Johnny Dodd

If you're looking for a really comprehensive, descriptive, in-depth look at BTK, this is a pretty good book. The dissection of BTK's personal writings are nearly exhaustive and include information I've never found anywhere else, and the comparison of early profiling vs. the actual profile of Dennis Rader was fascinating to me.
However, Douglas just rubs me the wrong way as a writer and a law enforcement professional. I've also read his other book, "The Cases That Haunt Us," and also came away with a bad taste in my mouth just because of his tone. He comes across almost as narcissistic and self-important as the serial killers he writes about; he goes out of his way to mention his own accomplishments while subtly minimizing and/or criticizing the incredibly talented people he's worked with that have contributed just as much, if not more, to solving the cases he worked on. For a book about something as seriously grisly as the BTK Strangler, I found myself actually rolling my eyes and snorting out loud over the number of times Douglas wrote things like, and I'm paraphrashing, "I was a young officer on the force (and actually the youngest ever hired)", "I won't even consider my 'wannabes' at Quantico as experts until they've been under my watch for 5 years," and "I was introduced to BTK as an FBI consultant who'd been specially flown in to meet with him, and his eyes told me how important that made him feel." On numerous occasions he goes out of his way to pat his own back, while providing strangely critical vignettes of the very people who did the footwork in arresting Dennis Rader (such as Casarona and Landwehr, both of whom were absolutely active and instrumental in solving the BTK murders yet described as checked-out and relatively incompetent in Douglas's opinion.)
Overall, solid info about BTK and his perversions, and the paraphrased discussions with BTK were some of my favorite as I'd never read anything like it before (I'm just assuming they are accurate.) Skip over the sections where Douglas talks about himself and his history/training, they have nothing to do with BTK and only serve to establish his "credibility" and stroke his own ego, ironically much like the serial killers he profiles.… (mehr)

Very throughly researched, and written by one of the top profilers in the field. The author also discusses the heavy price he paid for delving so deeply into this career, and the toll it took on his body. I had to skip a few pages when the author included the killer's diary, which was full of details and his excitement over his deeds. Just couldn't read those parts and not have nightmares for the rest of my life.

The one thing I was really interested in was the killer's family, and how much did they know. They did know quite a bit, but apparently just never put it all together, which the author says was more of the law enforcement's failure in a way because of how tightly controlled the information was back then. If they had released certain information sooner, the family or friends might've picked up on the connections sooner. It's a crapshoot basically, but definitely a must read for those interested in what makes serial killers do this.… (mehr)