Inside the Mind of BTK

242 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
party . . . Everything is looking good and then you just get shot down.
It all falls apart. You can’t imagine how many times we had victory
parties planned. I know of eight in 2004. The same thing happened
back in the 1980s.”
But there was something else about the Jakey letter that caused
Landwehr’s stomach to twist into knots. In it, the killer threatened that
he had “spotted a female that I think lives alone and/or is a spotted
latchkey kid. Just got to work out the details. I’m much older (not feeble)
now and have to conditions myself carefully. Also my thinking
process is not as sharp as it uses to be....I think fall or winter would
be just about right for the HIT. Got to do it this year or next! ...time
is running out for me.”
Landwehr glared down at the table in front of him and pushed his
plate aside, to the corner of the table.
“That’s the part that really made me sick,” he said. “I was so worried
that he’d picked out another victim. To think he might targeting
some kid was just too much. I never worried about me, you know.
About how, if he struck again, it might effect my reputation professionally.
But what ate at me was that he might claim another innocent
life. And if he’d killed a kid, that would have been tough for all of us,
too tough for the unit. It would have been very, very bad.”
But for Landwehr, the worst thing about what happened after the
so-called Jakey letter was that BTK went silent. “We didn’t get another
letter for about three months,” Landwehr said. “I really thought he’d
quit talking to us because he’d actually chosen his next victim and was
working out all the details before the kill.”
I could understand why Landwehr felt nervous and sick with frustration.
I agreed with Landwehr that as long as this guy kept sending
communications to the police and the media, he was doomed.
BTK’s next correspondence didn’t arrive until October. A UPS driver
spotted an unsealed envelope left in a drop box at the Omni Center
in downtown Wichita. He inspected the contents, which consisted
of a plastic bag with another envelope inside. The words BTK FIELD
GRAM were typed on the front. Tucked inside was a stack of threeby-five
cards. Two of the cards were covered with what the killer called
his “UNO-DOS-TRES THEORY,” intended to explain the philosophical
and mathematical underpinnings of the complicated universe he
yearned to have police believe dwelled within his head.
“The BTK World, Works in Threes,” he wrote, “and is base on the
Eternal Triangle.” He went on to list countless examples of this world,