INSIDE BERDELLA IT FESTERED

Can a man brutally mutilate someone yet still show glimpses of humanity? How much pain must he inflict on his victims before he is aroused and his fantasy fulfilled? Did being raped by a man in an Ohio restaurant bring this monster to the surface? How long did that trauma fester? These are questions that will never be answered. The only one who could have answered them is dead— and deservedly so...

His name was Bob Berdella.

To the victims’ families perhaps death wasn’t a harsh enough punishment. But what else is there? Maybe they would have found their emotional scars healing more quickly had they seen Bob Berdella suffer as their loved ones had done.

Bob Berdella was a serial killer who committed some of the most brutal sex crimes and mutilations in history by luring men into his home, sodomizing them and then killing them, chopping their corpses into pieces, and then putting the remains out to the curb for the garbage men to take away. Is this typical behavior on the part of a serial killer? To an extent it is: Jeffrey Dahmer was a similar kind of lunatic, his methods bearing striking parallels. Ted Bundy’s process ranks up there with his peers. In fact many of the individuals who have slaughtered enough of the population to be considered serial killers have exhibited such behavior. But there is more that comprises the darkness that was The Butcher of Kansas City.

Robert Berdella was born in 1949 in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio and baptized a Catholic at twelve years old, although many years later he had stopped attending church altogether. He believed that his father liked his younger brother Daniel more than him and no one knows what effect that may have had on his psyche. When he was sixteen his father died of a sudden heart attack and, subsequently, Bob deplored his mother’s remarriage shortly after his father’s death. Could that have been one of the many incidents that set him off? Such delayed causes are possible. At eighteen, Bob Berdella embarked on a pattern of drug abuse and selling. He was busted numerous times and with a variety of drugs in his possession: alcohol, LSD, and marijuana among them. In fact, it was reported that many of his victims had been injected with sedatives and/or poisons so that he could control them and, more importantly, hold them captive and silent. Unable to scream for help or escape.

Like most serial killers, Bob Berdella seemed to be a man of intelligence, a man who excelled in academics (despite rumors of being hard to teach), and he possessed many talents: He ran a novelty shop (Bob’s Bizarre Bizarre) in Kansas City and was also an accomplished cook who worked with an association that taught the culinary arts to aspiring chefs. He also enrolled in the Kansas City Art Institute in 1967 only to drop out less than two years later. A paradox: This disturbed human being, this madman, had even donated his time to organize a local crime prevention group. This kind of pattern is odd and misleading for a man who later in life unleashed his wrath so violently; it can also be construed as downright calculating, depending on what perspective one takes.

We can only think out loud here but is it possible that the days spent around cutlery had an impact on him? Did it make him think about how he would one day saw off a human head and bury it in the yard or display the skulls in his home, as he had done many times? Did he feel something changing inside him while he helped develop the neighborhood crime watch? Was there something about those he tried to protect that set off his rage and drove him to maim and kill? Perhaps he encountered a type of person that he liked to imagine torturing and carving in his wildest fantasies. All of this may have been pure research— his own self-discovery. True, these are just a series of variables to think about but that’s all the world is left with: endless questions and perplexing theories. After all, we can’t deny that many who were acquainted with Berdella agreed that he was an easy going, well-mannered man: He was liked in person, at work, and around town. However, underneath the surface, in the places where no one else could see, where no one had access, there seemed to be a “switch” of some kind waiting to be flicked on in this kind of beast; and when the wrong wires cross in the human mind, the fuse is ignited: human decency and reasoning cease to function.

Bob Berdella, like other murderers, behaved in ways that baffle, confuse, and frighten; he committed acts that although vile and unforgivable on every level can never be fully explained, which is why the populace is drawn to these stories and researches them assiduously. Even the experts, profilers, and the media can only form educated guesses and make suppositions. The reality is this: Maybe only Bob Berdella himself had the answers to the carnage he left behind.

Sometime before he reached 30, Bob Berdella admitted to being a homosexual and began taking men back to his residence from bars and clubs. They were offered the chance to live with him and he persuaded them to turn away from prostitution. Strange, indeed.

But years later the horrifying yet inevitable transformation took place. The roots of insanity that were once deeply established had been severed. The beast within Bob Berdella was loose and he no longer could hold his feelings of depravity in check. It was time to carry out his desires. He drugged one of the prostitutes he’d met (Jerry Howell), then raped and gagged him repeatedly until he died. Howell was hanged in the basement and his blood was drained. Howell was one of many who succumbed to the twisted visions of this renowned butcher.

For years to follow this was Bob Berdella’s way of life, his warped existence: injecting his victims with harmful drugs, deriving sexual pleasure from them in the most heinous ways, and chopping them to bits and hiding the remains. This was the kind of maniac he became. Such crimes seem to have been the only outlet he could achieve the pleasure he craved.

At 39 years old Bob Berdella was sent to jail. He died in prison from a heart attack at age 43. His disgusting crimes will never be forgotten. Currently, a film about his life and his crimes is in the works. More information about the film is available on the worldwide web.

Prepare yourselves, ladies and gentlemen, and keep an important reality in mind: These crimes were only a fraction of the brutality committed by one cunning man. Countless deeply disturbed human beings exist everywhere, just like Bob Berdella— in fact, possibly worse. The most horrifying truth of all this is ... no one knows who will be the next victim.