Inside the Mind of BTK

The Capture and Arrest of BTK 267
“Well,” Rader intoned. “If you’ll allow me to use an example: let’s
say you’re a bank robber. You’re always going to be dreaming about
your next big haul—like how you’re going to pull it off. And then one
day, you might drive by a bank and look at it, then figure out that what
you had in mind might not work. So then you go looking for another
one. I mean, it’s always in the back of your mind, just clicking away
there all the time, always asking you: ‘How are you going to do it? How
are you going to work toward pulling it off?’ ”
They let Rader collect himself for a few moments. He sat there,
not saying a word, beginning to crack but not yet knowing it. “I think
it’s in his genes,” he stammered. “I think, well, they call it Factor X.
That’s what he called it—Factor X. You don’t have any control over it.
You try and put it away, but that doesn’t work. I mean, it’s not accepted
by society. But it’s like an alcohol or a drug person. You know, they’re
going to blame it on the drugs or alcohol. They are going to say they
couldn’t control it.”
He took a deep breath, then muttered, “People have problems and
probably always will have problems.”
A few minutes later, his terrible secret continued rising up like bile
from that hidden place he’d let it fester his entire life. Landwehr could
tell it was all starting to come out, and there was nothing Rader could
do to stop it.
He looked straight at Landwehr and said, “Give me a pastor.”
“A pastor?” Landwehr asked.
“Yeah,” Rader replied.
But before Landwehr could leave the room, pretending to arrange
for Rader’s minister from Christ Lutheran to be shuttled to the federal
building, the handcuffed man began to utter the words that police
had been waiting to hear for decades:
“You guys have got me.”
Yet that was all he said. Nothing more. And Landwehr knew he’d
need much, much more from Rader.
In the next breath, Rader was trying to figure out whether Morton
had taken a regular commuter jet to Wichita that morning or whether
his case was a big enough for the FBI to charter a jet. Much to Rader’s
disappointment, he didn’t warrant a charter flight. And this, for the
next few moments, caused Rader to sulk just a bit, making him reluctant
to connect the dots for the two men and admit that he was BTK.
He was inching closer, yet he refused to make that final leap. Simply
saying, “You guys have got me” was a far cry from what prosecutors