85.Jeffrey Lionel DAHMER

A.K.A.: "The Milwaukee Cannibal"

Classification: Serial killer
Characteristics: Rape - Dismemberment - Necrophilia - Cannibalism
Number of victims: 17
Date of murder: 1978 - 1991
Date of arrest: July 22, 1991
Date of birth: May 21, 1960
Victims profile: Stephen Hicks, 19 / Steven Tuomi, 26 / James "Jamie" Doxtator, 14 / Richard Guerrero, 25 / Anthony Sears, 26 / Eddie Smith, 36 / Ricky Beeks, 27 / Ernest Miller, 22 / David Thomas, 23 / Curtis Straughter, 19 / Errol Lindsey, 19 / Tony Hughes, 31 / Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14 / Matt Turner, 20 / Jeremiah Weinberger, 23 / Oliver Lacy, 23 / Joseph Bradehoft, 25
Method of murder: Strangulation - Cutting his throat
Location: Ohio/Wisconsin, USA
Status: Pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Sentenced to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison, in Wisconsin on February 15, 1992. Sentenced to life in prison in Ohio in May 1992. Murdered in jail by convicted murderer Christopher Scarver on November 28, 1994

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Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender. Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with the majority of the murders occurring between 1987 and 1991. His murders involved rape, dismemberment, necrophilia and cannibalism. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by an inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.
Early life
Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, the son of Joyce Annette (née Flint) and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, an analytical chemist. Seven years later, his brother David was born. Joyce Dahmer reportedly had a difficult pregnancy with her elder son. When Jeffrey was eight years old, he moved with his family to Bath, Ohio. Dahmer grew increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative between the ages of 10 and 15, showing little interest in any hobbies or social interactions. He biked around his neighborhood looking for dead animals, which he dissected at home (or in the woods near his home). In one instance, he put a dog's head on a stake. Though fundamentally an outcast at Revere High School, Dahmer nonetheless became something of a cult figure among some students due to his impressions of his mother's interior decorator, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Dahmer began drinking in his teens and was an alcoholic by the time of his high school graduation.
In 1977, Lionel and Joyce Dahmer divorced. Dahmer attended The Ohio State University, but dropped out after one quarter, having failed to attend most of his classes. He was drunk for the majority of the term. Dahmer's father then forced him to enlist in the Army. Dahmer did well at first, but he was discharged after two years because of his alcoholism. When the Army discharged Dahmer in 1981, he was provided with a plane ticket to anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he could not go home to face his father, so he headed to Miami Beach, Florida, because he was "tired of the cold." He spent most of his time there at a hospital, but was soon kicked out for drinking. After coming home, he continued to drink heavily, and he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct later in 1981.
In 1982, Dahmer moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, where he lived for six years. During this time, his behavior grew increasingly strange. His grandmother once found a fully dressed male mannequin in his closet; Dahmer had stolen it from a store. On another occasion, she found a .357 Magnum under his bed. Terrible smells came from the basement; Dahmer told his father that he had brought home a dead squirrel and dissolved it with chemicals. He was arrested twice for indecent exposure, in 1982 and 1986; in his second offense, he masturbated in front of two boys.
In summer 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out because of his late nights, his strange behavior, and the foul smells from the basement. He then found an apartment on Milwaukee's West side, closer to his job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory.
On September 26, 1988, one day after moving into his apartment, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee. He was sentenced to five years' probation and one year in a work release camp. He was required to register as a sex offender. Dahmer was paroled from the work release camp two months early, and he soon moved into a new apartment. Shortly thereafter, he began a string of murders that ended with his arrest in 1991.
Murders
Dahmer committed his first murder in the summer of 1978, at the age of 18. His father was away on business and his mother had moved out, taking his brother with her; Dahmer was left behind, alone. That June, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Stephen Hicks and offered to drink beer with him back at his father's house, planning to eventually have sex with him. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 lb. dumbbell, striking the back of his head, later saying he had committed the crime because "the guy wanted to leave and [he] didn't want him to." Dahmer buried the body in the backyard. Nine years passed before he killed again; in September 1987, Dahmer picked up 26-year-old Steven Tuomi at a bar and killed him on impulse; he later said he had no memory of committing the crime.
After the Tuomi murder, Dahmer continued to kill sporadically: two more murders in 1988, and another in early 1989, usually picking up his victims in gay bars and having sex with them before killing them. He kept the skull of one of his victims, Anthony Sears, until he was caught.
In May 1990, he moved out of his grandmother's house for the last time and into an apartment that later became infamous: Apartment 213, 924 North 25th Street, Milwaukee. Dahmer picked up the pace of his killing: four more murders before the end of 1990, two more in February and April 1991, and another in May 1991.
In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him. Dahmer told John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, police officers dispatched to the scene, that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, who recognized him from the neighborhood and insisted that he was a child and couldn't speak English, the officers turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The officers did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age or identity, nor locate someone who could communicate with him, and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer being a convicted child molester still under probation. Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.
By summer 1991, Dahmer was murdering approximately one person each week. He killed Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19. Dahmer got the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies" — completely submissive, eternally youthful sexual partners – and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, usually while the victim was still alive. Other residents of the Oxford Apartments complex noticed terrible smells coming from Apartment 213, as well as the thumps of falling objects and the occasional buzzing of a power saw. Unlike many serial killers, Dahmer killed victims from a variety of racial backgrounds.
Arrest
On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another man, Tracy Edwards, into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him, but ultimately failed to cuff his wrists together. Wielding a large butcher knife, Dahmer forced Edwards into the bedroom, where Edwards saw pictures of mangled bodies on the wall and noticed the terrible smell coming from a large blue barrel; the barrel was filled with potent acid which dissolved human bodies to sludge for disposal via the apartment toilet. Edwards punched Dahmer in the face, kicked him in the stomach, ran for the door and escaped. Running through the streets with handcuffs still hanging from one hand, Edwards waved for help to a police car driven by Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller of the Milwaukee police department. Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers. However, Edwards remembered that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When one of the officers checked the bedroom, he saw the photographs of mangled bodies and called for his partner to arrest Dahmer. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head. Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, severed hands and penises, and photographs of dismembered victims and human remains in his refrigerator.
The story of Dahmer's arrest and the inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Seven skulls were found in the apartment. A human heart was found in the freezer.
Trial
Dahmer was indicted on 17 murder charges, later reduced to 15. Dahmer was not charged in the attempted murder of Edwards. His trial began on January 30, 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial lasted two weeks.
The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty available as Wisconsin abolished capital punishment in 1853. At his sentencing hearing, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, and said that he wished for his own death. In May of that year, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio, where he entered a plea of guilty for the murder of his first victim, Stephen Hicks.
Imprisonment and death
Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. Roy Ratcliff, a local preacher from the Churches of Christ, met with Dahmer and agreed to baptize him.
Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. An inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while Dahmer was returning to his cell from a church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds. While doing janitorial work in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a broomstick handle on November 28, 1994. Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds.
Aftermath
Upon learning of his death, Dahmer's mother, Joyce Flint, responded angrily to the media, "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" The response of the families of Dahmer's victims was mixed, although it appears most were pleased with his death. The district attorney who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned against turning Scarver into a folk hero, noting that Dahmer's death was still murder.
The Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street were demolished in 1992; the site is now a vacant lot. Plans to convert the site into a memorial garden failed to materialize.
In 1994, Lionel Dahmer published a book, A Father's Story, and donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims' families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel Dahmer and his wife, Shari. He has retired from his career as an analytical chemist and resides with his wife in Medina County, Ohio. Lionel Dahmer is an advocate for creationism, and his wife was a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman's Council. Both continue to carry the name Dahmer and say they love Jeffrey despite his crimes. Jeffrey's mother and Lionel Dahmer's first wife, Joyce (Flint), died of cancer in 2000. Jeffrey's younger brother, David, changed his last name and lives in anonymity.
Dahmer's estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer representing eight of the families, announced a planned auction of Dahmer's estate to raise up to $1 million, sparking controversy. A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride, was quickly established in an effort to raise the funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's possessions. The group pledged $407,225, including a $100,000 gift by Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber, for purchase of Dahmer's estate; five of the eight families represented by Jacobson agreed to the terms, and Dahmer's possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.
In January 2007, evidence surfaced potentially linking Dahmer to Adam Walsh's 1981 abduction and murder in Florida. However, Adam's father, John Walsh, believed that another serial killer, Ottis Toole, committed the crime. When interviewed about Adam Walsh in the early 1990s, Dahmer repeatedly denied involvement in the crime. In 2008, Florida police declared the Walsh case closed, naming Toole, who died in prison in 1996, as the killer.
Known murder victims
Name
Age
Date of death
Stephen Hicks 19 Jun 6, 1978
Steven Tuomi 26 Sep 15, 1987
James "Jamie" Doxtator 14 Jan 1988
Richard Guerrero 25 Mar 24, 1988
Anthony Sears 26 Mar 25, 1989
Eddie Smith 36 Jun 1990
Ricky Beeks 27 Jul 1990
Ernest Miller 22 Sep 1990
David Thomas 23 Sep 1990
Curtis Straughter 19 Feb 1991
Errol Lindsey 19 Apr 1991
Tony Hughes 31 May 24, 1991
Konerak Sinthasomphone 14 May 27, 1991
Matt Turner 20 Jun 30, 1991
Jeremiah Weinberger 23 Jul 5, 1991
Oliver Lacy 23 Jul 12, 1991
Joseph Bradehoft 25 Jul 19, 1991
Media portrayals
In 1992, Hart Fisher published a comic book titled Jeffery [sic] Dahmer: An Unauthorized Biography Of A Serial Killer. Collector's Item Issue, which the Milwaukee Sentinel described as "lurid and error-ridden." The publication sparked protests both in Milwaukee and in Fisher's home town of Champaign, Illinois. Dahmer's victims' relatives filed a lawsuit against Fisher (sometimes called "Fischer" in press reports) and his Boneyard Press for exploiting their loved ones' names and likenesses for profit without compensation, but a court eventually ruled that since the victims were dead at the time of publication, "name or likeness" laws were not applicable. In the wake of the lawsuit, Fisher eventually published sequels The Further Adventures of Young Jeffy Dahmer, Dahmer's Zombie Squad and Jeffrey Dahmer vs. Jesus Christ. Hart later discussed the controversy and confronted several family members of Dahmer's victims during two lively appearances on both The Jerry Springer Show and Sally Jesse Raphael.
The film Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life was released in 1993, starring Carl Crew as Dahmer.
Joyce Carol Oates' novel Zombie (1995) was based on Dahmer's life.
In 2002, the biographical film Dahmer, starring Jeremy Renner in the title role and Bruce Davison as his father, premiered in Dahmer's hometown. The film quickly went to video.
In 2002, cartoonist John Backderf (known as Derf), who attended middle school and high school with Dahmer, produced a comic book entitled My Friend Dahmer which presents his recollections about the killer's adolescence.
In 2003, Raw Dog Screaming Press released Harold Jaffe's 15 Serial Killers: Docufiction, which included a section on Dahmer; racism is implied as a factor in Konerak Sinthasomphone's death.
In 2006, another film, Raising Jeffrey Dahmer, was released; the film stars Rusty Sneary as Dahmer and Scott Cordes as Lionel; the film revolves around the reactions of Dahmer's parents after his arrest in 1991.
Dahmer was featured in the 6th episode of Discovery Channel's documentary series Most Evil.
In 2012, a documentary called Jeff premiered, which featured interviews with Dahmer's next door neighbor, Dahmer's interrogator, and the city medical examiner, as well as fictionalized scenarios of Dahmer living in Milwaukee
Further reading
Mann, Robert & Williamson, Miryam. Forensic Detective — How I Cracked The World's Toughest Cases. Ballantine Books (March 28, 2006)
Masters, Brian. The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London 1993 (Paperback Coronet 1993)
Pincus, Jonathan H. Base Instincts — What Makes Killers kill?. W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2001 (Paperback 2002)
Ratcliff, Roy with Lindy Adams. Dark Journey, Deep Grace: The Story Behind a Serial Killer's Journey to Faith. Leafwood Publishers, (2006).
Wikipedia.org

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Jeffrey Dahmer
Date of birth: May 21, 1960, at 4.34pm, at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital (Milwaukee)
Date of dead: November 28, 1994 (murderd by a fellow inmate)
Jeffrey Dahmer was a bit of a weird kid (to say the least). His mother was a loon. and his dad was a workaholic, so Jeff did not get a great deal of attention. He played games with his imaginary friends, and scared off his real friends with his strange antics.
He also had a strange fetish with dead animals. he loved to see their insides, and it's been claimed on numerous occasions that he once put a dogs severed head on a stick behind his house. Since his father was a doctor Jeff also got reading material, and sometimes a bit of help when it came to boiling road-kill down to bones for his personal collection.
Eventually Jeff's parents separated. If this wasn't hard enough on Jeff, then the fact that neither parent wanted him must have been. They argued fiercely over his little brother David, but never once bothered to mention Jeffrey's living arrangements. Eventually he went with his mother. Around this time Jeff discovered drugs and alcohol as a means to forget his problems.
Jeff was also known to run through the local mall acting like a retard, (which probably explains why he had few friends).
One night Jeff was driving back to his mothers when he picked up a hitchhiker, Steven Hicks, 19. The two of them went back to Jeffery's to drink some beer and smoke some pot. It seems that Jeff must have really liked Steve because when Hicks said that it was time he headed home, Dahmer decided that he did not want his new friend going anywhere. Jeff picked up a weight lifting dumbbell and struck Hick's in the back of the head. He then strangled him. Jeff then dragged the body into the crawlspace, under the house where it stayed for a few days. Eventually the smell became quite strong so Dahmer went down and cut the remains into pieces placing them into small plastic bags. He then put the bags in the bushes behind the house, eventually burying them. After a while Dahmer began to worry about the neighborhood kids digging up the remains so he dug them up and smashed the bones into pieces, which he scattered around the woods.
Over the next nine years Dahmer was able to control the urges to kill again.
Eventually Jeff joined the United States Army, where ended up stationed in Germany, this lasted a couple years until Jeff was finally discharged because of his erratic drinking problems.
After his military career ended Jeff accepted his homosexuality and became a regular at Milwaukee's gay bars. He was also arrested for flashing his penis at two 12 year old boys in a park and then masturbating. He was placed on probation until September 9, 1987 for the incident.
Just six days after the probation ended he started killing again.
On September 15, 1987 Dahmer spent the day drinking at a gay bar named Club 219 and met up with a gay man named Steven Toumi. They chatted with each other for a few hours and eventually left together. They went to a hotel and rented a room. Dahmer claims he can't remember what happened once they got to the hotel, only that he drank alot. He wasn't even sure if they had any form of sexual relations, but when he woke up Toumi was dead. It seems Jeff beat him very badly and strangled him. After this Jeff went out and bought a large suitcase. Which he then stuffed the body inside, and caught a taxi back to his grandmothers house, (where he lived in the basement). Once there he cut up the body, placed the pieces into garbage bags and put it out by the curb with the rest of the days trash.
On January 16, 1988 Dahmer approached a young male prostitute, James Doxtator (age: 14), and offered James money to make a video with him. Doxtator agreed so Jeff took him home to his basement room. Dahmer then gave James a sleeping drug concoction, and once he passed out Jeff strangled him. He then stripped the body of all flesh by using acid, then smashed the bones up with a sledgehammer. After he was satisfied with his work he scattered the bone fragments.
On March 24, 1988 Jeff met Richard Guerrero at a bar called the Phoenix. Guerrero was broke so Jeff offered him some money if he would come back to his place and make a video. Guerrero agreed, once back at Dahmer's they had oral sex, then Jeff offered him a drink and Richard accepted. Shortly after passing out Richard was strangled dismembered and disposed of.
It was around this time that Jeff's Grandmother began to worry about the foul smell coming from the basement. When Jeff’s father Lionel Dahmer inspected the room he found a black sticky residue, similar to what acid does to flesh, upon questioning his son about this Jeff told his father he had been experimenting with animals. Since Lionel never really gave a shit what Jeff did he accepted this and didn't bother to worry about it any further. But his grandmother did and he was asked to move out.
Dahmer soon got his own place at 808 North 24th Street. Just 24 hours after moving into his new apartment Dahmer was in trouble with police. He had conned a Laotian boy, Keison Sinthasomphone, 13, into coming up to his apartment. Once there Dahmer drugged and molested him, but the boy escaped. He reported the incident to the police and Dahmer was charged with sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. He spent one week in jail before getting released on bail. On January 30, 1990 Dahmer was found guilty, but sentencing wouldn’t take place for another four months.
On March 25, 1990 Dahmer met Anthony Sears at La Cage, (a gay bar). Dahmer took him back to his grandmothers house because he assumed the police were watching his apartment. Once there they had sexual intercourse, afterwards Dalmer made him a drink. Murdered him and decided to keep the skull as a trophy.
At Dahmer's sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes sentencing on May 23 Dahmer pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying "I am an alcoholic and a homosexual with sexual problems." The Judge, William Gardner, decided to sentence him to 5 years probation and 1 year in a half way house so he could continue to work.
After serving his time in the half way house Dahmer rented a place at the oxford apartments. Apartment #213. Just two weeks after moving into the now infamous apartment building (has since been demolished), Dahmer met Ray Smith at Club 219. Ray was a newcomer to Milwaukee and seemed to run into the wrong guy at the wrong time. Jeff asked Ray back to his place to pose for some photo's, Ray accepted this invitation and once Jeff offered him a drink. Once Ray passed out He strangled, then stripped the body and had necrophelic sex with it. This was the first corpse that Dahmer admitted to having sexual intercourse with, but definitely not the last. Once he'd had his fun with Ray he dismembered the body and threw it out with the trash. All except for the skull he kept that and painted it to preserve it, this marks the beginning of his macabre collection of human souvenirs.
On June 14, 1990 Dahmer met Eddie Smith, Eddie readily accepted Dahmer's advances and went back to Jeff's apartment where they had oral sex. Afterwards Jeff offered Eddie a drink, soon after Eddie passed out, Jeff strangled him, dismembered the body, then threw the remains out with the trash.
On July 8, 1990 Jeff decided to vary his MO, deciding not to bother drugging his victim. He had a 15 year old Hispanic kid posing for photos when he picked up a mallet and tried to hit the boy in the head. The kid fought back and eventually escaped, the kid went to the police, but when he begged police not to tell his foster parents that he was gay, the police decided to leave it alone.
On September 3, 1990 Dahmer picked up Ernest Miller, took him home had intercourse with him, drugged him, then changed his game plan a little plan, He didn't strangle Miller he cut his throat instead. He then sliced off the biceps and put them in the freezer, and then upon taking all the flesh from the bone, decided to keep the entire skeleton.
It was around this time that Jeff's neighbors started to complain about the putrid smell coming from his apartment. Dahmer explained to the landlord that his fridge was broken and he would get it fixed as soon as possible.
September/October, 1990 Jeff met David Thomas. Dahmer and Thomas were drinking in Dahmer's apartment when Jeff gave him his "special drink" Jeff didn't want to kill Thomas, but he was worried he might be upset when he woke up that Jeff drugged him. So Jeff decided the best thing to do was to kill him anyway. This time he filmed the whole dismemberment. He also took photo's of David's severed head in various positions in the apartment. (these photo's were later viewed by Thomas's sister for identification purposes).
On February 18, 1991 Jeff met Curtis Straughter. Curtis wanted to be a model, so when Jeff mentioned he pose for photo's, he gladly agreed. He was strangled while giving Jeff oral sex. Jeff kept the skull and painted it to preserve it, he also decided to keep the hands and penis as well.
On April 7, 1991 Jeff met Errol Lindsey (AKA Earl Lindsey) age: 19, at a local bus stop. Errol was paid by Dahmer to come back to the apartment. Jeff offered him a drink and he accepted, and soon Jeffrey was performing oral sex on his corpse. Jeff kept the skull.
On May 24, 1991 Jeff met Tony Hughes at club 219, Hughes was a deaf mute so Dahmer wrote his offer on paper and handed it to Tony, $50 to pose for some photos and watch some videos. Well as I am sure you have probably already guessed, Dahmer drugged and strangled Hughes. Then Jeff left the corpse laying around his bedroom for a few days before dismembering it.
On May 27, 1991 Dahmer met Konerak Sinthasomphone (age: 14) at a local bus stop. (Konerak was the younger brother of the guy who charged Jeff with sexual assault, although Jeff never knew it at the time.). Dahmer got the kid into his apartment, drugged him, had sexual intercourse with him, drilled a hole in his head, injected acid, then left to go get himself some beer. Somehow the kid woke up and was able to make it out of the building into the street where the police found him wandering around dazed and nude. To them he was just a drunk homosexual, and when they spoke to Dahmer their thoughts were confirmed. they went back to the apartment, noticed nothing out of the ordinary, and left Konerak with Dahmer. The police even made a joke about it on the CB. Well needless to say, Jeff added another skull to the collection which he also painted to preserve.
On June 30, 1991 Dahmer traveled to Chicago for Gay Pride Day. (his wallet was stolen at the events) While at a bus depot he met Matt Turner another guy that wanted to be a model. Dahmer talked him into coming back to Milwaukee with him. Dahmer paid for Greyhound bus tickets for them both and they were soon off on there 90 mile ride. Once safely back in the confides of his apartment, Dahmer drugged and strangled Turner. He then cut off Turners head, wrapped it in a plastic bag and placed it in the freezer, He then placed the torso in a blue 57 gallon barrel.
On July 4, 1991 Dahmer decided to pay another visit to Chicago. While there he met Jeremiah Weinberger age 23 at a local gay watering hole. Jermiah even asked his roommate what he thought of Jeff, "He seems all right". So Jeremiah decide to go back to Milwaukee with Jeff. Jeff again paid for Greyhound bus tickets for the 90 mile ride back to his place. Once they arrived back at Jeff's they had mutual sex and Jeremiah spent the night. But when Jeremiah got sick of having sex with Jeff he said he was going home. Jeff said fine, then offered him a farewell drink. Jeff then strangled him. Jeremiah's head was found in Jeff's freezer.
On July 12, 1991 Jeff met Oliver Lacy Age:23 They went back to Jeff's place, had a drink, fooled around, then Jeff strangled him. Then for the first time Jeff decided to get into some necrophelic sex and sodomized the corpse. He then sliced the right bicep off and ate it. He placed Lacy's head in the fridge next to an open box of Arm & hammer baking soda, and his heart in the freezer to eat later. He also put other body parts in the freezer. he put the rest of the flesh into the trash and he kept the entire skeleton.
It was at this time that Dahmer was suspended from his job at the Ambrosia chocolate factory. It seems that he spent a few too many days at home with his "friends". This really upset Jeff. And then on July 19 he was fired from the job.
On July 19, 1991 Jeff met Joeseph Bradehoft at a local bus stop. It was poring down rain and Joseph had a six pack of beer on him, so he decided to go back to Jeff's to party a bit. Once there they had oral sex, then Dahmer drugged and strangled him. slept with the body for the next few days until the head became infested with maggots. Jeff cleaned it and put it in the freezer along with the heads of Turner and Weinberger. He placed the torso in the 57 gallon barrol in the bed room.
Dahmer seemed to have very little control at this point, he seemed to care very little, he was becoming extremely sloppy, and it was only a matter of time before his world would completely collapse.
On July 22, 1991 Dahmer met Tracy Edwards age:32. Jeff picked him up, got him back to his place. Dahmer claims he remembers little of this evening, but you can bet your ass Edwards will never forget it. According to Edwards Jeff pulled out a knife and went from being Mr. nice to being a cold hearted son-of-a-bitch. Jeff managed to get a handcuff onto one of Edwards hands, but Edwards fought back and got away. Police officers Mueller & Rauth were doing their nightly patrol down Kilbourn Avenue, Milwaukee.
When they reached the corner of 25th Street, they were flagged down by a black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. hysterically explained to the officers that he had been drinking with a man who handcuffed him & tried to kill him. The officers tried to remove the handcuff from Edwards' wrist but their keys would not fit, so Mueller & Rauth escorted Edwards back to the man's apartment located at 924 North 25th Street. The door to apartment 213 was opened by Jeffery Dahmer a 31 year old, white, male. The inside of the apartment was neat & clean and Dahmer acknowledged that he was responsible for the handcuff & pointed the officers in the direction of the bedroom, which is where he thought the keys would be.
He also said: "I just lost my job, and I want to drink some fucking beer!". After looking around inside one of the officers opened up the fridge and exclaimed "OH MY GOD! THERE'S A GOD DAM HEAD IN HERE! HE"S ON SICK SO OF A BITCH!" Dahmer suddenly turned on them and fought as the other cop tried to cuff him, after subduing Jeff they took him in.
Upon searching the apartment, the box of baking soda in the refrigerator hardly absorbed the odors of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties. There was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath which had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who was first on the scene, described what she saw in her book The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: "...in the back of the closet was a metal stockpot that contained decomposed hands and a penis.
On the shelf above the kettle were 2 skulls. Also in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde...Polaroid photos taken by Dahmer at various stages of his victims deaths. One showed a man's head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean I could see the pelvic bone clearly." Some of the photos were his victims before he murdered them in various erotic and bondage poses. The case became the biggest serial murder case of the decade.
Dahmer's bail was originally set at $1 million cash. On Aug. 6, it was raised to $5 million when eight more murder charges were added to his charges. In the end Dahmer had fifteen murder charges against him. The longest sentence Dahmer muttered at any of the preliminary hearings was "I understand, your honor" when the judge asked if he understood the charges against him.
On July 13, 1992, Dahmer ignored his lawyer's advice and changed his plea to guilty, but that he was insane. According to Don Davis in The Milwaukee Murders, " the declaration turned the case on its head. Now, instead of having to prove his man did not commit the murders, defense attorney Gerald Boyle would unroll one of the goriest tapestries ever seen in an American courtroom. His task was to convince the jury that Dahmer was crazy, because only an insane person would do the things he did."
Two detectives took turns reading the 160-page confession. It was a catalog of sexual perversion. Detective Dennis Murphy stated that Dahmer "felt a tremendous amount of guilt because of his actions. He felt thoroughly evil." Then he quoted from Dahmer's own confession: "It's hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I've done, but I know that I did it." He claimed that his fear of being caught was overwhelmed by his excitement of being completely in control.
The battle of psychiatrists over whether Dahmer was legally responsible and able to control his actions seemed to confuse the jury. Finally Boyle drew a chart for the jury which He read them off quickly: "Skulls in locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbating.....This is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness..."
Prosecutor McCann rebutted, "He wasn't a runaway train, he was the engineer!" He was satisfying his extraordinary sexual cravings. "Ladies and gentlemen, he's fooled a lot of people. Please don't let this murderous killer fool you."
The jury deliberated for five hours and decided that Jeff Dahmer did not deserve to spend the rest of his life in a hospital, but in a prison cell. On all fifteen counts, Dahmer was found guilty and sane.
Dahmer wrote an apology to the judge covering a thirteen-year bloodbath. "Your Honor: It is now over. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace.. I know how much harm I have caused...Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins...I ask for no consideration."
He was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms or a total of 957 years in prison.
Dahmer adjusted very well to prison life at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. Initially, he was not part of the general population of the prison, which would have jeopardized his safety. As it was, he was attacked on July 3, 1994, while attending a chapel service by a Cuban who he had never seen before.
While in prison Dahmer was sued twice for 3 billion dollars. (even though he had not one red cent to his name) Dahmer, the model prisoner, convinced the prison authorities to allow him more contact with other inmates. He was able to eat in communal areas and he was given some janitorial work to do with other teams of inmates.
The morning of November 28, 1994. Dahmer was working bathroom clean-up detail paired up with two highly dangerous men: Jesse Anderson, a white man who had murdered his wife and blamed it on a black man, and Christopher Scarver, a black delusional schizophrenic who though the was the son of God, who was in prison for first degree murder. It's not difficult to imagine how Scarver viewed Dahmer, who had butchered so many black men, and Anderson. It was a disastrous combination. 20 minutes after they started, a prison guard came by to check on them and found Dahmer lying face down in a pool of blood with his head bashed in (the other white inmate was lying in a pool of blood in one of the showers).
Upon arriving at the hospital Dahmer was pronounced dead at 9:11 A.M. Jesse Anderson died shortly after. from having his head bashed against the floor and walls repeatedly. They compared his injuries to those of a car accident. Scarver claimed "God told me to do it!" At any rate he received another life sentence for his actions.
Jeff was cremated and his parents, who are divorced, each received half of his remains after a court battle over his ashes.

---

Jeffrey Dahmer
By John Boston

A Victim Almost Escapes
Konerak was only fourteen and he was running for his life. This was his only chance to escape from the horrible smelling apartment where the creepy blond guy had slipped him some kind of powerful drug. It seemed that luck was with him that he started to come around just as the blond man had left the apartment.
It took all the strength he had to get up and get to the door. He was so disoriented and panicked that it made no difference that he was naked. This was his only chance to survive. He was working strictly on instinct. Just get out of there and run away.
It was just before 2 A.M. and Sandra Smith called 911 to report the boy running around "butt naked.". She didn't know who he was, but she knew he was injured and terrified.
The paramedics got there first and put a blanket around the naked, dazed boy. Two police officers arrived soon after and tried to understand what was going on with this young man of Asian descent.
Sandra Smith, eighteen years old and her cousin Nicole Childress, also eighteen, were standing near the boy when the Milwaukee city police arrived. The tall blond man was also standing near the boy. The conversation became heated between the girls, the blond man and the police.
The tall blond man told the police the Konerak was his nineteen-year-old lover who had been drinking too much. Konerak who was drugged and incoherent wasn't able to contradict the smooth-talking blond man. Dahmer gave the police a picture ID.
The two young women tried to intervene. They had seen the terrified boy trying to resist the blond man before the police arrived. They were angry and upset. The police were ignoring them and listening to the white man instead.
Just to be on the safe side, the two officers went with the boy and the tall blond man to his apartment. The apartment smelled bad, but it was very neat. Konerak's clothing was folded and placed on the sofa. There were a couple of photographs of Konerak in black bikini briefs.
Konerak sat quietly on the sofa unable to talk intelligently. It's not even clear that he understood the calm explanation the blond man was giving the police. The blond man was apologizing that his lover had caused a disturbance and promised it wouldn't happen again.
The police believed the blond man. They had no reason not to -- he was well-spoken, intelligent and very calm. The Asian was apparently drunk and incoherent. The officers, not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic argument between homosexual lovers, left the apartment with Konerak still sitting quietly on the sofa. In that neighborhood, the officers felt that there were more pressing things for them to do.

The Body in the Bedroom
What they missed in the apartment bedroom was the body of Tony Hughes, whose decomposing corpse had lain for three days on the bed.
What they missed was the blond man immediately strangling the Asian boy and having sex with his corpse.
What they missed were the photos that the blond man took of the dead boy, the subsequent dismemberment of his body, and the cleaning up of his skull to be kept as a trophy.
What they missed was the opportunity to take the name of Jeffrey Dahmer off the ID that the man gave them and run a background check which would have told them than the calm, well-spoken man was a convicted child molester who was still on probation.
The story didn't stop there. The two girls who the police ignored went back home to Sandra Smith's mother, Glenda Cleveland, a 36-year-old woman who lived next to the Oxford Apartments which Jeffrey Dahmer called home. Later, Cleveland called up the officers to find out what happened to the Asian boy. She asked how old the child was. "It wasn't a child. It was an adult," the officer said.
When she continued to ask questions, he told her: "Ma'am, I can't make it any more clear. It's all taken care of. He's with his boyfriend and in his boyfriend's apartment...It's as positive as I can be...I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life."
A couple of days later, Cleveland called the officers back after she read a newspaper article about the disappearance of a Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone who looked like the boy that had seen trying to escape from Jeff Dahmer. They never sent anybody to talk with her.
Cleveland even tried contacting the Milwaukee office of the FBI, but nothing came of it.
That is, until a couple of months later on Monday, July 22, 1991 when all hell broke loose.

Exposed
A couple of months later on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers were driving around in the very high crime area around Marquette University. The heat was oppressive and the humidity almost unbearable. The smell of the neighborhood was all the more pungent in the heat: the garbage on the streets, the urine and feces left by the homeless, the rancid stink of cooked grease.
Around midnight, as the two officers sat in their car, they saw a short, wiry black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. Assuming that this man had escaped from another policeman, they asked him what he was doing. The man started to pour out a tale about this "weird dude" who put the cuffs on him in his apartment. The man was thirty-two year old Tracy Edwards.
Edward's story smacked of some homosexual encounter that normally the police would avoid, but the two policemen thought they ought to check out this man that had cuffed Edwards who lived at the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street. The door to Apartment 213 was opened by a nice looking thirty-one-year-old blond man.
Dahmer was very calm and rationale. He offered to get the key to the handcuffs in the bedroom. Edwards remembered that the knife that Dahmer had threatened him with was also in the bedroom.
Once of the officers decided to go into the bedroom himself and take a look. He noticed photographs lying around that shocked him: dismembered human bodies, skulls in the refrigerator. When he collected his wits, he yelled to his partner to cuff Dahmer and place him under arrest.

The Head in the Fridge
The placid, rational blond man suddenly turned on them and fought as the other cop tried to cuff him. While the one officer subdued Dahmer, the other one went to the refrigerator and opened it. He shrieked loudly at the face that stared out at him and slammed the door. "There's a fucking head in the refrigerator!"
A closer examination of the apartment revealed an intimate juxtaposition of the tidy and the unspeakable. While the small one-bedroom flat was neat and clean, especially for a bachelor, and his pet fish well cared for, the smell of decomposition was overwhelming.
The box of baking soda in the refrigerator hardly absorbed the odors of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties.
There was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath which had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who was first on the scene describes what she saw in her book The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: "...in the back of the closet was a metal stockpot that contained decomposed hands and a penis. On the shelf above the kettle were 2 skulls.
Also in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde...Polaroid photos taken by Dahmer at various stages of his victims' deaths. One showed a man's head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean I could see the pelvic bone clearly." Some of the photos were his victims before he murdered them in various erotic and bondage poses.
The police, the county medical examiner, the media, families of missing young men, Jeff Dahmer's family, the entire city of Milwaukee and the whole world tried to understand what had really happened in Apartment 213. Eventually the story began to tumble out.

First Blood
The first person to plumb the depths of Jeffrey Dahmer's depravity was Detective Patrick Kennedy. A huge bear of a man with dramatic handlebar mustache, he engaged Dahmer's confidence and was the person to whom he confessed the details of his thirteen-year killing spree.
While Dahmer had fantasies about killing men and having sex with their corpses as early as age fourteen, he didn't do anything about it until just after he graduated high school in June of 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks when he was living with his parents in the upscale community of Bath, Ohio. They had sex and drank beer, but then Hicks wanted to leave. Dahmer couldn't stand the idea of Hicks leaving, so he struck him in the head with a barbell and killed him.
He needed to get rid of the body so he cut it up, packaged it up in plastic garbage bags and buried the bags in the woods behind his house. That fall, he attended Ohio State University for a semester but flunked out. At the end of 1978, he left to join the Army and was stationed in Germany. Apparently he didn't kill anyone when he was in the Army which was corroborated by an exhaustive investigation by the German police. After a couple of years, the Army discharged him for alcoholism and he went to live in Florida before returning to Ohio. Once back home, he dug up Hick's body, pounded the decomposing corpse with a sledgehammer and scattered the remains in the woods.

Lust, Booze & Murder
A few months after his arrest in October of 1981 for drunken and disorderly conduct, his father thought it best that Jeffrey go live with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin. Things were calm for a few months until he dropped his trousers in the company of a group of people. He had apparently had a bit to drink. He kept things under control for another four years until he was again arrested in September of 1986 for masturbating in front of two boys. He was put on probation for a year.
He killed his second victim Steven Toumi a hotel room in September of 1987. The two of them had been drinking heavily in one of the popular gay bars. Dahmer didn't know how he killed him, but when he awoke, Toumi was dead and blood was on his mouth. He bought a large suitcase and stuffed the body inside. After he took Toumi's corpse to his grandmother's basement, he had sex with it, masturbated on it, dismembered it and threw it in the garbage.
Several months later, he selected his third victim, a fourteen-year-old Native American boy named Jamie Doxtator who hung around outside the gay bars, looking for relationships. Dahmer's methods became established by that time. Normally, he would meet and select his prey at gay bars or bathhouses. He would lure his victims by offering them money for posing for photographs or simply to enjoy some beer and videos. Then he would drug them, strangle them, masturbate on the body or have sex with the corpse, dismember the body and dispose of it. Sometimes he would keep the skull or other body parts as souvenirs.

More Murders, More Arrests
He practiced this ritual on Richard Guerrero, a handsome young man of Mexican origin in late March of 1988. Dahmer said he met him a gay bar in Milwaukee, but the young man's family disputed that their son was anything but heterosexual. By the summer of that year, Dahmer had killed four men. While Dahmer's grandmother was completely ignorant of the awful things that were happening in her basement, she was fully aware of the noise and drunkenness of Jeff and his male friends. Something had to be done.
So, on September 25, 1988, Jeffrey moved into an apartment on North 24th Street in Milwaukee. The very next day, he got into serious trouble. He offered a thirteen-year-old Laotian boy $50 to pose for some pictures. He drugged the boy and fondled him, but did not get violent or have intercourse with him. By incredible coincidence, the boy's name was Sinthasomphone, the older brother of the boy that Dahmer would kill in May of 1991.
The boy's parents realized there was something wrong with their child and took him to the hospital where it was confirmed that he had been drugged. The police picked up Dahmer at his job at the mixer of Ambrosia Chocolate. He was arrested for sexual exploitation of a child and second-degree sexual assault. On January 30, 1989, he pleaded guilty, although he claimed that he thought that the boy was much older than he was.
While Dahmer awaited sentencing and was living again at his grandmother's house, he met a black homosexual named Anthony Sears at a gay bar. Like the others, he offered the twenty-four-year-old aspiring black model some money to pose for photos. When they reached Dahmer's grandmother's house, Sears was drugged and strangled. Dahmer had sex with his corpse and then dismembered it.
Anne Schwartz describes what happened next: "...he kept the head and boiled it to remove the skin, later painting it gray, so that in case of discovery, the skull would look like a plastic model used by medical students. Dahmer saved the trophy for two years, until it was recovered from Apartment 213 on July 23, 1991. Later he explained that he masturbated in front of the skulls for gratification."

A True Psychopath
On May 23, 1989, Dahmer's lawyer Gerald Boyle and Assistant D.A. Gale Shelton presented their arguments to Judge William Gardner. Shelton wanted a prison sentence of at least five years. "In my judgment it is absolutely crystal clear that the prognosis for treatment of Mr. Dahmer within the community is extremely bleak... His perception that what he did wrong here was choosing too young a victim, -- and that that's all he did wrong, -- is a part of the problem... He appeared to be cooperative and receptive, but anything that goes below the surface indicates that the deep-seated anger and deep-seated psychological problems that he is unwilling or incapable of dealing with."
Three psychologists examined him and concurred that Dahmer was manipulative, resistant and evasive. Hospitalization and intensive treatment was recommended.
Boyle, the defense attorney argued that Dahmer was sick and needed treatment, not prison. He praised the fact that he had held a job. "We don't have a multiple offender here. I believe that he was caught before it got to the point where it would have gotten worse, which means that it is a blessing in disguise."
Dahmer himself spoke in his own defense, blaming his behavior on alcoholism. He was articulate and convincing, for someone who had secretly murdered several men by that time. "What I have done is very serious. I've never been in this position before. Nothing this awful. This is a nightmare come true for me. If anything would shock me out of my past behavior patterns, it's this.
"The one thing I have in my mind that is stable and that gives me some source of pride is my job. I've come very close to losing it because of my actions, which I take full responsibility for... All I can do is beg you, please spare my job. Please give me a chance to show that I can, that I can tread the straight and narrow and not get involved in any situation like this ever again... This enticing a child was the climax of my idiocy... I do want help. I do want to turn my life around."
A marvelous performance by a true psychopath! The judge fell for it, stayed his sentence, and put Dahmer on probation for five years. He was ordered to spend one year in the House of Correction under "work release," which allowed him to go to work during the day and return to the jail at night.

The Killing Binge
After ten months, the judge granted him early release despite a letter from Dahmer's father urging him not to release him until he received treatment. He went to stay with his grandmother in early March of 1990, but his stay there was conditional upon him finding his own place to live.
On May 14, 1990, Dahmer moved to 924 North 25th Street, Apartment 213 and the killing began in earnest.
During the following fifteen months, Dahmer went on a killing binge that cost twelve men their lives. The pace of Dahmer's murders accelerated to a frenzy in May-July of 1991 when he was killing almost at a rate of one man a week. All but three were black; one was white, one was Laotian and one was Hispanic. Most, but not all, were homosexual or bisexual. The youngest was Konerak, age fourteen, and the oldest was thirty-one. Many of the victims lived what police call "high-risk" lifestyles. Most of the men had arrest records, often for very serious crimes, like arson, sexual assault, rape, battery, etc.
The listing below appears in Anne Schwartz's The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough:
Edward Smith June, 1990
Ricky Lee Beeks July, 1990
Ernest Miller Sept., 1990
David Thomas Sept., 1990
Curtis Straughter Feb., 1991
Errol Lindsey April, 1991
Anthony Hughes May 24, 1991
Konerak Sinthasomphone May 27, 1991
Matt Turner June 30, 1991
Jeremiah Weinberger July 5, 1991
Oliver Lacey July 12, 1991
Joseph Bradehoft July 19, 1991

Deadly Ritual
His ritual for luring, murdering and disposing of his victims was usually the same. He invited the men to his apartment to watch sexually-explicit videos or to pose for photos. He crushed up his prescribed sedatives and served them in a drink. Once drugged, Dahmer strangled them with his bare hands or with a leather strap. He frequently had sex with the corpse and later masturbated on it.
Before any clean up began, Dahmer reached for his Polaroid to capture the entire experience so that he could remember each and every murder. Then he cut open their torsos. He was fascinated by the color of the viscera and sexually aroused by the heat that the freshly-killed body would give off. Finally, he would dismember the man, photographing each stage of the process for future viewing pleasure.
He disposed of most of the bodies, experimenting with various chemicals and acids that would reduce the flesh and bone to a black, evil-smelling sludge, which could be poured down a drain or toilet.
Some parts of the bodies he chose to keep as trophies, frequently the genitals and head. The genitals were preserved in formaldehyde. The heads were boiled until the flesh came off. Once the skull was bare, he painted it with gray paint to look like plastic.

Control
Not unusual with necrophiliacs is cannibalism. Dahmer claimed that he ate the flesh of his victims because he believed that the people would come alive again in him. He tried various seasonings and meat tenderizers to make the human flesh more tasty. Eating human flesh gave him an erection. His famous freezer contained strips of frozen human flesh. He had tried human blood too, but it did not appeal to his taste buds.
Like Eddie Gein, he tried to perfect the art of preservation and taxidermy so that he could practice the state-of-the-art on his victims.
Control was an all important issue for Dahmer. He could not tolerate rejection or abandonment. Even in his homosexual relationships, he did not want to please his sexual partner, he just wanted to have his own pleasures. Pleasure to Dahmer meant performing oral or anal sex on his partner, whether alive or dead.
This absolute need for control led him down some pretty weird roads. One of them was a kind of lobotomy that he performed on several of his victims. Once they were drugged, he drilled a hole in their skulls and injected some muriatic acid into their brains. Needless to say, it caused death right away in a few victims, but one supposedly functioned minimally for a few days before dying.
Not surprisingly, his need for control led him to dabble with Satanism. In fact, just having the bodies of his victims around him made him feel "thoroughly evil." "I have to question whether or not there is an evil force in the world and whether or not I have been influenced by it. Although I am not sure if there is a God," Dahmer said," or if there is a devil, I know that as of lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about both." He had plans to create a shrine in his apartment, featuring all of his trophies, his statue of a griffin, and incense burned in the skulls of his victims, so that he could receive "special powers and energies to help him socially and financially."

Why?
Why does a Jeffrey Dahmer happen? How does a man become a serial killer, necrophiliac, cannibal and psychopath? Very few convincing answers are forthcoming, despite a spate of books that propose to the understand the problem.
Many of the theories would have you believe that the answers can always be found in childhood abuse, bad parenting, head trauma, fetal alcoholism and drug addiction. Perhaps in some cases, these are contributing factors, but not for Jeffrey Dahmer.
His father, Lionel Dahmer, wrote a very sad and poignant book called A Father's Story which explores the very common phenomenon of a parents trying desperately to give their child a good upbringing and discovering to their horror that their child has built a high wall around himself from which their influence is progressively shut out. While fortunately, most parents do not have a Jeffrey Dahmer to raise, too many have seen their children succumb to drugs, alcohol, crime despite their very best and often frantic efforts to intervene.
"It is a portrayal of parental dread... the terrible sense that your child has slipped beyond your grasp, that your little boy is spinning in the void, swirling in the maelstrom, lost, lost, lost."
Lionel seems to be fairly straightforward in recognizing the negative influences in Jeff's life. No family is perfect. Jeff's mother had various physical ailments and appeared to be high strung, coming from a background in which her father's alcoholism deeply affected her life.
Lionel, a chemist who went on to get his Ph.D., stayed at work more often than he should to avoid turmoil on the home front. Eventually, the marriage dissolved in divorce when Jeff was eighteen. However, none of this commonplace domestic discord accounts for serial murder, necrophilia, or Jeff's other bizarre behaviors.

A Happy Little Boy
Jeff Dahmer was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was a child who was wanted and adored, in spite of the difficulties of Joyce's pregnancy. He was a normal, healthy child whose birth was the occasion of great joy. As a tot, he was a happy bubbly youngster who loved stuffed bunnies, wooden blocks, etc. He also had a dog named Frisky, his much loved childhood pet.
Despite a greater number than usual of ear and throat infections, Jeff developed into a happy little boy. His father recalled the day that they released back into the wild a bird that the three of them had nursed back to health from an injury: "I cradled the bird in my cupped hand, lifted it into the air, then opened my hand and let it go. All of us felt a wonderful delight. Jeff's eyes were wide and gleaming. It may have been the single, happiest moment of his life." The family had moved to Iowa where Lionel was working on his Ph.D. at Iowa State University.
When Jeff was four, his father swept out from under their house the remains of some small animals that had been killed by civets. As his father gathered the tiny animal bones, Jeff seemed "oddly thrilled by the sound they made. His small hands dug deep into the pile of bones. I can no longer view it simply as a childish episode, a passing fascination. This same sense of something dark and shadowy, of a malicious force growing in my son, now colors almost every memory."
At the age of six, he was found to be suffering from a double hernia and needed surgery to correct the problem. He never seemed to recover his ebullience and buoyancy. "He seemed smaller, somehow more vulnerable... he grew more inward, sitting quietly for long periods, hardly stirring, his face oddly motionless."
In 1966, Lionel had completed his graduate work in Iowa and got a job as a research chemist in Akron, Ohio. Joyce was pregnant with their second son David By that time Jeff was in the first grade and "a strange fear had begun to creep into his personality, a dread of others that was combined with a general lack of self-confidence. He was developing a reluctance to change, a need to feel the assurance of familiar places. The prospect of going to school frightened him. The little boy who'd once seemed so happy and self-assured had been replaced by a different person, now deeply shy, distant, nearly uncommunicative."

Metamorphosis
Lionel suspected that the move from Iowa to Ohio was the causative factor and Jeff's behavior was a normal reaction to being uprooted from familiar settings and placed into entirely new ones. Lionel, too, had suffered from shyness, introversion and insecurity as a child and had learned to overcome these problems. He figured his son would learn to overcome them too. What he didn't realize was that Jeff's boyhood condition was far graver than his and that "Jeff had begun to suffer from a near isolation."
In April of 1967, they bought a new house. Jeff seemed to adjust better to this move and developed a close friendship with a boy named Lee. He was also very fond of one of his teachers and took her a bowl of tadpoles he had caught. Later, Jeff found out that the teacher had given the tadpole to his friend Lee. Jeff sneaked into Lee's garage and killed all the tadpoles will motor oil.
Things did not get better with time. "His posture, and the general way in which he carried himself, changed radically between his tenth and fifteenth years. The loose-limbed boy disappeared, and was replaced by a strangely rigid and inflexible figure.
He looked tense, his body very straight. He grew increasingly shy during this time and when approached by other people, he would become very tense. More and more, he remained at home, alone in his room or staring at television. His face was often blank, and he gave the more or less permanent impression of someone who could do nothing but mope around, purposeless and disengaged.
He had one friend, who drifted apart from him at age fifteen. Lionel found out at Jeff's trial that during this period, Jeff would ride around with plastic garbage bags and collect the remains of animals for his own private cemetery. "He would strip the flesh from the bodies of these putrescent road kills and even mount a dog's head on a stake." There has been the suggestion that Jeff tortured animals, but that is unlikely. He enjoyed a dog and cat as pets in his childhood and kept pet fish as an adult. His fascination was with dead creatures.

Isolated by Sexual Fantasy
Jeff grew more passive and isolated. " His conversation narrowing to the practice of answering questions with barely audible one-word responses. He was drifting into a nightmare world of unimaginable fantasies. In coming years those fantasies would begin to overwhelm him. The dead in their stillness would become the primary objects of his growing sexual desire. His inability to speak about such strange and unsetting notions would sever his connections to the world outside himself."
While other boys pursued careers, education, the creation of homes and families, Jeff was completely unmotivated. "He must have come to view himself as utterly outside the human community, outside all that was normal and acceptable, outside all that could be admitted to another human being." One would expect that a person harboring the fantasies of death and dismemberment that swirled around in Jeffrey Dahmer's head as a teenager would show some outer signs of mental illness. But Jeff just became more isolated and uncommunicative. Far from rebelling, he never argued with his parents because nothing seemed to matter to him.
In high school, Jeff had average grades and participated in a few activities: he played tennis and worked on the school newspaper. However, his classmates considered him a loner and an alcoholic, who brought liquor into the classroom. He actually had a prom date, who he later invited to his parents' house for a seance.
His classmates remember a stunt he pulled when he got himself included in the yearbook photo of the members of the National Honor Society. The yearbook staff caught the prank in time and blacked out Jeff's picture.
As Jeff became more passive, the passions between Lionel and Joyce increased. It culminated in divorce when Jeff was almost eighteen. A custody battle began over David. Some months later, Lionel remarried. Whatever Lionel missed about Jeff's alcoholism, his new wife Shari did not.
Lionel and Shari convinced him to try the idea of college. In the fall of 1978, they drove him to Ohio State University, but he stayed drunk the whole semester and flunked out. By this time, his drinking problem was well understood, but he would not seek help for it. Lionel read him the rules: either Jeff had to get a job or join the Army. When Jeff refused to get a job and stayed drunk most of the time, his father drove him down to the recruiting office to join the armed forces in January of 1979.

Drunk and Deadly
From that time until Jeff's final arrest in 1991, life was a rollercoaster for Lionel and his wife. Jeff would appear to be doing well and then it was clear that he wasn't. He seemed to enjoy the Army, but then he was discharged early for habitual drunkenness. He then moved in with his grandmother and got a job, but then he was arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The offenses got worse as his alcoholism and emotional problems intensified. Indecent exposure, then child molesting and finally, the most horrible discovery of all when the police arrested him for multiple murders. Each time, Lionel stood by him, paid for the lawyer, urged him to seek treatment and crossed his fingers that Jeff would improve. Each time, his hopes were dashed by some fresh and more serious difficulty. Lionel began to understand that his son was completely beyond his reach.
As early as 1989 when Jeff was facing sentencing for child molestation, Lionel felt that the his "son would never be more than he seemed to be -- a liar, an alcoholic, a thief, an exhibitionist, a molester of children. I could not imagine how he had become such a ruined soul... For the first time, I no longer believed that my efforts and resources alone would be enough to save my son. There was something missing in Jeff.... We call it a "conscience"... that had either died or had never been alive in the first place."
Dr. James Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston and recognized expert on serial killer claims that "There was nothing we could do to predict this [tragedy] ahead of time, no matter how bizarre the behavior. He also noted that while Jeffrey was devastated when his mother left him, it would be wrong to blame his parents for what he had become. "Ever since Sigmund Freud, we blame everything bad that kids do on their parents... The culprit is Dahmer. Not his father, not his family, not the police."
Fox believes that Dahmer is an unusual serial killer. "He fits the stereotype of someone who really is out of control and being controlled by his fantasies. The difference is that most serial killers stop once the victim dies. Everything is leading up to that. They tie them up; they like to her them scream and beg for their lives. It makes the killer feel great, superior, powerful, dominant... In Dahmer's case, everything is post-mortem... all of his 'fun' began after the victims died... He led a rich fantasy life that focused on having complete control over people... That fantasy life, mixed with hatred, perhaps hatred of himself which is being projected into his victims. If he at all felt uncomfortable about his own sexual orientation, it is very easy to see it projected into these victims and punishing them indirectly to punish himself."
Serial murder, psychopathology, necrophilia, cannibalism -- none of these phenomena is unique to modern times. The answers to explain these phenomena go in and out of fashion. Today, genetics is gaining ground over behaviorism in explaining why people become criminals. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer it may be the only explanation.

Trial Begins with Heavy Security
The security surrounding the trial of Jeff Dahmer was unique in Milwaukee's history: "The courtroom was swept for bombs by a dog trained to sniff for explosives, and everyone allowed into the courtroom was searched and checked with a metal detector... In the courtroom, an eight-foot-high barrier was constructed from bullet-resistant glass and steel, designed to isolate Dahmer from the gallery." (Schwartz)
Of the 100 seats that were available, 23 were for reporters, 34 for the families of Dahmer's victims and the remaining 43 for public spectators.
The key players in this legal drama, besides Jeff Dahmer himself, were Judge Laurence C. Gram, Jr., District Attorney Michael McCann, and defense lawyer Gerald Boyle, who had defended Dahmer in the past. Lionel and Shari Dahmer attended every day.

The Insanity Defense
On July 13, 1992, Dahmer ignored his lawyer's advice and changed his plea to guilty, but that he was insane. According to Don Davis in The Milwaukee Murders, " the declaration turned the case on its head. Now, instead of having to prove his man did not commit the murders, defense attorney Gerald Boyle would unroll one of the goriest tapestries ever seen in an American courtroom. His task was to convince the jury that Dahmer was crazy, because only an insane person would do the things he did."
Mike McCann, on the other hand, needed to prove that Dahmer was not legally insane -- that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway. In others words, Dahmer was an evil psychopath who lured his victims and murdered them in cold blood.
The pool of prospective jurors were warned "You're going to hear about things you probably didn't know existed in the real world. In this case," Boyle told them, " you're going to hear about sexual conduct before death, during death, and after death. Will you be so disgusted by that you won't be able to listen?" Together, Boyle and McCann discarded potential jurors who were prejudiced against homosexuals or who didn't have any use for psychiatrists.
Anne Schwartz remembers the second day of jury selection before the prospective jurors were called into the room. Boyle held up a tabloid newspaper that read "Milwaukee Cannibal Killer Eats His Cellmate. "We all laughed," Schwartz recalled, "especially Jeffrey Dahmer... He was an attractive man when he laughed...I could see how so many were taken in by him."
On January 29, 1992, the jury and two alternates were selected. Only one black person was selected, which caused a protest among the family members. The entire case had seriously polarized the community along racial lines from the moment the public heard Glenda Cleveland's story through the discovery that most of his victims were black. Now, it seemed as though this jury of six white men and seven white women was just another example of racial injustice.

Evil or Sick
Boyle's defense consisted of some forty-five witnesses that would attest to various aspects of Dahmer's bizarre behavior and to try to show that Dahmer's sexual and mental disorders preventing him from understanding the nature of his crime. Every hideous detail of what Dahmer allegedly did with his victims and every nightmarish thing that ever entered his head was fair game. The goal was to convince the jury that such alleged actions and such alleged thoughts did not happen with a man that was sane.
Boyle threw the question out to the jury? "Was he evil or was he sick?" Had the jury at that point in time taken a vote, it's very possible that they would have agreed with Boyle.
However, it was McCann's turn to present his case. Dahmer, he told them, was a "master manipulator and deceiver who knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way, able to turn his urges on and off as easily as flipping a light switch. Did he attack other soldiers while he was in the army? Other students while at Ohio State University? The deaths, he said were not the acts of a madman, but the result of meticulous planning." (Davis)
Two detectives took turns reading the 160-page confession. It was a catalog of sexual perversion. Detective Dennis Murphy stated that Dahmer "felt a tremendous amount of guilt because of his actions. He felt thoroughly evil." Then he quoted from Dahmer's own confession: "It's hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I've done, but I know that I did it." He claimed that his fear of being caught was overwhelmed by his excitement of being completely in control.
The battle of psychiatrists over whether Dahmer was legally responsible and able to control his actions seemed to confuse the jury.
Finally, in his summation, Boyle drew a chart for the jury that took the form of a wheel. The hub of the wheel was Jeff Dahmer and all of the spokes coming out from the wheel were the elements of his deviance. He read them off quickly:
"Skulls in locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbating.....This is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness..."
McCann rebutted, "He wasn't a runaway train, he was the engineer!" He was satisfying his extraordinary sexual cravings. "Ladies and gentlemen, he's fooled a lot of people. Please don't let this murderous killer fool you."
The jury deliberated for five hours and decided that Jeff Dahmer did not deserve to spend the rest of his life in a hospital, but in a prison cell. On all fifteen counts, Dahmer was found guilty and sane.
Anne Schwartz, who covered the Dahmer story for the Milwaukee Journal from its discovery through the trial, was "astonished at how normal this man looked and sounded...The day Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced, I heard him read his statement to the court calmly and eloquently, and I wondered how easily I could have been conned.

End of the Road
"His apology, covering a thirteen-year bloodbath, ran fourty pewritten pages:
"'Your Honor:
"'It is now over. this has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace.. I know how much harm I have caused... Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins... I ask for no consideration."
He was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms or a total of 957 years in prison.
Dahmer adjusted very well to prison life at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. Initially, he was not part of the general population of the prison, which would have jeopardized his safety. As it was, he was attacked on July 3, 1994, while attending a chapel service by a Cuban who he had never seen before.
Dahmer, the model prisoner, convinced the prison authorities to allow him more contact with other inmates. He was able to eat in communal areas and he was given some janitorial work to do with other teams of inmates.
For some incredible reason, he was paired up with two highly dangerous men on a work detail: Jesse Anderson, a white man who had murdered his wife and blamed it on a black man, and Christopher Scarver, a black delusional schizophrenic who thought he was the son of God, who was in for first-degree murder. It's not difficult to imagine how Scarver viewed Jeff Dahmer, who had butchered so many black men, and Anderson. It was a disastrous combination.
The morning of November 28, 1994, the guard left these three men alone to do their work. Twenty minutes later, the guards came back to find Dahmer's head crushed and Anderson's fatally injured body nearby. A bloody broom handle seemed to represent Scarver's statement on the subject. Jeffrey Dahmer was pronounced dead at 9:11 A.M.

and in his final statement before the court . . .
"Your Honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, not for reasons of hate -- I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe that I was sick. The doctors have told told me about my sickness and now I have some peace. I know how much harm I have caused, and I tried to do the best that I could after the arrest to make ammends, but no matter what I did, I could not undo the terrible harm I have caused. My attempt to identify the remains was the best that I could do and that was hardly anything. I feel so bad for what I did to those poor families, and I understand their rightful hate."
"I know I will be in prison for the rest of my life. I know that I will have to turn to God to help me get through each day. I should have stayed with God. I tried and failed and created a holocaust. Thank God that there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins."
"I have instructed Mr. Boyle to end this matter. I do not want to contest the civil case. I have told Mr. Boyle to finalize them if he can. If there is ever any money, I want it to go to the victim's families. I have talked to Mr. Boyle about other things that might help me ease my conscience in some way of coming up with ideas on how to make some ammends with these families and I will work with him on that. I want to return to Ohio and quickly end that matter so I can put all this behind me and then come right back here and do my sentence."
"I decided to go through this trial for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was to let the world know that these were not hate crimes. I wanted the world of Milwaukee, who I deeply hurt, to know the truth of what I did. I didn't want unanswered questions. All of the questions have now been answered. I wanted to find out just what it was that caused me to be so bad and evil. But most of all, Mr. Boyle and I decided that maybe there was a way for us to tell the world that if there are people out there with these disorders maybe they can get some help before they end up being hurt or hurting someone. I think the trial did that."
"I take all the blame for what I did. I hurt many people. The judge in my earlier case tried to help me and I refused his help and he got hurt by what I did. I hurt those policemen in that Konerack matter and I shall forever regret causing them to lose their jobs. I hope and pray that they can get their jobs back because I know that they did their best and I just plain fooled them. For that I am so sorry. I know I hurt my probation officer who was really trying to help me. I am so sorry for that and for everyone else that I have hurt."
"I hurt my mother and father and stepmother. I love them all so very much. I hope they will find the same peace that I am looking for."
"Mr. Boyle's associates Wendy and Ellen have been wonderful to me, helping me through this worst of all times. I want to publicly thank Mr. Boyle. He didn't have to take this case, but when I asked him to help me find answers and to help others if I could, he stayed with me and went way overboard in trying to help me."
"Mr. Boyle and I agreed that it was never a matter of trying to get off, only a matter of which place I would be housed for the rest of my life. Not for my comfort, but for trying to study me in hopes of helping me in learning to help others who might have problems. I know I will be in prison. I pledge to talk to doctors who might be able to find some answers."
"In closing, I just want to say that I hope God has forgiven me. I know that society will never be able to forgive me. I know the families of the victims will never be able to forgive me for what I have done. I promise I will pray ever wach day to ask for their forgivness when the hurt goes away, if ever. I have seen their tears and if I could give my life to bring their loved ones back I would do it. I am so very sorry."
"Your Honor, I know that you are about to sentence me. I ask for no consideration. I want you to know that I have been treated prefectly by the deputies who have been in your court and the deputies that work the jail. The deputies have treated me very professionally and I want everyone to know that. They have not given me special treatment."
"Here is a trust worthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King, Immortal, Invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever."
"I know my time in prison will be terrible, but I deserve whatever I get because of what I have done."
"Thank you, your Honor, and I am prepared for your sentence which I know will be the maximum. I ask for no consideration."

The Possessions of a Madman
The doors of apartment 213, both inner and outer, were heavily secured with multiple locks and an alarm system. On the walls in the bedroom and the hall were framed photographs and posters of male nudes taken in "artistic" poses and clearly intended to be attractive to a homosexual man.
There were some empty beer cans and dirty dishes, and a number of pornographic videos lying around, mostly of the explicit kind commercially made in California. Among the titles which Dahmer possessed were, Cocktales, Chippendale's Tall Dark and Handsome, Rock Hard, Hard Men II, Hard Men III, Peep Show, and Tropical Heat Wave. Other non-sexual videos included two that would be referred to several times at the trial, Excorcist II and The Return of the Jedi. Somewhat incongruously, a lecture on evolution was also found on videotape, and an episode from The Bill Cosby Show.
On the kitchen floor were four boxes of muriatic acid. The refrigerator contained, in addition to the man's head already noted [The first of the human remains discovered. The head was facing upward in a cardboard box on the bottom shelf.], some blood drippings on the bottom, and, in the freezer compartment, three plastic bags. Two of them each contained a heart, and the third some portion of muscle. Against another wall was a floor-standing freezer in which were found three more human heads and a plastic bag containing a human torso. Stuck to the bottom of this freezer was another plastic bag the contents of which appeared to include flesh and various human internal organs; Dahmer subsequently revealed that it had been there for several weeks because he had been unable to wrench it away from the ice.
The Medical Examiner decided that this entire freezer should be sealed and removed, with its load, for detailed examination later.
In the hallway stood a closet in which were found, together with bedding, some chemicals (formaldehyde, ether, chloroform), and two bleached skulls on a shelf. On the floor at the back of the closet was a large aluminium kettle containing two human hands, obviously from the same person because they matched, and human genitals including penis, testicles and the pubic hair region.
The bedroom was seen to have a single bed with a mattress stained with blood, as well as some blood on the walls and pillow-case. The large knife to which Tracy Edwards had alerted the police officers [Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer's apartment after spending several hours handcuffed to a chair. He approached a squad car on a nearby street and informed the officers of the incident, which led to his eventual arrest] was still lying beneath the bed, while on top was the a polaroid camera. Next to the bed was a metal filing-cabinet. When this was opened it revealed, in the top drawer, three human skulls lying on a black towel.
The police officers noted they had been painted green with black flecks, but the Medical Examiner reported that they were painted and glazed to 'a dark gray marble-like texture', and that the towel upon which they rested was a dark blue. The bottom drawer of this cabinet contained a complete human skeleton, and in front of it were two paper bags: one held the dried remains of a human scalp, and the other a second set of genitals, also dried and mummified.
On the floor next to the chest of drawers was a box with a styrofoam lid, in which were two more skulls, and in the far corner was the 57-gallon blue plastic drum with a tight-fitting black lid, removed by a private contractor hired by the Fire Department's Hazardous Materials Unit.
This was later discovered to contain three human torsos in various stages of dismemberment and decomposition. In the chest of drawers which [Police Officer] Rolf Mueller had found open when he first went into the bedroom were original photographs of a particularly repellent nature. When they were counted, it was found that there were seventy-four of them.
The decor of Jeffrey Dahmer's life was labelled, catalogued and carted away with the most painstaking care. A photo album, a black ceramic coffee cup, an empty can of Budweiser beer, an empty bottle of Paramount rum, an empty paper lunch-bag lying on the occasional table by the couch in the living-room -- the fragile, dumb debris of ordinary life jostled with the curious and the sinister.
A one-gallon jug of Chlorax bleach was no longer as innocent as it might have been, and a bottle of 'Odorsorb' suggested long battles with unnaturally polluted air. Incense sticks had probably served a similar purpose. There were fifty envelopes from Woolworth's, a tube of acne lotion, a shaving kit, an Oral-B toothbrush, the lease form for the rental of apartment 213, a library card bearing the name of Jeff Dahmer, a pair of black men's nylon shorts.
The business card of Lionel Dahmer, Ph.D., was the first indication that the suspect had a family, while various identity cards littered on the kitchen floor, the bedroom floor, and in the drawers, poignantly gave names to some of the heads and limbs that had once been people.
An identity card in the name of Oliver Lacy, a Wisconsin driver's license in the name of Tony Hughes, and an Illinois driver's license in the name of Joseph Bradehoft supplied the initial clues in the investigation, and since Oliver Lacy's I.D. bore a photograph and was the first positive identification, the entire homicide file would be listed under his name. It was Lacy's head which lay in the box in the refrigerator, his heart which was in the bag, his skeleton which was in the freezer.
A few items held significance which would not be revealed until much later. One large hypodermic needle appeared mysterious, and a contact lens cleaning kit quite innocuous, but they had both played a role in the wild distracted turmoil of Dahmer's life. So had two plastic gargoyle figurines recovered from the living-room, and chemical-resistant gloves next to gallons of muriatic acid and six boxes of Soilex cleaner.
The purpose of the three-eighth inch drill and one-sixteenth inch drill bits was yet unclear, although the claw hammer and handsaw gave rise to no such doubts. And still, in crazy juxtaposition to the grim inventory were items suggestive of decency and goodness.
A King James Version Bible, for example, audio cassettes on Creation Science and the Bible, and other tapes entitled The Genesis Flood and The Bible, Science, and the Age of the Earth. There were further audio tapes explaining Numerology and the Divine Triangle, and a learning kit, in tapes and books, in Latin. Finally, there were four books on the care of fish and aquariums, and a beautifully kept aquarium itself, clean and wholesome, full of living plants and daintily exotic fish.

Pre-crime psychiatric history
Jeff Dahmer's first encounter with the psychiatric profession was the result of the events which occurred on September 8, 1986. Richard Kohn and John Ostland, both aged twelve, reported to police that, while standing near the bridge on the Kinnickinnic River Parkway in Milwaukee, they noticed a man standing near the edge of the lake, masturbating. The boys provided officers with a description of the man, and later identified him as Jeff Dahmer.
Dahmer denied the accusations, stating that he had been urinating, rather than masturbating, and was unaware of the boys' presence at the time. The charge was eventually reduced from Lewd and Lascivious Behavior to Disorderly Conduct and he was convicted on March 10, 1987. He was sentenced to one year's probation and required to undergo psychological counseling for sexual deviance and impulse control.
Dahmer was referred to clinical psychologist Dr. Evelyn Rosen and was immediately asked to take two written exams. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and Forer Structured Sentence Completion Test are both frequently examinations used to identify any underlying abnormalities of the personality.
The Millon exam lists various self-descriptive statements and the patient is asked to identify, by circling, which statements he or she finds applicable. Though Jeff found few that pertained (which, in itself, might be considered odd), those that he did should have, it seems, caused some of concern.
'Lately, I've begun to feel lonely and empty.'
'Ideas keep turning over and over in my mind and they won't go away.'
'I've become quite discouraged and sad about life recently.'
'Looking back on my life, I know I have made others suffer as much as I have suffered.'
'I keep having strange thoughts I wish I could get rid of.'
Now, it is true that some of these statements, if compared to the thoughts of an ordinary individual, appear innocent enough. However, the fact that this individual has been referred by the court as a possible 'sexual deviant' who lacks adequate 'impulse control' excludes him from such a classification.
Also lacking was any cooperation whatsoever from Dahmer, who was bitter and resentful of the charges. Dr. Rosen's approach was one of blatant and habitual nagging, and was far from effective. As time passed, Jeff became more and more reluctant to share his feelings with the therapist, eventually refusing to speak to her at all, sitting silent instead, with his back to her throughout the entire fifty minute session.
In addition to counseling, Dahmer was sent, on order from the court, to the Clinical Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin for psychological evaluation. This session went remarkably well. Jeff got along well with the clinician, Kathy Boese, and discussed some of his troubles with her.
The results of one of these tests revealed Dahmer's 'exceptional performance in the use of language and abstractions' (which, after hearing his expressionless voice speak such colorless words, regardless of the topic, is almost, but not entirely, impossible to accept). Another test, designed to identify underlying emotion derived 'exceptionally slow' responses that were 'extraordinarily few in number and abnormally restricted in regard to affect.'
In regard to his attitude toward his conviction and subsequent referral to the clinic 'He resents being told what to do by others and is easily disappointed and hurt.' A final, more significant, conclusion drawn from the tests was that 'his own goals for himself in this world, for what he hopes to achieve, are not congruous with reality.
Jeff Dahmer would again undergo psychological evaluation and therapy following his arrest in September, 1988. Dahmer met Somsack Sinthasomphone on a street near to the boys school. Jeff offered Somsack $50 if he would accompany him to his apartment and allow him to take pictures. The offer was accepted.
At the apartment, Dahmer served Somsack a combination of Irish Cream and crushed sleeping pills, and then began taking photos. After snapping a few shots of Somsack with his chest exposed, Jeff instructed Somsack to unzip his fly. This eventually led to an attempt, by Dahmer, to fondle his guest. Somsack responded by leaving the apartment.
The medication did not take full effect until after Somsack had gotten home. Unresponsive to questions and unable to walk, Somsack was taken to the emergency room by his father where testing revealed that he was suffering from a drug overdose.
He was released three hours later, and immediately led officers to Dahmer's apartment. Jeff was arrested later than evening while on duty at Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. It was not until this time that Jeff learned that Somsack was a juvenile, just fourteen years of age.
Dahmer was evaluated prior to sentencing by Dr. Charles Lodl. In speaking to Dr. Lodl, Jeff was uncharacteristically straightforward, explaining that he was experiencing 'significant psychological distress', that he was 'anxious, tense and depressed' and that he was tormented by 'deep feelings of alienation'.
Dr. Lodl, in his report to the judge, stated that the patient was a 'very psychologically problemed man ... There is no question that Mr. Dahmer is in need of psychological treatment.'
Two months after the interviews with Dr. Lodl, Jeff was examined by Dr. Norman Goldfarb. Apparently Dahmer had spent the interim brooding, as he was anything but cooperative. Dr. Goldfarb described him as being 'distant and evasive', and noted that he was 'suspicious of the motives of others'. Dr. Goldfarb felt that Jeff was impulsive, unable to tolerate frustration, and dismayed by his lack of accomplishment or success.
In his report to the judge, Dr. Goldfarb stated that Dahmer 'would not show others the depth, severity, or extent of pathology' and that because of this, 'others may not take his behaviors as seriously as they should'. He concluded that Jeff was 'a seriously disturbed young man... The pressure he perceives seems to be increasing...he must be considered impulsive and dangerous.'
Once released, Jeff Dahmer was required to meet regularly with his probation officer, Donna Chester, as well as participate in monthly group therapy sessions. He was once again evaluated, this time by a Dr. Krembs. The doctor observed that Jeff was 'very isolated, no friends, no hobbies, no interests, whole life is dull, sterile, monomaniacally directed, which is excellent breeding ground for depression.' Dr. Krembs felt that a 'major relapse is just a matter of time.'

Postcrime Psychiatric Information
Psychiatric Testimony
'A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.'
DEFENSE WITNESSES
Dr. Fred Berlin - Director of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at John Hopkins University; Maudsley Hospital in London; DSM-III-R subcommitee for the definition of sexual disorders
Dr. Berlin testified that Jeff Dahmer was unable to conform his conduct at the time that he committed the crimes because he was suffering from Paraphilia, or more specifically, Necrophilia, a mental disease.
He described Dahmer's affliction as being a 'cancer of the mind', a 'broken mind', and thought it facile to insinuate that the man could simply resolve to stop thinking of sex with dead bodies and the thoughts would go away. 'We cannot always choose what to have on our minds,' he said. Necrophilia, he explained, is not a matter of freewill. Prosecutor McCann, in his cross examination, after attacking both the comptetence and integrity of the witness, focused on what he saw as errors in the way Dr. Berlin conducted his evaluation of Dahmer.
'How long did you talk about family history?'
'Fifteen minutes.'
'From zero to age eighteen?'
'I'm not writing a biography of him.'
'What did you then talk about after family history?'
'Personal history.'
'How long did that take?'
'Half an hour. My examination covered five hours in all, maybe six. I'm not trying to be evasive.'
'The record indicates four hours and forty-five minutes. If you spent forty-five minutes talking about family and personal history, that leaves four hours, so you spent fifteen minutes on each homicide.'
The cross examination of Dr. Berlin continued in this manner, Mr. McCann eventually getting the doctor to admit that Dahmer was a liar, which, in this instance, was quite beneficial for the prosecution, as most of his conclusions were drawn from conversations with Jeff. During cross examination, Dr. Berlin was given the opportunity to clarify, explaining to the court that one does not have to be 'dumb or stupid' in order to be mentally disturbed. Dahmer could be cunning, deceptive, and a liar as well, and still have a mental illness.
Dr. Judith Becker - Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Arizona, specializing in the evaluation and treatment of paraphiliacs.
Dr. Becker, in her testimony, discussed for the most part Dahmer's childhood, citing numerous instances that she felt were of severe, and devastating, consequence to him, both physically and emotionally. What resulted, according to the doctor, was a deeply disturbed individual, whose perceptions of the world were distorted, and interactions with the world minimal. Though very insightful, Dr. Becker had little of scientific value to offer.
Dr. Carl Wahlstrom
Dr. Wahlstrom testified that 'Mr. Dahmer is a thirty-one year old white male with a long history of serious mental illness which was essentially untreated... His personality structure is extremely primitive,' and 'he has bizarre and delusional ideas.' Dr. Wahlstrom illustrated this last point using Dahmer's own words, ' If they had their own thought processes they might remember that they had to leave, or lived somewhere else.' The desire to turn a human being into a zombie, who would remain a personal, and life long companion, together with the intention of creating what Brian Master's termed a 'power-bestowing' temple from human remains, clearly indicated that Dahmer was severely delusional, and therefore psychotic. He felt that the mental disease from which Dahmer suffered was severe, and 'requires continuous treatment.'
PSYCHIATRISTS APPOINTED BY THE STATE
The following two psychiatrists, Dr. Palermo and Dr. Freedman, were appointed by the judge for the purpose of providing the jury with an 'objective' assessment of Jeff Dahmer's mental state at the time he committed the crimes.
Dr. George Palermo - Forensic psychiatrist, with experience working in both the United States and Italy.
Dr. Palermo concluded that, because Dahmer had been teased by his peers as a child, and had chosen never to defend himself, he had internalized feelings of hostility. It was his opinion that, because of his 'chronic' inability to form relationships, and his frustrated homosexual desires, Jeff Dahmer had developed into a Sexual Sadist. He stated that 'Aggressive, hostile tendencies led to his murderous behavior. His sexual drives functioned as a channel through which destructive power was expressed.' Dr. Palermo denied that there was any evidence to support a diagnosis of Necrophilia, and that Dahmer displayed none of the symptoms of a Necrophile. Dr. Palermo, in conclusion, told the court that the murders were the result of 'pent up aggression within himself. He killed those men because he wanted to kill the source of his homosexual attraction to them. In killing them, he killed what he hated in himself.' Dr. Palermo did not believe that Dahmer murdered for friendship, but in order to keep a potential victim silent. 'He killed because when they woke up they would be angry with him.'
Dr. Palermo also added, however, 'Strange to say, he's not such a bad person.'
Dr. Samuel Friedman
Dr. Friedman testified that it was a longing for companionship that caused Dahmer to kill. He spoke kindly of Jeff, describing him as 'Amiable, pleasant to be with, curtious, with a sense of humor, conventionally handsome and charming in manner, he was, and still is, a bright young man.' He described how Dahmer had gone to great lengths to provide insight as to why he had committed such terrible deeds, but all to no avail. Dahmer, he said, almost 'pleaded' with him to provide an explanation. 'I hope,' he said, 'that something can be done to reconstruct this individual, who certainly has the assests of youth and intelligence.' Despite all of this, however, Dr. Friedman concluded that Dahmer was sane because he had the opportunity to behave differently, and instead, he chose to kill, strategically planning the murders, in order to commit them successfully. On cross examination, Dr. Friedman was asked if it would be possible for a person 'to make elaborate and logical plans and choices towards the achievement of an ultimately insane purpose.' Dr. Friedman was not required to answer the question after an objection by Mr. McCann was sustained. However, after a series of similar questions, and questions rephrased, Dr. Friedman did admit that the exercise of free choice did not invalidate a diagnosis of mental illness, and that Dahmer's personality disorder did, in fact, amount to a mental disease.
PROSECUTION WITNESSES
Dr. Fred Fosdel
Dr. Fosdel testified to his belief that Dahmer was without mental disease or defect at the time he committed the murders. He described Jeff as a cruel, calculating, and cunning killer who prayed on weak and lonely men at the time that they were most vulnerable and in need of anonymous sexual release. Dr. Fosdel portrayed Dahmer as being utterly unconcerned and unaffected by the heinousness of his acts. On cross examination, Mr. Boyle asked the doctor if he believed that Jeff was a Necrophile, to which he responded, 'Yes, but that is not his primary sexual preference.' Boyle then asked Fosdel what term would be used to describe someone that 'preferred people in a comatose state, knocked out,' and was told that 'There's no name for it.' Boyle, using a copy of the DSM-III-R, read through the various catagories, getting Dr. Fosdel to admit to all of the disorders that Dahmer did not have and, by elimination, leaving his disorder unidentified. After a long pause, Dr. Fosdel responded by saying, 'I concede that he has a mental disease.' He would not, however, concede that Dahmer was insane. According to Dr. Fosdel, the disease did not interfere with Dahmer's ability to conform. Mr. Boyle then moved on to the following line of questioning.
'What about his desire to create a zombie? Do you consider that delusional thinking?'
'No, it was a very practical and reasonable attempt to achieve his aim.'
'Have you ever met a case of home-made labotomy before?'
'No, I think this is the first time internationally. Mr. Dahmer is setting some precendents here.'
'It couldn't have worked, could it? You're a doctor, you must know.'
'It's possible.'
'Did you ask him how long he was going to keep the zombie? Do you believe he would have created a zombie, and never have killed again?
'Absolutely. That would have been the solution to his problem. Absolutely.'
Dr. Park Dietz - Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.
Dr. Dietz testified that he did not believe Dahmer to be suffering from any mental disease or defect at the time that he committed the crimes. 'Dahmer went to great lengths to be alone with his victim and to have no witnesses.' He explained that there was ample evidence that Dahmer was well prepared for each murder, therefore his crimes were not impulsive. He felt that Jeff's habit of becoming intoxicated prior to committing each of the murders was significant, stating, 'If he had a compulsion to kill, he would not have to drink alcohol. He had to drink alcohol to overcome his inhibition, to do the crime which he would rather not do.'
Dr. Dietz agreed with earlier testimony that Paraphilia is not something that one chooses, stating, 'We cannot choose what we find sexy.' He did not, however, believe that a man afflicted with such a disorder was unable to choose whether or not he would act upon his desires. 'The Paraphile is as free as any other human being to choose whether to commit a crime to gratify his wishes. Paraphilia provides no more than a motive for what a person would like to do. If you say Paraphiles are compelled, then you have to say that we are all compelled to do what we want.'
Dr. Dietz did not believe that Dahmer could be classified as a Sadist. 'He did no t torture and took steps to prevent suffering.' He also offered an explanation for why Jeff would masterbate while holding the severed head of a victim in one hand, 'It facilitated the fantasy of the entire person, the fantasy of the living person to whom the head belonged, which cut out awareness that the rest of the body was missing and that the head was severed.' Dietz denied that this was delusional thinking. In regard to the last two murders, Dr. Dietz admitted that Dahmer was not in a state to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, however. This was ascribed to alcohol intoxication, not a mental disease, and therefore does not qualify, under Wisconsin Statute, as insanity.
Dr. Dietz concluded that Jeff's abnormality of mind did not substantially affect his mental or emotional processes.
Mr. Boyle asked on question during cross examination, to which Dietz was unable to adequately respond. If what the doctor had said was true, that it was alcoholism alone that was responsible for his inability to control his behavior in the month prior to his arrest, and there was no disease which contributed to it, would Jeff have continued to kill had he quit drinking alcohol before he met Tracy Edwards? (Jeff and Tracy met for the first time at a mall. This was approximately one month prior to the night that Tracy escaped from Dahmer's apartment.)
Disorders as Defined By the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition
Paraphilia - The essential features of a Paraphilia are recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving 1) nonhuman objects, 2) the suffering or humiliation of one's self or one's partner, 3) children or other nonconsenting persons, that occur over a period of at least six months (Criterion A). For some individuals, paraphiliac fantasies or stimuli are obligatory for erotic arousal and are always included in sexual activity. In other cases, the paraphiliac preferences occur only episodically (e.g., perhaps during periods of stress), whereas at other times the person is able to function sexually without paraphiliac fantasies or stimuli. The behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning (Criterion B).
Sexual Sadism - The paraphiliac focus of Sexual Sadism involves acts (real, not imaginary) in which the individual derives sexual excitement from the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim. Some individuals with this Paraphilia are bothered by their sadistic fantasies, which may be invoked during sexual activity but not otherwise acted on; in such cases the sadistic fantasies usually involve having complete control over the victim, who is terrified by anticipation of the impending sadistic act. Others act on the sadistic sexual urges with a consenting partner (who may have Sexual Masochism) who willingly suffers pain or humiliation. Still others with Sexual Sadism act on their sadistic sexual urges with nonconsenting victims. In all of these cases, it is the suffering of the victim that is sexually arousing. Sadistic fantasies or acts may involve activities that indicate domina nce of the person over t he victim (e.g., forcing the victim to crawl or keeping the victim in a cage). They may also involve restraint, blindfolding, paddling, spanking, whipping, pinching, beating, burning, electrical shocks, rape, cutting, stabbing, strangulation, torture, mutilation, or killing. Sadistic sexual fantasies are likely to have been present in childhood. The age at onset of sadistic activities is variable, but is commonly by early adulthood. Sexual Sadism is usually chronic. When Sexual Sadism is practiced with nonconsenting partners, the activity is likely to be reoeated until the person with Sexual Sadism is apprehended. Some individuals with Sexual Sadism may engage in sadistic acts for many years without a need to increase the potential for inflicting serious physical damage. Usually, however, the severity of the sadistic acts increases over time. When Sexual Sadism is severe, and especially when it is associated with Antisocial Personality Disorder, individuals with Sexual Sadism may seriously injure or kill their victims.
Necrophilia - Necrophilia is not defined in the DSM-IV, nor in any other diagnostic publication that I have found.
Delusion - A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility. Delusional conviction occurs on a continuum and can sometimes be inferred from an individual's behavior. It is often difficult to distinguish between a delusion and an overvalued idea (in which case the individual has an unreasonable belief or idea but does not hold it as firmly as is the case with a delusion).
Bizarre Delusion - A delusion that involves a phenomenon that the person's culture would regard as totally implausible.

The Crimes of A Madman
Late on the night of January 17, 1988, Jeff Dahmer met a young man named James Doxtator and murdered him at his grandmother's house in West Allis. Doxtator's mother reported him missing on January 18, 1988. Approximately two months later, on March 27, 1988, Jeff Dahmer encountered Richard Guerrero, aged twenty-three, and killed him at his grandmother's house. Pablo Guerrero reported his son missing to the Milwaukee Police Department on March 29th, and placed announcements in the local press, which included a recent photo. He received no response.
One year later, at closing time on March 25, 1989, Jeff Dahmer met two men outside La Cage ( a local gay bar, which Jeff often frequented ); a white man by the name of Jeffrey Connor, and a twenty-four-year-old black man named Anthony Sears. It was Sears who made the approach. Conner drove them both to the corner of 56th Street and Lincoln, in West Allis, and from there Sears and Dahmer walked to Catherine Dahmer's house, where he eventually murdered him. His skull, scalp, and genitals were discovered in Dahmer's apartment at the time of his arrest, which would not take place more than two years.
On May 20, 1990, Dahmer met a thirty-three-year-old black man named Raymond Smith ( a.k.a. Ricky Beeks ) who accompanied him to his apartment where he was drugged and strangled. One of the painted skulls found in upon Dahmer's arrest was identified as Smith's.
On June 24, 1990, Dahmer met a twenty-seven-year-old black man, Edward Smith, at the Pheonix Bar. They went to Dahmer's apartment by taxi, and engaged in oral sex. Smith was later drugged and strangled. No remains of Edward Smith were ever found.
Outside a homosexual bookshop on North 27th Street in the early part of September, 1990, Dahmer fell into conversation with a twenty-three-year-old black man from Chicago: Ernest Miller. He agreed to accompany Dahmer to his apartment, where he too, was killed. His skull was painted and his entire skeleton kept for future use. Both were discovered on the day of Dahmer's arrest.
Three weeks later, Dahmer met David Thomas, a twenty-two-year-old black man, and murdered him at his apartment. The following day David Thomas was taken to pieces and photographed throughout the process. No remains were ever found. He was reported missing by his girlfriend on the 24th of September, and was identified by his sister from photographs Dahmer had taken during dismemberment.
At 4:00 p.m. on February 17, 1991, Dahmer met a seventeen-year-old black man, Curtis Straughter, and murdered him by strangulation with a leather strap. He was then dismembered. Dahmer kept his skull, hands, and genitals, all of which he had photographed. All these items were found in Jeff's apartment when he was arrested. Straughter had been reported missing by his grandmother, and his skull was identified from dental records.
On April 7, 1991, a black man, not long past his nineteenth birthday, Errol Lindsey, spoke to Jeff Dahmer at 27th Street near the homosexual bookstore, and went with him to his apartment. Lindsey was drugged and strangled. Dahmer flayed the body and kept the skin for some weeks. The skull was discovered at the time of his arrest, enabling identification through dental records.
Tony Hughes was one year older than Dahmer. He was black, and he was deaf and dumb. They met at the 219 Club on May 24, 1991, and communicated by writing, although Hughes could lip read. The mute was drugged, strangled, and left to lie on the bedroom floor for three days. His identity was established by one of the skulls and dental records.
Dahmer met Konerack Sinthasomphone, the fourteen-year-old son of Laotian immigrants, outside a shopping center known as the Grand Avenue Mall on May 27, 1991, and offered him money to return with him to his home. Konerack accepted, and posed for two photographs in his underwear, before being drugged and murdered.
A month went by before Dahmer killed again. On June 30, 1991, he went to the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago and met a twenty-year-old black man, Matt Turner, in the bus station afterwards. He invited Turner to come to Milwaukee. They traveled by Greyhound bus, then took a taxi to the apartment, where Dahmer strangled him. Turner's head was found in the freezer, his internal organs were stuck to the freezer floor, and his torso was inside the blue drum in the bedroom.
One week later, again in Chicago, Dahmer met Jeremiah Weinberger, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican with Jewish blood, at Carols Gay Bar. They went by bus to Milwaukee, and then by taxi to the apartment. Weinberger was reported missing the following day, July 6th, but he was still alive and staying with Dahmer. It was not until the third day that Dahmer slew him. The improbable details of these two days together were not revealed until the trial. Weinberger's head was in the freezer, his torso in the big blue drum with Turner's.
On July 15, 1991, Dahmer met Oliver Lacy, under whose name the murder investigation was filed, on 27th Street. Lacy was black and twenty-four-year's old. Dahmer drugged and strangled him. He took various photographs of his victim before and after decapitation. His head and skeleton were found the freezer, his heart in the refrigerator.
It was four days later, on July 19, 1991, that Dahmer encountered a white man called Joseph Bradehoft, from Greenville, Illinois. Bradehoft was drugged and strangled. He was left on the bed, covered in a sheet, for two days. When Dahmer was arrested three days later, Bradehoft's head was sitting in the freezer, his torso was lying in the 57-gallon blue drum, along with Turner and Wienberger's.

Selected Quotes from Jeff Dahmer
"I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if it meant my own destruction."
ON THE CONFESSION
" ... To relieve the minds of the parents... I mean, it's a small, very small thing, but I don't know what else I could do. At least I can do that... because I created this horror and it only makes sense that I do everything to put an end to it, a complete end to it."
"It's just a nightmare, let's put it that way. It's been a nightmare for a long time, even before I was caught ... for years now, obviously my mind has been filled with gruesome, horrible thoughts and ideas ... a nightmare."
"I couldn't find any meaning in my life when I was out there. I'm sure as hell not going to find it in here. This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing ... it's just a sick, pathetic, wretched, miserable life story, that's all it is. How it can help anyone, I've no idea."
"I don't even know if I have the capacity for normal emotions or not because I haven't cried for a long time. You just stifle them for so long that maybe you lose them, partially at least. I don't know."
"I don't know why it started. I don't have any definite answers on that myself. If I knew the true, real reasons why all this started, before it ever did , I wouldn't probably have done any of it."
ON FANTASIES
" ... Like arrows, shooting through my mind from out of the blue."
ON THE MURDER OF STEVEN HICKS
"That night in Ohio, that one impulsive night. Nothing's been normal since then. It taints your whole life. After it happened I thought that I'd just try to live as normally as possible and bury it, but things like that don't stay buried. I didn't think it would, but it does, it taints your whole life."
"I was in college that day, thinking about Hicks. I was drinking and in a weepy sort of mood, and I cried about that."
IN RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS REGARDING THE MURDER OF STEVEN HICKS
"I'd rather be talking about anything else in the world right now."
IN RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION: "DO YOU LOVE YOUR GRANDMOTHER?"
"Yup, she's lived in that house a long time."
"At about eleven o'clock at night, when everyone was gone and the store was locked up from the outside, I went out and undressed the mannequin and I had a big sleeping bag cover. I put it in that, zipped it up and carried it out of the store, which was a pretty dangerous thing to do. I never thought of them maybe having security cameras or being locked in the store, but I walked out with it and took it back home. I ended up getting a taxi and brought it back and kept it with me a couple of weeks. I just went through various sexual fantasies with it, pretending it was a real person, pretending that I was having sex with it, masturbating, and undressing it."
ON THE MURDER OF STEVEN TUOMI
"I felt in complete shock. I just couldn't believe it happened again after all those years when I'd done nothing like this... I don't know what was going through my mind. I have no memory of it. I tried to dredge it up, but I have no memory whatsoever."
"One thing I know for sure. It was a definite compulsion because I couldn't quit. I tried, but after the Ambassador, I couldn't quit. It would be nice if someone could give the answer on a silver platter as to why I did all this and what caused it, because I can't come up with an answer."
"Am I just an extremely evil person or is it some kind of satanic influence, or what? I have no idea. I have no idea at all. Do you? Is it possible to be influenced by spirit beings? I know that sounds like an easy way to cop out and say that I couldn't help myself, but from all that the Bible says, there are forces that have a direct or indirect influence on people's behavior. The Bible calls him Satan. I suppose it's possible because it sure seems like some of the thoughts aren't my own, they just come blasting into my head... These thoughts are very powerful, very destructive, and they do not leave. They're not the kind of thoughts that you can just shake your head and they're gone. They do not leave."
"After the fear and terror of what I'd done had left, which took about a month or two, I started it all over again. From then on it was a craving, a hunger, I don't know how to describe it, a compulsion, and I just kept doing it, doing it and doing it, whenever the opportunity presented itself."
"I knew my grandma would be waking up and I still wanted him to stay with me so I strangled him... I brought him up to the bedroom and pretended he was still alive."
ON THE MURDER OF ANTHONY SEARS
"I took the knife and the scalp part off and peeled the flesh off the bone and kept the skull and the scalp... If I could have kept him longer, all of him, I would have"
ON GERALDO RIVERA (WOOHOO! GO JEFF!)
"He just wants to make people feel as guilty and lousy as possible. The guy is such a prick."
"It was nice, with African cichlids and tiger barbs in it and live plants, it was a beautifully kept fish tank, very clean ... I used to like to just sit there and watch them swim around, basically. I used to enjoy the planning and the set-up, the filtration, read about how to keep the nitrate and ammonia down to safe levels and just the whole spectrum of fish-keeping interested me ... I once saw some puffer fish in the store. It's a round fish, and the only ones I ever saw with both eyes in front, like a person's eyes, and they would come right up to the front of the glass and their eyes would be crystal blue, like a person's, real cute... It's a fun hobby. I really enjoyed that fish tank. It's something I really miss."
ON THE MURDER OF ERNEST MILLER
"I separated the joints, the arm joints, the leg joints, and had to do two boilings. I think I used four boxes of Soilex for each one, put in the upper portion of the body and boiled that for about two hours and then the lower portion for another two hours. The Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly like-like substance and it just rinses off. Then I laid the clean bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom."
"I didn't want to keep killing people and have nothing left except the skull... This is going to sound bad, but ... should I say it? ... I took the drill while he was asleep..."
"Yes, I do have remorse, but I'm not even sure myself whether it is as profound as it should be. I've always wondered myself why I don't feel more remorse."
THE FOLLOWING THREE QUOTES CONCERN THE THREE MURDERS WHICH, ACCORDING TO DAHMER, WEIGHED MOST HEAVILY ON HIS MIND
"I wish I hadn't done it." ...Steven Hicks
"I had no intention of doing it in the first place." ...Steven Tuomi
"He was exceptionally affectionate. He was nice to be with." ...Jeremiah Weinberger
"If I'd been thinking rationally I would have stopped. I wasn't thinking rationally because it just increased and increased. It was almost like I wanted to get to a point where it was out of my control and there was no return. I mean, I was very careful for years and years, you know. Very careful, very careful about making sure that nothing incriminating remained, but these last few months, they just went nuts... It just seemed like it went into a frenzy this last month. Everything really came crashing down. The whole thing started falling down around my head... That was the last week I was going to be in that apartment building. I was going to have to move out and find somewhere to put all my possessions. Should I get a chest and put what I wanted to keep in that, and get rid of the rest? Or should I put an end to this, try to stop this and find a better direction for my life? That's what was going through my mind that last week."
"Something stronger than my conscious will made it happen. I think some higher power got good and fed-up with my activity and decided to put an end to it. I don't really think there were any coincidences. The way it ended and whether the close calls were warning to me or what, I don't know. If they were, I sure didn't heed them... If I hadn't been caught or lost my job, I'd still be doing it, I'm quite sure of that. I went on doing it and doing it and doing it, in spite of my anxiety and the lack of lasting satisfaction... How arrogant and stupid of me to think that I could do something like this and just go about my life normally as if nothing ever happened. They say you reap what you sow, well, it's true, you do, eventually ... I've always wondered, from the time that I committed that first horrid mistake, sin, with Hicks, whether this was sort of predestined and there was no way I could have changed it. I wonder just how much predestination controls a person's life and just how much control they have over themselves."
"I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don't know how else to put it. It didn't satisfy me completely so maybe I was thinking another one will. Maybe this one will, and the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see. "
"It's just like a big chunk of me has been ripped out and I'm not quite whole. I don't think I'm over dramatizing it, and I'm certainly deserving of it, but the way I feel now, it's just like you're talking to someone who is terminally ill and facing death. Death would be preferable to what I am facing. I just feel like imploding upon myself, you know? I just want to go somewhere and disappear."
"When you've done the types of things I've done, it's easier not to reflect on yourself. When I start thinking about how it's affecting the families of the people, and my family and everything, it doesn't do me any good. It just gets me very upset. "
" ... If I was killed in prison. That would be a blessing right now."
"I should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium, that's what I should have done."
"I still have guilt. I will probably never get rid of that, but yes, I'm free of the compulsion and the driving need to do it... I don't think I'm capable of creating anything. I think the only thing I'm capable of is destroying ... I'm sick and tired of being destructive. What worth is life if you can't be helpful to someone?"

Bibliography
There are several good books readily available on Jeff Dahmer in bookstores and libraries. The Crime Library particularly recommends Anne E. Schwartz's Man Who Could Not Kill Enough; The Secret Murders of Milwaukee's Jeffrey Dahmer. As a newspaper reporter who followed the story from its very beginning to its completion, she brings an intimacy and immediacy that other books do not have. Another book that is recommended, but not easy to find, is Lionel's Dahmer's A Father's Story, which gives an intimate account of what it is like trying to raise a boy with so many serious, hidden problems.
A&E Biography Video: Jeffrey Dahmer
Baumann, Edward, Step into My Parlor: The Chilling Story of Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer. 1991.
Dahmer, Lionel, A Father's Story. William Morrow and Company, 1994.
Davis, Don, Milwaukee Murders, Nightmare in Apartment 213: The True Story. St Martin's Paperbacks, 1995.
Martingale, Moira, Cannibal Killers. St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1993.
Tithecott, Richard and James Kincaid, Of Men & Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer & the Construction of the Serial Killer.