Further reading for Robert Berdella, The Kansas City Butcher
Rites of Burial by Tom Jackman and Troy Cole
Robert Berdella was a serial killer that lived in the shadow of other serial killers. His crimes were some serious Silence of the Lambs shit, every bit as brutal and sickening as the evil perpetrated by murderers like Jeffrey Dahmer and Albert Fish. Yet, he somehow flies under the radar.
To the Kansas City, MO public, Bob Berdella was a bit of local flavor. He was openly gay at a time in America where this wasn’t something you often found outside the confines of New York City or San Francisco. He also ran a morbid curiosities table out of a local flea market, selling skulls, occult books, shrunken heads and assorted spooky shit. Even with the murders, Berdella represented the total package for fans of morbid stuff such as we Last Podcast fans are. Any one of us could have been a victim. Berdella’s secret life , however, was a house of horrors. He opened his filthy hovel to house drifters and once they were in, it wasn’t long before they found themselves bound and drugged, being raped and later tortured for Berdella’s sexual pleasure until they either expired from the trauma or until Berdella was forced to kill them in order to dispose of the evidence and hide the evil that made a home inside him from the rest of the world.
Berdella’s history is a bit of an anomaly for a serial killer, as well, lacking most of the usual characteristics that create a sexual sadist and murderer. The one thing he did have in common with Last Podcast characters like Leonard Lake was a sexual fantasy derived from the pages of the John Fowles novel, The Collector, which has got to be one of the most blood-soaked titles in the history of literature. By the time of his arrest, Robert Berdella had raped, tortured, and murdered six men that had the bad luck to cross his path and left copious notes and hundreds of horrific photos of his victims.
Episodes: 395 & 396
Episode Link
