"Your Neighbor Is a Killer": the father of two children who murdered a whole family

After an investigation that lasted for years, the content creator and podcaster Moti Kenen brings in his book Your Neighbor Is a Killer the stories of serial killers who managed to hide for years double lives—like family men, model neighbors, respected professionals and even lawmen—while they carried out horrific crimes.

Dennis Rader BTK — Bind, Torture, Kill | to bind, to torture, to kill

The monster within is not always visible to the eye; most of the time it lurks behind a mask of normality.

Dennis Rader

Type of disguise: president of the Lutheran church

Description of victims: young women and then older ones

Number of victims: 10, suspected of 11

He claimed more crimes: murder, burglary, and abuse

Years of activity: 1974–2005

Sentence: ten life sentences

A sexual fantasy is a thought, imagination, or script that arouses us sexually. Sexual fantasies usually begin when we start being sexually active, back in adolescence, although there are cases where they begin even earlier. Sexual fantasies can be very different and varied, and may include situations, characters, activities, or places that awaken a person’s sexual desire.

Sexual fantasies are usually normal, and they even develop the mind and imagination, but what happens if a sexual fantasy starts becoming a bit disturbing and even violent? What about a sadistic fantasy? Or a masochistic one?

Erotic choking, for example, is a sexual act performed during intercourse. I will not explain in detail how it is done, because different couples do it differently. But what if the same fantasy, full of feelings and deep intimacy, starts becoming obsessive to the point that it causes high sexual arousal but also self-harm? What if it comes together with a sexual deviation of voyeurism (Voyeurism), which is looking at others when they are having sex?

The combination of voyeurism with a sadistic mind can lead to very frightening character traits.

Therefore, I thought it would be very fitting to open the book with the story of a very sophisticated killer who operated for thirty-one years and managed to evade law enforcement authorities while taking the lives of ten people, and among them, to the horror, a whole family.

What makes his character so disturbing is that this killer was a family man, a father of two children, and married to a loving wife. He had a proper job and a respectable weekly salary as a technician and installer of security cameras. In addition to all of these, he was a polite person and admired in his church community, where he served as the church’s chief assistant to the pastor. Because of all of these, no one believed or suspected that he was capable of committing horrific murders like the ones he carried out.

His method of operation showed investigators that these were planned murders intended to fulfill a sadistic sexual fantasy involved with a severe deviation. This method proved that the killer sought to satisfy his terrible urges through especially violent murder, for which he received his nickname—BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill)—to bind, to torture, to kill. Dennis Rader.

The date was June 27, 2005. In the Sedgwick County District Court in Wichita, Kansas, an extremely difficult confession regarding violent and horrific murders was heard. The silence and tension that prevailed in the courtroom made the hairs of those present stand on end when they heard Dennis’s testimony.

Calmly and in a steady voice, without fear or remorse, he described the atrocities he committed against his victims one after another. He explained how he used to bind them, watch them when they were terrified, torture them mentally and physically, and finally choke them to death.

The first case he described occurred on January 15, 1974 in Wichita. The Ottero family, a family with four children, moved into a neighborhood where Dennis Rader lived. The time was 7:30 in the morning. Dennis saw nine-year-old Joey bring the dog into the house and leave the back door open. The breach called to Dennis, and he entered the house without suspicion: he cut the telephone line and, with a gun to his threats, began confronting Joseph, the head of the family.

“Who are you?” Joseph asked.

“I’m wanted in the state of California and on my way to New York. I need your car and I’ll eat,” Dennis replied.

“We don’t have money, but you can take my car parked outside—just don’t hurt us!”

“Lie on the floor face down. If I hear even one small squeak, I’ll shoot you and your entire family,” Dennis said and threatened him with the revolver in his hand.

The family’s dog, which was inside, began barking, and Dennis ordered Joseph to take it outside. Joseph called for little Joey and asked him to take the dog out. After he took the dog out, Dennis tied Joseph’s, Julia’s, and little Joey’s hands and feet, and suddenly he saw in front of him Josephine, the eleven-year-old, stunned and paralyzed with fear, standing by the stairs to the second floor. He grabbed her too and tied her hands and feet.

Dennis took everyone to the bedroom on the second floor and seated Joseph, Josephine, and Julia on the floor with their hands and feet bound, with a gag in their mouths, while little Joey sat on the bed.

Joseph Ottero suffered an injury to one of his ribs due to a car accident he had gone through, and he felt pain from sitting on the floor in the bedroom while bound. To ease him, Dennis loosened the tight binding slightly. Although in court he admitted that the family murder was planned, when he entered their home he did not know he was going to encounter the head of the family; he was sure he would not be home.

When the four family members were in the bedroom, bound, Dennis understood that they had seen his face and that they could easily identify him if he left them alive.

He took a plastic bag and an electrical cable he had brought in advance, wrapped Joseph’s head, sat behind him on the floor, wrapped the cable around his neck, pulled his head tightly backward, and began choking him. Joseph resisted and moved from side to side while his wife tried with all her might to scream, but her mouth was blocked with a sock that Dennis shoved into it. She screamed and cried, and the children also cried and begged him to stop. Dennis increased the pressure on the bag wrapped around Joseph’s head, but suddenly the bag tore and a large hole opened in it. At that moment Joseph lost consciousness and fell to the floor.

In movies, choking is often shown in a distorted way, where it lasts five to fifteen to twenty seconds until the victim loses his life, but in reality choking takes much longer. The average time for full choking is between four and seven minutes, during which one must apply heavy pressure on the neck. Try sitting quietly for five minutes, alone, doing nothing, and you can imagine what happens during this prolonged time to a person whose neck is being pressed, preventing air and blood from reaching his head until he loses consciousness. Add to that the anxiety, panic, and horror the victim feels while seeing his killer in front of him. Understand how frightening it is to choke another person, and on the other side, to be choked.

After Joseph lost consciousness, Dennis stood up and took another plastic bag, wrapped Julia’s head and began choking her. The children beside them cried and screamed at Dennis to stop, but he increased the pressure on the bag until Julia also lost consciousness. At that stage Dennis was sure she was dead, but she simply fainted. He went to Josephine, the eleven-year-old, and choked her too, and she also lost consciousness.

Suddenly Julia woke up and, in exhaustion, asked:

“Please, release my little son, please!”

Dennis stood calmly, took Joey to another room while he was bound, and there wrapped his head with a shirt and a plastic bag and placed him on the floor. Then he returned to Julia and choked her again, but this time he did not use a plastic bag; he used the electrical cable. This time Dennis did not stop until her last breath. When he finished with her, he noticed that Joseph was waking up. He wrapped his head with the shirt that was in the room and choked him, this time until death.

After that he returned to the room of little Joey, who was sprawled on the floor, brought a chair close, and sat down.

“Don’t worry, Joey, I promise it will pass quickly,” he said and began choking him.

Slowly Joey choked as Dennis pressed on his small neck with the rope wrapped around him. Dennis gasped hard. He was stunned and excited by what had just happened. He felt tension and his heart beat hard. Feelings of sexual arousal and control passed through his body. Now he wanted to complete his sexual fantasy; that is why he came here.

“Mom?…” Little Josephine woke up, coughing from the choking she had experienced.

“Mom isn’t here, honey. I’ll take care of you,” Dennis told her.

In frightening and chilling congratulations, he lifted her. She was his prize; only her he had been waiting for.

Dennis carried her in his hands down to the basement, where he tied a soft rope around her neck and then hung her from one of the pillars. And while she fought for her life and was choked to death, he sat in front of her, watched her, and touched himself. When she died completely, he masturbated and reached sexual release.

Dennis Rader’s life

Dennis Rader was born on March 9, 1945 in Pittsburgh, Kansas. He was the oldest brother among four brothers. His mother, Dorothy Rader, was an accountant, and his father worked for a gas services company in the city. When he was six, his family decided to move to the city of Wichita and start a new life in a big city.

Even in childhood, Dennis showed signs of cruelty and lack of empathy. He had a very cruel hobby—he enjoyed torturing small animals, a habit that indicates early signs of psychopathic behavior. He was withdrawn and failed to develop deep social connections with his peers. Although he seemed like a normal child outwardly, his behavior was distant and cold.

Adolescence was a critical period in which his violent and sexual urges took shape. At school he was considered an average student—not outstanding in studies and not active socially at all. He avoided group activities and thus hid his dark thoughts and cruel behavior. During adolescence, Dennis’s behavior became darker and more complex. He began developing violent sexual fantasies that included control and choking. To satisfy his urges, he would find small animals, choke them, and look at them dead between his hands (hurting animals in childhood indicates trauma that existed at home).

As these fantasies developed, so did his desire to abuse. His relationship with his mother was complex; most of the time there was no loving relationship between them, and she behaved toward him coldly. One day she found a stain of semen on one of his pants. She humiliated him and said: “If you masturbate, God will come and kill you.”

Dennis said that one day her ring fell between the springs of the sofa and she called him to help her. When Dennis saw the distress she was in, crying and frightened, he found that he was teasing by the situation; he was excited to see an helpless and trapped woman.

Some estimate that he had a sexual attraction toward his mother and yet also a repulsion from her. Apparently, the strange relationship with her was the trigger that caused him to fantasize about how he would hurt women. This was also the period when he began creating traps for girls for himself using binding methods, something that would later help his murderous activity.

Dennis watched a lot of pornographic films, especially those containing elements of BDSM (binding, control, sadism, and masochism).

He liked reading stories about serial killers, about violent crimes and kidnappings. In this way he learned the path of serial killers and understood what hindered them and what he needed to do in order not to fail in the same things. While children his age played outside, he would sit and draw pictures for himself of women who were bound, frightened, and tortured—an occupation that caused him a great deal of satisfaction. His obsession with the female sex grew more and more and became a very central factor in his life. He described how he would dress in women’s clothes and peek at his neighbors, and then return home, bring it back in his memory, and masturbate.

After finishing his studies, he enrolled in university in Kansas. He failed in his studies and claimed that everything he thought about during his studies was his sexual fantasies. In the years 1966–1970 he enlisted in the American army and served in the Air Force. When he was released, he started working at a butcher shop in the city.

In 1971 he married Paula, who was his beloved from his studies. The couple had two children: Carrie and Brian. In 1973 he studied technology and electronics and completed his studies successfully. In 1979 he completed a bachelor’s degree in science at Wichita University. In the years 1974–1988 Dennis worked at a security company as an installer of cameras in the homes of innocent citizens. Those citizens requested his services because they feared the killer who was roaming around the city, but ironically that killer was the person who provided them with security.

Your Neighbor Is a Killer, Moti Kenen | 201 pages