Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 249
He was one angry dude, Rader thought. Big, too. He listened to
the TV and quickly concluded—as he told the police after his arrest—
that Charlie wanted to cut him up and feed him to the sharks.
Rader told Landwehr after his arrest that the more he thought
about it at the time, he realized that that probably wouldn’t be such a
bad way to go. Sure as hell beat being locked up in prison for the rest
of your life. All the same, he decided that if he had to be put away, he
wanted to be hanged, as they had done to the killers of the Clutter
family. But because they don’t do that anymore, he resigned himself
to the fact that he’d either rot in prison or, if it came down to it, commit
suicide. He hoped it would never come to that.
Just a little while longer, he kept telling himself. A few more taunts
to the police, then he’d disappear forever.
Rader told Landwehr that he found it interesting watching
Charlie—not so much because he had any interest in learning how
the murders had affected the families of his victims. What he found
intriguing was the effect Charlie’s TV appearance had on him. He was
sitting with Paula at the time his interview came on, and the moment
it started, he felt himself suddenly shift into what he referred to as
chameleon mode.
“I had to pretend he was somebody else besides who he really
was,” he explained during his interrogation. “After all these years, this
sort of thing was easy to do. He just kept telling himself, “Don’t tip it
...Don’t tip it.’”
He had another close call a few days later. As Landwehr told me,
Rader was at home writing a letter to his brother Paul, who was stationed
over in “the big sandbox,” which was how Rader enjoyed
describing Iraq. Paula happened to walk by and glance over her husband’s
shoulder at the letter, reading the words he’d written. Suddenly,
he heard her exclaim, “You know, you spell just like BTK.”
Rader realized that like everyone else in Wichita, she’d been watching
and reading all the coverage of his recent communiqués. He knew
the case had been on her mind lately. So he didn’t panic. Not like the
time back in 1979 when she told him he sounded like the man who
telephoned police to inform them where they could find the murdered
body of Nancy Fox.
Instead, he joked around with her and said, “We [he and BTK]
went to school before they were teaching phonics.” Then he laughed,
and she walked off into the kitchen.