Inside the Mind of BTK

150 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
he never felt particularly comfortable hanging out with the other kids.
It required too much effort. Yet on some occasions, he actually enjoyed
the company of others.
Sometimes at night, Rader and a buddy would drive out to the city
dump and blast rats with their .22s. This sort of hunting required
plenty of patience, because rats are easily spooked. So the first thing
they’d do after shutting off the engine was to kill the headlights.
According to the friend, they’d sit there in the darkness, waiting for the
city’s vermin to delude themselves that all was safe, that the danger had
passed and it was OK to come out of hiding. While passing the time,
the two friends would talk about things, whispering—so that the rats
couldn’t hear them—about what they wanted to do with their lives.
Like any other teenager, Rader had dreams and ambitions—
although to his friend who reported this to me, they sometimes
seemed a bit unrealistic for someone with his lackluster student
record. For a while there, he was telling his buddies that he wanted to
be a rocket scientist when he got older, a profession that seemed so
beyond his capabilities that it was hard not to laugh. To most people
who knew him, he seemed most likely to end up being some sort of
city worker, perhaps a bus driver. If he got lucky and knew someone,
maybe he could get hired on somewhere as a cop, they thought.
One of his friends said that by the time high school was finishing
up, Rader was contemplating becoming a game warden—which made
sense to those who thought they knew him. After all, he certainly
seemed to be fond of animals. He was also an avid outdoorsman, the
kind of guy who appeared at home in the woods with a shotgun or
fishing rod in his hands, just happy to be out there walking through
the mud, surrounded by all those elm and poplar trees. Whenever he
was hunting for dove, quail, or rabbit, one hunting buddy said, he was
the type who always took the “kill” shot. He went out of his way to
make sure that none of the animals he shot suffered. And over the
years, he’d matured into one of those hunters who didn’t just venture
out into the woods in order to bag as many birds as his permit would
allow.
Sure, he still loved to hear his gun go boom. And he still enjoyed
getting a good shot in from time to time. But more than anything else,
Rader just appeared to have an ease about him when he put on his
hunting jacket and flannel cap. According to a friend, he didn’t need
to be killing something in order to appear content when he traveled