Dennis “BTK” Rader: Looking like the psychopathic serial killer he is!
For a while yesterday, the cold-blooded but riveting confession of serial killer Dennis Rader competed with the regurgitation of idle speculation and overwrought comments about (missing in Aruba) Natalee Holloway for air time on TV.
But here at last was TV coverage worthy of morbid fascination: A supremely self-possessed man – with the delusional habit of referring to himself in the third person – stood in open court and confessed to terrorizing the state of Kansas for almost 20 years (1974-1991) the way snipers terrorized Washington D.C. for a just over 20 days in the fall of 2002.
Rader gave himself the eponym “BTK” to match his predilection to “bind, torture and kill” his victims. He informed the court that this ritual was dictated by his perverted sexual fantasies. Indeed, anyone remotely interested in sadistic fetishes must have found Rader’s allocution of his crimes positively orgasmic. Because, even though he spoke in the dispassionate manner of a clinical psychologist, Rader described each of his “10 kills” in such pornographic detail that even the Marquis de Sade might have gotten a rise. And, one has to suspect that this moment for Radar was the equivalent of having a cigarette after a really good romp.
But Rader seems possessed of another perverse – though not lethal – vice: intellectual arrogance. After all, he not only satisfied his sexual fantasies in BTK fashion but also sought prolonged gratification by taunting the police with letters and other paraphernalia from his exploits. These he offered as clues to give the intellectually inferior minds on the police force at least a fighting chance of catching him. Apparently, this was his sociopathetic version of hide and seek and Rader had no doubt that the genius of his criminal mind would always keep him a few steps ahead of the law.
That he was evidently a lot dumber than he realized is immaterial at this point. His factual account of his crimes, however, makes the giddy speculation about what may have happened to Natalee Holloway seem like schoolyard banter.
Dennis BTK Rader: Looking like the president of his Lutheran Church, Cub Scout Master and community Dog Catcher he was (like a good neighbor…).
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adam says
dennis rader rules