Feast of the Assumption not as appetizing as it sounds

A copy of Marc Levitz’s Kansas City Film Festival selection, Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders, sat unwatched on my coffee table for weeks. Nothing appealed to me less than watching a documentary about Dennis Rader, the Wichita serial killer known as BTK. When I finally forced myself to feed the DVD into my machine, it was with all the joy of a dieter loading low-calorie lasagna into the microwave.

My efforts were rewarded with an opening description of the scene at the home of the Otero family, where BTK murdered his first victims — a mother, father, sister and brother — on January 15, 1974. One of the first law enforcement officers on the scene, now retired, describes the basement  where the little girl was found strung up by her neck. Apparently, cops measured five ejaculations worth of BTK’s semen coating the floor. Meanwhile, my lunchtime tuna sandwich went sailing into the trashcan.

Fortunately, the focus of the film isn’t on gruesome details but on Charlie Otero, who was 15 and survived the attack because he wasn’t home at the time. He was the first to discover the bodies. Early in the film, he describes how he lost his faith in God because his devout mother had only prayed for one thing for

herself: to die peacefully in her sleep.

As a young adult, Charlie fled to New Mexico and worked as a mechanic, hung with a rough pack of bikers, kept giant snakes as pets and always believed that more than one person was responsible for the deaths of his family members.

Levitz, the director of the documentary, is a native Kansan. He went to Blue Valley North High School and graduated from the University of Kansas in 1995 with a journalism degree. He spent several years in Los Angeles, discovered a passion for filmmaking, and decided to return to Kansas after learning about the BTK murders on the news. A friendly webmaster on a BTK-related site told Levitz to write to Charlie Otero at his address in prison, where he was serving a sentence for assaulting his ex-wife.

Levitz’s camera follows Charlie as he’s paroled and works to piece his life back together. The Documentary Gods must like Levitz, because they dropped him a gift: BTK resurfaces less than a year after Charlie is paroled. In real time, Levitz’s camera captures Charlie and his remaining siblings’ reactions as the identity of BTK is revealed.

There are amazing moments in Levitz’s documentary, as when Charlie and his living siblings revisit the family’s home where the murders took place, and when they give their statements at Rader’s sentencing (“When all is said and done,” Charlie says, “Dennis Rader failed in his efforts to kill the Oteros”). Levitz scored a very brief interview with an anonymous member of Rader’s church, who suspected nothing, of course. The most chilling parts are the ones in which Rader himself stars, licking his lips while recalling his victims’ last moments and how he evaded capture for so many years.

The film lags after Rader is sentenced to life in prison without parole and Charlie goes back to his search for a normal life. Nearly two hours in, Levitz himself breaks the fourth wall and appears in front of the camera for the first time, which is jarring. And Levitz’s choice in music — a soundtrack by Society’s Parasites, Deadboy and the Elephantmen, G.G. Allin and the Murder Junkies, and one particularly ill-timed Wesley Willis song titled “I Murdered Your Family” — is literal to the point of parody. Most disappointing is Levitz’ failure to address whether or not Charlie ever regains his faith.

But this is Levitz’ first film and it’s gained plenty of traction on the film festival circuit, so what do I know? See “Feast of the Assumption: The Otero Family Murders” for yourself at the KC Film Fest on Friday, April 24, at 9:30 p.m. at the new AMC Mainstreet 2. Tickets and more information on the KC Film Fest are available here.

A recent article on Charlie Otero is here.