The final murder charge named Dolores E. Davis. It covered January 18 through January 19, 1991, and stated that she died on January 19. Rader questioned the two-day window when Waller first read it, saying his copy identified the nineteenth. The judge explained the wording before him, and Rader accepted it. The exchange preserved both the charging period and the stated date of death. There is no conflict that needs to be resolved by assigning an unsupported hour to the crime.
Another correction followed during the reading of Count Ten. The judge initially described the offense using a later sentencing classification. Prosecutor Kevin O’Connor clarified that the crime predated the guidelines and was also a Class A felony. Waller accepted the correction. The moment matters because the case crossed years in which Kansas sentencing law had changed. A single defendant and a single plea hearing did not make every count legally identical. The law applicable to Davis’s killing had to be addressed on its own terms.
When asked for the factual basis, Rader described leaving unspecified commitments and eventually going to Davis’s residence. Those references establish his account of moving from ordinary obligations toward a crime; they do not establish knowledge or involvement by anyone associated with those obligations. He said he had considered the house before and forced entry that night. The account supplies intention and intrusion without requiring the route, equipment arrangements, or entry mechanics that occupy additional lines in the transcript.
Waller asked where the residence was located. Rader could identify North Hillside but could not give a reliable house number. He offered possibilities and acknowledged uncertainty. North Hillside is therefore the supported location within his answer. Supplying a precise number from his guesses would create confidence the hearing did not provide. As with earlier address corrections, the value of the transcript lies partly in retaining the difference between what he recalled firmly and what he could only approximate.
Rader admitted confronting Davis, restraining her, and killing her. He also said he took personal items from the residence. When the judge asked about taking things in other cases, Rader gave a mixed account, remembering some removals and expressing uncertainty about others. That broader answer did not change the immediate admission concerning Davis. It showed, however, why a general statement about his conduct across all ten murders would be less accurate than following the specific acts he acknowledged in each count.
The questioning then established that he removed Davis’s remains from her home. Waller and Rader clarified that the vehicle initially used was hers. Rader went on to describe movements between locations and eventually leaving her remains outside the residence. The details can remain at that level. Reproducing a sequence of transfers, abandoned possessions, and concealment would overwhelm the essential development: Count Ten extended beyond an admitted home invasion and killing to his admitted removal of the person he had killed.
By the end of that account, the charged chronology was complete. Joseph Otero, Julie Otero, Josephine Otero, Joseph Otero Jr., Kathryn Bright, Shirley Vian, Nancy Fox, Marine Hedge, Vicki Wegerle, and Dolores E. Davis were the ten people whose murders Rader had described. The dates ran from January 1974 through January 1991. There were seven charged dates because the four Otero deaths occurred on the same day. Each person nevertheless remained the subject of an individual first-degree murder count.
Davis’s count also carried a sentencing issue absent from the first nine. In explaining possible punishment, Waller described a later law that could require forty years before parole eligibility in specified circumstances. The court would have to address aggravating and mitigating factors for that question. A guilty plea to murder would establish guilt; it would not by itself complete every step in deciding that sentencing issue. The separate waiver and the prosecutors’ decision to present proof would come after the factual examination.
For now, the chronology ends at the tenth charged death. It does not establish what investigators knew at every earlier stage or why the killings in these charges were separated by long intervals. The next major development in the supplied record occurred years later, when communications renewed the investigation in 2004. Those messages would carry claims about the sender’s identity. Before one message helped lead investigators to Dennis Rader, other purported clues would draw attention toward an innocent man.