Inside the Mind of BTK

Meeting BTK: An Exclusive Interview 327
off. The guard wrote up a report and disappeared. A few minutes later,
Rader heard the cellblock’s speaker system crackle to life.
“Whoever flipped off BTK,” the voice intoned, “needs to stop. He
finds it disrespectful . . . Again, whoever flipped off BTK, please stop
this disrespectful behavior at once.”
Rader smiled and shook his head. That ought to take care of that,
he told himself. A split second later, the cellblock exploded into a
cacophony of laughter, jeers, and whistles. Before Rader knew it, he
was laughing too.
It was a peculiar image, I thought. Because at first glance it almost
appeared that Rader was laughing at himself. But he wasn’t. This
would have been impossible for an egomaniac like Rader. He would
never have mentioned this incident to Casarona if he had understood
that those other inmates were laughing at him. Instead, he interpreted
the event as yet another example of how, for a brief instant, he’d
become the center of the universe, the guy everybody was thinking
and talking about.
He was BTK, he told himself. Even in prison, he was the guy giving
orders, and, narcissistic sociopath that he was, he expected special
treatment.
I poked around the backyard a bit longer, kicking at the dirt and
dead grass, checking out what remained of Rader’s vegetable gardens,
where he claimed to enjoy futzing about on summer evenings after
work. His two black plastic compost bins were nearly covered over by
vines and weeds. Of all the low-life psychopaths in whose lives I’d
immersed myself, Rader had his role down pat. No wonder it took
police so long to catch him. He could out-normal even the most normal
person. If they gave out awards for alter egos, he’d be a contender
for an Oscar.
I tried to imagine Rader back here, playing with his kids, pushing
his daughter, Kerri, on the now rusted swing set or sitting up on
the now splintered planked floor of the treehouse with Brian. No
matter how I attempted to picture a scene out of an idyllic Norman
Rockwell painting, the images of Rader interacting with his family
always lapsed into something hellish, terrifying, something resembling
a canvas by Hieronymus Bosch. The vision caused me to experience
yet another deep pang of pity for Rader’s wife and kids. What
could compel a man to play charades like that with the three people
who trusted him most?