The Air Force gave him his first taste of what it felt like to have subordinates. It also reminded him of one of the things he loved most about Boy Scouts—he got to wear a uniform. After a few years, when he became a sergeant, Rader was allowed to supervise men, and the sensation of being able to control people like that proved both intoxicating and addicting.
Rader wrote in his journal that these were good years for him, the one period in his life when he considered himself to be a bona fide “lone wolf.” He would often think back to his Air Force days with a fondness and sick jealousy. In his mind, the lone wolf stood at the top of the food chain. He took what he wanted, answered to no one, lived only for himself, roamed indiscriminately, and killed whenever the urge hit him. Then he moved on. Nothing and nobody could ever stop a lone wolf.
Rader took his newly acquired skills as an extrovert and picked up where he’d left off in Salina. He drank a lot of beer, even letting down his guard on a few occasions and allowing himself to get drunk. Whenever he could, he enjoyed hanging out at the bars near whatever base he was stationed at. He did this because bars were a gathering spot for prostitutes. Rader had quickly become a big fan of prostitutes, especially Asian ones. His journals hint that this was how he lost his virginity. Sex with prostitutes, however, was probably something of a disappointment for him because, like all psychopaths, he would have abhorred a willing or compliant woman. For him, it was the hunt and the thrill of controlling a woman, forcing her to perform some sexual act against her will, that would have turned him on.
He claimed to have fallen in love with one of the prostitutes. In one of his diary entries, he listed her name as Tina. Reading between the lines, I got the sense that Tina gave him the equivalent of a graduate school education in sex. For a while there, he convinced himself that he wanted to marry her. But the relationship eventually went south, so he found another bar girl and picked up where he’d left off.
More than anything, he yearned to experience the feeling of binding somebody up, then having sex with her. He felt as though he’d been dreaming about it for most of his life. Sometimes in the middle of sex with some prostitute, he’d make his move and quickly attempt to tie the women up. But the prostitutes he frequented were far too seasoned for that sort of kinky nonsense. Whenever he attempted such a stunt, they sent him packing, which wasn’t any big deal because he had access to more prostitutes than he knew what to do with.
He had other hobbies, too. While in Japan, he picked up a macho-looking big-barreled .22-caliber semiautomatic Woodsman Colt. The pistol, he wrote, had the craziest hair trigger he’d ever felt on a gun. The damn thing spooked him. He used to joke that all he had to do was look at it wrong and it would go off. When he bought it, he told himself he wanted it as a target shooter. But that other part of him knew it would make a helluva weapon if the shit ever started hitting the fan. On those days when he had nothing better to do, he used it to blast cans, and he was a decent enough shot. After his arrest, he told Landwehr that at twenty-five yards, he rarely missed.
Rader also bought a camera at a base store and spent some of his off hours snapping photos of the prostitutes he’d bedded, then developing the pictures in a base darkroom. Sometimes he’d draw a noose around the woman’s neck, a gag over her mouth, and ropes across her wrists and ankles. He could look at those photographs and masturbate for hours. But, he later claimed, his favorite activity involved clipping pictures of women out of newspapers and magazines, then sketching all manner of bindings around their bodies. He loved the way it felt to pick his victims at random from the pages. No one was safe. And everyone was so unsuspecting, so oblivious to what lay waiting for them. He took whomever he wanted, clipped them neatly from their paper home, and glued them to index cards.
He called his little cards “slick ads.” He did that for two reasons—they were often printed on glossy paper stock, and most of his victims were in the midst of modeling something when he snatched them. He would hold them in his hands, whispering to them all the things he wanted to do to them . . . that was pure bliss. Some guys have baseball cards, he’d laugh to himself, but I have these—my fantasy cards. He quickly got so addicted to his paper prisoners that he continually felt the need to add to his stable. After a while, they always lost their zing. He tried using the pictures he’d clip from the local newspapers he had access to, but something about those women never quite worked for him.
One night, he grew so desperate for a fix of what he considered to be American-looking models that he claimed to have smashed a window on the side of the base library, crawled inside, and stolen a stack of magazines. He quickly stashed them away deep in his locker. Whenever he felt the need to go trolling for victims, he’d retrieve one of his pilfered magazines, grab a pair of scissors, and go to work. The break-in marked something of a dark milestone for Rader. His decision to steal the magazines during a high-risk, high-stakes late-night burglary—instead of simply sneaking them out when the library was open—showed that he was beginning to have a tough time controlling his impulses.
Some nights, however, not even his slick ads could help Rader scratch his itch. So he’d wander out in the woods near his base, wrap himself up in rope, lock his wrists together with the pair of handcuffs he’d purchased during his travels, then pretend to be one of his imagined victims. The handcuffs were the latest addition to his arsenal. For the first few months he had them, they helped ease some of his sexual frustrations. Yet, as satisfying as they could be, his self-bondage eventually failed to satisfy his urges. Which was why he finally decided it was time to step up his game to the next level.
One night, he waited until nightfall, then jumped the fence surrounding the Tachikawa Air Base, located about forty miles northeast of Tokyo. I read in his journal how he spent the next half hour hailing down taxis and hopping buses, trying to get as far away from the base as possible, working his way deeper and deeper into the maze of tiny, crowded streets. He considered this to be a little game. He was going on a pretend hunt.
He stuck out like a bandaged thumb, out there in those neighborhoods. He knew that, but he didn’t care. That thing inside him was getting stronger now—hungrier, too. I’d learned from other killers that their fantasies were like watching a movie over and over again. Pretty soon, no matter how exciting it once was, the story line grows boring, and the killer has to try to find something new. Rader’s having access to the prostitutes was similar. After a while, his sex sessions did little to satisfy his real appetite, the one that demanded torture and pain. This new little game of his was the only way he knew how to feed it.
In the pockets of his coat, he carried rope, gags, a knife, and his Woodsman Colt. He wanted to find just the perfect woman, then tail her through the darkness wherever she went. He told himself that he’d walk through the darkness until he spotted that special someone who looked just right, then who knows what might happen. He’d walk behind his target, licking his lips, whispering to himself all the things he yearned to do to her. Sometimes the words and images that slithered out from his head surprised even him. He was so close, he told himself. But he was in control. He hadn’t crossed over the line. Not yet. He called the shots. Not the monster inside him. It was all pretend. Nobody ever got hurt. He never once so much as touched any of the women he followed through the night. So it was all okay. Kind of like a hobby.
Where would it all lead? Sometimes that thought drifted through his mind as he walked back through the night to the safety of the base. As I read in his journal, he always reckoned he’d put it all behind him when he finally returned stateside. After all, what sort of a future was there in this sort of thing? Not much. He told himself that when he got back to Wichita, he’d get a job, find a wife, start a family, and settle down. He’d renew his faith in God. He’d purge all this from his system.
He told himself he could do it. And deep down he almost believed it. That was the way most of the serial killers I’d interviewed were. At times, they possessed the ability to f
ool everybody—even themselves.
12
The mouse pad on my computer had grown alarmingly hot, so I shut the machine down for a few moments to let it cool off. If only I could do the same thing for my brain.
I stared into the emptiness of my hotel room. The quiet at this hour of night was deafening. Thoughts were swimming around inside me like piranhas. After a few moments one of them surfaced, and it occurred to me that Dennis Rader and I had something in common. He too was a profiler. The difference was that he profiled in order to feed his appetite as a sexual predator.
He reminded me of a lion out on the Serengeti, scanning the plains for prey—weak, lame, or old. Why work up a sweat by going after some young, swift antelope when he could find others much more vulnerable? Yet the comparison only went so far, because lions hunt for survival. They kill to feed themselves and their cubs. Men like Rader kill as a form of recreation. They’re predators. They live for the hunt. Like the lion, they search for easy targets. But their biggest turn-on is the chance to play God, to have absolute control and dominance over another human being. It was enough to make me sick. That is, of course, if I didn’t find it so goddamned interesting.
The clock was ticking for Dennis Rader.
Even if I hadn’t known the tragic, terrible outcome of his story, I had gained enough of an understanding about serial killers over the years to know that he had reached an age when there was no turning back. Even though he had yet to take a life, it was only a matter of time. Even though he told himself he was going to put his dark urges behind him, those urges were just too powerful. And growing stronger every day.
Reading this portion of Rader’s journal entries was like watching an impending train wreck.
The year was 1970. Shortly after Rader returned to Wichita following his four-year hitch in the Air Force, his mother announced, “You need to come to church with me. I met a nice girl there who I think you’d like.”
She was right. Her name was Paula Dietz, and she’d graduated from Wichita Heights High School in 1966, the same year Rader went into the service. Paula had grown up in a quiet little suburb of Wichita known as Park City. Physically, she was a wet dream come true for Rader—tall and blonde, with brown eyes. She was a looker, he told one of my sources, but in a proper and sweet way. The two began dating shortly after meeting, and by May 1971 they were married. Before long, they’d purchased a home in Park City that was practically next door to the house where Paula’s parents lived.
Rader wasn’t in love, of course. Serial killers lack that ability. But they can fake it with the proficiency of a veteran actor. And Rader knew even then that having a wife was the honorable, normal thing to do. Having a wife, he no doubt sensed, would provide the perfect cover, allowing him to remain hidden and inconspicuous.
By all accounts, Paula is a quiet, simple, hard-working woman. Her faith and her family are her passion. Even today, no one in the area will say a single disparaging word about her. In fact, people who know her basically refuse to say anything at all about her to strangers. Shielding her from the glare of inquisitive outsiders has become something of a community project.
Yet in this entire horribly depressing saga involving her husband, she has emerged as a truly fascinating character. One can’t help but wonder, How was it that she could not know? Of course, only Paula holds the answer to that question. What is known is that on the surface Dennis and Paula Rader were the picture of marital bliss. Friends have reported that Dennis could often be seen doting on his wife at church, opening and closing doors for her as she climbed in and out of the car, helping her on and off with her coat. During his interrogation, Rader admitted that he had “real good sex” with his wife, although he quickly confessed that their relationship would have been “more fun if it [the sex] was different.”
One thing seems clear: marriage helped focus Rader. In 1972, he landed a job as an assembler at the Coleman Company and began to immerse himself in the goings-on at Park City’s newly created Christ Lutheran Church, where Paula and her mother sang in the choir. By the summer of 1973, he was working on the assembly line at the Cessna Aircraft Company, which seemed perfect because Rader had reportedly begun toying with the idea of becoming a pilot. At this same time, he and Paula were trying to start a family, although they weren’t having much luck yet.
By November, the oil crisis was wreaking holy hell across the nation. Gasoline jumped from thirty cents a gallon to more than fifty cents. Every time he flipped on the TV, Rader had to listen to another news report about some plant laying off workers. It wouldn’t happen to him, though—that’s what he told himself. After all, he’d been so good. He’d tried so hard to stop thinking all those bad thoughts. Before long, though, he began hearing rumblings that the suits who sat around all day in their air-conditioned offices had panicked. Because of the huge jump in gas prices, they figured the small plane business was all washed up.
So one crisp autumn morning, Rader showed up at the Cessna plant and learned that he and about five hundred other workers had been sacked. He couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t fair. All because of some phony oil crisis cooked up by a bunch of guys living out in the desert. His head was spinning around. He felt as though someone had plunged a Buck knife into his heart. Sure, he’d been working on the line for only four months, but he loved the job. The money was good. He was even taking night classes at Wichita State University (WSU). He felt like a person with a future. Now it had been destroyed.
He climbed into his ’62 Chevy Impala and poured on the gas out of the parking lot. He told himself that somebody was going to pay for making him feel so small, so powerless. The monster began to squirm inside him. Rader might have deluded himself that it was dead, but it turned out that it had always been in there, lying low, hibernating, gathering strength for the day it would one day reappear.
Rader later told Landwehr that minutes after getting his pink slip he realized he was on the verge of doing something weird, something bad. Paula wasn’t home at that hour of the morning. She wouldn’t return from her bookkeeping job at the VA hospital until late that afternoon. So Rader decided just to drive the streets of Wichita, trying to pretend he didn’t know what was going to happen next.
When he finally spotted a house a few miles away from the Cessna plant that looked as though the owners were away, he stopped his car, strode up to the front door, and rang the doorbell. When no one answered, he walked into the backyard and broke inside. His heart was going crazy in his chest. Yet standing inside that stranger’s empty home not only calmed him but made him feel alive in a way he hadn’t for years. He didn’t stay long. When he finally left, he took only one thing with him—a hatchet. He walked straight back to his car, shoved it beneath the front seat, and drove home.
He felt good.
The next few weeks were bad ones. He couldn’t shut off his head. The yearning to hurt someone wouldn’t go away. He couldn’t shake it. For years he’d fantasized about this sort of thing. But this was different. The urge was so much more powerful now, and was growing more so with each passing day. And now that he didn’t have a job to occupy him, he had nothing to do all day but think.
He could control his urge if he wanted to—that was what he told himself. The thing was, he didn’t want to control it anymore. Why should he? He’d done that all his life. He’d kept his secret under wraps. He’d hidden it away. He’d played by everybody’s rules, and where had it had gotten him? Out of work, living off his wife’s salary, and collecting unemployment, with Christmas just around the corner.
Shortly before getting laid off, Rader decided to surprise Paula with a trip to Las Vegas. But after getting his pink slip, he didn’t want to go. The people at the airline, however, didn’t seem to care that he’d just lost his job, he later said. They weren’t going to give him his money back, so he had no choice but to use the tickets. He told himself he’d make the best of it, and before long he began to wonder what Sin City would look like from the window of his jet,
those millions of flickering incandescent bulbs and miles of neon tubes setting the night sky aglow.
Yet on the evening they flew into Las Vegas, all he saw was darkness. There must be some mistake, he thought. Had their flight been diverted to another city?
When he asked a stewardess about it, she just shrugged. It was all because of the oil shortage, she told him. A couple of days before, they’d decided to turn off all the lights in town because it had gotten too expensive to power them. Rader stared down at the blackened city in angry disbelief. He never wrote another word about the trip in his diary, so I can only imagine that his visit to Vegas was both uneventful and disappointing.
A few days later, he returned to their tiny house in Park City in a foul, anxious mood. Every morning, he’d drive Paula to work, then return home to thumb through the stash of detective magazines he kept hidden away on a top shelf of the guest bedroom closet. He loved to stare into those pages, reading the stories over and over again, pausing every so often, allowing the headlines to seep deep inside him: “He Was into Kinky Sex . . . and Kinkier Kills: Weird Case of the Hog-Tied Hookers.” “Rape-Strangler’s Two-Year Terror Reign.” “Dog-Leash Strangler Hung Victim from Doorknob!” “The Autopsy Showed That Besides Hog-Tying His Victim, the Pervert Used His “Torture Kit” on Krista!”
Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer Page 21