The Silent Kansas City Butcher - Unnoticed For Far Too Long.
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- Hey you, how are you today? Are you having a good day? 'Cause I hope so. If you're not, don't worry, it's gonna get better, allegedly. You know, I don't know. Today's Monday, which means it's murder mystery and makeup Monday. If you are new here, hi, my name is Bailey. And on Mondays, I sit down and I talk about true crime story that's been heavy on my noggin and my mind.

I do my makeup at the same time. So if you're interested in true crime and you like makeup, you could subscribe if you want, you know? Okay, so today's story takes place in like the late 80s. You know how like every city, every town, every neighborhood has, you always have that house or there's people in town that are just considered like strange,

They're weird, they're different. I would know I'm usually that person, but I think it's safe to say that like within every community, there's always at least one person who tends to stand out to everybody else. So it's like a little odd.

A little different. You know, maybe it's the old man at the end of the street who has like that front yard, that questionable front yard where you're like, I know they have dead bodies somewhere in that house probably. Or maybe it's like a woman up the street who says she's a witch. Those people, you know, our kind of people. Maybe it's you.

Well, for Kansas City in the 1970s and the 80s, one of like the most well known in the neighborhood and stuff was this guy named Robert Berdella. Robert was unique. He had like this really cool store where he sold like the strangest little things, occult books, antique mechanisms, skulls, everything that I just love.

And he was really into it. He had like these business cards that he would give out with the whole, his whole backstory on them. And oddly enough, on the back of the business card, Robert had claimed that his head was actually like full of poison. Yeah, I wasn't sure. I was like, what is this about? But

No answers could be found, but his head is full of poison. And most people in the neighborhood just assumed like he was strange, yes, but he was also a salesman who was having fun, dedicating himself to like being the kind of character you'd find in a shop like this. Nobody really thought twice about this guy. That is until a naked man jumped out of the second story window of Robert's house. Yeah, get this.

I guess the naked man who jumped out of the second story window of Robert's house was only wearing a dog collar. Huh? So how did we get there? Right? How did we get there? Well, let's get to know Robert a bit more, shall we? So who is this Robert guy? Well,

He was born in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio in 1949. Robert was the oldest of two kids. He had a younger brother named Daniel and Daniel was like seven years younger than him. So there's a pretty big gap, you know? It's not that big, but you know what I'm saying? Like, you know what I'm saying? Now, Robert was not set up for success. I think that's safe to say. I'm not laughing, but you know. Robert, from a young age, he was diagnosed with high blood pressure.

I know this may be dumb, but I really didn't know at a young age you could be diagnosed with high blood pressure. Yeah, so at a young age he had high blood pressure, he was nearsighted, and he also spoke with like a severe speech impediment. - I know. - Same C. In school, like he didn't show any interest in sports or anything.

I'm gonna make a wild guess here and say that they the kids who played sports and whatnot were probably not the most welcoming to him but yeah no interest in sports and because of this it was quite disappointing to his father yeah daddy did not like that he wanted a son so his dad didn't quite understand Robert he doesn't play sports so it's like what does he do

what do I do with this kid? Robert noticed that his dad started to favor his younger brother, Daniel, a lot more. 'Cause Daniel was like really into sports. So dad would like hang out with Daniel a lot. And like Robert took notice. And obviously as a young kid, that's confusing or whatever, you know?

So because of this, Robert would later say that it definitely started to drive a wedge between him and his family. So making matters even worse, like it's safe to say Robert was not popular in school, you know? Mainly for like the exact same reasons his father dismissed him.

Kids are brutal. They're mean. Speech impediment, nearsighted, didn't play sports, wasn't looking good for him. Now, Robert would say that at a pretty young age, he found out or realized that he was gay. It's rough because like his family, super gay.

a Roman Catholic, would go to church all the time. His church was not accepting of him. It's hard to say like how his family felt about him. There's no record or anything of him like being kicked out or

anything by his parents, you know? But by the time that Robert was in his late teens, like approaching his early 20s, it was said, or Robert would say that everyone shunned him in some sort of way. That's what he said, shunned. So before he even makes it out of his teen years, his whole foundation, his whole upbringing, I mean, he's isolated from having friends, family, community. It's off to a rocky start, you know?

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This is the era of no internet or like anything like that. So let's be honest, it's Ohio in the 1960s. So like Robert's attempt to escape in some sort of way was very limited. I don't even know how he did it. Well, I'm gonna tell you actually, 'cause I do. I do know how he did it. To fill his time, Robert, he found a bunch of little hobbies to keep him busy. Like he started to collect coins.

He even started to collect stamps. I know, very cool. But also he got into writing different pen pals around the globe. Pen pals. Okay, I don't know about you, but this unlocked a memory I completely forgot about, like pen pals. Did you have a pen pal as a kid or anything?

I did. We'd write each other letters. It was so exciting. I don't know how he found the pen pal though. That was the part I was kind of tripping on, but he had pen pals. So Robert, he would write and receive letters from people like all over the world. But his favorites were from places like Vietnam and Burma, places that were far off and to him were just so opposite of anything he knew, very mysterious.

Sometimes Robert would ask like his pen pals to send him pictures of local historic or like cultural icons. So it was an exchange of like, here's some cool shit I got. And then he would send cool shit that he got.

And this is when he became interested in like the worldly oddities that he would be known for later in life. But this is an introduction to all of that. Anyway, so it's safe to say he's a lonely kid who's pretty isolated from like his family and everyone really. And then sadly in December of 1965, Robert's father suddenly died just out of nowhere, nowhere, heart attack.

Yeah, so this caught, obviously, everybody by surprise. Robert's dad at the time was only 39 years old. That freaked me out because I was like, that is so young, right? Well, maybe to some of you, you're like, that's old. So his dad dies. Yeah, I mean, they weren't the closest, but it was still his dad, you know? And Robert just was completely devastated. The whole family was, completely tore him up. And then on top of that,

What tore him up even more was the fact that his mom, a devout Roman Catholic, I guess like right after he died, her husband died, she remarried like really shortly after Robert's dad's death. It was a little too quick and Robert was like, this is a lot, right? She was just onto the next, which is fine, I think. I don't know. I'm not judging. I don't know.

but it robert didn't take it well okay and robert would say like this had really impacted him and after this moment he never seemed to look at his mom the same way he kind of like lost respect for her is what he said and it's also around this time that robert started feeling kind of like negatively towards women in general just

was so rude to them and it wouldn't take long for people in town to just really label Robert as an asshole honestly like he was very dismissive towards anyone any woman that he he hadn't met and a lot of the times he would talk down to them like they were dumb that he was better than them and just kind of treating a lot of people again mainly women just like shit you know and it became a

a big part of his personality to just be an asshole. I mean, this got me thinking, I mean, well, to be fair, like on Robert's end, being nice wasn't getting him anywhere, you know? So that's my assumption. Maybe he's like, whatever, but he definitely has a shift at this moment. So he's becoming an asshole. You get it. He's becoming an asshole. So he is an asshole. So Robert,

becoming an asshole. Robert, he actually did pretty well in high school. He's pretty smart when he like tried, you know? And like once he graduated from high school, he decided like I have to make better choices with my life. And he knew he wasn't happy at home. He didn't have

He didn't have friends. I mean, nobody liked him. Poor guy. So in 1967, Robert moved from Cuyahoga to Kansas City and he ended up enrolling in the Kansas City Art Institute, which may be shocking. You're like, what? Kansas City Art Institute? Yeah, I know. I guess, remember when he was doing coins, collecting the coins and the stamps and all that? I guess he also picked up

He was a really good writer. So I think that's what he got in for. Again, there's like so much I just truly couldn't get clarification on. But he goes to the Kansas City Art Institute.

That's what we need to know. Like I had mentioned, Robert had good grades in high school, not even good grades. He had great grades in high school and he even got a letter of recommendation from one of his teachers. So he got into this college, I guess, just like super easy. And he told everyone that he was actually going to plan on using his education to become a teacher himself. He wanted to be a teacher, which is like a solid plan, right? But unfortunately, as soon as Robert got there,

he got into all sorts of trouble, which fair because college life, huh? 180 for Robert. He was now independent. He was able to express himself more freely. He could do whatever the heck he wanted with like his own peers. So college was just this whole new and he really odded away, you know? He felt so free that during his second year at the Kansas City Art Institute,

Robert started selling drugs. I guess he ended up making friends with, you know, some of the bad kids, the ones that did the drugs and drank a lot. And Robert started like selling drugs himself, you know, making some money.

college is expensive. Like many college students, you know, he also got into drinking and he was shrinking a lot. Then it progressed to doing drugs, then selling drugs. And it was just not looking great for Robert. Now at one point, Robert would get caught and arrested, not once, but a

couple of times for possession of drugs. I guess he had like LSD on him one time and also meth. So he got arrested and caught for that, but he only spent like a few days in jail and most of the charges ended up being dropped. Don't you feel like in every murder mystery, it's like charges get dropped and then it's just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. It's like this thing like

They mentally, I'm making an assumption. I'm talking out of my ass right now, but hear me out. It's like their ego just grows because they're like, look, I got away with it. What else can I do? I feel like that's a fair assessment to make. I've been doing murder mystery for a while now. And in my personal opinion, it feels that may be true. But just a girl on the internet.

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So he gets in trouble with drugs, meth, not great. LSD, never done it, but it's probably better than meth. But none of this compared to the art projects he started doing as like a part of his coursework. So you know when you go to school and they're like, hey, here's an assignment for you. You're gonna have to like come and make a presentation about X, Y, and Z and...

That's your project, right? Great. So in college, Robert, he had this some kind of school project. I don't know what the, I don't know what the project actually was, but there was more than one instance where Robert literally as a school project either hurt or killed an animal as a school project. And for some reason, this didn't set off red flags for a,

some of the teachers or students to maybe inform. Well, it's the 70s. But for example, so once Robert had brought a live duck to school, you know, duck, quack, quack, feathered bird. And as the story goes, he gets in front of the class, he tortures the duck, and then he kills it in front of everybody. On top of that, once the duck is dead and killed,

He then gives instructions on like how to eat it, how to prepare it to eat. And his teacher didn't stop him or something. I don't know. I just read that and I was like, I'm sorry. Nobody stepped in to say, no, we can't do that. But he did that. Okay. Everyone witnessed it later. Robert was found experimenting with tranquilizers on a dog.

So he's giving this dog like various injections to see what would happen. It was his own little science project.

He wanted to know how much of this, how much of that, and just using this poor dog, you know? I mean, I shouldn't have sassed the teachers and whatnot because to be fair, shortly after the duck incident, it was like the year 1969, Robert, he wasn't kicked out of school, but the college staff and administrators, they had reached their limit really. And they approached Robert and expressed that he could not be doing this duck stuff

And I don't know what exactly they said, but it led to Robert withdrawing from college, which I think was their goal. They wanted him out. I know it's a shame they didn't call police or something and be like, "Hey, just wanna put this guy on your radar. He's killing ducks and tranquilizing dogs as projects. This isn't vet school."

Okay, so for about 10 years on, it seems like Robert was just like terribly alone. I mean, he did. He did well at both of his jobs. And it was said he wasn't shy in public, like, you know, he's getting older, he's more comfortable in his own skin. So as time goes on, I mean, he's moving up, he starts working at like fancier restaurants, and then starts working like a really nice country club. And at the country club, he's working as a senior chef.

And he was even like establishing contracts with antique and oddities dealers around the world. And through that, he would buy and sell. Robert's neighbors would describe him as like a bit flamboyant, but they also talked about how involved he was in his community and like what a great person he was. I know. This is how it always goes, huh? Literally. They get us every time.

Robert was the central organizer for his neighborhood watch group, and he spent much of his free time participating in a local program to help train other aspiring chefs in the city. Yeah, right? I was like, oh, great. I'm always rooting for these people. And I'm like, oh, yeah, wait.

Nah, goes wrong every time. On top of that, like Robert was busy. I don't know how he had the time for everything, but he managed somehow. Because on top of all of that, he also had a habit. I don't know if habit's the right word, but that's how he described it. A habit of taking in young men who were living on the street. Whether his neighbors knew it or not,

The boys that Robert was taking in, most of them were gay young men who were also living on the streets. And Robert was trying to get them off of working the streets as sex workers. So he was like the fatherly figure and like wanted to take them in. Unfortunately for Robert though, his efforts in that area like never really panned out. Like he gave these boys places to stay, but

his response was never good. Like Robert would become very frustrated with them if these boys, these young men didn't quote unquote recover from being homeless as fast as he would have liked. Yeah, I know, I don't know. So Robert would get like just really irritated with them, much like his disdain for women.

This also evolved into some kind of like prejudice. Like Robert, when he would take in these young men, he would feel like or he felt like he was better than them, right? Like I am...

You get it. He just felt like he was above them. They were nothing, nothing without him. In the early 1980s, like around 1981, Robert, his little side business was taking up so much of his time that he decided it would be best to quit his job working as a chef and dedicate his entire life to running his store. I mean, that was his passion. So that's a good idea, Robert, you know, whatever. So there's a local flea market in Westport

And Robert thought, oh my God, this is perfect. Like this is where I could set up shop. And he did, he got a booth there and he had to give his store a name. You know, what's he gonna name it? And honestly, he picks a great name. Great name. He names it Bob's Bazaar, B-A-Z-A-A-R, Bazaar, Bizarre, B-I-Z, Bob's Bazaar Bazaar.

Great name. Come on. That's great. It's fun. It's like, oh, but that's what he picks. He even had like t-shirts printed with the store's name on the front. And then he had a little phrase that said, because everyone needs a place to go to get folked up. Folked up? He is great with wordplay, isn't he? And basically that was like Robert throughout the 1970s and most of the 1980s. Or at least.

That's what everyone saw. So Robert's business and his seemingly like innocent interest in his community made up so much of who he was that those things like came to really define him. Like I said at the start, he was just a weird guy with weird interests, but everyone just assumed it was part, it was just who he was. It was his deal, you know? Like, of course, the guy who owns the shop that sells occult magic books is gonna be a little weird.

And to many people, it was actually kind of charming. But little did they know that by 1984, hidden away in Robert's basement was something not so charming. It was far less endearing. Okay, so I started today's story with a man jumping out of Robert's window, second story window, wearing nothing but a dog collar. And I promise we are getting there. We are getting there.

But most of Robert's crimes went completely unnoticed until that very incident. So again, Robert was known for taking in, you know, the unhoused boys and sex workers and like giving them a place to stay. So again, like no one would really bat an eye when he had young men coming in and out of his house all the time, or they just didn't freaking care.

We don't know. But one of his neighbors was interviewed years later about it. And he said that he just thought Robert was a father figure to these kids, these young kids. And he thought that Robert was doing

a really nice thing, right? Because on the outside, that's exactly what it looks like. By 1984, Robert had been operating the Bazaar Bazaar for a few years and he had gotten to know like one of the other merchants at the flea market pretty well. It was this guy, his name was Dave and he had a son named Jacob. So Robert knew Jacob pretty well because of his father, but he also knew that Jacob worked the street sometimes as like a sex worker.

So Robert kind of used this as his entry point to talk to Jacob. The two of them become friendly somehow. Well, somehow because he's this fatherly figure who's like kind of mentoring Jacob and trying to get him off the streets. I'm using quotes here if you can't see me because I don't really freaking know. The two of them become close. And one day Robert had agreed to drive Jacob to a dance competition, which was out of town.

So Jacob tells his dad, everything's great. The only thing is that no one ever saw Jacob again. So Robert tells police that he had actually dropped Jacob off before they even got to the competition. And that was the last time he saw Jacob.

but we all know that's a lie. Here's what really happened. So Robert picked up Jacob and he then started offering him and feeding him alcohol and drugs. After that, Robert ends up taking Jacob back to his house and gave him even more drugs in hopes to really just knock him unconscious.

Finally, when I guess he achieved that goal, Robert injected Jacob with Valium, you know, like the sedative. And for 28 hours, Robert repeatedly stuck Jacob with like more needles, more drugs, ended up tying him up on his bed.

and was like experimenting on him, taking notes as to like what drugs he was giving Jacob and how he was responding to it. All of the injections made it so Jacob, you know, he really could not fight back when Robert was doing all this. I guess there was a point where like Jacob was still awake, but he couldn't move his body, which is like fucking terrifying, right?

So he's awake, he's aware, and he's begging Robert to just stop, to just let him go. But of course, Robert being the sick fuck that he is, he doesn't listen and he just continues abusing and then sexually abusing Jacob. And according to Robert himself,

Like this was like a flex for Robert or something. I don't know. But Robert said that Jacob was like begging for him to stop the entire time. But Robert just silenced him with more drugs. It was like a brag for him. Robert was like, yeah.

He was begging, but just gave him more drugs. It's like so scary, right? Well, after doing this for hours and hours, I mean, Jacob's body just kind of like gave up, gave out. Poor Jacob, he ended up choking to death in Robert's house. Sad. Jacob was Robert's first victim. So...

and he liked it too, which is never a good combination. Like I said, Robert kept notes. I mean, he kept a detailed description record of like everything he did with Jacob. Not just that, but what he did with Jacob

of his victims for that matter. Every little detail. Jacob was by no means like the only person Robert wanted to get his hands on. And like whatever urge he had that motivated him to kill or experiment on animals for artistic purposes, you know, back in college, seemed to all be coming to surface. Well, after Robert tortured Jacob to death, he very quickly found a way to

Well, he had to find a way to dispose of the body. And let me tell you, this next part was so, ah, all of it. Robert was sick. Okay, so he needs to dispose of the body. So what he does is he ends up taking Jacob's body down into the basement where he hangs it upside down. Not kidding. Hangs the body upside down in the basement and he drains all of his blood, Jacob's blood, into like a huge cooking pot.

Once the corpse was dry, he took it down and carved it into more quote unquote manageable pieces and limbs. Then he wrapped those pieces in newspapers and then double bagged them in trash bags so no one could see what was inside. Put a little bow on top of the trash bag

took it out to his trash can. And it worked for him, I guess. Robert, he would say that he would watch for the trash truck to come and he would watch them pick up the trash, you know, that had the remains in it. And he would just watch them to make sure that like they didn't notice anything weird. And sadly for three years,

No one did. It's just sad. So in those three years, I mean, Robert found plenty of victims or as he recorded them in his notebook,

Yeah, he called his victims play toys. This is very, very unfortunate. So Robert began using his reputation as the father figure, you know, to the unhoused, usually gay boys to lure them into his home and into the same sorts of situations that he put Jacob through. In April of 1985, Robert let a 20-year-old, his name was Dan, he let Dan come stay with him.

And Dan had actually stayed with Robert before, so Dan felt like it was a safe option. Robert only waited two days to drug Dan and then drag him to the basement. And according to like his notes and even his own testimony, Robert wasn't sexually attracted to Dan, but he wanted to quote, "Express some of the anger and frustration that I had toward other people," end quote.

And he did so through torturing Dan. Robert took things a step further with him, if you can actually believe it. He ends up taking a bunch of like little needles and he put these needles under Dan's fingertips to try and keep Dan from fighting back. Yeah. So he just left these needles in his fingertips. And then, what's that called? Cock? You know that thick putty stuff that carpenters use to like fill gaps and whatnot? You know what I'm talking about. It's white.

That stuff, Robert took that and filled Dan's ears with it. Robert is so sick. So he's just being all sorts of nasty, right? And while doing this, Robert was taking notes in his little diary and recording like each of Dan's reactions. Like, oh, he didn't respond well to needles under the nails.

Surprise! Robert ended up keeping Dan like this for three days. Yeah, three days of torture with needles under his fingernails. Fingertips.

Either way, needles in his fucking fingers, okay? Thing is, Dan might have been there even longer, but Robert, it's not funny at all, but this is dumbass. Robert had a repairman come out to the house because he needed to get his roof looked at for something. So in the middle of torturing poor Dan, the repairman shows up.

And Robert's like, oh shit, oh no. Maybe Robert was thinking like the roof guy would only need to look at the roof, but the roof guy, he is asking Robert, hey, I need to come into your basement. I need to look at certain things around the house. So Robert was like, oh fuck, he has Dan in the house, right? So he's like, oh fuck, I gotta get rid of this Dan guy.

So Robert, with the roof guy in the house, like looking at the basement, Robert ends up strangling Dan. Yeah, and kills him. With the roof guy in the house. Then he hides Dan's body in the bathtub. It's like he was so close to getting caught too. Robert was sadly able to trap Dan.

four more men, all of them were under the age of 22. And he did the exact same kinds of awful torture techniques to them as well. His final victims, which took place in 1986 and 1987 were Tyler and Rick. And these two got like the worst of him.

Sadly, I think this whole thing is sad, Bailey. I know. By the time Robert had worked his way to his final victims, he was like messier, more bold. And he moved on from like simply drugging his victims to now having a more experimental approach to his torture. Robert would like rub drain cleaner on his victim's eyes.

I know. I know. He would rub drain cleaner on his victim's eyes or he would inject the drain cleaner into their throats. Bro. Which Rick specifically, Robert kept him for like six weeks, which...

way longer than any of his previous victims. And Robert would later explain to the police that like Rick was the most cooperative person he had tortured. And that's why he kept him for so long. And as a reward for Rick, I guess for like good behavior, Robert moved Rick out of the basement just after a few days and set him up in the bedroom upstairs, you know, as a treat.

Robert's like, "Yeah, he'll enjoy this. He'll love this." Rick wasn't cooperating because he liked the whole thing, you know? Rick was playing the game. And I guess like before Rick died, he had lashed out at Robert in a great way. Robert would force his victims to perform like sexual acts on him. He would rape them and whatnot. So while Robert was forcing Rick to go down on him, Rick tried to bite Robert's dick off.

You know, he did. He tried to bite it off. And according to Robert, like Rick had bit it so deep that Robert like started gushing blood and he had to, he had to rush to the hospital. Unfortunately though, that was the last straw for, for Robert.

Right after he got back from the hospital, Robert killed Rick shortly afterwards. Rick was the last man that Robert Berdella was able to kill, but he wasn't the last person he was able to capture. Which finally brings us to Easter weekend, April 1988, when one of Robert's victims jumped out of a second story window of Robert's house completely nude. So it's March 29th.

1988, Robert is out driving and it's around like 1:00 AM and he passes by the train station. And Robert knows that the train station is like a hangout spot for the male sex workers. So Robert goes there, he picks someone out and it's someone that he had never seen before. It's a young guy named Brian. So Robert approaches him and asks like, "Hey, you wanna come back to my place?" Or whatever he does. And

So they get into the car. When in the car, Robert offers him like a beer. He's like, "Here you go. You want a beer? Oh, we're cool, right? I'm cool. I'm safe." So they're driving. And then once they get to Robert's house, you know, Robert invites him in and then invites him upstairs. So Robert kind of allows Brian to go first up the stairs and Robert is behind him. So once Brian kind of reaches the top of the stairs,

Robert, he bashes him in the back of the head with an iron pipe. I know, so many, I was like, are we in Clue now? An iron pipe, iron pipe, knocked him right out. And sadly, same as many of his other victims, Robert, you know, kind of tied him up, tortured Brian for three days, just that whole thing.

But Brian was starting to kind of get the picture. Like Robert was going to kill him one way or another. And it was just really a matter of time. So over the course of those three days, Brian played it smart.

he started to go along with what Robert was doing, kind of like trying to have conversations with him, you know, building rapport, building trust. And it seemed to be kind of working because Robert was laying his guard down little by little and

It kind of seemed like he thought Brian was becoming obedient to him or something, or maybe he just wanted a friend. I don't know, but Robert was like giving in. Okay, so eventually,

Robert, he lets Brian lie in bed with his hands tied in front of him rather than above him like every other victim of Robert's. After that, all it took was like a little brainstorming on Brian's part. So Brian, he found like a small set of matches in Robert's room like he had left it behind. So Brian, he takes them and he hides them under the bed.

because he needs to wait for the perfect moment to use these matches. Now, as soon as like Brian had some free time to himself when Robert had left the room, he grabbed the matches and he lit the rope. It was like as simple as burning the rope that was holding his hands together. Yeah, I know. Honestly, I would never have thought of that, but good for him. So he lights the matches and he burns the ropes off.

From there, that's when Brian just opened the nearest window, jumped out and ran across the street to a neighbor who called the police. Boom, baby. I was like, thank God, right? Because a lot of the times here on these Monday episodes, it's kind of like they'll run and run and knock on people's doors and it's like, they won't get an answer. But in this case,

Neighbor helped him right away. I'm sure you can only imagine what would have happened to him if like Robert had found him before he was able to contact the police, right? So Brian gave the police Robert's address as well as like the whole story of his time with Robert. And to them, it may have sounded like a little crazy, but they saw like all the cuts and the marks on his body. And like they knew like something was going on there, some truth in there. So while Brian was sent to the hospital, the police, they worked on getting a search warrant for Robert's home.

It didn't take them long, I mean, within the hour of Brian escaping Robert's house, the police had Robert arrested and were starting to look all throughout his home. Now at this point, the only thing they had on Robert was Brian's testimony and like the condition that Brian was in.

They weren't sure what Robert had actually done, like on a larger scale. Robert had told Brian that he had killed others, but obviously the police found, well, they didn't find any bodies. So it would end up taking them down to the wire of their warrant to like find any evidence that they could get. Picking through Robert's home, like it was just, it was said to be like a maze of stuff. All of his store inventory was piled up in boxes.

Plus, it was all mixed with notebooks and other household items. It took an entire team of officers to comb through everything. But eventually, they found something interesting. What did they find? Well, that notebook.

The notebook, they found it luckily. And this had all, all of his little records. Now, again, you would think this is enough, but it wasn't quite enough. It would be easy to argue that the notebook was fiction, you know, since again, there's no physical evidence to prove any of this is true.

Instead, the focus shifted to his odd collections and strange books, you know, the shit that he would sell in his store. And that's when the media caught wind of Robert and the accusations against him. So once the media got word of this, like, oops, they went to town, of course. Quickly, Robert went from the local, you know, oddball to satanic abomination.

a cultist selling human body parts out of his like flea market stall. Now there's actually no evidence that he did that. It was just the kind of stuff that the media was making up about him at that time and selling it, you know? When Robert had found out about it, it really pissed him off. I don't know, he didn't like that reputation for some reason. Throughout his time in police custody and during trial, Robert hated how he was covered and he did whatever he could to try and like get control of his stuff.

his story, you know, opposite of the media, what the media was saying, which is so like, really, that's what you're worried about? All right. It was like he was just obsessed with controlling everything. He wanted to control his victims and he wanted to control the way people saw him after he was arrested. He was a control freak.

Robert refused to talk to the media, but he poured every little detail of his crimes to like the police. And he also did so in court. I don't know, dude. It's like kind of, you gotta let it go at this point, man. You're arrested and you murdered people. So can't control it anymore, my guy. During his questioning and even trial, Robert would refer to himself as an upstanding individual and that he was much better than others.

other people out there. And I don't know why that was so important to him for everyone to know, but it was. It was like, okay, dude, you murdered someone. What do you mean you're better than everyone? I don't know.

He just wanted to control how people saw him. Obviously him saying all this didn't have any type of impact on these people. So eventually though, the police, they ended up finding a collection of Polaroid pictures that Robert had taken of his victims in various states of torture. Yeah, I guess he was taking freaking pictures as well. So many of the photos showed these victims all beaten and bloody and some they were assuming were of, I don't know,

dead bodies because yeah so he had pictures of everything and the notebooks and then soon after that robert had confessed to murdering six men and torturing each of them in his home but then right after he confessed the police found the remains of one of these of his victims buried in robert's backyard

And again, that just like all of it just really sealed the deal for them. The remains that police found in Robert's backyards, they were able to identify with dental records. But that discovery just meant that Robert was now being charged with his first count of murder. He ended up taking a plea deal where he agreed to plea guilty for all six of his murders. So he ended up giving police his complete confession in turn for murder.

you know, not being charged with the death penalty or not getting the death penalty, which I don't get. Like, don't you just kind of want, nah, whatever. Just put them down, people. So instead of getting the death penalty, Robert got a life sentence and was sent to the Missouri State Penitentiary where he stayed until 1992. I know. I was like, what? Did he get out? Well,

Robert's family history caught up to him because on October 8th, 1992, Robert, he was complaining to the prison staff that he was having heart pains. So then the medical staff at the prison, they ended up sending him to the hospital, but it was too late. Like Robert had died in transit to the hospital of a sudden heart attack.

Wow, huh? Talk about... What's that called? That's... Talk about a... Wow. Yeah, so he died suddenly of a heart attack. It was like not even two hours after he first complained about his chest... His chest hurting. Just like his dad. I know. Robert was 43 years old and honestly a shitty person. So...

Whatever, you know, whatever. He's dead. Okay, that's the story about Robert Berdella. I feel like there's still a lot of unanswered questions and because he died, like just not gonna get them. My question is, it just, I bet you, I would bet you that he had more victims. I would bet you. The reason I feel that way is because he had so many boys coming and going from his house. Who knows how many victims he really had. And then he was just disposing them in the trash. And once they're in the trash, it's like,

the chances of finding them is slim to not the victims. And the fact that he was torturing like so, in such an extreme way, again, just comes across as like he had been practicing this. Maybe there were more animals involved. I don't know, but Robert Burdella, you were a shit head. I would love to hear your guys' thoughts down below. I think,

A lot of us can agree that, sadly, Robert, his killings went unnoticed because his victims were the unhoused gay men. Young, too. Sex workers. And fucking please don't give a fuck. So annoying, right? Jeez. But other than that, please be safe out there. Carry pepper spray. Carry something to protect yourself.

Have a good rest of your day. I hope you make good choices and I will be seeing you guys later. Goodbye.