Inside the Mind of BTK

108 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
him those photos and his defense attorney will say he’s unstable and
only offered up what he saw in the pictures.
“Don’t trick him to try to play games because he’s enough of a
police buff to know what’s going on. Be rested and ready for a long
interview. You want him to be the one who fades out. In the end, he
may be looking for some sort of face-saving scenario. Don’t bring up
his killing of young children because he doesn’t want to be known as
a child killer. That’s not a healthy reputation to have in prison. Get
him thinking that maybe he was in a trance when he committed his
murders. If he’s arrogant, then be very nonchalant. Let him speak in
the third person, if he wants.
“At the same time as your interview, you need to be performing a
simultaneous search of his residence. If he gets tipped off in advance
that this is what you’re going to do, he won’t destroy his stash, but he
will move it. Drill it into his head that you’re not going to stop going
until you solve this case because you know it is solvable. What you
want is for him to become extremely rigid. That’s going to mean he’s
losing control and you’re gaining control.”
As I spoke, Pierce Brooks walked into the conference room and
took a seat at the table. A veteran LAPD homicide detective, Brooks
was something of a legend, made famous for his role in Joseph
Wambaugh’s crime classic The Onion Field. For years, Brooks used to
pour over out of town newspapers searching for violent crimes that
might be similar to cases he was investigating in Los Angeles. After
coming to the FBI, he’d begun developing a computer program, known
as VICAP. The idea was for police around the nation to enter data from
open cases into a centralized computer, allowing cops to better track
violent crimes where the same UNSUB might be responsible.
When Brooks heard me talking about interrogation techniques,
he said in his strained, whisper-like voice: “Be ready to go with the
polygraph at the right moment. But be careful. Do it the wrong way
and you might just get an inconclusive unless the questions are
designed in a way that will be more distressing to him. For instance,
the killing may not upset him, but the fact that he was soiled by the
victim’s blood could cause a reaction. He may respond to the Bright
case because he screwed up. In the Otero case, he might respond
more to the boy because he feels bad about him. Don’t expect him
to break down.”
I had to force myself not to interrupt Brooks. Walker looked at me
and grinned. He knew how I felt about polygraphs. I hated them, espe-