Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 321
friend in Missouri, but he was fairly certain she’d never breathe a word
of what she’d seen him doing to a single living soul. Who knows? Perhaps
this was the real reason why this always calculating, perpetually
plotting psychopath chose Paula to be his wife in the first place.
Having Rader speak with a therapist or a counselor was out of the
question, Paula informed Dennis. It petrified her to imagine what people
might think if word ever got out—and Lord only knows that it
would in a town as small as Wichita. So, in a matter of days, Paula
decided to summon up enough courage to telephone the VA Hospital
in Wichita, where she’d once worked as a bookkeeper back during
the Otero murders. Without identifying herself, she asked to speak
with a therapist over the phone, confiding that a friend of hers had a
problem with her husband and wondered whether they had any suggestions
on how it might best be handled.
Whomever she spoke with gave her a list of several self-help books
that addressed the issue she’d described. She bought every single title
she could find and gave the books to Dennis, telling him he’d better
read them and memorize every single page.
According to my source, he attempted to do just that.
Rader claimed that his biggest fear was that Paula would leave
him, the source insisted. This made perfect sense. Without Paula, he
would have no one running interference for him, no one to cover for
him—even though Paula had no earthly idea that this was what she
was doing. Rader knew that without Paula, it might be just a matter
of time before people began wondering about him, giving him second
looks and possibly starting to point fingers at him. Paula’s departure
from his life, he guessed, could very well be the beginning of the end.
Rader told my source that for the next two years he tried to clean
up his act—at least when it came to practicing his unique form of
autoeroticism. He did his best to go cold turkey from the rope. I have
no idea what Rader did to quench his terrible, destructive hunger for
the next two years. All I know is that one afternoon in 1980, it happened
again. Paula walked into the bedroom and caught him with
another rope around his neck.
This time, Rader told my source, his wife was no longer concerned
that something might be wrong inside her husband’s head. Instead,
she was angry. Just plain ticked off. Mad as a goddamned hornet. This
was obviously a reaction Rader hadn’t foreseen. So he took what was
a very calculated gamble. He informed Paula that he’d be willing to