Inside the Mind of BTK

136 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
their drawing, his two friends grew embarrassed by their little house
of horrors. A tiny voice inside them, my source said, seemed to be
telling them that what they were doing was ...something they probably
shouldn’t be proud of.
Both boys grew quiet under the gaze of Mrs. Hadon.
Not Rader, though. He began jabbering nonstop about all the
intricate details of his diabolical creation—how the unsuspecting girls
would enter through an ordinary front door, only to be quickly bound
by a web of ropes. In the depths below lay a labyrinth of dungeons and
subdungeons where the bewildered victim would be transported via
conveyor belt. His imagination went wild, spinning out dark scenarios
so intricate that his friends’ mouths hung open in dumbfounded
amazement. But they were embarrassed by what Rader was telling
Mrs. Hadon, who looked bewildered and shocked by what she heard.
The friend explained that he carried the memory of that strange,
intense look with him for the next five decades. The haunting vision
of his friend’s face always made him uneasy in a way he never could
quite put his finger on. And on more than a few occasions after BTK’s
murders had begun, he would quietly tell himself that this image held
the key to some enormous mystery—although he was never quite sure
what it was.
“I know this sounds crazy, but back during the height of all the
BTK hysteria, I used to tell myself that I knew who BTK was,” said
Rader’s old friend. “I knew who he was, but I just couldn’t remember
his name. It was like I had amnesia.”
Rader’s friend sobbed uncontrollably as he told me this, unable
to fathom that he had once been close friends with a serial killer. “I
don’t understand how any of this could have happened. I’m buffaloed
by the whole thing. As long as I live, it’ll never make sense to me.”
According to an entry I read in his journal, Rader’s family bought
their first TV set in 1955, when Rader was around ten years old.
The Rader boys loved watching The Mickey Mouse Club. But Dennis
enjoyed the Mouseketeers for reasons other than their zany songs
and adventures. By the time he entered junior high, he’d developed an
obsessive and violent crush on America’s newest teen sweetheart—
Annette Funicello. He told Landwehr about how he longed to drive
out to California, kidnap her, tie her up in ropes, then take her to an
abandoned house—always situated atop a lonely hill outside of town.
He loved to shut his eyes and think about the sexual things he’d do to