Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 241
about Sexual Masturbation in unusual ways with Bondage and Homosexual
thrills,” agreed to help him. Everything he wrote was pure
make-believe. Rader had absolutely nothing to do with Allen’s tragic
death. But Landwehr couldn’t take that chance, so his men began
combing through Allen’s computers, sifting through his e-mails and
piecing together every word he’d ever posted in a chatroom. After a
couple of weeks, it became evident that everything BTK had written
about Allen had either been lifted from newspaper accounts of his
death or fabricated.
“Of all his letters, I’d say that was the one that stood out the most,”
recalled Landwehr. “There he was telling us that he’d killed again.”
“It confirmed everyone’s worst fears,” I said. “You knew about
Vicki Wegerle, so you knew he’d been killing while he’d gone underground.
But Wegerle was back in 1986. Suddenly he’s telling you that
he’s still at it, he’s still killing.”
“Not only that, his letter led us off on a wild goose chase,”
Landwehr said. “Because when we dug into Jakey’s background, we
learned that he was studying to be an optometrist. That’s what he
wanted to do in college. But we also knew that eyeglasses were important
to BTK, so we knew we had to run down that angle.”
“The eyeglasses?” I said. “I’d forgotten all about that. He mentioned
Josephine’s glasses in the letter he sent police after the Otero
killing, and he drew glasses on the bedside table when he sent you that
picture of Nancy Fox in 1978.”
Landwehr nodded. “And Cheryl Gilmore, the woman we believed
he was after on the day he ended up killing Shirley Vian, worked for
an optometrist,” he said. “So when we learned about Jakey’s optometry
connection, the KBI guys started [DNA] swabbing every
optometrist in town. I told them, ‘I want to know who refuses, the second
it happens, and we’ll put an undercover on them.’ ”
“You must have thought this was your huge break,” I said.
“But it gets better,” Landwehr grumbled. “Turns out that the eye
doctor Gilmore worked for also saw Jake. So now we’ve got a potential
victim who didn’t get hit and a kid who might be a possible victim
both connected to the same guy.”
“All you needed to do was go put cuffs on the guy,” I laughed.
Landwehr stared at his empty coffee cup, then shook his head,
slowly. “This investigation was filled with so many moments like that,”
he explained. “There were just so many points when you’d get so
excited and think, ‘This is it! We got him.’ You’re ready for the victory