The residents in the 4300 block of Charlotte Street could stand it no more. They went to Robert Berdella`s house with rakes and brooms last week and cleaned up the yard left torn and littered by police investigators.
But there is other damage they don`t yet know how to repair.
”It has destroyed the neighborhood in terms of how we feel about where we live,” said a woman who lives across the street from Berdella`s yellow house with brown trim and once befriended him.
”We`re all feeling a lot of pain that he did this to us. We never picked up on anything. We really feel used, as though we were part of Bob`s cover.” Robert Berdella, 39, a flea market dealer in primitive art and jewelry and once a civic-minded neighborhood citizen, sits in Jackson County jail in lieu of $750,000 bail. He is charged with felonious restraint, assault, forcible sodomy and murder by dismemberment.
His house, with the windows now boarded up, has become a magnet for the curious since April 2, when a naked man with red, swollen eyes and deep, raw marks around his wrists, ankles and mouth leaped from a second floor window wearing only a dog collar.
The man, Christopher Bryson, 22, told police he was knocked unconscious by Berdella, tied up and sexually abused for three days. He said Berdella told him others who had resisted had died.
Bryson also told police he was drugged, beaten with a pipe, tortured with electrodes and injected with substances that Berdella said were Drano and penicillin.
Within hours, Berdella was arrested, and police were searching his house and digging up his back yard. Four years earlier, they had suspected him in the unsolved disappearance of Gerald D. Howell, 19, who also worked at the Old Westport Flea Market, and, like another missing youth, Walter Ferris, was last seen with Berdella.
In the yard police unearthed a human head and part of a backbone that they identified as the remains of Larry W. Pearson, 21, of Wichita, Kan., who had been missing for nearly a year.
Inside the house, police found another human skull that was identified as that of Robert Sheldon, 19, a California youth said to have lived there briefly.
So far, Berdella has been charged only with Pearson`s murder. Privately, police and prosecutors say, they suspect he may have killed as many as seven people. His arraignment, originally scheduled for last week, was postponed a week.
Police found traces of blood on the basem*nt floor, human teeth in an envelope, several syringes and unidentified liquids and substances, and drugs that can be purchased legally from any veterinary supply house.
They have refused to say whether saw blades found in the house contain traces of blood. However, forensic tests of Pearson`s hair found traces of two obscure poisons, both mentioned in a journal Berdella allegedly kept of his sexual encounters, police said.
Also found were more than 200 Polaroid photographs of 19 naked young men, all except three of whom have been identified. Some appeared to be undergoing torture, and others looked comatose or dead. One young man was pictured hanging, blue-faced, by his feet.
The 4300 block of Charlotte Street is an amicable mix of white-collar and service workers, teachers, old people and young professionals. Its big, circa- 1930 houses sell at reasonable prices that make it a neighborhood of affordable first homes.
”We`re very proud of our property. When that happened, it was like a slap in the face,” said Michael Calderon, a bail bondsman who lives on the block.
For years, Berdella, a heavy man who favored flowered Hawaiian shirts and loose-fitting jeans, had been a conscientious neighbor.
He led the crime watch program, looked into the details of city rehabilitation subsidies, and represented the neighborhood at fundraisers for the local public television station. He cooked well and brought tasty dishes to block parties, neighbors said.
Although he became less active after Paul Howell, Gerald`s father, accused him of involvement in his son`s disappearance four years ago, neighbors recall his lifestyle had begun to change even before that.
”About six years ago he began bringing young boys home,” Helen Duran said.
”He told everyone he was like a foster parent to them,” said Shannon Christy, whose house is next door.
The youths, in their late teens and early 20s, worked around the house. Many, police now say, were male prostitutes.
After April 2, neighbors began recalling things about Berdella that they had not thought much of before, such as all his windows being heavily shaded or draped.
”You never knew if he was in there or not,” Rachel Geischen said.
His odd hours, the rooting about in the back yard late at night, the foul odor that lingered there-they all took a macabre new significance.
Last week, people on the block complained about the gawkers, including a bus full of tourists and families out for Sunday drives, who are constantly coming into their street.
”This has invaded my entire life,” Geischen said.
They said they are less likely to gather on their porches in the evening. They worry about property values dropping. Several even discussed having Berdella`s house torn down.
”These people feel very betrayed,” Christy said. ”Mortified and betrayed.”
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