Robert Berdella

But the strange thing is that none of the reports seemed to match, as if each sighting was of a different unknown animal.

Behind the friendly demeanor of Robert Berdella lurked a deadly obsession with torture and murder.

He soon earned the label The Butcher of Kansas City.

Weirdo family member Chris Masulak tells the true story of him and his friends getting exactly what they asked for and wishing they hadn't.

[eerie music] When Weird Darkness returns: After a series of attacks on farm animals in Puerto Rico, numerous people reported sightings of the creature at fault.

But the strange thing is that none of the reports seemed to match, as if each sighting was of a different, unknown animal.

Behind the friendly demeanor of Robert Berdella lurked a deadly obsession with torture and murder.

He soon earned the label The Butcher of Kansas City.

You have a book called, uh, the collector by, uh, John Falls and, uh, two serial killers, at least two series that we know of, uh, had it in a procession.

Uh, Leonard Lake was heavily obsessed by that book and also, uh, Bob Berdella from Kansas city.

Right.

Berdella was also, he preferred men to women, is that correct?

Let's hear them.

Hi, my name is Tim, and I have just recently started lis- And I found your episode about Robert Berdella.

He was from my hometown of Cuyahoga Falls, Ohio.

And despite what other people say, he is actually buried in Oakwood Cemetery in his father's grave as well.

[lip smack] And I, and honestly, I have subsequently learned that like, um, that same week, um, a couple other things happened in Kansas City that, that Michael Jackson performed.

Um, I know that the Sun City Girls played, um, at this, uh, venue called The Foolkiller, um, that week, and the most notorious serial killer in our city, Bob Berdella, committed his first murders that week, too.

It was a, a...

People wouldn't know about that for four years later, and obviously, the Sun City Girls, uh, performance relative to the Jackson's Victory Tour w- didn't get as much ink.

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.

Unfortunately though, that was the last straw 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.

That's the one that sticks out to me.

And there was, oh, it was Bob Berdella.

Bob Berdella was in the Geraldo episode.

If you've ever watched it, I mean, you can probably go back and watch it on YouTube, but Geraldo did this, it was an NBC special.

He did this one hour special on Satanism in the 80s, which just kind of come to define the satanic panic.

And they feature Bob Berdella in that episode, which is ironic.

That's right.

I have seen that.

We had a huge fucking serial killer there.

Really? Bob Berdella.

Yeah, he would prey on the gay community, young boys, not boys, but young men, 18, 19 years old, lure them back to his house, and then look them up.

It's crazy.

Well, if you were cruising around Kansas City and some serial killer pulls up in a raper van, would you have known? No, no,

dude.

No, and that's the crazy thing that was trippy about it because when – This guy, Bob Berdella, got caught, and they located his house.

We were like, oh, shit, that's like two blocks away from Whitney's house where he had the quarter pipe, like where we would all meet up, and it wasn't a nice part of the town.

Photographs, notes, restraints, human remains, and evidence pointing to a series of murders that had gone undetected for years.

The man behind it was Robert Berdella, a chef, a businessman, a familiar face in Kansas City's Westport neighborhood, and eventually, the man who'd become known as the Kansas City Butcher.

Six men were dead, one escaped, and one house held the secrets that would finally expose everything.

Welcome to the Murder Podcast Show.

And I know all you guys will be in the chat going, oh, my gosh, there's that state again.

So we will get rolling here.

When we hear the name Robert Berdella today, it's almost impossible to separate the man from the crimes.

His name has become synonymous, right? Sure.