In February 2005, news of the capture of Dennis Rader made headlines and TV newscasts everywhere. What surprised me most was the fact that this guy was a serial killer with a three-decade-long history and 10 victims, and I’d never heard of him. Like a pro athlete, psychopathic murderers have to ply their trade in a major media market if they want the public to know who they are.
Rader – a lower-middle-class borderline loser, family man, church president and city code enforcement officer in Wichita, Kan. – turned out to be the self-named “BTK” strangler – the initials standing for “bind, torture, kill,” his primary means of communication with strangers. His story is explored in John Douglas and Johnny Dodd’s INSIDE THE MIND OF BTK: THE TRUE STORY BEHIND THE THIRTY-YEAR HUNT FOR THE NOTORIOUS WICHITA SERIAL KILLER.
From his first recorded killing of a family of four in 1974 – including two children, aged 9 and 11 – to his final murder of an attractive woman in her early 60s in 1991, BTK was the kind of monster you’d be generous to call “a piece of shit.”
I suspect that another reason Rader was able to stay off the radar so long was that he went into hibernation several times. He killed five people in 1974, then two more in 1977 before vanishing until 1985-86. Another five years passed before his final killing in 1991, and then … nothing.
Finally, in 2004, a brief piece in the Wichita newspaper recapped the case on the 30th anniversary of its beginning, along with mentioning that a local attorney was planning to write a book about BTK. This pissed Rader off because he thought that no one should write about the case unless they were personally associated with it. Rader began contacting the police and local news sources, and that led to his capture on Feb. 26, 2005.
BTK has been the subject of a few TV documentaries, the short ones that turn up over and over again on cable networks, but if you think you’ve learned all there is to know about Rader from watching them, think again. Douglas – the former FBI profiler who is now one of the most popular true-crime writers in America – reveals things about this guy’s psyche that will not only make your skin crawl, but drop to the floor and slither away.
While he was staying away from committing murders, Rader would have what he called “motel parties.” He’d check in, dress himself in drag – occasionally using women’s underwear he’d burgled or carried away from his victims as souvenirs – bind himself with ropes and handcuffs, and pose for timed snapshots. The book includes some photos to prove it. He would also indulge in a little autoerotic asphyxiation. At least once he even donned a female mask and buried himself up to the neck. This is hardcore disturbing stuff.
With unlimited access to Rader’s journals, photos, short stories and drawings, Douglas tries to answer the three most baffling questions: 1) why and how was BTK able to take so much time between killings, 2) how could his wife of 30 years and his two kids not have a clue what was going on, and 3) what caused him to rampage so drastically off the rails in the first place.
His answers to the first two are compelling, but his only guess as to the third is that, despite what Rader says – and the obvious facts seem to bear out about a quiet childhood and normal upbringing – his early years must have contained some traumatic event that no one will admit remembering. It’s pretty weak, but I can empathize with Douglas’ need to find some kind of answer.
The book is chilling, and as you learn more and more about what kind of monster BTK really was, you’ll feel a little perverse to be reading it in public. But the trouble with reading it while you’re alone is that it’ll scare the living crap out of you. –Doug Bentin
