Inside the Mind of BTK

240 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
The next page contained a computer-generated word-search puzzle
that at first felt reminiscent of something that a diabolical mastermind
like the fictional Hannibal Lecter might create to confound
authorities. But the more investigators scrutinized it, the more they
realized that this guy was no better at designing a puzzle (he couldn’t
quite seem to line the numbers up with the letters) than he was at
spelling.
The puzzle contained words relating to the case, including victim,
serviceman, fantasies, lost pet, and officer. On the final page were photocopies
of two ID badges—one from a phone company in town, the
other from the local school district.
One month later, BTK’s third communication was discovered in a
Ziploc plastic bag, duct-taped to a stop sign near an on-ramp to I-135,
which bisected the city. On the outside of the enclosed brown envelope
were the words “BTK Field Gram.” It contained a disturbingly
sophomoric account of the Otero murders, including a graphic description
of his slaying of eleven-year-old Josie. The killer also included a
sketch of a gagged, bound, nude woman dangling from a noose. The
caption read, THE SEXUAL THRILL IS MY BILL.
On July 17, Wichita Public Library workers discovered a clear plastic
bag marked BTK at the bottom of an outdoor book collection bin.
This mailing consisted of five sheets of paper. Two of those pages
detailed BTK’s involvement in the death of a troubled nineteen-yearold
young man named Jake Allen, whose suicide had been reported in
the local press a few weeks earlier. Of course, everything Rader wrote
in that communiqué was pure bullshit, but the Wichita police didn’t
know that at the time. According to Landwehr, Allen, a star athlete and
high school valedictorian, had dreamed of becoming an optometrist,
but weeks before his death he and some buddies had gotten caught by
local cops for having beer in their car. Allen soon convinced himself
that he’d blown his chances of ever getting into optometry school and,
in the early morning hours of July 5, lay down on the train tracks near
his home in tiny Argonia, Kansas, forty miles from Wichita. Not long
afterwards, a passing Burlington Northern Santa Fe freight train barreled
over his body, crushing it almost beyond recognition.
Hoping to send police off in countless directions, the killer wrote
that he’d been responsible for the death of “Jakey” after meeting him
in a computer chat room and convincing him that he was a private
eye hunting for BTK. The young man, who he claimed “had fantasies