Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer by John Douglas, Johnny Dodd Page A
Authors: John Douglas, Johnny Dodd
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presence in their neighborhood.
The Detroit area had been nearly leveled by the 1967 race riots that left forty-three people dead. When I joined the FBI three years later, the place still exuded the desperate, forgotten aura of a second-generation war zone. Whenever my partner and I drove through the area in our so-called “bucar” (short for bureau car), the locals would flip us off and shout, “DOWN WITH THE PIGS.”
One afternoon in 1971, while en route to stake out a bookie joint, I asked myself, Is this really how you want to spend the next twenty-five years of your career? Before an answer could come to me, an empty bottle bounced off the roof of my car, shattering on the asphalt just outside my open window. I stomped on the accelerator, muttering to myself that the only way I’d ever last in the FBI would be to find some specialty in the science of criminology, then hurl myself into it with everything I had.
By 1972, shortly after the new FBI Academy opened in Quantico, Virginia, I learned about an agent named Howard Teten who was dabbling in criminal profiling, using it to catch violent criminals. And I started on the path that led me to this library, to these stacks of paper that told the story of how seven people in Wichita had come to be murdered.
3
Iglanced back down at the police and autopsy reports, yellowed press clippings, and black-and-white crime scene photos on the table and took a deep breath. I lifted the top page from the stack, adjusted my glasses, and began reading.
Years spent pouring through countless reports just like these had enabled me to develop the ability to transform the facts and images appearing on these pieces of paper into a series of moving pictures loosely resembling a movie. All I needed to do was absorb the information, and, before I knew it, scenes and images were spilling out inside my head. The sensation was similar to watching TV—only most of what I glimpsed was much more violent.
It all began on a frigid Tuesday morning around 7:50 A.M. The date was January 15, 1974. That was the moment the city of Wichita underwent a transformation because of what took place in a white house with black shutters in a lower-middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood in the southeast part of town.
When the man responsible for the event fled the dwelling at 803 North Edgemoor Street around noon, the residence sat quiet for over three hours. A furnace rumbled in the basement, and the family’s German shepherd paced anxiously through the snow in the backyard, letting out an occasional bark.
Shortly after 3:30 P.M, fifteen-year-old Charlie Otero and his brother, Danny, fourteen, and sister, Carmen June, thirteen, walked home from school and discovered the bodies of their mother and father in their bedroom. Charlie tried calling for help from the kitchen wall phone, but he couldn’t get a dial tone. So he ran to the house next door, shouting that his father was dead.
A moment later, the neighbor sprinted back to the family’s residence, ran down the hallway to the master bedroom, and poked his head inside. He spotted Julie Otero’s body sprawled atop the bed. Nearby, on the floor, lay her husband, Joseph, with a butcher knife beside him and his bound ankles propped up on a briefcase. The neighbor had no idea that the knife was there because the Otero children had used it to cut the bindings off their father. So, in a flash, he assumed the worst: Joseph had murdered his wife, then killed himself. That was what he told police a few minutes later when he telephoned them from his kitchen.
By the time rookie Wichita Police Department patrolman Robert “Bob” Bulla arrived at the Otero house less than five minutes later, the three or four inches of snow carpeting the lawn had begun turning to slush. Dispatch had radioed him that there was a possible murder-suicide at 803 North Edgemoor. Charlie was on the front lawn when Bulla pulled
The Detroit area had been nearly leveled by the 1967 race riots that left forty-three people dead. When I joined the FBI three years later, the place still exuded the desperate, forgotten aura of a second-generation war zone. Whenever my partner and I drove through the area in our so-called “bucar” (short for bureau car), the locals would flip us off and shout, “DOWN WITH THE PIGS.”
One afternoon in 1971, while en route to stake out a bookie joint, I asked myself, Is this really how you want to spend the next twenty-five years of your career? Before an answer could come to me, an empty bottle bounced off the roof of my car, shattering on the asphalt just outside my open window. I stomped on the accelerator, muttering to myself that the only way I’d ever last in the FBI would be to find some specialty in the science of criminology, then hurl myself into it with everything I had.
By 1972, shortly after the new FBI Academy opened in Quantico, Virginia, I learned about an agent named Howard Teten who was dabbling in criminal profiling, using it to catch violent criminals. And I started on the path that led me to this library, to these stacks of paper that told the story of how seven people in Wichita had come to be murdered.
3
Iglanced back down at the police and autopsy reports, yellowed press clippings, and black-and-white crime scene photos on the table and took a deep breath. I lifted the top page from the stack, adjusted my glasses, and began reading.
Years spent pouring through countless reports just like these had enabled me to develop the ability to transform the facts and images appearing on these pieces of paper into a series of moving pictures loosely resembling a movie. All I needed to do was absorb the information, and, before I knew it, scenes and images were spilling out inside my head. The sensation was similar to watching TV—only most of what I glimpsed was much more violent.
It all began on a frigid Tuesday morning around 7:50 A.M. The date was January 15, 1974. That was the moment the city of Wichita underwent a transformation because of what took place in a white house with black shutters in a lower-middle-class, predominantly white neighborhood in the southeast part of town.
When the man responsible for the event fled the dwelling at 803 North Edgemoor Street around noon, the residence sat quiet for over three hours. A furnace rumbled in the basement, and the family’s German shepherd paced anxiously through the snow in the backyard, letting out an occasional bark.
Shortly after 3:30 P.M, fifteen-year-old Charlie Otero and his brother, Danny, fourteen, and sister, Carmen June, thirteen, walked home from school and discovered the bodies of their mother and father in their bedroom. Charlie tried calling for help from the kitchen wall phone, but he couldn’t get a dial tone. So he ran to the house next door, shouting that his father was dead.
A moment later, the neighbor sprinted back to the family’s residence, ran down the hallway to the master bedroom, and poked his head inside. He spotted Julie Otero’s body sprawled atop the bed. Nearby, on the floor, lay her husband, Joseph, with a butcher knife beside him and his bound ankles propped up on a briefcase. The neighbor had no idea that the knife was there because the Otero children had used it to cut the bindings off their father. So, in a flash, he assumed the worst: Joseph had murdered his wife, then killed himself. That was what he told police a few minutes later when he telephoned them from his kitchen.
By the time rookie Wichita Police Department patrolman Robert “Bob” Bulla arrived at the Otero house less than five minutes later, the three or four inches of snow carpeting the lawn had begun turning to slush. Dispatch had radioed him that there was a possible murder-suicide at 803 North Edgemoor. Charlie was on the front lawn when Bulla pulled
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