Inside the Mind of BTK

252 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
But a few minutes later, Stone worked his way into a portion of
the file that he hoped would contain some traces of identifying information
about whoever created it, along with the computer’s registered
owner. Stone clicked open this portion of the file and read that the
alleged creator of the file was someone named Dennis. The owner of
the computer was listed as Christ Lutheran Church.
Stone called up Google on another computer and typed what he’d
just learned into the search engine. In less time than it took to blink,
the pieces of the puzzle began to fall into place. Christ Lutheran
Church was located in Park City. Somebody named Dennis Rader was
listed as the church president.
“So four task force detectives took off to Park City,” Landwehr
recalled, “to check out what they could find about this guy. And I’m
standing there thinking to myself, ‘Can it really be this easy?’ ”
Within an hour, they’d pieced together a rough idea of just who
Dennis Rader was. He’d lived in the same house for thirty-three years,
had been married to the same woman for thirty-three years, and every
morning for the past thirteen years had gotten dressed in a brown uniform
that made him resemble a park ranger—complete with a badge,
cap, and two-way radio dangling off his jacket—and driven off to a
job where he got to play make-believe and pretend to be a cop. The
more Landwehr learned about the guy, the more he liked what he saw.
Fifty minutes later, on their first drive-by of Rader’s tiny ranchstyle
home, located a half mile from the Park City municipal building,
detectives spotted a black Jeep Cherokee in the driveway. It
resembled the vehicle they’d spotted in the Home Depot security
videotape and was registered to Rader’s twenty-nine-year-old son,
Brian, currently serving in the navy.
Undercover agents began loosely tailing Rader, watching his
movements, but keeping an extremely low profile. Although Landwehr
didn’t post undercover detectives in front of his house or at the Park
City Municipal Building, his men monitored Rader’s activities on a
regular, steady basis. During the day, they continually watched to
ensure that he was at work. And at night when he was supposed to be
at home, they performed hourly bed checks to make sure he didn’t
sneak out.
“But we were careful not to jump on him right away,” Landwehr
told me. “We’d had too many close calls before. So we stuck to him
day and night, studying everything he did and, most important, making
sure he didn’t try and go after anyone else.”