Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 215
Men Loves Little Girls,” depicted her pants rolled down around her
ankles.
Because the newspaper was chock full of ads on that particular
day, Rader saw no reason to limit his art project to just one so-called
slick ad. He quickly located another picture of what he felt was a suitably
curvy preteen wearing some sort of a Halloween costume. His ink
pen knew exactly what it needed to do, and twenty minutes later she
became the “Devil’s Delight.” His art project, which he would later
stash away in the far reaches of his bedroom closet, whipped him into
such a frenzy that he sat back in his easy chair, and when he was sure
that Paula and the kids were out of the house, he masturbated into a
plastic baggie. That was one of the drawbacks of living in such horribly
tight quarters—he was forever having to watch his back in order
to have any fun. It wasn’t until the late 1990s that he was able at least to
move part of his cache of sketches and other memorabilia to some file
cabinets at work.
In May 1991, with his temporary census job finished, Rader landed
another job—as compliance supervisor for Park City. This time he got
to wear a badge and a uniform, complete with a radio he clipped onto
his belt. His main duties involved driving around the tiny suburb in a
white truck and writing up tickets for residents who kept old refrigerators
in their front yards or let their dogs run off-leash or let their grass
grow too long. The job paid $16.62 an hour. For a guy who always
wanted to be a cop and spent much of his waking hours dreaming
about flaunting power over others, this was about as close to heaven as
he could get without killing someone. He even got to carry a rifle in
his truck, on the off chance that he had to put down a wild dog.
But the best thing about the job was that it allowed him to disappear
for hours at a stretch in his truck, providing plenty of time to
stalk victims, work on his slick ads, or fantasize about past kills while
masturbating into plastic sandwich bags.
According to Landwehr, opinion is divided over exactly how
heavy-handed Rader was in his duties. Plenty of residents loathed the
way he bullied them, showing up at their homes with a ruler to measure
the height of their grass, then demanding they mow it or else he’d
fine them. Others complained that he had their dogs euthanized
purely out of his lust for power. And then there were those who
insisted that Rader was doing only what was expected of him—enforcing
city code.