On the morning of January 15, 1974, 11-year-old Josephine Otero was killed inside her family home at 803 North Edgemoor Street in Wichita, Kansas. A gun-wielding intruder cut the telephone line, forced Joseph, Julie and their sons into a bedroom, and bound them with rope. The parents were strangled and the younger brother suffocated. Josephine was taken to the basement, suspended from a sewer pipe and strangled; she was left partially clothed. Autopsy found asphyxiation as the cause of death and investigators recovered semen at the scene, suggesting a sexual motive, though no direct physical assault on Josephine was documented.

Police initially considered a botched burglary, but the meticulous bindings and the staged positioning of Josephine suggested otherwise. A typed letter hidden in a library book and later communications using the moniker BTK tied the killings to a serial offender. In 2005 Dennis Lynn Rader was identified by DNA and other evidence, confessed to Josephine Otero’s murder and the killings of nine other victims, and pleaded guilty. Authorities attribute the family murders to Rader alone.

If anyone knew the Otero family, their routines, or saw anything suspicious around North Edgemoor Street in January 1974, please share what was observed.