Killers - The Most Barbaric Murderers of Our Time (19 page)

Chapter 16

Jeffrey Dahmer

Name: Jeffrey Dahmer

Nationality: American

Number of victims: 17 killed

Motive: necrophilia and cannibalism

Favoured method of killing: drugging, strangulation, dismemberment

Reign of terror: 1978–91

Sentence: 957 years

Like Dennis Nilsen, Milwaukee mass murderer Jeffrey Dahmer kept the corpses of his victims around his home. But he wanted to possess them even more completely. So he ate their flesh because that way they would be a part of him and stay with him forever.

Dahmer began his murderous career in Ohio in 1978 at the age of 18. At that time, his parents were going through an acrimonious divorce. Dahmer’s father had already left and his mother was away on a vacation. Dahmer was alone in the house and feeling very neglected. So he went out looking for company. He picked up a hitch-hiker, a 19-year-old white youth named Stephen Hicks who had spent the day at a rock concert. They got on well and Dahmer took Hicks back to his parents’ house. They had a few beers and talked about their lives. Then Hicks said that he had to go. Dahmer begged him to stay, but Hicks was insistent. So Dahmer made him stay. He picked up a heavy dumbbell, beat him around the head and strangled him.

Dahmer dragged Hicks’ body into the crawlspace under the house and dismembered it with a hunting knife. He had had plenty of practice – his childhood hobby had been dissecting animals. He wrapped Hicks’ body parts in plastic bags and stashed them there. But the stench of rotting flesh soon permeated the house. That night, Dahmer took the remains and buried them in a nearby wood. But soon he became afraid that local children would discover the grave, so he dug up the body parts, stripped the flesh and pulverised the bones with a sledgehammer. Then he scattered the pieces around his garden and the neighbouring property. It was ten years before Dahmer killed again.

In 1986, Dahmer, then aged 26, was sentenced to a year’s probation for exposing himself and masturbating publicly in front of two 12-year-old boys. He claimed he was urinating and promised the judge that it would not happen again.

Before his probation ended Dahmer moved to Milwaukee to live with his grandmother. He was a loner. He would hang out in gay bars. If he did strike up a conversation with another customer, he would slip drugs into their drink. Often they would end up in a coma. Dahmer made no attempt to rape them or kill them, he was simply experimenting. But when the owner of the Club Bar ended up unconscious in hospital, Dahmer was barred.

Six days after the end of his probation, he picked up 24-year-old Stephen Tuomi in a gay club. They went to the Ambassador Hotel to have sex. When Dahmer awoke, he found Tuomi dead with blood around his mouth and bruising around his neck.

Dahmer had been drunk the night before and realised that he must have strangled Tuomi. Now he was alone in a hotel room with a corpse and any minute the porter would be checking whether the room had been vacated. He rushed out and bought a large suitcase. He stuffed Tuomi’s body into it and took a taxi back to his grandmother’s house. The taxi-driver even helped him drag the heavy case inside. Dahmer then cut up the body and put the bits into plastic bags which he put out for the rubbish collectors. He performed this task so well that he left no traces at all. When the police called around to ask him about the disappearance of Tuomi, there was no sign of a body and Dahmer found that he had got away with his second murder.

Sex, companionship and death were now inextricably linked in Dahmer’s mind. Four months later, he picked up a young male prostitute. They went back to Dahmer’s grandmother’s house to have sex in the basement. Dahmer gave the boy a drink laced with a powerful sedative. When the young man was unconscious, he strangled him. He dismembered the corpse, stripped off the flesh, pulverised the bones and scattered the pieces.

Two months later, Dahmer met a 22-year-old homosexual who was broke. Dahmer offered him money to perform in a video. He had oral sex with Dahmer, in his grandmother’s basement. When it was over, Dahmer offered him a drink, drugged him, strangled him and disposed of the corpse.

Dahmer’s grandmother began to complain of the smell that persisted even after the rubbish had been collected. She then found a patch of blood in the garage. Dahmer said that he had been skinning animals out there. She accepted this excuse, but made it clear that she wanted him to move out.

Dahmer found himself a small apartment in a run-down, predominantly black area. On his first night there, he lured Keison Sinthasomphone, a 13-year-old Laotian boy back to the flat and drugged him. The boy somehow managed to escape. Dahmer was arrested and charged with sexual assault and enticing a minor for immoral purposes. He spent a week in jail, then was released on bail.

But Dahmer could not contain his compulsion to kill. While out on bail, he picked up handsome 26-year-old black bisexual Anthony Sears. Fearing that the police were watching his apartment, he took Sears back to his grandmother’s basement. They had sex, then Dahmer drugged him and dismembered his body. He disposed of Sears’ corpse in the rubbish, but kept the skull as a souvenir.

Back in court, the District Attorney pushed for five years’ imprisonment for his assault on Keison Sinthasomphone. Dahmer’s attorney argued that the attack was a one-off offence. His client was a homosexual and a heavy drinker, and needed psychiatric help, not punishment. Dahmer got five years on probation and a year on a correction programme.

It did not help. Dahmer was now set in his murderous ways. He picked up a young black stranger in a club and offered him money to pose for nude photographs. Back in Dahmer’s flat, the youth accepted a drink. It was drugged. Once he was unconsciousness, Dahmer strangled him, stripped him and performed oral sex with the corpse. Then he dismembered the corpse, again keeping the skull, which he painted grey.

He picked up another homosexual known as ‘the Sheikh’ and did the same to him – only this time he had oral sex before he drugged and strangled his victim.

The next victim, a 15-year-old Hispanic, was luckier. Dahmer offered him $200 to pose nude. He undressed but Dahmer neglected to drug him before attacking him with a rubber mallet. Dahmer tried to strangle him, but he fought back. Eventually Dahmer calmed down. The boy promised not to inform the police and Dahmer let him go, even calling a taxi for him.

Next day, when he went to hospital for treatment, the boy broke his promise and spoke to the police. But he begged them not to let his foster parents find out that he was a homosexual and the police dropped the matter altogether.

The next time Dahmer picked up a victim, a few weeks later, he craved more than the usual sex, murder and grisly dismemberment. He decided to keep the skeleton and bleach it with acid. He dissolved most of the flesh in the acid, but kept the biceps intact in the fridge.

When neighbours began to complain of the smell of putrefying flesh coming from Dahmer’s flat, Dahmer apologised. He said that the fridge was broken and he was waiting to get it fixed.

Dahmer’s next victim, 23-year-old David Thomas, was not gay. He had a girlfriend and a three-year-old daughter, but accepted Dahmer’s offer to come back to his apartment for money. After drugging him, Dahmer realised that he did not really fancy his latest pick-up anyway. But fearing that Thomas might make trouble when he woke up, he killed him. This time he took more pleasure in the dismemberment, photographing it step by step.

He also photographed the dismemberments of Curtis Straughter and Errol Lindsey, holding onto their skulls as trophies.

Thirty-one-year old deaf mute, Tony Hughes, accepted $50 to pose nude. But by this time, Dahmer had become so blasé about the whole procedure that he kept Hughes’ body in his bedroom for several days before he cut it up.

Dahmer’s next victim was Keison Sinthasomphone’s older brother, 14-year-old Konerak. Again things went badly wrong. Dahmer drugged the boy, stripped him and raped him but then, instead of strangling him, Dahmer went out to buy some beer. On his way back to the apartment, Dahmer saw Konerak out on the street. He was naked, bleeding and talking to two black girls. When Dahmer grabbed him, the girls hung on to him. One of them had called the police and two patrol cars arrived.

The police wanted to know what all the trouble was about Dahmer said that he and Konerak had had a lover’s tiff. He managed to convince them that 14-year-old Konerak was really 19 and, back at his apartment, he showed them Polaroids of Konerak in his underwear which seemed to back up his story that they were lovers. The police did not realise that the pictures had been taken earlier that day, while Konerak was drugged.

Throughout all this Konerak sat passively on the sofa, thinking his ordeal was over. In fact, it had only just begun. The police accepted Dahmer’s story and left. Konerak was strangled immediately and then dismembered. When Dahmer picked up 23-year-old Jeremiah Weinberger in a gay club, Weinberger asked his former roommate whether he should go with Dahmer. The roommate said: ‘Sure, he looks OK.’

Dahmer seems to have liked Weinberger. They spent the whole of the next day together having sex. Then Weinberger looked at the clock and said it was time to go – and Dahmer said he should stay for just one more drink. His head ended up in the freezer, next to Matt Turner’s, an aspiring model Dahmer had picked up on Gay Pride Day in Chicago.

When Dahmer lost his job, he knew only one thing would make him feel better. He picked up a 24-year-old black man called Oliver Lacy, took him back to his apartment, strangled him and sodomised his dead body.

Four days later, 25-year-old Joseph Bradeholt – who was married with two children – accepted Dahmer’s offer of money for nude photographs and, according to Dahmer, willingly joined in oral sex with him. His dismembered torso was left to soak in a dustbin filled with acid.

By the time Dahmer had killed 17 men, all in much the same way, he was getting so casual that it was inevitable that he would get caught. On 22 June 1991, he met Tracy Edwards, a young black man who had just arrived from Mississippi. He was with a number of friends. Dahmer invited them all back to his apartment for a party. He and Edwards would go ahead in a taxi and organise some beers. The others would follow later. Edwards went along with this plan. What he did not know was the Dahmer was giving his friends the wrong address.

Edwards did not like Dahmer’s apartment. It smelt funny. There was a fish tank, where Dahmer kept some Siamese fighting fish. Dahmer told lurid tales about the fish fighting to the death and Edwards glanced nervously at the clock as he sipped his cold beer.

When the beer was finished, Dahmer gave Edwards a rum and coke. It was drugged. Edwards became drowsy. Dahmer put his arms around him and whispered about going to bed. Instantly, Edwards was wide awake. It was all a mistake. He had to be going, he said.

Before he knew it, his hands were handcuffed and Dahmer was poking a butcher’s knife in his chest, ordering him to get undressed. Edwards realised the seriousness of his situation. He knew he had to humour the man and make him relax. Slowly, he unbuttoned his shirt.

Dahmer suggested that they go through into the bedroom and escorted Edwards there at knifepoint. The room was decorated with Polaroid pictures of young men posing naked. There were other pictures of dismembered bodies and chunks of meat. The smell in the room was sickening. The putrid aroma seemed to be coming from a plastic dustbin under the window. Edwards could guess the rest.

Dahmer wanted to watch a video with his captive friend. They sat on the bed and watched
The Exorcist
. The gruesome film made Dahmer relax as Edwards desperately thought of ways to escape.

The film over, Dahmer said, if Edwards did not comply with his requests, he would cut out his heart and eat it. Then he told Edwards to strip so that he could photograph him nude. As Dahmer reached for the camera, Edwards seized his opportunity. He punched him in the side of the head. As Dahmer went down, Edwards kicked him in the stomach and ran for the door.

Dahmer caught up with him and offered to unlock the handcuffs, but Edwards ignored him. He wrenched open the door and ran for his life.

Halfway down Twenty-fifth Street, Edwards spotted a police car. He ran over to it yelling for help. In the car he explained to the officer that a maniac had tried to kill him and he directed them back to Dahmer’s apartment.

The door was answered by a well-groomed, good looking white man who seemed calm and composed. The police began to have second thoughts about the story Edwards had told them – until they noticed the strange smell.

Dahmer admitted that he had threatened Edwards. He looked contrite and explained that he had just lost his job and had been drinking. But when the police asked for the key to the handcuffs, he refused to hand it over and grew violent. The policemen pushed him into the flat and, in moments, had him face down on the floor. They read him his rights. Then they began looking around the flat. One of them opened the fridge door.

‘Oh my God,’ he said, ‘there’s a goddamn head in here.’

Dahmer began to scream like an animal. The police rushed out to get some shackles. Then they began their search of the apartment in earnest.

The refrigerator contained meat, including a human heart, in plastic bags. There were three human heads in the freezer. A filing cabinet contained grotesque photographs, three human skulls and a collection of bones. Two more skulls were found in a pot on the stove. Another pot contained male genital organs and severed hands and there were the remains of three male torsos in the dustbin in the bedroom.

In the precinct, Dahmer seemed almost relieved that his murder spree was over. He made a detailed confession and admitted that he had now reached the stage where he was cooking and eating his victims’ bodies.

Dahmer’s cannibalism and his necrophilia were the cornerstones of his insanity plea. But the District Attorney pointed out to the jury that if Dahmer were found insane and sent to a mental hospital, his case would be reviewed in two years and, if he was then found to be sane, he could be out on the streets again. In June 1992 the jury found Jeffrey Dahmer guilty of the 15 murders he was charged with and he was given 15 life sentences, or 957 years in prison. The state of Wisconsin had no death penalty, but he still faced execution. He still had to be tried for the murders that took place in his parents’ home in Ohio, which did have the death penalty. However, after serving two years in the state penitentiary, he was murdered by another inmate.