Living victim sues Rader | The Wichita Eagle

Kevin Bright, the only person known to have survived an attack by BTK, has filed suit against the man who has admitted to being the serial killer.

Bright filed suit against Dennis Rader Friday in Sedgwick County District Court seeking more than $75,000 for damages including medical expenses, lost income, pain, suffering, disability, disfigurement and mental anguish.

The suit is the fourth filed against Rader since he admitted in court on June 27 that he is the serial killer who murdered 10 people between 1974 and 1991. Relatives of BTK victims Vicki Wegerle, Marine Hedge and Shirley Vian Relford have also sued Rader.

Bright was with his older sister Kathryn when they returned to her home at 3217 E. 13th St. on the afternoon of April 4, 1974.

Rader was hiding in a back bedroom of the house. At the court hearing in which he admitted his guilt, Rader told Judge Greg Waller that he expected only Kathryn to come home.

He told the Brights he didn’t want to hurt them, that he was wanted by police in California and needed money and their car for a trip to New York. It was a story similar to the one he told Joseph and Julie Otero before he killed them and two of their children, Joseph II and Josephine, in their home less than three months earlier on Jan. 15.

Rader forced Kevin to tie his 21-year-old sister to a chair, then took him to another room and bound and gagged him. Rader then left the room, and Bright could hear him rummaging through the house.

Rader then returned to where Kevin Bright was bound and gagged and began to strangle him. Bright broke free from his bonds and began struggling with Rader, who then pulled a gun out of his waistband and shot him.

The shot hit Bright in the forehead and he fell. Rader went into the other room, where Kathryn Bright asked, “What have you done to my brother?”

Rader later returned to the room where Kevin Bright lay and tried to strangle him again. The two men struggled again, and Rader shot him a second time. This shot hit Kevin Bright in the face just above the mouth, and a third shot grazed his skin.

Bright pretended to be dead and Rader left the room again. Severely wounded and unable to fight, Kevin fled the house through a side door and flagged down a neighbor.

He was rushed to Wesley Medical Center, where a neurologist performed emergency surgery to remove a bullet from his head. A metal plate was inserted into his skull. One of the wounds forced the removal of three teeth.

Afraid that police would be coming through the door of the Bright house at any time, Rader told Waller, he stabbed Kathryn Bright two or three times beneath the ribs. She died later at the hospital.