Inside the Mind of BTK

180 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
dreamed about doing. But now it turned out that all those stories had
been painted with deceivingly broad strokes.
Why was this turning out to be so difficult? The boy was thrashing
about on the floor, and so was Joseph. His head was rocking back and
forth in quick, violent spasms. If his feet hadn’t been tied to the bedpost,
there’s no telling where he would have moved to.
Meanwhile, up on the bed, the mother and daughter shrieked so
loudly that the noise seemed to fill every inch of the house. Rader
slammed his gloved hand down on top of them, then attempted to
cover their gagged mouths with his hands. They both begged him to
take the bags off Joseph’s and Joey’s heads. For some reason, Rader
reached down and yanked the bag off the boy’s head. Joey’s eyes were
closed, and he was still. The father appeared to have rubbed a hole in
the bag. Vomit was smeared around his face, and his chest was moving
up and down in slow, labored movements. When Rader glanced
over, he was surprised to see that the boy’s eyelids were fluttering open.
“Please,” Josephine cried. “Please go. You can leave. We won’t tell.
We won’t tell anyone. Nobody will say a word.”
He stood there and surveyed the scene, trying to catch his breath
and calm his head. For a brief instant, he thought about getting the
hell out of there. But then he realized they could identify him. They’d
seen his face. If he left now, he might as well drive straight to the cops.
From out of his pocket, he pulled a coil of thin rope. When Julie
saw it, she began screaming again, begging him to stop all this. He
quickly looped the rope around her neck, pulled tight, and began to
strangle her slowly.
“Mommy,” Josephine cried out. “Mommy, I love you.”
“Be calm,” Rader told the girl, according to his journal. “She’ll pass
out soon . . . She’ll go to sleep.”
Julie was gasping now, staring straight up into his eyes. Not blinking.
“Mama,” the little girl cried out. “What are you doing to my
mama?” Then, all at once, Julie’s eyes shut, and she passed out. Afterwards,
Rader removed the rope, slipped it around Joseph’s neck, and
yanked it tight.
“Be careful,” the little girl whispered when she saw what he was
doing. “Please be careful.”
“He’ll go to sleep, too,” he told the girl. “Once he stops fighting the
rope, he’ll go to sleep.”
Rader wrote that his hands hurt by the time he finally finished off
the father. And that surprised him. He never thought that killing
someone would be so difficult.