Meet Robert Berdella – a Kansas City serial killer who kidnapped, raped, tortured, and murdered at least six young men after subjecting them to periods of captivity lasting up to six weeks.
Police found a total of 357 photographs, depicting 23 people in various states of sexual torture, 6 of whom were identified as his murder victims.
After taking the men into captivity, Berdella would familiarize them with the “house rules” and subjected them to beatings, insertion of foreign objects into their anal cavities, and electric shock, regardless of whether they were obedient to his imposed rules.
Berdella’s torture methods ranged from putting bleach into the victims’ eyes to injecting them with different types of drugs, such as Thorazine, animal tranquilizers, and curare.
On multiple occasions, the killer injected Drano into their throats.
Berdella would then record the effects in a diary.
During his confessions, The Kansas City Butcher claimed that the movie adaptation of John Fowles’ 1963 novel “The Collector” had a huge impact on him as a teenager and served as inspiration for his crimes.
Eerily enough, Berdella was not the only killer who took the novel as a source of inspiration.
The infamous murderous duo, Charles Ng and Leonard Lake, named their murder and torture plot “Operation Miranda” after the character in Fowles’ book. Lake was obsessed with the novel and had a copy of ‘The Collector’ inside his bunker.
