Robert Berdella: The Butcher of Kansas City
In 1988, a lot of folks in the Westport neighborhood of Kansas City, Missouri, knew Robert Berdella. He was a bit of an oddball, to be sure; he ran a flea market booth called Bob’s Bazaar Bizarre, where he sold unusual antiques with a distinctly dark or occult theme.
But in this part of town, that wasn’t so shocking. In fact, Berdella seemed to fit right in to the eclectic community — he had made it his home, something that couldn’t be said for his hometown of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.
As a kid, he had been a quiet loner who wore thick glasses and suffered from high blood pressure — making him a favorite target of bullies.
But his uneventful, if lonely, life took a turn when he was 16. That year he saw a movie that would change his life forever: The Collector, based on the novel of the same name by John Fowles (affiliate links) — the same novel that inspired serial killers Leonard Lake and Christopher Wilder.
But, much worse, on Christmas Day, his father died at the age of just 39. It devastated him. Much to his disapproval, his mother remarried, and Berdella could barely contain his hatred of his stepfather.
It was during this time that Berdella became interested in art — and the weirder, the better. His interest — and emerging talent — earned him a partial scholarship to the Kansas City Art Institute, so in 1967, he moved to Kansas City to begin his studies.
He also began a popular extracurricular activity: using and selling drugs. In 1968, he was busted for selling methamphetamine to an undercover agent. He pled guilty and received a fine and a five-year suspended sentence. But only a month later, he was caught with marijuana and LSD and spent five days in jail. The charges were later dropped for lack of evidence.
Regardless, the Art Institute wanted him out. The drug charges were one thing — it was the 60s; drug use on an art school campus was de rigueur. But Berdella’s “art” had become increasingly disturbing. At three different performances, he had killed animals — including a dog — onstage. In 1969, he was forced out of the Kansas City Art Institute.
Berdella chose to remain in Kansas City and bought a modest three-storey house on Charlotte Street. The eclectic Westport neighborhood suited his personality — and was welcoming to gays like himself. There, he worked as a cook, ran his curio shop out of the Westport Flea Market, and volunteered with the community. He befriended sex workers, drug addicts, and petty criminals — the people the rest of society had abandoned — and tried to help them overcome their problems. Many considered him a sort of foster father.
One of the young men he befriended was Jerry Howell. Jerry’s father, Paul, ran a booth next to Berdella’s. The younger Howell was a sex worker, and Berdella would occasionally help him when he had run-ins with the law. In July 1984, when Howell was 19, Berdella offered him a ride to a dance in nearby Mirriam. Jerry Howell was never seen again.
In April of the following year, 23-year-old Robert Sheldon, a former boarder of Berdella’s, showed up looking for a place to stay for a few days. Like Howell, that was the last time he would be seen alive.
Just a couple months later, in June 1985, a young man named Mark Wallace ducked into Berdella’s garage to escape a sudden thunderstorm. The two had met previously, when Wallace had done some yardwork for Berdella. Berdella invited the 20-year-old into his house — and Wallace was never seen again.
In late September, another of his old boarders, Jim Ferris, called him looking for a place to stay. Berdella obliged, and Ferris disappeared. However, unlike Sheldon and Wallace, Ferris’ disappearance, along with Howell’s, was reported to the police. Another of Berdella’s former boarders, a drug addict named Todd Stoops, told police both of the men had last been seen with Berdella.
When questioned, Berdella claimed he’d known both of them, but hadn’t seen them in a while. He said he dropped Jerry off at the dance and hadn’t seen him since. He was indignant at being questioned, and refused to answer any more questions without a lawyer. When police put him under surveillance, he threatened to file a harassment suit.
With no other evidence to go on, the cases went cold. Just to be safe, police told Stoops that he shouldn’t go to Berdella’s house anymore.
Then, in June of 1986, Stoops ran into Berdella at a local park. Berdella invited Stoops over to his house for lunch — and possibly, sex. Forgetting, or ignoring, the police’s warning, Stoops accepted the offer. He became one more young man who seemed to drop off the face of the earth.
In the spring of 1987, Berdella made a new friend. Larry Wayne Pearson had wandered into Berdella’s shop and expressed an interest in witchcraft and the occult. The two became friends, and Pearson moved in with Berdella. The young man worked off his rent by doing chores around the house and helping with the shop. However, Pearson couldn’t stay out of trouble, and was arrested for some petty offence in June. Berdella bailed him out, and Pearson was never heard from again.
Other than Howell and Ferris, none of the men were reported missing. But among the transients, sex workers, and the underground community in general, their absence was noticed. Rumors began swirling around Berdella — several sex workers who had gone to Berdella’s house told friends he was a “mean trick,” tying them up, injecting them with drugs, and inflicting pain through various cruel methods. And some of these sex workers claimed they had seen some of the missing men’s belongings in his house. But, probably afraid of being arrested themselves, none of them went to the police.
On April 2, 1988, a meter reader working on Charlotte Street saw something shocking: a naked man leaping out of a second-story window. The man, Chris Bryson, ran to a neighbor’s house. He was bruised and bloody and had a dog collar around his neck. His eyes were red and swollen, and he didn’t seem as though he could see well.
The neighbors called the Kansas City Police Department. When they arrived, Bryson told them a tale they could barely believe. He said he’d been hitchhiking near the Greyhound bus station when a man in a brown Toyota Tercel picked him up and offered to take him to a party. Later, he would admit he was engaging in sex work, and the man had picked him up for a “date.”
Bryson accepted and went with the man to his house at 4315 Charlotte St. He said the man — who called himself Bob — told him to go upstairs, away from his dogs. Bryson said he walked up the stairs in front of Bob, and just as he reached the landing, he was knocked out.
He said when he came to, he was chained up in the basement. Over the next four days, Bob would rape him repeatedly, beat him with a metal pole, electrocute him, and inject him with sedatives. When Bryson screamed, Bob injected drain cleaner into his throat. He also dabbed something caustic, like alcohol or ammonia, into Bryson’s eyes.
Bryson said that Bob had shown him Polaroid pictures of men who appeared to be dead, and told Bryson that if he didn’t cooperate, he would end up “in the trash” just like them.
After the first couple of days, Bryson had gained Bob’s trust, so Bob took the man upstairs and tied him to the bed there. The rape and torture continued, but in between, Bryson was allowed to watch TV and have his hands tied in front of him rather than above him.
On the fourth day, when Bryson thought his captor had left the house, he noticed a book of matches on the floor nearby. He used these to burn through his ropes. Not knowing for sure if Bob was home or not, he thought his only chance of escape was through the second-story window. He leapt through the glass, cutting himself and breaking a bone in his foot when he landed.
Seeing the man’s condition, the police had every reason to believe him. So while Bryson was taken to the nearby hospital for treatment, the police waited for Berdella to come home.
When he arrived to see police at his house, Berdella seemed surprised. He was arrested, but refused to let them search his home, so they obtained a search warrant.
When police tried to enter the Berdella home, they were greeted by two very angry Chows. Once animal services had gotten the dogs away safely, the police could enter.
Immediately, they knew that searching this house would be a challenge. It was stacked floor to ceiling with boxes, magazines, clothes, and strange, random items. There were dog feces everywhere.
In the second-floor bedroom, they found the evidence corroborating Bryson’s report: a bloodstained bed with burnt ropes on it. Next to the bed were a metal pole, a tray of hypodermic needles, and swabs and eyedroppers. On the floor nearby was an electrical transformer with clamps on the end of its wires.
But that was not all they found. Luminol tests showed massive amounts of blood, especially in the basement and bathtub. And just as Bryson had said, there was a cache of more than 350 Polaroids showing young men in various stages of torture and sexual assault — and some of them appeared to be dead.
Amongst all the clutter they also found two human skulls, an envelope full of human teeth, and what looked like human vertebrae. The skulls were analyzed by a forensic anthropologist. One was determined to be a high quality fake, much like the ones Berdella sold at his store. But the other was very real, and had belonged to a young man who had died about a year ago. Dental records would show the skull belonged to Robert Sheldon.
The vertebrae had been cut with a hacksaw and a knife, as though someone had decapitated the victim. Indeed, police found a hacksaw, mitre saw, and chain saw on the property. The chainsaw in particular had blood, tissue, and human hair on it.
Now with evidence that murders had taken place at Berdella’s home, police got a warrant to dig up the property. In the backyard, they found another human skull and a small bone fragment. The skull would later be identified as Larry Pearson’s.
Most damning of all, on top of a dresser, they found a steno book in Berdella’s writing. In it, he had made detailed logs of the torture and killing of each of his victims.
The Kansas City PD formed a task force to dig into Berdella’s past and try to identify the men shown in the photos. Many of them corresponded to men who had gone missing since 1984.
However, with only the remains of two of these men, it would be hard to charge him with any others. So prosecutors went ahead with the two they knew they could prove to a jury.
On July 22, 1988, Berdella was charged with the murder of Larry Wayne Pearson. The following month, at his indictment for the murder of Robert Sheldon, he shocked the court by pleading guilty. His attorney arranged a plea deal, where, in exchange for his confession, he would not be sentenced to death.
Berdella confessed to the murders of six men, all between the ages of 18 and 21, beginning in 1984. In each one, the details of how he lured them in and what exact methods of torture he used differed. But the overall modus operandi was the same: once they were in his house, he would either drug them or knock them out, then tie them up. He would, over the course of hours or days, repeatedly rape and torture them much as he had done to Bryson.
Some of them died from his abuse; some, he killed by suffocation with a plastic bag or with a garrote. Once his victims were dead, he would hoist them over a spot in the basement or the bathtub, slit their veins, and let the blood drain out. Once that was done, he would dismember the body with various instruments — including the saws seized by police — and put the pieces in plastic bags, which he would put out with the rest of the garbage.
He was sentenced to two life sentences with no possibility for parole. While incarcerated, he railed against the media for “dehumanizing” him, saying he was really a good person who had just made mistakes. He also filed several suits against the prison for mistreatment.
From behind bars, he arranged to sell his massive horde in a series of auctions. The appraiser in charge of it called it a “mind-boggling accumulation of about 2,000 rare antiquities, ordinary household goods and an uncountable assortment of egregious junk.” The bulk of the estate — including the house on Charlotte Street — was purchased by the flamboyant former bank robber and millionaire-industrialist Del Dunmire, who had it demolished.
In the fall of 1992, Berdella wrote to a minister who had befriended him, complaining that the prison officials weren’t giving him his heart medication. Then, on Oct. 8, 1992, when he was 43, Berdella suffered a heart attack and died. He had served less than four years of his sentence.
