Victim's son believes father knew BTK, family targeted

[Retired-18]

Posted on Tue, Nov. 30, 2004
Victim's son believes father knew BTK, family targeted

ROXANA HEGEMAN

Associated Press

WICHITA, Kan. - For decades after leaving school, Charlie Otero stayed underground hiding from the BTK serial killer who strangled his parents and two younger siblings.

"I didn't want him tracking me, knowing where I am," Otero said in a telephone interview Tuesday from the Western New Mexico Correctional Facility. "No rent, no house, no bills. Nothing. No jobs. No checks."

Otero was 15 when he found his parents' bound bodies in their bedroom in 1974. Police told him later that his brother and sister were also killed.

Now 46, Otero remains convinced his father knew the killer because he had been acting strangely to protect the family in the days just before the killings. And he believes his family was targeted because of something his father did during his military service.

The strangulation of Otero's four family members are the earliest deaths claimed by the killer who calls himself BTK, which stands for "Bind, Torture, Kill." He has been linked to eight unsolved homicides that terrorized Wichita between 1974 and 1986. After years of silence, the killer surfaced again by sending letters to police and media this year.

Police said earlier this year that the Otero killings had "special significance" because they were the first in a string of killings. But police have refused to discuss the case beyond carefully scripted statements periodically released.

On Jan. 15, 1974, the three surviving children of Joseph and Julie Otero came home from school to find their parents and two other siblings, Josephine, 11, and Joseph II, 9, dead at the family's Wichita home.

Otero is nearing the end of a four-year sentence for aggravated battery in a domestic violence case. He said he has not talked to BTK investigators since 1977 or 1978. He wants to know what is happening in the case, and whether there is any way he can help.

"I've had this bottled up inside me for 30 years," he said.

He listened intently as an AP reporter recounted the details released Tuesday by Wichita police profiling the killer in the hopes that someone could identify him. None of it pointed to anyone he knew, he said afterward.

"I've always thought my father knew him, that is about all," Otero said.

His father knew something was wrong, Otero said, citing several instances in the days before the murders that were "very suspicious." One time when the lights went out, his father made the family get into a closet until he made sure the neighborhood was also dark.

Another time, when a telephone repairman showed up at the house, Joseph Otero made his son go to a window to make sure there was a company van there before he opened the door.

Then just days before he died, Joseph Otero, who worked as an aircraft mechanic, tried to give him his ring in case something happened to him. Charlie Otero now remembers telling his father he didn't want him to talk like that, kidding his father he would probably outlive him.

"Nobody hated my family," Otero said. "I am sure it had something to do with my father's military history. My dad did things. ... He had to tell somebody what he had been up to in the last few years and he was dead days later."

Years later Otero is still convinced - based on that overheard telephone conversation his father had days before his death - that his family's slaughter had something to do with his service in the U.S. Air Force. Otero said his father was involved with the Inter-American Air Forces Academy, a program that has trained Air Force personnel from Latin America for 60 years.

But Otero declined to say further what his father did in the military because he was afraid talking about it might jeopardize his parole next month.

He still remembers vividly the day his family was killed. His younger siblings were the first to find their parents bodies, crying out to him that mom and dad were playing a bad joke on them.

But Otero instantly knew they were dead: "My dad was cold, hard. You could smell the death. His tongue was almost bit off, a belt was around his neck."

He thought his other siblings were in school, now he knows they never got a chance to go to school before the killer came to their house. He and his two surviving siblings would also be dead had they not left an hour earlier than usual for school, he said.

Otero said he learned further details of his family's murders after hiring a lawyer and private investigator and reading some of the FBI files on the case.

That is where he said he found out that his father was apparently untied in the middle of his torture session and made to write something before he was tied up again and killed.

The killings changed his life: "Look where I am at," Otero said in the prison interview.

Otero said he has spent 20 of the last 30 years hiding from BTK. He said he is not paranoid because the killer is still out there.

And he has something he would like to tell BTK: "Why? Turn yourself in. Tell me why."

[Retired-17]

Wow.

Thank-you soooo much for posting this.
I have been following this case for as long as I can remember. Very scary, but very interesting.

[jftazzy102]

I think this one has been the scariest out of all the serial killers I have heard about.

[irisheyes66]

Scary indeed...proving that even in a quiet place like Kansas, evil can take hold.

[Stewyfan]

I knew this family be fore they lived in Kansas. Joseph and my father were dear friends in the Air Force in the Panama Canal Zone.
This has hurt for so long, I still can't believe it. For Charlie and anyone who knew the Otero family, I hope this will bring us all some peace.