Customer Reviews

My Boss was the BTK Killer... I was the Next Victim

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

This book was one of the most poorly written and edited books I have ever read. It told me very little about Dennis Rader and a whole lot about Mary Capps. What I read of the book (about half)told me all about Mary's life, her kids and her growing up, with an occasional diatribe about Dennis Rader and how he ruined her life with a sentence that followed similar to "but more about that later." She supposedly attempts to tell her life story along a time line which runs with what BTK was reported to be doing at that particular time in her life, but goes off on too many rabbit trails. It certainly is not worth $14.00; in fact, in my opinion it isn't worth 50 cents.

Having never heard of the BTK killer, I opened this book without any knowledge or pre-existing interest in the case. In fact, I didn't even know until partway through what the initials BTK stand for ("bind, torture, kill"). But "My Boss Was the BTK Killer" draws you in from the beginning and holds you til the end, in a quite unexpected way.

Interspersed with Ms Capp's diary-like account of working with Dennis Rader, are transcripts of his confessions detailing the various murders. It's always repellent to hear a killer sound indifferent, or--more offensively--gloating about their atrocities with no apparent display of remorse, empathy or objectivity about what they've done. Of course, this is also what makes them fascinating. Like distillations of the predatorial instinct run amok, they are society's cancer gene--they get a signal from their brain instructing them to murder someone, and once they've completed the task, they think to themselves "I've done a good job today. Finally, I can sleep." In short, they are pure killing machines.

Mary Capp's first hand account of working with the murderer for six and a half years is told in such an informal, talky way that at first I thought it would fail to create a suitably spooky atmosphere. Accounts of pleasure-killing, when detailed in books, are usually mounted in a language that elevates the sordid details into the prose of gothic fiction. This makes them go down easier--we feel less depraved for enjoying it. Ms Capp's narrative voice, however, is chatty and real--like a journal entry, or a transcript of a telephone conversation between friends. At times, her habit of lapsing into extrannea can be disconcerting--her constant references to Diet Pepsi, musing about the plastic wrappers on her cigarette packs, naming the guys she went to every high school dance with etc., all seem tangential and off the point. Isn't there a killer lurking?

But as I read on, I realized that when evil people really ARE in your life, this is the way it is. All the banal things continue to happen around them, and their presence doesn't "enchant" the atmosphere. But then in private, when no one's watching, they morph from those everyday guises--a surly supervisor, in this case--into monsters that surpass our wildest nightmares. Only to return to their former, seemingly innocuous personas again the next day.

Hence the most daunting aspect of this book; How evil hides inside the banality of everyday life, interwoven with the fabric of it so that you might miss it at first glance. You might even miss it if you're working for it, living with it or married to it, drinking your Diet Pepsis and fiddling with the cellophane wrap on your cigarettes. You might even miss it until it kills you.

A warning. Evil hides in plain sight.

poorly written. many spelling mistakes, which is amazing.
generally just a rehash of the court case.
very little "new information" here.
dont waste your money.

I checked this book out from my local library. It is a good story, VERY POORLY edited, and not well written at all. I found misspellings and other editorial mistakes that made me glad I didn't pay to read it. Overall I am glad the lady got to tell her story, but she could have hired someone better than the guy she hired to tell it.

This lady is as messed up as Rader.

I lost track of how many times she was married - 2? 3? Engaged to one guy when Rader is arrested in 2005. Engaged to a different guy when the book comes out in 2007.

This book is barely a book. More like a collection of rants pulled from her anger journal.

I sensed the real purpose of the book was to support her claim of PTSD, and her lawsuit.

No wonder it's ranked 2,147,683 on Amazon Books.

A better BTK book is "Bind, Torture, Kill: The Inside Story of BTK, the Serial Killer Next Door" by Roy Wenzl, Tim Potter, Hurst Laviana and L. Kelly

Only Mary Capps could have written this book.

Part memoir, part thriller, this book combines the most unlikely of the two genres. Mary "Mary Nova" Capps worked under Dennis "BTK Killer" Rader, the notorious Kansas serial killer, as a compliance officer. Throughout her six and a half year tenure, she felt as if Rader had singled her out for death. One year, for Christmas, Rader gave her an ornament of a snowman wearing a hat and scarf. "I look back on certai...more Only Mary Capps could have written this book.

Part memoir, part thriller, this book combines the most unlikely of the two genres. Mary "Mary Nova" Capps worked under Dennis "BTK Killer" Rader, the notorious Kansas serial killer, as a compliance officer. Throughout her six and a half year tenure, she felt as if Rader had singled her out for death. One year, for Christmas, Rader gave her an ornament of a snowman wearing a hat and scarf. "I look back on certain incidents," Mary Capps writes, "and wonder how close Dennis [Rader] was to choking the crap out of me."

(Fortunately for her, the killer was arrested before he ever got the chance to choke the crap out of her.)

Mary Capps has bad dreams, and recounts several of them for posterity to demonstrate how her subconscious was warning her of the impending doom. Mary Capps has circumstantial evidence to show that Rader was poisoning her Diet Pepsi with "tranq" (the substance used by compliance officers to tranquilize aggressive dogs). Mary Capps would also come home to find her front porch light regularly unscrewed. And once, Rader stood in front of her office door in a menacing manner. All of this leads to her case that Mary Capps was hand-chosen by Rader as his eleventh victim. Indeed, she has her mother's assent on this point.

"No, I wasn't murdered," Mary Capps admits, "but I sure in hell am a surviving victim." In fact, he even gave her a negative work performance review prior to his arrest - a review the municipality of Park City allegedly refuses to expurge from its files.

But this book isn't entirely about Dennis Rader and his crimes against Mary Capps. Mary Capps also shares some of her own biography with readers: she grew up with "Happy Days" on television, and listened to Bruce Springsteen in 1978 (after growing weary of Paul McCartney's Wings). She went through several serious relationships, and other personal crises. And as a treat for the reader, she delves into some intimate personal moments between her and her three children: "Our joke between my boys and myself is that I tell them, 'Don't make me get a ladder so that I can slap you.' And then we bust up laughing. One, because of the joke; and two, because I probably only ever struck my three children once or twice in their lifetime, but I can yell! That's another joke between the boys. I won't hit them, but I can sure scare the hell out of them when I raise my voice, that's when they know I mean business."

And with this book, Mary Capps truly does "mean business."

Although tormented on a daily basis by her psychotic boss, Mary Capps also takes the time to share a little seen side of Dennis Rader: his perceived sense of humour. In one instance, when Mary Capps was ordered to condemn a home which was soiled with "three inches of cat poop on the stove, and on the floor in every room," Rader acknowledged her efforts with a bumper sticker that read: SO MANY CATS, SO FEW RECIPES.

One criticism I have read of this book is that Mary Capps delves into her own history as well as into the specifics of the case. While it is true that there is a lot of focus on the author, perhaps an answer can be found between the lines: "In short," Mary Capps writes, "Dennis Rader is all about Dennis Rader."

Why, then, should Mary Capps be all about Dennis Rader, and not herself to some extent? Too many people have called her crazy in her lifetime - and finally Mary Capps has the means to show them who the crazy one really is.