Inside the Mind of BTK

166 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
When he asked a stewardess about it, she just shrugged. It was all
because of the oil shortage, she told him. A couple of days before,
they’d decided to turn off all the lights in town because it had gotten
too expensive to power them. Rader stared down at the blackened city
in angry disbelief. He never wrote another word about the trip in his
diary, so I can only imagine that his visit to Vegas was both uneventful
and disappointing.
A few days later, he returned to their tiny house in Park City in a
foul, anxious mood. Every morning, he’d drive Paula to work, then
return home to thumb through the stash of detective magazines he
kept hidden away on a top shelf of the guest bedroom closet. He loved
to stare into those pages, reading the stories over and over again, pausing
every so often, allowing the headlines to seep deep inside him: “He
Was into Kinky Sex . . . and Kinkier Kills: Weird Case of the Hog-Tied
Hookers.” “Rape-Strangler’s Two-Year Terror Reign.” “Dog-Leash
Strangler Hung Victim from Doorknob!”“The Autopsy Showed That
Besides Hog-Tying His Victim, the Pervert Used His “Torture Kit” on
Krista!”
Rader would close his eyes and masturbate, imagining himself to
be right there in the middle of whatever scene he’d just read about.
He’d always be the bad guy, and he loved the way the women in these
magazines would watch his every move, the way their little eyeballs
would dart about in their sockets, never blinking, following him as he
walked about the room with his ropes and knives. He was the one with
all the power, all the control. There was no denying that. He was in
charge. It was sheer ecstasy. He couldn’t get enough of it.
Winter came early that year. The ground froze up hard as concrete,
and the sky always looked gray. Paula was the one bringing
home the bacon now. Rader didn’t like thinking about that. It made
him feel weak. Some mornings after dropping Paula off at work, he’d
write in his journal, something he continued to do on an erratic basis
for the remainder of his life as a free man. Lately, his entries had begun
to detail his newfound habit of driving the streets of Wichita, allowing
his mind to drift from one dark thought to the next.
He’d begun noticing things in a way he never had before—coeds
from the local university, mothers and little girls, women walking by
themselves on the sidewalk. They were all his for the taking, he told
himself. And that made him feel good. Sometimes he’d park his car
and watch them stroll past his window. Other times, he’d follow them