Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 121
that made this case interesting from an investigative standpoint had
all been explained away—all except the question of how Rader had
been able to stay under the radar for so long. Which was the very question
that ate away at me.
Despite spending my career studying remorseless monsters just
like BTK, I still didn’t feel I could solve the riddle of Dennis Rader. His
proficiency as a killer didn’t quite seem human. I still didn’t understand
him.
Landwehr punched the gas, and we began traveling north on I-
135, the highway that connects Wichita to Park City. Although Rader
sometimes took surface streets in order to traverse the seven miles into
“town,” this highway provided the quickest beeline to his haunts. After
six miles, Landwehr pulled off at the 61st Street exit. In a matter of
seconds we were driving past the side street where Rader, on his way
home to lunch, was pulled over on that fateful afternoon eight months
before and taken into custody by a dozen heavily armed cops.
Just around the corner from that spot where Rader was arrested
sat the nine-hundred-square-foot ranch-style home where the killer
moved shortly after his marriage in 1971. The three-bedroom home,
built in 1954, was his home for thirty-three years and the place where
he and his wife, Paula, raised their two children. But on this sunny
October afternoon, the house sat vacant. Paula had moved out shortly
after her husband’s arrest, fearful for her own safety.
We pulled to a stop in front of the driveway. The empty home gave
off the feel of a mausoleum. Dried leaves and long, brittle branches
littered the driveway and yard. The grass had turned brown. Several of
Rader’s neighbors stood in their front yards and glared at us. None
of these folks appeared to recognize Landwehr. For all they knew, we
were just two more gawkers who’d descended on their neighborhood
to stare at the house where the devil lived.
We sat there in the middle of the street for a few moments, the car
idling, both of us staring in silence at the nondescript structure.
“Not a helluva lot to it,” I said.
Landwehr said nothing. He stepped on the gas, and we sped off.
All morning long, he’d been alluding to a run-down grain silo he
wanted me to see. He’d learned about it from Rader while interrogating
him. To get out to where it was, we drove past Rader’s office in the
neat and tidy one-story brick Park City municipal building on
Hydraulic Street. The structure had the sterile, nondescript feel of a
medical complex and was located just a few minutes away from his