- 22 hours ago
World's Most Evil Killers S03E07
Category
🦄
CreativityTranscript
00:00.
00:10December 1988, Kansas City.
00:15Robert Bedella finally confessed to kidnapping, raping,
00:19torturing, and then killing six men,
00:21four and a half years after the murder of his first victim.
00:26For him, they weren't living, feeling, breathing individuals.
00:30They were literally just pieces of meat,
00:32and he would do with them what he wanted.
00:35He took hundreds of photos and kept vivid, detailed notes
00:39to document his macabre acts,
00:41using ever-increasing twisted methods
00:44to cause unimaginable pain and suffering.
00:47This was not a spree killing.
00:49This was not somebody out of control of their actions.
00:52This is somebody who knows what he's doing,
00:55knows what he wants to do, and does it.
00:58That is the definition of evil.
01:00After murdering them,
01:02he dissected his victims with such precision,
01:05he became known as the Kansas City Butcher.
01:09And then he would cut the bodies up with a butcher knife
01:12and a chainsaw, and then put them in the trash.
01:16His dark fantasies, sick mind, and horrific torture of six men,
01:21that sometimes lasted weeks at a time,
01:24makes Robert Berdella one of the world's most evil killers.
01:29April 2nd, 1988, Kansas City, Missouri.
01:42A man wearing nothing but a dog collar was found in the street.
01:58He was taken to a house nearby where he pled for police to be called.
02:03A police investigation revealed a horrific series of murders
02:08that took place at the hands of one man,
02:11who systematically and methodically kidnapped and tortured young,
02:16vulnerable men before killing them.
02:19Bordella is evil because he took advantage of the weak,
02:26and he just performed so many unpleasant acts on them
02:30while they were alive.
02:32For Bordella, it's more than just killing, it's cruelty.
02:35After claiming his first victim in 1984,
02:39he went on to murder five more men,
02:42each time increasing the level of pain and suffering that he caused them.
02:46Bordella had a complete disregard for human life,
02:50and I think what he was always aiming for
02:52was to create this compliant, docile sex slave.
02:56And some of his victims, he treated them so brutally
02:59that they died as a result of the torture,
03:02as a result of him trying to deprive them
03:04of all of their sensations.
03:09Rick Holtzclaw was the assistant prosecutor
03:13for the sex crimes unit in Kansas City.
03:17He would prey on those who were down and out
03:20or needed some help.
03:22He would befriend them or take them in,
03:24and that's how it would begin.
03:26Bordella's crimes would go unnoticed for years
03:29until one day one of his victims managed to escape
03:32and call for help.
03:34Troy Cole was the lead detective on the case.
03:37We decided to bring in a backhoe to dig up that one particular spot
03:41where it looked like it might have had a grave marker to it.
03:45And sure enough, on the second scoop of the backhoe,
03:48it pulled up a human head.
03:50And that was the first time that I realized
03:53we had a homicide investigation,
03:55and it was probably going to be a big investigation.
04:00Until this point, Bordella was seen
04:02as an upstanding member of the local community.
04:05Roy Orth was a sergeant with the Kansas City Police Department.
04:10Robert Bordella was a member of the arts community
04:14in Kansas City, Missouri,
04:16a former student of the Kansas City Art Institute.
04:19He was involved in his neighborhood crime watch program,
04:24and as I remember, was even a court-appointed advocate
04:28for juveniles through the Kansas City, Missouri
04:32juvenile justice system.
04:33This seemingly normal member of the Kansas City community
04:37went from being an upstanding citizen
04:40to an infamous serial killer.
04:42Bordella documented the torture and the murder of his victims
04:46for a couple of different reasons.
04:48Firstly, he wanted to relive and revisit that sense of power
04:52he felt when he was doing these things.
04:54But secondly, he wanted to create an archive.
04:57I think he wanted history to remember him
05:00and remember the horrendous things that he'd done.
05:05This killer story begins in 1949.
05:09Robert Andrew Bordella, Jr. was born on January the 31st,
05:15the first of two sons.
05:17He was raised in Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio,
05:21in a strict Catholic household.
05:23His father worked at the Ford Motor Company.
05:27His mother was a homemaker,
05:28so they were very much the traditional American nuclear family.
05:33Bordella was a shy, intelligent child
05:36who struggled to fit in at school.
05:38He was bullied by his peers
05:40because he did stand out as different.
05:42He wore very thick glasses.
05:43He went to the algebra club.
05:45He collected stamps.
05:47So there was that sense in which he always felt that isolation
05:51from his peer group.
05:52Then, in his mid-teens, his world was turned upside down.
05:57Bordella's father died of a heart attack when he was 16,
06:00and this did have quite a significant impact on him
06:03because his mother remarried,
06:05and she went on to set up another home with somebody else.
06:09And I think that Bordella really did feel a sense of rejection here.
06:12He was part of his mother's past.
06:14The world had moved on, and he was left behind.
06:17Around the same time, Bordella had been working part-time.
06:22There's a particular incident that Bordella later recalls
06:25that is potentially significant.
06:28Bordella claims that he was raped when he was an adolescent
06:31at a restaurant where he worked.
06:33Bordella never reported the incident to the police.
06:38In 1967, after graduating high school,
06:43Bordella enrolled in Kansas City Art Institute.
06:47At this time, he'd begun exploring his sexuality.
06:51He'd realized that he was certainly gay,
06:54and it was pretty apparent to him
06:56that his father would not have approved of that.
06:59He's also been brought up in the Catholic Church,
07:02so I think there is very much an underlying sense of shame there.
07:06By 1969, Bordella had begun to experiment with drugs.
07:10He quit college after tutors failed to understand
07:13his twisted art projects, often involving live animals.
07:17He may have been a bit nerdy to look at,
07:21and a bit strange, but he was clearly talented.
07:25In need of a job, Bordella put his talents to a new use.
07:30Bordella started working as a short-order chef,
07:32and quickly rose.
07:35He developed quite a good reputation in the local community
07:39as people were talking about the food that he was making,
07:42and he bought his own house.
07:44He had quite a bright future.
07:46He really was a figure that commanded respect
07:48in the local community.
07:50By his mid to late 20s,
07:53Bordella had also developed a passion for collecting,
07:56and this hobby soon became a business in its own right.
08:01He was obviously a very good chef,
08:03but it wasn't his only talent.
08:05He also collected art and antiquities.
08:08This was a man of quite considerable taste,
08:12working at some of the best restaurants,
08:14and at the same time operating a boutique
08:16called Bob's Bizarre,
08:18selling art and antiquities.
08:21The boutique became Bordella's full-time job,
08:23and he began to rent out rooms in his home
08:26to help make ends meet.
08:28Some of those lodgers were vulnerable young men
08:31who'd received bed and board in return
08:33for carrying out jobs around the house,
08:36and at his antique shop.
08:38People who'd run away from home,
08:40young gay men, couples,
08:43rather a sort of benevolent figure.
08:46As far as the local community concerned,
08:48an entirely upright and straightforward citizen.
08:51In 1984, Bordella's behaviour began to get bizarre.
08:56His house had become literally a warehouse
09:00of all sorts of odd objects.
09:03This man, who previously had been a sort of pillar
09:06of the local community, was becoming increasingly odd,
09:08and he also, I think, began to despise the young men
09:12who came seeking shelter.
09:14In March that year, age 35,
09:17Bordella began a relationship with a 19-year-old male,
09:20former sex worker, Gerry Howell.
09:23Bordella knew his dad,
09:25who also had a stall in the flea market.
09:27So Gerry hung around with his dad,
09:29so Bordella knew both of them well.
09:31Bordella knew both of them well.
09:33Gerry had had some issues with drugs.
09:35He'd had some issues with the criminal justice system,
09:38and I think Bordella was seen to be this trusted figure.
09:42So when Bordella offers to help him,
09:45he offers to lend him money, Gerry takes him up on this.
09:48He doesn't pay him back, though.
09:50On July the 5th, 1984,
09:54he picked Gerry up from the flea market
09:56to help with some jobs,
09:58but Gerry was more interested in getting loaded.
10:01Bordella gave him drugs and alcohol,
10:04and they headed home.
10:05But getting increasingly frustrated with Gerry using him,
10:09Bordella gave Gerry some stronger medication
10:12that caused him to pass out.
10:15When the victim became virtually unconscious,
10:18Bordella would inject him with drugs,
10:21giving him absolute control over the body.
10:24He would then repeatedly rape the victim
10:27over a very extended period in this case, 27 hours.
10:31When he returned from work, the torturing continued.
10:35He's not only sexually assaulted,
10:38he is struck with a metal ruler,
10:41he's given a cocktail of drugs before he's even killed.
10:45So we have a mixture of somebody who's going to be confused
10:49by what's going on,
10:51they're going to be confused by the drugs they've been given,
10:54and then he's being physically and sexually assaulted.
10:57It's just a horrific way to die.
11:00The following night, Gerry was dead.
11:04Bordella had meticulously detailed the torture and murder
11:09in extensive notes and photographs.
11:12One of the things that Bordella did immediately after Gerry had died
11:17was to note down and describe precisely what he did with the body,
11:21which effectively was to drain it of blood and then dismember it
11:24and wrap it up in garbage bags.
11:26He kept a detailed record because, in many ways,
11:29that was the kind of character that he was.
11:32He took pride in his work.
11:34He was completely cold and isolated,
11:38interested only in his own satisfaction,
11:41which makes it all the more chilling.
11:43Bordella bagged up the remains with all the instruments he'd used
11:47and dumped it in the trash, which was picked up the next morning.
11:51On July the 8th, Gerry's father contacted the police.
11:56Gerry's father reports him missing,
11:58and Bordella is interviewed by the police in relation to this.
12:02And Bordella says,
12:03well, I dropped him off at the 7-Eleven, the convenience store.
12:06And at this point in time, why wouldn't the police believe Bordella?
12:10He's this upstanding figure in the community.
12:13He's not somebody who would appear to have a reason to lie.
12:16So, unfortunately, this case goes cold.
12:19Then, officers received a tip-off
12:23from one of Bordella's previous boarders, Todd.
12:29One of Gerry's acquaintances, who was also known to Bordella,
12:32actually tipped off the police that they thought
12:34that Bordella may have been involved,
12:35or at least given Gerry a hot-shot injection.
12:37But there was no body.
12:39No-one knew where Gerry was.
12:41Bordella was put under surveillance,
12:43but no evidence was ever found.
12:46Gerry Howell's father always thought that Bordella
12:49had done something to his kid.
12:51He just couldn't prove it.
12:52And, uh, but, yes, he was very suspicious of him.
12:56Gerry Howell's body was never discovered.
13:01Bordella had developed a sick taste for torture and murder.
13:05And after getting away with his first crime,
13:08he began to look for ever-increasing horrific ways
13:12to get his sexual kicks.
13:14Nine months after he'd tortured and murdered his first victim,
13:1919-year-old Gerry Howell, Robert Bordella took his next victim.
13:24So Robert Sheldon was somebody who had stayed with Bordella before at his house.
13:31So there was a degree of trust in this relationship,
13:34and it was trust that Bordella really did take advantage of.
13:39Bordella, on April the 10th, 20-year-old drug addict Robert Sheldon
13:44appeared at Bordella's door looking for somewhere to stay
13:47after an argument with his girlfriend.
13:50Shortly after he set foot inside, Bordella put his sadistic plan into action.
13:56He keeps him for four days.
14:00Automatically, you know that this is going to be somebody who's in distress.
14:05He starts to escalate his cruelty with this victim.
14:10He injects drain cleaner into his eyes.
14:13He fills his ears with caulking material.
14:16There's damage to the hands from piano wire.
14:19He's hitting him with a rubber mallet.
14:21All of these things are acts of cruelty,
14:25and they would not kill you.
14:28It's subduing the victim.
14:30He did some horrendous things to him,
14:33but the thing that really stood out for me
14:35was the tattoo that he gave this victim on his shoulder.
14:39He was almost branding this man, saying,
14:41you are mine, I own you and I possess you.
14:45Like he had with his first victim,
14:47Bordella documented his methods by writing intricate notes.
14:51This time he went one step further
14:54and included himself in the photographs with his tormented victim.
14:58He wanted an absolute record of everything he'd done.
15:02There was a certain amount of pride.
15:04There is no doubt whatever that that's what was in his mind.
15:07He documented it because he was proud of it.
15:09On the 14th of April, Bordella arrived home to find a workman he knew
15:14on the roof of his property.
15:16Concerned that he'd be discovered, he decided to kill Robert.
15:21He becomes quite paranoid because he knows this guy,
15:24so Bordella takes matters into his own hands,
15:27and he goes and places a plastic bag over the head of his victim,
15:31essentially ending his life.
15:33Bordella began his ritual act of cutting up his victim's body piece by piece.
15:41Dismembering a body is not the easiest thing in the world to do,
15:46but if you have some knowledge, like a surgeon or a chef,
15:50then you can quite effectively dismember a body,
15:54and that makes it easier to dispose of.
15:58This horrific expertise in chopping up bodies
16:02later earned Bordella the nickname the Kansas City Butcher.
16:09In keeping with his obsession with collecting,
16:12this time Bordella decided he wanted to keep a souvenir of his actions.
16:18Bordella's second victim, Robert, he dismembered the body
16:22and cut off the head.
16:24But this time he didn't put it all into black garbage bags
16:29and put it out for the garbage truck.
16:32He kept the head first in the freezer in his house,
16:36and he later buried it in the garden where it decomposed
16:40as a kind of trophy of the killing.
16:43And this is really significant for me
16:45because the head is what gives somebody their identity.
16:49It's what makes them a human.
16:51I think by keeping the head, Bordella wants to be able to say,
16:54I'm the one that has depersonalized this individual.
16:57I'm the one that's dehumanized them.
17:00Bordella had now tortured and murdered two people
17:03without being caught.
17:08The following June, just two months after his last murder,
17:11he struck again.
17:13Mark was a young man who had helped out around Bordella's house.
17:17He'd mown the lawn for him a few times.
17:20And Bordella discovered him intoxicated in his shed one day.
17:24He invites him into his home and so begins the process of torture,
17:30as had been the case with previous victims.
17:3220-year-old Mark Wallace was gagged and injected with a cocktail of drugs
17:38to sedate him before he was restrained and raped.
17:41Mark was Bordella's third victim.
17:44And again, I think we have with this the escalation and the experimentation.
17:50We have injection of drugs.
17:53He's used the rubber mallet again to strike his victim.
17:56But now he's applying electric shocks.
18:01When Bordella returned from work that evening,
18:04he found Mark trying to free himself.
18:07Bordella sedated him again
18:09before continuing to rape and torture his victim.
18:14It's almost as if he has a compliant victim
18:17and he's thinking, what will this do?
18:21Electric shocks are rarely fatal,
18:24but they can be tremendously painful.
18:28As had become his custom,
18:30Bordella kept a record of his barbaric actions in his diary.
18:35On the 23rd of June 1985, he wrote,
18:397am, no signs of life.
18:42He died as a result of the torture.
18:48And in previous cases, we've seen this happen before.
18:52Once again, Bordella lived up to his alter ego
18:56of the Kansas City Butcher.
18:58He's dismembered with safety razor, a knife and a saw,
19:03and then literally left out with the rubbish.
19:06With three local men now missing,
19:09rumours amongst Kansas City sex workers began to spread.
19:15The male sex workers of Kansas City
19:17had developed quite a wariness of Robert Bordella.
19:21He'd developed something of a reputation at this time
19:24for being aggressive with people,
19:26for wanting to tie them up, wanting to aggressively rape them.
19:30So there was definitely a sense in which
19:33this guy was somebody to steer clear of,
19:35this guy was potentially dangerous.
19:38Bordella was well known for haunting
19:41what you might describe as gay bars, as the gay community.
19:45But he was also very well known
19:47for wanting to be in complete control.
19:50He did not have a good reputation.
19:53And many of the people that came into contact with him
19:56warned each other in that really quite small community.
20:00Despite his reputation, some still trusted him.
20:04On the 26th of September, 1985,
20:08Walter Ferris, a married man and acquaintance of Bordella,
20:12turned up at his house.
20:14Once he set foot inside, his fate was sealed.
20:18Walter asked Bordella whether he could stay at his house,
20:21and I think in this Bordella sees another opportunity.
20:26And so begins a process again of torture
20:30and of absolutely horrendous pain and discomfort.
20:35Bordella found new ways to inflict more suffering to his victim.
20:40With Bordella's fourth victim,
20:42we've got another development of the behaviour.
20:45We've still got electric shocks that he'd used on his previous victim.
20:50We've got injection of drugs.
20:53We've got sexual assault.
20:55And one of the things he uses with this victim is ketamine.
21:00Ketamine is a tranquiliser.
21:02It is used therapeutically,
21:04but it's known that it can cause horrific hallucinations.
21:10And it has to be used very carefully in a therapeutic environment.
21:14So potentially we're looking at all sorts of horrible hallucinations
21:19added to the horrible things that are actually happening to him.
21:23It is a horrific set of circumstances that one cannot even really begin to imagine.
21:34Yet again, Bordella documented each and every step in minute detail.
21:40Bordella by now was escalating his torture.
21:46Extraordinary things were done to these poor men.
21:50And yet again, there was an exact record of what he could survive.
21:54I suspect part of the reason for that was that Bordella wanted to see
22:01how much a human body could take, what it could accept.
22:06He wanted to test everything to its limits.
22:09He wanted to see how far.
22:11Can he take that? Could he take more?
22:15In less than 24 hours, Walter was dead.
22:19Walter Ferris died at around midnight,
22:22the day after he was captured by Robert Bordella.
22:25Bordella disposed of Walter's body in the usual fashion.
22:28So he dismembered it in his bathtub,
22:30and he put the pieces of Walter's body out with the trash.
22:34Days after his disappearance,
22:37Walter's wife reported him missing to the police.
22:40His wife and mother suspected Bordella because the last time that Walter left the house,
22:48he said, I'm going over to Bordella's, and he was never seen again.
22:51For the second time in approximately 15 months, Bordella was questioned and put under surveillance.
22:58But investigators quickly hit a dead end.
23:01The missing persons unit did an investigation.
23:04They did their best to further the investigation along, but they were just unsuccessful.
23:10There was not enough evidence to charge him.
23:12They went to his house.
23:13They tried to buy drugs undercover from him.
23:16There was various things they did to try to make a case.
23:21They were just unsuccessful.
23:23In just over a year, Bordella had detained, savagely tortured, and killed four men.
23:30Each murder he committed increased in brutality as his dark imagination seemed to know no limits.
23:37Yet he continued the pretense of an upstanding, if eccentric, member of the local community.
23:43And police had no reason to link him with the disappearance of his victims.
23:50The police had no suitable cause to search the house.
23:54So, as far as they were concerned, Bordella was simply helping the police with their inquiries.
24:00They had no concrete evidence whatever against Bordella at that point.
24:04On June the 17th, 1986, Bordella selected his next victim.
24:09In the red light district of Kansas City, he picked up 23-year-old casual sex worker and drug addict, Todd Stoops.
24:18Bordella's next victim, Todd, had already had contact with him over a number of years.
24:23Indeed, it suggested to the police that Bordella might have been guilty of killing his first victim with an injection,
24:29which was never proven.
24:31Bordella was sexually attracted to Todd.
24:34And Todd and his wife had actually spent some time living in Robert Bordella's house
24:40in exchange for sexual favors that Todd provided to Bordella with his wife's knowledge.
24:46So, this couple, they were very vulnerable.
24:49And Bordella took advantage of that vulnerability.
24:53When Todd needs money for drugs, Bordella sees another opportunity here.
25:00As soon as Todd stepped foot inside, Bordella began his deadly routine.
25:06Over a period of two weeks, he subjected him to a ferocious series of attacks.
25:12If what happened to Walter was horrific, he manages to outdo himself with Todd.
25:19So, we have nearly a fortnight of captivity with torture, whipping, sexual assault again,
25:27all sorts of horrific physical acts to degrade, to cause pain.
25:33But he's also once again organized.
25:36He's planning.
25:37He thinks injecting Drano into the eyes will blind his victim, which it does.
25:43It makes it more difficult to escape.
25:45He injects it into the voice box to stop him screaming.
25:49These are not the acts of a madman.
25:52These are planned, deliberate actions of somebody who knows what he's doing and why he's doing it.
25:59Bordella took extensive photographs of the torture and the demise of Todd.
26:05I think Bordella felt that Todd was a significant victim for him.
26:09He felt that attraction to him.
26:11And it wouldn't surprise me if he'd been at the center of quite a lot of fantasies he'd had about having a sex slave.
26:18On July the 1st, 1986, Todd died of septic shock from an infection caused by the injuries he had received.
26:28Like his previous victims, Bordella dismembered Todd's body and put his remains to be picked up by trash collectors.
26:37On the 23rd of June, 1987, a little less than a year later, the Kansas City butcher saw his next opportunity.
26:52Larry Pearson was a sex worker who needed some bail bond money.
26:56So Robert Bordella says to him,
26:58I will bail you out, I'll give you the money, as long as you come and stay in Ohio for a week with my family.
27:05So Larry agrees to do this.
27:07And then when they arrive back from this vacation, Bordella takes him captive.
27:13Once again, we have escalation of this behavior.
27:17We started with cruelty.
27:19It's escalating and escalating.
27:22We now have a victim kept for six weeks, tortured, sexually assaulted.
27:28Despite the constant torture, Larry fought back.
27:32Larry didn't know what to do.
27:34He knew he wanted to survive as best he could.
27:37Until finally, in what must have been utter despair, Larry bit Bordella's penis during oral sex.
27:48The injury to Bordella's penis was so severe he went to hospital.
27:54Bordella calls a taxi and during the time while he's waiting for the taxi, he kills his victim.
28:00When he's dead, Bordella has the sense to try and keep the property cool,
28:10to slow down decomposition, to reduce smells produced.
28:14Once again, these are all unconscionable acts, but they are planned.
28:20They are deliberately undertaken.
28:23This is somebody who is in control of what he's doing.
28:26When Bordella returned from hospital, he dismembered Larry's body.
28:32Bordella was so angry at the injury that had been caused to him
28:38that he was determined to take out the maximum punishment and revenge
28:43on the man who had the temerity to actually hurt him.
28:47It was the first time anyone had tried to hurt him.
28:49And so, yet again, he dismembered the body
28:53and yet again cut off the head.
28:56Only this time he went out into the garden, dug up Robert's head,
28:59put Larry's in the same hole,
29:01and proceeded to bring Robert's head into the house, clean it up,
29:06take the teeth out, put them in two envelopes,
29:10and put the skull, which was all that remained at that point,
29:12into a closet in the upstairs of his house.
29:15Heads are very, very significant for Bordella,
29:18and I think the head of Larry is a very important one
29:21because this is the guy who has come closest
29:24to Bordella's fantasy of having this sex slave.
29:28He's the guy who's survived for six weeks.
29:31He's survived the longest,
29:32and I think he wants to commemorate that.
29:34But Bordella's barbarous nature was far from satisfied.
29:38On March the 29th, 1988,
29:43he picked up 22-year-old male prostitute Christopher Bryson
29:47and took him back to his house.
29:50So Christopher Bryson was wandering the streets
29:53when Robert Bordella picks him up,
29:56and he offers him a beer,
29:57and they drive around in his car for a while.
30:00Bordella then says, well, come back to my house,
30:02and you can have a beer there.
30:04So Christopher agrees, and they go back.
30:07He was brought home to provide sexual favours for Bordella
30:12and was told to go upstairs as soon as they got there.
30:16As Bryson mounted the stairs and started walking up,
30:19he was struck from behind and rendered unconscious.
30:22With his victim sedated and held captive,
30:27Bordella began his deadly ritual.
30:30Once again, he is tortured, he is assaulted,
30:35he is given bleach in the eyes,
30:38but this time it's swabbed onto the eyeballs rather than injected in.
30:43That would probably be even more painful.
30:46There are many nerve endings on the globe of the eye,
30:50which would react very badly to the bleach.
30:53Repeatedly electrocuted, raped and injected with a cocktail of sedatives,
30:59Christopher remained a submissive captive for four days.
31:03But on the morning of April the 2nd, 1988,
31:07when Bordella had left for work,
31:09Christopher managed to set himself free.
31:12He finds some matches and he's able to actually burn through the robes
31:18that Bordella had restrained him with.
31:20So he flees the house wearing only a dog collar.
31:23It must have been an extraordinary sight,
31:25a naked man wearing a dog collar.
31:28He runs across the street,
31:30meets a meter reader who's going to a house.
31:33They knock on the door.
31:34The house owner is astonished, opens the door astonished,
31:38won't let Christopher into the house, but does call the police.
31:43Roy Orth was a sergeant with the Kansas City Police Department
31:47when they received the call.
31:50Chris had been severely physically abused and was asking for help.
31:55District officers got there,
31:58found this was probably going to be some kind of an unlawful restraint,
32:02abduction situation,
32:04and called the Sex Crimes Child Abuse Unit,
32:08and our detective responded.
32:10Rick Holtzclaw was the assistant prosecutor
32:14for the Sex Crimes Unit in Kansas City.
32:17Roy Orth called me and said,
32:19we need you, and I said, you don't need me today.
32:21And he said, no, I'm telling you, we need you on this one.
32:24He may have told me briefly what it was,
32:26that we had someone who had escaped naked with a dog collar.
32:30It became evident that they were going to need some assistance,
32:33so I went to the home on that Saturday afternoon,
32:36and we began the investigation getting search warrants,
32:40and that's how it began.
32:42In just over a three-year period, Bedella had held,
32:47brutally raped, tortured, and killed six men,
32:51and got away with it.
32:53Unknown to the police, they were about to uncover
32:56the shocking crimes committed by a sadistic serial killer,
33:01Robert Bedella.
33:05Troy Cole was the lead detective in charge of the case.
33:10I first became aware of him April 2, 1988.
33:14I was working in the homicide unit.
33:16It was a Saturday, and I was called out in regards to a sodomy.
33:21The guy alleged that he had been kidnapped and held captive
33:25for a number of days, and I was the duty sergeant,
33:28which meant that I handled the homicides, the robbery,
33:30and the sex crimes for that particular day.
33:33Christopher managed to escape and flag down a passerby.
33:37That's what brought us to the residence.
33:40The traumatized victim recounted his ordeal
33:44and gave police the name and address of his captor.
33:48When Bedella arrived home that evening,
33:51the police were waiting for him.
33:54When Bedella drove up to the house,
33:56we asked him for identification, and he produced it,
33:59and he said, I live here.
34:00And at that point, he was immediately arrested
34:02for investigation of sodomy.
34:05We brought him downtown.
34:10I asked him if he would sign a consent to search the residence
34:14so we could further the investigation.
34:16He refused.
34:17He said that he would rather talk to his attorney.
34:20So at that point, we booked him into the city jail
34:23and prepared to get a search warrant.
34:26With Chris's testimony, police were able to obtain a warrant
34:31to search Bedella's property the same day.
34:35When we first went up to kick the door in,
34:38we could hear large dogs in the background,
34:40so we called animal control out.
34:42Immediate reaction was the house was filthy,
34:45had a stench, the odor was horrible,
34:48clutter and dog feces everywhere.
34:51It was one of the worst houses I'd ever walked into.
34:56Using the information that Christopher had given them,
35:00officers searched Bedella's property
35:02for the room where he'd held his victim captive.
35:05So our initial thought was to try to find the room
35:08to verify his story.
35:10So we go upstairs and after a brief period of time
35:13we found the room that he had described.
35:16We found the bed that he had described
35:18and it had restraints tied to the bedpost.
35:21So we were pretty sure at this point
35:23his story maybe had some legitimacy to it.
35:26There was a device underneath the bed plugged into the wall
35:30that was a, it appeared to me to be an electric train transformer.
35:35And there were jumper cable clips on the ends of it
35:38so that he could attach them to different parts of somebody's body
35:42and then increase the electrocution level
35:45by turning the transformer selector.
35:48In searching the rest of the house,
35:50officers discovered Bedella's most prized collection.
35:54We discovered several hundred, probably two to three hundred,
35:57Polaroid photographs that he had taken.
36:00Some of the people in the photographs
36:02were in obvious signs of being tortured.
36:05Eventually we were able to find detailed torture notes
36:09that Bedella had kept on several people, six in fact.
36:14And in reviewing those pictures,
36:17probably the most telling was one of a young man
36:20that was hanging, suspended upside down
36:22from a steel I-beam.
36:24And what we later learned was the basement of the Bedella home.
36:28And this person appeared to be deceased.
36:34As the police combed the property,
36:36they discovered more and more evidence
36:39of Bedella's horrific crimes.
36:41A short time later we found a skull in a closet
36:45which appeared to have been probably fairly recent.
36:49The officers gathered the evidence.
36:51The following day, a pathologist was called in.
36:55We had called in a doctor to examine the skull
36:59that was in the closet.
37:01And he said that in his opinion,
37:03that skull probably was less than two years old.
37:06But it would obviously require further examination.
37:10So at that point we sort of cataloged
37:12what we could find in the house.
37:14It looked like it might have some evidentiary value to it.
37:17One was a bag of what appeared to be human vertebrae
37:21that were very clean.
37:23Obviously they'd been boiled out, bleached,
37:27almost looked like plastic.
37:29We also found this skull that was obviously human
37:33and hadn't been bleached out yet.
37:36The police returned to Bedella's home the next day,
37:39and they left no stone unturned.
37:43Bedella kept dogs in the backyard in an enclosure.
37:47And in looking at the backyard,
37:49the grass was noticeably greener in a couple of areas,
37:55which caused me to think that, you know,
37:57possibly there was something else there.
38:00So at that point we decided to bring in a backhoe
38:04to dig up that one particular spot
38:07where it looked like it might have had a grave marker to it.
38:10On the second dig, there was a sucking sound
38:14as it dug in and lifted out.
38:17I stopped the man immediately and looked,
38:20and there was a human jaw that had been pulled up.
38:25And then, of course, we stopped,
38:27and eventually we found the full human skull.
38:30What it appeared that he was doing
38:32was once he would dismember his victims,
38:35he collected the skulls and then would clean them
38:38by burying them in the backyard.
38:41And after they'd been out there
38:42for whatever time he felt was necessary,
38:45dig them back up and then clean them out,
38:47boil one, bleach them.
38:49When police extended their search
38:51to Bedella's shop in the bazaar,
38:54they found a macabre window display.
38:57As you walked up Westport Road,
39:00there was a display of human skulls.
39:02I think there were two, I can't remember now.
39:05And initially, these were so clean
39:08that they appeared to be plastic,
39:10but it was later determined
39:11that they were also Bedella victims.
39:17Bedella's obsession with his crimes
39:19and brazen behavior were his undoing.
39:23But the police still had a mammoth task to overcome.
39:29Our biggest challenges early on
39:31were identifying all these people
39:33that were in the Polaroid photographs.
39:35We had no idea when we started the investigation
39:37who any of them were.
39:39Of the 200, they were not all facial shots.
39:42There were some body parts and people in various stages,
39:45but we needed to identify the skull that was found in the closet,
39:50and we needed to identify the human head
39:52that we dug up in the backyard.
39:54So those were our biggest challenges.
39:56By May 1988, using Bedella's photos,
40:01detailed notes and dental records,
40:04the police identified the two skulls
40:06as belonging to his second victim, Robert,
40:09and his sixth victim, Larry.
40:14On August the 3rd, 1988,
40:16at Jackson County Circuit Court,
40:19Bedella stood before the circuit court judge,
40:22Alvin Randall,
40:23charged with the first-degree murder of Larry.
40:27The state decide that they're going to pursue a prosecution
40:30for the murder of Larry first,
40:32but before they get very far,
40:34Bedella actually confesses he pleads guilty.
40:37I think everyone was stunned.
40:39Strategically, I think it was a great move on the defense team,
40:43because at that time,
40:44kept the state from filing a death penalty charged against him.
40:48Everyone was surprised.
40:50I think he pled guilty
40:51because he was scared of the death penalty,
40:53and I think he felt like we were going to go for the death penalty.
40:57And at that point,
40:58he started working out a deal with his attorney
41:00to let's try to cut a deal to save my life.
41:03As the prosecution prepared to take Bedella to trial
41:08for the murder of his second victim, Robert,
41:11he made a plea bargain.
41:13Part of the guilty plea was that Bedella sat down
41:16with his two defense lawyers
41:18and then also with Mr. Hall and Mr. Reeder,
41:21the prosecutor and the assistant prosecutor
41:23from the murder division.
41:24And they spent two days under oath on the record,
41:28and he would lay out what he did to these victims.
41:32From the 13th to the 15th of December,
41:35Bedella fully confessed to all six murders.
41:39We spent three days with him over in the Jackson County jail,
41:43and he was very matter of fact in describing all of the murders.
41:47Basically, he didn't show any remorse.
41:50I think he enjoyed reliving and describing
41:53what he had done to the victims.
41:55I think he got a charge out of it,
41:56and it was a pretty compelling three days.
42:02Bedella is incredibly proud of these murders,
42:05of this project, of this extended experiment
42:08that he's been conducting.
42:10And he really does enjoy reliving this
42:13and telling people who appear to want to hear about it.
42:17By revealing the true horror of his crimes
42:20to the authorities, he avoided the death penalty.
42:24On December the 19th, 1988,
42:27at Jackson County Circuit Court,
42:30Bedella was sentenced.
42:32Bedella received two life sentences
42:34for first-degree murder
42:36and four conditional life sentences
42:38for second-degree murder.
42:41But less than four years later,
42:43on October the 8th, 1992,
42:46Bedella died in Missouri State Penitentiary
42:49from a heart attack.
42:51He was 43.
42:55In just over three years,
42:56he meticulously planned, documented,
42:59and implemented the brutal rape, torture,
43:02and murder of six men.
43:05He then cut up their bodies
43:07with such methodical precision,
43:09he earned the nickname
43:10the Kansas City Butcher.
43:13The prolonged torture of his victims
43:15and his obsession with his own terrifying deeds
43:18would make Robert Bedella
43:20one of the world's most evil killers.
43:24Your life is yours.
43:25For more than one of the world's most evil killers,
43:26the brutal rape, torture,
43:27and the victory.
43:28Do not continue to escape the world's most evil.
43:29It must be more constructive,
43:30in the past,
43:31theboots and self-care exists.
43:33By the way,
43:34the man,
43:35the man,
43:36the man,
43:37the man's most evil Nós.
43:38The man,
43:39the man,
43:40the man,
43:41the man,
43:42the man,
43:42and the man,
43:43and the man,
43:44the man,
43:45and the man,
43:46and the man,
43:48the man,
43:49and the man,
43:50the man.
43:51You