Excerpt: 'Bind, Torture, Kill: The Serial Killer Next Door'

Aug. 22, 2007 — -- For more than three decades, a killer stalked, terrorized and murdered Wichita, Kan., residents. The self-proclaimed BTK, which stood for bind, torture, kill, was a serial killer whose identity shocked the nation when it was revealed.

Dennis Rader was a family man, church president and Boy Scout dad and former Eagle Scout when police arrested him for several alleged murders.

A new book "Bind, Torture, Kill: The Serial Killer Next Door" aims to give insight on Rader, who now is in prison.

Four award-winning authors from the Wichita Eagle penned the book and covered the story for more than 20 years. The book includes interviews with law enforcement officials, who previously were unable to discuss the case, and victims' families. It even has an interview with Rader's brother Jeff Rader.

You can read an excerpt of the book below.

January 15, 1974, 8:20 AM
The Oteros

Her name was Josie Otero. She was eleven years old and wore glasses and wrote poetry and drew pictures and worried about her looks. She had started wearing a bra and growing her hair out; it fell so thick around her head and throat that the man with the gun would soon have a hard time tying the cloth to keep the gag stuffed in her mouth.

As Josie woke up that morning, the man with the gun crept to her back door and saw something that made him sweat: a paw print in the snowy backyard. He had not expected a dog.

He whistled softly; no dog. Still, he pulled a Colt Woodsman .22 from his waistband and slunk to the garage wall to think.In the house, Josie had pulled on a blue T-shirt and walked from her room to the kitchen. It was a short walk; it was a small house. Her mom, Julie, was in the kitchen, wearing her blue housecoat. She had set the table, putting out cereal and milk for breakfast and tins of potted meat for school-lunch sandwiches. Joe, Josie?s dad, was eating canned pears.

At five feet four, Josie was already an inch taller than her mom and as tall as her dad. But she worried the worries of a child.

"You don't love me as much as you love the rest of them," she had blurted one day to her brother Charlie. At fifteen he was the oldest of the five Otero kids.

"That's not true," he said. "I love you as much as I love any ofthem."

She felt better; she loved them all, Mom and Dad and Charlie, and Joey, who was nine, and Danny, fourteen, and Carmen, thirteen. She loved the way Joey studied his brothers and tried to be tough like them. He was so cute; the girls at Adams Elementary School adored his brown eyes. This morning he had dressed to draw attention: a long-sleeved shirt pulled over a yellow T-shirt and white undershirt, and purplish trousers with white pockets and white stripes down the back.