Inside the Mind of BTK

250 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
He finished the letter and mailed it, he told police. But for the next
few days he found himself wondering, Does she have a clue?
One Friday in February 2005, Rader met with Michael Clark, the
pastor of Christ Lutheran Church, where Rader had recently been chosen
to serve as congregation president. Over lunch at a local Park City
eatery, the two discussed the agenda for the upcoming church council
meeting. Early on in the discussion, Rader placed his briefcase on
the table, opened it up, reached in, and without a moment wasted,
quickly pulled out a notepad and pen.
Clark told me that he sat there dumbfounded, watching as Rader
retrieved the items. He was astonished at how everything in his briefcase
appeared to have been positioned in an exact, very precise position.
He’d never seen anything like it.
“He didn’t have to hunt for anything,” Clark said. “He knew exactly
where everything was—unlike me, who has to search through four different
compartments in my briefcase before I can find anything. I
thought to myself, ‘I knew Dennis was organized, but not anything
quite like this.’ ”
Over the course of the next hour, Rader took copious notes as
Clark spoke. Afterwards, the pastor suggested that Rader give him the
notes and he’d have the church secretary type them up in an agendastyle
format and hand them out to the other church council members,
so they could prepare for the meeting two weeks away.
“I’ll type it up myself,” replied Rader.
“As you wish,” said Clark.
Just before they parted company, Rader told the pastor, “You
know what? I don’t really have a good place to print up any copies for
you.”
“No problem, Dennis,” Clark told him. “Type it up on your home
computer, load it onto a disk, then bring it into the church tomorrow
and I’ll show you how to load it onto the church computer. You can
print it up from there.”
Which is exactly what Rader did. The next morning at ten sharp,
he showed up at Christ Lutheran Church. Clark showed him what to
do, then disappeared into his office to work on his sermon. Fifteen
minutes later, Rader poked his head in through Clark’s door.
“He looked at me,” Clark told me, “and said, ‘I’m out of here.’ ”
In his hand was the computer disk.