Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 201
killing with the frequency he yearned for and spent his days fantasizing
about. They made it impossible for him to be the lone wolf he’d always
fancied himself. In the best of all worlds, he told himself, he’d enjoy
living alone. He’d be able to come and go whenever he pleased, stalking
victims until 4 A.M. on a weeknight without ever having to
explain himself, without worrying about whether or not his wife suspected
something. He wrote in his journals that sometimes he’d drive
around in his truck and hold pretend conversations with the cops,
telling them, “If I’d been a lone wolf, there’d be a lot more bodies
around here.”
Still, it wasn’t a bad life. When he could find the time, he enjoyed
hanging himself. All he needed was a quiet place to do it. That was the
trouble with hanging, especially when you liked getting all dolled up
for it the way he did. It was an all-or-nothing kind of affair. Much of
the time he’d do it in his parents’ basement. He liked the dark, dank
feel of the room. It reminded him of some medieval dungeon. Other
times, he’d go out into the woods and find a sturdy branch, then toss
a nice thick rope over it. Not a cord, though—that would be far too
thin. Besides, cord had the tendency to bite like a knife into the soft
flesh of the neck. True, he’d have no qualms about using it on one of
his victims. But for himself he preferred a thicker gauge rope—nylon,
polyester, sisal, or hemp. He’d slip his head through the simple noose
he’d fashioned, then put some weight onto it. Not enough to fully cut
off the blood supply to his brain—just enough so that he could feel
the biting pressure against his throat and up the side of his neck.
It was the pressure he enjoyed most of all. He never went all the
way, though. Unlike some of the jokers he’d read about who accidentally
died while hanging themselves, he always kept his feet planted
firmly on the ground, and leaned into the rope. That was enough to
do the trick. He could literally hang himself for hours at a time, dangling
there, imagining himself to be one of his victims, feeling all the
terror, confusion, and helplessness that must have coursed through
their bodies before he put them down. More often than not, he’d be
dressed in a frilly, intimate getup he’d stolen out of some woman’s
house. A few of the outfits came from his victims’ lingerie drawers.
A source close to Rader told me that once, on a family fishing
vacation to Colorado, Rader managed to secure an afternoon away
from Paula and the kids, so he hung himself from a tree for hours. The
problem was, he didn’t bother putting any sunscreen on his neck, and
the sun cooked him red—all except where the rope had been, which