Serial Killers: Article 4 : Jeffrey Dahmer

Article Four: Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer

                                                         The Milwaukee Cannibal

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

His childhood seemed normal until his mother and father decided to get a divorce. His mother took his brother and moved away leaving Jeffrey to be raised by his father Lionel who tried to help his son and would continue to stay a devoted father.

At age 14, Jeffrey would begin to experience fantasies about killing and having sex with men but would not act them out until right after his graduation from High School in June of 1978 when he met his first victim, Steven Hicks.

Steven Hicks was looking for a ride that night and ended up following the road to a horrible death. Jeffrey talked Steven into party with him and Steven agreed. They drank and had sex. After a few hours Steven indicated that he needed to leave but Jeffrey was not having it and smacked him upside his head with a barbell, killing him. He then cut up Steven’s body and then buried it in the woods behind his dad’ house.

Jeffrey enrolled in college and failed out. He then joined the Army and was stationed in Germany but would get discharged for alcoholism. After a brief stay in Florida, he returned to his father’s home and dug up Stevens’s body so he could shatter the bones and spread the remains in the woods.

 In 1981, Jeffrey was arrested for disorderly conduct and drunk in public. Having had about all he could with Jeffrey’s drinking his father sent him to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin. Everything was good for about five years when he was arrested for masturbating in front of two boys. He was tried, convicted, and sentences to a year of probation.

 In 1987, Jeffrey went to a gay bar and met Steven Toumi where he coaxed Steven to come back to his hotel and party. Jeffrey was supposedly a smooth talker and would keep to his routine or “rituals” if you will, with very few differences in elements. His invitations were alluring with promises of beer, watching gay porn, and offering payment for taking photographs. When they got to his apartment to pose for photos, he would serve them drinks with crushed sedatives in them. When they were incoherent, that is when his fun for Jeffrey began.

Routinely his victims would pass out, at which time he would strangle them to their deaths. He would then cut open the torsos dismember the bodies, and dispose of them. He would keep the parts of the body that he wanted and the rest would either be thrown into the trash or he would put them in a chemical barrel filled with acid and then flush the liquid down the toilet or sink; photographing the whole event as it took place. This is the fate that Steven Toumi would meet, along with many others.

Only a few months later, he would meet 14 year old Jamie Doxtator who was standing outside of a gay bar and in March of 1988, he met Richard Guerrero. Both would meet the same fate.

 Jeffrey’s grandma asked him to move out because of his drunken nature and partying with other boy’s, totally unaware of the horror that was taking place in her basement. In September of 1988, he moved North 24th street in Milwaukee, Wisconsis and would get into trouble immediately.

A fourteen year old boy came home one evening and his parents just knew something was wrong with him so they took him to the E.R. where the doctors found out that he had been drugged and it was also learned that he had been fondled. His parents, Mr. & Mrs. Sinthasomphone sought charges against the man accused, who was Jeffrey Dahmer. He was arrested and charged with sexual exploitation of a child and second degree assault in which he pled guilty to on January 30, 1989. Even though it is not procedure, it is my belief that once someone pleads guilty, they should either be sentenced right then and there or be held until sentencing. Had he been held for sentencing that the next victim may still be alive.

While Jeffrey, out on bail, was waiting to hear his sentence, he went to a gay bar and met Anthony Sears who was his next victim. He decided that he was going to keep his head so he boiled it and painted it so that it would look like a model head that a med student might have. This was one of the trophies that he kept for sexual pleasure.

On May 23, 1989, Jeffrey was sentenced for his crime against the minor child of Mr. & Mrs. Sinthasomphone. The Assistant District Attorney was asking the court to impose a sentence of at least five years while the defense would argue that he needed help for this one action, this one mistake that Mr. Dahmer had made. 

 Jeffrey turned on the charm for the judge, begging him to allow him this one chance to redeem himself because he had now had a steady job, was doing good and didn’t want to lose the one thing he had going for him. The judge then imposed a sentence of one year in jail on work release conditions and five years of probation.

 When it came time to release him, Jeffrey’s father begged authorities not to release him from jail until he got treatment but despite his father’s efforts, Jeffrey was released after only serving 10 months of his sentence. Having lost his apartment, Jeffrey moved back into his grandma’s house on the condition that it was temporary.

 In May of 1990, he would move into 924 North 25th Street, Apt.213

 where he would kill several more young men. In June he killed Edward Smith, In July he killed Ricky Lee Beeks, In September he killed Ernest Miller and David Thomas. In February 1991, he killed Curtis Straughter in April he killed Errol Lindsey and in May he killed Anthony Hughes.

Three days after he murdered Anthony Hughes, he met Konerak Sinthasomphone. Does that name look familiar? Konerak Sinthasomphone was the other son of Mr. & Mrs. Sinthasomphone who had just gone through emotional turmoil at the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer only two years earlier when their son was molested.

After drugging Konerak, the 14 year old did everything that he could to get away from Jeffrey, fearing what would be happening next. He did everything he could to get out the door and get help. A neighbor saw him in the street naked and called 911 immediately. When the police arrived the boy could barely speak because of the sedatives that he had injested. 

 In the neighbor’s complaint, she told the officers that she saw the boy struggling and trying to get away from the man who lived in Apt. 213. They went to the door and Jeffrey turned on the charm. He gave the police his identification and explained that the boy was 19 years old and they had just had a “gay lovers quarrel”.

 The police looked into the apartment and see Konerak’s clothes stacked and folded on the couch along with the photos that Dahmer had taken of Konerak, and the apartment was spotless, but it had a bad stench to it. After seeing the photos, the police were satisfied that what he was telling them was the truth, and thinking they had better things to pursue they left.

 I have huge, huge problems with this. There have been several articles published about this serial killer. All of which blame only Dahmer. While I know that he committed these acts there are several things that could have and should have been done at this point. I have not personally worked in the field but have studied extensively about criminal procedures.

My first question is, why did the police not investigate how old the Konerak actually was. Was he asked for id? If they had made a positive identification on him in the first place they would have found him to be a minor.

Then, they had Jeffrey Dahmer's identification in their hands. Why was it not called into the station for verification? Had they checked him out than they would have found out he was a convicted sex offender but not only that, they would have found out that he was convicted for acts on Konerak’s brother to boot.

Another thing I have a problem with is the fact that they saw that the apartment was very clean and organized but smelled? That right there should have been an indication that something was wrong. I could almost understand a smelly apartment if the place is a nasty pig pen but, if it was spotless it should not stink. The stench was actually coming from Anthony Hughes who was decomposing in his bedroom as the policeman stood in the living room of the apartment.

Again, I have not been in the field but, I know for a fact the death has a distinct smell about it through my own experience of my neighbor being killed, dismembered and stuffed under his trailer (no lie, it happened in 2002).

I smelled it and it was nauseating and something like no other smell. When the stench first became apparent, I was outside gabbing with another neighbor when the wind kicked up and I mentioned to my neighbor that they needed to check under their trailer because it smelled like something was dead under there.

 Only two days later the body was discovered by my landlord when he was removing the carpet that was under the trailer, thinking that was what smelled. Well, when the arm came out that confirmed it was definitely the smell (he sold the trailer park that day). Why did these trained officer’s not investigate this strange smell?

The last but not least problem that I have is the fact that they left this unidentified, incoherent (what they thought) man there. By leaving the essentially imposed a death sentence upon this child and in my mind is responsible for his death, the death of Matt Turner in June, the deaths of Jeremiah Weinburger, Oliver Lacey and Joseph Bradekoft in July.

Had they done their jobs, they very well may have saved all these lives after their visit to his apartment in the end of May, especially because at this time Dahmer’s killing spree was escalating. Mistakes were definitely made by the criminal justice system on many levels involving Jeffrey, as he continued to trickle through the cracks.

On July 22, 1991 while two officers were on patrol, they observed an African-American man (who would be later identified as Terry Edmonds) came running down the streets with handcuffs dangling off of his wrist. Thinking that he had run from an officer, they apprehended him and began learning about an event that took place at the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer.

With as homophobic and prejudice as the police department seemed at this time, luckily they decided to check out his story and knocked on Jeffrey’s door. Again, he turned on the charm, claiming that it was a lover’s quarrel and told the officer that he would retrieve the key from the bedroom, to unlock the cuffs.  The victim then spoke up and informed the officers that he had knives in the bedroom so the officer took it upon himself to go to the bedroom and retrieve the key. Thankfully the thought hadn’t crossed the officers mind that he also had a set of handcuff keys, because if it had than what he would find in the bedroom would have again gone overlooked.

The officer walked into the bedroom to get the key and saw photographs of murders that had been performed and yelled out to the other officer to arrest Dahmer. Upon further investigation of the apartment they would find one head in the refrigerator and three more in the freezer. In the hallway was a closet with a deadbolt that upon breaking it opened they saw that it contained ethyl alcohol, chloroform, formaldehyde, glass jars with private parts in them, more self taken photographs of Jeffrey with his trophy’s, and a stockpile of hands, private parts, and two skulls.

During interrogation at the police station, Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to all of the murders that he had committed. The confession was 160 pages of shocking and gory details of the crimes that he had committed. The community was outraged, and rightfully so. When the trial began, the courtroom had to be swept for bombs and explosives and Jeffrey had to stand trial behind bullet-proof partitions. The courtroom was packed with the victim’s families, news media, public entities, and Jeffrey Dahmer’s father and step-mother.

On July 13, 1992, against the advice of his lawyer, Jeffrey Dahmer changed his plea to guilty due to insanity. He wrote a long letter to the judge and jury begging them to end his life for all the things that he had done but his charm would not work this time. The community wanted to see him suffer for his crimes for the rest of his life.

Instead he was sentenced to 15 life terms to be served consecutively totaling 957 years. He was sent to the Columbia Institute in Portage, Wisconsin where he would reside until his death on November 28, 1994 at 9:11 a.m. when he was killed by a prison inmate who crushed his skull with a broom. It is funny how karma works isn’t it?

Jeffrey Dahmer’s father tried all of Jeffrey’s life to get him some help. He knew something was wrong but he could never have known to what extent and extreme the situation had escalated to. Sigmund Freud had the idea that parents are responsible for the actions of their children. Being the mother of a child with neurological problems myself, I don’t believe that Sigmund Freud’s ideals were correct. Parents can only do but so much to help their children if they are not getting the help they need, the resources to help him, coupled with a justice system that wouldnt impose proper punishment or treatment.

His father Lionel wrote about his situation in a book titled A Father’s Story, some good suggested reading material. In the book he states:

“My son will never be more than a liar, an alcoholic, an exhibitionist, and a molester of children. I cannot imagine how he became such a ruined soul. For the first time, I no longer believed that my efforts and resources alone would be enough to save my son. There was something missing in Jeff…we called in conscience, it either died or had never been alive in the first place”.