Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer

by Douglas, John

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Epigraph

  Preface to the Paperback Edition

  Acknowledgements

  Introduction

  ACT ONE - My Lifelong Hunt for BTK

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  ACT TWO - The Capture and Arrest of BTK

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  ACT THREE - Meeting BTK: AN Exclusive Interview

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  About the Authors

  Photo Insert

  Index

  Copyright © 2007, 2008 by Mindhunter Investigative Support, Inc. All rights reserved.

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  eISBN : 978-0-470-43567-0

  In memory of my mother, Dolores A. Douglas,

  February 9, 1919-March 4, 2006.

  Mother and my biggest fan—with love.

  —John Douglas

  To my father, a man of few words, but many books.

  Long may you read.

  —Johnny Dodd

  Preface to the Paperback Edition

  Criminal profiling has become a very popular and widely portrayed aspect of modern criminology in American society, particularly since it has been dramatized in movies like Silence of the Lambs and Mind-hunters; on such TV shows as X-Files, Profiler, Waking the Dead, and Criminal Minds; and books like Patricia Cornwell’s Kay Scarpetta series, featuring FBI agent Benson Wesley. I was an FBI agent back when profiling was still in its infancy, and I’ve seen it grow to become a very effective investigative tool. But at the same time, I’m well aware that for some critics, criminal profiling has become controversial; it has been widely misunderstood and even attacked in the media.

  Recently, for example, Malcom Gladwell wrote an article in the New Yorker (Nov. 11, 2007) that questioned the legitimacy and success of criminal profiling, comparing it to astrology. Aside from including many mistakes, misrepresentations, and inaccuracies about the history of criminal profiling and its utility to the FBI, Gladwell and his fellow critics basically misunderstand the theory and practice of what I and other professionals having been doing for many years.

  Most of what you read in crime novels or see in movies and on TV is pretty entertaining, exciting, and dramatic, but it has little to do with professional criminal profiling. What I’ve been doing for more than thirty years is not so quick and easy to learn. Nor is it a magic bullet for achieving immediate solutions to all sorts of murders and other heinous deeds. It also has little to do with instant psychological analyses or mystic visions, trances, and talking corpses.

  I’m extremely proud of my work. As an FBI agent, I hunted for some of the most vicious predators in American history, including the Green River Killer, San Francisco’s Trailside Killer, and the Atlanta child murderer. When I started, profiling was an exciting, emerging science—with a lot of skeptics and much work yet to be done. I learned as I went, conducting face-to-face interviews with Charles Manson, David Berkowitz, Richard Speck, and many other violent serial criminals whose single positive contribution to society was the window they gave me and my colleagues into the criminal mind. By talking with them and observing them, we learned how they thought, how they selected their victims, and how their violent acts escalated over time. We learned how to predict their behavior. And most important, we learned how these killers revealed themselves through their crimes.

  That’s the basis of profiling. You study the evidence—gathered from crime scenes and witness interviews, forensics and victimology. Then, from literally thousands of pieces of information, you find the behavioral indicators from which you put together a picture of the perpetrator.

  Profiling went from theory to science during my years at the FBI training and investigative center at Quantico, Virginia, and my unit turned it into a tried-and-true tool, an essential part of complex investigations. That’s something I’ll always take pride in. And although I retired from the Bureau more than ten years ago, my work as a profiler hasn’t ended. Much of my time these days is spent doing pro bono work for victims of violent crime and their families, advising parole boards, and speaking to law enforcement groups about the value of criminal profiling in their work.

  I’m hoping that writers like Malcolm Gladwell can forget about the mythology they see in the movies and on TV and take a hard look at the facts. I’m no Dick Tracy. Nor am I an entertainer shooting in the dark without expertise or evidence.

  Like medical doctors, profilers require an inordinate amount of experience laced with instinct and intuition. Mr. Gladwell has written that “instinct is the gift of experience. The first question you have to ask yourself is, ‘on what basis am I making a judgment?’” So we agree on something. The more experience you have under your belt, the better your instincts and track record as a profiler will b
e.

  So-called criminal profilers do much more than draw up vague pictures of an unidentified perpetrator. In fact, the FBI has no official position designated as “profiler.” More times than not, the profiler will offer a range of suggested investigative methods, including proactive techniques, information for probable cause in search warrants, interview and interrogation strategies to be used when the suspect is apprehended, and prosecutorial strategies. These profilers are also relied on often to provide expert testimony when a case goes to trial.

  In the book you are about to read, for example, I detail how the Wichita police came to my unit at the FBI in 1979, seeking assistance in their investigation of a serial killer who had terrorized their city. What we did do was make a variety of suggestions, one of which—the “super-cop” technique—turned out to be a significant tool in getting BTK to drop his guard for the first time in three decades. This misstep on BTK’s part eventually led to his arrest. The FBI felt so strongly against my divulging this successful super-cop technique in this book that it first sought to prevent its publication.

  If the critics of profiling had themselves ever been involved in an actual criminal investigation, they would know that it’s a useful tool among many other scientific, investigative, and forensic tools used in modern detective work. Nevertheless, there’s no absolute formula where A plus B automatically winds up with the C of certain identification, proof, and conviction.

  As you read this book, you’ll come to understand that criminal profiling is a subtle yet powerful investigative art. I can’t think of a better way to tell the story of criminal profiling than through the thirty-year investigation and hunt for BTK. It’s an odyssey that reveals a great deal about the criminal mind and the latest investigative techniques used in finding out who he really was, how his mind worked, and how ultimately to lock him up forever.

  JOHN DOUGLAS AUGUST 2008

  Acknowledgments

  I am indebted to the heroic people who shared their insights, professional experiences, and, in many cases, their lives with me—particularly the men and women of the Wichita Police Department and the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, who worked so long and so hard and so well to see this case through and see justice done. They have the undying gratitude of us all. Thank you.

  This book was a team effort, and it would not have been possible without the support of our literary agent, Liza Dawson; our intrepid editor, Alan Rinzler; my entertainment attorney and good friend, Steve Mark; and of course Johnny Dodd, who became an extension of my life and personality in writing this book. Thank you all.

  Finally, I would like to pay tribute to my mother, Dolores Douglas, who died in an accident while I was writing this book. She was my biggest fan and supporter, and I miss her dearly.

  —JOHN DOUGLAS

  An extra special thanks to Liza Dawson, the best agent an ink-stained wretch could ask for. To John Douglas for his patience and trust in allowing me to tell his story. To Alan Rinzler and his editorial cat o’ nine tails (the scars have almost healed). To Kris “It’s So Over” Casarona for literally everything. To Ken Landwehr, Larry Welch, and Bernie Drowatzky for all their help. And to all those who knew Dennis Rader (or thought they did) for agreeing to share their stories with me.

  A shout-out of gratitude to Evan and the staff at Peet’s at 14th and Montana. To Bill “Deer Hunter” Lischak and Diamond Joe Bruggeman for always being there with an open ear and a shoulder. To Ron Arias for his words, wisdom, and advice. To Lizz Leonard for once again being so absolutely Lizz Leonardesque. To Diana for picking up the domestic slack and then some. To Mother Antonia for her prayers of protection, her insight, and her lorca. To my various friends who spent fourteen months listening to my rants and nightmares. To Jamie Lee for her wordsmithing. To Champ Clarke, Oliver Jones, and Lorenzo Benet for allowing me to constantly pick their gray matter. To T-lu for her motherly advice and proofreading prowess. To Julie for helping me shape every single word. And to Christian and Ella, my two little rays of sunshine: remember always to do your best.

  —JOHNNY DODD

  Introduction

  It began in the autumn of 1974 while I was working as a “street agent” in the FBI’s Milwaukee field office. I was twenty-eight years old and had spent the past three years working with the bureau. One afternoon while I was chewing the fat with a couple of homicide detectives from the Milwaukee Police Department, somebody mentioned a serial killer in Wichita, Kansas, who called himself “the BTK Strangler.”

  BTK. Just those initials. What did they stand for? I didn’t know then, but the moment I heard them I felt a little jolt of electricity shoot through me. I yearned to know everything I could about this murderer. Little did I realize how far my search for answers would take me and how entwined my life would become with this violent, elusive killer.

  It was during this period of my life that I started on my quest to understand what motivated someone who seemed to enjoy perpetrating acts of violence upon complete strangers. This was what made serial killers so difficult to identify—they rarely killed anyone whom they knew intimately, and their crimes often appeared to have no motive.

  As a young FBI agent, I made it my personal mission to find out what drove these vicious, heartless killers. I wanted to know how they viewed the world, how they perpetrated their crimes, how they selected their victims. If I could get the answers to those questions, I told myself, I’d one day be able to help police around the nation identify serial killers long before they got the chance to leave a long, bloody trail in their wake.

  So after work that evening back in 1974, I went digging through the Milwaukee Public Library and located some old newspapers from Wichita. I read every word that had been written about the quadruple homicide this killer had committed in January 1974 and learned that BTK stood for “bind, torture, and kill.” His self-chosen nickname perfectly summed up his modus operandi. He somehow managed to waltz his way into his victims’ homes, tie them up, and torture them in the same way a schoolboy might torment an insect. Then, when it suited him, he snuffed out their lives. He was an equal opportunity killer who had claimed the lives of a man, a woman, and children.

  That was a hectic, busy time in my career. When I wasn’t working bank robberies and fugitive and kidnapping cases, I could be found at the University of Wisconsin, where I’d enrolled in graduate school, studying educational psychology, pushing myself to understand what made someone like BTK perpetrate such heinous, brutal acts.

  Some nights I’d lie awake asking myself, “Who the hell is this BTK? What makes a guy like this do what he does? What makes him tick?”

  At the time, the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit (BSU) was operated out of the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia. It served primarily as an academic unit. The word profiling had yet to find its way into the bureau’s investigative vocabulary. But it would one day soon—I just knew it. And I promised myself that after I earned my graduate degrees, I would transfer into the BSU and spend my days profiling the minds of violent serial offenders full-time.

  By June 1977, I did just that. I was selected and transferred to the FBI Academy as an instructor for the BSU and quickly began teaching courses in hostage negotiation and criminal psychology. Most of my hours were spent working as an instructor, but I occasionally thought about BTK, wondering if he’d ever been identified and arrested.

  One afternoon in March 1978, while researching another case, I again dug up what I could on BTK and was surprised to learn that since 1974, he had somehow still eluded police and now claimed responsibility for seven murders. By this time in 1978, he’d already sent two taunting letters to local newspapers—the first in October 1974, the second in February 1978—daring the police to try to catch him.

  By 1979, I was in the midst of my serial murder research program, conducting what would eventually become in-depth interviews with three dozen serial killers, including Charles Manson, Arthur Bremmer, Richard Speck, John Wayne Gacy, David Berkowitz (aka Son of Sam), and o
thers, each of whom had murdered three or more victims with some sort of cooling-off period between their crimes.

  In the autumn of 1979, the phone rang in my office, which at that point was located in the basement of the FBI Academy library. On the other end of the line was a homicide detective with the Wichita Police Department. “I heard about the work you’ve been doing out there,” he said. “Was wondering if you could help us on a case we’ve been working on.”

  “Tell me about it,” I said.

  “We got a serial killer out here,” he said. “Goes by the name of BTK. You heard of him?”

  “Only what I’ve read in the papers.”

  Over the next few minutes, he walked me through the BTK murders, detailing the twists and turns of the investigation and reiterating his claim that police would welcome any assistance the FBI’s BSU could lend.

  “If you can get out here,” I told him, “I can give you a day. Bring everything you’ve got. We can go through it, and I’ll put together an analysis for you.”