walked over to the back gate, opened it up, and my dog Lucky was outside. So I said, Hey, Lucky, what are you doing out here, buddy? I opened up the kitchen door, and I noticed that my mom's purse was on the stove, flipped up. There was no sound, no buddy. And so I was like, I yelled out, is anybody here? And one of my siblings yelled out.

Charlie, come quick. Mom and dad are playing a bad trick on us. So I ran down the hall, and I saw my mother, my father, and my life changed. Joseph Otero, Charlie's father, is found lying on the floor with the belt around his neck. His wife Julia lays motionless next to him, also tied up. As soon as I touched him, I knew they were dead. I could smell the fear and the pain that they had gone through.

I could feel it all in the room. He basically died looking at each other's eyes. Charlie asks his younger brother to call the police, but they quickly find out the phone line has been cut. He then takes his siblings out of the house and begs a neighbor to get help. The police came and they took me away. I tell the police to go to my brother and sister to school and stop Joey and Josie from going home.

They cannot go home and find this like this, bring them to me. I gotta have them with me right now. And finally a police captain came up to me and said, Charlie, we gotta tell you that Joy, that Joey and Josie were in the house. It felt like somebody had ripped my chest open and pulled my heart out. Joey was just like a little man. I mean, he was already a lady killer, good looking, totally athletic.

Josie was a poet, an artist, very quiet. They had their whole lives ahead of them. When police entered the house, they found 9-year-old Joey Jr. bound in his room with a bag over his face. They also identify marks in the carpet that show the killer sat down to watch the little boy. Upon searching the house, a cop went into the basement and bumped into what he thought was a punching bag. After turning on the light, he found out it was actually 11-year-old Josephine hanging from a pipe. She had been abused.

And I thought right then, there is no God. I hate God. I hate the world. I really lost my religion at that moment. The investigators looked shaken what they saw and what had been done to the children. That would shake anybody. This was an average, normal, nuclear family.

Nobody could file them exactly why they were selected for this crime. Most people at that time thought it was a drug deal. We thought it was a one-off, a one-time deal. we were wrong. February 1974, one month later, Charlie is sent to New Mexico, along with his brother Danny and his sister Carmen, to go live with an uncle.

There's a start a new life there, but to Charlie, life has lost all purpose. When my family was killed, you have an empty feeling in your heart. It's like it's not there anymore. PTSD kicked in, started drinking, using drugs, trying to get the memory out of my head,

trying to get the visions out of my head. Every day, he catches himself watching over his shoulder, convinced that the man who killed his family will come for him too. All he knows and cares about is that the killer was never caught. I should have been there. I should have been home. If I hadn't gone to school early that day, I would have been there. April 4, 1974, just two miles away from where Charlie used to live. A 19-year-old man is running down the street with blood on his face

when he catches a few passers by and begs them to call him. the police. He says, please help my sister. Someone broke into our house, and she's still there. When police arrive at the boy's home, they find 21-year-old Catherine Bright, tied up with nylon stockings. She begs the officers to remove the binding because she can't breathe. The woman has been stabbed several times. After being rushed to the hospital, she dies. Her brother Kevin, who came out searching for help, was shot twice in the head, but he's in stable condition. Especially the Bright murder was not associated with the Otero killings. There were not a lot of similarities in the method of killing.

Catherine Bright had been stabbed, but the Otero family had been strangled. We noticed that the nylon stockings were tied with square knots, such as had been seen at the Otero crime scene. In both crime scenes, the telephone line was cut prior to entry. That wasn't enough to actually connect those two cases. However, police are able to make a composite sketch with the help of Kevin who saw the killer up close. Right away, the sketch is shared with every news outlet in the state of Kansas.

Everyone is on the lookout for who might fit the description. Thousands of tips flood in, with no solid lead. October, six months later, police finally make an arrest after one young man confessed he did kill the Otero family, along with two of his friends. The news comes as a relief when the local papers hit the stands. Shortly after, a news reporter receives a call from an anonymous man. The person on the other end says, go to the library. You will find a letter in an engineering book.

The letter started out with, I did this, I did it myself, I did it alone, so let's set this straight. It shared information regarding the crime scene that only someone who had been in there would know about. Josephine, physician, hanging by the next. in the northwest part of the basement, hand-tied with Byncourt, noose with four or five turns. He wasn't remorseful about the Otero Homicide. Somebody else was stealing his thunder, and he wasn't going to stand for it. At the end of the letter, he mentioned that the code words for me will be bind them, torture them, kill them. B.T.K.

He indicated that he was a serial killer to be and threatened to continue to kill. Since investigators are unable to trace the author of the letter, the man who calls himself BTK disappears, and for the rest of 1974, no one hears a word from the killer. 1975 goes by, then 1976, and still not a word. Everyone in which it tells lives in fear, but for Charlie Otero, nothing has changed. Living 800 miles away, he doesn't hear news of this second murder and has never heard of the moniker of BTK. Unable to cope with the loss of his family, he becomes prone to violence. I lost all hope, I lost all desire to care about anybody or believe in anything.

All I thought about was violence and pain and suffering. What had happened to my family became who I was. And little by little, I got worse. 1777 Charlie manages to graduate from high school but he finds trouble wherever he can now 18 and no longer a minor Charlie turns to the streets and becomes a drifter he lives outside the law

stealing for food riding around in his motorcycle the smart boy with the bright future is long gone while a new serial killer is beginning to thrive it's March 17th 1977 when BTK strikes again Police get a call from a man who says a little boy just came knocking up my door, saying, my mom is dead, my mom is dead, call police. A man killed my mom. Police respond to the boy's home and find a woman lying dead in her own bed. She was found with a bag over her head tied with a ligature around her neck.

They learned from neighbors that the woman is Shirley Vion, a single mother of three children. Her son, five-year-old Steve, is the one who called for help. It appears he witnessed his mother's memory. murder. How do you ever recover from that? How does a five-year-old ever recover from that? In my mind, I was five, but I was six-year-old, just turned six. My mom, she was sick in bed, sent me block up the road for a can of soup, you know. And on my way back, man stops me, It tells me a picture, a woman and a child. Right away, the young boy can see the man is holding up a picture of his mom and his brother.

Asked me, did I know who it was? I said, no, sir. He wouldn't ahead and let me go. About 15 minutes later, he'd come knocking on an order. I opened it, and there stood the same guy. And he had a gun. Mom said, do as he says. He locked up in the bathroom.

Put his kids in there. Put blanket, a couple toys in there. Pushed the bed against the other door. I picked through a crack in the door. I've seen everything. Grip down, naked. Tipped your hands behind her back, face down. My brother, he broke the bathroom window,

hauled for help. I ran through the door. Broke it. After I ran around and tried to untie the rope, I could have got the rope loose. There might have been hope. But I was a five-year-old boy, you know. What the hell could I do?

It's a... It's burned in my brain. It'll never go away. Police now have three homicides. The Oteros, Catherine Bright, and Shirley Vion. BTK has become a serial killer, just like he promised. You're saying. Yes, man.

See you, Paul. We received a call about 8.20 from an individual that hung up phone and officers came out and we have checked and we do have a young lady that is a victim of a homicide. Was she shot or stand? Now she appears been strangled this time. With us right now is Chief of Police Richard Lemunion. BTK assault has killed seven people chief. What kind of leads do you have? Very honestly we have no solid leads at all. We have general leads. We have circumstantial evidence. We have absolutely nothing that will point us. to any one particular individual.

It appears somebody between the early morning hours of Saturday, April 27th, cut phone lines to Hedges home, broke into the house, and kidnapped the 53-year-old Park City woman. We have an individual who apparently has the uncontrollable desire to kill at times. Fear spread quickly in the community. People began looking over their shoulders. Doors and windows were locked tight. The most important thing that everyone can do is certainly be aware

that we do have a very serious problem. The body was nude, and police say badly decomposed. A pair of knotted pantyhose were found lying in the ditch beside it. The murders in Wichita were all close together. Everyone within a few miles of the killer's playground fears for their own life. But those who survived and know what kind of monster BTK really is. Charlie Otero, Kevin Bright, Steve Relford. Steve is now 20 years old, and just like Charlie, he lives a troubled life.

Steve, I've always felt very bad for him for what happened to him. Because BTK didn't just kill his mother. BTK really killed him too. My memory of my mom took over everything for a while. I didn't care about having. Care where I went. I care if I died. Still sometimes I wish I died.

Charlie Otero is now 34. His relationships are far from the picture-perfect love his parents had. He now has a son, a new spark in his life. He named him Joseph after his dad and his baby brother. It's a shot at redemption for Charlie. But in his heart, the anger and hatred has boiled up for far too long. I wanted revenge. I wanted revenge for my family.

That's all I could think about. The year is 2004. There has been no news of the serial killer in over 12 years. Charlie has reached Rock Bottom. He's in jail, serving time for domestic violence for the last four years. He knows if his own parents were here, they would be ashamed of him. His son, who's now 16 years old, comes to visit him from time to time, but it only breaks his heart. 30 years ago today, 15-year-old Charlie Otero comes home from school to find his entire family murdered in this house on North Edgemore,

and so begins the most infamous, unsolved serial killing substance. free in Wichitae history. BTK might have been able to get away with it for the rest of his life had he not let his massive ego getting away. It's January of 2004. For the last 13 years, no one knows what happened to the serial killer. The media are doing stories on the 30th anniversary of BTK's first murder. According to the Wichita newspaper, it appears someone is also writing a book on the BTK case.

BTK did not like that at all. He did not like that there was someone else writing his story. There was someone else getting publicity for the murders that he wanted credit for. And good evening. We have exclusive details. A new communication that could be from the serial killer BTK. Breaking his silence after 25 years. Serial killer apparently has resurfaced.

Wichita Police Department on Friday received information in Wichita Eagle received a letter. The letter contains Vicki Wegerly's driver's license, which was never recovered by investigators, as well as pictures that will shock police. The pictures of Vicki Wagerly on her floor in her bedroom is determined were not taken by anyone in law enforcement. They were taken by the killer. Everyone was in shock. No way. There's no way this is true. It can't be that he's still around.

But when they examined the return address, it reads, Thomas Kilman. B.T.K. In the following months, B.T.K sends a steady stream of communications to the news media, letters, puzzles, all accompanied by a plastic doll wrapped in bondage, identical to those of the victims. It was very shocking to see a doll with the exact same bondage from 30 years before. As the FBI told us early in this investigation, if you can keep him communicating, he will make a mistake.

The following facts about the ETK are being made available. are being made available to the public in hopes of identifying BTK. Investigators become more and more present in the news, sharing facts about the case, giving BTK the publicity he wants, all the while trying to appeal to his ego. This is one of the most challenging cases that I've ever been involved with. Those releases weren't met for the public. They were meant for BTK. We truly feel that he is trying to communicate with us. That was kind of an invitation to BTK to bond with it.

Between March 2004 and January 2005, Wichita Police receives a total of five communications from the killer. On January 25th, the investigation takes a shocking turn. The latest letter is found in a cereal box, left at a Home Depot parking lot. Inside, the killer writes to police that he now wants to change his communication method. BTK asks police, can you trace a floppy disc? Please be honest. This guy thought that we wouldn't lie to him because we were enjoying things as much as he was. Well, law enforcement was not honest.

They say, no, it cannot be traced. To respond to the killer, police need to post a message through the classified ads. The response was to be, Rex, it'll be okay. My fear was that he would send us a floppy disk, that it would lead us to maybe a false suspect, and then he'd know we lied to him. If this is a trick, BTK could disappear forever. However, for the first time, investigators have something they didn't have 30 years earlier, video surveillance from the Home Depot parking lot. The quality is poor, making it impossible to see the man's face.

You wouldn't be able to identify anybody, but Ralph took one look at that film and said, that's a cheap Cherokee. This was truly the first piece of evidence we had that BTK didn't give us. give us. Just days later, a floppy disc arrives at the Wichita Police Department from BTK. Right away, forensics analyzed the disks. In a matter of moments, they are able to find the software registration to a user named Dennis and the organization name Christ Lutheran Church. Went to, I think it was a Google search, and found Christ and Lutheran Church. And when he clicked on the officers, there was a picture of a man named Dennis Raider.

We think it can't be this simple. Maybe this is a setup. Dennis Raider was president of his church. He was a compliance officer for the city of Park City. He was tracking it down. The dogs are somewhat territorial as well as vicious. He was living a normal life. He was a Cub Scout leader. He's out there not only using knots, but he's teaching people how to tie square knots. He worked for ADT, the alarm company. He's in your house

installing the alarm system and he's a serial killer. And then we drove to Park City as fast as we could. There was a black jeep Cherokee in the driveway. Investigators put Dennis Rader under 24-hour surveillance while they billed the case against him. Back in 1974, we couldn't even spell DNA. The technology didn't exist back then. But at Josephine's feet, there was a pool. The crime scene investigator had incredible imagination.

He took a pillowcase and he cut it up into several small pieces, and then he dipped it in that pool. 31 years later, a genetic profile would be drawn from one of those preserved pieces of evidence. Ever since the coming of DNA technology, police have been looking for a match to that genetic profile. Now, they have the next best thing. They find out Raider has a daughter who attended Kansas State University. His daughter, Carrie, she had had a pap smear, and I was able to get a court order for this sample, drove it as quickly as I could to our forensic laboratory. I recall it as being the longest two days in the world.

I'll never forget the lieutenant called me and said, got the DNA back its hands. BTK is Dennis Raider. On February 25, 2005, police arrest Dennis Raider on his way home for lunch in Park City. As he is faced with the investigators who finally caught him, the serial killer who terrorized the state of Kansas for the last 3rd, for the last 30 years is stunned. Lieutenant Landware pulls up in a Ziploc evidence baggie

with the purple floppy disk in it. He slides it in front of Raider and says, you know what this is. Dennis Raider starts poking his finger forcefully on this floppy disk. And he says, I got a question. I need to ask. Sure do I.

Raider thought that Landware was doing this for the fun of it, that they had a good thing going. good thing going. I was trying to catch you. The BTK murder mystery may be nearing and end. That's right. Wichita Police and city leaders confirming today that a person of interest taken in for questioning yesterday is in fact BTK. The bottom line,

BTK is arrested. I believe most women in Wichitaw are very emotional that day because we really didn't believe it would never happen again. And you're like, we're finally safe or finally safe. Although many in Wichita are relieved by the news of the arrest, most are shocked to learn who BTK is. People knew Dennis Raider for his role at the local church. For the family of his victims, the news is horrifying. What could be worse than to piously pretend every Sunday that you're to this example of Christianity, you can be the worst form of social sewage that ever crept out from under a rock.

The day Dennis Raider was caught, I was working to do landscaping. I got the phone call from my sister. She said they got him. I said, yeah, right. She goes, no, they really got him. They swear it's him. I put the phone down, and I remember Bush is flying 10 feet high over my head. I was ripping him out of the ground.

Charlie Otero, who has been struggling to put his life back on track, is confronted with the memory of his family's murder once again. Dennis Rader, the man who murdered his parents, his little brother, and his sister in cold blood, now has his face on every newspaper and TV channel in the country. For Charlie, the hate that was buried in a shallow grave, comes boiling out, and now he will have to face him in court. The man accused of being the BTK serial killer returns to a Kansas courtroom this morning. Families torn apart by the VTK killings will be able to look someone in the eye.

My mother died at the hands of one of the most disgusting social malignancies that's ever been introduced into this world. You always imagine the face of the devil. And here's this Elmer Fudd-looking little oath with a stupid haircut and a dumb look on his face. And I thought, oh, you're real intimidating. Yeah, you could probably scare a woman in the middle of night. But you're just a little cockroach. June 26, 2005, Dennis Rader is brought in front of a jury to begin his trial. Every surviving family member of each one of his victims shows up in court.

They want to make sure the monster will be put behind bars. Steve, son of Shirley Vion, is there. So is Charlie Otero. I was going there with the idea of getting my hands on him. I was going to shank him if I could. No matter what happened to me, I didn't care. I just wanted revenge. Constitutions of the United States and the state of Kansas provide that a person charged

of the criminal case is entitled to have a jury of 12 of his peers. I wanted revenge for my family. That's all I could think about. I didn't know anything about how my family had died until he did his confession. I like confronted the family, pulled the pistol, confronted Mr. O'Therald. He said that my mother said that, you know, may God forgive you for what you're doing. And it broke my heart to hear that my mom had said these things to a man while she's killing her family in front of her.

I wanted revenge. I wanted revenge for my family. For the next 45 minutes, the courtroom is quiet as the serial killer describes what happened to each of his victims. I started strangling. I stabbed her two or three times either here or here. Most of them, like Charlie, are hearing the details for the first time. Raider speaks matter-of-factly, showing no emotion or remorse in the killings. I proceeded to tie her up, in the bag overhead and strangled her.

The kids were really banging on the door, hollered screaming. Charlie is waiting patiently for the perfect moment to assault and kill Dennis Raider, when he gets a call he never expected. When we returned from lunch, I was confronted by a phone call. from my ex-girlfriend, the mother of my son, saying, Charlie Joseph's been hit by a car, and he said he's in a coma, he'd been hit by a car. After that phone call, I told God at that time, he said, I'll give my life, I'll give you everything, just save my son. Charlie is asked to make a statement on behalf of his family, all the while not knowing if his son will survive

the night. My name is Charlie Otero. I am not here to recant the personal loss I have felt for over 30 years, but to speak for all the members of my family, living and dead. Not only my siblings and I, but the entire families of the Oteros and the Burgos suffered from the actions of one Dennis Raider, sons, daughters, uncles and cousins, a father and mothers, all lost the precious moments my family's very existence would have brought them during their lifetimes. He caused me to challenge my faith, change my future forever, and separated me from the rest of my loved ones for over 30 years. Yet a son's love for his mother would not allow Dennis Rader to tarnish her memory.

The lessons I learned from my father and mother transcend the evil doings of Dennis Rader. Each one of these accounts, those sentences that are run consecutively one after the other. After Dennis Rader's sentencing, Charlie Otero left his anger in the courtroom and walked out a new man. All need for revenge went away, and all I could think about was my son. My son woke up months later, a newborn child. God answered my prayers and saved my son. And that changed my life. To this day, I try to live up to that.

I was wrong in letting what he did dictate who I was for so long. I take the memories of my family and use that to guide me. My family is with me all the time. I do a lot of speaking on a message of hope and redemption, trying to get people to understand that they can change their ways. After meeting another one of Raiders victims, Steve Relford, both men bonded over their common history. Charlie found a purpose in helping Steve fix his life, as Steve found a brother in Charlie.

Because of this common devastation to our lives, Steve understands me and I understand Steve like probably not too many other people do. It seems there is a brighter future ahead. for both men, as well as for other victims. Even as we left the courtroom, a lot of us felt that, you know, maybe we can make it. You know, maybe all is not lost. Maybe we can live our lives in a way that is a tribute to the one we lost. We can memorialize them through us and through what we do to better the world around us.

And while that doesn't bring back whoever we've lost in that path, doesn't go away and it never will, it gives us a chance to let them live on through something that's bigger than that, something that's bigger than us.