Inside the Mind of BTK

Q
Istared at Rader’s image on my screen. His mouth was
moving, but the damn speaker appeared to have gone dead again.
Because the only thing that ever came out of Rader’s mouth was
emptiness cloaked in words, I tried to convince myself that the malfunctioning
sound system didn’t matter. But I motioned for a guard
to come over and fix it anyway. After a few moments spent shaking
some wires and tapping the side of the TV monitor, the guard coaxed
the speaker back to life, catching Rader in the midst of a ramble about
what compelled him to commit his first murder.
“You already know what the precipitating event was,” he said. “It
was all because of my getting laid off at Cessna. I wasn’t having any
sexual problems with my wife or financial problems. It was all because
of unemployment. It didn’t seem fair. It just didn’t seem fair. I really
loved that job.”
“Back up a minute, “ I said. “The sound went on the fritz for a few
minutes, just as you were about to tell me what it was that drove you.”
A tiny smile returned to Rader’s face. He seemed to be enjoying this.
“It was all psychological,” he said. “My whole thing when I went
into someone’s house was based on a fantasy of bondage. I was espe-
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