Bind, Torture, Kill

The Book in 1 Sentence

A story about the sacrifice of detectives and their families while hunting a serial killer who choose his victims at random.

Brief Review

This story is so much more than the history of serial killer and his victims. In fact, it is more about the police who investigated and the city the suffered under his terror. You do learn more than enough about his acts of evil, it focuses on those that put in the work to capture him. Even if it was ego that stopped him.

Why I Read this book

When I was young, my older brother threatened me one time saying that he was going to get BTK to come after me. Do I remember why? No. Do I think he was even remotely serious? No. We were both relatively young and how he even knew about BTK still doesn't make sense to me since I know our rough ages. Anyway, I read it to know more.

In-Depth Review

As with all books I didn't look at the jacket to see what the book was about, but I am honestly glad I didn't. I am getting tired of serial killer books since they are all just narcissistic asshats. As a side note, by grammar (which checks for profanity) and spellchecker apparently doesn't have an issue with asshats. Good to know that this is an acceptable word. I digress. This book made sure to follow more of the life of the detectives. This made a drastic change to my enjoyment of the book with its informative information.

It feels weird to talk about enjoying a book when it is talking about the terror of a serial killer. However, that was exactly it. I enjoyed the narrative format this book presented the story. Seeing how the citizens worked to understand what was going on. Also, to see where the detectives made mistakes that could have helped, but I honestly am not sure that it would have mattered due to BTK's targeting, patience, and glove wearing.

I think that is where I am going to focus on for this book, the detectives, and their work. There is a lot of conversation in the book about the public being aggressive in their anger, couch coaching, and just having the evidence when doing their review. Also, the police had to wait for technology to catch up to what they needed. For instance, DNA testing when BTK left samples in his early murders in the 1970s was basically non-existent. By the time he was arrested in 2004, the Wichita Police was able to test somewhere in the range of 800–2000 people during their 11-month task force. All of this is with the fact that they were pulling 16-20 hour days, for weeks at a time. Their families sacrificing their time with the detectives and missing major life events.

How my life / behavior / thoughts / ideas have changed as a result of reading the book.

We as a society talk about poor policing and their power hungry tendencies. However, it is stories like this that should be highlighted to show that they put in a lot of work to find the answers and a lot of work to put together a good case for the truth. I know that not all of them are good and even in this book it highlights the assumptions that some officers fall into during their investigations.

What will change for me? Patience. Hopefully. The truth will speak no matter what.

Rating

I can't tell you how happy I was to not hear about the pain and suffering of a serial killer and have that provide a "justification" as to why he did what he did. Was the answer of why he killed those people acceptable? I can't answer that as I am not one of his victims families, but I would argue that it isn't. What this book does so well is show the incredible work that police forces did to put together the arrest. This will be my last serial killer book and with Batman and Psychology coming out recently, I think that is what started it. I said in that book that it should be used as a source book for a class and I feel the same about this book. While it is less academic, it does show the insights into how police, politicians, and others in the defense world have to do and work within their realms and against the suspect. A different class, but an important book. This is a 9.

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