00:00:04
♪♪ -December 1988, Kansas City. Robert Berdella finally
confessed to kidnapping,
00:00:16
raping, torturing,
and then killing six men four and a half years
after his first victim.
00:00:24
-To him, they weren't living,
feeling, breathing individuals. They were literally
just pieces of meat,
00:00:30
and he would do with them
what he wanted. -He took hundreds of photos
and kept vivid,
00:00:35
detailed notes to document
his macabre acts using ever-increasing
twisted methods
00:00:42
to cause unimaginable
pain and suffering. -This was not a spree killing. This was not somebody out
of control of their actions.
00:00:50
This is somebody who knows
what he's doing, knows what he wants to do,
and does it.
00:00:56
That is the definition of evil. -After murdering them,
he dissected his victims with such precision
00:01:03
he became known as
the Kansas City Butcher. -And then he would cut
the bodies up
00:01:09
with a butcher knife
and chain saw and then put them in the trash. -His dark fantasies, sick mind,
and horrific torture of six men
00:01:20
that sometimes lasted weeks
at a time makes Robert Berdella one of
the world's most evil killers.
00:01:28
♪♪ ♪♪ April the 2nd, 1988,
Kansas City, Missouri. a man wearing nothing but a dog
collar was found in the street.
00:01:57
He was taken to a house nearby where he pled for police
to be called. A police investigation revealed
a horrific series of murders
00:02:06
that took place
at the hands of one man who systematically
and methodically kidnapped
00:02:13
and tortured young, vulnerable
men before killing them. -Berdella is evil because
he took advantage of the weak,
00:02:24
and he just performed so many
unpleasant acts on them while they were alive. For Berdella,
it's more than just killing.
00:02:32
It's cruelty. -After claiming
his first victim in 1984, he went on to murder
five more men,
00:02:40
each time increasing
the level of pain and suffering
that he caused them. -Berdella had a complete
disregard for human life,
00:02:48
and I think what
he was always aiming for was to create this compliant,
docile sex slave,
00:02:54
and some of his victims,
he treated so brutally that they died
as a result of the torture,
00:03:00
as a result of him
trying to deprive them of all of their sensations. -Rick Holtsclaw was
the assistant prosecutor
00:03:11
for the Sex Crimes Unit
in Kansas City. -He would prey on those
who were down and out
00:03:18
or needed some help. He would befriend them
or take them in, and that's how it would begin.
00:03:24
-Berdella's crimes
would go unnoticed for years until one day one of his victims
managed to escape
00:03:31
and call for help. Troy Cole was the lead
detective on the case. -We decided to bring
in a backhoe to dig up
00:03:38
that one particular spot
where it looked like it might have had
a grave marker to it,
00:03:43
and sure enough, on the second
scoop of the backhoe, it pulled up a human head. That was the first time
that I realized
00:03:51
we had a homicide investigation, and it was probably gonna be
a big investigation.
00:03:58
-Until this point,
Berdella was seen as an upstanding member
of the local community.
00:04:04
Roy Orth was a sergeant with the
Kansas City Police Department. -Robert Berdella was a member
00:04:11
of the arts community
in Kansas City, Missouri, a former student of
the Kansas City Art Institute.
00:04:18
He was involved in his
neighborhood crime watch program and, as I remember, was even
a court-appointed advocate
00:04:26
for juveniles
through the Kansas City, Missouri,
Juvenile Justice System. -This seemingly normal member
of the Kansas City community
00:04:36
went from being
an upstanding citizen to an infamous serial killer. -Berdella documented the torture
and the murder of his victims
00:04:45
for a couple
of different reasons. Firstly, he wanted to
relive and revisit that sense of power he felt
when he was doing these things,
00:04:53
but secondly, he wanted
to create an archive. I think he wanted history
to remember him
00:04:58
and remember the horrendous
things that he'd done. -This killer's story
begins in 1949.
00:05:08
Robert Andrew Berdella, Jr. was born on January the 31st,
the first of two sons.
00:05:16
He was raised
in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, in a strict Catholic household. -His father worked
at the Ford Motor Company.
00:05:25
His mother was a homemaker,
so they were very much the traditional American
nuclear family.
00:05:32
-Berdella was a shy,
intelligent child who struggled to fit
in at school. -He was bullied by his peers
00:05:38
because he did stand out
as different. He wore very thick glasses. He went to the algebra club.
00:05:43
He collected stamps. So, there was that sense
in which he always felt that isolation
from his peer group.
00:05:50
-Then, in his mid-teens, his world was
turned upside-down. -Berdella's father died of
a heart attack when he was 16,
00:05:58
and this did have quite
a significant impact on him because his mother remarried,
00:06:03
and she went on to stash up
another home with somebody else, and I think that Berdella
really did feel
00:06:09
a sense of rejection here. He was part of
his mother's past. The world had moved on,
and he was left behind.
00:06:16
-Around the same time, Berdella
had been working part-time. -There's a particular incident
that Berdella later recalls
00:06:24
that is potentially significant. Berdella claims
that he was raped when he was an adolescent
at a restaurant where he worked.
00:06:33
-Berdella never reported
the incident to the police. In 1967, after graduating
high school,
00:06:42
Berdella enrolled
in Kansas City Art Institute. At this time, he'd begun
exploring his sexuality.
00:06:49
-He'd realized that he was
certainly gay, and it was pretty apparent
to him that his father
would not have approved of that.
00:06:58
-He's also been brought up
in the Catholic church, so I think there is very much an
underlying sense of shame there.
00:07:04
-By 1969, Berdella had begun
to experiment with drugs. He quit college after tutors
failed to understand
00:07:11
his twisted art projects
often involving live animals. -He may have been a bit nerdy
to look at and a bit strange,
00:07:21
but he was clearly talented. -In need of a job, Berdella
put his talents to a new use.
00:07:28
-Berdella started working
as a short order chef and quickly rose. -He developed quite a reputation
in the local community,
00:07:37
as people were talking about
the food he was making, and he bought his own house.
00:07:42
He had quite a bright future. He really was a figure that commanded respect
in the local community.
00:07:49
-By his mid to late 20s, Berdella had also developed
a passion for collecting, and this hobby soon became
a business in its own right.
00:07:59
-He was obviously
a very good chef, but it wasn't his only talent. He also collected art
and antiquities.
00:08:06
This was a man
of quite considerable taste, working at some
of the best restaurants
00:08:12
and at the same time
operating a boutique called Bob's Bizarre Bazaar
selling arts and antiquities.
00:08:19
-The boutique became Berdella's
full-time job, and he began to rent
out rooms in his home
00:08:24
to help make ends meet. Some of those lodgers
were vulnerable young men who'd receive bed and board
in return for carrying out jobs
00:08:33
around the house
and at his antique shop. -People who'd run away
from home, young gay men,
00:08:40
couples, rather
a sort of benevolent figure -- as far as
the local community concerned,
00:08:46
an entirely upright
and straightforward citizen. -In 1984, Berdella's behavior
began to get bizarre.
00:08:55
-His house had become
literally a warehouse of all sorts of odd objects. This man who previously had been
00:09:03
sort of pillar
of the local community was becoming increasingly odd,
and he also, I think,
00:09:07
began to despise the young men
who came seeking shelter. -In March that year at age 35,
Berdella began a relationship
00:09:17
with a 19-year-old male
former sex worker, Jerry Howell. -Berdella knew his dad, who also
had a stall in the flea market,
00:09:26
so Jerry hung around
with his dad, so Berdella knew
both of them well. -Jerry had had some issues
with drugs.
00:09:34
He'd had some issues with
the criminal justice system, and I think Berdella was seen
to be this trusted figure,
00:09:41
so when Berdella offers
to help him, he offers to lend him money,
Jerry takes him up on this.
00:09:47
He doesn't pay him back, though. -On July the 5th, 1984, he picked Jerry up from the flea
market to help with some jobs,
00:09:56
but Jerry was more interested
in getting loaded. Berdella gave him
drugs and alcohol,
00:10:02
and they headed home, but getting increasingly
frustrated with Jerry using him, Berdella gave Jerry
some stronger medication
00:10:10
that caused him to pass out. -When the victim became
virtually unconscious, Berdella would inject him
with drugs,
00:10:20
giving him absolute control
over the body. He would then repeatedly rape
the victim
00:10:25
over a very extended period
in this case -- 27 hours. -When he returned from work,
the torturing continued.
00:10:33
-He's not only
sexually assaulted, he is struck with a metal ruler. He's given a cocktail of drugs
before he's even killed,
00:10:43
so we have a mixture of somebody who's going to be confused
by what's going on. They're going to be confused
by the drugs they've been given,
00:10:52
and then he's being physically
and sexually assaulted. It's just a horrific way to die.
00:10:58
-The following night,
Jerry was dead. Berdella had meticulously
detailed the torture and murder
00:11:07
in extensive notes
and photographs. -One of the things that Berdella
did immediately after Jerry
00:11:14
had died
was to note down and describe precisely
what he did with the body, which effectively was
to drain it of blood
00:11:21
and then dismember it
and wrap it up in garbage bags. He kept a detailed record
because, in many ways,
00:11:27
that was the kind of character
that he was. He took pride in his work. He was completely cold
and isolated,
00:11:35
interested only
in his own satisfaction, which makes it
all the more chilling. -Berdella bagged up the remains
with all the instruments
00:11:44
he'd used
and dumped it in the trash, which was picked up
the next morning. On July the 8th, Jerry's father
contacted the police.
00:11:54
-Jerry's father reports
him missing, and Berdella is interviewed by
the police in relation to this,
00:12:00
and Berdella says,
"Well, I dropped him off at the 7-Eleven,
the convenience store,"
00:12:04
and at this point in time, why wouldn't the police
believe Berdella? He's this upstanding figure
in the community.
00:12:11
He's not somebody who would
appear to have a reason to lie, so, unfortunately,
this case goes cold.
00:12:18
-Then officers received
a tip-off from one of Berdella's
previous boarders, Todd.
00:12:27
-One of Jerry's acquaintances
who was also known to Berdella
actually tipped off the police
00:12:31
that they thought Berdella
may have been involved or at least given Jerry
a hot-shot injection,
00:12:35
but there was no body. Nobody knew where Jerry was. -Berdella was put
under surveillance,
00:12:41
but no evidence was ever found. -Jerry Howell's father
always thought that Berdella had
done something to his kid.
00:12:49
He just couldn't prove it,
and, uh -- but, yes,
he was very suspicious of him. -Jerry Howell's body
was never discovered.
00:12:59
Berdella had developed a sick
taste for torture and murder, and, after getting away
with his first crime,
00:13:06
he began to look for
ever-increasing horrific ways to get his sexual kicks. Nine months after he tortured
his first victim,
00:13:17
19-year-old Jerry Howell, Robert Berdella
took his next victim. -So, Robert Sheldon was somebody
who had stayed with Berdella
00:13:28
before at his house, so there was a degree of trust
in this relationship, and it was trust that Berdella
really did take advantage of.
00:13:37
-On April the 10th,
20-year-old drug addict Robert Sheldon
appeared at Berdella's door
00:13:43
looking for somewhere to stay after an argument
with his girlfriend. Shortly after he set foot
inside,
00:13:50
Berdella put his sadistic
plan into action. -He keeps him for four days. Automatically, you know
that this is going to be
00:14:02
somebody who's in distress. He starts to escalate
his cruelty with this victim. He injects drain cleaner
into his eyes.
00:14:11
He fills his ears
with caulking material. There's damage to the hands
from piano wire.
00:14:17
He's hitting him
with a rubber mallet. All of these things are acts
of cruelty, and they would not kill you.
00:14:25
It's subduing the victim. -He did some horrendous things
to him, but the thing that really
stood out for me was the tattoo
00:14:34
that he gave this victim
on his shoulder. He was almost branding this
man, saying, "You are mine.
00:14:40
I own you, and I possess you." -Like he had with
his first victim, Berdella documented his methods
by writing intricate notes.
00:14:49
This time, he went one step
further and included himself in the photographs
with his tormented victim.
00:14:56
-He wanted an absolute record
of everything he'd done. It was a certain
amount of pride.
00:15:02
There is no doubt what ever that
that's what was in his mind. He'd documented it because
he was proud of it.
00:15:08
-On the 14th of April,
Berdella arrived home to find a workman he knew
on the roof of his property.
00:15:14
Concerned
that he'd be discovered, he decided to kill Robert. -He becomes quite paranoid
because he knows this guy,
00:15:22
so Berdella takes matters
into his own hands, and he goes and places a plastic
bag over the head of his victim,
00:15:29
essentially ending his life. -Berdella began his ritual act of cutting up his victim's body
piece by piece.
00:15:40
-Dismembering a body is not
the easiest thing to do, but if you have some knowledge
like a surgeon or a chef,
00:15:48
then you can quite
effectively dismember a body, and that makes it easier
to dispose of.
00:15:56
-This horrific expertise
in chopping up bodies later earned Berdella the nickname
"The Kansas City Butcher."
00:16:07
In keeping with his obsession
with collecting, this time, Berdella decided he wanted to
keep a souvenir of his actions.
00:16:16
-Berdella's second victim,
Robert, he dismembered the body
and cut off the head,
00:16:22
but this time he didn't put it
all into black garbage backs and put it out
for the garbage truck.
00:16:30
He kept the head first
in the freezer in his house, and he later buried it
in the garden
00:16:37
where it decomposed as
a kind of trophy of the killing. -And this is really significant
for me
00:16:43
because the head is what
gives somebody their identity. It's what makes them a human.
00:16:49
I think by keeping the head, Berdella wants
to be able to say, "I'm the one that has
depersonalized this individual.
00:16:55
I'm the one
that's dehumanized them." -Berdella had now tortured
and murdered two people without being caught.
00:17:06
The following June, just two
months after his last murder, he struck again. -Mark was a young man
who had helped out
00:17:14
around Berdella's house. He'd mown the lawn
for him a few times, and Berdella discovered him
intoxicated in his shed one day.
00:17:23
He invites him into his home, and so begins
the process of torture, as had been the case
with previous victims.
00:17:31
-20-year-old Mark Wallace
was gagged and injected with a cocktail
of drugs to sedate him before
he was restrained and raped.
00:17:40
-Mark was Berdella's
third victim, and, again, I think we have, with this, the escalation
and the experimentation.
00:17:49
We have injection of drugs. He's used the rubber mallet
again to strike his victim,
00:17:55
but now he's applying
electric shocks. -When Berdella returned
from work that evening,
00:18:02
he found Mark
trying to free himself. Berdella sedated him again before continuing to rape
and torture his victim.
00:18:12
-It's almost as if he has
a compliant victim, and he's thinking,
"What will this do?"
00:18:20
Electric shocks
are rarely fatal, but they can be
tremendously painful. -As had become his custom,
00:18:28
Berdella kept a record of his
barbaric actions in his diary. On the 23rd of June, 1985,
he wrote,
00:18:37
"7:00 a.m., no signs of life." -He died as a result
of the torture and, in previous cases,
we've seen this happen before.
00:18:50
-Once again, Berdella lived up to his alter-ego of
The Kansas City Butcher. -He's dismembered with
a safety razor,
00:18:59
a knife, and a saw, and then literally left out
with the rubbish. -With three local men
now missing,
00:19:07
rumors amongst Kansas City's
sex workers began to spread. -The male sex workers
of Kansas City
00:19:16
had developed quite a wariness
of Robert Berdella. He'd developed something
of a reputation at this time
00:19:22
for being aggressive
with people, for wanting to tie them up, wanting to aggressively
rape them.
00:19:28
So there was definitely a sense
in which, "This guy was somebody
to steer clear of.
00:19:33
This guy was
potentially dangerous." -Berdella was well-known
for haunting what you might describe
as gay bars,
00:19:42
as the gay community,
but he was also very well-known for wanting to be
in complete control.
00:19:49
He did not have a good
reputation, and many of the people
that came into contact with him
00:19:55
warned each other in that
really quite small community. -Despite his reputation,
some still trusted him.
00:20:03
On the 26th of September, 1985,
Walter Ferris, a married man
and acquaintance of Berdella,
00:20:10
turned up at his house. Once he set foot inside,
his fate was sealed. -Walter asked Berdella whether
he could stay at his house,
00:20:20
and I think in this Berdella
sees another opportunity and so begins a process
again of torture
00:20:28
and of absolutely horrendous
pain and discomfort. -Berdella found new ways to inflict more suffering
to his victim.
00:20:38
-With Berdella's fourth victim, we've got another development
of the behavior. We've still got
electric shocks
00:20:46
that he'd used on
his previous victim. We've got injection of drugs. We've got sexual assault.
00:20:54
And one of the things he uses
with this victim is ketamine. Ketamine is a tranquilizer.
00:21:01
It is used therapeutically, but it's known that it can
cause horrific hallucinations,
00:21:09
and it has to be used
very carefully in a therapeutic
environment, so potentially we're looking
at all sorts
00:21:15
of horrible hallucinations
added to the horrible things that are actually
happening to him.
00:21:24
It is a horrific set
of circumstances that one cannot even
really begin to imagine.
00:21:32
-Yet again, Berdella documented
each and every step in minute detail. -Berdella by now was escalating
his torture.
00:21:44
Extraordinary things were done
to these poor men, and, yet again,
there was an exact record
00:21:49
of what he could survive. I suspect part of the reason
for that was that Berdella
00:21:57
wanted to see how much
a human body could take, what it could accept. He wanted to test
everything to its limits.
00:22:06
He wanted to see how far. "Could I -- Can he take that? Could he take more?" -In less than 24 hours,
Walter was dead.
00:22:18
-Walter Ferris died
at around midnight the day after he was captured
by Robert Berdella.
00:22:23
Berdella disposed of Walter's
body in the usual fashion, so he dismembered it
in his bathtub,
00:22:29
and he put the piece of Walter's
body out with the trash. -Days after his disappearance,
00:22:35
Walter's wife reported him
missing to the police. -His wife and mother
suspected Berdella
00:22:43
because the last time
that Walter left the house, he said, "I'm going over
to Berdella's,"
00:22:48
and he was never seen again. -For the second time
in approximately 15 months, Berdella was questioned
and put under surveillance,
00:22:56
but investigators
quickly hit a dead end. -The missing-persons unit
did an investigation.
00:23:03
They did their best to, uh,
further the investigation along, but they were just unsuccessful.
00:23:08
There was not enough evidence
to charge him. They went to his house. They tried to buy drugs
undercover from him.
00:23:14
There was various things
they did to try to -- to make a case. They were just unsuccessful.
00:23:21
-In just over a year,
Berdella had detained, savagely tortured,
and killed four men.
00:23:28
Each murder he committed
increased in brutality as his dark imagination
seemed to know no limits.
00:23:35
Yet he continued the pretense
of an upstanding if eccentric member
of the local community,
00:23:41
and police had no reason
to link him with the disappearance
of his victims. -The police had no suitable
cause to search the house,
00:23:52
so as far
as they were concerned, Berdella was simply helping
the police with their inquiries.
00:23:57
They had no concrete evidence whatever against Berdella
at that point. -On June the 17th, 1986,
00:24:04
Berdella selected
his next victim. In the Red Light District
of Kansas City, he picked up 23-year-old
casual sex worker
00:24:14
and drug addict Todd Stoops. -Berdella's next victim, Todd, had already had contact with him
over a number of years,
00:24:22
and he had suggested
to the police that Berdella might have been guilty
of killing his first victim
00:24:26
with an injection,
which was never proven. -Berdella was sexually attracted
to Todd,
00:24:32
and Todd and his wife
had actually spent some time living in
Robert Berdella's house
00:24:38
in exchange for sexual favors that Todd provided to Berdella
with his wife's knowledge,
00:24:44
so this couple --
they were very vulnerable, and Berdella took advantage
of that vulnerability.
00:24:51
When Todd needs money for drugs, Berdella sees
another opportunity here. -As soon as Todd
stepped foot inside,
00:25:01
Berdella began
his deadly routine. Over a period of two weeks, he subjected him to
a ferocious series of attacks.
00:25:11
-If what happened to Walter
was horrific, he manages to outdo himself
with Todd.
00:25:17
So we have nearly a fortnight
of captivity with torture, whipping, sexual assault again,
00:25:25
all sorts of horrific
physical acts to degrade, to cause pain, but he's
also once again organized.
00:25:34
He's planning. He thinks injecting Drano
into the eyes will blind his victim,
which it does.
00:25:41
It makes it more difficult
to escape. He injects it into the voice box
to stop him screaming.
00:25:47
These are not the acts
of a mad man. These are planned, deliberate
actions of somebody
00:25:54
who knows what he's doing
and why he's doing it. -Berdella took extensive
photographs of the torture
00:26:01
and the demise of Todd. I think that Berdella felt
that Todd was a significant victim
for him.
00:26:07
He felt that attraction to him,
and it wouldn't surprise me if he'd been at the center
of quite a lot of fantasies
00:26:13
he'd had about
having a sex slave. -On July the 1st, 1986,
Todd died of septic shock
00:26:22
from an infection caused by
the injuries he had received. Like his previous victims,
Berdella dismembered Todd's body
00:26:31
and put his remains to be
picked up by trash collectors. ♪♪ On the 23rd of June, 1987,
a little less than a year later,
00:26:46
the Kansas City Butcher
saw his next opportunity. -Larry Pearson was a sex worker
who needed some bail bond money,
00:26:55
so Robert Berdella says to him,
"I will bail you out, I'll give you the money,
as long as you come
00:26:59
and stay in Ohio
for a week with my family." So, Larry agrees to do this, and then when they arrive back
from this vacation,
00:27:09
Berdella takes him captive. -Once again, we have escalation
of this behavior. We started with cruelty.
00:27:17
It's escalating and escalating. We now have a victim
kept for six weeks, tortured, sexually assaulted.
00:27:27
-Despite the constant torture,
Larry fought back. -Larry didn't know what to do.
00:27:32
He knew he wanted to survive
as best he could, until finally, in what
must've been utter despair,
00:27:40
Larry bit Berdella's penis
during oral sex. The injury to Berdella's penis was so severe
he went to hospital.
00:27:52
-Berdella calls a taxi,
and during the time while he's waiting for the taxi,
he kills his victim.
00:28:02
-When he's dead,
Berdella has the sense to try and keep the property cool
to slow down decomposition
00:28:10
to reduce smells produced. Once again, these are all
unconscionable acts, but they are planned.
00:28:19
They are deliberately
undertaken. This is somebody who is
in control of what he's doing.
00:28:26
-When Berdella returned
from hospital, he dismembered Larry's body. -Berdella was so angry
at the injury
00:28:35
that had been caused to him,
that he was determined to take out the maximum
punishment or revenge
00:28:41
on the man who had the temerity
to actually hurt him. It was the first time
anyone had tried to hurt him,
00:28:48
and so, yet again,
he dismembered the body and yet again cut off the head,
only this time,
00:28:55
he went out into the garden,
dug up Robert's head, put Larry's in the same hole,
00:28:59
and proceeded to bring
Robert's head into the house, clean it up,
take the teeth out,
00:29:06
put them in two envelopes,
and put the skull -- which was all that
remained at that point --
00:29:11
into a closet
in the upstairs of his house. -Heads are very,
very significant for Berdella,
00:29:17
and I think the head of Larry
is a very important one, because this is the guy
who has come closest
00:29:23
to Berdella's fantasy
of having this sex slave. He's the guy who's survived
for six weeks.
00:29:29
He's survived the longest, and I think he wants
to commemorate that. -But Berdella's barbarous nature
was far from satisfied.
00:29:39
On March the 29th, 1988, he picked up 22-year-old
male prostitute Christopher Bryson
and took him back to his house.
00:29:49
-So, Christopher Bryson
was wandering the streets when Robert Berdella
picks him up,
00:29:54
and he offers him a beer, and they drive around
in his car for a while. Berdella then says,
"Well, come back to my house,
00:30:00
and you can have a beer there." So Christopher agrees,
and they go back. -He was brought home to provide
sexual favors for Berdella
00:30:10
and was told to go upstairs
as soon as they got there. As Bryson mounted the stairs
and started walking up,
00:30:17
he was struck from behind
and rendered unconscious. -With his victim sedated
and held captive,
00:30:25
Berdella began
his deadly ritual. -Once again, he is tortured. He is assaulted. He is given bleach in the eyes,
but this time it's swabbed
00:30:37
onto the eyeballs
rather than injected in. That would probably be
even more painful.
00:30:45
There are many nerve endings
on the globe of the eye, which would react very badly
to the bleach.
00:30:51
-Repeatedly electrocuted, raped, and injected with a cocktail
of sedatives, Christopher remained
a submissive captive
00:31:00
for four days. But on the morning of April
the 2nd, 1988, when Berdella had left for work,
00:31:07
Christopher managed
to set himself free. -He finds some matches, and he's able to actually
burn through the ropes
00:31:16
that Berdella had
restrained him with, so he flees the house
wearing only a dog collar.
00:31:22
-It must've been
an extraordinary sight -- a naked man
wearing a dog collar. He runs across the street,
meets a meter reader
00:31:30
who's going to a house. They knock on the door. The house owner is astonished. Opens the door astonished, won't
let Christopher into the house,
00:31:37
but does call the police. -Roy Orth was a sergeant
with the Kansas City Police Department
when they received the call.
00:31:48
-Chris had been severely
physically abused and was asking for help. District officers got there,
found this was probably gonna be
00:31:58
some kind of an unlawful
restraint, abduction situation, and called the Sex Crimes/Child
Abuse Unit,
00:32:06
and our detective responded. -Rick Holtsclaw was
the assistant prosecutor for the Sex Crimes Unit
in Kansas City.
00:32:16
-Roy Orth called me and said,
"We need you," and I said, "You don't need me today,"
and he said,
00:32:20
"No, I'm telling you
we need you on this one." He may have told me briefly
what it was,
00:32:25
that we had someone who had
escaped naked with a dog collar. It became evident that they were
gonna need some assistance,
00:32:31
so I went to the home
on that Saturday afternoon, and we began the investigation,
getting search warrants,
00:32:38
and that's how it began. -In just over a three-year
period, Berdella had held,
brutally raped,
00:32:47
tortured, and killed six men
and got away with it. Unknown to the police, they were about to uncover
the shocking crimes
00:32:56
committed by a sadistic
serial killer, Robert Berdella. Troy Cole was the lead detective
in charge of the case.
00:33:08
-I first became aware of him
April 2nd, 1988. I was working in
the homicide unit.
00:33:14
It was a Saturday, and I was called out
in regard to a sodomy. A guy, allegedly had been
kidnapped and held captive
00:33:23
for a number of days,
and I was the duty sergeant, which meant
that I handled the homicides,
00:33:28
the robbery and the sex crimes
for that particular day. Christopher managed to escape
and flag down a passerby.
00:33:35
That's what brought us
to the residence. -The traumatized victim
recounted his ordeal
00:33:42
and gave police the name
and address of his captor. When Berdella arrived home
that evening,
00:33:49
the police were waiting for him. -When Berdella drove up
to the house, we asked him for identification,
and he produced it.
00:33:57
He said, "I live here,"
and at that point, he was immediately arrested
for investigation of sodomy.
00:34:06
We brought him downtown. I asked him if he would sign a
consent to search the residence
00:34:11
so we could further
the investigation. He refused. He said that he would rather
talk to his attorney,
00:34:18
so at that point we booked him
into the city jail and prepared to get
a search warrant.
00:34:24
-With Chris' testimony,
police were able to obtain a warrant to search Berdella's
property the same day.
00:34:33
-When we first went up
to kick the door in, we could hear large dogs
in the background,
00:34:37
so we called animal control out. Immediate reaction was the house
was filthy, had a stench,
00:34:44
the odor was horrible, clutter
and dog feces everywhere. Was one of the worst houses
I ever walked into.
00:34:55
-Using the information
that Christopher had given them, officers searched
Berdella's property for the room
00:35:01
where he'd held
his victim captive. -So, our initial thought
was to try to find the room
00:35:06
to verify his story. So we go upstairs, and after
a brief period of time, we found the room
that he had described.
00:35:14
We found the bed
that he had described, and it had restraints
tied to the bedposts,
00:35:19
so we were pretty sure
at this point his story maybe had some legitimacy to it. -There was a device
underneath the bed
00:35:27
plugged into the wall
that was -- appeared to me to be
an electric train transformer,
00:35:34
and there were jumper-cable
clips on the ends of it so that he could attach them
00:35:38
to different parts
of somebody's body and then increase
the electrocution level by turning
the transformer selector.
00:35:46
-In searching the rest
of the house, officers discovered Berdella's
most prized collection.
00:35:52
-We'd discovered several
hundred -- probably 200 to 300 -- Polaroid photographs
that he had taken.
00:35:58
Some of the people
in the photographs were in obvious signs
of being tortured. -Eventually we were able to find
detailed torture notes
00:36:08
that Berdella had kept
on several people -- six, in fact -- and,
in reviewing those pictures,
00:36:15
probably the most telling
was one of a young man that was hanging suspended
upside-down
00:36:20
from steel I-beam
in what we later learned was the basement
of the Berdella home,
00:36:26
and this person
appeared to be deceased. -As the police combed
the property, they discovered more
and more evidence
00:36:37
of Berdella's horrific crimes. -A short time later,
we found a skull in a closet
00:36:43
which appeared to have been
probably fairly recent. -The officers
gather the evidence.
00:36:50
The following day,
a pathologist was called in. -We had called in a doctor
to examine the skull
00:36:57
that was in the closet,
and he said that in his opinion that skull probably was less
than two years old,
00:37:05
but it would obviously require
further examination. So at that point we sort of
catalogued what we could find
00:37:11
in the house
that looked like it might have some
evidentiary value to it. -One was a bag of what appeared
to be human vertebrae
00:37:19
that were very clean. Obviously they had been
boiled out, bleached. Almost looked like plastic.
00:37:27
And we also found the skull
that was obviously human and hadn't been
bleached out yet.
00:37:34
-The police returned
to Berdella's home the next day, and they left no stone unturned.
00:37:41
-Berdella kept dogs in
the backyard in an enclosure, and in looking
at the backyard,
00:37:48
the grass was noticeably greener
in a couple of areas, which caused me to think that,
you know,
00:37:55
possibly there
was something else there. -So, at that point, we decided
to bring in a backhoe to dig up
00:38:04
that one particular spot
where it looked like it might have had
a grave marker to it.
00:38:08
-On the second dig, there was
a sucking sound as it dug in and lifted out, and I stopped
the man immediately and looked,
00:38:18
and there was a human jaw
that had been pulled up, and then, of course, we stopped,
00:38:25
and eventually we found
the full human skull. What it appeared
that he was doing
00:38:30
was once he would
dismember his victims, he collected the skulls
and then would clean them
00:38:36
by burying them in the backyard,
and after they'd been out there for whatever time
he felt was necessary,
00:38:43
dig them back up and then clean
them out, boil and bleach them. -When police extended
their search
00:38:49
to Berdella's shop
in the bazaar, they found
a macabre window display. -As you walked up Westport Road,
00:38:58
there was a display
of human skulls -- I think there were two,
I can't remember now --
00:39:03
and initially,
these were so clean that they appeared
to be plastic, but it was later determined that
they were also Berdella victims.
00:39:15
-Berdella's obsession
with his crimes and brazen behavior
were his undoing, but the police still had
a mammoth task to overcome.
00:39:27
-Our biggest challenges early on
were identifying all these people that were
in the Polaroid photographs.
00:39:33
We had no idea when we started
the investigation who any of them were. Of the 200, they were
not all facial shots.
00:39:40
There were some body parts
and people in various stages, but we needed to
identify the skull
00:39:46
that was found in the closet, and we needed to identify
the human head that we dug up in the backyard,
00:39:52
so those were
our biggest challenges. -By May 1988, using Berdella's
photos, detailed notes,
00:40:00
and dental records, the police identified
the two skulls as belonging to his second victim, Robert,
and his sixth victim, Larry.
00:40:12
On August the 3rd, 1988,
at Jackson County Circuit Court, Berdella stood before
the circuit court judge
00:40:20
Alvin Randall charged with the
first-degree murder of Larry. -The state decide that they're
gonna pursue a prosecution
00:40:28
for the murder of Larry first, but before they get very far,
Berdella actually confesses.
00:40:34
He pleads guilty.
-I think everyone was stunned. Strategically, I think it was a
great move on the defense team,
00:40:41
because, at that time,
kept the state from filing the death penalty
charges against him.
00:40:47
Everyone was surprised. -I think he pled guilty because he was scared
of the death penalty,
00:40:52
and I think he felt like we were
gonna go for the death penalty, and at that point he started
working out a deal
00:40:57
with his attorney to, "Let's try to cut a deal
to save my life. -As the prosecution prepared
to take Berdella to trial
00:41:06
for the murder
of his second victim, Robert, he made a plea bargain. -Part of the guilty plea
was that Berdella sat down
00:41:14
with his two defense lawyers
and then also with Mr. Hall and Mr. Riederer, the prosecutor
and the assistant prosecutor
00:41:21
from the murder division, and they spent two days
under oath on the record, and he would lay out
what he did to these victims.
00:41:30
-From the 13th to the 15th
of December, Berdella fully confessed
to all six murders.
00:41:37
-We spent three days with him
over in the Jackson County jail, and he was very matter-of-fact
00:41:43
in describing
all of the murders. Basically,
he didn't show any remorse. I think he enjoyed reliving
and describing
00:41:51
what he had done to the victims. I think he got a charge
out of it, and it was a pretty
compelling three days.
00:42:00
-Berdella is incredibly proud
of these murders, of this project, of this extended experiment
that he's been conducting,
00:42:08
and he really does enjoy
reliving this and telling people who appear
to want to hear about it.
00:42:15
-By revealing the true horror of
his crimes to the authorities, he avoided the death penalty.
00:42:23
On December the 19th, 1988,
at Jackson County Circuit Court, Berdella was sentenced.
00:42:30
-Berdella receives
two life sentences for first-degree murder and four conditional
life sentences
00:42:36
for second-degree murder. -But less than four years later
on October the 8th, 1992,
00:42:44
Berdella died
in Missouri State Penitentiary from a heart attack. He was 43. In just over three years,
he meticulously planned,
00:42:56
documented, and implemented
the brutal rape, torture, and murder of six men. He then cut up their bodies
with such methodical precision,
00:43:07
he earned the nickname
"The Kansas City Butcher." The prolonged torture
of his victims
00:43:13
and his obsession
with his own terrifying deeds would make Robert Berdella one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:43:22
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪