"He abused that entire neighborhood."
That is not the whole situation. Many he did abuse, but many others thought well of him, including my sister and a friend of mine.
In the 70s when BTK was a household word here in Wichita, he was thought to probably be "the person that you would lease suspect". And yet, this was a brutal killer. I do not know him or his victims. I do remember that the evidence that was reported back then was like hot and cold. Almost like 2 completely different human beings. He really liked to taunt police and the media, but did a very good job of muddying the field of possible suspects by knowing what and when to clean up after himself. I think the only thing that will really get him will be DNA because he could not know what the future would bring in terms of technology. Maybe computer data bases also.
Sounds as if Rader is a psychopath, and people like that can compartmentalize their lives surprisingly well. They manage a normal work existence and confine their nuttiness to off hours or whatever is the focus when they're 'correcting' things, so those who know them superficially think they're normal.
Not that my former next door neighbor was a psychopath, certainly not...but he was a control freak. He and his wife had five children, boys and girls -- teenagers. One summer his wife mentioned they were driving to Canada, where they intended to go camping for a few weeks. This trip was to take five hours. I laughed and said how would they manage to stay sane, five hours in a station wagon with five teenagers? I stopped laughing when she said that was no problem. The kids would sit silently for the entire trip since they were all terrified of their father. She was dead serious, but didn't divorce him until all the kids were grown and out of college and she'd retired from teaching with a pension large enough to make it on her own.