Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (2022) s01e03 Episode Script
Evil or Insane?
1
Fire department.
Yes, could you send an ambulance
on the corner of 25th and State?
What's the problem?
There's this butt-naked young boy
or man, or whatever.
He's still out, and people's trying
to help him stand. He can't stand.
He has no clothes on. He's very hurt.
- Is he awake?
- He ain't awake.
They trying to get him to walk,
but he can't walk straight,
can't even see straight.
Anytime he stand up, he falls.
- 25th and State?
- Yeah.
- All right. Okay.
- The one-way. Okay. Bye.
What happened that night,
it's unbelievable.
Here's this young man, naked,
outside Dahmer's apartment building.
He had not a stitch of clothing on.
Two people summoned
the fire department and the police
because some of them saw he had blood
running out of his rectum.
He had a scrape on his knee.
He was clearly dazed from something.
Why is this boy,
naked, bleeding, and incoherent
on the streets of Milwaukee?
We had a mall called the Grand Avenue,
and Jeffrey Dahmer
was in the mall all the time.
We would see him in the food court,
walking up and down the mall.
He took pictures of people,
and he'd say,
"You look like a model.
Want me to take your picture?"
Dahmer was sitting
having pizza and a beer
when he saw an attractive young man,
Konerak Sinthasomphone, come by,
whom he engaged in conversation.
He offered the young man $50
to pose for pictures.
And the young man
agreed to go back
to Dahmer's apartment with him.
In the apartment,
Dahmer hands him this drink
with the amount of Halcion
that was able to
render him unconscious for a while.
Dahmer wanted to keep this victim alive
as long as he could.
In my sessions with him,
Mr. Dahmer told me what he wanted
was somebody perfectly compliant,
who would stay with him
without fear of leaving.
There were a few
where I tried the drilling technique.
And I did the drilling with him too.
You did?
Mm-hmm.
At what point?
- Uh
- Before the officers came or after?
Yeah, before the officers came.
Jeffrey told me about, uh, Konerak,
and how he made some adjustments
and changes in his method
in an effort to make him into a zombie
that would actually live.
Dahmer drilled a hole
in his skull,
injected muriatic acid
and was waiting to see
if he'd succeeded this time,
because the others
died from that injection.
How far
you think you penetrated with the drill?
- All the way to the brain.
- Two or three inches?
- Yeah.
- And you went straight down?
- Right. Mm-mm.
- Nothing came out?
- No fluid of any kind?
- No fluid that I could see.
And no bleeding either.
Konerak actually was able
to function to a limited degree.
He was groggy and everything.
He wasn't dead or anything, and he talked.
I thought maybe I'd be able
to keep him that way.
Jeff would just tell him
what he wanted him to do, and it worked.
What Jeff didn't take into consideration
was the fact
that he might run
outside of the apartment.
Dahmer went out to get liquor.
He often did while doing these crimes.
In this particular case,
he left to get some beer at a nearby bar.
While Dahmer is out getting beer,
Konerak takes the opportunity
to run out of the house
and up the alley.
That's when a neighbor
looks out her window and sees him.
The women call the police.
The police arrive,
and Konerak is now sitting
with a blanket around him at the scene.
And the officers are approaching
to find out what's going on.
Police officers tried
to question Konerak.
Konerak can't really communicate
his side of the story
'cause he's been drugged.
There was nothing
that would indicate
that there was a hole in his head
that Dahmer put there.
There was no blood flowing from it.
And while that was going on,
Dahmer came up the street.
These young women interceded.
They asked Konerak,
"What's your name?" He couldn't talk.
That's when they got between them
and said, "Stay away from him."
Two 18-year-old Black girls
protecting him from Dahmer.
The police don't listen to those girls.
They didn't even take their names.
Kept telling them to be quiet. That they'd
arrest them if they kept talking.
Dahmer grabbed his arm and said,
"No, he's my boyfriend,"
and started to take him back.
Dahmer figured that,
as a white guy,
"I could tell these officers
my version of the story."
And I have to believe he believed that
because he knew that,
"I'm white,
and I could get away with this."
Jeffrey always had
a quick response.
It seemed kind of natural to him
to have that ability to manipulate
and get himself out of bad situations.
Now you got a naked guy
out in the streets,
making noises.
The police thought
he was drunker than a billy goat.
So what did they do?
They don't just leave him.
They take him into a place of safety,
the apartment from whence he came.
So they go into the apartment.
Konerak sat on the couch
as if this was his place.
Konerak's clothes
are all in a little pile,
neatly laid out
somewhere in the living room.
Dahmer shows the officers
photographs that he took of this young man
and said that was
You know, that was his lover.
They say, "We're not gonna arrest
these two guys for being gay."
"Ain't gonna happen."
And they left Sinthasomphone
on the couch at Dahmer's home
and never looked in the bedroom.
Little do those officers know
that in Dahmer's bedroom,
Tony Hughes's dead body
is on the bed just laying there.
The police left, and shortly thereafter
Dahmer injected more of this acid
into the brain of Konerak Sinthasomphone.
What you put in?
Konerak, I filled a syringe
with muriatic acid.
I used the acid again in a lesser dosage,
but it was still too much the second time
after I injected the second amount in.
One of the girls
who tried to protect Konerak
went home and told her mother,
Glenda Cleveland.
- Milwaukee Police.
- Yes, uh
Uh, there was a squad car, number 50,
that was flagged down earlier
this evening, about 15 minutes ago.
- That was me.
- What happened?
I mean, my daughter and my niece, uh,
witnessed what was going on.
Was anything done about the situation?
Nope. It's an intoxicated,
uh, boyfriend
of another boyfriend.
How old was this child?
- It wasn't a child. It was an adult.
- Are you sure?
Ma'am, I can't make it
any more clear. It's all taken care of.
Sinthasomphone died.
He died within an hour
after the police left the apartment.
Konerak Sinthasomphone
was 14 years old and was
one of the youngest of Dahmer's victims.
If they thought for a moment
that he was at risk,
they would never have let him
go back with Dahmer, ever.
The police officers had been told
to be respectful
of the gay community in Milwaukee.
And I think they probably were thinking
they were being respectful,
and not bringing a heterosexual bias
to the situation.
Whatever the police did,
obviously, it wasn't enough.
You have a number
of African Americans
basically saying
that this young man is underage,
that he didn't appear
to be in his right state of mind.
People say they were doing their jobs,
just doing the best they could.
That falls very far short
of what they should have done.
If they'd run his name,
they'd have found he was on probation
for assaulting a Laotian boy,
who would turn out
to be Konerak's brother.
How How does this happen?
Twice victimized
by Jeffrey Dahmer,
one of Konerak's brothers had been
molested by Dahmer three years ago.
The family came to America 11 years ago
with dreams of a better life.
Instead, Jeffrey Dahmer
has given them a grisly nightmare.
He said, "It It seems
almost more than coincidence."
However, it was something
that really shocked Jeff
when he heard that.
He just was was floored by it.
The Eurasians,
it's just amazing they were brothers.
It's It's incredible.
I can't believe it.
- Are you saying it's his brother?
- Mm-hmm.
- You know what his name was?
- No.
Sure don't.
It's a horrible tragedy
for the Sinthasomphone family.
A sexual assault victim
and a separate murder victim
in the same family.
It's hard to fathom
what that family had to go through
at the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer.
After Dahmer was arrested
in July of '91,
the community was in an uproar
when they found out
that the police had released Konerak
back to Dahmer.
Glenda Cleveland
called the police station
again and again over the next week or so.
She said,
"My daughter saw this boy naked,"
just believing that he had been
sexually assaulted.
I was a young reporter at the Sentinel
when the Dahmer case broke.
Somebody wanted to talk about Dahmer,
and I said, "I can talk to you."
The person on the phone
was Glenda Cleveland.
She tells me this story
that they had tried to protect this boy,
and the police wouldn't listen to them.
I called a captain at the police station.
I was expecting him to just deny it,
but they didn't.
They said, "Yes,
this matter's under investigation."
How could the police
give that boy back to that man?
They handed that
minority male back to Dahmer,
but they took the word of the white male
over five Black witnesses.
I have concluded that the officers failed
to properly perform their duties
as required by the rules and regulations
of the Milwaukee Police Department.
The two police officers,
John Balcerzak and Joe Gabrish,
were fired from the Milwaukee
Police Department.
It was turmoil in
the police department. The city was torn.
Some people supported the officers.
We are behind our police officers 100%.
Much of the white community
is not convinced
that racism is a problem
in the police department.
They are rallying behind the police,
even as the charges grow louder.
I personally feel that there is
equal and fair treatment done
throughout the community by our officers.
They're trained that way.
I don't think that the officers
made a decision based upon any race,
any homophobia.
Obviously in retrospect,
the officers made a mistake,
but there was a lot of people
that Dahmer had conned.
And he conned those officers that night.
And I'm sure those officers
have second-guessed that many times.
People have pointed
to the radio transmission by the officers
right after the contact.
The intoxicated Asian naked male
was returned
to his sober boyfriend.
It'll be a minute. My partner's
gonna get deloused at the station.
You hear officers
laughing in the background.
I think that what they did was a travesty.
That gets back to the root
of how we view homosexuality.
Gay people were made fun of.
They were the butt of the joke.
But then the two police officers
went to circuit court
to appeal their firing.
The court agreed with them,
reinstated them with back pay.
The Konerak Sinthasomphone case
shed a spotlight on Milwaukee.
This was telling them a lot
about their community.
It was telling them a lot
about the police protection
that they were offered.
This was a very scary episode.
After Mr. Dahmer
killed, uh, this young Laotian lad,
bodies were piling up in his apartment.
Dahmer went on
to kill four more people.
At first, it was nine years
between his homicides.
Then it was months.
After Konerak, it was weeks.
An hour before I had to go to work,
I was trying to decide
whether to strangle him then,
or keep him alive during the night.
And I chose the latter and missed work.
And was fired that Sunday.
And that was the domino.
The first domino that started
the whole chain reaction falling.
He had started drinking more
and spiraling down.
I noticed that I wasn't seeing him
as often as before he lost his job.
And I would actually go
to knock on his door to check on him.
And I would notice
the peephole would go dark.
Then it'd go back light.
And I knew that he came to the door,
and that he saw me.
He knew that it was me
knocking on the door,
and he didn't open the door for me.
So I I took it upon myself
to think that he wanted me to go away,
which I did.
A couple of the doctors said,
"Yes, he was definitely an alcoholic."
He had an addictive personality.
I think he had
the same addiction to the killing.
As it grew and grew and grew,
he needed it more and more and more.
He reached a point of time
where he was consistently having to go out
and deal with yet another individual,
and not disposing of the other ones
he'd already killed.
When I was
dismembering him in the tub,
I didn't finish the job in one night.
I was in too much of a rush
to get it done.
He was getting so overwhelmed
with what he was doing
that he had no more control of the scene.
He was showering with two people
in the bottom of the tub.
I asked him, "Why didn't you get rid of
the bodies before you went after another?"
He said, "I couldn't help it.
I needed the excitement of it."
It was important that I was nonjudgmental,
and that I didn't put him into a position
that would stop him from talking.
But hearing the graphic detail
from Jeffrey Dahmer
was a challenge.
- Did it excite you?
- Yeah, it did.
Yeah, just to see the inside.
It grew through time
where it wasn't
just having sex with a corpse,
but it was opening the viscera of the body
and and, uh, having sex right there
with the insides of the person.
There were times where it was
very, very difficult to listen to,
and to pretend like, you know,
uh, this isn't affecting me.
I almost got in trouble because
that smell apparently alerted neighbors.
One night, I was sleeping,
and this horrible smell
woke me up about 2:30 in the morning.
And I opened the door,
and I could see a mist.
You ever watch a movie, a scary movie
where you're in the graveyard,
and they got the, you know, coming up?
That's what I saw.
I closed the door,
I took a towel,
and I covered the bottom of the door.
So then I went back to bed.
And when I woke up,
I told my wife Pam about the smell,
and she said, "I'm gonna find out today
where it's coming from."
Later, she said,
"I sniffed the door hinges."
"And the smell's
coming from Jeff's apartment."
She took a lawn chair, and she sat
in our apartment with our door open,
waiting for Jeff to come home.
When he came home,
she confronted him about the smell.
And he said that his freezer
had quit working,
and the meat spoiled in his freezer.
And so I asked him,
"Don't you got a warranty on that thing?
How long have you had it?"
Did they ever come and inquire?
- Yeah, they did.
- What happened?
I told them
the freezer went on the blink.
He used a variety of means
to keep what he could
of the men he found attractive.
And that included
taking photographs of them
when they were unconscious or dead,
removing parts of them
that he would preserve.
And it included eventually
some cannibalization.
Did you select
what you decided to keep?
How did you select that?
Just the meatiest-looking parts.
The parts with the least amount of fat.
- So the biceps, thighs, calves?
- Right. Mm-hmm.
The eating of victims is part of
the very disturbed thinking that developed
once Mr. Dahmer gave up on the idea
that he could fight the urge to kill.
There were various body parts
he'd thought about eating,
including a human heart.
So you took out
the heart and the liver,
and you preserved that and his thigh.
What did you do with the rest of it then?
I kept about 50 pounds.
The rest went in the trash.
How many pounds
would you estimate you've eaten?
Total, about
ten.
At one point, he drank human blood, again,
somehow thinking in his disturbed way
that this was gonna connect him
with the blood of the people
that he was consuming.
His thinking was,
"Somehow, if I ingest these souls,
they will still live on through me."
If anybody looked
it looked like you just stocked up.
So it looked
just like supermarket meat.
I froze it for a while.
Maybe a month.
Or not that long. A couple weeks.
Oh my God. I had no idea
that this is what was occurring
right across the hall
from where we lived.
Everyone in the building felt suckered.
We all felt
that Jeffrey Dahmer had played us.
It's really hard
to become fond of someone
to find out that actually
that person had a dagger in your back.
I thought this guy was my friend.
People who live in the
building are in a state of shock tonight.
They simply cannot believe
that a crime of this magnitude
was going on right next door.
The race question in
the Jeffrey Dahmer story was raised today,
since most of the murder victims
were Black,
and since it happened
in a largely Black neighborhood.
The racism is the key
because the consistent thing,
above the sex with the corpse,
above the number,
is the consistency
that these were Black young men.
Dahmer said his ideal victim
was a young, athletic Black male,
but his first two victims were white.
He had Hispanic victims.
He had Asian victims.
He was attracted to people of color.
This wasn't some hate crime.
He was trying
to become involved intimately
with the sort of person
towards whom he was attracted.
I don't know
what was in Dahmer's mind.
Was he a racist? Who cares?
He killed Black people.
He killed people of color.
He killed gay people.
In my opinion,
what matters is that he took the lives
of a lot of people
that should still be alive today.
With today's technology, the trial
will be beamed through outer space
to other countries in a matter of seconds.
The line people in England have used
is that Jeffrey Dahmer
has made sure that Milwaukee's
not just gonna be famous for beer.
It's now gonna be famous
for serial killers.
Dahmer confessed
to killing 17 people altogether.
Dahmer entered a plea of guilty.
The only issue now
was whether he was sane or insane.
Dahmer's plea was,
"Yes, I did the murders, but I'm insane."
The trial was a big event.
It had drawn a lot of reporters.
Family members were there.
It was now, you know, the big show.
Michael McCann was the DA at the time
that conducted the trial for the state.
Gerry Boyle
was Dahmer's defense attorney,
and a powerhouse
in delivering an argument to a jury.
And I knew he'd be a tough guy.
I can still remember what
it was like to sit with the other media
at the Milwaukee County Courthouse
when we were waiting
for Dahmer's initial appearance in court.
This was going to be the first time
that we were going to see him in person.
We were expecting like,
you know, maybe Charles Manson,
but Dahmer was a good-looking man.
He was subdued.
He didn't look like a serial killer.
I think there was the hope
from Dahmer's father
that there's some understanding
that he did this
because of a mental disease.
Lionel was hoping that the court
could give Jeffrey the help he needed.
Everyone please rise.
Hear ye, Circuit court branch 33
in Milwaukee County's now in session,
the Honorable Laurence C. Gram
here presiding.
The burden to show the insanity
was on the defense.
In an insanity plea,
the defense presents first.
Very different from the typical
burden of proof.
I accept the responsibility
of proving to you
that this was not an evil man.
This was a sick man.
My duty and my goal were to prove
that he was insane
during the commission of these offenses.
That when he killed somebody,
he was suffering from mental illness.
And this is what I see
about this Jeffrey Dahmer
as a total human being.
A person who's into fantasy, drugging,
keeping skulls in locker, cannibalism,
sexual urges, drilling,
making zombies, necrophilia.
Of course,
by an average person's view
he was insane. He was a cannibal.
He was a serial killer.
But by the criminal standard of insanity,
was he insane?
Did he meet the legal definition?
That was an open question.
Before a person can be found insane
under the law,
he must suffer
from a mental illness or defect,
and they lack substantial capacity
to understand the difference
between right and wrong.
Or they're unable to control their conduct
to the requirements of the law.
I went to Chicago, and I got Dr. Wahlstrom
and was able to bring him in on the case.
The defendant's personality structure,
his underlying way
of looking at the world and himself,
is diagnosed and meets the criteria
for schizotypal
and borderline personality disorders.
Tell us what that means.
They have frantic attempts
to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
And in this case,
it's the most extreme example
of those kind of frantic attempts.
Dahmer didn't want people
to leave him,
but to stay with him.
That feeling of abandonment,
I think a part of that goes to
why he kept the body parts of his victims.
He saved the bones. He saved the skulls.
He saved the hands.
Jeff indicated that it
it was for a shrine.
I have this pedestal.
This black pedestal.
And I had a, uh,
black, round top on top of it,
and I had the skulls
set up on top of that, around it.
It was just, uh, a remembrance of, uh
the people.
A keepsake of each one of them.
It was my own, yeah,
private little world. Yeah.
I had complete control.
That's about the ultimate control
you can have.
This is, in fact,
the picture of what he drew.
And as you see here,
he signed it below.
Did you feel by keeping the skulls,
and if you would've
actually accomplished this shrine,
that you would've felt less lonely,
like you were being kept company,
that they were there?
I think that
must have, yeah, been, uh, my thinking.
Jeffrey's building the shrine
was all about power and control for him.
And that each trait that he liked
out of each one of them
was something that was now
internalized into his own life.
That was a bizarre delusion
that he thought that he could take
the skulls and the bones of victims
and create a power center
in which he would be able
to get special powers.
We're trying to win an insanity defense.
This was where he lost control.
We're trying to show that, you know,
he didn't have
that rational thought anymore.
I believe he had
a mental disease, necrophilia,
a very rare and, uh, possibly dangerous
psychiatric condition.
This is a human being
with a horrible psychiatric disorder
who is really struggling very hard
not to allow that disorder
to bring him to the point
where he's harming other people.
Obviously, he lost that battle.
In my professional opinion,
Mr. Dahmer did lack substantial capacity
to conform his behavior
to the requirements of law.
But I believe they met, at that time,
the statutory requirements
for an insanity defense.
And I still believe that today.
I was approached
by the district attorney's office
to evaluate Mr. Dahmer.
At the time of each of the killings,
he did have the capacity
not to do the killing.
There was no force pushing him to kill.
There was merely a desire
to spend more time with the victim.
If the victim had agreed voluntarily
to stay with him,
he would not have done the killing.
That's an indication
that he could control his behavior.
I didn't think Dahmer had a mental disease
or mental illness.
Did he know it was wrong?
Well, here's how I'm sure
he knew it was wrong.
He said he knew it was wrong at that time.
Every single one of them.
He took steps for every single one
of the charged homicides
to make sure that he wouldn't get caught.
They included putting in
fake security cameras
to deter people from breaking in
while he was at work.
They included disposing of evidence.
They included pulling the curtains
while he's dismembering bodies.
The many, many steps
to try to evade detection.
And in order to kill,
he had to overcome his inhibition
against it by getting drunk.
All the psychiatrists
agreed basically
that he was an alcoholic, necrophilic.
Agreed he knew it was wrong,
but disagreed he couldn't control himself.
For me, the trial was very
anxiety-provoking.
I was sitting next to to Jeff.
When he did have questions,
he would talk to me.
Wendy Patrickus played a prominent role
to soften Jeffrey Dahmer's image.
Having a young woman sitting there
made Jeffrey Dahmer look
a little less threatening.
And I think that was part of the intention
to show the jury
that Jeffrey Dahmer was not quite
the monster many had made him out to be.
I had issues during the course
of representing Jeffrey Dahmer.
I received death threats
from a number of different sources.
There was really only one time I felt like
some of the threats became real.
One of the victim's family members,
when I was out one night,
came after me with a pool cue
because I was representing Jeff.
I said, "You do understand that's
just a job. That's a position."
"I didn't kill your brother."
Uh, she couldn't, or wouldn't,
discern the difference between the two.
She just, you know, came after me.
It did cause me to, uh,
escalate my concern
during the trial,
and pretty much
become a homebody at that point.
Dahmer's father and stepmother
came every day to the trial.
And you could tell
the trial got to them.
Doctor would be on the stand
quoting from his confession,
and it was the most appalling information.
You'd see it on his father's face.
And there Lionel Dahmer sat with Shari,
his second wife,
looking behind his son,
remaining behind his son.
The trial went two weeks.
He's out of control.
He could not stop.
He was a runaway train
on a track of madness.
It isn't, "Is he sane or insane?"
It's, "Did he prove to a reasonable
certainty that he was insane?"
If he didn't, the answer is no.
You don't have to make a finding
that he was sane.
You're not being asked
to make a finding that he was sane.
You're being asked to make a finding,
"Did he prove to a reasonable certainty
that he was insane?"
That's the issue before you.
After all the testimony was in,
the jury went in to deliberate.
Is Dahmer legally not guilty
because of mental disease?
That's what the jury must sort out.
I think juries and people in general
are often concerned
if someone's found
not criminally responsible,
and they go to a mental institution,
that they're gonna come out
and hurt people again.
Even if you're successfully treated
while you're in a mental institution,
the court would have to sign off
before you re-enter the community.
In a case such as Mr. Dahmer's,
I find it exceedingly unlikely
that a court would've approved him
going back into the community.
Few would place bets
on the decision they'll reach.
They're gonna find him insane.
I think they're probably gonna vote
that he's sane.
Which way do you think
the jury's gonna go?
No clue.
It went to the jury on Friday,
and it was late Saturday afternoon
before they came back.
They looked at all the evidence.
They were very adamant in their decision.
In a hushed courtroom in Milwaukee today,
the jury rendered its decision
in one of the most grisly
and widely-followed murder trials
in modern history.
The verdict. Jeffrey Dahmer was sane
when he killed and dismembered
men and boys
in a gruesome quest for companionship
and sexual gratification.
That's something that troubled me.
If a man who is preoccupied
with having sex with corpses,
if a man who's drilling holes
in the heads of human beings
to try to keep them alive
in a zombie-like state
doesn't have a psychiatric disorder,
then I don't know what we mean
by psychiatric disease.
How many people does someone
have to eat in Milwaukee
before they think
you have a mental disease?
I've been trying cases
for 38 years as a DA.
I don't find a a celebratory feeling.
Seventeen people died.
Seventeen families crushed and destroyed.
There's just no room for elation.
But I would've been crushed
if he had come back
and found that he was insane.
Dahmer had no reaction
to being found sane.
No reaction whatsoever.
None.
Ms. Dahmer,
do you have any comment?
No.
- Mr. Dahmer?
- No.
We attempted
to talk to Dahmer's grandmother
Catherine this morning,
but a sign is already posted on the door
saying she is too weak and too troubled
to talk about the case.
As far as the verdict is concerned,
it wasn't really very surprising.
But I think he had a mental disease,
and he needed help.
Families of his victims
wept with relief,
knowing that Dahmer now faces
a probable prison sentence
instead of a mental institution.
The case against Jeffrey Dahmer
comes to a close today
when he is sentenced later this morning
in a Milwaukee courtroom.
What do you expect
will happen this morning
in terms of Dahmer's sentencing?
We first have the family speak.
Under our state law, each family
has an opportunity to express to the court
the impact of this offense
on their family.
I think we'll see highly charged
emotional statements by the family.
I'm the mother of Anthony Lee Sears.
And I just wanted to know,
you know, just why would it be my son?
Um, I wanna thank the jury.
I wanna thank you, Judge.
And just keep this man
off the street, please.
I would like to say to Jeffrey Dahmer
that he don't know the pain, the hurt,
the loss, and the mental state
that he had put our family in.
I don't wanna ever see my mother
have to go through this again!
Never, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey, I hate you, motherfucker!
I hate you!
Jeffrey's out of control!
Don't fuck with me, Jeffrey!
I'll kill you, goddamn it!
Look at me, motherfucker!
- Ah! I could kill you!
- Lunch and recess.
Fucking kill you, motherfucker!
She was coming
across the courtroom at him,
intent, it appeared to me, to attack him.
He was cool. He kept control.
I would've thought he'd jump up.
He didn't.
He just sat there.
This is Jeffrey Dahmer under stress.
The judge said to Jeffrey,
"Is there anything you'd like to say
in addressing the court
before I pass judgment?"
This has never been a case
of trying to get free.
Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
I hated no one.
I knew I was sick or evil, or both.
Now I believe I was sick.
I take all the blame for what I did.
I hurt many people.
I've hurt my mother and father
and stepmother.
I love them all so very much.
I hope that they will find
the same peace I am looking for.
This left the judge to
hand down the stiffest possible sentence
in a state with no death penalty.
Dahmer was sentenced to 15
consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Yes!
Finally they had something
to cheer about for the first time
since these family members learned
of Jeffrey Dahmer and what he did.
Life goes on.
Maybe what I've learned through
this tragedy will help someone else.
And I just thank God for this verdict.
Dahmer identified Steven's picture and
was asked how he could be sure who it was.
He told the police,
"You always remember your first."
I want him to know
that we also remember our first.
Not one day has passed
that we've not thought about Steve.
There's a sense of closure in the sense
Especially for the families
that waited years to find out
what had happened to their sons.
It's a sad sense of closure,
but it's closure.
Dahmer was sent to Columbia
Correctional Facility in Wisconsin.
I dunno what prison systems are like.
I have a picture
of a very dreary, gray place.
I was thinking maybe that in prison,
they'll maybe let me do something
with growing some kind of a plant.
Uh, I've always had an interest
in growing plants.
I had plants at the apartment.
He was put on suicide watch,
so he was placed in a single cell,
not in the bullpen.
He told me,
"What do I have to look forward to?"
I said, "You know,
there's a lot of things that you can do."
"You said you were reading the Bible."
"And you wanted to get back into it."
So he did make those, uh, overt actions
to try and redeem himself in God's eyes.
I got a phone call in 1994
from a minister friend in Milwaukee,
who was in Milwaukee at the time,
saying an inmate wanted to be baptized.
He said,
"You might wanna sit down for this one."
"His name is Jeffrey Dahmer."
I was nervous about meeting him.
I'd never been to a prison before.
I'd never been to a murderer before.
I was sitting there thinking, "Wow."
"I'm in a room with a guy
who's killed a lot of young men."
And I looked at his hands. And his hands
I thought his hands were relatively small
compared to my hands.
With those hands, he strangled men,
and yet here I am talking to him
as if, you know, we're just normal people.
I said, "Yes, I'll I'll baptize you."
That seemed to cause him
a great deal of relief.
He says, "Well, I was afraid you'd say,
'You are too evil."
"You are too horrible,
too wicked to be baptized.'"
Jeff was brought in.
I pushed his head under the water,
and when he came up, I said,
"Welcome to the family of God."
On the day of his baptism,
John Wayne Gacy
was executed on that same day.
There was a full solar eclipse as well.
Some tried to read into that some kind
of mystical, uh, meaning behind all this.
I met him once a week from that point on
for about an hour.
It was a matter of growing in his faith,
understanding what his faith was about,
and then continue each week.
Jeffrey Dahmer lives
in that building back there.
Disciplinary Segregation Two.
Now, he has a job,
mopping and sweeping up floors,
and officials hope eventually he'll be
able to mix with the general population.
On the last day I saw him,
it was the day before Thanksgiving.
He gave me a card,
and he underlined the word "friend."
It indicated that, uh, he was beginning
to understand
what friendship was
for the very first time.
After he was in prison for a year,
I went and visited him.
He said, "I'm not gonna do this anymore.
I can't just sit here in isolation."
He said,
"If I can't interact with other people,
that's gonna be worse than if I died."
He said, "I'm gonna be asked
to be put in general population."
I said, "Jeff, you know,
you're gonna be dead shortly."
"Because everybody had such strong,
strong views
and opinions about your actions."
"We don't need any further loss of life."
I tell you, Wendy.
I don't think I'm gonna be able to keep
a level head. I really don't.
Because I've always been one
who needs stimulation, mental stimulation.
Uh
And I just don't have
the patience that I should.
I had a very hard time
that day leaving.
And I just said, "Please don't do this."
"You're just not gonna make it."
In November of 1994, while he was
in the prison, he was at the work detail.
He and a man named Jesse Anderson
were assigned to clean up
lockers in the gym.
Christopher Scarver, a man who my office
had convicted of murder
a number of years earlier,
was on the same work detail.
He took the barbell from the exercise room
and bludgeoned Dahmer
over the head with that weapon.
The information I received
from the prison was
he did not resist the attack.
The irony in all of this is that
the first time that Mr. Dahmer killed
was when he picked up
some weight lifting equipment
and took the life of Steven Hicks.
The whole thing came full cycle.
He was in general population
within a year of when he was killed.
It was surprising
that Dahmer lived that long.
Dahmer's father Lionel joins us.
Tell me, you told me that you were at work
when your wife called
to say your son had been injured.
What then happened after that?
She had called and
and hit me with the news
that that Jeff had passed away
that morning about ten o'clock.
I just couldn't believe it. I
I started sobbing and and, uh, shaking.
I was very upset.
You can't help but become close
with somebody
when you spend that many days,
weeks, months with them.
Some suspected that the prison system
had deliberately undertaken
to execute Dahmer,
and the governor, very wisely,
immediately ordered a commission
to investigate it.
This prison has nearly 3 dozen
video monitors, electronic steel doors,
yet somehow 25-year-old
Christopher Scarver
allegedly managed to elude
the elaborate security system.
One went to answer a phone call
the other was listening to music.
It was ridiculous no one was around.
I used to work in prison.
We watched them bathe.
We watched them eat and sleep.
We watched them pee and poo.
Any time they moved, we were there.
Dahmer was one of the most celebrated
prisoners in the western hemisphere.
How is it that so prominent a prisoner
could be executed in the prison?
There was a study, and, uh, the commission
said there was no crime involved,
that there was no conspiracy,
no inside job to get rid of Dahmer.
They have given him good, fair, uh, care.
They've guarded him.
Uh, they knew the potential dangers.
It's not the prison's fault.
Jeff, for all that he was a killer,
could never defend himself.
I I could not celebrate
when he was killed.
I can understand why some might,
but I felt nothing but sadness.
A sad story with a sad ending.
Jeffrey Dahmer
was a very complex person.
He was a very hurting individual
that felt soulless, felt empty.
Did it enter your mind
that it seemed a waste to destroy somebody
who looked so nice
while they were still alive?
Yeah, it did.
I felt that it was
a waste that I couldn't keep them longer
without having to kill them,
but I didn't know any other way
to make them stay
and to control them.
I had no choice in the matter.
Did you, uh,
feel emotions of any kind?
I felt a lot of
a great deal of remorse.
I don't think Jeffrey
ever found out
a good enough answer for him
as to why he did what he did.
He said, "Through all
of these forensic doctors I'm talking to,
if one of them
could give me a reason why."
"I really would like to know."
But with his death,
I knew he would never find out why.
We can easily just say
this is an evil monster.
"Why'd he do it?" "'Cause he's evil."
"How do we know?" "'Cause he did it."
It's just a label
masquerading as an explanation.
There were still things
that I wanted to know about him,
things I wanted to talk to him about.
It was a waste of an opportunity
for people to study what made him tick.
They were horrific, terrible things
that he did,
but if he really couldn't
control his conduct,
let's find out what's going on here.
Maybe we can all learn something
as a society.
Jeffrey Dahmer, he didn't care.
He had no sympathy for them.
He had no remorse.
And far as I know, he never felt bad
for the people he harmed,
all the damage he did.
Dahmer's victims had
very little recourse in the end.
And the family members who had survived,
there was very little
to compensate them for their losses.
But what was left was Dahmer's property
that had been taken out of his apartment.
That's when a judge ordered
that Dahmer's possessions,
including his instruments of death,
be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The proceeds would be divided
among the victims' families.
A philanthropist purchased
everything on behalf of the victims.
Milwaukee businessman
Joe Zilber
launched an effort
to buy everything and destroy it.
Zilber reached out
to fellow business leaders, politicians,
and prominent Milwaukeeans.
They raised $400,000
and purchased all the items.
They're upset that
a situation would have to occur
where these terrible, terrible items
would go on a public auction block
in a very highly visible,
worldwide way.
The items were then
loaded into a garbage truck
and taken to an undisclosed landfill
in Illinois.
He took lives
for a few hours of sexual pleasure
of persons that had done him nothing evil,
or toward which he would have no ill will.
He took their life.
That's the tragedy.
I would hope the world
would forget about Dahmer,
and he would become
a part of the ash bin of history.
All the tenants
living in the Oxford Apartments,
we held a meeting
to decide on what we were gonna do.
And we decided
that we didn't want to live there anymore.
It will give me relief
to know that the young men that died here,
their souls and their body,
will seem at rest with this down.
So the Oxford will be razed,
and it is hoped the tragic memories
born here can be buried forever.
What many call a symbol
of pain and senseless violence
will no longer be so visible
to the city of Milwaukee
and the families
of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims.
I can understand Milwaukee
wants to put this case behind it.
I think it's important,
though, to understand
that there are people out there
who do horrific things.
Evil is real.
Jeffrey Dahmer not only
killed his victims,
but he hurt a community.
The pain of Jeffrey Dahmer's killings
hurt Milwaukee.
The The families were people
that we saw on TV.
The neighborhood was a neighborhood
that we knew.
This was a case that exposed
a lot of racial issues,
a lot of different biases,
both in the police department
and the community that is Milwaukee.
What Dahmer was doing was
he was feeding on the undetectable
in our community,
and he was protected by the institutions
that were supposed to be protecting
these weakest, most vulnerable people.
He preyed on them,
and the police did not protect them.
Whatever we learn, it's not gonna be worth
what these families have suffered,
but let's not just throw it away.
It's important to get this right,
to talk about this in a way
that gives dignity to these victims.
We can't go back and fix
what happened back in 1991
and prior to that
when he started killing people.
What you can do, though,
is have people talk about what happened,
so we don't fall into the same traps
and shed light on it,
so the crime that we see on a daily basis
stops or slows down.
The poverty, the high crime,
the fact that we don't care
about the disadvantaged,
all those things provided
a playground for him to operate in.
To prevent something like that
from happening again,
you have to address these issues
today.
There's always
gonna be that pain,
that remembrance of what happened.
We're always gonna do the "what-ifs."
You know? Where would they be now?
What kind of life would they have had?
You're always gonna miss that person.
Humanizing the individuals
who lost their lives
is important.
Recognizing that
each one of those young men
had a mother,
a father,
had sisters and brothers
that loved them and still miss them.
They were just trying to do
what we're all trying to do.
Survive.
Live and enjoy the life
that they'd been given.
They had a life
that they loved.
I think it's important
to tell their story.
Nobody deserves to die like that.
Fire department.
Yes, could you send an ambulance
on the corner of 25th and State?
What's the problem?
There's this butt-naked young boy
or man, or whatever.
He's still out, and people's trying
to help him stand. He can't stand.
He has no clothes on. He's very hurt.
- Is he awake?
- He ain't awake.
They trying to get him to walk,
but he can't walk straight,
can't even see straight.
Anytime he stand up, he falls.
- 25th and State?
- Yeah.
- All right. Okay.
- The one-way. Okay. Bye.
What happened that night,
it's unbelievable.
Here's this young man, naked,
outside Dahmer's apartment building.
He had not a stitch of clothing on.
Two people summoned
the fire department and the police
because some of them saw he had blood
running out of his rectum.
He had a scrape on his knee.
He was clearly dazed from something.
Why is this boy,
naked, bleeding, and incoherent
on the streets of Milwaukee?
We had a mall called the Grand Avenue,
and Jeffrey Dahmer
was in the mall all the time.
We would see him in the food court,
walking up and down the mall.
He took pictures of people,
and he'd say,
"You look like a model.
Want me to take your picture?"
Dahmer was sitting
having pizza and a beer
when he saw an attractive young man,
Konerak Sinthasomphone, come by,
whom he engaged in conversation.
He offered the young man $50
to pose for pictures.
And the young man
agreed to go back
to Dahmer's apartment with him.
In the apartment,
Dahmer hands him this drink
with the amount of Halcion
that was able to
render him unconscious for a while.
Dahmer wanted to keep this victim alive
as long as he could.
In my sessions with him,
Mr. Dahmer told me what he wanted
was somebody perfectly compliant,
who would stay with him
without fear of leaving.
There were a few
where I tried the drilling technique.
And I did the drilling with him too.
You did?
Mm-hmm.
At what point?
- Uh
- Before the officers came or after?
Yeah, before the officers came.
Jeffrey told me about, uh, Konerak,
and how he made some adjustments
and changes in his method
in an effort to make him into a zombie
that would actually live.
Dahmer drilled a hole
in his skull,
injected muriatic acid
and was waiting to see
if he'd succeeded this time,
because the others
died from that injection.
How far
you think you penetrated with the drill?
- All the way to the brain.
- Two or three inches?
- Yeah.
- And you went straight down?
- Right. Mm-mm.
- Nothing came out?
- No fluid of any kind?
- No fluid that I could see.
And no bleeding either.
Konerak actually was able
to function to a limited degree.
He was groggy and everything.
He wasn't dead or anything, and he talked.
I thought maybe I'd be able
to keep him that way.
Jeff would just tell him
what he wanted him to do, and it worked.
What Jeff didn't take into consideration
was the fact
that he might run
outside of the apartment.
Dahmer went out to get liquor.
He often did while doing these crimes.
In this particular case,
he left to get some beer at a nearby bar.
While Dahmer is out getting beer,
Konerak takes the opportunity
to run out of the house
and up the alley.
That's when a neighbor
looks out her window and sees him.
The women call the police.
The police arrive,
and Konerak is now sitting
with a blanket around him at the scene.
And the officers are approaching
to find out what's going on.
Police officers tried
to question Konerak.
Konerak can't really communicate
his side of the story
'cause he's been drugged.
There was nothing
that would indicate
that there was a hole in his head
that Dahmer put there.
There was no blood flowing from it.
And while that was going on,
Dahmer came up the street.
These young women interceded.
They asked Konerak,
"What's your name?" He couldn't talk.
That's when they got between them
and said, "Stay away from him."
Two 18-year-old Black girls
protecting him from Dahmer.
The police don't listen to those girls.
They didn't even take their names.
Kept telling them to be quiet. That they'd
arrest them if they kept talking.
Dahmer grabbed his arm and said,
"No, he's my boyfriend,"
and started to take him back.
Dahmer figured that,
as a white guy,
"I could tell these officers
my version of the story."
And I have to believe he believed that
because he knew that,
"I'm white,
and I could get away with this."
Jeffrey always had
a quick response.
It seemed kind of natural to him
to have that ability to manipulate
and get himself out of bad situations.
Now you got a naked guy
out in the streets,
making noises.
The police thought
he was drunker than a billy goat.
So what did they do?
They don't just leave him.
They take him into a place of safety,
the apartment from whence he came.
So they go into the apartment.
Konerak sat on the couch
as if this was his place.
Konerak's clothes
are all in a little pile,
neatly laid out
somewhere in the living room.
Dahmer shows the officers
photographs that he took of this young man
and said that was
You know, that was his lover.
They say, "We're not gonna arrest
these two guys for being gay."
"Ain't gonna happen."
And they left Sinthasomphone
on the couch at Dahmer's home
and never looked in the bedroom.
Little do those officers know
that in Dahmer's bedroom,
Tony Hughes's dead body
is on the bed just laying there.
The police left, and shortly thereafter
Dahmer injected more of this acid
into the brain of Konerak Sinthasomphone.
What you put in?
Konerak, I filled a syringe
with muriatic acid.
I used the acid again in a lesser dosage,
but it was still too much the second time
after I injected the second amount in.
One of the girls
who tried to protect Konerak
went home and told her mother,
Glenda Cleveland.
- Milwaukee Police.
- Yes, uh
Uh, there was a squad car, number 50,
that was flagged down earlier
this evening, about 15 minutes ago.
- That was me.
- What happened?
I mean, my daughter and my niece, uh,
witnessed what was going on.
Was anything done about the situation?
Nope. It's an intoxicated,
uh, boyfriend
of another boyfriend.
How old was this child?
- It wasn't a child. It was an adult.
- Are you sure?
Ma'am, I can't make it
any more clear. It's all taken care of.
Sinthasomphone died.
He died within an hour
after the police left the apartment.
Konerak Sinthasomphone
was 14 years old and was
one of the youngest of Dahmer's victims.
If they thought for a moment
that he was at risk,
they would never have let him
go back with Dahmer, ever.
The police officers had been told
to be respectful
of the gay community in Milwaukee.
And I think they probably were thinking
they were being respectful,
and not bringing a heterosexual bias
to the situation.
Whatever the police did,
obviously, it wasn't enough.
You have a number
of African Americans
basically saying
that this young man is underage,
that he didn't appear
to be in his right state of mind.
People say they were doing their jobs,
just doing the best they could.
That falls very far short
of what they should have done.
If they'd run his name,
they'd have found he was on probation
for assaulting a Laotian boy,
who would turn out
to be Konerak's brother.
How How does this happen?
Twice victimized
by Jeffrey Dahmer,
one of Konerak's brothers had been
molested by Dahmer three years ago.
The family came to America 11 years ago
with dreams of a better life.
Instead, Jeffrey Dahmer
has given them a grisly nightmare.
He said, "It It seems
almost more than coincidence."
However, it was something
that really shocked Jeff
when he heard that.
He just was was floored by it.
The Eurasians,
it's just amazing they were brothers.
It's It's incredible.
I can't believe it.
- Are you saying it's his brother?
- Mm-hmm.
- You know what his name was?
- No.
Sure don't.
It's a horrible tragedy
for the Sinthasomphone family.
A sexual assault victim
and a separate murder victim
in the same family.
It's hard to fathom
what that family had to go through
at the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer.
After Dahmer was arrested
in July of '91,
the community was in an uproar
when they found out
that the police had released Konerak
back to Dahmer.
Glenda Cleveland
called the police station
again and again over the next week or so.
She said,
"My daughter saw this boy naked,"
just believing that he had been
sexually assaulted.
I was a young reporter at the Sentinel
when the Dahmer case broke.
Somebody wanted to talk about Dahmer,
and I said, "I can talk to you."
The person on the phone
was Glenda Cleveland.
She tells me this story
that they had tried to protect this boy,
and the police wouldn't listen to them.
I called a captain at the police station.
I was expecting him to just deny it,
but they didn't.
They said, "Yes,
this matter's under investigation."
How could the police
give that boy back to that man?
They handed that
minority male back to Dahmer,
but they took the word of the white male
over five Black witnesses.
I have concluded that the officers failed
to properly perform their duties
as required by the rules and regulations
of the Milwaukee Police Department.
The two police officers,
John Balcerzak and Joe Gabrish,
were fired from the Milwaukee
Police Department.
It was turmoil in
the police department. The city was torn.
Some people supported the officers.
We are behind our police officers 100%.
Much of the white community
is not convinced
that racism is a problem
in the police department.
They are rallying behind the police,
even as the charges grow louder.
I personally feel that there is
equal and fair treatment done
throughout the community by our officers.
They're trained that way.
I don't think that the officers
made a decision based upon any race,
any homophobia.
Obviously in retrospect,
the officers made a mistake,
but there was a lot of people
that Dahmer had conned.
And he conned those officers that night.
And I'm sure those officers
have second-guessed that many times.
People have pointed
to the radio transmission by the officers
right after the contact.
The intoxicated Asian naked male
was returned
to his sober boyfriend.
It'll be a minute. My partner's
gonna get deloused at the station.
You hear officers
laughing in the background.
I think that what they did was a travesty.
That gets back to the root
of how we view homosexuality.
Gay people were made fun of.
They were the butt of the joke.
But then the two police officers
went to circuit court
to appeal their firing.
The court agreed with them,
reinstated them with back pay.
The Konerak Sinthasomphone case
shed a spotlight on Milwaukee.
This was telling them a lot
about their community.
It was telling them a lot
about the police protection
that they were offered.
This was a very scary episode.
After Mr. Dahmer
killed, uh, this young Laotian lad,
bodies were piling up in his apartment.
Dahmer went on
to kill four more people.
At first, it was nine years
between his homicides.
Then it was months.
After Konerak, it was weeks.
An hour before I had to go to work,
I was trying to decide
whether to strangle him then,
or keep him alive during the night.
And I chose the latter and missed work.
And was fired that Sunday.
And that was the domino.
The first domino that started
the whole chain reaction falling.
He had started drinking more
and spiraling down.
I noticed that I wasn't seeing him
as often as before he lost his job.
And I would actually go
to knock on his door to check on him.
And I would notice
the peephole would go dark.
Then it'd go back light.
And I knew that he came to the door,
and that he saw me.
He knew that it was me
knocking on the door,
and he didn't open the door for me.
So I I took it upon myself
to think that he wanted me to go away,
which I did.
A couple of the doctors said,
"Yes, he was definitely an alcoholic."
He had an addictive personality.
I think he had
the same addiction to the killing.
As it grew and grew and grew,
he needed it more and more and more.
He reached a point of time
where he was consistently having to go out
and deal with yet another individual,
and not disposing of the other ones
he'd already killed.
When I was
dismembering him in the tub,
I didn't finish the job in one night.
I was in too much of a rush
to get it done.
He was getting so overwhelmed
with what he was doing
that he had no more control of the scene.
He was showering with two people
in the bottom of the tub.
I asked him, "Why didn't you get rid of
the bodies before you went after another?"
He said, "I couldn't help it.
I needed the excitement of it."
It was important that I was nonjudgmental,
and that I didn't put him into a position
that would stop him from talking.
But hearing the graphic detail
from Jeffrey Dahmer
was a challenge.
- Did it excite you?
- Yeah, it did.
Yeah, just to see the inside.
It grew through time
where it wasn't
just having sex with a corpse,
but it was opening the viscera of the body
and and, uh, having sex right there
with the insides of the person.
There were times where it was
very, very difficult to listen to,
and to pretend like, you know,
uh, this isn't affecting me.
I almost got in trouble because
that smell apparently alerted neighbors.
One night, I was sleeping,
and this horrible smell
woke me up about 2:30 in the morning.
And I opened the door,
and I could see a mist.
You ever watch a movie, a scary movie
where you're in the graveyard,
and they got the, you know, coming up?
That's what I saw.
I closed the door,
I took a towel,
and I covered the bottom of the door.
So then I went back to bed.
And when I woke up,
I told my wife Pam about the smell,
and she said, "I'm gonna find out today
where it's coming from."
Later, she said,
"I sniffed the door hinges."
"And the smell's
coming from Jeff's apartment."
She took a lawn chair, and she sat
in our apartment with our door open,
waiting for Jeff to come home.
When he came home,
she confronted him about the smell.
And he said that his freezer
had quit working,
and the meat spoiled in his freezer.
And so I asked him,
"Don't you got a warranty on that thing?
How long have you had it?"
Did they ever come and inquire?
- Yeah, they did.
- What happened?
I told them
the freezer went on the blink.
He used a variety of means
to keep what he could
of the men he found attractive.
And that included
taking photographs of them
when they were unconscious or dead,
removing parts of them
that he would preserve.
And it included eventually
some cannibalization.
Did you select
what you decided to keep?
How did you select that?
Just the meatiest-looking parts.
The parts with the least amount of fat.
- So the biceps, thighs, calves?
- Right. Mm-hmm.
The eating of victims is part of
the very disturbed thinking that developed
once Mr. Dahmer gave up on the idea
that he could fight the urge to kill.
There were various body parts
he'd thought about eating,
including a human heart.
So you took out
the heart and the liver,
and you preserved that and his thigh.
What did you do with the rest of it then?
I kept about 50 pounds.
The rest went in the trash.
How many pounds
would you estimate you've eaten?
Total, about
ten.
At one point, he drank human blood, again,
somehow thinking in his disturbed way
that this was gonna connect him
with the blood of the people
that he was consuming.
His thinking was,
"Somehow, if I ingest these souls,
they will still live on through me."
If anybody looked
it looked like you just stocked up.
So it looked
just like supermarket meat.
I froze it for a while.
Maybe a month.
Or not that long. A couple weeks.
Oh my God. I had no idea
that this is what was occurring
right across the hall
from where we lived.
Everyone in the building felt suckered.
We all felt
that Jeffrey Dahmer had played us.
It's really hard
to become fond of someone
to find out that actually
that person had a dagger in your back.
I thought this guy was my friend.
People who live in the
building are in a state of shock tonight.
They simply cannot believe
that a crime of this magnitude
was going on right next door.
The race question in
the Jeffrey Dahmer story was raised today,
since most of the murder victims
were Black,
and since it happened
in a largely Black neighborhood.
The racism is the key
because the consistent thing,
above the sex with the corpse,
above the number,
is the consistency
that these were Black young men.
Dahmer said his ideal victim
was a young, athletic Black male,
but his first two victims were white.
He had Hispanic victims.
He had Asian victims.
He was attracted to people of color.
This wasn't some hate crime.
He was trying
to become involved intimately
with the sort of person
towards whom he was attracted.
I don't know
what was in Dahmer's mind.
Was he a racist? Who cares?
He killed Black people.
He killed people of color.
He killed gay people.
In my opinion,
what matters is that he took the lives
of a lot of people
that should still be alive today.
With today's technology, the trial
will be beamed through outer space
to other countries in a matter of seconds.
The line people in England have used
is that Jeffrey Dahmer
has made sure that Milwaukee's
not just gonna be famous for beer.
It's now gonna be famous
for serial killers.
Dahmer confessed
to killing 17 people altogether.
Dahmer entered a plea of guilty.
The only issue now
was whether he was sane or insane.
Dahmer's plea was,
"Yes, I did the murders, but I'm insane."
The trial was a big event.
It had drawn a lot of reporters.
Family members were there.
It was now, you know, the big show.
Michael McCann was the DA at the time
that conducted the trial for the state.
Gerry Boyle
was Dahmer's defense attorney,
and a powerhouse
in delivering an argument to a jury.
And I knew he'd be a tough guy.
I can still remember what
it was like to sit with the other media
at the Milwaukee County Courthouse
when we were waiting
for Dahmer's initial appearance in court.
This was going to be the first time
that we were going to see him in person.
We were expecting like,
you know, maybe Charles Manson,
but Dahmer was a good-looking man.
He was subdued.
He didn't look like a serial killer.
I think there was the hope
from Dahmer's father
that there's some understanding
that he did this
because of a mental disease.
Lionel was hoping that the court
could give Jeffrey the help he needed.
Everyone please rise.
Hear ye, Circuit court branch 33
in Milwaukee County's now in session,
the Honorable Laurence C. Gram
here presiding.
The burden to show the insanity
was on the defense.
In an insanity plea,
the defense presents first.
Very different from the typical
burden of proof.
I accept the responsibility
of proving to you
that this was not an evil man.
This was a sick man.
My duty and my goal were to prove
that he was insane
during the commission of these offenses.
That when he killed somebody,
he was suffering from mental illness.
And this is what I see
about this Jeffrey Dahmer
as a total human being.
A person who's into fantasy, drugging,
keeping skulls in locker, cannibalism,
sexual urges, drilling,
making zombies, necrophilia.
Of course,
by an average person's view
he was insane. He was a cannibal.
He was a serial killer.
But by the criminal standard of insanity,
was he insane?
Did he meet the legal definition?
That was an open question.
Before a person can be found insane
under the law,
he must suffer
from a mental illness or defect,
and they lack substantial capacity
to understand the difference
between right and wrong.
Or they're unable to control their conduct
to the requirements of the law.
I went to Chicago, and I got Dr. Wahlstrom
and was able to bring him in on the case.
The defendant's personality structure,
his underlying way
of looking at the world and himself,
is diagnosed and meets the criteria
for schizotypal
and borderline personality disorders.
Tell us what that means.
They have frantic attempts
to avoid real or imagined abandonment.
And in this case,
it's the most extreme example
of those kind of frantic attempts.
Dahmer didn't want people
to leave him,
but to stay with him.
That feeling of abandonment,
I think a part of that goes to
why he kept the body parts of his victims.
He saved the bones. He saved the skulls.
He saved the hands.
Jeff indicated that it
it was for a shrine.
I have this pedestal.
This black pedestal.
And I had a, uh,
black, round top on top of it,
and I had the skulls
set up on top of that, around it.
It was just, uh, a remembrance of, uh
the people.
A keepsake of each one of them.
It was my own, yeah,
private little world. Yeah.
I had complete control.
That's about the ultimate control
you can have.
This is, in fact,
the picture of what he drew.
And as you see here,
he signed it below.
Did you feel by keeping the skulls,
and if you would've
actually accomplished this shrine,
that you would've felt less lonely,
like you were being kept company,
that they were there?
I think that
must have, yeah, been, uh, my thinking.
Jeffrey's building the shrine
was all about power and control for him.
And that each trait that he liked
out of each one of them
was something that was now
internalized into his own life.
That was a bizarre delusion
that he thought that he could take
the skulls and the bones of victims
and create a power center
in which he would be able
to get special powers.
We're trying to win an insanity defense.
This was where he lost control.
We're trying to show that, you know,
he didn't have
that rational thought anymore.
I believe he had
a mental disease, necrophilia,
a very rare and, uh, possibly dangerous
psychiatric condition.
This is a human being
with a horrible psychiatric disorder
who is really struggling very hard
not to allow that disorder
to bring him to the point
where he's harming other people.
Obviously, he lost that battle.
In my professional opinion,
Mr. Dahmer did lack substantial capacity
to conform his behavior
to the requirements of law.
But I believe they met, at that time,
the statutory requirements
for an insanity defense.
And I still believe that today.
I was approached
by the district attorney's office
to evaluate Mr. Dahmer.
At the time of each of the killings,
he did have the capacity
not to do the killing.
There was no force pushing him to kill.
There was merely a desire
to spend more time with the victim.
If the victim had agreed voluntarily
to stay with him,
he would not have done the killing.
That's an indication
that he could control his behavior.
I didn't think Dahmer had a mental disease
or mental illness.
Did he know it was wrong?
Well, here's how I'm sure
he knew it was wrong.
He said he knew it was wrong at that time.
Every single one of them.
He took steps for every single one
of the charged homicides
to make sure that he wouldn't get caught.
They included putting in
fake security cameras
to deter people from breaking in
while he was at work.
They included disposing of evidence.
They included pulling the curtains
while he's dismembering bodies.
The many, many steps
to try to evade detection.
And in order to kill,
he had to overcome his inhibition
against it by getting drunk.
All the psychiatrists
agreed basically
that he was an alcoholic, necrophilic.
Agreed he knew it was wrong,
but disagreed he couldn't control himself.
For me, the trial was very
anxiety-provoking.
I was sitting next to to Jeff.
When he did have questions,
he would talk to me.
Wendy Patrickus played a prominent role
to soften Jeffrey Dahmer's image.
Having a young woman sitting there
made Jeffrey Dahmer look
a little less threatening.
And I think that was part of the intention
to show the jury
that Jeffrey Dahmer was not quite
the monster many had made him out to be.
I had issues during the course
of representing Jeffrey Dahmer.
I received death threats
from a number of different sources.
There was really only one time I felt like
some of the threats became real.
One of the victim's family members,
when I was out one night,
came after me with a pool cue
because I was representing Jeff.
I said, "You do understand that's
just a job. That's a position."
"I didn't kill your brother."
Uh, she couldn't, or wouldn't,
discern the difference between the two.
She just, you know, came after me.
It did cause me to, uh,
escalate my concern
during the trial,
and pretty much
become a homebody at that point.
Dahmer's father and stepmother
came every day to the trial.
And you could tell
the trial got to them.
Doctor would be on the stand
quoting from his confession,
and it was the most appalling information.
You'd see it on his father's face.
And there Lionel Dahmer sat with Shari,
his second wife,
looking behind his son,
remaining behind his son.
The trial went two weeks.
He's out of control.
He could not stop.
He was a runaway train
on a track of madness.
It isn't, "Is he sane or insane?"
It's, "Did he prove to a reasonable
certainty that he was insane?"
If he didn't, the answer is no.
You don't have to make a finding
that he was sane.
You're not being asked
to make a finding that he was sane.
You're being asked to make a finding,
"Did he prove to a reasonable certainty
that he was insane?"
That's the issue before you.
After all the testimony was in,
the jury went in to deliberate.
Is Dahmer legally not guilty
because of mental disease?
That's what the jury must sort out.
I think juries and people in general
are often concerned
if someone's found
not criminally responsible,
and they go to a mental institution,
that they're gonna come out
and hurt people again.
Even if you're successfully treated
while you're in a mental institution,
the court would have to sign off
before you re-enter the community.
In a case such as Mr. Dahmer's,
I find it exceedingly unlikely
that a court would've approved him
going back into the community.
Few would place bets
on the decision they'll reach.
They're gonna find him insane.
I think they're probably gonna vote
that he's sane.
Which way do you think
the jury's gonna go?
No clue.
It went to the jury on Friday,
and it was late Saturday afternoon
before they came back.
They looked at all the evidence.
They were very adamant in their decision.
In a hushed courtroom in Milwaukee today,
the jury rendered its decision
in one of the most grisly
and widely-followed murder trials
in modern history.
The verdict. Jeffrey Dahmer was sane
when he killed and dismembered
men and boys
in a gruesome quest for companionship
and sexual gratification.
That's something that troubled me.
If a man who is preoccupied
with having sex with corpses,
if a man who's drilling holes
in the heads of human beings
to try to keep them alive
in a zombie-like state
doesn't have a psychiatric disorder,
then I don't know what we mean
by psychiatric disease.
How many people does someone
have to eat in Milwaukee
before they think
you have a mental disease?
I've been trying cases
for 38 years as a DA.
I don't find a a celebratory feeling.
Seventeen people died.
Seventeen families crushed and destroyed.
There's just no room for elation.
But I would've been crushed
if he had come back
and found that he was insane.
Dahmer had no reaction
to being found sane.
No reaction whatsoever.
None.
Ms. Dahmer,
do you have any comment?
No.
- Mr. Dahmer?
- No.
We attempted
to talk to Dahmer's grandmother
Catherine this morning,
but a sign is already posted on the door
saying she is too weak and too troubled
to talk about the case.
As far as the verdict is concerned,
it wasn't really very surprising.
But I think he had a mental disease,
and he needed help.
Families of his victims
wept with relief,
knowing that Dahmer now faces
a probable prison sentence
instead of a mental institution.
The case against Jeffrey Dahmer
comes to a close today
when he is sentenced later this morning
in a Milwaukee courtroom.
What do you expect
will happen this morning
in terms of Dahmer's sentencing?
We first have the family speak.
Under our state law, each family
has an opportunity to express to the court
the impact of this offense
on their family.
I think we'll see highly charged
emotional statements by the family.
I'm the mother of Anthony Lee Sears.
And I just wanted to know,
you know, just why would it be my son?
Um, I wanna thank the jury.
I wanna thank you, Judge.
And just keep this man
off the street, please.
I would like to say to Jeffrey Dahmer
that he don't know the pain, the hurt,
the loss, and the mental state
that he had put our family in.
I don't wanna ever see my mother
have to go through this again!
Never, Jeffrey.
Jeffrey, I hate you, motherfucker!
I hate you!
Jeffrey's out of control!
Don't fuck with me, Jeffrey!
I'll kill you, goddamn it!
Look at me, motherfucker!
- Ah! I could kill you!
- Lunch and recess.
Fucking kill you, motherfucker!
She was coming
across the courtroom at him,
intent, it appeared to me, to attack him.
He was cool. He kept control.
I would've thought he'd jump up.
He didn't.
He just sat there.
This is Jeffrey Dahmer under stress.
The judge said to Jeffrey,
"Is there anything you'd like to say
in addressing the court
before I pass judgment?"
This has never been a case
of trying to get free.
Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
I hated no one.
I knew I was sick or evil, or both.
Now I believe I was sick.
I take all the blame for what I did.
I hurt many people.
I've hurt my mother and father
and stepmother.
I love them all so very much.
I hope that they will find
the same peace I am looking for.
This left the judge to
hand down the stiffest possible sentence
in a state with no death penalty.
Dahmer was sentenced to 15
consecutive terms of life imprisonment.
Yes!
Finally they had something
to cheer about for the first time
since these family members learned
of Jeffrey Dahmer and what he did.
Life goes on.
Maybe what I've learned through
this tragedy will help someone else.
And I just thank God for this verdict.
Dahmer identified Steven's picture and
was asked how he could be sure who it was.
He told the police,
"You always remember your first."
I want him to know
that we also remember our first.
Not one day has passed
that we've not thought about Steve.
There's a sense of closure in the sense
Especially for the families
that waited years to find out
what had happened to their sons.
It's a sad sense of closure,
but it's closure.
Dahmer was sent to Columbia
Correctional Facility in Wisconsin.
I dunno what prison systems are like.
I have a picture
of a very dreary, gray place.
I was thinking maybe that in prison,
they'll maybe let me do something
with growing some kind of a plant.
Uh, I've always had an interest
in growing plants.
I had plants at the apartment.
He was put on suicide watch,
so he was placed in a single cell,
not in the bullpen.
He told me,
"What do I have to look forward to?"
I said, "You know,
there's a lot of things that you can do."
"You said you were reading the Bible."
"And you wanted to get back into it."
So he did make those, uh, overt actions
to try and redeem himself in God's eyes.
I got a phone call in 1994
from a minister friend in Milwaukee,
who was in Milwaukee at the time,
saying an inmate wanted to be baptized.
He said,
"You might wanna sit down for this one."
"His name is Jeffrey Dahmer."
I was nervous about meeting him.
I'd never been to a prison before.
I'd never been to a murderer before.
I was sitting there thinking, "Wow."
"I'm in a room with a guy
who's killed a lot of young men."
And I looked at his hands. And his hands
I thought his hands were relatively small
compared to my hands.
With those hands, he strangled men,
and yet here I am talking to him
as if, you know, we're just normal people.
I said, "Yes, I'll I'll baptize you."
That seemed to cause him
a great deal of relief.
He says, "Well, I was afraid you'd say,
'You are too evil."
"You are too horrible,
too wicked to be baptized.'"
Jeff was brought in.
I pushed his head under the water,
and when he came up, I said,
"Welcome to the family of God."
On the day of his baptism,
John Wayne Gacy
was executed on that same day.
There was a full solar eclipse as well.
Some tried to read into that some kind
of mystical, uh, meaning behind all this.
I met him once a week from that point on
for about an hour.
It was a matter of growing in his faith,
understanding what his faith was about,
and then continue each week.
Jeffrey Dahmer lives
in that building back there.
Disciplinary Segregation Two.
Now, he has a job,
mopping and sweeping up floors,
and officials hope eventually he'll be
able to mix with the general population.
On the last day I saw him,
it was the day before Thanksgiving.
He gave me a card,
and he underlined the word "friend."
It indicated that, uh, he was beginning
to understand
what friendship was
for the very first time.
After he was in prison for a year,
I went and visited him.
He said, "I'm not gonna do this anymore.
I can't just sit here in isolation."
He said,
"If I can't interact with other people,
that's gonna be worse than if I died."
He said, "I'm gonna be asked
to be put in general population."
I said, "Jeff, you know,
you're gonna be dead shortly."
"Because everybody had such strong,
strong views
and opinions about your actions."
"We don't need any further loss of life."
I tell you, Wendy.
I don't think I'm gonna be able to keep
a level head. I really don't.
Because I've always been one
who needs stimulation, mental stimulation.
Uh
And I just don't have
the patience that I should.
I had a very hard time
that day leaving.
And I just said, "Please don't do this."
"You're just not gonna make it."
In November of 1994, while he was
in the prison, he was at the work detail.
He and a man named Jesse Anderson
were assigned to clean up
lockers in the gym.
Christopher Scarver, a man who my office
had convicted of murder
a number of years earlier,
was on the same work detail.
He took the barbell from the exercise room
and bludgeoned Dahmer
over the head with that weapon.
The information I received
from the prison was
he did not resist the attack.
The irony in all of this is that
the first time that Mr. Dahmer killed
was when he picked up
some weight lifting equipment
and took the life of Steven Hicks.
The whole thing came full cycle.
He was in general population
within a year of when he was killed.
It was surprising
that Dahmer lived that long.
Dahmer's father Lionel joins us.
Tell me, you told me that you were at work
when your wife called
to say your son had been injured.
What then happened after that?
She had called and
and hit me with the news
that that Jeff had passed away
that morning about ten o'clock.
I just couldn't believe it. I
I started sobbing and and, uh, shaking.
I was very upset.
You can't help but become close
with somebody
when you spend that many days,
weeks, months with them.
Some suspected that the prison system
had deliberately undertaken
to execute Dahmer,
and the governor, very wisely,
immediately ordered a commission
to investigate it.
This prison has nearly 3 dozen
video monitors, electronic steel doors,
yet somehow 25-year-old
Christopher Scarver
allegedly managed to elude
the elaborate security system.
One went to answer a phone call
the other was listening to music.
It was ridiculous no one was around.
I used to work in prison.
We watched them bathe.
We watched them eat and sleep.
We watched them pee and poo.
Any time they moved, we were there.
Dahmer was one of the most celebrated
prisoners in the western hemisphere.
How is it that so prominent a prisoner
could be executed in the prison?
There was a study, and, uh, the commission
said there was no crime involved,
that there was no conspiracy,
no inside job to get rid of Dahmer.
They have given him good, fair, uh, care.
They've guarded him.
Uh, they knew the potential dangers.
It's not the prison's fault.
Jeff, for all that he was a killer,
could never defend himself.
I I could not celebrate
when he was killed.
I can understand why some might,
but I felt nothing but sadness.
A sad story with a sad ending.
Jeffrey Dahmer
was a very complex person.
He was a very hurting individual
that felt soulless, felt empty.
Did it enter your mind
that it seemed a waste to destroy somebody
who looked so nice
while they were still alive?
Yeah, it did.
I felt that it was
a waste that I couldn't keep them longer
without having to kill them,
but I didn't know any other way
to make them stay
and to control them.
I had no choice in the matter.
Did you, uh,
feel emotions of any kind?
I felt a lot of
a great deal of remorse.
I don't think Jeffrey
ever found out
a good enough answer for him
as to why he did what he did.
He said, "Through all
of these forensic doctors I'm talking to,
if one of them
could give me a reason why."
"I really would like to know."
But with his death,
I knew he would never find out why.
We can easily just say
this is an evil monster.
"Why'd he do it?" "'Cause he's evil."
"How do we know?" "'Cause he did it."
It's just a label
masquerading as an explanation.
There were still things
that I wanted to know about him,
things I wanted to talk to him about.
It was a waste of an opportunity
for people to study what made him tick.
They were horrific, terrible things
that he did,
but if he really couldn't
control his conduct,
let's find out what's going on here.
Maybe we can all learn something
as a society.
Jeffrey Dahmer, he didn't care.
He had no sympathy for them.
He had no remorse.
And far as I know, he never felt bad
for the people he harmed,
all the damage he did.
Dahmer's victims had
very little recourse in the end.
And the family members who had survived,
there was very little
to compensate them for their losses.
But what was left was Dahmer's property
that had been taken out of his apartment.
That's when a judge ordered
that Dahmer's possessions,
including his instruments of death,
be auctioned off to the highest bidder.
The proceeds would be divided
among the victims' families.
A philanthropist purchased
everything on behalf of the victims.
Milwaukee businessman
Joe Zilber
launched an effort
to buy everything and destroy it.
Zilber reached out
to fellow business leaders, politicians,
and prominent Milwaukeeans.
They raised $400,000
and purchased all the items.
They're upset that
a situation would have to occur
where these terrible, terrible items
would go on a public auction block
in a very highly visible,
worldwide way.
The items were then
loaded into a garbage truck
and taken to an undisclosed landfill
in Illinois.
He took lives
for a few hours of sexual pleasure
of persons that had done him nothing evil,
or toward which he would have no ill will.
He took their life.
That's the tragedy.
I would hope the world
would forget about Dahmer,
and he would become
a part of the ash bin of history.
All the tenants
living in the Oxford Apartments,
we held a meeting
to decide on what we were gonna do.
And we decided
that we didn't want to live there anymore.
It will give me relief
to know that the young men that died here,
their souls and their body,
will seem at rest with this down.
So the Oxford will be razed,
and it is hoped the tragic memories
born here can be buried forever.
What many call a symbol
of pain and senseless violence
will no longer be so visible
to the city of Milwaukee
and the families
of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims.
I can understand Milwaukee
wants to put this case behind it.
I think it's important,
though, to understand
that there are people out there
who do horrific things.
Evil is real.
Jeffrey Dahmer not only
killed his victims,
but he hurt a community.
The pain of Jeffrey Dahmer's killings
hurt Milwaukee.
The The families were people
that we saw on TV.
The neighborhood was a neighborhood
that we knew.
This was a case that exposed
a lot of racial issues,
a lot of different biases,
both in the police department
and the community that is Milwaukee.
What Dahmer was doing was
he was feeding on the undetectable
in our community,
and he was protected by the institutions
that were supposed to be protecting
these weakest, most vulnerable people.
He preyed on them,
and the police did not protect them.
Whatever we learn, it's not gonna be worth
what these families have suffered,
but let's not just throw it away.
It's important to get this right,
to talk about this in a way
that gives dignity to these victims.
We can't go back and fix
what happened back in 1991
and prior to that
when he started killing people.
What you can do, though,
is have people talk about what happened,
so we don't fall into the same traps
and shed light on it,
so the crime that we see on a daily basis
stops or slows down.
The poverty, the high crime,
the fact that we don't care
about the disadvantaged,
all those things provided
a playground for him to operate in.
To prevent something like that
from happening again,
you have to address these issues
today.
There's always
gonna be that pain,
that remembrance of what happened.
We're always gonna do the "what-ifs."
You know? Where would they be now?
What kind of life would they have had?
You're always gonna miss that person.
Humanizing the individuals
who lost their lives
is important.
Recognizing that
each one of those young men
had a mother,
a father,
had sisters and brothers
that loved them and still miss them.
They were just trying to do
what we're all trying to do.
Survive.
Live and enjoy the life
that they'd been given.
They had a life
that they loved.
I think it's important
to tell their story.
Nobody deserves to die like that.