Larry Wayne Pearson was 20 when he met Robert Berdella in the spring of 1987 after wandering into Berdella’s Westport shop in Kansas City, Missouri. Pearson moved in with Berdella and worked around the house and shop, but that arrangement concealed a far more sinister reality.

On June 23, 1987, Berdella reportedly intoxicated Pearson, injected him with a sedative, then bound and held him in the basement. Over about six weeks Pearson was allegedly tortured and ultimately died by suffocation after a plastic bag was placed over his head. Berdella dismembered Pearson’s body, burying the skull in the backyard; the rest of the remains were never fully recovered. Dental records later identified a skull found at the property as Pearson’s.

A grand jury indicted Berdella for Pearson’s murder on July 22, 1988; Berdella pleaded guilty the following month to first-degree murder as part of a deal to avoid the death penalty and received life without parole. The house held detailed logs of torture and evidence of other victims. Does anyone have additional information about Pearson’s life before he met Berdella or recall seeing him in Kansas City in 1987?