American Serial Killer Robert Berdella: Bizarre Bob

Active between 1984 and 1987, Robert Berdella's murderous escapades foreshadow those of Jeffrey Dahmer who would kill most of his victims from 1987 through 1991. In Berdella's case, however, the police took the story of the first escaped victim seriously and this led to the killer's immediate arrest and eventual conviction. In Dahmer's case, the story of teenage victim Konerak Sinthasomphone would be ignored and Dahmer would remain free to kill again and again.

In the spring of 1988, a man wearing nothing but a dog collar with a red leash attached leaped from a second story window of a suburban Kansas City Charlotte Street residence. Eventually he found his way to the nearest police station where he disgorged a story of abuse, torture and murder that would turn the peaceful community upside down. Police investigated his claims immediately and soon found Robert Berdella, a man who would later admit to being influenced by John Fowles' The Collector to such an extent that he had felt compelled to start his own collection of dead bodies... They also found Bob's collection of oddities in the Charlotte Street house including a human skull, two envelopes full of teeth, a packet of human vertebrae, boxes of Polaroid photographs of young men in extremely compromising positions and a notebook that was later shown to contain descriptions of each torture session and murder in excruciating detail. Such content would rival that of the small curio shop that Berdella had owned, aptly named Bob's Bizarre Bazaar.

The police immediately launched a full investigation, which led to their discovery of, among other things, a decomposing head in Berdella's back yard. This head was later identified as having belonged to Larry Pearson, a local young man, possibly active in the gay community, who had been missing for some time. Plans to try Berdella for the murder of Pearson became superfluous, however, when Berdella pled guilty to the crime. The skull found inside the house was then identified as having belonged to Robert Sheldon, another young man whose background was disturbingly similar to Pearson's. A second murder charge was duly brought against Berdella, who did not admit guilt this time but rather offered the prosecution full details of all the other murders he had committed in exchange for their abandoning the death penalty sought for the Sheldon murder. The question now became what was better: a full confession solving who knew how many murders or only the possibility that Berdella would be found guilty in only the Sheldon case.

The plea bargain was accepted; Berdella wrote out his full confession and, in December 1988, the prosecution and defense both sat through his rather self-indulgent reading of this 717 page document. Berdella pleaded guilty to a total of six murders and was immediately imprisoned. In what seems like a travesty of justice, however, he died in jail of what was deemed to be natural causes after serving only four and a half years of his prison sentence. It has been rumored that he was murdered - again like Dahmer - but, so far, no evidence has been put forward to support this theory.

Before he died, he often, and vociferously, complained about the presence of cockroaches in his jail cell. Nobody took any notice of him but, then again, had he taken any notice of his victims' pleas for mercy?

Sources:
Robert Berdella Wikipedia
Katherine Ramsland Bob Berdella: The Kansas City Butcher TruTV Crime Library
Constitution Tribune