In 1974, Dennis Lynn Rader stalked and murdered a family of four in
Wichita, Kansas. Since adolescence, he had read about serial killers and
imagined becoming one. Soon after killing the family, he murdered a
young woman and then another, until he had ten victims. He named himself
"B.T.K." (bind, torture, kill) and wrote notes that terrorized the city.
He remained on the loose for thirty years. No one who knew him guessed
his dark secret. He nearly got away with his crimes, but in 2004, he
began to play risky games with the police. He made a mistake. When he
was arrested, Rader's family, friends, and coworkers were shocked to
discover that B.T.K. had been among them, going to work, raising his
children, and acting normal. This case stands out both for the brutal
treatment of victims and for the ordinary public face that Rader, a
church council president, had shown to the outside world. Through
jailhouse visits, telephone calls, and written correspondence, Katherine
Ramsland worked with Rader himself to analyze the layers of his psyche.
Using his drawings, letters, interviews, and Rader's unique codes, she
presents in meticulous detail the childhood roots and development of one
man's motivation to stalk, torture, and kill. She reveals aspects of the
dark motivations of this most famous of living serial killers that have
never before been revealed. In this book Katherine Ramsland presents an
intelligent, original, and rare glimpse into the making of a serial
killer and the potential darkness that lives next door.
