Robert Berdella

What the record shows

Robert Berdella is an American serial killer who pleaded guilty in 1988 to murdering six young men in Kansas City, Missouri, between 1984 and 1987. He was never tried: on his pleas he was convicted of two counts of first-degree murder and four counts of second-degree murder, received six life sentences, and died in the Missouri State Penitentiary in October 1992. Prosecutors agreed not to seek the death penalty in exchange for his confessions, according to United Press International reporting at the time.

According to the Wikipedia article, the first victim was Jerry Howell, 19, who died on July 5, 1984, after being held at Berdella's house in the Hyde Park neighborhood. Five more men died there over the next three years: Robert Sheldon, 20, in April 1985; Mark Wallace, 27, in June 1985; Walter Ferris, 25, in September 1985; Todd Stoops, 23, in July 1986; and Larry Pearson, 20, in 1987. Each man was held captive at the house before he died, in most cases of asphyxiation, and the bodies were never recovered. UPI reported in May 1988 that the families of Howell and Ferris had long said the men were last seen with Berdella.

The case broke on April 2, 1988, when a 22-year-old man, later identified as Christopher Bryson, escaped from the house by jumping from a second-floor window and reached police wearing only a dog collar. Berdella was arrested the same day and charged with seven counts of forcible sodomy, one count of first-degree assault and one count of felonious restraint. Police began digging up the yard on April 3 and seized more than 200 photographs of men being abused. A skull found inside the house was identified on May 10, 1988, through hospital X-rays and dental records as Robert Sheldon, and two days later a second skull dug from the back yard was identified by dental records as Larry Pearson, UPI reported.

A grand jury indicted Berdella for Pearson's murder on July 22, 1988. In early August he pleaded guilty to first-degree murder in Pearson's death before Judge Alvin C. Randall and was sentenced to life in prison without parole; later that month he pleaded guilty to forcible sodomy and felonious restraint in the Bryson case, receiving a further life term and seven years, with the remaining counts dropped. In September he pleaded not guilty to five additional murder charges. UPI reported on December 19, 1988, that after a week of meetings with prosecutors, public defenders and detectives at the county jail, Berdella had agreed to confess to the five remaining killings in exchange for prosecutors not recommending death. That day, according to the Wikipedia article, he pleaded guilty before Jackson County Circuit Judge Robert Meyers to first-degree murder in the death of Sheldon and second-degree murder in the deaths of Howell, Wallace, Ferris and Stoops, and received five further concurrent life sentences.

Berdella was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary in Jefferson City, with a brief period at Potosi Correctional Center for his own protection. He died on October 8, 1992, aged 43, after complaining of chest pains; he was pronounced dead at a hospital in Columbia, Missouri, and the cause was recorded as a heart attack. The Pitch, a Kansas City weekly, reported in 2004 that a minister said Berdella had telephoned him shortly before his death claiming prison officials were withholding his heart medication. His house on Charlotte Street was sold and demolished, and the lot was later deeded to the Hyde Park Neighborhood Association.

Berdella was born on January 31, 1949, in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio. By the 1980s he ran a stall at the Westport Flea Market in Kansas City, known as Bob's Bazaar Bizarre and lived alone at 4315 Charlotte Street. He was described in court proceedings as having a depressive personality disorder and sexual sadism disorder, according to the Wikipedia article. His case was the subject of Tom Jackman and Troy Cole's book Rites of Burial (1992) and Ben Meade's 2004 documentary Bazaar Bizarre.