Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 49
shot twice in the head, he was eager shortly after emerging from
surgery to tell detectives everything he could remember. The men
pulled up chairs beside his bed and asked him questions.
Kevin had driven into Wichita from his parent’s house in nearby
Valley Center the previous night and crashed at the rental house where
his two sisters—Kathy and Karen—lived. Earlier that morning, Kevin
and Kathy had gone to a local bank to see about getting a loan to help
nineteen-year-old Kevin fund an invention he wanted to turn into a
business. Karen was off working the first shift at Coleman. It didn’t
take long for the loan officer to nix his request, so they returned to
Kathy’s house and had just walked through the front door when—as
Kevin recalled—a dark-haired man with a slight pot belly, standing
about five feet, ten inches tall, wearing a stocking cap, gloves, a white
T-shirt, and a green parka, stood waiting for them in the living room.
He was holding a pistol.
“Stop,” the man told them. “Hold it right there.”
The intruder announced that he was on the lam from police in
California and trying to get to New York. “I need your car keys and a
hundred dollars,” he said.
Kathy told him to take a hike. The man forced the two into a back
bedroom at gunpoint. In the middle of the room, he’d positioned a
chair. On a nearby bed he’d laid out various ligatures and bindings
made out of rope and nylons he’d apparently found in the house.
Kevin was ordered to tie his sister to a chair. Then the intruder
instructed Kevin to lie on the floor, and he bound Kevin’s arms and
legs with pair of jeans and stockings. He placed a pillow beneath Kevin’s
head, then told Kathy to walk to an adjoining bedroom, which she was
somehow able to do, despite being tied to a chair. The stranger darted
out of the room and disappeared into another part of the house.
Kevin couldn’t quite figure out what this guy, who was both forceful
and almost gentle, really wanted with the two of them. Before long,
he could hear him opening drawers and slamming doors.
After a few minutes, the man appeared back in the bedroom,
walked directly over to Kevin, and, without a moment’s hesitation,
kneeled beside him and wrapped what was either a pair of nylons or
a rope around his neck, then pulled it tight. The force yanked Kevin
up off the floor. When Kevin suddenly realized what the intruder
intended to do to him, he began squirming and twisting his hands and
arms back and forth. Within seconds, the wiry youth managed to