Inside the Mind of BTK

My Lifelong Hunt for BTK 87
A few minutes later, a squad car pulled up to the house, and two
patrolmen began asking the badly shaken Williams questions. She’d
been in poor health ever since the recent death of her husband, and
this near disaster seemed on the verge of pushing her over the edge.
One of the officers, who poked around the backyard with a flashlight,
spotted the reason why her phone was dead—the line had been cut.
Burglary investigators combed through the house, searching for fingerprints
and traces of semen, but nothing was found. A crime report
was taken, but it quickly disappeared into a file cabinet, and, because
there was no reason to do so, it was never shared with homicide detectives
in the police department’s burglary unit.
No mention of the incident appeared in the local newspaper.
Williams, however, never believed a random burglar was responsible
for the break-in. In her heart, she believed it to be the work of BTK.
In his heart, the individual responsible for the break-in couldn’t
stand it that news of his most recent surfacing didn’t make headlines.
On June 15, a manila envelope, printed in neat block letters, arrived
at Williams’s home and was opened by her daughter. It contained her
mother’s pilfered scarf and jewelry. Also stuffed inside the envelope
was a typed photocopied poem and a drawing of a bound, nude
woman lying face down on her bed; a broomstick had been inserted
into what appeared to be either her vagina or anus. Williams’s daughter
telephoned police without ever showing the letter to Anna.
Two days later, the Wichita Eagle ran the headline BTKISBACK;
INTENDED VICTIM GETS POEM on the front page. True to his word,
BTK had chosen his eighth victim. The only problem was, she never
bothered to show up. In his nineteen-line poem titled “Oh Anna, Why
Didn’t You Appear?” he aired his frustration at being denied the pleasure
of getting to snuff out another life.
T’was perfect plan of deviant pleasure so bold on that Spring nite
My inner felling hot with propension of the new awakening season
Warn, wet with inner fear and rapture, my pleasure of entanglement,
like new vines at night
Oh, Anna, Why Didn’t You Appear
Drop of fear fresh Spring rain would roll down from your nakedness
to scent to lofty fever that burns within,
In that small world of longing, fear, rapture, and desparation, the
game we play, fall on devil ears