Inside the Mind of BTK

154 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
One night he up and did it. On his way home from work at
Leeker’s, he parked his car a few blocks away from his old high school
and went for a walk. A few minutes later he arrived outside his former
alma mater. The place looked pitch black inside. He walked around
the building, just to make sure that no janitors were lurking around the
property. When he finally decided that all was safe, he clambered up
onto the roof, popped open one of the skylights, and jumped down
into the darkness. The moment his shoes hit the floor, a wonderful
sensation coursed through his body. It made him feel like a spy, an
interloper, the ultimate invader who had dared to go somewhere he
didn’t belong. He walked through the darkness for a while, soaking up
the feeling. It was indescribable, vaguely sexual. Eventually, he wandered
into one of his old classrooms, managed to locate a piece of
chalk in the nearly pitch-black room, and scribbled some profanities
on the board.
A half hour later, he was back home and getting ready for bed.
It was in the first few months of 1965 that one of his acquaintances
convinced him that if he ever wanted to do anything in life
other than work as a clerk at Leeker’s, he needed a college degree.
Rader realized that he was probably right. By that point, he’d grown
so frustrated and restless since graduating from high school that he
began looking at colleges. But instead of opting to attend one of the
lower-priced state schools in the region, he picked Kansas Wesleyan,
a four-year college run by the Methodist Church, located ninety miles
north of Wichita in Salina. I never was able to ascertain exactly how
someone with Rader’s lackluster high school GPA could have gotten
accepted to a school like Wesleyan. But something told me that Rader’s
longtime involvement with his church youth group might have helped
convince school administrators that what he lacked in smarts he made
up for in faith. Whatever the reason for his admission, Rader soon
realized that he had made a bad choice.
Because his parents could afford to cover only a portion of the relatively
steep tuition, Rader was constantly strapped for cash. He was
so desperate for money to live on that he would drive ninety miles
back to Wichita in order to work his old job at Leeker’s, always earning
just enough to barely get him through the next week of school.
Before long, he began sneaking around at night and jimmying open
soda machines and stealing the pop bottles. After dumping the pop
out, he’d drive around to area groceries and collect the deposit money