Inside the Mind of BTK

300 INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK
“Thanks,” I said.
Rader sat there and listened with a pensive, somber look plastered
on his face as I continued to speak about my mother’s death. He
appeared as though he were trying to fathom what I was telling him,
but I knew he could not. It was physically and psychologically impossible.
And after a few moments, a thin, dull glaze had begun to descend
over his eyes, so I decided to steer the conversation back to him.
“I had a hell of a time getting in to see you,” I told him.
“Yeah,” he replied. “There were a few people who rather we didn’t
talk. Two FBI agents came here a couple of months ago and told me
that I didn’t need to be speaking to you. They kept telling me, ‘Forget
about John Douglas. Talk to us’ ...I think they’re jealous of you.”
“They’re not jealous,” I told him. “They’re just sore. I’ve butted
heads with the FBI a few times since my retirement in cases where I
believed they’d made a mistake. The JonBenet Ramsey murder was
one of them.”
I spoke slowly, trying not to appear too anxious to talk about his
crimes. I wanted to establish myself as a guy who looked at all sides of
a case, the kind who wasn’t out to please either prosecutors or defense
attorneys. I wanted him to know that I would give him a fair shake.
Rader peered intently into the camera and nodded his head
slowly. “You don’t think her parents had something to do with it?”
“No, I don’t,” I told him. “At different times during the investigation
I was brought in by both the defense and the prosecution, but I
walked away from that one convinced there was no way the family
could have committed that murder.”
“Why not?” he asked.
“When a parent kills a child, the body generally doesn’t look like
that little girl’s did,” I said. “After the murder, they usually attempt to
undo the scene and make it appear more comfortable and peaceful for
the victim. But JonBenet had been viciously garroted. Duct tape covered
her mouth. Her hands were bound over her head. And shortly
before she died, her skull was smashed with a blow that would have
brought down a two-hundred-pound man.”
Rader looked bored, fidgety. He’d begun to slouch just a bit. All
this talk about some murder he’d played no part in had begun to
annoy him, I could tell. He wanted this to be all about him.
Fearful he was on the verge of growing bored because I wasn’t
properly stroking his ego, I decided to switch gears and compliment
him. I told him that I’d always been impressed with his ability to