Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
Landwehr needed a smoke. “I’ll meet you up in your
room in a minute,” he said. So I walked slowly back upstairs thinking
over everything he’d told me.
BTK’s reappearance in March 2004 had stirred up the proverbial
hornets’ nest, all right. Before long, it was as if the killer had never gone
into hiding for the past two and half decades. By that summer, the entire
city had gone on red alert—gun sales skyrocketed; so did the number
of security systems. Police were being inundated with so many calls
on their special hotline that they had to hire more operators. Suddenly
it felt like 1978 all over again.
It was good to be back in the public eye, BTK told Landwehr after
his arrest.
One evening a few months into his BTK 2.0 act, Rader recounted
how he flipped on the TV and happened to catch an interview with
Charlie Otero, Joseph Otero’s eldest surviving son. Once BTK resurfaced,
the media tracked Charlie down, and he had ended up doing
lots of interviews over the past few months. He’d also been “pretty verbal”
about the killings.
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