Unholy Messenger: The Life and Crimes of the BTK Serial Killer

This is an amazing detailed and revealing study of the psychopath next door - or maybe hiding in the closet - drawn from extensive interviews with Rader's pastor, congregation, detectives, and psychologists who worked the case, and from his detailed thirty-two-hour confession. The true bogeyman of homicidal home invasion while also working at ADT and (later) a canine officer and even Lutheran congregation chief officer is all too much and very American, somehow. This is the kind of monster that is truly fearsome: fitting in and hiding in plain sight.

For the closing material, I think some where-are-they-now stories would have been good, since the crimes are so recent. However, a lot was given over to discuss the possible physiological show more basis for criminal motivation without being able to connect it to BTW, like it was successfully to Arthur J. Shawcross in The Misbegotten Son. This is a needed line of inquiry and makes me think of Kurt Vonnegut ('Dwayne's bad chemicals made him take a loaded thirty-eight caliber revolver from under his pillow ...), but possibly more relevant and related here is the popular Christian mysticism that allowed him to self-justify within a matrix of demonic possession and acceptable levels of repentance. show less

Overall, pretty good. story takes a linear timeline which I like and there is a lot of information from the pastor to bolster the story so it isn't all gory and totally focused on the crimes themselves but more on Rader and why.

Good look into how the crimes not only the victims and their families but how it affected his own family and circle of friends.