Ken Otto Tries to Obliterate His Victim
(‘Best Foot Forward,’ Forensic Files)
A disheartening aspect of updating Forensic Files cases is finding out that, between the time the episode was produced and the present day, a person who committed a gruesome murder has been released from prison.
Take Richard Crafts (please). In a case that made headlines around the globe in 1986, he killed his wife, Helle Crafts, placed her in a freezer, and used a wood chipper to dispose of her body.
He’s out.
Then there’s Fred Grabbe. In 1981, he killed wife Charlotte Grabbe after repeatedly choking her until she passed out, waiting until she regained consciousness, and then starting the process over. He disposed of her body in an unthinkable way.
He’s out, too.
Young homebody. Thus a check on the incarceration status of another sadistic criminal, Ken Otto, seems in order. He enjoyed harming living things, starting with animals and ending with a human being. So let’s get going on the recap of “Best Foot Forward,” along with extra information from the Hartford Courant and other internet research:
After opening with an especially long montage of strippers, the episode introduces us to Shamaia Smith, a 22-year-old dancer at the Kahoots club in East Hartford, Connecticut.
Despite her risqué vocation, Shamaia lived at home with her parents, Gloria Frink and Barry Smith Sr., on Indian Hill Road in East Hartford. Shamaia hoped to attend Goodwin College and open her own hair salon someday, according to her obituary and the Hartford Courant. In the meantime, she was making a living under the stage name Unique.
Moneyed barfly. When Shamaia didn’t come home from work on March 14, 2007, her mother reported her missing to the East Hartford police. Shamaia’s boyfriend, Jamel McDonald, said he hadn’t seen her since she caught a ride to work at 3 p.m. with someone he didn’t know. Jamel’s story sounded suspicious at first, but investigators quickly cleared him.
They then turned their attention toward Ken Otto, 56, a well-to-do local man who frequented Kahoots. Ken said he gave Shamaia a ride to the club and then headed home and went to sleep the night she disappeared.
Security footage, however, showed that Shamaia never entered the club on that day.
No free lunch. Kahoots employees told police that they knew Ken Otto as a frequent customer who paid a lot of attention to Shamaia. He would later tell investigators that he suffered from erectile dysfunction and couldn’t have sex with her. Ken admitted that he gave her $500 — “to continue her education.”
Monique Frink, Shamaia’s sister, said that she told Shamaia to be careful because Ken would be expecting something in return (Rachel Siani) for the $500. On a hunch, after Shamaia disappeared, Monique called Ken, identified herself as Shamaia, and left a message asking Ken to give her a call back.
He never did.
Colleagues like the guy. So who was this affluent strip-club denizen? Kenneth John Otto Sr. was born on January 4, 1951. He and his wife, Kathleen, married in 1974 and went on to have a son and daughter. The family lived in a four-bedroom house at 21 Windmill Road in Ellington, Connecticut. Kathleen worked as a pharmacy technician. According to the Hartford Courant, Ken was a manager for Bodycote Thermal Processing, a metallurgical-services company in South Windsor. A Boston Herald story described Ken as an engineer. Whatever the case, during each of the three years leading up to Shamaia’s disappearance, Ken earned about $230,000, according to court papers.
His co-workers had no inkling of any brutality on his part. “He was outgoing and jovial, a very friendly guy,” Alan Madden, a company HR director, told the Hartford Courant.
Ken had no criminal record.
Grisly hobby. Descriptions of his relationship with Shamaia vary according to the source. The two were dating or he was paying her for sex or they were just friends.
Cell phone pings from days before Shamaia went missing indicated that she had been near a 75-acre plot of wooded land that Ken Otto and his son owned in the town of Stafford. When Ken allowed law officers to search the property, they took note of a burn pit with the smell of gasoline. After cadaver dogs came on the scene, they picked up a scent of bodily remains at the burn pit.
Ken explained that he had recently killed a beaver, chopped it up, and burned the pieces. He liked to cut dead animals into pieces, he said.
Vandalizes own property. He then revoked his permission for the search, and sent the police team home.
By the time police got a search warrant to study the land again, Ken had torched some of the property and used a backhoe in an attempt to bury his newly wrecked trailer.
Investigators found a piece of carpet that looked as though a human body had once made an impression on it. A mop recovered from the trailer contained Shamaia’s blood, according to the Connecticut Law Tribune.
Firearm evidence. In the burn pit, they recovered small pieces of human bones without enough DNA to test — before finding a burned human foot with some flesh still attached. Its DNA matched that of Shamaia’s relatives. A torched key at the alleged crime scene opened the door to Shamaia’s residence.
Ballistics tests linked three cartridges found on the property to a semiautomatic pistol in Ken’s safe.
As detectives continued their sleuthing, the Ottos made some crafty moves of their own. After the East Hartford police interviewed Kathleen in April 2007 and told her that Ken had paid Shamaia Smith for sex — and was being investigated in Shamaia’s murder case — Kathleen and Ken headed to Tewksbury, Massachusetts. There, Ken transferred ownership of a condominium to his wife. Back in Connecticut, he signed over his 2004 GMC Envoy to her as well, and then, with his support, Kathleen consulted a divorce lawyer, according to court papers filed by a representative for Shamaia’s family.
Big bail. Meanwhile, Monique Frink complained that her sister’s disappearance got only scant coverage in the media. But she soon received some satisfaction, when authorities arrested Ken Otto at Bradley International Airport in May 2007. He was carrying a suitcase with $10,000 and foreign currency, according to the Hartford Courant. He also had Cialis and condoms with him.
Ken said that he was headed to a business meeting and needed the cash for legal fees, according to information available on CrimeLibrary.org.
A judge set his bail at $5 million cash, although prosecutors had asked for $10 million after calling Ken an extreme flight risk.
Trailer terror. Bodycote Thermal Processing suspended Ken and extended condolences to Shamaia’s family. (The company also employed Kathleen and Ken’s son, Kenneth Otto Jr., and he continued working there.)
While awaiting trial, Ken received three disciplinary tickets in jail, including one for possession of a key to handcuffs, according to the Hartford Courant.
At the court proceedings, prosecutor Kenneth Zagaja contended that Ken, as he admitted, picked up Shamaia for work. But, he alleged, instead of dropping her off at Kahoots, he took her 30 miles away to his property in Stafford. In Ken’s trailer, they had some type of exchange that culminated in his shooting her twice, rolling her in a piece of carpet, and burning her body for days in the pit.
Some other dude. At the trial, police said Ken Sr. admitted to dating Shamaia but not to murdering her.
His lawyers offered up the SODDI defense. An Otto family friend testified that many people used the Stafford property for recreational purposes — dirt biking, camping, and target shooting — and that parties other than the Ottos sometimes used the burn pit.
The defense also had an explanation for the abused trailer. Kenneth Jr. said that he and his father partially buried it because they planned to use it as the base of a log cabin.
Tapped out. Unimpressed by the defense’s argument, the 12-member jury convicted Ken Sr. of murder and tampering with evidence. Superior Court Judge Thomas O’Keefe Jr. called him a cold-blooded killer and gave him a sentence of 60 years.
“It’s life,” said Gloria Frink, as reported by the Hartford Courant. “That’s what we were looking for.” Monique Frink said it still haunted her that no one knew the reason for the murder or what Shamaia’s last words were.
In 2012, the Connecticut Supreme Court unanimously rejected Ken Otto’s claim that the state didn’t have enough evidence to prove he intended to kill Shamaia. By this time, Ken had public defender Adele Patterson — rather than a private lawyer — representing him. He had already used $264,000 from his retirement accounts to pay for legal representation, according to the Hartford Courant.
Million-dollar judgment. The following year, Ken tried the ever-popular “ineffective counsel” claim, but the Superior Court of Connecticut shut it down.
In the meantime, Stephen McEleney, a lawyer for the victim’s family, successfully argued that the Ottos violated the Uniform Fraudulent Conveyance Act by transferring property to Kathleen before their divorce and thus conspiring to deprive Shamaia’s estate of compensation. It was ruled that the family should receive a remedy of $670,000.
Shamaia’s family also won a $9 million claim against Otto.
Stuck behind razor wire. It’s not clear whether Shamaia’s survivors actually received any of the money.
“The guy’s locked up for a significant period of time and obviously doesn’t have any income,” one of Ken’s lawyers, Richard Brown, told the Connecticut Law Tribune. “It isn’t just about economics always. I assume the plaintiffs did it for reasons other than just the money. They’re extremely angry about what my client was convicted of and felt the need to seek civil damages.”
But Shamaia’s family is, so far, seeing justice done to the killer. Ken, now 72, resides along with 1,329 other inmates in MacDougall-Walker Correctional Institution in Suffield, Connecticut. The state Department of Corrections lists a release date of May 15, 2067 — when he’s 116 — and makes zero mention of parole eligibility.
Business gets makeover. As for an update on the victim’s family, Gloria Frink died at the age of just 53 in 2014. Her obituary mentioned that, in addition to Shamaia, her son Barry Smith Jr. preceded her in death. Shamaia’s sister Monique Frink, who Forensic Files watchers will remember from her on-camera interview, has since married and is known as Monique Cooper. She has a career working with people with autism.
The club where Shamaia and her killer met has changed over the years. Kahoots adopted a no-touching policy in 2010, meaning no lap dances or tips placed in dancers’ clothing. The establishment closed amid legal problems in 2013, but has since reopened as a restaurant trumpeting attractive waitresses, not exotic dancers. Let’s hope the business also has no obsessive customers who cause tragedies like Shamaia Smith’s death.
That’s all for this post. Until next time, cheers. — RR
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