Was It a Murder Conspiracy? (page 3 of 4)

Never-Ending Troubles

He couldn't know it yet, but the hunt for BTK would eventually help turn his life around. At the moment, though, his troubles seemed never-ending. Charlie's wife called the police after an argument and accused him of trying to choke her with a coat hanger. He denied it, but facing a charge of attempted murder, he accepted the prosecutor's bargain and pleaded guilty to aggravated battery. In October 2001, he began a 44-month sentence at Western New Mexico Correctional Facility.

In prison, Charlie worked as a mechanic and took courses in computer programming and astronomy. He spent hundreds of hours reflecting on his tormented history and even started attending chapel. "I was doing good in prison," he says. "It was like a revitalization."

Charlie spent the 30th anniversary of his family's murders behind bars. A few weeks later, one of his cellmates called out to him, "Hey, Charlie, your mom's on TV!" A news program was reporting that BTK had resumed his communication with a coded message to The Wichita Eagle. Pictures of victims BTK had claimed flashed onscreen one by one, including those of Charlie's parents, sister, and brother. The return of the killer rekindled his rage; later that day, he beat on a punching bag at the gym. "I was like a grenade with the pin pulled," he recalls.

The next day, Charlie wrote to the producers of America's Most Wanted, identifying himself as a relative of four of the Wichita victims. They asked him for an interview from prison. Newspaper reporters began calling, too, and a woman who'd seen him on TV volunteered to design a website on which Charlie could field questions about the case.

With the spotlight back on his family, Charlie's old nightmares -- images of his loved ones' screaming faces and tortured bodies -- kicked up. But his waking hours held a note of hope. By breaking the silence he'd enveloped himself in for so many years, Charlie dreamed of tempting the killer out of hiding. Perhaps, he thought, BTK would leave some DNA on his next letter. "I dared him to come for me when I was on prison road crew," Charlie recalls. "I thought, If he runs me over, maybe somebody will see his license plate."

BTK sent nine more notes and packages to the media and police over the following months. Two were decorated with New Mexico-themed postage stamps, which Charlie interpreted as directed at him. But the most astonishing communiqué came in December. It was a call to Charlie from a 16-year-old Wisconsin boy named Joseph. "This is your son," said the voice on the phone. "I'm looking forward to meeting you."

Charlie walked out of prison into a cold rain on January 3, 2005, ready to make amends with the world. The first person he visited was his sister Carmen, now a mentor to at-risk kids in Albuquerque. He apologized to her for his years of estrangement, and the two spent the afternoon talking as they hadn't since childhood. Later he called Danny, who was working as a cable installer in Phoenix. Their conversation had the same tone of forgiveness, and they vowed to stay in closer touch. He got a room at a halfway house not far from Carmen's place and found a job as a day laborer.

He was clearing brush on a landscaping job the next month when he got a call from Carmen. "They got him," she said, and Charlie's adrenaline pumped so intensely that he uprooted shrubs as if they were dandelions.

Dennis Rader, a 59-year-old Cub Scout leader and father of two, confessed to ten murders as the BTK killer. Rader was the compliance officer for a Wichita suburb and president of the congregation at Christ Lutheran Church. He had remained undetected for 31 years, until he sent police a message on a floppy disk that was traceable to his church computer. To make sure Rader was their man, investigators obtained a DNA sample. It showed a strong resemblance to samples taken at several BTK crime scenes.

Charlie and his siblings attended Rader's trial, listening as he described without remorse how he'd stalked their mother, Julie, and young Josie, planning to torture them to death after getting rid of Joey, and how he'd clipped the phone line and waited by the back door for a chance to get in. Rader said he'd been surprised to find Joseph Sr. home that morning but had a pistol to keep the situation under control.

• • Cracking Cases

• Visit Charlie Otero's Website
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• Visit the Official Website for Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders
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• Two Million Reasons for Murder
• Justin Barber said his wife was killed during a late-night robbery. But the details didn't add up.
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• The Black Widow Killer
• Two men. Two murders. Too many questions.
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• Catching the BTK
• No one ever suspected this ordinary man could be the killer next door.
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