Inside the Mind of BTK

44 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
an act of retaliation or—due to the family’s having just moved to the
area from Panama—was somehow connected with the narcotics trade.
It also seemed possible that the killer had been targeting Julie and her
daughter. If that were true, he was undoubtedly surprised to find
Joseph at home on that morning, especially because there were no cars
parked in the driveway. Little did the killer know that a few weeks earlier,
two men had run Joseph off the road. The accident not only caved
in the front end of his car, which was now in the shop, but also
severely injured his shoulder.
By early February, none of the leads unearthed by detectives had
led anywhere. In an effort to dig up some information into Joseph
Otero’s background, an investigative trip to Puerto Rico and Panama
was undertaken by Floyd Hannon, Wichita chief of police, and Bill
Cornwell, chief of homicide. They traveled there to flesh out some of
the rumors they’d heard about Joseph Otero.
Could this veteran pilot have been involved in the drug trade? Might
this have been a gang hit? Was it possible that the murders were a ritualistic
killing performed by some religious group the family belonged to?
Other than getting a suntan and having a few run-ins with the local
police, who didn’t like the no-nonsense attitude of these two gringo
interlopers, Hannon and Cornwell did little to crack open any new
leads. By the time the two cops returned to Wichita, they were no closer
to solving the murders than they had been a month before when the
bodies of Joseph, Julie, Josie, and Joey Otero were discovered.