Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
21
On May 28, eight months after my last trip to
Wichita to research the events leading up to Rader’s arrest, I hopped
another flight out to that city on the plains and booked a hotel room
downtown by the old train station, at the same place I stayed last
time—a newly renovated century-old former warehouse for a company
that manufactured scythes, axes, and butcher knives. The sidewalks
and the buildings in that part of the city had a tired, ancient
smell. Everything there appeared to be constructed from bricks made
from day-old dried blood. Just thinking about that color brought back
memories of the thousands of grisly crime scene photos I’d spent my
career wading through while attempting to reconstruct events I now
wanted to forget.
It was late May, but even at midnight the air felt hot and damp,
the kind of syrupy heat that made me wish I could shake my compulsion
to wear button-down shirts. But old habits die hard.
I’d returned to Wichita to interview Dennis Rader, now known to
the staff of the El Dorado Correctional Facility as Inmate no. 0083707.
Getting permission to see him hadn’t been easy. In fact, it had been
damn near impossible. Most people think that all I have to do is show
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