Inside the Mind of BTK

264 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
As Rader nodded, the expression on his face softened. “Uh-huh,”
he mumbled. Morton continued stroking him.
“This is such a dramatic crime,” he said. “Kind of an unheralded
crime, if you want to think about it, in history. That’s why there’s so
much attention about it.”
Rader continued nodding like some bobblehead doll.
“Yeah, a lot,” Rader said. “A lot. A lot of media attention. A lot of
stuff going on.”
A faint grin spread across Landwehr’s face when I asked him
about the incident. “At first, I thought it would be a good idea to have
an FBI agent there,” he told me. “But it started to become pretty evident
that he was so excited to be there, to be the center of this much
attention, that he would have talked anyway.”
By now, the world knows that Rader eventually confessed to being
BTK, but what I found most interesting were those hours that elapsed
between the time when this dazed, handcuffed nobody from Park City,
Kansas, was read his Miranda rights and when he finally began spilling
his guts. During those hours, before Rader’s dark, perverse world got
thrust out into the light for everyone to see, Landwehr received a firsthand
glimpse at the façade Rader had lived behind for decades.
“It’s all there in one of those folders on your computer, the folder
named ‘interrogation,’ ” Landwehr told me. “It’s a transcript of what
happened.”
After a few seconds spent searching for it, I found the folder,
clicked it open, and began reading, noticing that Landwehr didn’t
waste much time in getting to the point about why he’d hauled Rader
up to this room.
“Do you know why you’re here?” he asked.
“Well, probably for the BTK thing,” Rader replied. “I assume I’m
a suspect at this point in time.”
“Any reason why we should think that you’re BTK?” Landwehr
inquired.
Rader nodded again, slowly. “Well, I live in Park City, went to
WSU, served in the ...Uhh.I’m in that age group. Kind of surprised
you haven’t been knocking on my door before, wanting a swab.”
Rader grew quiet for a moment, then added, “I’ve been a BTK fan
for years.”