Robert Berdella's Jailhouse Interview, Kansas City Public Television, 1989

Name: Robert Berdella's Jailhouse Interview, Kansas City Public Television, 1989
Uploaded: 2024-03-17
Duration: 55 min 51 s
Description: Two weeks after pleading guilty to six murders, Robert Berdella gave his first interview, denying the Satanism rumors and blaming the police and the press.

Two weeks after pleading guilty to six murders, Robert Berdella gave his first interview, denying the Satanism rumors and blaming the police and the press.

Subject: Robert Andrew Berdella Jr.
Interviewer: Jim McKinley
Recorded: January 2, 1989
Program: Kansas City Illustrated
Broadcaster: KCPT, Kansas City Public Television
Runtime: 55:51

Content warning: in this recording the speaker talks about his own violent crimes.

The Interview

In January 1989 Kansas City's public television station, KCPT, broadcast the first interview Robert Berdella gave after pleading guilty to the murders of six young men. It aired on "Kansas City Illustrated", the station's weekly local news magazine, as a full program: an introduction, about half an hour of edited interview, and a studio conversation with the Jackson County prosecutor who had taken Berdella's pleas.

The interview was conducted by Jim McKinley, a professor of English at the University of Missouri-Kansas City who wrote about crime and contributed regularly to the program. It was recorded on Monday, January 2, 1989, in a room at the Jackson County Jail, two days before Berdella was moved into the state prison system. McKinley told viewers that KCPT had not sought the interview, that no conditions were attached and that no money was paid, and that he had deliberately avoided the gruesome details of the case.

Historical Context

Berdella, who ran a booth called Bob's Bazaar Bizarre at the Westport Flea Market, was arrested on April 2, 1988, after a young man escaped from his house on Charlotte Street wearing only a dog collar. Investigators found evidence that Berdella had held, drugged, tortured and killed men in the house over several years. In August 1988 he pleaded guilty to the first-degree murder of Larry Pearson. On December 19, 1988, he pleaded guilty to one more first-degree murder and four second-degree murders, accounting for six victims in all. He was sentenced to life in prison. The case had drawn national attention, including coverage in a Geraldo Rivera television special on Satanism. In this program the prosecutor criticizes the special, and Berdella criticizes a police officer who appeared on it.

Circumstances of the Interview

The interview came two weeks after the December pleas, at the moment Berdella moved from county custody to the state system. The interviewer notes that he had refused all interviews until then. He says he chose KCPT because he believed the city's newspapers and television stations depended too heavily on the police to be objective. The interview works through police reports and photographs, including a copy of one of the pages police had called his diaries.

What the Interview Covers

Most of the interview is Berdella's rebuttal of how the case was reported. He denies any involvement in Satanism or witchcraft and disputes, item by item, the objects and rumors that fed those stories, from an embroidered garment described as a ceremonial robe to a sculpture described as a throne. He rejects the description of his notes as meticulous diaries, calling them "sheets of paper" and notes. He denies rumors from the flea market that he served or made jewelry from human remains.

He accuses the police of failing to connect him to earlier missing-person cases and of tolerating the area around 10th and McGee, a known site of male and female prostitution, and he says that had they done their jobs, he might have been "scared off". He admits that he was disturbed at the time of the killings, says he is being treated for depression, and says he has signed over the majority of any income from book or film rights to a trust for the victims' families. He declines to say why he committed the crimes. Near the end, the interviewer reads the names of the six victims.

In the studio, Prosecutor Albert Riederer disputes much of what Berdella said. He describes the notes kept on each of the six victims, says there was no evidence that the killings involved Satanism, defends the police investigation, and explains why his office accepted guilty pleas instead of seeking the death penalty.

What Makes the Recording Significant

This is the only full-length television interview with Berdella that this project found in circulation, and he gave it at a precise moment: after his pleas and before he disappeared into the prison system, where he died in 1992. It shows him as he chose to present himself, articulate, combative and focused on his treatment by the press and the police. At one point he compares the media's treatment of him to the way he treated his victims, as something less than human. The program also preserves the prosecutor's point-by-point response on the same broadcast, which gives viewers the official account alongside Berdella's claims.

Archival Importance

The program is a complete piece of 1980s local public-affairs television, kept intact with its introduction, the editorial explanation of why KCPT aired it, and the prosecutor's reply. The copies in circulation are home recordings of the original broadcast. One is held by the Internet Archive, and the same recording has been posted to YouTube. It is a primary record of how a major Kansas City case was covered and contested at the time.

Important Caveats

Berdella's accusations against the police and the press, his description of his notes and his claims about the rumors are his own statements. The prosecutor rejects several of them on the same program. Berdella's claim that he held Larry Pearson for five days, not the longer period reported, is his assertion. The recording is a VHS copy made off air, and the broadcast date is inferred rather than documented. The YouTube upload comes from a channel linked to a seller of crime memorabilia, which is not affiliated with KCPT.

Announcer: Local support for this program on KCPT has been provided in part by United Telecom and its long-distance company US Sprint.

Randy Mason (host): Good evening, and welcome to Kansas City Illustrated. I'm Randy Mason, sitting in for John Masterman. Normally, our weekly news magazine offers up a variety of reports on topics of local interest. Some of them light, some of them heavy. For example, in 1988, Kansas City Illustrated brought you in-depth stories about the city's growing problems with crack, about arson, AIDS, and a string of unsolved prostitute murders. This week, as you probably know, we're presenting the first interview with convicted murderer Robert A. Berdella. Not a pleasant topic, but one that given the opportunity to learn from, we felt we could not turn down. The man who did that interview is Jim McKinley, professor of English at UMKC, and a regular contributor to Kansas City Illustrated. Jim has written books and articles about crime and criminals, including a 1977 interview with James Earl Ray. At the conclusion of the roughly 30-minute edited interview, Jackson County prosecutor Albert Riederer will join me in the studio with his thoughts on the matter. Jim?

Jim McKinley: Before you view my interview with Robert Berdella, I should say something about how and why KCPT did this interview. First, neither KCPT nor I sought this interview. It came with no strings attached, no conditions for the interview were put on KCPT, and no money was paid for the interview. to the interview. Second, as to the why. KCPT and I decided to do the interview only after being assured that solid journalistic matters would be raised, including Berdella's allegations against public servants in the press and his at least partial revelation of his personality, his guilt, and his motives. As to tone, I purposely avoided all sensational details of the case, all for gore and horror, striving instead for a straightforward questioning of the serial murderer whose case will be discussed in this city for years to come. In such cases, my experience and the experience of many journalists suggests that the public is best served by knowledge rather than ignorance and blind hatred. Lastly, the setting. I conducted this interview in a room at the Jackson County Jail on Monday, January 2nd, two days before Robert Berdella was moved to the Department of Corrections, Admissions, and Diagnostics Center in Fulton, Missouri. *[The recorded interview at the Jackson County Jail begins.]*

Jim McKinley: Mr. Berdella, you're sitting here as a man who's gonna spend the rest of his life in prison. You'll confess to the murder of six young men in this city and crimes that horrified the city and much of the country. You've confessed to, in various degrees, felonious restraint, drugging people, sexually abusing them, torturing them, killing them, dismembering them. And until now, you've refused all interviews. So in light of all those facts, I have to ask you, why are you here? What is it you have to say to us? What is it you want to say about yourself in this case?

Robert Berdella: Well, I've had the media clamoring to get interviews with me. And after I made my last plea, I wanted to get at least part of my side of it out. I filed it very hard to find any way to do that in Kansas City. The media is so biased, in my case, that I really could not find any form to express to express some of my concerns, I couldn't even find a reporter that I thought could be objective. One of the reasons I approached TV-19 is that I came to the conclusion that the newspapers and the TV stations were so dependent upon the police for their stories [from captions: news um excuse me upon the] and the information on the stories that they were in no position to be objective.

Jim McKinley: Your prosecutors, and I do want to quote this, when you came to plead, call your crimes wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman.

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] When was this done?

Jim McKinley: [speaker attribution uncertain] I believe in documents associated with the Sheldon charges.

Jim McKinley: To repeat that quote from the prosecution, these crimes were wantonly vile, horrible, or inhuman.

Robert Berdella: I think if you check with just about any attorney you'll find that that is the standard clause that's used when they went to build a case for Capital One with the death penalty.

Jim McKinley: Without the legalism, would you agree that those crimes are wantonly vile or inhuman?

Robert Berdella: I won't disagree.

Jim McKinley: One of the things you said to me before we began this televised interview was, I want to show that I am not as presented, and one of the main ways in which you have been presented, at least in the media, and I suppose those reports stem from, in some ways, police sources, is as an advocate of and practitioner in Satanism and witchcraft. Is this true?

Robert Berdella: Not only is it not true, I found it very offensive, and I have seen in the stars... And I have seen in The Star and Times, Letters to the Editor, a cartoon by Lee Judge, and I happen to enjoy the cartoon, stating that I am this cold, hard, emotionless individual. And letters to the editor, comments by reporters build upon that basis. I would have to look at the public and tell them that if they believe, laugh. And then there is still things that offend me. They should question themselves if lay if I'm not offended.

Jim McKinley: Are you saying you feel remorse or that you've been misunderstood?

Robert Berdella: I'm not going to sit here with my finger to my chin and say nobody understands me. Yes, there has been a lot of remorse for Sergeant Cole to be at the three days of deposition and come out and say he saw no sign of remorse. It's as inaccurate as all the other statements that Sergeant Cole has made, both to the newspaper before the testimony and after the testimony.

Narrator: Berdella claims that the sensational speculations of satanic practices had been fueled by police and media reports, implying that Berdella played demonic music, owned a ritual throne and fetish objects, and made animal sacrifices. Using police reports and photos, Berdella disputed every such allegation.

Jim McKinley: What about the ceremonial robe as often mentioned?

Robert Berdella: Well, I'm trying to figure out which robe. There's supposedly something hanging above a bed. Okay, that's very easy. I have that one here. This is a Afghanistan peasant shirt showing every embroidery in such a very ingenious way of ornamentation, like using one side. of a zipper for intricate little metal pieces.

Jim McKinley: And this is not a satanic ceremonial robe?

Robert Berdella: In no way, shape, or form.

Jim McKinley: Did you have a satanic throne in your house?

Robert Berdella: I had nothing that could even be described as a throne in my house. The only thing that they may have been pointing to, which was outside in the yard, is a chair, if you will, made out of a sculptural piece by John Buck, who is now a nationally known artist. He was a student at the Art Institute at that time. This piece used to stand on a metal pole on the Art Institute grounds on its side. He built it into a chair, if you will.

Jim McKinley: Did you put bird carcasses in jars and bury them in your backyard?

Robert Berdella: No. I think if we hid those photographs here, and I hope we'll have them by the time this goes to air, they will support my intention that these jars have been buried in my backyard for decades. They are very old, they some fruit jars, the lids are nothing more than rust and corrosion and mud at this point.

Jim McKinley: Did you write magical incantations and satanic verse?

Robert Berdella: The only notebooks, no, they found one folder stored away in the bottom of a chest of drawers, and all the other papers in that folder were from the 1969-71 period. They did find, in fact, a handwritten incantation, a script for a black mass, if you will.

Narrator: Black mass intended, Berdella said, as a prank to be played on what he called Jesus Freaks, who lived around the corner in the early 1970s, and one that was never performed. Berdella protested that the police and reporters mistook his collection of primitive art for occult materials materials and pointed out that in fact he had a crucifix in the so-called satanic torture chamber.

Jim McKinley: Another report was that you kept detailed torture logs and diaries. Did you?

Robert Berdella: I kept sheets of paper that I had made some notations on. This is between the mattress and springs on my bed.

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] This is one of those

Robert Berdella: packages containing a numerous photographs and what became to be known as meticulous methodical diaries.

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] Those pieces of paper in there are these

Robert Berdella: meticulous diaries.

Jim McKinley: [speaker attribution uncertain] These are the pictures of the more than 200 photographs,

Jim McKinley: some of them of young men, sexual partners, and these are in some ways and these that we see here are the sheets of paper upon which you made notes.

Jim McKinley: [speaker attribution uncertain] This is a copy

Jim McKinley: of one of those pages. It looks like loose leaf paper. It does contain information about amounts of drugs and so on. So what is your complaint with the police calling these detailed diaries? By your evaluation, does this look methodical?

Robert Berdella: Doesn't look methodical.

Jim McKinley: Meticulous?

Robert Berdella: It looks a little sloppy. They are not the bound in the Corinthian leather, written on parchment diaries that the media apparently tries to describe them as. The sheets of paper are notes.

Jim McKinley: You recall we mentioned before that there were reports in the Westport flea market where you had your shop that people would say oh yes I do remember you had these strange smelling dishes of food that he had bead bones and later on the bones and later on there was speculation, at least in the community and in some aspects of the media, that the remains of your victim were somehow being transported and prepared as meals and prepared as jewelry in your shop. Was that good report? Or was that false?

Robert Berdella: They based that information on the two phone calls that they got from a 16-year-old young man, the son of one of the dealers in the flea market, who for a reason known only to him made statements such as that about the food. I was quickly able to identify to the police the other dealers in that section of the market where we rotated potluck rather than eat the flea market food again. And that you could question any of these people may be able to tell you that the food was good. There was nothing suspect about turkey or ham or beef. It was in these dishes. This is the same kid that testified, made a phone call to the officers and said that I was cutting up the bones of my victims to making the jewelry and beads.

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] He did not do that.

Robert Berdella: When you can buy a bone bead made from a camel bone, et cetera, for two or three cents wholesale, you'd have to spend 45, 50 minutes to make that bone bead. You do not spend that kind of time to make bone beads for jewelry unless perhaps you were doing it for ceremonial purposes, which may have occurred. First of all, I never found any evidence of any kind of tools, equipment, et cetera, to make these beads. And in the bone beads that were in the shop and were around the house, it surprised me that they never took any...

Jim McKinley: So the answer is no. You did not take your victim's bones or any of the other bones, the beads on them.

Robert Berdella: That's correct.

Jim McKinley: So the sum of this is, and please correct me if I'm wrong, that you deny the police allegations and the newspaper and other media reports that you are a Satanist, that you engaged in witchcraft.

Robert Berdella: That's correct. They have produced not a single piece of evidence, not a single valid interview that could be shown to be truthful.

Jim McKinley: The point is that there's a hysteria. Do you think that hysteria about Satanism infected the police department in their investigation?

Robert Berdella: Oh yes, there's no question about that. You have specific officers like this McGee that was on the Rivera show that I don't think tried to hide his religious beliefs or be objective in this investigation at all. I don't really know how to explain it, put it into terms they might understand. It was okay for me to be built, for people to believe that I committed these acts out of being in the league with the devil or Satanism. Okay. What if I use that as a defense? Do I wash my hands of all my crimes after exposing myself to an exorcism or two?

Narrator: Besides charging that the police encourage rumors of Satanism, Berdella faults the department for a haphazard investigation of him and of the missing young men. For example, he said when he was arrested in 1984 for drugs, The police failed to connect him to a prior drug arrest in 1969. Berdella further contends that despite police assertions that he had long been a prime suspect in the Jerry Howell and other cases, The police could not locate the Howell file and did not start a file on him until after his arrest.

Jim McKinley: When did they assemble the file on Robert A. Berdella, to your knowledge?

Robert Berdella: To the best of my knowledge, April 6, 1988.

Jim McKinley: That would make it, what, three or four days after you were apprehended?

Robert Berdella: That's correct.

Jim McKinley: After the young man escaped from your house wearing, as they say in the newspapers, only a dog collar?

Robert Berdella: That's correct. I now pull out report to page 221 in the police file in regards to the Walter Ferris disappearance and missing person investigation. Until I told those detectives that I had been questioned in the Jerry Howell investigation, they were not aware that I had been investigated in any other missing person.

Jim McKinley: So again, there was no connection made?

Robert Berdella: None whatsoever. And even when I did tell them, they did nothing to follow it up.

Jim McKinley: Walter James Ferris, I should add, is another young man to whom he pled guilty of murder.

Robert Berdella: That's correct. When I went to the hospital in August of 1987 with a human bite to my penis, I tried to turn in a complaint to the police department for the specific reason of developing an alibi. The officer that took my complaint really acted like he was rather awkward at being there, who's a young rookie. On his part, there's probably no reason to believe that it went any further than a few locker room jokes that night. but then when the report was turned in, if there was any kind of report on me, any kind of foul, any kind of investigative work that had been done, you would think that this would pop up a red flag or two. But it did not. This is not a usual circumstance.

Jim McKinley: And this fight was inflicted by Larry W. Pearson, another of your victims.

Robert Berdella: That's correct.

Jim McKinley: And again, you're saying that the police made no connection between the report of this incident and their subsequent investigation of you.

Robert Berdella: That's correct.

Narrator: Berdella's charges of police laxness led him to, as he put it, join the families in calling for an independent probe of the police investigation. And echoing rumors rampant in the city, Berdella accused the police of covering up sexual behavior by police officers that was, he said, similar to his own.

Robert Berdella: In the records, whenever the investigation came to a point that there may have been an officer involved, a police officer of any kind, the investigation did not pursue those points. And they asked me no questions during this testimony about events related to the police's investigation of my case.

Jim McKinley: Are you saying that there might have been involved allied with yours?

Robert Berdella: Not allied with mine. I want to make that clear. We have several reports here where they know that one of my previous sex partners, an individual that lived with me off and on for about three years, had been, after he left me, living with a police officer off and on again for seven years. for several years I'm sorry.

Jim McKinley: Well Mr. Berdella how is that material to your case are you suggesting there should be some link from your sex partner to the police officer and from that to another police department?

Robert Berdella: No the police when they questioned anybody it appears in my case asked if there was any kind of sexual involvement personal involvement etc. And I don't think they should back off from asking those questions just because it's against the good old boy policy of covering up for one of their own even if it's just a matter of shall we say dirty underwear.

Jim McKinley: So it's not so much a question of this being material to your case as being a lead that you feel the police should have followed up in cases that might be similar to yours.

Robert Berdella: Yes from what I can gain through the police reports there are enough comments to indicate that maybe they these people aren't going to the same lengths as I went to but they are say we're saying into some of the stages that I went through before I got involved with victims.

Jim McKinley: You said I want the police to explain why they allow the loved ones of families to die in the convenient area of 10th and McGee. What does that mean?

Robert Berdella: It has been my understanding both from knowing people down at 10th and McGee and even talking to the defense attorneys here and some of the guards. The 10th and McGee which is a known spot for male prostitution and female prostitution and prostitution usually based on the need for money to buy drugs and not all of the victims of my victims were involved with the prostitution attempt to McGee but I don't think any family of my victims, or anybody else that has been killed, now related to 10th and McGee, are going to be happy to find out that their loved one is basically written off by the police as far as investigations go, etc. Because they died in a convenient neighborhood, the police knew what was going on, so it's no big deal.

Jim McKinley: And that accounts for your remark to me, and I don't mean at all to make light of it, that I killed six, but they, the police, by allowing this to stay open, they killed more.

Robert Berdella: Yes. This has been something that's been going on for over 20 years, to my knowledge. And the most harassment, the most the police get involved is just chasing these kids off. By kids, I mean 18 to 25 year olds. There has, to my knowledge, never been an effort made to control this area.

Jim McKinley: It seems to me that you're suggesting that had the police done their job, had they followed the leads, had they really been on your case prior to April 2nd, 1988, they would have caught you, and some of this suffering could have been prevented,

Robert Berdella: maybe not caught me.

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] Scared me off, maybe, prevented things from happening after how?

Robert Berdella: [speaker attribution uncertain] Definitely.

Jim McKinley: In a way, do you wish they had?

Robert Berdella: Yes.

Narrator: Berdella's accusations of the police were matched by his complaints about media coverage, yet he clearly relished the publicity. For example, disputing police and newspaper reports that he held and tortured Larry W. Pearson for 43 days. He only tortured Pearson for five days, he told us. And he was especially interested in reports that his crimes were influenced by a movie, The Collector, in which a disturbed man kidnaps a young woman and imprisons her until she dies.

Robert Berdella: I pointed out the things in my background. The retrospect may have some importance. I never said that the movie made me do it. I would point out some more, I guess, significant events in my youth. As a child, I watched Rex Humbard in the Cathedral of Tomorrow, which was out of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio, the town where I grew up. I went to high school. I tried hot-socking. Any of these events had a much greater influence on me than a movie that I watched once when I was maybe 17 or 18.

Jim McKinley: Let me go to a specific incident that you have mentioned. There's a report, a long report, on April 10th, not long after your apprehension and detention, in which two newspaper reporters, as part of their coverage, mentioned that your neighbors had noticed marked changes in your behavior in recent years. The neighbors were quoted as saying that you've grown more reclusive. The word paranoid was used by one of your neighbors, and that in general, the Robert A. Berdella that people had known as a community activist in some ways, perhaps an eccentric man, but certainly one well within the bounds of society, now was becoming stranger and stranger. Do you think that those findings by those newspaper reporters should have been the lead toward a more comprehensive investigation of your history, your mental state, any changes in you?

Robert Berdella: Well, see, you've just used the dirty word, word, mental. The media has been able to banter about unchallenged with things like Satanism, demonic worship. demonic worship, human sacrifice, but they can't bring themselves to say mental illness. The star has in fact an editorial that I basically say I'm not good enough to be mentally ill. Specifically they use the logic that most mentally ill people are not dangerous or violent. I took logic in elementary grades, studied reason in high school, and it does not turn around to say that most violent people are mentally healthy. It should be the reverse of their art.

Jim McKinley: Are you suggesting that you were in some ways disturbed off balance a little bit at the time of these incidents?

Robert Berdella: I think we conclude that that is an acceptable statement, yes.

Jim McKinley: How did you feel when you learned that not long after your arrest, the local radio stations, two of them at least, were running a Bob Berdella parody song and were asking people to come to parties wearing dog collars?

Robert Berdella: Well I think the newspaper article reported that even the families of the victims were upset by the song. I have never had a chance to hear the song. I had also been told when I first came into jail that the Fox radio station had run a promo giving prizes to their listeners if they showed up at the station in a dog collar and with a leash. The people here in the institution, the correctional officers, the caseworker, even the psychiatrist, were I think surprised to find out that that upset me.

Jim McKinley: But it did upset you?

Robert Berdella: Very much so. It marked in this case the initial victim. It wasn't mocking me to speak up. it was going directly after the victim.

Jim McKinley: What else about newspaper coverage since that has been your access to media has has bothered you other than perhaps things like the call for your execution.

Robert Berdella: Well the police the the media from the beginning took the evidence as the police gave it to them or reinterpreted themselves and basically tried me and found me guilty from the beginning of crimes of the most horrendous nature and put it in the most horrendous light.

Jim McKinley: Do you think they were too graphic too sensational?

Robert Berdella: Well I'm in no way trying to distract from the crimes that I am guilty of. I have gone to court and taken responsibility for that. I would point out to the public and to the media that basically they are going to portray me as being non-human and their motivation is no separate from what the way I treated my victims. I treated them as something less than human. It's nothing more than a play toy or not a play object. This is what the media has done to dehumanize me so that it can lead along with the public that things like human sacrifice, sex Satanism, demonic practices are more believable than leaving the neighbor next door, reach the point in his life where he could do monstrous acts. That's not the same thing as being a monster.

Jim McKinley: Bill Tamais and one piece that appeared in the newspapers suggested that your problem was a problem of humanity. There was a problem of the evil that perhaps is in all of us. In this case, got out of the bottle, escaped into the world. Is that true? Do you feel that way?

Robert Berdella: I'm not going to say I feel that way. I can't say that's one of the very few articles in the star or times that attempted to step back and be objective. And I can't fault him for that.

Jim McKinley: There was a report in the Sunday Kansas City Star in December about the dangers you might face after you leave the Jackson County Correction Facility and are moved to another larger prison. How do you feel about reports like that? Do they make you anxious?

Robert Berdella: They didn't give me some reason for concern, but one of the reasons I'm concerned is that these were not just reports. These were digging out quotes from unnamed prosecutors implying that the inmates down there are waiting to get their hands on me. I am at this point less concerned about the inmates acting on their own as opposed to the inmates or the inmates acting in response to maybe some directive or coercion from some police officers.

Jim McKinley: Do you think you're being set up perhaps?

Robert Berdella: I think the star and times, since they haven't been able to get a court to put me to death, are now trying to get the inmates to do it for them.

Jim McKinley: Have you suffered from depression, from exhilaration? Are you medicated for any of these things?

Robert Berdella: I'm medicated for depression and given a little sleep pill. giving a little sleep pill, just enough to help me get to sleep in the evening. I'm giving that because it makes such a tremendous difference in my attitude and my behavior if I can get at least a decent night's sleep.

Jim McKinley: What do you suppose is the cause of your depression? What do you think it is? I know you're visited by caseworkers and you see a psychologist.

Robert Berdella: Anybody that's gone through what I've had to go through just to get to this point, to where I could sit down across from the prosecutors. I've had to work at maintaining and developing my mental health, my mental emotions.

Jim McKinley: Is it allied with remorse? Does it stem from the nature of what you've done or does it come as a combination of that and the realization that you'll spend the rest of your life in prison or do you know?

Robert Berdella: When I walked into this facility, before that, before when I was in the city jail for the two days before they brought me over here, I understood clearly that I wouldn't be seeing the outside again. That's an easier conclusion for somebody that's 39 or 40 than it is for some 18 or 19 year old kid. It's easier for me to deal with that kind of determination of where my life would be going. Hell yes, I'm depressed. I'd be crazy if I wasn't.

Jim McKinley: The names, when we called the roll, Larry W. Pearson, Robert A. Sheldon, Gerald D. Howell, Walter James Ferris, Todd Stoops, and Mark Wallace, young men mentioned in your pleas. Would you have something to say to the families, not just to families of your victims, but to families in general or perhaps to the families of your victims? Would you say something to them? Do you have some message for them?

Robert Berdella: I've already given them that message in my statement. They have, I believe, been informed of that. statement. It surprises me that the media did not handle that stronger. But since one of the points in that statement was that the families have the right to have a time to their own private group.

Jim McKinley: Are you talking about your final statement?

Robert Berdella: Yes.

Jim McKinley: But I gather you would want to do more than that as an individual. You would want to speak to the families.

Robert Berdella: No, I didn't indicate that. It is not my position to go into the families and try to motivate, not excuse me, motivate, but influence their feelings. The families in my view are the only ones that have a legitimate case who want to hate me, have anger toward me. They don't need my help or the media's help in dealing with those feelings.

Jim McKinley: Did you not say, I do understand the nature of my crimes and I don't take them lightly?

Robert Berdella: That's correct.

Jim McKinley: You do understand what you do.

Robert Berdella: Yes.

Jim McKinley: And you're willing to take, and in fact you must take the consequences.

Robert Berdella: I'm going to be in prison for the rest of my life. I signed over the majority of all income from any book rights, movie rights, into a trust fund for the families. To do this, I've literally had to sell everything I've ever owned. I think I'd say I'd take it seriously. *[Interview ends. McKinley's closing remarks.]*

Jim McKinley: A final word about this encounter with Robert Berdella. Throughout my talks with him, he refused to answer direct questions about why exactly he committed his crimes. But as you see, he says he was not possessed by Satan. He says he was mentally disturbed when he murdered and that he was able to kill because he saw his victims as inhuman, as mere objects. And so you've seen that Berdella is a cunning, megalomaniacal, twisted and pathetic man. But he is not a made-in-Hollywood horror. This was Nightmare on Charlotte Street, not Nightmare on Elm Street. Berdella is a man disfigured though he is by his peculiar mind and his monstrous acts. That he is a man, not a demon, illuminates a dark side of human nature and one we should resolve as much as possible to reform and suppress. Thus, I believe Berdella's sordid story is a cautionary tale and as such deserves this airing rather than appearing as a cheap tabloid offering at your supermarket checkout or at your local video store.

Randy Mason (host): Thank you, Jim. In just a moment, Jackson County prosecutor Albert Riederer joins us in the studio with his response to the interview. And we continue on Kansas City Illustrated. *[Preview of next week's program.]*

Program Preview: Coming up on the next edition of Kansas City Illustrated, we'll focus on development, medicine and lifestyles. Bartle Hall expansion. Everyone agrees Bartle needs to be bigger. A question is where and how it should be expanded. Some, including the son of billionaire H. Ross Perot, think expansion should go directly south across the freeway. And he's promised to build an international trade center if the city goes along with his plan. Martha Lally will examine medical malpractice. Malpractice is becoming as big a problem in Missouri and Kansas as in the rest of the country and the stakes are getting higher. And Carol Whittaker looks into the phenomenon of quartz crystals. They're beautiful, symbolic of the New Age movement and they've become very popular. Is there such a thing as rock power or are these just rocks? These stories and more next time on Kansas City Illustrated, Tuesday night at nine.

Randy Mason (host): I do have to say that in the week or so that I've been involved with this experience, first sitting in on the interview and then spending a lot of time. viewing and reviewing these tapes for editing that it has been a profoundly disturbing experience. With me now is Jackson County prosecutor Albert Riederer who has just viewed the tape and will be talking about his response to it. I know for you it's been a disturbing experience now for something like nine months. I'm curious after watching the tape today what kind of reaction did you have to it? *[Studio interview with Prosecutor Albert Riederer.]*

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I suppose my initial reaction really is that the thing that your viewers have seen just now is a person who himself deserves no response. I really want to make this response because I think the citizens of this community deserve to have a different point of view and to have the point of view of law enforcement on this whole matter. I think perhaps the interviewer said it best you have viewed a person who is cunning who is a megalomaniac and who is twisted and I think that's all it needs to be said about him and so my reaction really is based on the desire to speak to some of the issues around this case so that people can understand those.

Randy Mason (host): Well in December when the decisions were made to take the guilty pleas you spent something like three days with Robert Berdella. Did you see the same sort of responses that you saw in the tape today?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I think so and I think I came to basically the same conclusion Mr. McKinley did that he's twisted that he's cunning that he's smart. One of the things that that really comes out in this is the splitting of hairs saying things like well this wasn't a detailed log or this wasn't a diary this was just a page of notes. The fact of the matter is there were pages of notes on each of the six victims and if they weren't detailed they were this at least they contained the time of certain acts the time of certain actions, such as the injection of drugs. They contain the responses of the victims to those injections, and they contain descriptions of the sexual acts that were performed on these people and their responses, if any, to those. Now, you may not want to call that a detailed diary or a log, but that's what was there.

Randy Mason (host): I want to talk more about the Satanism angle in a moment. But getting back to those three days, he claims he did express remorse during that time, and that has been incorrectly reported. What did you see?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I can tell you that we asked repeatedly whether he felt any remorse. There was never a direct answer that said, yes, I do. At one time, in the process of answering that question, he did break down and cross. So I suppose that that is an indication that there's some kind of an emotional reaction going on. But again, he never said remorse. And he may well feel remorse, but he has the remorse of a crook that got caught.

Randy Mason (host): You decided to take the guilty pleas. Why exactly, given the possibilities of the death sentence that many people would like to see carried out, why did you do what you did?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well, I would have liked to see a death sentence carried out myself, and I would have gladly done it after talking to him for three days and hearing the details of the most incredible crimes that he could imagine. But the facts are really, I think there are two values, two factors that came into play in our decision. First is that with respect to the four homicides that we filed on the last day of the plea, we had no evidence whatsoever. And there was no way to even get an indictment on those crimes, let alone any kind of a conviction. On the other two cases, it was my judgment that we would never have been able to sustain a death penalty given the evidence that we had. The best that we could have hoped for, the best, would have been to get life in prison without the possibility of parole. So we felt like we wanted to at least get that, because that was the best we could get with the evidence we had. On top of that, though, was the question of what do you do about the other families that are involved, the families of these four victims on whom we had no evidence. And those families, in talking with some of them, it became clear that they would like this outcome, because there are other things that would have been helped by that. For example, getting a death certificate to get insurance proceeds, to get government benefits for the dependents of these dead people. And that, to me, is not a small thing. That was something that would help these families.

Randy Mason (host): The nuts and bolts of life going on is what you're saying played a part.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Yeah, and also, there is the fact that, in order for these families really to have any chance to heal, it seemed to me, and I think they expressed that too, that they had to know, for sure, what had happened to their sons and their brothers. And so really, I think that is what tipped the scales in favor of finding out exactly what had happened to these people, to try to help them process heal it and get beyond it somehow.

Randy Mason (host): The fact that you didn't have a case that you felt you could take that far, does that reflect on the police investigation?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): No, I think that one of the things about this police investigation was that it was as thorough as it could possibly have been. We knew that we had Mr. Berdella in jail on the sodomy charge, on a very solid charge. And we knew he wasn't going anywhere. We knew that we had the ability and the opportunity to take our time and to do it right. And I have to say that the police department, every single time they had a question about what they should be doing next or what about this or what about that. They came to us and said, they consulted with us and asked us. And together we worked out, I think, a very slow, very meticulous, and very methodical investigation. I don't know of anything that was not done in this investigation.

Randy Mason (host): Some of the families of the victims, though, have not been completely satisfied with some of the police procedures. There was the question of whether there was a file on Berdella going back to, say, four years before he was apprehended. What have you seen to answer those questions?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well, in the question, of whether there was a file in Berdella before April of last year, there definitely was not. Because in a missing person's case, the file is carried not under the name of the number of suspects that you might have. It's carried under the name of the person who has disappeared unless and until you get to the point where you know the person has died, has been killed. And we had no evidence that Jerry Howell, for example, had been killed. There simply was no evidence of that. And Mr. Berdella himself, the night that Jerry Howell was killed, which was about 24 hours after he was abducted, he immediately disposed of the body and all the instruments that he had used to dismember us. So even if the police had stormed Rupert the house, which they couldn't have done under our Constitution, but even if they'd done that, they would have found nothing.

Randy Mason (host): So you feel that the procedures ended up making the case that you had in a very methodical way. You're happy with the way things went from April to December.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Yeah, I don't think there's anything that the police could have done that they didn't do.

Randy Mason (host): We talked about Satanism a little bit. Well, in the interview it comes up often, and I know this is one instance where you split some from certain people in law enforcement. You found no evidence of Satanism

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): in my opinion. I don't think that the police investigation uncovered any evidence whatsoever. And I don't mean some evidence, but it was incredible evidence. [from captions: we encountered no evidence whatsoever that] any of these killings had anything to do with Satanism, cults, the occult, or anything. There just simply is no evidence. And really, the only person I disagree with on this is Mr. Rivera, who basically took no evidence and made it into 15 minutes on television.

Randy Mason (host): Are you feeling any personal satisfaction that he and NBC have had a falling out about this point?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Oh, not particularly. I think, you know, he's a charlatan, and I think he has been shown to be there.

Randy Mason (host): So as you sit here in December with the police behind you, with that special that made so much of the splice behind you, how do you assess these last nine months? Has it been for Albert Riederer an extremely tough time?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well, it's been a difficult case because of the extraordinary nature of the crimes that were involved, because of the consequences of that being that it's very high profile in the media and difficult to deal with. It's also because it is probably the most exhaustive and complete investigation that I've ever been through, and my years as prosecutor, and it's been a tough case. And it's also been one that's tough to call, because I'm no different from anybody else in the community. I would love to see him executed. I think what he did is abominable. There is no way to minimize the atrocity of what he did, regardless of what his demeanor is in the interview. You cannot minimize the inhumanity that this guy committed on other people. But in order to get to that death penalty, we would have to have more evidence in my judgment. So, you know, in that sense, I'm no different from anybody else, because I would love to see the plug pull on him.

Randy Mason (host): We talked about the missing men and the difficulty of getting files started and so forth. This brings up the issue of how can people disappear so readily and not be accounted for? Is this a subculture that, as we talked about... 10th and McGee is somewhat condoned by the police because they know that this homosexual prostitution goes on and basically are willing to let it go as long as it doesn't go further than that.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well, I don't think that the subculture of prostitution is condoned by the police. The police do, in fact, work within the framework of the laws that are given them to do something about prostitution. And 10th and McGee certainly is not the only area of this city that has prostitutes. And if you want to go into the geographic location where they are otherwise, we can do that too. But that whole thing is another example of this guy's twisted, cunning nature. Here somehow or another, it's the police's fault. That's crazy, it's his fault. He chose to do what he did and now he has to bear the responsibility, not because he has any remorse, but because, as I said, he's got the remorse of a crook that got caught. You know, he talked about, we need, as a city, to look at the question of prostitution. It is not the existence of prostitution that led Bob Berdella to do what he did. Bob Berdella chose to kill those people and he's got to bear the responsibility now that the police, whom he criticized, have done such a bad investigation that he's in jail for the rest of his life and will die in prison.

Randy Mason (host): [speaker attribution uncertain] You called him a big joke,

Randy Mason (host): a monumental, unprecedented example of ridiculousity. Well, his claim's about that it's somehow somebody else's responsibility. Is that a way that he deals with his guilt by somehow shifting that? Do you think it's just so incredibly overbearing at this point that he has to do that to even live another day?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I don't know why he does it. I can only tell you that it certainly is consistent with the three days of the talk that we had with him that there is a continuing, somehow a desire, conscious or otherwise, to shift somehow the blame to other people. It's the victim's fault because they were involved in prostitution, and not all of them were, by the way. Or it's the police's fault because they didn't do something about it. or it's the police's fault because they didn't catch him after Jerry Howell disappeared. It's not their fault. It's his fault. He bears the responsibility. And the only reason he bears the responsibility is not because he came forward and said, oh, I've done all these terrible things. He bears the responsibility because the police taught him. They built a case that was good enough that he pleaded guilty and he's going to die in prison.

Randy Mason (host): He's been quoted as saying that he thinks he can be a benefit to young people by warning him of the dangers of the street because of his name recognition that there is some positive impact he might someday be able to have. What do you feel about that?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I think that if anybody can, I mean, the fact is that anybody can learn from the crimes that are done by someone else. But again, you know, we have to be careful about glorifying the criminal here. He's not to be glorified. He's a twisted, pathetic person. And the fact is people may learn from it, but they may learn from all kinds of crimes that other people commit. That doesn't make those criminals special.

Randy Mason (host): Is there a kind of healing process the city needs to be undergoing at this point? This has really shook people up. It shook the city up. We even here are feeling lots of the echoes of it just by even mentioning the name.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I think there may be some kind of a healing process that needs to go on. Certainly people need to process the horrendous nature of the crimes, the fact that this could happen in our city. Probably a primary concern to us, however, really before the healing of the city is the healing of the victims' families. Because those people are the ones who more than anybody else really have been so deeply hurt. And those are the people who I think, you know, we are in the process of trying to help to heal, to process this, to figure things out. And in a larger scale, I suppose, that's necessary for the whole city.

Randy Mason (host): Has the department, as the prosecutor's office, learned anything in particular about fighting crime and about how to prevent things like this in the future?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well I don't know that a police department or a prosecutor's office can ever hope to prevent things necessarily from happening because we're not in the business of prevention if you will. Maybe psychiatry and psychologists and educational people will learn something from all of this in terms of prevention because that's probably where they toil more than we do. It certainly has taught us that in a big investigation like this that it makes sense to take your time and do it right. That's what happened. That's why he's pretty guilty and that's why he's going to die in prison

Randy Mason (host): and in the midst of that taking your time taking a lot of heat.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well it's true that when you take your time to do it right you get a lot of heat because people say hey you're not going fast enough but that's part of the job and I've learned a long time ago you don't worry about that. You worry about getting it done right.

Randy Mason (host): As a political or in a political sense for you has it created the new opportunities or has it made things more difficult?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Well I suppose it's a little of both. I suppose it really is kind of a wash in a political sense. Certainly it became part of the political campaign last year when my opponent held a press conference in front of Mr. Berdella's house. But I think that again was a total showmanship. It wasn't having to do with any of the issues and I think probably in the political sense it's neither here nor there. I think the thing that was important to me and certainly important to everybody who worked on this case in our office in the police department was to keep it out of the political arena to make sure that we didn't do things because of political considerations but rather that we did things in order to get the thing done right.

Randy Mason (host): And you feel that that is a fair statement about the way it was done?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): I think so. I don't think there was any attempt by the police department to go off on the deep end. I mean for example Mr. Berdella says that the hysteria about satanism affected the police department. Well here you have Mr. Rivera accusing them of ignoring satanism. You got Mr. Berdella on the other side accusing them of using it too much, and the truth is they're both wrong, because I think what the police did was they looked at what they had and they tried to solve homicides to make any difference if there was Satanism in the law. Fine, if there was Satanism, great. Since there was no evidence of Satanism, they tried to solve homicides, and they did.

Randy Mason (host): Any final thoughts?

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Again, I just want to say that after viewing that interview, it's the kind of person who doesn't deserve a response himself. I think the response that I'm here trying to give is because I think the citizens of this community are owed some answers to some questions, and it's really on their behalf and for them that we come here today.

Randy Mason (host): All right, Albert Riederer, thank you for joining us.

Albert Riederer (Jackson County Prosecutor): Thank you, Mr. [name unclear].

Randy Mason (host): As we close this week's edition of our show, a few final words on all of this. First, has the public interest been served by shining a light on some very ugly things? We think so. We feel that even though there is always the danger of creating a celebrity, ignoring and avoiding may ultimately be more dangerous. As to just how much can be realistically learned in an hour of television, maybe a baseball analogy is appropriate. We like home runs, but sometimes you can get a lot from a string of singles. That's journalism. It's been a wild week here at KCPT. We've heard from lots of people who've made up their minds before even seeing this broadcast. If you've stayed with us through the entire show, we thank you and hope you'll join us again next week. For John Masterman and all of us here at KCI, I'm Randy Mason. Good night.