Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer [Hardcover]

John Douglas (Author), Johnny Dodd (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0787984841 | ISBN-13: 978-0787984847 | Publication Date: September 28, 2007 | Edition: 1

A dramatic and compelling true-crime psychological thriller

This incredible story shows how John Douglas tracked and participated in the hunt for one of the most notorious serial killers in U.S. history. For 31 years a man who called himself BTK (Bind, Torture, Kill) terrorized the city of Wichita, Kansas, sexually assaulting and strangling a series of women, taunting the police with frequent communications, and bragging about his crimes to local newspapers and TV stations. After disappearing for nine years, he suddenly reappeared, complaining that no one was paying enough attention to him and claiming that he had committed other crimes for which he had not been given credit. When he was ultimately captured, BTK was shockingly revealed to be Dennis Rader, a 61-year-old married man with two children.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Legendary profiler and bestselling author Douglas (Mindhunter), who pioneered the FBI's systematic study of serial killers, offers his insights into one of this country's most chilling killers—Dennis Rader, a seemingly innocuous family man and municipal employee, whose brutal murders terrorized Wichita, Kans., for three decades. Identifying himself by the initials BTK (for Bind, Torture, Kill), Rader (who in 2005 pled guilty to 10 murders and is serving consecutive life sentences) taunted the press and law enforcement, striking at random in savage attacks that often decimated families, and then confounded his pursuers with long dormant periods. With the aid of People magazine writer Dodd, Douglas nicely weaves the story of his own development as a profiler with the history of BTK's crimes and his own role in the investigation, drawing on analyses he developed early on in the rampage; he noted, for instance, the razor sharp control the killer maintained after his crimes. While the stomach-turning story of BTK's crimes has been told by others, Douglas's unique professional experience and his exclusive personal access to Rader offers a different perspective, even as the answer to the question of how such a monster comes to be remains elusive. (Oct.)
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Review

"...It's an unforgettable portrait of a guy most of us are glad we never met." (Bloomberg.com, November 8, 2007)

Legendary profiler and bestselling author Douglas (Mindhunter), who pioneered the FBI's systematic study of serial killers, offers his insights into one of this country's most chilling killers—Dennis Rader, a seemingly innocuous family man and municipal employee, whose brutal murders terrorized Wichita, Kans., for three decades. Identifying himself by the initials BTK (for Bind, Torture, Kill), Rader (who in 2005 pled guilty to 10 murders and is serving consecutive life sentences) taunted the press and law enforcement, striking at random in savage attacks that often decimated families, and then confounded his pursuers with long dormant periods. With the aid of People magazine writer Dodd, Douglas nicely weaves the story of his own development as a profiler with the history of BTK's crimes and his own role in the investigation, drawing on analyses he developed early on in the rampage; he noted, for instance, “the razor sharp control” the killer maintained after his crimes. While the stomach-turning story of BTK's crimes has been told by others, Douglas's unique professional experience and his exclusive personal access to Rader offers a different perspective, even as the answer to the question of how such a monster comes to be remains elusive. (Oct.) (Publishers Weekly, August 20, 2007)

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Jossey-Bass; 1 edition (September 28, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0787984841
• ISBN-13: 978-0787984847
• Product Dimensions: 6.3 x 1.2 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (29 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #393,916 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

23 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hard to Imagine a More Competent Explanation of a Serial Killer, October 23, 2007

By 

Kent Ponder (Albuquerque., NM USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer (Hardcover)

This book is simply outstanding. Douglas is the epitome of his craft, the "profiler's profiler" of serial killers. Because of my academc background in linguistics and psychology, I appreciate Douglas's profound grasp of how serial killers create and maintain their interior dialogue, their mental drama that follows a patterned plot sequence of desired elements in each murder. Douglas has studied the typical psychological profile of this kind of psychotic personality, evolving from childhood fantasies that take the form of fire setting or animal torture and the like.
Dennis Rader, self-labeled as the BTK (bind, torture, kill) murderer, typifies this type of psychopath, needing the domination of helpless victims to gain emotional stability by "owning" the final minutes or hours of a victim's life, planning and controlling various levels of detail. Rader would engage in "down-time" fantasy skits (one-man) donning his past victims' clothing, wearing a mask to imitate the victim while looking in a mirror, sometimes while lying in a self-dug grave, photographing himself in that position, relishing the projected feeling of being the victim in order to relive the crime. In this, Rader was somewhat typical in that while maintaining a normal life to earn a living, his preferred mental life, the one that provided him his most exciting sense of identity, was reliving past murders and inserting his sense of identity into his idea of the mind of the victim, while also fantasizing about expanding this secret life by acquiring additional victims.
Thus this book presents, in effect, the serial killer as suffering from (while enjoying, in his own way) a multiple-personality disorder.
I know of no book that so competently deals with this kind of subject, and I know of no one better qualified for this task than John Douglas. I don't know how this book could have been better written (though Douglas himself didn't do most of the actual writing per se).

24 of 31 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Not the book I expected... disappointing., December 10, 2007

By 

scifiguy57 "scifiguy57" (Phoenix, AZ United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer (Hardcover)

I thought this was going to be a description of a psychological profiler patiently sifting through clues, gradually building up a picture of a killer which leads police to the right suspect. It turns out that Douglas's involvement with the case was quite peripheral. He provided some consulting to Wichita PD in the late 70's (he didn't even go to Wichita, they had to come to Quantico), then moved on to other cases and eventually retired. Only after BTK had been arrested, tried and sent to prison did Douglas decide he had to interview the killer.

The book has all the hallmarks of a quickie job, an attempt to make a buck by milking Douglas's tenuous connections with the case. It's ghost-written in a style that is frequently labored and smacks too much of "freshman creative writing 101", and I very much doubt Douglas talks or writes that way in real life. Also I would hope that he is a bit more professional and objective than he is sometimes portrayed as - we hear again and again how we wants to kill Dennis Rader, punch him through the CCTV connection used to interview him in prison, etc.

The real hero in the story is Ken Landwehr, leader of the task force that actually tracked down and arrested BTK. I'd like to have read the story from his perspective. Another person who gets less credit than she deserves is Kris Casarona, who wanted to write a book about BTK and was the first person after his arrest to win his trust and be granted exclusive access to his story. This was a minor speedbump in the way to Douglas exploiting the case for his own book. Douglas describes with pride how he used his psychological tricks of the trade on Casarona, and wore her down until she persuaded Rader to let Douglas interview him. I really despised Douglas here. Casarona was a young struggling single mother who really needed a break, and Douglas the established, successful author just elbowed her out of the way and never seemed to care whether she succeeded in writing her book.

On the plus side, the book is interesting in building up Rader's life and the details of his murders from the copious notes he left. But Douglas's opportunism and bad faith left a sour taste in my mouth.

12 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars RICK "SHAQ" GOLDSTEIN SAYS: "SERIAL KILLERS LIKE BTK AREN'T HUMAN!", October 17, 2007

By 

Rick Shaq Goldstein "*SHAQ*" (Danville, Ca, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 1000 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Inside the Mind of BTK: The True Story Behind the Thirty-Year Hunt for the Notorious Wichita Serial Killer (Hardcover)

I first became aware of John Douglas around 1995 when I read his best selling autobiography "Mindhunter". It was a fascinating book that detailed John's growth from a high school kid headed nowhere, to a personal road that led him from the Air Force, to the FBI, to becoming a co-participant in the FBI's first research program of serial killers. I became enthralled with the "common sense and logic" involved in the early days of profiling serial killers. I immediately became a John Douglas fan, and read every one of his subsequent major releases. After reading all his books I almost felt as if I had a degree in criminal psychology. I amazed myself on a number of occasions while watching the nightly news, when I applied the logic I had learned reading John's books to crimes that were reported on the news. My teenage son was astonished when weeks after I made "my profiles" to him of the "UNSUBS" that were reported on the news, they turned out to be highly accurate. My son then read Douglas's books and made his term report in his English class on John Douglas.

"Inside The Mind Of The BTK" shows that John Douglas has not lost his literary "fast-ball"! This book matches up with the best of his prior work. The beginning might be a little slow for readers like myself who already know his background, but I of course understand, that first-time Douglas readers need to be given a cursory report on John's resume, so that they can fully appreciate his legitimacy in making the claims that he does. I have read another BTK book that beat John's to publication, and while it was an excellent book, it talked more about the crimes than about the root cause. John deftly, and in intricate detail, peels back the skin of the onion, relating to how a monstrous, less than human creature, winds up becoming a serial killer. The author makes it very clear, that the goal of his work is not just to assist law enforcement in capturing active serial killers, but to figure out what "formula(s) create these abominations on earth, so society can be armed with the information needed to be able to see warning signs and stop them before they strike!

The fact that this monster (BTK) killed ten innocent people is one thing, but the fact that he stretched it out over thirty years, added a new wrinkle that racked John's brain: Serial killers can't control themselves and go without killing for such long periods of time. How, and why did BTK? NOTE: (The only other known serial killer who "may" have restrained himself is the Zodiac Killer. But no one knows if he simply died). This book will keep your interest all the way to the last page. It doesn't hide a single grisly detail, but it's comforting to know that men like Douglas are working full-time to try to understand the "un-understandable".

Probably the best printable quote in or out of this book regarding a serial killer like BTK is: "A LONG TIME AGO, I HEARD SOMEONE DESCRIBE A NAZI WAR CRIMINAL IN A WAY THAT I THINK WORKS FOR BTK," HE SAID. "THEY REFERRED TO HIM AS AN "UNFINISHED SOUL." "I CAN'T THINK OF A BETTER TERM - UNFINISHED SOUL."