Inside the Mind of BTK

202 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
was white as the stripe that ran along the back of a skunk. He had a
helluva time trying to explain that one the next morning, but he managed
somehow. He always did. That was one of his strengths. He could
play people the way some people played musical instruments.
But there was something peculiar about the way Rader hung himself.
Plenty of people use a rope to cut off the blood supply to their
brain in order to intensify an orgasm they’ve achieved either through
sex with another person or by masturbating. But Rader did things differently.
He didn’t need to have sex or masturbate in order to reach an
orgasm. In his mind, just being hung was enough. The longer he dangled
from the end of that rope, the harder his erection would become,
until eventually he’d explode.
For him, it was all about the rope.
Marine Hedge lived five doors down from him. Whenever Dennis
Rader would walk by her place, his journals revealed, he’d wave to
her if she were out front gardening. Some time in early April 1985,
something clicked inside his head, and he began to wonder what she’d
look like with a rope around her neck and a gag in her mouth. When
he learned that the fifty-three-year-old widow worked in a hospital
coffee shop, he nicknamed her Project Cookie. Deep down, he knew
that targeting someone who lived so close to his house violated one
of the cardinal rules of serial killing—never murder a neighbor. But
he didn’t care. Once he’d begun fixating on her, he couldn’t shake her
loose from his mind. After a few months spent fantasizing about all
the things he yearned to do her, he started sneaking down to her house
at night and peeking in through the venetian blinds as she read in bed.
On one occasion, her cat spotted him looking in the window and
flipped out, jumping off the bed and hissing.
He finally decided he would make his move on April 27, during a
Saturday night Boy Scout camping trip with Brian. Logistically, the murder
would be his most complicated, involving what he later referred to
as lots of “maneuverment.” On that evening, the tents had all been
pitched, the dinner was cooked, and the campfire was blazing when
Rader began to complain to the other Scout leaders of a headache, and
soon disappeared inside his tent. Not long afterwards, he sneaked out,
fetched his hit kit, which he’d stashed inside a bowling bag, then hoofed
it to a nearby bowling alley. He stayed just long enough to buy a beer,
drink a bit of it, then splash the rest of it on his clothes. He walked
outside, reeking of beer, and called a taxi from a pay phone.