Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 303
Rader’s words reinforced my belief that he knew exactly what he
was doing when he committed his savage murders. It had nothing to
do with any split personality, evil twin, or monster living within him.
I thought back to how Rader’s pastor at Christ Lutheran Church
wanted to attribute what happened to his parishioner as an example
of how a demonic force can corrupt an otherwise healthy, caring, welladjusted
man. I suppose that was the difference between me and a
man of the cloth like Rader’s pastor.
“It’s not so bad in here,” Rader went on, switching the subject.
“They’ve got me in a twelve-by-nine cell. I have a little window that
looks out over the fields. I can see robins out there in the grass. Sometimes
I can even see butterflies. I watch a lot of sunsets, too. Every
night I try and write up a little entry in my journal about the sunset I
just watched.
“I do a lot of writing in here—letters mostly. I get a lot of mail. I
miss being outside and getting to work in my garden. I had a pretty
big garden at my house, out in the backyard. Maybe one day I’ll be
able to go out into the yard, here. That might be nice. But I guess it
could probably be dangerous too. So I don’t know . . .”
“You’d probably be a celebrity out in the yard,” I said.
“Yeah, I know,” he smiled. “Kind of like a rock star, I guess.”
He paused again, bent down and wiped sweat—or maybe it could
have been tears—out of his eyes, then continued. “This is Memorial
Day weekend, isn’t it? . . . You know, ever since my dad died, I’d drive
out to the cemetery and stick flowers on his grave. Good guy, my old
man. I asked Kris to do it for me. To ask him to forgive me, to tell
him he didn’t have anything to do with the way I turned out, to ask
if he’d tell all my victims up in heaven to forgive me, but I’m not sure
if Kris will.”
“She’s under a lot of pressure,” I told him.
“I know she is,” Rader said. “But I really like her. I really do. Not
in a lover sort of way. It’s nothing like that. She’s had a hard time
because of me, but she’s stuck in there for me.”
I clenched my teeth together. It amazed me how delusional this
guy was. The only reason Casarona stuck in there with him was
because she had no choice. The people suing her didn’t care if she
broke her contract with Rader or not. In their eyes, she’d cast her lot
with the devil, and those lawsuits were her just deserts. She could crawl
into a corner and try to wish it all away (I’d lost count of how many