Serial Killer's Soul (10 page)

We complained to the guards, but they wouldn’t budge.

That evening we went to the canteen from 7:15 p.m. until 8:30 p.m. We had more uniformed officers than usual as escorts.

On February 19, inmates on Units 4 through 9 went to breakfast in the units’ dayroom cafeterias while the cell doors for Units 1 and 2 remained closed. The sergeants proclaimed us “on lockdown until further notice.” Our resentment grew. Dahmer’s mere presence was taking away the miniscule scraps of freedom that we had.

That morning we received a lovely bag breakfast consisting of two boiled eggs, two slices of toast, two boxes of cereal, and two containers of milk. That night inmates on Units 4 through 9 attended Wednesday evening Catholic services, but not us. Lockdown.

Later that evening, a memo from the warden slid under our cell doors. “Officers have been noticing gang activities at various places such as the gym, school, and church,” it read. “Therefore, there will be a search of each inmate’s cell. Also each inmate in Units 1 and 2 will be questioned by captains and lieutenants.”
Warden Endicott and the security director had
each
signed the memo.

The memo surprised us. First,
we
hadn’t heard any talk of gang activity. Second, if the guards had noticed such activity, why didn’t they stop it immediately like usual? The whole thing just increased our suspicions that Dahmer was the real reason for the lockdown and security just wouldn’t admit it.

Lunch that day was served in bags, this time with two bologna sandwiches; raw carrot, celery, and radish sticks; two cookies; a carton of milk; and a cup of coffee.

It didn’t take long before inmates in Units 4 through 9, the units
not
on lockdown, started asking about our units. Word reached relatives and friends outside the prison, who began calling the prison, inquiring about the lockdown status. The media-relations officer at Columbia stressed that Dahmer had nothing to do with the situation. Media reports incorrectly announced that the entire institution was on lockdown, not just Units 1 and 2.

Supper was served late that afternoon on Styrofoam trays: turkey, cold mashed potatoes, two slices of bread, one carton of milk, coffee, and one piece of fruit. After supper, inmates heard rumors that new gang members from the Black Gangster Disciples and Vice Lords just arrived at Columbia and claimed they wanted to take over the prison. Since Units 1 and 2 were gang units, we were sure that if there
were
gang members, they shared housing with us. Maybe there was something to the memo after all.

Finally, that night we could have visits from friends and family, but no other privileges.

On the morning of February 20, while Dahmer remained in his cell on Desegregation Unit 1, each prisoner in Units 1 and 2 left his cell, one at a time, handcuffed, and escorted to a multipurpose room on the unit. Officers interrogated us, asking questions mostly related to gang activities, but also wanting to know if we’d heard anything about any threats on Dahmer’s life.

Every inmate was questioned for ten to twenty minutes before returning to his cell. The questioning went on all day.

That night, while the other inmates had recreation, we remained locked in our cells. By this point, we were pretty agitated. Most of the inmates on Units 1 and 2 have prison sentences ranging from five to seventy-five years and have a standard daily routine. Inmates don’t like it when routine is upset.

Let me say this, then, speaking for the Lord: Live no longer as the unsaved do, for they are blinded and confused. Their closed hearts are full of darkness; they are far away from the life of God because they have shut their minds against him, and they cannot understand his ways. They don’t care anymore about right and wrong and have given themselves over to impure ways. They stop at nothing, being driven by their evil minds and restless lusts. (Ephesians 4:17-19
, TLB)

As I sat in my cell and read my Bible during those days after Dahmer joined our ranks, I found myself wondering over and over whether or not this man’s soul could be saved. Oh, I knew if he would just ask for forgiveness and give his life over to Jesus the potential was there, but I wondered if Satan had such a powerful grip on him that all was lost.

Would Dahmer ever get to a point where he would ask forgiveness for his horrible sins? Would he even realize the immensity of them?

I wondered and I prayed.

During those first few weeks after Dahmer joined us, I had a
lot
of time on my hands, especially since we were on lockdown most of the time. Whenever I got the chance to go to the library, I read everything I could get my eyes on that discussed Dahmer’s childhood or his life as a young man in Ohio and, later, Wisconsin. I read about Satanism and different cults, trying to find a correlation to Dahmer’s despicable acts. I wanted to know how a person could do what he did to the bodies of the men and boys he murdered.

I read newspapers and magazines, did research, and took notes on a tablet in my cell. For me, the media couldn’t write enough about Dahmer. To satisfy my need for information, I had to dig deeper into his background.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, at Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee to Joyce (Flint) and Lionel Dahmer. Jeff’s mother and father had married the previous July in Milwaukee. Joyce, born in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, had a master’s degree in counseling from the University of Wisconsin-Stout in Menomonie. Lionel received a degree in electrical engineering from Marquette University in Milwaukee.

Joyce Dahmer had a difficult pregnancy while carrying Jeff. Lionel said she suffered from psychiatric and environmental ailments throughout their son’s childhood.

In 1966, the family moved to Ames, Iowa, where Lionel received a doctorate. He later got a job in Akron, Ohio, as a research chemist at PPG Industries and the family moved to Doylestown, Ohio. Joyce chose to stay home to raise Jeffrey. Family life was, by any standards, pretty normal during those days.

When Jeffrey was six, he started school at Hazel Harvey Elementary School in Barberton, Ohio. That same year, Jeffrey’s younger brother, David, was born.

As a child, Jeffrey was polite and neat. Most people who knew them believed he had a good upbringing. The Dahmers weren’t church-going people. The family religion was Protestant, but attending church wasn’t important to the Dahmers.

Like many children his age, Jeff played baseball, had a job as a paperboy, and played games with children at school and in the neighborhood.

In 1968, the family moved to Bath, Ohio. It wasn’t long before family life started to go downhill. During the next few years, Lionel and Joyce’s marriage disintegrated. Jeffrey began to have difficulties with some of the children at school. They thought he was strange and, as children sometime do, bullied and teased him. Jeffrey began to spend more and more time alone in the woods, fascinated with nature.

When he was fourteen years old and in junior high, Jeff became even more of a loner. He alienated himself, and classmates stayed away completely because of his odd behavior. He did succeed academically, however. He was a
smart student who received honors in science, his favorite subject. Not ironically, some of his science projects involved experimenting with animals.

In junior high and high school, Jeff became known as the class clown, but he also started drinking.

At Revere High School, he played the clarinet in the band. Later he joined the intramural tennis team, playing tennis from his sophomore year through his senior year, and worked on the school newspaper,
The Lantern
.

From 1975 through 1980, the years while Jeff was in high school, local authorities called on the Dahmer residence several times because of domestic disputes between Joyce and Lionel.

At fifteen, Jeff admitted fantasizing about homosexual activities, but never felt comfortable discussing this with his parents or peers. As a result, he retreated further and further into himself. Some wonder if school counselors or his parents knew about these thoughts and perhaps took action, would Jeff have turned into such a monster? Would his parents or professionals have been able to help him?

Regardless of speculation, that’s not how history unfolded. Jeff kept everything hidden. He lied to himself and to those around him. He drank, probably in an effort to forget. Before long, Jeff’s whole world became one of deceit and mind games.

At some point, Jeff became interested in Satanism. During his high school years, he invited the few friends he still had to his home for a séance. Fascinated by evil and the devil, Jeff tried his hardest to call Satan into their midst.

No one knows for sure just how much Jeff actually knew about Satanism, but some of the rituals he performed during his youth and, eventually, on his victims strangely resembled the practice. Later, interviews by authorities and psychiatrists after his arrest led them to believe Dahmer did these things more for personal pleasure and feelings of complete power over individuals rather than as an act of Satanism itself.

Lionel Dahmer filed for divorce from Joyce on November 4, 1977, near the beginning of Jeffrey’s senior year, and moved into a motel. That didn’t help family life; the confrontations between Jeff’s parents continued. The divorce was
final in 1978, just before Jeff graduated from high school.

That spring, Jeff asked a girl to prom. She accepted, although Jeff admitted later that he felt quite uncomfortable about his male role in the situation.

During the last few years of high school, Jeff’s grades plunged and he graduated without honors.

Just a few weeks after graduation, on June 18, 1978, in Bath Township, Ohio, he killed his first victim, Steven Hicks.

Many accounts of Hicks’ murder give an appearance that the murder was an accident, that Jeff didn’t
intentionally
kill Hicks. Dahmer, likely lonely, just wanted to knock Hicks unconscious so he wouldn’t leave.

Some wonder if that one accidental death was the pivotal turning point in Jeffrey Dahmer’s legacy of horror.

That fall, Dahmer moved to Columbus, Ohio, to attend Ohio State University and major in business. His drinking continued quite heavily and because of his drinking, he was never able to keep his grades up. By semester’s end, he was failing and dropped out.

In the meantime, Jeff’s father began dating a woman named Shari and, on December 24, 1978, they were married. Two weeks later, Lionel, upset with Jeff for flunking out of college, dragged his son to the Army recruiter’s office, and insisted that he enlist. Jeff did his basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, and became a military police officer.

Jeff’s years in the military were uneventful. He was transferred to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he completed a six-month course as a medical specialist. In July 1979, he went overseas to Baumholder in West Germany. Most people, authorities included, believe Jeff did not engage in any criminal or homosexual activities while in the Army.

In March 1981, at the age of twenty-one, Jeff was still drinking heavily and the Army discharged him under
Chapter 9
of the code of military justice, the section that covers abuse of alcohol and drugs.

He went to Miami, where four months later, in the summer of 1981, he got a job at a sub sandwich shop. His income was so low that he couldn’t afford decent housing and often slept on the beach. After six unsuccessful months in
Florida, his stepmother, Shari, called him, asking him return home. He stayed with Shari and Lionel until the following year.

The relationship between Lionel and Jeff was difficult. In 1982, Jeff left Ohio and, at his father’s suggestion, moved to the Milwaukee suburb of West Allis to live with his paternal grandmother.

Jeff worked as a phlebotomist, a skill he learned in the Army, drawing blood samples at Milwaukee Blood Plasma.

In August 1982, not long after he arrived in Wisconsin, Jeff was arrested for exposing himself in a public area. Because of his arrest, he lost his job. He continued to live with his grandmother, but didn’t land another job for more than two years. Finally, Jeff found a position at Ambrosia Chocolate Factory in downtown Milwaukee. His job responsibility surrounded mixing ingredients for chocolate products.

After twenty months of employment at Ambrosia Chocolate, he was arrested and convicted for masturbating on the riverbank of the Kinnickinnic River in Milwaukee. As a twenty-six year old, he received one year of probation by the Milwaukee Circuit Court and underwent psychological therapy.

During his therapy, a psychiatrist diagnosed him with a schizoid personality wherein a person loses contact with reality, experiences a disintegrated personality, and may even have hallucinations.

The following year, 1987, Dahmer started frequenting gay taverns in Milwaukee, including Club 219, where he often hung out after work and on weekends. In September, he met his second victim, Steven Tuomi. Tuomi was the victim whose body was stuffed into a suitcase, chopped up, and dispersed. Tuomi’s body was never found.