Inside the Mind of BTK

174 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
In an entry from early January 1974, Rader wrote that Paula didn’t
like driving in the snow and ice. The stuff just made her nervous. So
whenever the city got a dumping of snow or the streets were glazed
with ice, Rader became the designated chauffeur, often carting her to
and from work. He didn’t mind. Deep down, there was something
soothing about sitting behind the wheel of a car. It made him feel
more powerful, more in control. It was one of the few socially acceptable
activities he could engage in that possessed the necessary juice to
quiet his mind whenever all the clamor started.
According to his journal, it was during one of those drives in the
first week of January 1974 that he first spotted them—a mother and
three or four kids, climbing into a station wagon and backing out of
the driveway. He couldn’t quite make out their nationality, but the
moment he spotted their dark skin, his brain flew into overdrive. The
fantasies started.
There was just something about dark-skinned people that turned
him on, he told one of my sources. What was it? he wondered. Something
about their dark eyes and dark hair. A few of the prostitutes he’d
been with in the service were Hispanic, he recalled. Then again, some
of his favorite detective magazines sported pictures of sexy-looking
dark-skinned models on their covers. So maybe that was it?
According to what Landwehr told me, Rader was never quite sure
why he’d targeted the Otero family—other than that they were in the
wrong place at the wrong time.
Whatever the reason, that next morning he drove back to their
neighborhood, parked down the street from their house, and waited.
It was almost 8 A.M. Sure enough, just like clockwork, the mother and
children climbed into a station wagon and drove away. He began to
daydream about all the terrible things he wanted to do with the
mother and her daughter. A couple of days later, he followed the family
station wagon on its morning drive to school and back. He did this
for several days. One afternoon, he later admitted, he drove over to
the public library and used a reverse directory to look up the Oteros’
phone number and identity. He even dialed their number a few times
and listened to who answered the phone. He was desperate to figure
out if any males lived at the residence. The last thing he needed was
some guy to waltz onto the scene and ruin what was shaping up to be
the perfect fantasy. It wasn’t that he didn’t believe he could overpower
any man—that had nothing to do with it, he told himself. He just
didn’t need the hassle.