Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 39
Cruiser station wagon backing out of the garage at approximately
10:30 A.M. The driver, according to this neighbor, was a short man
with a “Middle Eastern” complexion.
Another neighbor also reported seeing a dark-haired stranger
quickly back out of the family’s driveway. Whoever was driving the car
was in such a rush that yet another neighbor had to slam on his brakes
to avoid plowing into him as the neighbor backed onto Murdoch
Street.
A few hours later, the car was located in the parking lot of Dillons
grocery. A witness at the scene told police that the driver exiting the
car looked terribly nervous. His whole body appeared to be shaking.
It was hours past sunset when Charlie Stewart, the lead detective
working the case, broke the news to the three surviving Otero children
that their two youngest siblings weren’t going to be coming home
from school.
From fifteen-year-old Charlie Otero, Stewart, known for his rocksolid
investigative skills, learned that the family had moved to Wichita
in fall 1973 from the Panama Canal Zone, where Joseph, thirty-eight,
had served the last stretch of his twenty-year hitch in the Air Force.
An aviation fanatic with a penchant for bongo playing and practical
jokes, he decided to move his family to Wichita, known as the “Air
Capital of the World,” in order to pursue a career in flying. For the past
couple of months, Joseph, who had a commercial pilot’s license,
worked as a mechanic and flight instructor at a local airport.
Like his wife, Julie, thirty-four, to whom he’d been married for the
past sixteen years, Joseph was born in Puerto Rico. The couple’s five
kids, ages nine through fifteen, were all well mannered and studious,
and seemed to adore their parents. The only other member of the
family was their often unpredictable German shepherd mix, Lucky, a
trained military guard dog the Oteros had brought with them when
they moved from Panama.
The dog was pacing around the backyard when police arrived,
something that perplexed detectives when they spotted boot prints
near the spot where the UNSUB had cut the family’s phone line. Why,
they wondered, hadn’t the foul-tempered Lucky started barking to
sound the alarm?
After speaking with the distraught, dazed children, a picture of
the family’s morning routine began to come into focus, along with
some rough details about what may have happened over the course of
the morning.