Questions about the Image of God

I had the unfortunate experience today of tuning in to CNN just in time to watch Dennis Rader, the BTK killer, do his acceptance speech before receiving his life sentence. I say "acceptance speech," because, despite the admission that he did terrible things, it sounded like a thank you address to the Academy.

Monsters live among us. They look like people, they have the DNA of people, but they are loathsome predators who, if there is any justice in the world, at minimum end up spending the rest of their lives locked in a cage.

The Bible says that human beings are created in the image of God. I'd like to explore that. What kind of imaging are we talking about? How does this relate us to God? Why does God think of us as a consequence? and so on.

But right now I'm hung up on the BTK killer. The issue I face is this: If the world can produce a Dennis Rader who tortured and killed a man, seven women and two children for personal gratification, then either he's outside the loop of "created in the image of God," or we have to explain how the wheels came off the image in his case. Is a monster still human? Is he like us only somehow worse?

Is being created in the image of God like buying one of those cheap cars that sometimes run OK but tend to self-destruct? If so, does God know what he's doing?