Anger, Relief Over BTK Confessions

A former church and scout leader's matter-of-fact confession that he is the serial killer who haunted Wichita for decades may have brought closure to some — but not to Charlie Otero.

Otero, whose two siblings and parents were Dennis Rader's first victims in 1974, said the guilty plea can do nothing to repair the lives of survivors of the 10 people Rader so chillingly acknowledged Monday that he killed.

"It's a release that he's admitted it, but as far as closure goes, it's far from it," said Otero, now 47 and living in Albuquerque, N.M. "It turned my life around 180 degrees and left me no hope for a future I had seen before the murders. My life went from idyllic and wonderful to dark and dank."

Nor was it closure for the BTK killer's 10th victim's son, Jeff Davis, who now lives in Memphis. He told CBS affiliate WREG that listening to the murderer's chilling description in court Monday was like adding salt to his already open wound.

"It's always been an open sore, and always will be," Davis said. "But at least now I've got the name, the person, and the satisfaction of knowing that he's going to get part of what's coming to him."

Rader — husband, father of two — will likely spend the rest of his life behind bars for crimes that gained him the moniker "BTK" for his preferred killing method, "Bind, Torture, Kill."

In pleading guilty, Rader was unfailingly emotionless and courteous, answering questions with "Yes, sir" and "Yes, your honor," and at one point launching into an almost scholarly discourse on habits of a serial killer.

"If you've read much about serial killers, they go through what they call different phases. In the trolling stage, basically, you're looking for a victim at that time," he said. "You can be trolling for months or years, but once you lock in on a certain person, you become a stalker."

"There was an emotionally devoid humanoid with a monster living inside it just coldly reciting facts," said Davis.

The judge pressed Rader for details on his crimes, and the killer obliged.

He talked about how he hung Otero's 11-year-old sister from a sewer pipe after murdering her parents and brother. He described strangling a 62-year-old woman — Jeff Davis' mother — with pantyhose and dumping her body under a bridge. He told of comforting another victim and giving her a glass of water before putting a bag over her head and strangling her.

Even Rader's attorney, Steve Osburn, admitted he was shaken by the coldness of Rader's testimony.

"I've never had this experience, and I hope to never have it again," Osburn told CBS News Correspondent Erin Moriarty.

"Even though you know the facts of the case, it was chilling, horrifying, really," prosecutor Kevin O'Connor said Tuesday on CBS News' The Early Show. "To hear the murders described in such a matter of fact manner, no matter how much you know about the case, it's still something that's hard to accept."

Those who watched Rader, 60, walk into the courtroom saw a man who looked eerily normal for the crimes he was about to confess — a balding man with a jacket and tie and close-cropped hair and beard. Once he began to speak, though, observers heard the killer calmly describe murders he said were fulfillments of the sexual fantasies he harbored.

"He was so cold about it," said 19-year-old Jared Noble of Wichita, who listened to the court proceedings in his car. "The way he described the details — heartless — with no emotion at all."

It was Rader's demeanor that haunted residents here. How he described his killings as "projects" and his victims as "targets," and the screening process as typically "trolling" followed by "stalking." How he carried supplies like rope and tape in a "hit kit," as he described a briefcase or bowling bag. How he talked of his first four victims almost as animals, saying he decided to "put them down."

"He's like a guy with a mission. You would think that he worked for some spy agency or something and these were hits that he was assigned because he methodically works towards his goal," psychologist Howard Brodsky, who was consulted by Wichita police, told CBS News Early Show co-anchor Hannah Storm.

Brodsky called Rader a sociopath, and said it was amazing "that nobody was able to figure out that this guy had this secret life that he was hiding and that he was amazing in his ability to surround himself with people who just didn't ask the right questions, who were kind of naive as to what was going on."

Richard LaMunyon, a former Wichita police chief who ran the department during most of the BTK killings, said Rader's confession brought back the horror of his crimes.

"He just referred to these people like rag dolls, like they didn't exist," he said. "Each and every one of those people comes to your mind and you can see them and the agony and the pure terror that they went through. All this comes rushing back."

The BTK killer taunted media and police with cryptic messages during a cat-and-mouse game that began after the first murder in 1974. BTK resurfaced in 2004 after years of silence with a letter to The Wichita Eagle that included photos of a 1986 strangling victim and a photocopy of her missing driver's license.

That letter was followed by several other cryptic messages and packages. The break in the case came earlier this year after a computer diskette the killer had sent was traced to Rader's church, where he once served as president.

Those transfixed by the case must wait until Aug. 17 to hear Rader's fate, though he almost certainly will never leave prison because each count carries a possible life sentence.

The state had no death penalty when the crimes were committed.