And, so, finally the world saw the face of evil and heard the voice of evil.
And it was the voice and face of anyone who could live next door. To you. To me.
Someone who could be a scout or church leader. A plumber. A teacher. A car mechanic.
Because when 60-year-old Dennis Rader pleaded guilty in a courtroom in Kansas to 10 murders yesterday, at the judge’s prodding the former Scout leader and church president let it all hang out — his psyche, his desire for domination, his thrill at control, his pride in being a craftsman of death — and his merciless pursuit of goal orientation.
Yes, because when Rader talked in chilling, no-holds-barred detail about how he strangled, stabbed and hung men, women and childen one thing became clear. BTK was the ultimate perversion of the only-goal-achievement-matters mentality.
His goal was to feel powerful, exercise that ultimate thrill of control as he felt with his own fingers the lives of his terrified victims end. It didn’t matter if it was a doomed mother desperately pleading for her little son’s life. Only his goal (the thrill of the kill) mattered; it didn’t matter her the woman’s son would never experience junior high school, never go to a prom, never know the thrill of getting a driver’s license. The kid’s living meant part of his goal wouldn’t be reached.
Bind Torture and Kill’s single minded goal was his fantasy and his desire to feel all-powerful. His desire to target, stalk, surprise, terrorize, dominate and kill.
So if a little girl woke up after being strangled, that goal wasn’t met.
What could be more logical, then, of taking the little girl down to the basement, hanging her and then acting out an exotic sexual fantasy?
Remorse? BTK showed none, because it didn’t simply compute with his all-important goals.
And yesterday he seemingly pursued some more goals as he talked with absolutely no emotion about each killing — perhaps achieving another possible goal…to show the world how a mind that had domination and murder down to a fine art viewed the intricacies of terror and murder. And how it didn’t move him one bit.
Consquences? He pleaded guilty, depriving his critics and the families of his victims from being able to say: “He’s such a filthy failure of a human being that he didn’t even realize the consquences!” No, it seemed yesterday as if he fully knew there would be consquences, but they were less important than achieving his goals, no matter how many victims’ and families’ lives were destroyed in the process.
So as he talked yesterday, sounding like a plumber explaining the work he had to do on a routine job, he looked like anyone we can meet in person or watch on TV who is fixated only on achieving a goal, no matter what has to be done or who has to be hurt and how badly they have to be hurt.
He seemed like any number of people we meet or see.
And, in that sense, maybe he is.
VIDEO of his testimony is HERE
MORE READING ON THIS CASE:
The Wichita Eagle (TMV was a reporter on this paper from 1980-1982)
New York Times
Associated Press
Los Angeles Times
The Guardian
Ireland Online
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.