Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
8
Twenty-one years after that afternoon in 1984 when I
sat at that oak table at the FBI Academy, brainstorming ways to help
Wichita police find BTK, I landed in Wichita, Kansas, where I was
scheduled to meet Lieutenant Ken Landwehr, the no-nonsense fiftyone-year-old
veteran homicide detective with the Wichita police force
who’d kept the BTK investigation alive ever since the Ghostbusters
task force was disbanded in 1987. Landwehr had agreed to meet with
me in my hotel room and had promised, whenever he got a break
from the other homicides that he and his detectives were investigating,
to give me an insider’s view of the case that had wormed its way
deep into his psyche.
I was thrilled to finally be in Wichita, where the Chamber of Commerce
Web site plays a persuasive public relations video called “I
Found It in Wichita,” touting the city’s great opportunities for full
employment, a short commute, and a great way of life.
Plenty had happened in my life since the afternoon I’d retired from
the FBI in 1995. I’d made the transition to best-selling crime author,
lecturer, and pro bono criminal profiler, volunteering my time to smalltown
police departments and to the families of victims. During that
113