Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 95
For the next ninety minutes I stared into the flickering TV
screen, not exactly sure why I was so mesmerized by the movie. But
somewhere in the back of my head, a voice told me to sit back, pay
attention, and enjoy the show. I liked Shaft. He kicked a lot of butt,
bedded a bunch of women, and still managed to look like a million
bucks the whole time. Something about his no-holds-barred approach
to cracking that kidnapping case so crucial to the movie’s plot felt
strangely inspiring.
“I bet he could catch BTK,” I mumbled. “Maybe I oughta call up
the task force in Wichita and tell them that what they really need is
Shaft, super-detective.”
The sheer absurdity of Richard Roundtree running around the
streets of Wichita trying to crack a serial murder case made me smile.
Maybe the idea wasn’t so absurd. The local police didn’t need a
super-detective. What they really needed was a super-cop, someone
who could crawl inside our UNSUB’s mind and gently steer him in
the direction we wanted him to go.
What I began to envision was a John Wayne–like twist on the standard
concept of a police spokesman, typically used to brief the media
during ongoing high-profile cases. That individual’s job is to stand up
in front of the cameras and microphones and update reporters on the
status of the investigation. Sometimes they even give descriptions of
the suspect or suspects. It’s hardly cutting-edge criminology. Police
agencies around the nation have been using spokespeople for decades.
Sometimes the person tapped for the role is the chief or the sheriff.
Other times, a lead detective on the case is used. More often than not,
the honors go to one of the department’s public information officers.
But now, out here on that running trail, an idea took shape and
began to unroll itself inside my head like thread off a spool. We’d tweak
the standard-issue police spokesperson concept just a bit. We’d turbocharge
this otherwise predicable symbol of law and order, and
transform it into a psychological crime-fighting tool who would be
the perfect counterpart of BTK’s grandiose vision of himself. How
would we do this? For starters, it was obvious that part of the
UNSUB’s motive was a desire to thumb his nose at police. He wanted
the world to know that he was smarter than the cops trying to catch
him. At the same time, his detailed descriptions of his crime scenes
told me that he was also a wannabe cop, someone who would have
probably given anything to have a job in law enforcement. I wondered
if he’d ever applied for a job with police and been turned away. Or