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brought that morning, then realized, with a sick feeling, that he had left his knife at the Otero house.
    He drove back to the house on North Edgemoor, pulled into the garage, walked to the back door, and picked up the knife. Then he drove home, his head pounding. He took two Tylenol, then drove to some woods he’d played in as a boy, along the Little Arkansas River north of Wichita. There he burned sketches he had made during the planning, along with things he had used to kill the family. He hurried. His wife would be getting off work, and he wanted to be home.
     
    After the murders, Wichitans who had never locked their doors did so. Some bought guns and alarm systems. Kids like Steve and Rebecca Macy came home from high school every day with a new routine: Rebecca would sit in the car. Steve would carry a baseball bat into the house and check every room and closet�and the phone�before letting his sister in.
    Younger children like Tim Relph, a seventh grader, lived with fear for years, wondering whether their families might be attacked. The route his parents drove to get him and his siblings to school took them along the same streets the Oteros used.
    Homicide captain Charlie Stewart began to sleep near his front door.
    Lindy Kelly, a former homicide detective, was so angry about what he’d heard from his best friend, Sgt. Joe Thomas, that he violated his rule about never scaring his children with stories about work. He told his thirteen-year-old daughter, Laura, about the chair imprints in the carpet. The guy had sat and watched the little boy struggle, Kelly said.
    Thomas began a routine that would last the rest of his life. Every morning when he picked up the Eagle , he carried a doorstop, a heavy metal bar that would come in handy for beating the Oteros’ killer to pieces if he decided one day to pay him a visit.
     
    Rader slipped back into the comforts of home. He had been married nearly three years and still opened doors for his wife, helped her put on her coat. They attended church with their parents; he helped with the youth group. But he made the rules and liked things neat, orderly, and on time. She complied.
    He liked to study crime novels, detective magazines, and pornography. He liked to masturbate while playing with handcuffs. In their snug home�only 960 square feet�he hid small trophies. On his wrist he wore Joe Otero’s watch. It ran well and got him to school on time. Wichita State University had started spring classes, and he had chosen a major�administration of justice�that let him study police officers closely and learn more about his new pursuit. He enjoyed the irony.
    He began to write about what he had done; he told his wife he had a lot of typing to do for school. He wrote that Joe Otero had thought in the first moments that his intrusion was a practical joke. He wrote what Josie had said just before he hanged her. He wrote it all down, finished it on February 3, 1974, and filed it in a binder so he could read it whenever he pleased. He signed the document “B.T.K.” Bind, torture, kill.
    He knew he had done things that could have got him caught: he had left his knife behind. He had let himself be seen. He had not anticipated the dog. He had assumed the father had left. He had walked into a place with too many people.
    He decided to do better next time. And there must be a next time.
    He had enjoyed his time with the girl.

4
April 4, 1974
    Kathryn Bright
    The safe thing would be to never kill again, especially after the way he’d botched so many details of the Otero murders. But Rader had Factor X, as he called it, or the Monster Within, his other name for whatever impelled him. He was inventing new abbreviations and names now: BTK for who he now was, Sparky for his penis, trolling for what he did, which was hunt women. He called his female targets projects�PJs for short. In his writings, he called Josie Otero “Little Mex.”
    Rader went trolling again a few weeks after he