Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 283
ending source of headaches in my life. But, as strange as it now seems
for me to write this, over time she’d become something of a delight.
She was a whip-smart, bullheaded woman with a knack for getting
herself into tight scrapes. But for those who took the time to get to
know her, she was also a generous, good-natured soul, the type to give
a stranger in need the last dollar out of her purse.
“Of course, he disgusts me,” Casarona said, staring at her empty
glass. The ice had melted long ago. “If he were to somehow get out of
prison and show up on my front doorstep, I’d pump as many slugs
into his body as I could. I’ve got a forty-five, you know. Got a nice kick
to it. Picked it up after failed marriage number one.”
Casarona laughed.
I believed her.
Ever since we’d begun communicating, Casarona had been
guarded about most of the intimate details she’d learned about
Rader’s childhood. That was what interested her the most. When did
it happen? When did he know he was different? Something told me
she’d yet to unearth the answer. Every so often, she’d drop hints
about what she’d learned, but it wasn’t anything that I didn’t already
know. And from the few morsels she’d told me, my gut had confirmed
one important, disturbing observation: Casarona had become Rader’s
next victim. He might be locked behind steel doors, several feet of
concrete, and glistening razor wire, monitored by surveillance cameras
and watched over by countless heavily armed guards, but he
was still up to his old tricks. Somewhere inside his brain, he was plotting
to kill Casarona, torturing and strangling her, day after day, week
after week, imagining her lifeless naked body fallen before him as he
masturbated.
The two of them had forged a symbiotic relationship. He needed
her as fodder for his fantasies, and she needed him as grist for her
book and to solve the riddle that many people were asking: Was Rader
born a serial killer and those ten murders he committed an example
of genetic destiny? Or was he shaped and molded by some sort of horrible
childhood trauma? Of course, this question was nothing more
than the age-old nature-versus-nurture enigma, pushed to its moral
outer limit.
Like me, she’d discovered no examples of sexual or physical abuse
in Rader’s past. Although he steadfastly denied ever being victimized