Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
The mouse pad on my computer had grown alarmingly
hot, so I shut the machine down for a few moments to let it cool
off. If only I could do the same thing for my brain.
I stared into the emptiness of my hotel room. The quiet at this
hour of night was deafening. Thoughts were swimming around inside
me like piranhas. After a few moments one of them surfaced, and it
occurred to me that Dennis Rader and I had something in common.
He too was a profiler. The difference was that he profiled in order to
feed his appetite as a sexual predator.
He reminded me of a lion out on the Serengeti, scanning the
plains for prey—weak, lame, or old. Why work up a sweat by going
after some young, swift antelope when he could find others much
more vulnerable? Yet the comparison only went so far, because lions
hunt for survival. They kill to feed themselves and their cubs. Men like
Rader kill as a form of recreation. They’re predators. They live for the
hunt. Like the lion, they search for easy targets. But their biggest turnon
is the chance to play God, to have absolute control and dominance
over another human being. It was enough to make me sick. That is, of
course, if I didn’t find it so goddamned interesting.
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