Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 167
home, paying close attention to where they lived. Up until then, he’d
always felt somewhat ashamed of all those thoughts he used to have,
but something was different now. The gloves were off. He was sick of
pretending. There was a comfort that came with all this thinking, a
sense of belonging, of being part of a universe where he called the
shots. He didn’t need to hide his thoughts and feelings anymore, to be
embarrassed. He could go for hours at a stretch and not do anything
but let that TV set between his ears play and play and play. Oh, the
places it took him.
One morning, after arriving back at the house, he pulled his old
typewriter out of the closet in the back bedroom and rolled a piece of
paper into it. Over the past few days, he’d been starting to notice that
the buzz he got by looking at his magazines wasn’t enough anymore.
He’d begun to grow bored reading about all the grand adventures all
those other guys were having. He decided it might be nice to create a
story of his own, one in which he, not somebody else, got to be the
bad guy. He’d certainly never considered himself to be much of a
writer, but now it seemed as though the words and sentences were
bursting out of him so quickly that he wondered if he’d be able to peck
them out on his typewriter quickly enough. It almost felt as though
someone were dictating them to him.
According to an entry I read in his journal, the first time he tried
it, he sat there for a moment and thought about what he wanted to
write, what he needed to say. He’d never done that sort of thing before.
Yet he had so much going on inside his head that he needed to get out.
So he started off by coming up with a title—if he could just get the
right title, the rest of the story would come to him.
So he typed out the words, THE CHILD KILLER WHO DRESSED
LIKE A WOMEN.
Something about the word women didn’t look right to him, he
later told my source, but he couldn’t figure out why. Lord knows he
had to be one of the world’s worst spellers. Nevertheless, he liked the
way his headline floated there at the top of the page. It looked professional,
he told himself.
Then, all at once, the story he needed to write exploded inside his
brain. He began typing:
It was suppertime in Wichita, Ks. The streets were nearly deserted.
The scene presented, peaceful winter setting for to young girls walking
down the street. There was no reason for concern as the two girls walk