Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 325
substitute for what he truly yearned to be doing: working as a cop.
Every morning, instead of heading to the right side of the building, to
the police station, Rader was forced to follow the little sidewalk that
stretched to the left, to his job as a dogcatcher. It was just one more
disappointment in a life filled with disappointments.
The drive to Rader’s house took only about three minutes. To get
there, I drove past the city’s tiny public library, located in a run-down
mini-mall, where he often did much of his research for his final barrage
of communiqués to police.
Rader’s neighborhood felt like a cemetery. At this hour, the sun
burned so hot overhead that nobody bothered watering their lawns.
Hours would pass before the hoses and sprinklers were turned on. I
parked, walked up Rader’s cracked, crumbling concrete driveway, and
noticed a sign in the plate-glass window of his neighbor’s house advertising
piano lessons. Could this be the same neighbor mentioned in
his journal? I wondered. The one he fantasized over as she clipped
evergreen boughs from her shrubs to make a holiday wreath?
There was nothing out of the ordinary about his place. It was
roughly the same size as all his neighbors’ homes and—besides having
an overgrown yard—resembled every other residence on the street.
People always seem surprised whenever I tell them how unremarkable
the home of a killer can be. Of course, it’s only human nature to want
anything associated with a monster to stand out, much as everyone
wanted Rader to resemble some sort of hideous ghoul with blood
dripping from his teeth, someone who could be easily plucked out of
a crowd.
The problem is, they look like us and to some degree can act like
us. The only time they don’t occurs during those horrifying few
moments when they morph into their true identity as a secret killer.
But precious few people ever get a glimpse of that side of the killer’s
personality. And those who do seldom live long enough to tell anyone
about it.
I made my way to Rader’s backyard and stood there in the middle
of the brown, dead grass, surveying the space that stretched off
behind Rader’s house. I’ve always felt that if you wanted to understand
someone, all you need do was spend some time in his backyard; it is
there, hidden by the façade-like front of his home, that a person dares
to act out all those things he keeps hidden away from the rest of the
world.