6:01

The Boy Scouts family moved to Wichita when

6:03

he was around five in 1950. They

6:06

settled into a three-bedroom home on North

6:08

Seneca Street on the northwestern edge of

6:10

town, only 10 minutes from

6:13

his dad's new job at Kansas Gas

6:15

& Electric. Those who grew

6:17

up with the Boy Scout remember him as

6:19

a shy, quiet kid who didn't participate in

6:21

the neighborhood stickball games that were all the

6:24

rage at the time. Maybe

6:26

that wasn't a huge red flag, but this

6:29

could have been. One

6:31

winter day when the Boy Scout was

6:33

in sixth grade, the snow kept the

6:35

students inside for recess. That's

6:37

when he and two friends began drawing

6:39

what he labeled a, quote-unquote, girl trap.

6:42

His friends went along with this, agreeing that

6:44

they knew plenty of girls in their class

6:46

who were annoying. But

6:49

the trap that the Boy Scout was

6:51

drawing in colored pencil was a slaughterhouse

6:53

based on none other than the murder

6:55

castle designed by H.H. Holmes.

6:58

He had read about Holmes in his

7:00

murder hotel and become obsessed. While

7:03

his two friends drew the interiors of

7:05

the hotel, he drew steel cages and

7:08

flames that shot out of walls to

7:10

roast his victims. When

7:12

their teacher came over to see what

7:14

the boys were furiously whispering about, the

7:17

other two boys had the decency to

7:19

look ashamed. But the Boy

7:21

Scout excitedly began to explain how it

7:23

would all work to his teacher. One

7:26

of those friends would later sobbingly

7:28

tell profiler John Douglas that he

7:30

knew something wasn't right at that

7:32

moment, but he never would have

7:34

guessed his childhood friend would turn

7:36

out to be such a horrific

7:38

killer. In

7:42

1955, when the Boy Scout was about

7:44

10 years old, his family bought its

7:46

first TV. All four

7:48

boys loved to watch The Mickey Mouse Club,

7:50

according to Psychology Today, around the same

7:53

time that he was drawing his terrifying

7:55

picture of his murder castle, he had

7:58

a raging and violent crush. sample

30:00

directly from him, they could

30:02

maybe get a sample from a relative. Ray

30:05

London, a special agent with the

30:07

Kansas Bureau of Investigation, remembered

30:10

that the Boy Scouts' daughter, Carrie,

30:12

attended Kansas State University and that

30:14

most students used the on-campus clinic.

30:17

Agent London drove the 130 miles

30:20

to KSU and found that Carrie

30:22

had used the clinic several times.

30:25

After returning with a court order, he

30:28

came back to Wichita with slides containing

30:30

cells from Carrie's last pap

30:32

smear. With

30:35

another court order in hand, he dropped the

30:37

sample at the crime lab in Topeka. After

30:40

those tests were done, London,

30:42

and his entire task force,

30:45

had what they were hoping for. They

30:47

had DNA proof. The

30:52

arrest was a coordinated operation

30:54

that included the FBI, KBI,

30:57

and Wichita Police. D-Day

30:59

was February 25th. From

31:01

their surveillance, they knew the Boy Scout left his

31:03

office every day at 1215 and drove

31:06

the three minutes home to have lunch with

31:08

Paula. Agents waited

31:11

until he was on a side road to entrap

31:13

him in a pincer move. The

31:15

Boy Scout immediately jumped out of his truck,

31:18

but he didn't bolt. Agent

31:20

London told Jodyn Douglas that, quote,

31:23

he went quickly without much effort,

31:25

end quote. London also

31:27

recalled that everything about him was

31:29

calm, cool, and flat, especially

31:32

when the Boy Scout looked him in the

31:34

eye and said, quote, tell my

31:36

wife I won't be home for lunch. I

31:38

assume you know where I live, end quote.

31:44

The trial began in the summer of 2005 as Kansas

31:46

braced to relive 30 years of trauma. But

31:51

to everyone's surprise, the Boy

31:54

Scout confessed to murdering 10 people in

31:56

open court on June 27th. play

32:00

had been ruled out and for him

32:02

this was his best or only option

32:05

at getting a reasonable sentence. He

32:07

then proceeded to describe each of

32:09

the 10 murders in detail

32:12

without any hint of remorse.

32:14

At a sentencing on August

32:16

18th, the Boy Scout monologued

32:18

for 30 minutes without apologizing

32:21

or saying anything of note.

32:24

Once he finally sat down,

32:26

according to the Washington Post,

32:28

the Boy Scout, aka Dennis

32:30

Rader, the BTK killer, that's

32:32

spine torturer kill, was

32:35

sentenced to 10 consecutive life sentences

32:37

with a minimum sentence of 175

32:39

years. As you can

32:43

imagine, Rader's family was reeling,

32:46

devastated from the moment police notified

32:48

them of his arrest. They

32:50

didn't know him to be the monster capable

32:52

of doing the things he described in court.

32:55

In early 2007, Paula filed

32:58

for an emergency divorce. According

33:00

to the Wichita Eagle, Kansas

33:03

typically requires a 60-day waiting period

33:05

for divorces, but Judge Eric Yost

33:07

waived that, signing the papers the

33:10

very same day they were filed.

33:12

It should

33:15

be noted too that Charlie Otero's

33:17

life seismically changed when he found

33:20

his family dead years prior. The

33:22

surviving members of the family were sent to

33:25

New Mexico to live with relatives. Unsurprisingly,

33:27

Charlie suffered from periods

33:29

of instability, periods of

33:32

being unhoused, and he spent

33:34

some time in prison. He moved back to

33:36

Wichita in 2008, where, according to

33:39

a 2019 Wichita Eagle article,

33:42

he was living with his fiancée and

33:45

happily working at a motorcycle shop doing

33:47

repair work. According to the

33:49

article, Charlie had even begun to come to

33:51

terms when living in the same city as

33:54

the man who killed his family. He told

33:56

the Eagle that he used to give the

33:58

prison the middle finger. whenever he was driving

34:00

by. But he stopped. He

34:03

decided to let his hate for Rader go.

34:06

He said simply that he was,

34:09

quote, just tired of carrying that

34:11

weight, end quote. To

34:22

research this episode, Jen Erdman

34:25

read former FBI profiler John

34:27

Douglas's book Inside the Mind

34:29

of BTK, the true story

34:31

behind the 30-year hunt for

34:34

the notorious Wichita serial killer.

34:37

Additional sources included several articles

34:39

from the Wichita Eagle, the

34:41

Washington Post, and Psychology Today.

34:46

The Catalyst is a production

34:49

of Grab Bag Collab, created

34:51

and engineered by Amanda Rossman

34:53

and narrated and edited by

34:55

Amber Hunt. You can support

34:58

us and our other programs

35:00

at patreon.com/grab bag collab. That's

35:02

G-R-A-B-B-A-G-C-O-L-L-A-B. Special thanks

35:05

to Daisy Egan for being our

35:07

first pass editor and a collaborator

35:09

on Grab Bag. Music comes from

35:11

Soundstripe Inc., my dad, Bruce Hunt,

35:13

and my son, Hunt Van Ben

35:15

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