Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 143
oxygen, Rader would masturbate, then probably try to ejaculate on
the body. When it was all over, he’d untie the animal and, on the way
back to his house, toss it in a ditch or leave it on the side of the road.
Leaving it strung up inside the barn would have been far too risky.
One of the things Rader would have enjoyed best about killing animals
was how powerful he felt afterward, how high it made him. Because
he had no other way to achieve that rush of power, he had to steal it away
from others. So he started with animals. He loved the sensation of it. It
made up for all the ways he felt different from the other kids. It not only
leveled the playing field but made him feel better than everyone else.
Over the years, I’ve learned that many serial killers escalated their
violence, moving from inanimate objects to animals and then to people.
In fact, torturing and killing animals is a type of prep school for
potential sex offenders and killers.
Despite his love of violence, Rader wasn’t much of a fighter. This
wasn’t because he was scared to trade blows with other kids. His reticence
had more to do with his always seeming to have other uses for
his energy. Besides, from what he’d observed in the past, fights rarely
went down the way they did in the movies. Physical altercations were
messy affairs. In a fight, one risked losing control—the last thing Rader
would ever want to have happen. He’d worked far too hard, spent far
too much time crafting his image, to let down his guard like that.
Most of the time, Rader was content to use words instead of his
fists. Years later, as BTK, he used this same approach when convincing
victims to go along with him and allow him to tie them up. He
used words rather than a blitz attack because he wanted his victims to
be conscious when he played out his bondage fantasies.
One of his high school chums told me about the time when
another student cut in front of Rader in line; he never lost his cool.
One morning when everyone was lined up in front of the cafeteria for
lunch, the school’s biggest jock butted in front of Rader and his buddies.
One of Rader’s pals recalled how the group quickly decided not
to make a big deal out of the incident. But Rader wasn’t the type to
ignore such an obvious infraction of the social code. So he tapped the
guy on the shoulder and informed him, in the most matter-of-fact
way, that he didn’t like the jock’s cutting in front of him. Rader didn’t
have a mean look on his face, said the friend. And he never raised his
voice. But before anyone knew what had happened, the interloper
mumbled a terse apology and walked to the back of the line.