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On Sunday morning, January 17, 2004, Dennis Rader walked outside and picked up the Wichita Eagle, the local newspaper he read closely, especially on weekends. Sometimes, he cut articles or ads featuring girls or women out of the paper and kept them in one of his private collections. He had thousands of pictures of females stashed around the house and at work, which he looked at whenever he felt restless or in need of a sexual rush. As he opened the paper, the main headline stunned him: "BTK Case Unsolved, 30 Years Later." A reporter named Hurst Laviana had written a story about Wichita's greatest mystery, recapping the terror that had infiltrated the city in the 1970s, after the WPD had announced that a serial killer was in their midst. The article described the crimes, the victims, the maddeningly unsuccessful one-hundred-thousand-hour investigation, and the bizarre behavior of BTK himself, evoking the most perplexing issues all over again. How was it possible that a city renowned for its police work could not find this predator? Why hadn't the FBI and other national resources brought into the case been able to help? Would the WPD and Wichita's 340,000 citizens ever know the truth? The story suggested that by 2004 all these questions had likely become moot, because BTK was probably dead.

Rader read the article slowly and read parts of it again, stopping to nod or smile. The words brought on a flood of exciting and powerful memories of his heyday, back in his thirties and forties. He'd been unstoppable then, uncatchable, invincible. No one had had a clue who he was or where he lived or worked, and they still didn't. He'd done it all, never made a major mistake, and felt lucky to have held on to his freedom. Now that he was about to turn fifty-nine, he'd more or less put BTK into retirement, but this article was stirring something within. Over the next few years, he'd planned to take all of BTK's drawings, pictures, and writings, transfer them onto CDs, and place everything in a safe-deposit box for others to find after his funeral. On the CDs, he'd have laid it all out just like the credits at the beginning and end of a movie, listing the names of the people who'd played a part in the criminal drama, describing their roles, thanking some of them, and calling the whole thing BTK Productions. Wouldn't that be a kick -- not just to his wife and children and the people at Christ Lutheran, who thought they knew their husband and father and fellow worshipper, but to the entire city of Wichita and its incompetent police department! The bogeyman had been living right next to them all along, going to his job each day, coming home and watching BTK reports on the evening news with his wife, and praying at one of their churches. They'd only get the satisfaction of solving their grand mystery after he was gone -- and he'd get the satisfaction of never having spent a day in prison.

One section of Laviana's article struck him the hardest, the part about a local lawyer named Robert Beattie, who taught a criminal justice course at Friends University. For years Beattie had been researching the BTK murders and was putting together a book about the case. While the police generally felt that BTK was either in prison or had left Wichita or died, Beattie held out the hope that somebody might one day read his book and, as he'd told the Eagle, "come forward with some information -- a driver's license, a watch, some car keys....I'm sure we will be contacted by both crackpots and well-meaning people who have little to contribute. But I do not think we'll be contacted by BTK."

Beattie's words angered and stimulated Rader because for years he'd been trying to write his own book. The attorney had thrown down the gauntlet. How could some lawyer who'd never met him presume to know who BTK was or what he'd accomplished during the height of his criminal career? Or why he'd done all those things? How could anybody have any understanding of the case unless that person knew what had gone through BTK's head or the feelings that had raced through his body before and after a kill, and how he'd picked out his victims, and what had taken place in the rest of his life, when he wasn't stalking a woman? Who the hell did this Beattie think he was -- trying to answer such questions without knowing anything about the subject?

Rader laid aside the paper and calmed down, considering his options. Maybe BTK had gone away too soon. Maybe he could bring him out of retirement for just one more fling with the media and the Wichita Police Department. Not much else was going on in his life right now. His job as a Park City compliance officer, issuing tickets to people whose dogs ran loose or who violated other local ordinances, had become a mindless routine. His kids were grown and out of the house, and he and Paula had drifted into a place in middle age where nothing seemed capable of being new. Only his church work really called to him because he was fond of Pastor Clark and serious about being a good Christian. He'd read a lot of Scriptures and didn't wait till Sunday morning to pray to God. For three decades, Jesus Christ had been his personal savior, and he renewed that commitment every week in the sanctuary. He'd do anything for his minister and congregation.

He was bored, really, once he stopped to think about it -- doing little more than waiting to leave his job in a few more years and start drawing Social Security. He was isolated too, in that part of himself he'd never been able to share with others, yet still wanted to. Dennis Rader wasn't lonely, but BTK was.

"It might be fun to stir the hornet's nest," he muttered to himself, smiling again.

He'd always itched to do something creative, so why not bring back BTK and see what happened? It wasn't as if he'd ever really put all that to rest. He still had "hiding holes" around the house, where he tucked away pictures, drawings, and slick ads taken from fashion magazines. He had swimsuit ads, bra ads, pictures of brides, and images of celebrities, Halle Berry and Meg Ryan, all taped to three-by-five index cards. He had ads of young boys, young girls, and women of all ages, plus Barbie-doll knockoffs. One hiding hole was a box he kept right below his work uniforms in the bedroom. Another was a drawer with a secret bottom in a linen closet. A third was a green plastic tub filled with mementos. His wife had never looked in any of these places or suspected a thing, even though they'd lived in the same nine-hundred-foot-square house for the past thirty years. It wasn't her way to pry into his affairs, and if she ever tried to do that, he knew how to brush her off with a glib comment or two. Didn't take much to steer Paula in another direction. Outside in the driveway was his camper, where he kept more memorabilia. A few blocks away, in his office at City Hall, was the Mother Lode of information sitting right by his desk, a locked metal file cabinet holding computer floppy disks, newspaper clippings, maps, Polaroid pictures, puzzle books, and neatly marked file folders with transparent covers. No matter what he was doing, Rader was extremely well organized and stayed on top of the details.

He was also absolutely sure of one thing: nobody could tell his story but himself. He was a man no one knew -- no one on earth -- and it had been that way since early childhood, because he was certain that nobody could understand or accept who he really was, not even God. For years, he'd been trying to tell people who he was without revealing anything about himself -- just one of his contradictions. He'd wanted to remain unknown but craved media attention and getting credit for his crimes. He could be utterly normal and grotesquely abnormal. He'd seemed to want help with his compulsions but resisted the notion that anybody could help him. He'd toyed with the police and given them hints about his identity, but didn't want to get caught. For years he'd admired law enforcement but treated them with contempt. He wrote in a tiny handwriting so that his words were nearly indecipherable, using language not to reveal but to distort and cover up. He'd pull back the mask of anonymity just enough to entice before sliding it back over his life. He could be genuinely kind and unspeakably vicious. And he'd always been amazed at how easily the police and the public could be misled, by just a few misdirecting clues. People weren't nearly as smart as they thought they were.

He looked at some other headlines, needing to think about all this and weigh the risks and potential benefits before making a decision. Age had slowed him down and he wasn't as quick mentally as he used to be; he couldn't afford a single mistake. Almost two months passed before he took action.

Copyright © 2006 by Stephen Singular