Editing Dennis Rader (section)

==Criminal history==
On January 15<sup>th</sup>, 1974, four members of the Otero family were murdered in Wichita, Kansas. The victims were father Joseph Otero, aged 38, mother Julie Otero, age 33, and two children: Joseph Otero Jr. age 9, and Josephine Otero age 11. Their bodies were discovered by the family's eldest child, Charlie Otero, who was in 10th grade at the time, as he returned home from school. After his 2005 arrest, Rader confessed to killing the Otero family. Rader wrote a letter that had been stashed inside an engineering book in the Wichita Public Library in October 1974 that described, in detail, the killing of the Otero family in January of that year.

In early 1978, he sent another letter to television station KAKE in Wichita, claiming responsibility for the [[murder]]s of the Oteros, Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian and Nancy Fox. He suggested many possible names for himself, including the one that stuck: BTK. He demanded media attention in this second letter, and it was finally announced that Wichita did indeed have a serial killer at large. A poem was enclosed titled "Oh! Death to Nancy," a parody of the lyrics to the American folk song "O Death."

He also intended to kill others, such as Anna Williams, who in 1979, aged 63, escaped death by returning home much later than expected. Rader explained during his confession that he became obsessed with Williams and was "absolutely livid" when she evaded him. He spent hours waiting at her home, but became impatient and left when she did not return home from visiting friends.

Marine Hedge, aged 53, was found on May 5<sup>th</sup>, 1985, at East 53rd Street North between North Webb Road and North Greenwich Road in Wichita. Rader had killed her on April 27<sup>th</sup>, 1985 and he took her dead body to his church, the Christ Lutheran Church, where he was the president of the church council. There, he photographed her body in various bondage positions. Rader had previously stored black plastic sheets and other materials at the church in anticipation for the murder and then later dumped the body in a remote ditch. He had called his plan "Project Cookie".

In 1988, after the murders of three members of the Fager family in Wichita, a letter was received from someone claiming to be the BTK killer, in which the author of the letter denied being the perpetrator of the Fager murders. The author credited the killer with having done "admirable work." It was not proven until 2005 that this letter was, in fact, written by Rader. He is not considered by police to have committed this crime. Additionally, two of the women Rader had stalked in the 1980s and one he had stalked in the mid-1990s filed restraining orders against him; one of them also moved away.

His final victim, Dolores E. Davis, was found on February 1<sup>st</sup>, 1991, at West 117th Street North and North Meridian Street in Sedgwick. She had been killed by Rader on January 19<sup>th</sup>, 1991.