Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 293
Meanwhile, I was lost. After what seemed like hours spent on the
road, I told myself I must have taken a wrong turn somewhere along
the way. When I spotted an old man in baggy overalls walking across
the gravel parking lot of a diner, I pulled over.
“You happen to know where a prison is around here?” I asked,
leaning out the window of my car.
The old man gave me the once over, trying to figure out if he
knew me or if I looked to be from these parts. “What sort of business
you got up there?” he asked.
“Somebody I’ve been wanting to talk to for a long time is waiting
for me.”
“Well, ain’t that just something,” he grinned, then pointed back
at the highway in the direction I was already going. “Keep going down
the road a ways. You can’t miss it.”
I thanked him and continued on my way. A few minutes later as
I crested a hill, the prison complex loomed enormous in the distance,
squat, ringed with what appeared to be miles of glistening
chain-link fence. A bone-white water tower resembling a mushroom
cloud jutted up into the sky above the facility. The massive compound
looked like something out of a sci-fi flick, the kind of place
where one might expect to find an evil scientist holed up in a laboratory
making poison.
I turned off the highway and followed the long, meandering road
that led to the parking lot. A wind, warm and furious, blew across the
prairie out of the south, bending the tiny saplings along the road. I
pulled into a space and parked. From the window of my car, I stared
at the dozens of crows and sparrows hunched over on the ground,
leaning into the gusts, straining to keep from being blown away. A
brass clip dangling from a rope on the massive aluminum flagpole by
the guard tower clanged out a rhythm, strangely hypnotic, permeating
everything.
I made my way toward a concrete walkway, trying not to stare at
the stern-faced women sitting inside the dozen or so cars and trucks,
preening themselves in their rearview mirrors. The doors of the prison
were constructed from thick glass. Because of the wind, I had to tug
on them with all my strength in order to coax them open.
Once I was inside, the first thing that caught my eye was a glass
case filled with handicrafts made by the residents of El Dorado. On
one of the shelves sat a collection of dream-catchers made from yarn
and sticks, for sale. According to the lore, various Native American