Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 171
with it, he told himself. So he walked back down the highway to his
car and drove home.
But that was hardly the end of it. He now understood that he
needed to be much more systematic in his planning. If he was going
to pull off a bold crime, he needed to anticipate every single worstcase
scenario imaginable. Nothing could be left to chance. All those
guys he read about in the detective magazines—they might have
pulled off big rapes, kidnappings, and mass murders, but they’d all
gotten caught because of some foolish mistake. They were lazy. He
vowed not to let that happen to him. He would be different. He was
always an organized guy—a detail freak. He couldn’t help himself. He
was the type of guy who would walk into a room and want first thing
to straighten it up, organize it, put everything back in order. Suddenly
it dawned on him that he could use this trait to his advantage. He’d
use his love of order to help him kill. The devil, he thought, really was
in the details.
So he spent the next few days plotting, fantasizing. After dropping
Paula off at work each day, he began hanging out in the parking lot of
the Twin Lakes Mall, he later confessed, studying the girls as they
walked to and from their cars. He’d lose himself in his daydreams,
shutting his eyes and trying to imagine all the powerful things he
could do with victims. He wanted one so badly.
One morning it came to him. He’d snatch the thirty-somethingyear-old
brunette he’d often seen walking across parking lot, the one
who he knew worked in a bank located in the mall.
“I can do this,” he told himself. “I can do this. People kidnap people
and hold them for ransom all the time.”
Rader knew, however, that he wasn’t going to bother with any of
that ransom nonsense. He’d bind her, force her to have sex with him,
then garrote her. Afterward, he’d toss her body on the side of a highway
outside of town. A few days earlier, he’d begun driving around
with his bowling bag filled with his pistol, some ropes, and a hunting
knife; he referred to the bag as his “hit kit” because that was the slang
term that all those killers in his detective magazines used to describe
the tools of their trade.
According to the entry I read in his journal, it was early evening
when he finally decided to make his move. The brunette always
seemed to depart the bank at about 5:35 P.M. and walk to her car. So
he left his car on the other side of the parking lot, walked across to
where she parked, and waited. When she appeared, he pulled the hood