Robert Andrew Berdella Jr. (January 31, 1949October8, 1992) was an American serial killer who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least six young men after forcing his victims to endure periods of up to six weeks of captivity. His crimes took place in Kansas City, Missouri, between 1984 and 1987.
Describing his murders as being "some of my darkest fantasies becoming my reality", Berdella pleaded guilty and was sentenced to life imprisonment without the possibility of parole for the first-degree murder of one of his victims, Larry Pearson, in August 1988; he would later plead guilty to one further charge of first-degree murder and four charges of second-degree murder in December 1988. He died of a heart attack while incarcerated at the Missouri State Penitentiary in October 1992.
Berdella became known as the Kansas City Butcher due to his practice of extensively dissecting his victims' bodies, which he would then dispose of in garbage bags, and The Collector due to the movie which he stated was the basis of the fantasies behind the modus operandi of his crimes.Michael H. Stone & Gary Brucato. The New Evil: Understanding the Emergence of Modern Violent Crime (Amherst, New York: Prometheus Books, 2019), pp. 185-189.
Early life Robert Berdella was born on January 31, 1949, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the first of two sons born to Robert Andrew Berdella Sr., a die setter for the Ford Motor Company, and Mary Louise ( Huffman) Berdella. Berdella's father was a devout Roman Catholic of Italian descent, while his mother was of German and British descent. The family regularly attended Mass, and both sons regularly attended religious education courses.
As a child, Berdella was intelligent but a loner who rarely played outside his home and seldom had friends visit to socialize. He had a speech impediment and wore thick glasses from the age of five because he was severely nearsighted; he was also diagnosed with high blood pressure, for which he took several medications. Berdella was largely unathletic, whereas his younger brother, Daniel, seven years his junior, displayed an aptitude for sports from an early age. Berdella's father valued sports and physical education and viewed his older son's lack of interest in sports as a sign of failure, often comparing him unfavorably with his younger brother. Occasionally, Berdella's father physically and emotionally abused his children, such as by beating them with a leather strap.
Berdella performed well academically, though teachers often found him difficult to teach, partly due to his aloofness and his being the recipient of bullying by other students. Because of this, he seldom socialized with his peers.
When Berdella reached puberty, he discovered that he was homosexual; initially, he kept this fact a closely guarded secret, and he did not become open about his sexuality for several years. Nonetheless, in his early teens, he briefly had a girlfriend.
Adolescence By his mid-teens, Berdella had begun to display a degree of aggression, becoming rude and condescending to others, particularly women. He learned about cooking and art and developed showmanship. On Christmas Day 1965, the Berdella family drove to Canton, Ohio, to visit relatives. That evening, Berdella's father suffered a heart attack at the age of 39, from which he died two days later. Two days later, Berdella—having returned to Cuyahoga Falls by himself—was told by his family that his father had died. Berdella sought solace in his Catholicism, reading extensively about many faiths. He eventually became cynical about all religion.
In 1965, Berdella saw the film adaptation of the John Fowles novel The Collector. The plot of the film revolves around a disturbed man who stalks and then abducts a young woman whom he finds attractive, holding her captive in his windowless stone basement and viewing her as little more than an attractive specimen. After several weeks, the woman dies of a contracted illness despite her captor's efforts to keep her alive. Berdella later stated that this movie had formed a lasting impression on him.
Shortly after the death of Berdella's father, his mother remarried, an action that was met with resentment by Berdella, who viewed it as a form of betrayal against his father. As a result, he became increasingly withdrawn and further immersed himself in the solitary activities he had participated in since childhood, such as painting, collecting coins and stamps, and writing to foreign pen pals. Berdella would later claim that his hobby of writing to pen pals in countries such as Vietnam and Burma and their sending him stamps and photographs of mythical and historical icons, ancient cultures, and architecture would lead to his avid interest in primitive art, photographs, and antiques. From approximately 1965, he began collecting such artifacts; this practice would inspire him to open his own antiques business in 1982.
Relocation to Kansas City
College years In the summer of 1967, Berdella graduated from Cuyahoga Falls High School. Throughout his studies in high school, he had earned such excellent grades and showed such potential that in 1966, one teacher had placed him in an independent study program. Shortly after graduation, Berdella relocated to Kansas City, enrolling in the Kansas City Art Institute (KCAI), with aspirations of becoming a college professor. In his first year at the KCAI, Berdella was considered an attentive and talented student, although by his second year, he became vocally anti-authoritarian, becoming acquainted with a clique of students who supplied him with drugs, which he then sold to other students at a profit. In addition, he began regularly abusing alcohol. He also engaged in acts of animal torture on at least two occasions; during one of these instances, he decapitated a duck in the presence of his peers, and in the second, he experimented with sedatives and tranquilizers on a dog.
At the age of 19, Berdella was arrested for attempting to sell methamphetamine to an undercover officer; he was released after posting a $3,000 bond (equivalent to about $ ). He would later plead guilty to the offense and was handed a five-year suspended sentence. One month after this first arrest, Berdella and two other students were arrested for possession of marijuana and LSD in Johnson County. On this occasion, Berdella could not post bond, and he spent five days in jail; the charges against him and one of the other students were later dropped due to a lack of evidence.
4315 Charlotte Street In 1969, Berdella voluntarily withdrew from KCAI after receiving harsh criticism from college administrators for killing and cooking a duck for the sake of art. He chose to remain in Kansas City and in September of that year, he moved into an address within the Hyde Park district: 4315 Charlotte Street. By this stage, Berdella had been openly gay for several years. He began spending much of his free time with male prostitutes, drug addicts, petty criminals, and runaways. Berdella would typically befriend these individuals, then "try to help free them from their drug addictions or criminal lifestyles", though he was adamant that, throughout much of the 1970s, he had no physical contact whatsoever with any of them.
To several of his neighbors, Berdella stated that he felt almost like a foster parent to many of these youths. By the early 1980s, many of his older acquaintances had ceased having any form of social contact with him. Berdella increasingly relied on these young men as a source of companionship and friendship. He would later claim to have become increasingly frustrated that many of these individuals were ignorant of his efforts to help steer them away from self-destructive behavior.
Despite these later claims, Berdella would often engage in sexual relations with the men he befriended, and would establish a degree of control over them, in part to engage in these sexual relations, by loaning them money and allowing them to live rent-free at his house for periods of time.
To his neighbors, Berdella was considered flamboyant yet helpful and civic-minded, despite the generally unkempt state of his property and his somewhat haughty attitude. Beginning in the late 1970s, Berdella worked with the South Hyde Park Crime Prevention and Neighborhood Association, becoming their chairman in the early 1980s and encouraging neighborhood watch patrols. He remained active in the association until the mid-1980s, when he left his position. Berdella also volunteered at fundraising events for a local public television station until the mid-1980s.
Shortly before Berdella moved into his Charlotte Street address, he began working as a short-order cook in various restaurants around Kansas City, in part to help pay lawyer fees and fines accrued from his previous drug arrests. For additional income, he also sold art and antiques he had collected via contacts he had established in Africa, Asia, South America, and various Pacific Rim countries. He initially operated this side business from his home.
Both Berdella's cooking career and the antiques business flourished, and by the mid-1970s, he began working as a senior cook at several renowned Kansas City restaurants. He joined a local chefs' association and helped establish a training program for aspiring chefs at a local community college. At the same time, he devoted more attention to his own business. By 1981, he had established several contractual agreements with both national and international contacts for his antiques business. He viewed this as his full-time job and later ceased working as a chef.
Bob's Bazaar Bizarre In 1982, Berdella began renting his own booth at the Westport Flea Market. This store was named Bob's Bazaar Bizarre, and primarily sold and traded primitive art, jewelry, and antiques. Although he occasionally made a generous monthly profit, the income from this business was insufficient to cover his expenses and make ends meet. As a result, Berdella would occasionally steal or scavenge items to sell at his booth. He would also take lodgers at his home as a means of gaining additional income.
At the flea market, Berdella became acquainted with a fellow merchant named Paul Howell, who operated a booth adjacent to his own. Soon, Berdella became acquainted with Paul Howell's younger son, Jerry. Initially, Jerry Howell and his friends taunted Berdella for his overt homosexuality, although according to Berdella, Jerry Howell later confided to him that he and his friends occasionally earned money as male prostitutes.
By the early 1980s, Paul Howell had relocated his business to a store close to the intersection of 39th and Main Street, with his family living in an apartment above the shop. Berdella remained a casual friend of the family, offering his assistance if Jerry encountered any minor scrapes with the law. By the summer of 1984, Jerry Howell had turned 19.
Murders First known victim Berdella is believed to have killed his first victim on July5, 1984: 19-year-old Jerry Howell. Berdella had promised to drive the youth to attend a dancing contest in Merriam. According to Berdella, he plied Howell with alcohol, diazepam, and acepromazine both in his car and at his house until he became unconscious. He then injected Howell with a heavy tranquilizer before binding him to his bed.
Howell was restrained to Berdella's bed for approximately 28 hours. Throughout this period of captivity, Berdella repeatedly drugged, tortured, raped, and violated him with foreign objects, repeatedly ignoring Howell's queries as to why he was being treated this way and his pleas to be freed. According to Berdella, Howell's death occurred because he "either asphyxiated on [his own] vomit, or the combination of the gag and the medicines were too strong for him to be able to catch breath".