Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 259
I recounted how Rader later told one of my sources that the morning
before his arrest, Dennis woke up and started thinking about what
his next move should be. Part of him wanted to send police another
package. He was just dying to unload one more of his specially prepared
dolls, which he stored in a closet in Brian’s old bedroom. He
wanted this one to represent Shirley Vian, and on his last morning as
a free man, he was thinking about how he planned to tie a little plastic
baggie over its head—just like he’d done to Vian in real life. But
another part of him told him to back off for a bit, especially as it
appeared that he could now start communicating via computer disk.
“Had a lot on his mind, didn’t he?” Landwehr smiled.
Then he proceeded to tell me about the day it all went down: February
25, 2005.
The weather had held, he said. Winter appeared to have skipped
town early. The sun glowed like a searchlight up in the blue sky.
Shortly after 9:30 on that morning, Landwehr’s cell phone rang. One
of his buddies was calling, wanting to know if he had time to play a
round of golf later that afternoon.
“No,” Landwehr told him, trying not to chuckle at the understatement.
“I’d love to, but it looks like I’m probably gonna be a bit
tied up most of the day.”
All morning long, a contingent of Landwehr’s men, along with
agents from the FBI and KBI, had been on edge. In other parts of
Sedgwick County—and in the town of Farmington, Michigan, and
Groton, Connecticut—FBI agents were in place, ready to serve
search warrants and go to work interviewing Rader’s relatives and
coworkers.
Everything, it seemed, was ready. Now all they needed was for the
guest of honor to arrive.
From what Landwehr’s detectives had learned, Rader was a creature
of habit. He left his office for lunch every day at precisely 12:15.
Three minutes later he would arrive home to find that Paula had lunch
waiting for him on the kitchen table. That morning was no exception.
At 12:15, he walked out of his office, strode across the black asphalt,
climbed into his GMC truck, and started the engine.
Less than thirty seconds later, after he turned right out of the Park
City Municipal Building parking lot, Rader’s life started coming apart.
“Click on the folder that says ‘arrest photos,’ ” Landwehr told me,
pointing to my computer screen.