Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 247
Among the contents was a two-page document that detailed how
the killer’s “lair” was booby-trapped with explosives. He also included a
lengthy list of “PJs,” which included “PJ—Little Mex, my 1 big hit ...a
good start as Serial Killer” and PJ Fox Tail . . . Nancy J Fox, My best Hit.”
But the part of the communication that caught Landwehr’s eye was the
pithy message BTK had tacked onto the final page. It read,“Look, be honest
with me. If I send you a disk will it be traceable? Just put (the answer)
in the newspaper under Miscellaneous Section 494 (Rex, it will be OK).
Run it for a few day in case I’m out of town—etc. I will try a floppy
for a test run some time in the near future—February or March.”
This marked the beginning of the end for BTK. If the killer was
being honest—and Landwehr certainly had no reason to believe he
was—it appeared that a shift had occurred in their relationship. For
the first time in three decades, BTK was no longer just barking at the
cops. He was asking them a question. And this was huge. He wanted
to know if it was safe to begin sending police his communications on
a computer disk. It wasn’t so much what he was asking. What mattered
was the notion that BTK finally wanted to establish some sort of
a dialogue with police. Landwehr, it seemed, had begun to wear his
adversary down. Rader was playing right into his hands.
The killer had begun to trust the super-cop—which was exactly what
I had envisioned when I began suggesting this technique back in 1984.
Landwehr grinned while recounting this part of the BTK story to
me. “We didn’t know what to think,” he said. “The last thing we
thought was that he’d use his own computer, because whenever you
stick a floppy in a computer, it gets stamped with all the identification
information of that computer, and it’s pretty easy to trace. We figured
he’d just use one at a library or some school. At the very least, we’d be
able to analyze the floppy, and it would give us a better chance to see
where he’d just been.”
As Landwehr later learned when he interrogated him, BTK was
growing frustrated with the elaborate, complicated logistics involved
with dropping off his communiqués around the Wichita area. He
wanted to go digital and begin submitting his messages to them via
computer disk. Because the police knew about these high-tech matters,
he truly believed he could trust them to give it to him straight.
So Landwehr decided to do exactly as the man he was trying to catch
had requested. On January 28, a detective quietly placed a classified ad
in the Wichita Eagle, informing Rex to go ahead and send them a floppy.
Then Landwehr sat back and waited.