Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (2022) s01e01 Episode Script
Sympathy for the Devil
1
[eerie music playing]
[woman] I was a young lawyer at the time.
I was in my twenties.
I just moved to Milwaukee.
And a woman living alone,
and I didn't know a lot of people.
[telephone ringing]
I get this call from Jerry Boyle, my boss.
He said, "Look, we've got this new case,
and it's a big one."
"I need you to go down
to the police administration building."
[car engine revving]
[woman] Jerry Boyle indicated, he said,
"This is somebody
I had represented in the past."
"He's a nice man. Don't worry,
he won't bite your head off."
I went down immediately
as he had requested
to see Jeffrey Dahmer.
It's my first job.
[ominous music playing]
[woman] When I first went in to see him,
it was a very small interview room.
There was Jeff, um,
sitting in the corner of the table.
I was incredibly nervous
because this was something
I felt was way over my head.
[reporter 1]
Even veteran police officers say
this is among the strangest
murder scenes they've witnessed.
The country has been spellbound
by the horrifying story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
[reporter 2] Murder, mutilation,
even cannibalism.
[reporter 3] Shock and horror
as police carry out a large cooking kettle
in the biggest and most gruesome
mass murder case in Milwaukee history.
I felt like Clarice Starling
in Silence of the Lambs.
He, uh He was very polite.
I was somewhat surprised, I guess,
at how, uh, cordial Jeff was.
In order to be a good defense attorney,
you have to be nonjudgmental
and develop a trust.
And, uh, he called me Wendy.
I called him Jeff.
[plays from recorder] This is okay, Jeff.
I mean, don't be embarrassed about it.
Am I Am I making you feel uncomfortable?
[Jeffrey] No. It has to be faced, so
It's just so bizarre, isn't it?
It's not It's not easy to talk about.
It's something that I've kept
buried within myself for many years,
and it's
Yeah.
It's like trying to pull up
a two-ton stone out of a well.
[Wendy] I don't think there's anything
that can prepare anybody
for that kind of carnage.
[music builds to climax]
[unsettling theme music playing]
[tape rolling]
[clicks]
[ominous music playing]
[helicopter whirring]
[man] It was a quiet night.
You know, one of those summer nights
where it was steamy.
I was a television reporter, and I was
among the first people on the scene
at Dahmer's apartment
the night he was arrested.
When I arrived, just seeing
the faces of the police officers,
that's when I realized that
something big was happening there.
I ran into a police officer
that I had known.
Bobby Rao was his name.
And I said, "Come on, Bobby.
Is this for real?"
He looked at me, shook his head and said,
"You bet. This is for real."
[reporter] Lt. Roosevelt Harrell.
[Roosevelt] We're investigating a homicide
which occurred in the apartment building
in 900 block of North 25th Street.
We do have, uh, one person in custody.
There's a strong possibility
there might be additional homicides, uh,
that we're looking into
that this individual might be involved in.
The police officer assigned to the door
at the Oxford Apartments
was a guy I knew.
And we asked, begged him,
"Could we get in? Could we take pictures
inside Dahmer's apartment?"
He shook his head.
"You take pictures, I'll lose my job."
But he said, "You can look in.
As long as you don't cross the threshold."
So we went to the door,
held onto the frame and leaned forward,
and looked inside the apartment.
I remember it being not memorable
for a lot of reasons.
There was a rolled-up carpet.
A kitchen to the left.
There was a bedroom off to the right
and a bathroom.
But the one thing that stood out
more than anything else
was a creepy lava lamp that was going.
The blob going up and down.
Such an eerie feeling
about the the apartment.
The night the Dahmer story broke,
I was a reporter
at the Milwaukee Sentinel at the time.
And I'm like the only reporter there
because it was late.
Tina Burnside,
who was, uh, a night cops reporter, calls.
[phone ringing]
She said, "James, I need you
to take this down very carefully."
It's the pressure of having an editor
breathing over your shoulder saying,
"I need that story now."
I hit "send" to the night editor.
He edits it, sends it off.
I remember him saying at the time,
"This is gonna be the biggest story
to ever hit the city of Milwaukee."
[tense music playing]
I was Chief Prosecutor of Milwaukee
many years ago
before I became a defense lawyer.
So I've been on both sides of the fence.
I got a phone call,
a fellow from our main TV station.
"Wanna talk to you
about a client of yours."
I said, "Who's that?"
He said, "Jeffrey Dahmer."
"We think he's a homicidal maniac."
I had represented him in 1988
for some sex crime.
And I said, "Hold that thought.
I I gotta call his father."
I called Lionel Dahmer,
and I told him
what the reporter had told me.
I told him that I'd get somebody
to find out what's going on.
I called Wendy Patrickus,
and Wendy was available.
[Wendy] First person that they brought me
in to see was Detective Murphy.
At that point, the entire interrogation
was controlled by the detectives.
[man] When I first met Dahmer,
all he said to me is,
"Why don't you just shoot me now
for what I did?"
And I sat down with him,
reassured him
that whatever he could tell me
wouldn't reflect on him, or it wouldn't
make me like him or dislike him anymore.
And subsequently
put the confession on paper.
I was a lieutenant
assigned to the homicide unit.
Dennis Murphy and Pat Kennedy
were the primary people
that interviewed Dahmer.
In fact, pretty much every day
that was their job.
The way he was able to recall
every detail of these homicides.
It was incredible.
[Wendy] As I recall,
Jeff was a little drunk at the time.
I did ask him why he was telling
the police everything,
why he was rendering a confession.
And he said, "Wendy,
they found so much in my apartment."
"You know, the gigs up. So I would prefer
to continue talking with them."
He already had his mind made up.
At that point I had to say,
"Jeff. I will honor that."
[Boyle] He had already confessed.
So I knew Dahmer didn't have a defense.
So I said to him,
"What do you want me to do?"
He said, "I wanna know
why I am what I am."
So I told him,
"I can get a good psychiatrist
to come and talk to you,
and plead you not guilty
by reason of mental illness."
"Insanity."
"But I'd need doctors
to tell me they can support that."
The real job was to get enough information
to give to the doctors
to be able to answer their questions.
The question was
whether he was sane or insane.
The next several months,
I'd spend considerable time with him,
talking about each victim
and, um, gathering as much information
as possible.
[indistinct sound on tape]
[Wendy, from playing recorder]
Jeff, tell me what you were thinking.
[Jeffrey] I had wondered
why I was compelled
to do all the murders.
What I was searching for
that would, uh,
fill the emptiness that I felt.
The murdering someone
and and disposing of them right away
gives no great lasting pleasure
or a feeling of fulfillment.
And yet I still felt the compulsion
to do it throughout these years.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Wendy] Jeff wanting to identify
all the victims,
this was very unique
in somebody who is a serial killer,
a true serial killer.
Didn't deny it.
And said, "Yes, I killed and I killed."
"This is how I killed. And this was why."
[Jeffrey playing from tape recorder]
I didn't seem to have
the normal feelings of empathy.
[Wendy] Did you ever think to yourself,
"Why don't I have feelings
that normal people have?"
[Jeffrey] I did wonder about it.
It started with fantasies, fantasizing.
It always started with fantasizing,
and then
eventually it seemed
the fantasies, uh, came to be.
He took his fantasy world
to degrees and places that
most of us would never even conceive of.
I interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer
at the request
of defense attorney Jerry Boyle.
I'd been asked if there was,
in my view, a defense of insanity here.
I had a 30-year career in Milwaukee
as a forensic psychologist,
and Dahmer's case came mid-career for me.
There were others that followed,
but nothing like this.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
What triggered it all?
I wish I could give you
a good, straightforward answer on that.
If there's any area
that is, uh, to really blame,
it's my own twisted thinking. I haven't
been thinking normally for years.
[uneasy music builds to climax]
[tape rolling]
Jeffrey was more reserved
at talking about his childhood.
There were pictures I saw of him
when he was younger with his dad Lionel,
and, you know, it seemed very normal.
You know,
they're playing catch with the ball.
But his father was gone a lot.
He's a scientist, and, you know,
he was furthering his own education.
But Jeff was adamant
that there wasn't any huge traumas
that would have caused him
to do these things.
Wasn't like he was
sexually abused or beaten.
The one thing that Jeffrey
did tell me and Jerry Boyle
about his childhood
that really affected him
was this, uh, constant bickering
between his parents.
[Boyle plays from recorder]
What was the problem growing up
between your mom and dad?
[Jeffrey] Ugh!
They just couldn't seem to get along,
especially on my mom's side.
[Boyle] Any violence?
[Jeffrey] Just the slapping and hitting.
- [Boyle] Who was hitting who?
- [Jeffrey] Um, Mom hitting Dad.
[Boyle] Whose side were you on?
[Jeffrey] I was trying
not to be on anyone's side.
[Boyle] I had inquired
into the family history
on both sides
to see if there was any insanity here,
any peculiar things
about those family members
that might give us an insight
as to how Dahmer became what he became.
And I didn't find anything
on Lionel Dahmer's side.
And on Joyce's side,
I think there was
some alcoholism in her family.
But there's alcoholism
in a lot of families.
So it didn't mean anything to me.
Jeffrey had, uh, a brother,
who was born when Jeffrey was about six.
David.
[uneasy music playing]
[Wendy] All attention then
was given to his younger brother.
So he was already alone a lot.
[Eric Tyson]
When Jeff and I were growing up,
I don't think he had
a large group of friends.
I never really saw other people come over.
It was basically Jeff and and myself.
Our driveways were directly
across the street from each other,
so we could take our bicycles
and zoom right across the street,
or just play ball, go sledding.
[Dr. Smail] His father was quite concerned
that Jeffrey did not do well in school.
Didn't have very many friends.
Never had any contact with girls.
[Wendy playing from recorder] How long
had you known you're homosexual?
[Jeffrey] Uh, since I was 13, I'd say.
[Smail] Jeffrey became aware
of his sexuality
about the time he reached puberty,
which is what you would expect.
He knew that it would be contrary
to the wishes of his father and mother.
[Wendy] And it was about the time
that he did
some sexual experimentation
with another boy in the neighborhood.
[playing from recorder] What did you do?
[Jeffrey] Just kissing.
Laying together,
in the tree house.
I was about 14 or 15.
And that was consensual.
As he got older,
Jeffrey became walled up emotionally
from his peers, his teachers,
childhood friends, even his parents.
[man] I served as the elected
District Attorney of Milwaukee County
during the years of Dahmer's murders.
I was also the prosecutor
of the case itself.
I was the attorney in court
prosecuting him.
By the time he was a senior
in high school,
he started having fantasies.
Sexual fantasies.
One of those was having sex with a person
who was, in effect,
completely submissive to him.
To violently force someone
to submit to him.
[Wendy plays from recorder]
When was the first time you thought
about doing these things to a person?
[Jeffrey] Uh
- [Wendy] I mean, just fantasy.
- [Jeffrey] Yeah.
Probably around when I was 18.
He fantasized about a jogger
that came by frequently.
He wondered what that person
would look like without a shirt on.
He wanted to have sex with that young man,
was drawn to that man to have sex.
But he didn't know how to approach it
or what to do.
So he decided he would
knock him unconscious in the woods
and have sex with him
while he was unconscious.
[Dr. Smail]
It wasn't an object to kill him.
It was an object to touch, cuddle,
explore the body.
It wasn't the relationship.
It's not the person.
It's the well-toned,
athletic male body. That's what he wanted.
He sawed off a bat for a weapon
to knock the man unconscious.
[Wendy] He had hid behind a tree.
But that particular jogger
did not come by,
so he abandoned that idea.
[Michael Mccann] That was basically
Dahmer's first violent fantasy.
To do that to this man
that jogged through his neighborhood.
[uneasy music playing]
[tape rolling]
[news theme music playing]
[reporter] From WTMJ TV.
Milwaukee's 24-hour news channel.
This is News Channel 4 Daybreak.
My first opportunity
to share the news with the world
was in a morning live shot
on a, uh, morning news show.
Good morning. A very gruesome
discovery in Milwaukee overnight.
Milwaukee police find a horrifying scene
inside an apartment building.
What I recited shocked the anchor people
back at the station.
Mike and Juliet, police got here
in the middle of the night,
and what they found was an apartment
full of pieces of people.
Men who were apparently killed
by another man, a resident here,
in what appears to be
a sexually motivated mass murder.
At the end of the broadcast,
I was expecting a question.
You always get a routine question
from the anchor people.
The bodies were dismembered,
so literally
piecing together the information,
it's gonna be difficult to figure out
who the victims are.
They were silent.
I asked them later, "What happened?
Why didn't you ask me a question?"
They said, "We were so stunned,
we couldn't think of a question."
[Causey] I remember going to the scene
because as a reporter,
you wanna see for yourself.
And it was it was literally a zoo.
- [reporters chattering indistinctly]
- It was like that for days on end.
People were shocked. They were awed.
And they couldn't turn away.
[indistinct chatter]
[Wendy] You can't imagine
the enormity of it all.
It was anxiety.
It was a lot of excitement,
to some extent.
But worried that I was doing my job right.
[playing from recorder]
When did your parents separate?
[Jeffrey] When I was 18.
In 1978.
Instilling in him that I'm not somebody
sitting here judging him,
um, was of utmost importance
to cut through everything,
because there was so much material.
To get that trust
made all the difference in the world.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
Mom and Dad, they had their problems.
There was nothing I could do
to change the situation,
so I just tried to
find some happiness my own way,
which was obviously the wrong way.
[tape rolling]
[Mccann] Dahmer had just graduated
from high school.
His parents were going through a divorce,
and Dahmer was alone
at the home in Bath, Ohio.
[Dr. Smail] His mother kicked
his father out.
He moved out to a motel.
Unbeknownst to his dad,
his mother just decided,
"I've had enough."
So she left abruptly with his brother.
[Wendy] I don't think his father knew
that the mother
had left for Wisconsin at the time.
Jeffrey Dahmer never used the word
"abandoned by his parents,"
although I think that he might
have been familiar with that feeling.
[Wendy plays from recorder]
The day she left to Chippewa Falls
- you never talked to her again?
- [Jeffrey] Right.
[Wendy] How did it make you feel
at that time?
[Jeffrey] Uh, depressed.
Lonely and bored.
Confused, I would say.
No one was at home.
I saw this guy hitchhiking.
I thought it'd be nice
to have someone around to talk with,
and someone that I wanted
to be with for sex.
[cheering]
[woman] In 1978,
Steven Hicks was hitchhiking
to a rock concert.
[Wendy] One of the things
that Jeffrey was always interested in
was the torso, the physique,
how well-built,
how attractive the individual was.
That was the driving force
of his attraction.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
That's what attracted me. The physique.
Just the muscular physique.
That's That's the motivation.
When Steven Hicks was hitchhiking
and didn't have a shirt on,
he said to me, "This is unbelievable.
This was the fantasy I had."
"Now I'm able to enact it."
[Dr. Smail] Jeffrey thought,
"What a great opportunity.
I've got a car, a house. Nobody around."
"So let me see if I can get this guy
to come back to the house."
He stopped, talked to him and said,
"Look, I've got some beer
and pot at the house."
"Do you wanna come back
and share that with me?"
Steven Hicks said yes.
[Wendy] Mr. Hicks was not gay.
There wasn't any sexual interaction.
[from recorder] You hadn't done
anything with him, had you?
[Jeffrey] No.
I just got the sense
he wasn't interested in that at all,
after a while talking with him.
So I don't believe I asked him, no.
[Wendy] Okay.
At some point,
Steven Hicks indicated to Jeffrey,
"I gotta get going.
I can't stay here any longer."
"People will be wondering where I am."
Jeff didn't wanna let him go.
[Jeffrey] It was the first time, uh
I did have the desire to control.
I lost all feelings,
so I guess I just decided
to do it, whether he was, uh, gay or not.
It didn't really matter.
Dahmer took a barbell from a weight set
and hit Steven Hicks
over the head with it.
[thudding]
[tape recorder clicks]
[Jeffrey from recorder] I dunno why I hit
him, except I wanted to stay with him
for longer.
[Dr. Smail] Steven is then
unconscious at this point,
and Jeffrey uses the barbell
to to strangle Steven.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I thought how amazing it was
that I was actually doing it
to another human being.
It shocked me
that I got to that point.
And that was a feeling of excitement,
control,
but mingled with a lot of fear.
- [Wendy] What did you do with his body?
- [Jeffrey] Nothing.
Just right under the
under the house in the crawl space area.
- [Wendy] Did you go down and look at him?
- [Jeffrey] I did once.
But just looked at him.
[Wendy] What was going through your mind
as you were looking at him?
[Jeffrey] Uh
A sort of morbid curiosity as to
what a dead person looked like.
Uh
Curiosity mixed with a lot of fear.
[Wendy] It was after that
that now he has this anxiety, uh, panic.
"Uh, what am I gonna do with the body?
How am I gonna get rid of this?"
[indistinct sounds on tape]
[Jeffrey from recorder] I started
dismembering him and everything.
There's something about him
that I remember.
Cutting the legs off
and then the arms and head.
[Wendy] Did you touch anything?
[Jeffrey] I I probably did.
Liver and the heart.
He had the head separate for a while.
He masturbated to the body parts.
[Wendy from recorder] Did it concern you
at all as to why you felt
such satisfaction at that time,
when you were 18 years old,
by using him to masturbate?
[Jeffrey] I'm not sure
I even know why now.
I got, uh, an exciting feeling
out of doing that.
But I did it.
[Wendy] How long did you
keep him in the house with you?
[Jeffrey] Um
I don't know. Six hours.
He got the most satisfaction
in what he did with the body afterwards.
It was true
that he did have a sexual disorder.
In an attempt to try
and get him through the insanity plea,
I know that one of our experts,
uh, went into it a great deal.
[Fred Berlin] I'm a forensic psychiatrist.
I was an expert witness
in the Jeffrey Dahmer case.
My expertise is in paraphilias,
which is in layman's terms
sexual deviation disorders.
People have something different
or aberrant about their sexual makeup.
My diagnosis of Mr. Dahmer
was necrophilia.
Necrophilia is a condition
in which an individual
is very much aroused
by having sex with individuals
after they've passed away.
So there's the corpse.
There's Jeffrey.
About three o'clock in the morning,
he decided to dispose of the body
by taking it to a ravine
that he knew was some miles down the road.
He took the body,
put the body into garbage bags,
and was stopped by a police officer
because he crossed the median line.
[police siren wailing]
They tested him for drunken driving.
He passed.
The officer took his flashlight
and flashed it into the back,
and there was the garbage bag
with Hicks' dead body in it.
The officer asked what it was. He said,
"The garbage. My parents are breaking up."
"I'm alone. I couldn't sleep,
so I thought I'd get rid of the garbage."
You've got a dead body in the seat
behind you that you've just killed,
and you're now talking
with a police officer.
You're an 18-year-old boy.
Dahmer knew what was at stake,
and Dahmer was cool enough to say,
"Just on the way to dump the garbage."
The officer believed him.
Although he saw the bags,
he never looked in the bags.
He was able to convince that officer.
After that, he knew
that he could manipulate.
He knew he could make a statement
to somebody and get away with it.
He turned around
and went back to the house.
He found a galvanized pipe.
He said it was about two feet,
that he stuffed the bags into.
Uh, he went out over the bridge,
over the river,
and threw any other personal items
of, uh, Mr. Hicks.
Including a knife that he that he used
to cut the body into manageable pieces.
[Jeffrey from recorder]
Dad was living at the hotel,
so I was pretty much by myself
for a couple months.
[Wendy] During the time
your father was at the hotel,
how many times a day
would you speak with him?
[Jeffrey] Maybe once or twice a week.
His father and Shari,
his soon-to-be stepmother,
came back to the house.
There wasn't much food
in the refrigerator.
Alcohol bottles were around.
It looked like a life that was in trouble
as a young man.
His father was quite concerned,
so they moved back in.
[Wendy playing from recorder] After that,
you said you went to Ohio State?
[Jeffrey] For about three months.
Did a lot of drinking there,
so grades weren't very good.
[Smail] I think his dad
had gotten him into
It was Ohio State.
He was drinking very heavily,
essentially flunked out.
The decision was made
by his dad and stepmother,
he would go into the army.
[clipper buzzing]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
They sent me to basic training.
Then field medic training.
[Wendy] He indicated to me
that this was something
that he learned about,
being able to identify the organs,
um, through his training in the military.
[Dennis Murphy] Jeffrey Dahmer
was discharged because of drinking.
[Jeffrey from recorder] I was
drinking heavily near the end,
so I had to move back to Ohio
with the folks.
When he came back and came to the house
three years later,
the bags with Steven Hicks' body
Those bags were still there.
[Mccann] Jeffrey Dahmer spread out
the remains of Steve Hicks
over the one and a quarter wooded acres
on which the family lived.
Here's a fine young man
that disappeared into thin air.
You can imagine.
They didn't learn this until July of 1991.
Their son disappeared in June of 1978.
For 13 years,
that family had no idea
what had happened to their son,
Steven Hicks.
[ominous music playing]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was troubled about that.
[Wendy] How did it manifest itself
that you were troubled by it?
What were you feeling?
[Jeffrey] A lot of guilt.
Indecision over whether I should
confess to it.
But I just never had the courage to.
[Wendy] What were you thinking?
[Jeffrey] Well,
I knew how horribly wrong it was.
And I never wanted to have
anything like that ever happen again.
[ominous music builds to climax]
[tape rolling]
[Murphy] During our interview
with Jeffrey Dahmer,
we talked to him about family members,
and Jeff says,
"Leave my family out of it."
He says, "My parents don't have
any knowledge of my activities."
I I told Lionel,
Jeff's father,
about the homicides,
and his reaction was shock.
He couldn't understand
how his kid would do this to someone.
How is his family reacting to all of this?
I can only state
that, uh, it would be predictable
as to how anyone's family
would react to this.
They likewise are extremely despairing.
They feel horrible
for the tragedy that has happened,
including the victims
and the victims' family.
And, of course,
feel great grief for their son.
It's a very fine and wonderful family.
His father Lionel is just a marvelous man,
and he is hurting as badly as anyone.
[Lionel Dahmer] I love him.
I did not realize just how sick he was.
And I will, as I always have,
stand by him in my thoughts and prayers.
[uneasy music playing]
- [lighter flickers]
- [Wendy] Detectives allowed him to smoke
and to have as much coffee
as he wanted as well.
It kept him calm and on track,
and I think without those,
we wouldn't have gotten all the story.
Because he was willing to talk
longer and longer
as long as he could
continue to have those two things.
[Jeffrey from recorder]
It's difficult dredging up these feelings
and motivations, you know.
[Wendy] I know it's real hard.
If it gets too difficult, tell me.
- You realize why
- [Jeffrey] Yes, it it
Talking about it and analyzing it
shows me just how,
uh, warped my thinking was.
My relationship with him, as it grew,
um, he would be more and more willing
to, um, expound
on the nuances of each case,
of each murder.
There were times
that I felt like a mother to him.
There were times that I felt like like
he was my brother.
There were times
that I felt like he I was his therapist.
[playing from recorder]
You ever try to develop a relationship?
[Jeffrey] Uh, no. I can't say that I did.
[Wendy] Why not?
[Jeffrey] Well, it was because
of the home situation.
I couldn't carry on
a long-term relationship
where I was staying.
Jeff's father suggested
moving in with grandma, which he did.
[Murphy] After I informed Katherine,
his grandmother,
about his activities and what he did,
she she broke down and cried.
She didn't believe it.
She said she didn't want
to get involved in his activities.
And she didn't want to know
what was going on in the basement.
[tape rolling]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I had moved out then,
to here up in Wisconsin
to help my grandma out.
It was, "Well, why don't you
go and move with Grandma?"
"A place that would be healthy for you.
She's getting older. She needs the help."
"And start, you know, in a new city."
Jeffrey told me
he loved his grandmother very much.
[Dr. Smail] Jeffrey's grandmother
was described by Jeffrey
as a perfect grandmother.
South Side, Milwaukee.
Religious, caring.
A very, very nice person.
And this is the environment
in which Lionel Dahmer grew up in.
[Wendy] She was very supportive,
and she loved Jeff.
It was very clear that he wasn't
that close with his mom and dad.
Grandma's house was in West Allis,
a suburb of Milwaukee.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] Uh,
I helped her with the yard work
and various chores.
[Dr. Smail] When Jeffrey moved in,
I don't think she put much demands on him.
It isn't clear to me
if she knew his sexuality.
But Jeffrey was aware
that had she known that,
she would've been quite judgmental.
[Wendy] At that time,
coming out, it was completely different.
That was a struggle for him. He told me.
He said, "I don't like being gay."
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I really made a sincere effort
to change the way I was living,
to change my desires.
To get rid of the, uh
homosexual, uh, feelings that I had.
Any sinful thoughts.
Started going to church with Grandma
on a regular basis.
And, uh, tried to stifle
any sexual feelings that I had.
I think that really, uh, you know,
started to change him.
He would read the Bible.
They, you know, spent
a lot of time together at dinners.
[recorder clicks]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] My grandma
was going to church every Sunday.
[Wendy] What denomination is she?
[Jeffrey] Protestant.
He was going to church.
He was praying he would find some way
to fight off these urges,
these these pathological sexual cravings.
It was during that time period
that he tried to create surrogates
to not take a a human life.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was walking around Southridge
and, uh, saw this mannequin
that sort of caught my eye.
I wanted that mannequin, so I
went in the store.
There's nobody in there.
Stayed there until closing time.
- [Wendy] And no alarms went off?
- [Jeffrey] No, nothing.
I got the mannequin undressed,
got a taxi back home,
and stored it in the garage
at, uh, Grandma's house.
And I used to play around with it after
dressing it up and undressing it.
Pretending it was real.
[Dr. Dietz] He did use it
to lie with it and masturbate,
which wasn't as good as a person.
He found it disappointing.
A faceless mannequin from a department
store didn't cut it for him.
[Jeffrey plays from recorder] After a week
or two, Grandma would stumble across it.
She was hanging up some clothes
that she'd washed for me.
- [Wendy] She did?
- [Jeffrey] Yeah. She asked me what was it.
Where did I get it.
And I gave her some story
that I picked it up at
They had extra mannequins
that they were selling.
I think she called Dad,
so I figured I better get rid of it.
Took it down to the basement and, uh,
smashed it up,
and threw it out in the garbage.
[eerie music playing]
[Dr. Dietz]
I've seen about 20 serial killers.
Not all of them sexual but most.
And I've seen a number of mass murderers,
and I was approached
by the district attorney's office
to evaluate Mr. Dahmer.
Saw him for three days
and later testified at his trial.
The extraordinary thing
in comparing Jeffrey Dahmer
to other serial killers I've interviewed
is how he lacked defensiveness about it.
He wasn't, as far as I could tell,
trying to hide anything from me.
I do think that he sought to find
another solution for a time.
But when Dahmer
was trying to avoid alcohol,
uh, trying to avoid gay sex
because of his religious inhibitions
against it,
he had what was for him
an unprecedented experience
of a man dropping a note in the library,
offering him a blow job in the bathroom.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was in the West Allis library
[sniffs]
just sitting in a chair, reading a book.
It was the last thing I expected,
you know?
I just laughed it off to myself.
I thought, uh,
"That's an awful feeble,
uh, attempt to get me to stumble,"
you know?
I never saw his face or anything.
[Wendy] You'd put the compulsion to rest
when you went to church with Grandma,
and it came back stronger, didn't it?
[Jeffrey] That's what triggered it,
I guess.
This made him begin thinking
about gay sex much more
and realizing he could go get it.
So in that sense,
it did open the world to him.
And there came a time
when he threw caution to the winds.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Anne Schwartz] Jeffrey Dahmer got a job.
He was a mixer
at the Ambrosia chocolate factory.
He worked the night shifts.
It was a job that enabled him
to go out on the weekends.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] I at least
had a job that paid halfway decent.
I could look forward to free time.
Privacy.
Started drinking again,
going to the bookstores.
Uh
Found out where the gay bars were
and started going to them.
What I was looking for
was some live companionship.
Someone to spend the night with.
A man I had complete control over,
and to be able to do with as I pleased.
Something real,
uh, instead of fake like the mannequin.
So that was my fantasy.
Little by little, I started falling away
I just, uh, gave up trying to resist.
I knew Jeffrey Dahmer
and several of his victims.
After this all came out,
several people in the bars said,
"I remember him. I remember him."
Well, of course. We all did.
Milwaukee's only this big.
[vibrant music playing]
[Ross] The 1980s.
Gay life was really up-and-coming
in Milwaukee.
It wasn't as exclusive
as Chicago and New York and LA,
but for a city like Milwaukee,
we had a good time.
We had a ball.
You could go out almost any night,
and there'd be something
going on somewhere.
[Ross] You could be yourself.
You had freedom.
So you were comfortable.
I mean, we'd get dressed up
and go to the bar.
The bars had beautiful music.
People always wanted to dance.
[Connor] The area for the gay bars
pretty much was centrally located.
They were all within, I'd say,
an eight, nine-block radius of each other.
You could easily walk from place to place.
[Ross] We were all just coming into
who we are.
Accepting ourselves.
A lot of those people
were beautiful souls.
[Michail Takach]
I had lived in Milwaukee my entire life
and was involved in the community
from an early age.
During that time,
I was also a columnist and journalist
in the Milwaukee area.
Dahmer operating in this space,
he carefully selected these places.
The demographics, the customer base,
the locations.
These were not brightly lit streets.
These were not places where people
would park their car and feel safe.
That lack of transparency
really made it easy
for someone like Dahmer
to be a predator in those spaces
because no one knew what these people's
real names were in the first place.
[reporter] Gay men often rely on the cover
of darkness to hide their second life
from a good job, wife and kids.
The president of Gay People's Union says
the relationship between homosexual men
is often shrouded by secrecy.
A long-running tradition
of the gay community
was the bathhouse.
By the 1970s and 1980s,
they were really strictly being used
as social spaces
for gay men to meet each other for sex.
You could go to the bathhouse and get just
as naked as you were born into the world,
and walk around freely.
You see somebody you want,
and you do what you do.
Because it was anonymous.
You know, you didn't have to know them.
People were just trying to have sex.
[Takach] In Milwaukee, the most
popular bathhouse was called Club Baths.
It was a second floor,
only accessible by the alley.
Um, unfortunately, it was also
a popular place with Jeffrey Dahmer.
[Mccann] He'd meet men in bathhouses
and have sexual activities with them.
However, Dahmer didn't wanna
submit to anybody.
Jeffrey wanted to be completely in charge.
So Dahmer started bringing drugs
into the bathhouses.
[Wendy from recorder]
What sleeping pills did you use?
[Jeffrey] Uh, Halcion.
[Wendy] Why did you get that prescription?
[Jeffrey] For trouble sleeping.
I worked third shift.
[Wendy] That gave you
a feeling of control?
[Jeffrey] Uh
Well, I could keep them there longer.
I could, uh, just lay around with them
without feeling pressure
to do anything that they wanted to do.
Uh
There just wouldn't be any
They wouldn't make any demands on me.
Uh, I could just enjoy them
the way I wanted to.
[Wendy] Did you think about at all
how they might have felt?
[Jeffrey] Yeah, I think I did,
but at that point I didn't much care.
I just wanted to do what I wanted.
So I didn't care.
That solved his problem
of not wanting people to leave,
and to be able to lie together
for a prolonged period,
which was a primary wish he had.
These people were not conscious.
There weren't mobile.
They weren't able to protect themselves.
And they're engaging in sexual acts
against their wills.
[Mccann] At one point,
he over-drugged someone,
and when the guy
with difficulty waking him up,
the bath owner,
had to summon medical help.
And thereafter the word got out,
"Don't let Dahmer in your bathhouse."
The police did not investigate
these cases as rape,
or sexual assault,
or disorderly conduct even.
They essentially just told
the bathhouse operator
to notify them if he returned,
and keep him off the property.
I don't think they accepted the fact
that a man could be raped.
He was a marked man.
He wasn't able to go there anymore.
[Wendy playing from recorder]
Did any of that satisfy you?
As far as really getting
any true satisfaction?
[Jeffrey] It didn't.
I didn't have control over them. I
I wanted all of them, you know.
And, uh, couldn't get it that way.
[tape rolling]
[dance music playing]
[Wendy] Jeffrey was out one night,
and he met Steven Tuomi.
And he wanted to spend a night with him,
and it was too difficult
at his grandmother's house.
So they took a room
over at the Ambassador Hotel.
[uneasy music playing]
[elevator dings]
And drank a great deal.
And they had a night together.
The following morning,
Jeff ended up waking up
after being in a blackout.
[playing from recorder]
You totally blacked out?
[Jeffrey] Yeah.
[Wendy] Had no idea you'd done anything?
[Jeffrey] No.
Not until I woke up in the morning.
I couldn't believe it.
His hands were bloody.
The sheets were bloody.
This guy's face was bloody.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
Shocked. Uh
Panicked.
And, uh
very sorry that it happened
because I had no intention
of anything like that happening.
[Wendy] How'd you know he was dead?
You check his pulse?
[Jeffrey] I was afraid. No.
And there was blood
coming out of the mouth.
Apparently, I had beaten him
with my fists on the chest.
There's blood everywhere.
He said he was in an alcoholic blackout.
It was a surprise to him.
So there wasn't an actual intent.
It wasn't a fantasy.
But what his deepest desire was
still came out.
[Berlin] It's clear he hadn't planned it
because he signed into the hotel
for one day,
and he had to sign in for a second day
to buy some time to get rid of the body.
[Boyle] He went out
and went to a luggage store,
and got a big trunk,
and brought it into the hotel.
And he took the trunk up to his room
and got Mr. Tuomi into the trunk.
He then had a cab driver
come and pick him up.
Dahmer said the cab driver even said,
"You must have a dead body in here."
The case was so heavy.
He then took Steven Tuomi's body
back to the grandmother's house
and secretly disposed of his body.
[Wendy] He cut off the parts of the body,
put it into Hefty bags,
and threw it in the dumpster.
[eerie music playing]
[tape rolling]
[reporter] Tuomi grew up
in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,
in the small town of Ontonagon,
where most everyone knew him.
And he was a real quiet kid,
and that's how I knew him.
He was real quiet
and never bothered anybody.
Steven Tuomi moved to Milwaukee
sometime in the mid-1980s
and took up working as a short-order cook.
The last time anyone saw him
was in the fall of 1987.
[Kenneth Meuler] After his confession,
I believed what Dahmer said
because he had no reason
not to tell us the truth.
He had no reason to tell us
that was a victim that he killed,
because that was one of the victims
that we had a little evidence of.
It was Dahmer's statement
and putting together in great detail.
There's no reason not to believe
factual information that Dahmer gave us.
After his confession,
I met with the family in Upper Michigan.
Their son went down to Milwaukee
to get work in a more urban area.
To try to find out
what he wanted to do with his life.
The family never sees him again.
And I think they had
a very difficult time accepting it.
[Wendy playing from recorder] How did you
feel after that time at the Ambassador?
[Jeffrey] Horrified
that it started again, you know.
And I never wanted to have
anything like that ever happen again.
[Wendy] How did you feel that it came
forth even though you were unconscious?
[Jeffrey] Uh, confused.
[Wendy] Did you feel
you'd started to lose control?
[Jeffrey] Yeah, I knew I had. Yeah.
That was the first slaying here.
It went from 1978,
the slaying of Steven Hicks,
to November of 1987,
the slaying of Steven Tuomi.
The first killing had been
by the time when he was 18 years old.
He then went for nine years
without killing.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
The Ambassador did something..
It triggered something
I wanted more.
I don't know what it triggered,
but it triggered something.
The Tuomi murder
was a turning point for him.
He finally decided,
"I'm losing this fight with myself."
"I can't control it any longer."
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
It just gave me a sick pleasure.
It dominated my thoughts,
doing these things.
The danger could be someone who looks
just like your next door neighbor.
He passed on the street
as a very normal person.
He didn't look scary.
[Mccann] There's a serial slayer
in Milwaukee.
No one except Dahmer
knew that a serial slayer
was loose in our city.
The police just didn't know.
Nobody in the community knew.
[Berlin] After years of trying
to resist these urges, he just gave up.
Became like a killing machine
who was totally out of control.
[Jeffrey from recorder] The compulsion
was stronger than any anything else.
It was a single-minded, driving force.
My
desires, uh, were
bestial, obviously.
[scoffs]
[eerie music swells, fades]
[somber music playing]
[eerie music playing]
[woman] I was a young lawyer at the time.
I was in my twenties.
I just moved to Milwaukee.
And a woman living alone,
and I didn't know a lot of people.
[telephone ringing]
I get this call from Jerry Boyle, my boss.
He said, "Look, we've got this new case,
and it's a big one."
"I need you to go down
to the police administration building."
[car engine revving]
[woman] Jerry Boyle indicated, he said,
"This is somebody
I had represented in the past."
"He's a nice man. Don't worry,
he won't bite your head off."
I went down immediately
as he had requested
to see Jeffrey Dahmer.
It's my first job.
[ominous music playing]
[woman] When I first went in to see him,
it was a very small interview room.
There was Jeff, um,
sitting in the corner of the table.
I was incredibly nervous
because this was something
I felt was way over my head.
[reporter 1]
Even veteran police officers say
this is among the strangest
murder scenes they've witnessed.
The country has been spellbound
by the horrifying story of Jeffrey Dahmer.
[reporter 2] Murder, mutilation,
even cannibalism.
[reporter 3] Shock and horror
as police carry out a large cooking kettle
in the biggest and most gruesome
mass murder case in Milwaukee history.
I felt like Clarice Starling
in Silence of the Lambs.
He, uh He was very polite.
I was somewhat surprised, I guess,
at how, uh, cordial Jeff was.
In order to be a good defense attorney,
you have to be nonjudgmental
and develop a trust.
And, uh, he called me Wendy.
I called him Jeff.
[plays from recorder] This is okay, Jeff.
I mean, don't be embarrassed about it.
Am I Am I making you feel uncomfortable?
[Jeffrey] No. It has to be faced, so
It's just so bizarre, isn't it?
It's not It's not easy to talk about.
It's something that I've kept
buried within myself for many years,
and it's
Yeah.
It's like trying to pull up
a two-ton stone out of a well.
[Wendy] I don't think there's anything
that can prepare anybody
for that kind of carnage.
[music builds to climax]
[unsettling theme music playing]
[tape rolling]
[clicks]
[ominous music playing]
[helicopter whirring]
[man] It was a quiet night.
You know, one of those summer nights
where it was steamy.
I was a television reporter, and I was
among the first people on the scene
at Dahmer's apartment
the night he was arrested.
When I arrived, just seeing
the faces of the police officers,
that's when I realized that
something big was happening there.
I ran into a police officer
that I had known.
Bobby Rao was his name.
And I said, "Come on, Bobby.
Is this for real?"
He looked at me, shook his head and said,
"You bet. This is for real."
[reporter] Lt. Roosevelt Harrell.
[Roosevelt] We're investigating a homicide
which occurred in the apartment building
in 900 block of North 25th Street.
We do have, uh, one person in custody.
There's a strong possibility
there might be additional homicides, uh,
that we're looking into
that this individual might be involved in.
The police officer assigned to the door
at the Oxford Apartments
was a guy I knew.
And we asked, begged him,
"Could we get in? Could we take pictures
inside Dahmer's apartment?"
He shook his head.
"You take pictures, I'll lose my job."
But he said, "You can look in.
As long as you don't cross the threshold."
So we went to the door,
held onto the frame and leaned forward,
and looked inside the apartment.
I remember it being not memorable
for a lot of reasons.
There was a rolled-up carpet.
A kitchen to the left.
There was a bedroom off to the right
and a bathroom.
But the one thing that stood out
more than anything else
was a creepy lava lamp that was going.
The blob going up and down.
Such an eerie feeling
about the the apartment.
The night the Dahmer story broke,
I was a reporter
at the Milwaukee Sentinel at the time.
And I'm like the only reporter there
because it was late.
Tina Burnside,
who was, uh, a night cops reporter, calls.
[phone ringing]
She said, "James, I need you
to take this down very carefully."
It's the pressure of having an editor
breathing over your shoulder saying,
"I need that story now."
I hit "send" to the night editor.
He edits it, sends it off.
I remember him saying at the time,
"This is gonna be the biggest story
to ever hit the city of Milwaukee."
[tense music playing]
I was Chief Prosecutor of Milwaukee
many years ago
before I became a defense lawyer.
So I've been on both sides of the fence.
I got a phone call,
a fellow from our main TV station.
"Wanna talk to you
about a client of yours."
I said, "Who's that?"
He said, "Jeffrey Dahmer."
"We think he's a homicidal maniac."
I had represented him in 1988
for some sex crime.
And I said, "Hold that thought.
I I gotta call his father."
I called Lionel Dahmer,
and I told him
what the reporter had told me.
I told him that I'd get somebody
to find out what's going on.
I called Wendy Patrickus,
and Wendy was available.
[Wendy] First person that they brought me
in to see was Detective Murphy.
At that point, the entire interrogation
was controlled by the detectives.
[man] When I first met Dahmer,
all he said to me is,
"Why don't you just shoot me now
for what I did?"
And I sat down with him,
reassured him
that whatever he could tell me
wouldn't reflect on him, or it wouldn't
make me like him or dislike him anymore.
And subsequently
put the confession on paper.
I was a lieutenant
assigned to the homicide unit.
Dennis Murphy and Pat Kennedy
were the primary people
that interviewed Dahmer.
In fact, pretty much every day
that was their job.
The way he was able to recall
every detail of these homicides.
It was incredible.
[Wendy] As I recall,
Jeff was a little drunk at the time.
I did ask him why he was telling
the police everything,
why he was rendering a confession.
And he said, "Wendy,
they found so much in my apartment."
"You know, the gigs up. So I would prefer
to continue talking with them."
He already had his mind made up.
At that point I had to say,
"Jeff. I will honor that."
[Boyle] He had already confessed.
So I knew Dahmer didn't have a defense.
So I said to him,
"What do you want me to do?"
He said, "I wanna know
why I am what I am."
So I told him,
"I can get a good psychiatrist
to come and talk to you,
and plead you not guilty
by reason of mental illness."
"Insanity."
"But I'd need doctors
to tell me they can support that."
The real job was to get enough information
to give to the doctors
to be able to answer their questions.
The question was
whether he was sane or insane.
The next several months,
I'd spend considerable time with him,
talking about each victim
and, um, gathering as much information
as possible.
[indistinct sound on tape]
[Wendy, from playing recorder]
Jeff, tell me what you were thinking.
[Jeffrey] I had wondered
why I was compelled
to do all the murders.
What I was searching for
that would, uh,
fill the emptiness that I felt.
The murdering someone
and and disposing of them right away
gives no great lasting pleasure
or a feeling of fulfillment.
And yet I still felt the compulsion
to do it throughout these years.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Wendy] Jeff wanting to identify
all the victims,
this was very unique
in somebody who is a serial killer,
a true serial killer.
Didn't deny it.
And said, "Yes, I killed and I killed."
"This is how I killed. And this was why."
[Jeffrey playing from tape recorder]
I didn't seem to have
the normal feelings of empathy.
[Wendy] Did you ever think to yourself,
"Why don't I have feelings
that normal people have?"
[Jeffrey] I did wonder about it.
It started with fantasies, fantasizing.
It always started with fantasizing,
and then
eventually it seemed
the fantasies, uh, came to be.
He took his fantasy world
to degrees and places that
most of us would never even conceive of.
I interviewed Jeffrey Dahmer
at the request
of defense attorney Jerry Boyle.
I'd been asked if there was,
in my view, a defense of insanity here.
I had a 30-year career in Milwaukee
as a forensic psychologist,
and Dahmer's case came mid-career for me.
There were others that followed,
but nothing like this.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
What triggered it all?
I wish I could give you
a good, straightforward answer on that.
If there's any area
that is, uh, to really blame,
it's my own twisted thinking. I haven't
been thinking normally for years.
[uneasy music builds to climax]
[tape rolling]
Jeffrey was more reserved
at talking about his childhood.
There were pictures I saw of him
when he was younger with his dad Lionel,
and, you know, it seemed very normal.
You know,
they're playing catch with the ball.
But his father was gone a lot.
He's a scientist, and, you know,
he was furthering his own education.
But Jeff was adamant
that there wasn't any huge traumas
that would have caused him
to do these things.
Wasn't like he was
sexually abused or beaten.
The one thing that Jeffrey
did tell me and Jerry Boyle
about his childhood
that really affected him
was this, uh, constant bickering
between his parents.
[Boyle plays from recorder]
What was the problem growing up
between your mom and dad?
[Jeffrey] Ugh!
They just couldn't seem to get along,
especially on my mom's side.
[Boyle] Any violence?
[Jeffrey] Just the slapping and hitting.
- [Boyle] Who was hitting who?
- [Jeffrey] Um, Mom hitting Dad.
[Boyle] Whose side were you on?
[Jeffrey] I was trying
not to be on anyone's side.
[Boyle] I had inquired
into the family history
on both sides
to see if there was any insanity here,
any peculiar things
about those family members
that might give us an insight
as to how Dahmer became what he became.
And I didn't find anything
on Lionel Dahmer's side.
And on Joyce's side,
I think there was
some alcoholism in her family.
But there's alcoholism
in a lot of families.
So it didn't mean anything to me.
Jeffrey had, uh, a brother,
who was born when Jeffrey was about six.
David.
[uneasy music playing]
[Wendy] All attention then
was given to his younger brother.
So he was already alone a lot.
[Eric Tyson]
When Jeff and I were growing up,
I don't think he had
a large group of friends.
I never really saw other people come over.
It was basically Jeff and and myself.
Our driveways were directly
across the street from each other,
so we could take our bicycles
and zoom right across the street,
or just play ball, go sledding.
[Dr. Smail] His father was quite concerned
that Jeffrey did not do well in school.
Didn't have very many friends.
Never had any contact with girls.
[Wendy playing from recorder] How long
had you known you're homosexual?
[Jeffrey] Uh, since I was 13, I'd say.
[Smail] Jeffrey became aware
of his sexuality
about the time he reached puberty,
which is what you would expect.
He knew that it would be contrary
to the wishes of his father and mother.
[Wendy] And it was about the time
that he did
some sexual experimentation
with another boy in the neighborhood.
[playing from recorder] What did you do?
[Jeffrey] Just kissing.
Laying together,
in the tree house.
I was about 14 or 15.
And that was consensual.
As he got older,
Jeffrey became walled up emotionally
from his peers, his teachers,
childhood friends, even his parents.
[man] I served as the elected
District Attorney of Milwaukee County
during the years of Dahmer's murders.
I was also the prosecutor
of the case itself.
I was the attorney in court
prosecuting him.
By the time he was a senior
in high school,
he started having fantasies.
Sexual fantasies.
One of those was having sex with a person
who was, in effect,
completely submissive to him.
To violently force someone
to submit to him.
[Wendy plays from recorder]
When was the first time you thought
about doing these things to a person?
[Jeffrey] Uh
- [Wendy] I mean, just fantasy.
- [Jeffrey] Yeah.
Probably around when I was 18.
He fantasized about a jogger
that came by frequently.
He wondered what that person
would look like without a shirt on.
He wanted to have sex with that young man,
was drawn to that man to have sex.
But he didn't know how to approach it
or what to do.
So he decided he would
knock him unconscious in the woods
and have sex with him
while he was unconscious.
[Dr. Smail]
It wasn't an object to kill him.
It was an object to touch, cuddle,
explore the body.
It wasn't the relationship.
It's not the person.
It's the well-toned,
athletic male body. That's what he wanted.
He sawed off a bat for a weapon
to knock the man unconscious.
[Wendy] He had hid behind a tree.
But that particular jogger
did not come by,
so he abandoned that idea.
[Michael Mccann] That was basically
Dahmer's first violent fantasy.
To do that to this man
that jogged through his neighborhood.
[uneasy music playing]
[tape rolling]
[news theme music playing]
[reporter] From WTMJ TV.
Milwaukee's 24-hour news channel.
This is News Channel 4 Daybreak.
My first opportunity
to share the news with the world
was in a morning live shot
on a, uh, morning news show.
Good morning. A very gruesome
discovery in Milwaukee overnight.
Milwaukee police find a horrifying scene
inside an apartment building.
What I recited shocked the anchor people
back at the station.
Mike and Juliet, police got here
in the middle of the night,
and what they found was an apartment
full of pieces of people.
Men who were apparently killed
by another man, a resident here,
in what appears to be
a sexually motivated mass murder.
At the end of the broadcast,
I was expecting a question.
You always get a routine question
from the anchor people.
The bodies were dismembered,
so literally
piecing together the information,
it's gonna be difficult to figure out
who the victims are.
They were silent.
I asked them later, "What happened?
Why didn't you ask me a question?"
They said, "We were so stunned,
we couldn't think of a question."
[Causey] I remember going to the scene
because as a reporter,
you wanna see for yourself.
And it was it was literally a zoo.
- [reporters chattering indistinctly]
- It was like that for days on end.
People were shocked. They were awed.
And they couldn't turn away.
[indistinct chatter]
[Wendy] You can't imagine
the enormity of it all.
It was anxiety.
It was a lot of excitement,
to some extent.
But worried that I was doing my job right.
[playing from recorder]
When did your parents separate?
[Jeffrey] When I was 18.
In 1978.
Instilling in him that I'm not somebody
sitting here judging him,
um, was of utmost importance
to cut through everything,
because there was so much material.
To get that trust
made all the difference in the world.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
Mom and Dad, they had their problems.
There was nothing I could do
to change the situation,
so I just tried to
find some happiness my own way,
which was obviously the wrong way.
[tape rolling]
[Mccann] Dahmer had just graduated
from high school.
His parents were going through a divorce,
and Dahmer was alone
at the home in Bath, Ohio.
[Dr. Smail] His mother kicked
his father out.
He moved out to a motel.
Unbeknownst to his dad,
his mother just decided,
"I've had enough."
So she left abruptly with his brother.
[Wendy] I don't think his father knew
that the mother
had left for Wisconsin at the time.
Jeffrey Dahmer never used the word
"abandoned by his parents,"
although I think that he might
have been familiar with that feeling.
[Wendy plays from recorder]
The day she left to Chippewa Falls
- you never talked to her again?
- [Jeffrey] Right.
[Wendy] How did it make you feel
at that time?
[Jeffrey] Uh, depressed.
Lonely and bored.
Confused, I would say.
No one was at home.
I saw this guy hitchhiking.
I thought it'd be nice
to have someone around to talk with,
and someone that I wanted
to be with for sex.
[cheering]
[woman] In 1978,
Steven Hicks was hitchhiking
to a rock concert.
[Wendy] One of the things
that Jeffrey was always interested in
was the torso, the physique,
how well-built,
how attractive the individual was.
That was the driving force
of his attraction.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
That's what attracted me. The physique.
Just the muscular physique.
That's That's the motivation.
When Steven Hicks was hitchhiking
and didn't have a shirt on,
he said to me, "This is unbelievable.
This was the fantasy I had."
"Now I'm able to enact it."
[Dr. Smail] Jeffrey thought,
"What a great opportunity.
I've got a car, a house. Nobody around."
"So let me see if I can get this guy
to come back to the house."
He stopped, talked to him and said,
"Look, I've got some beer
and pot at the house."
"Do you wanna come back
and share that with me?"
Steven Hicks said yes.
[Wendy] Mr. Hicks was not gay.
There wasn't any sexual interaction.
[from recorder] You hadn't done
anything with him, had you?
[Jeffrey] No.
I just got the sense
he wasn't interested in that at all,
after a while talking with him.
So I don't believe I asked him, no.
[Wendy] Okay.
At some point,
Steven Hicks indicated to Jeffrey,
"I gotta get going.
I can't stay here any longer."
"People will be wondering where I am."
Jeff didn't wanna let him go.
[Jeffrey] It was the first time, uh
I did have the desire to control.
I lost all feelings,
so I guess I just decided
to do it, whether he was, uh, gay or not.
It didn't really matter.
Dahmer took a barbell from a weight set
and hit Steven Hicks
over the head with it.
[thudding]
[tape recorder clicks]
[Jeffrey from recorder] I dunno why I hit
him, except I wanted to stay with him
for longer.
[Dr. Smail] Steven is then
unconscious at this point,
and Jeffrey uses the barbell
to to strangle Steven.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I thought how amazing it was
that I was actually doing it
to another human being.
It shocked me
that I got to that point.
And that was a feeling of excitement,
control,
but mingled with a lot of fear.
- [Wendy] What did you do with his body?
- [Jeffrey] Nothing.
Just right under the
under the house in the crawl space area.
- [Wendy] Did you go down and look at him?
- [Jeffrey] I did once.
But just looked at him.
[Wendy] What was going through your mind
as you were looking at him?
[Jeffrey] Uh
A sort of morbid curiosity as to
what a dead person looked like.
Uh
Curiosity mixed with a lot of fear.
[Wendy] It was after that
that now he has this anxiety, uh, panic.
"Uh, what am I gonna do with the body?
How am I gonna get rid of this?"
[indistinct sounds on tape]
[Jeffrey from recorder] I started
dismembering him and everything.
There's something about him
that I remember.
Cutting the legs off
and then the arms and head.
[Wendy] Did you touch anything?
[Jeffrey] I I probably did.
Liver and the heart.
He had the head separate for a while.
He masturbated to the body parts.
[Wendy from recorder] Did it concern you
at all as to why you felt
such satisfaction at that time,
when you were 18 years old,
by using him to masturbate?
[Jeffrey] I'm not sure
I even know why now.
I got, uh, an exciting feeling
out of doing that.
But I did it.
[Wendy] How long did you
keep him in the house with you?
[Jeffrey] Um
I don't know. Six hours.
He got the most satisfaction
in what he did with the body afterwards.
It was true
that he did have a sexual disorder.
In an attempt to try
and get him through the insanity plea,
I know that one of our experts,
uh, went into it a great deal.
[Fred Berlin] I'm a forensic psychiatrist.
I was an expert witness
in the Jeffrey Dahmer case.
My expertise is in paraphilias,
which is in layman's terms
sexual deviation disorders.
People have something different
or aberrant about their sexual makeup.
My diagnosis of Mr. Dahmer
was necrophilia.
Necrophilia is a condition
in which an individual
is very much aroused
by having sex with individuals
after they've passed away.
So there's the corpse.
There's Jeffrey.
About three o'clock in the morning,
he decided to dispose of the body
by taking it to a ravine
that he knew was some miles down the road.
He took the body,
put the body into garbage bags,
and was stopped by a police officer
because he crossed the median line.
[police siren wailing]
They tested him for drunken driving.
He passed.
The officer took his flashlight
and flashed it into the back,
and there was the garbage bag
with Hicks' dead body in it.
The officer asked what it was. He said,
"The garbage. My parents are breaking up."
"I'm alone. I couldn't sleep,
so I thought I'd get rid of the garbage."
You've got a dead body in the seat
behind you that you've just killed,
and you're now talking
with a police officer.
You're an 18-year-old boy.
Dahmer knew what was at stake,
and Dahmer was cool enough to say,
"Just on the way to dump the garbage."
The officer believed him.
Although he saw the bags,
he never looked in the bags.
He was able to convince that officer.
After that, he knew
that he could manipulate.
He knew he could make a statement
to somebody and get away with it.
He turned around
and went back to the house.
He found a galvanized pipe.
He said it was about two feet,
that he stuffed the bags into.
Uh, he went out over the bridge,
over the river,
and threw any other personal items
of, uh, Mr. Hicks.
Including a knife that he that he used
to cut the body into manageable pieces.
[Jeffrey from recorder]
Dad was living at the hotel,
so I was pretty much by myself
for a couple months.
[Wendy] During the time
your father was at the hotel,
how many times a day
would you speak with him?
[Jeffrey] Maybe once or twice a week.
His father and Shari,
his soon-to-be stepmother,
came back to the house.
There wasn't much food
in the refrigerator.
Alcohol bottles were around.
It looked like a life that was in trouble
as a young man.
His father was quite concerned,
so they moved back in.
[Wendy playing from recorder] After that,
you said you went to Ohio State?
[Jeffrey] For about three months.
Did a lot of drinking there,
so grades weren't very good.
[Smail] I think his dad
had gotten him into
It was Ohio State.
He was drinking very heavily,
essentially flunked out.
The decision was made
by his dad and stepmother,
he would go into the army.
[clipper buzzing]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
They sent me to basic training.
Then field medic training.
[Wendy] He indicated to me
that this was something
that he learned about,
being able to identify the organs,
um, through his training in the military.
[Dennis Murphy] Jeffrey Dahmer
was discharged because of drinking.
[Jeffrey from recorder] I was
drinking heavily near the end,
so I had to move back to Ohio
with the folks.
When he came back and came to the house
three years later,
the bags with Steven Hicks' body
Those bags were still there.
[Mccann] Jeffrey Dahmer spread out
the remains of Steve Hicks
over the one and a quarter wooded acres
on which the family lived.
Here's a fine young man
that disappeared into thin air.
You can imagine.
They didn't learn this until July of 1991.
Their son disappeared in June of 1978.
For 13 years,
that family had no idea
what had happened to their son,
Steven Hicks.
[ominous music playing]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was troubled about that.
[Wendy] How did it manifest itself
that you were troubled by it?
What were you feeling?
[Jeffrey] A lot of guilt.
Indecision over whether I should
confess to it.
But I just never had the courage to.
[Wendy] What were you thinking?
[Jeffrey] Well,
I knew how horribly wrong it was.
And I never wanted to have
anything like that ever happen again.
[ominous music builds to climax]
[tape rolling]
[Murphy] During our interview
with Jeffrey Dahmer,
we talked to him about family members,
and Jeff says,
"Leave my family out of it."
He says, "My parents don't have
any knowledge of my activities."
I I told Lionel,
Jeff's father,
about the homicides,
and his reaction was shock.
He couldn't understand
how his kid would do this to someone.
How is his family reacting to all of this?
I can only state
that, uh, it would be predictable
as to how anyone's family
would react to this.
They likewise are extremely despairing.
They feel horrible
for the tragedy that has happened,
including the victims
and the victims' family.
And, of course,
feel great grief for their son.
It's a very fine and wonderful family.
His father Lionel is just a marvelous man,
and he is hurting as badly as anyone.
[Lionel Dahmer] I love him.
I did not realize just how sick he was.
And I will, as I always have,
stand by him in my thoughts and prayers.
[uneasy music playing]
- [lighter flickers]
- [Wendy] Detectives allowed him to smoke
and to have as much coffee
as he wanted as well.
It kept him calm and on track,
and I think without those,
we wouldn't have gotten all the story.
Because he was willing to talk
longer and longer
as long as he could
continue to have those two things.
[Jeffrey from recorder]
It's difficult dredging up these feelings
and motivations, you know.
[Wendy] I know it's real hard.
If it gets too difficult, tell me.
- You realize why
- [Jeffrey] Yes, it it
Talking about it and analyzing it
shows me just how,
uh, warped my thinking was.
My relationship with him, as it grew,
um, he would be more and more willing
to, um, expound
on the nuances of each case,
of each murder.
There were times
that I felt like a mother to him.
There were times that I felt like like
he was my brother.
There were times
that I felt like he I was his therapist.
[playing from recorder]
You ever try to develop a relationship?
[Jeffrey] Uh, no. I can't say that I did.
[Wendy] Why not?
[Jeffrey] Well, it was because
of the home situation.
I couldn't carry on
a long-term relationship
where I was staying.
Jeff's father suggested
moving in with grandma, which he did.
[Murphy] After I informed Katherine,
his grandmother,
about his activities and what he did,
she she broke down and cried.
She didn't believe it.
She said she didn't want
to get involved in his activities.
And she didn't want to know
what was going on in the basement.
[tape rolling]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I had moved out then,
to here up in Wisconsin
to help my grandma out.
It was, "Well, why don't you
go and move with Grandma?"
"A place that would be healthy for you.
She's getting older. She needs the help."
"And start, you know, in a new city."
Jeffrey told me
he loved his grandmother very much.
[Dr. Smail] Jeffrey's grandmother
was described by Jeffrey
as a perfect grandmother.
South Side, Milwaukee.
Religious, caring.
A very, very nice person.
And this is the environment
in which Lionel Dahmer grew up in.
[Wendy] She was very supportive,
and she loved Jeff.
It was very clear that he wasn't
that close with his mom and dad.
Grandma's house was in West Allis,
a suburb of Milwaukee.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] Uh,
I helped her with the yard work
and various chores.
[Dr. Smail] When Jeffrey moved in,
I don't think she put much demands on him.
It isn't clear to me
if she knew his sexuality.
But Jeffrey was aware
that had she known that,
she would've been quite judgmental.
[Wendy] At that time,
coming out, it was completely different.
That was a struggle for him. He told me.
He said, "I don't like being gay."
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I really made a sincere effort
to change the way I was living,
to change my desires.
To get rid of the, uh
homosexual, uh, feelings that I had.
Any sinful thoughts.
Started going to church with Grandma
on a regular basis.
And, uh, tried to stifle
any sexual feelings that I had.
I think that really, uh, you know,
started to change him.
He would read the Bible.
They, you know, spent
a lot of time together at dinners.
[recorder clicks]
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] My grandma
was going to church every Sunday.
[Wendy] What denomination is she?
[Jeffrey] Protestant.
He was going to church.
He was praying he would find some way
to fight off these urges,
these these pathological sexual cravings.
It was during that time period
that he tried to create surrogates
to not take a a human life.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was walking around Southridge
and, uh, saw this mannequin
that sort of caught my eye.
I wanted that mannequin, so I
went in the store.
There's nobody in there.
Stayed there until closing time.
- [Wendy] And no alarms went off?
- [Jeffrey] No, nothing.
I got the mannequin undressed,
got a taxi back home,
and stored it in the garage
at, uh, Grandma's house.
And I used to play around with it after
dressing it up and undressing it.
Pretending it was real.
[Dr. Dietz] He did use it
to lie with it and masturbate,
which wasn't as good as a person.
He found it disappointing.
A faceless mannequin from a department
store didn't cut it for him.
[Jeffrey plays from recorder] After a week
or two, Grandma would stumble across it.
She was hanging up some clothes
that she'd washed for me.
- [Wendy] She did?
- [Jeffrey] Yeah. She asked me what was it.
Where did I get it.
And I gave her some story
that I picked it up at
They had extra mannequins
that they were selling.
I think she called Dad,
so I figured I better get rid of it.
Took it down to the basement and, uh,
smashed it up,
and threw it out in the garbage.
[eerie music playing]
[Dr. Dietz]
I've seen about 20 serial killers.
Not all of them sexual but most.
And I've seen a number of mass murderers,
and I was approached
by the district attorney's office
to evaluate Mr. Dahmer.
Saw him for three days
and later testified at his trial.
The extraordinary thing
in comparing Jeffrey Dahmer
to other serial killers I've interviewed
is how he lacked defensiveness about it.
He wasn't, as far as I could tell,
trying to hide anything from me.
I do think that he sought to find
another solution for a time.
But when Dahmer
was trying to avoid alcohol,
uh, trying to avoid gay sex
because of his religious inhibitions
against it,
he had what was for him
an unprecedented experience
of a man dropping a note in the library,
offering him a blow job in the bathroom.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
I was in the West Allis library
[sniffs]
just sitting in a chair, reading a book.
It was the last thing I expected,
you know?
I just laughed it off to myself.
I thought, uh,
"That's an awful feeble,
uh, attempt to get me to stumble,"
you know?
I never saw his face or anything.
[Wendy] You'd put the compulsion to rest
when you went to church with Grandma,
and it came back stronger, didn't it?
[Jeffrey] That's what triggered it,
I guess.
This made him begin thinking
about gay sex much more
and realizing he could go get it.
So in that sense,
it did open the world to him.
And there came a time
when he threw caution to the winds.
[suspenseful music playing]
[Anne Schwartz] Jeffrey Dahmer got a job.
He was a mixer
at the Ambrosia chocolate factory.
He worked the night shifts.
It was a job that enabled him
to go out on the weekends.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder] I at least
had a job that paid halfway decent.
I could look forward to free time.
Privacy.
Started drinking again,
going to the bookstores.
Uh
Found out where the gay bars were
and started going to them.
What I was looking for
was some live companionship.
Someone to spend the night with.
A man I had complete control over,
and to be able to do with as I pleased.
Something real,
uh, instead of fake like the mannequin.
So that was my fantasy.
Little by little, I started falling away
I just, uh, gave up trying to resist.
I knew Jeffrey Dahmer
and several of his victims.
After this all came out,
several people in the bars said,
"I remember him. I remember him."
Well, of course. We all did.
Milwaukee's only this big.
[vibrant music playing]
[Ross] The 1980s.
Gay life was really up-and-coming
in Milwaukee.
It wasn't as exclusive
as Chicago and New York and LA,
but for a city like Milwaukee,
we had a good time.
We had a ball.
You could go out almost any night,
and there'd be something
going on somewhere.
[Ross] You could be yourself.
You had freedom.
So you were comfortable.
I mean, we'd get dressed up
and go to the bar.
The bars had beautiful music.
People always wanted to dance.
[Connor] The area for the gay bars
pretty much was centrally located.
They were all within, I'd say,
an eight, nine-block radius of each other.
You could easily walk from place to place.
[Ross] We were all just coming into
who we are.
Accepting ourselves.
A lot of those people
were beautiful souls.
[Michail Takach]
I had lived in Milwaukee my entire life
and was involved in the community
from an early age.
During that time,
I was also a columnist and journalist
in the Milwaukee area.
Dahmer operating in this space,
he carefully selected these places.
The demographics, the customer base,
the locations.
These were not brightly lit streets.
These were not places where people
would park their car and feel safe.
That lack of transparency
really made it easy
for someone like Dahmer
to be a predator in those spaces
because no one knew what these people's
real names were in the first place.
[reporter] Gay men often rely on the cover
of darkness to hide their second life
from a good job, wife and kids.
The president of Gay People's Union says
the relationship between homosexual men
is often shrouded by secrecy.
A long-running tradition
of the gay community
was the bathhouse.
By the 1970s and 1980s,
they were really strictly being used
as social spaces
for gay men to meet each other for sex.
You could go to the bathhouse and get just
as naked as you were born into the world,
and walk around freely.
You see somebody you want,
and you do what you do.
Because it was anonymous.
You know, you didn't have to know them.
People were just trying to have sex.
[Takach] In Milwaukee, the most
popular bathhouse was called Club Baths.
It was a second floor,
only accessible by the alley.
Um, unfortunately, it was also
a popular place with Jeffrey Dahmer.
[Mccann] He'd meet men in bathhouses
and have sexual activities with them.
However, Dahmer didn't wanna
submit to anybody.
Jeffrey wanted to be completely in charge.
So Dahmer started bringing drugs
into the bathhouses.
[Wendy from recorder]
What sleeping pills did you use?
[Jeffrey] Uh, Halcion.
[Wendy] Why did you get that prescription?
[Jeffrey] For trouble sleeping.
I worked third shift.
[Wendy] That gave you
a feeling of control?
[Jeffrey] Uh
Well, I could keep them there longer.
I could, uh, just lay around with them
without feeling pressure
to do anything that they wanted to do.
Uh
There just wouldn't be any
They wouldn't make any demands on me.
Uh, I could just enjoy them
the way I wanted to.
[Wendy] Did you think about at all
how they might have felt?
[Jeffrey] Yeah, I think I did,
but at that point I didn't much care.
I just wanted to do what I wanted.
So I didn't care.
That solved his problem
of not wanting people to leave,
and to be able to lie together
for a prolonged period,
which was a primary wish he had.
These people were not conscious.
There weren't mobile.
They weren't able to protect themselves.
And they're engaging in sexual acts
against their wills.
[Mccann] At one point,
he over-drugged someone,
and when the guy
with difficulty waking him up,
the bath owner,
had to summon medical help.
And thereafter the word got out,
"Don't let Dahmer in your bathhouse."
The police did not investigate
these cases as rape,
or sexual assault,
or disorderly conduct even.
They essentially just told
the bathhouse operator
to notify them if he returned,
and keep him off the property.
I don't think they accepted the fact
that a man could be raped.
He was a marked man.
He wasn't able to go there anymore.
[Wendy playing from recorder]
Did any of that satisfy you?
As far as really getting
any true satisfaction?
[Jeffrey] It didn't.
I didn't have control over them. I
I wanted all of them, you know.
And, uh, couldn't get it that way.
[tape rolling]
[dance music playing]
[Wendy] Jeffrey was out one night,
and he met Steven Tuomi.
And he wanted to spend a night with him,
and it was too difficult
at his grandmother's house.
So they took a room
over at the Ambassador Hotel.
[uneasy music playing]
[elevator dings]
And drank a great deal.
And they had a night together.
The following morning,
Jeff ended up waking up
after being in a blackout.
[playing from recorder]
You totally blacked out?
[Jeffrey] Yeah.
[Wendy] Had no idea you'd done anything?
[Jeffrey] No.
Not until I woke up in the morning.
I couldn't believe it.
His hands were bloody.
The sheets were bloody.
This guy's face was bloody.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
Shocked. Uh
Panicked.
And, uh
very sorry that it happened
because I had no intention
of anything like that happening.
[Wendy] How'd you know he was dead?
You check his pulse?
[Jeffrey] I was afraid. No.
And there was blood
coming out of the mouth.
Apparently, I had beaten him
with my fists on the chest.
There's blood everywhere.
He said he was in an alcoholic blackout.
It was a surprise to him.
So there wasn't an actual intent.
It wasn't a fantasy.
But what his deepest desire was
still came out.
[Berlin] It's clear he hadn't planned it
because he signed into the hotel
for one day,
and he had to sign in for a second day
to buy some time to get rid of the body.
[Boyle] He went out
and went to a luggage store,
and got a big trunk,
and brought it into the hotel.
And he took the trunk up to his room
and got Mr. Tuomi into the trunk.
He then had a cab driver
come and pick him up.
Dahmer said the cab driver even said,
"You must have a dead body in here."
The case was so heavy.
He then took Steven Tuomi's body
back to the grandmother's house
and secretly disposed of his body.
[Wendy] He cut off the parts of the body,
put it into Hefty bags,
and threw it in the dumpster.
[eerie music playing]
[tape rolling]
[reporter] Tuomi grew up
in Michigan's Upper Peninsula,
in the small town of Ontonagon,
where most everyone knew him.
And he was a real quiet kid,
and that's how I knew him.
He was real quiet
and never bothered anybody.
Steven Tuomi moved to Milwaukee
sometime in the mid-1980s
and took up working as a short-order cook.
The last time anyone saw him
was in the fall of 1987.
[Kenneth Meuler] After his confession,
I believed what Dahmer said
because he had no reason
not to tell us the truth.
He had no reason to tell us
that was a victim that he killed,
because that was one of the victims
that we had a little evidence of.
It was Dahmer's statement
and putting together in great detail.
There's no reason not to believe
factual information that Dahmer gave us.
After his confession,
I met with the family in Upper Michigan.
Their son went down to Milwaukee
to get work in a more urban area.
To try to find out
what he wanted to do with his life.
The family never sees him again.
And I think they had
a very difficult time accepting it.
[Wendy playing from recorder] How did you
feel after that time at the Ambassador?
[Jeffrey] Horrified
that it started again, you know.
And I never wanted to have
anything like that ever happen again.
[Wendy] How did you feel that it came
forth even though you were unconscious?
[Jeffrey] Uh, confused.
[Wendy] Did you feel
you'd started to lose control?
[Jeffrey] Yeah, I knew I had. Yeah.
That was the first slaying here.
It went from 1978,
the slaying of Steven Hicks,
to November of 1987,
the slaying of Steven Tuomi.
The first killing had been
by the time when he was 18 years old.
He then went for nine years
without killing.
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
The Ambassador did something..
It triggered something
I wanted more.
I don't know what it triggered,
but it triggered something.
The Tuomi murder
was a turning point for him.
He finally decided,
"I'm losing this fight with myself."
"I can't control it any longer."
[Jeffrey playing from recorder]
It just gave me a sick pleasure.
It dominated my thoughts,
doing these things.
The danger could be someone who looks
just like your next door neighbor.
He passed on the street
as a very normal person.
He didn't look scary.
[Mccann] There's a serial slayer
in Milwaukee.
No one except Dahmer
knew that a serial slayer
was loose in our city.
The police just didn't know.
Nobody in the community knew.
[Berlin] After years of trying
to resist these urges, he just gave up.
Became like a killing machine
who was totally out of control.
[Jeffrey from recorder] The compulsion
was stronger than any anything else.
It was a single-minded, driving force.
My
desires, uh, were
bestial, obviously.
[scoffs]
[eerie music swells, fades]
[somber music playing]