Serial Killer Documentary - Jeffrey Dahmer： The Blood Curling Story Of The Milwaukee Cannibal

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Shortly before midnight on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police
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officers were flagged down in their patrol car by a
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man with a pair of handcuffs dangling from one wrist.
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The police had no idea that this bizarre encounter would
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lead to the arrest of one of the most prolific
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serial killers in U.S.
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History.
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That night, people were afraid. People were whispering under their breaths,
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you know, it was the devil.
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The man had escaped from a small one-bedroom apartment on
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North 25th Street. When the officers went to investigate, they
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found themselves in a living nightmare.
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They saw the body parts and then one of the
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officers said he heard a scream. Then he realized later
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he was the one who screamed when he saw the body.
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Without detection, 31-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer had killed 17 young men
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across a 13-year period.
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He hasn't got the same level of repulsion and shock
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at dead bodies or mutilated bodies that most of us have.
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It was just another aspect of his life.
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Jeffrey Dahmer had etched his name in history as one
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of the world's most evil killers. The name Jeffrey Dahmer
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has become synonymous with evil. Between 1978 and 1991, he
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killed 17 young men and boys by drugging them before
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strangling them to death. As the revelations of the murders
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came to light, it was the behaviour of Dahmer once
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he'd killed his victims that really stunned the world, with
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stories of necrophilia and cannibalism. The first journalist to arrive
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at the crime scene was Annie Schwartz.
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It wasn't a gory crime scene. It was really quite antiseptic.
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It was a very simple one-bedroom with a kitchen and
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a living room, and it looked like a regular single
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guy lived there. There were some dishes in the sink,
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but by and large, this was not some chamber of
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horrors like people will describe it. Certainly not at first look.
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Once detectives and officers started searching further, that's when they
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found out the actual horror was in that apartment.
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The story of this macabre killer begins 30 years before
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his arrest. Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on
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May the 21st, 1960. The family moved to Iowa before
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settling in Ohio in 1966.
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He lived with his parents. who were constantly, constantly, as
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he put it, at each other's throats. You know, his
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mother appeared to have been, you know, this raging bundle
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of neurotic behavior. The parents were constantly fighting and screaming. And,
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you know, Dahmer himself evidently, throughout much of his early life,
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was completely, completely ignored by both of them.
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They were so caught up in their own psychological turmoil.
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Jeffrey Dahmer never really made close social links with any
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of his peers.
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He was a little bit odd.
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And if you speak to his school friends at the time,
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he didn't seem to have a lot of empathy for
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other children. So when children would fall over in the
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playground or get hurt or cry, he didn't appear to
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be affected by that and would sometimes laugh at them.
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So something wasn't quite right with a young Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Feeling ostracized by his family and classmates, Dahmer spent a
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lot of time playing alone in the woods surrounding his
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Ohio home.
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Well, he had a really morbid curiosity with death from
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quite a young age, and this started with a fairly
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innocent insect collection, and he would keep the bodies of
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insects inside jars full of chemicals. This soon progressed. He
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would go fishing. And he was interested in what the
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fish looked like on the inside. So he would chop
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up the fish to have a look at this.
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Dahmer took his fish and cut it open. He was
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fascinated with the inside of the fish. And one of
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his little friends asked him, Jeffrey, why do you, what
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are you doing? And he said, just look at it.
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You know, and this, you know, escalates, you know, to
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the point that it's, you know, he's apparently killing stray
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dogs and you know, decapitating them.
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One of the young boys in the neighborhood was walking
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in the woods behind Dharma's house when Dharma was a teenager,
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and he came across the body of a dead dog,
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and it was mutilated, and it was nailed to a tree.
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So there's some early interest in animal anatomy that blossoms
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into this very, very dark obsession and then somehow becomes
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tangled up with his own sexuality.
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Darma continued to struggle to fit in at high school
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and turn to alcohol from a young age.
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Well, Darma started drinking when he was at school, and
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one of his former classmates remembered that he used to
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come in with a cup, and he didn't have tea
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or coffee in this cup. He had Scotch whiskey in it.
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So this was quite a disturbing behavior for a teenager.
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There's a thought that, in hindsight, you ask why more
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people didn't try to intervene. You've got a kid coming
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drunk to school. But back in the 70s, when Dahmer's
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coming to school intoxicated, nobody thinks, gee, we better make
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sure we take care of this, because what if he
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turns out to be a serial killer?
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In the summer of 1978, Dahmer's parents finally divorced.
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The breakdown of Jeffrey Dahmer's parents' marriage was quite a
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tough time for him. His parents were at each other's throats.
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It was not an amicable divorce at all, and And
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each of them was forcing him to side with them.
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So he felt very much torn between his parents. So
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this was a real source of conflict for him. And
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I think at this time, children often who have these
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experiences will retreat into themselves. They will preoccupy themselves with
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things that they're interested in and will lose themselves in
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their own fantasy world. And I think that's very much
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what happened with Dharma.
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Having just recently graduated from high school, Dahmer soon had
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no one around him at all.
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Well, in 1978, Jeffrey Dahmer was 18. His mother had
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gone away with his younger brother and his father was
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living in a hotel. So he's alone and he's ruminating
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and he's fantasizing and things are going to take a
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turn for the worse quite soon after this.
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On June the 18th, 1978, Dahmer's fantasy world collided with
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the real one when he pulled over to pick up
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a 19-year-old hitchhiker called Stephen Hicks.
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Dahmer picked him up and invited him back to his
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house to have some drinks and I guess maybe smoke
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some dope.
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They were in the basement of his parents' home. They
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had had sex and then Stephen Hicks wanted to leave.
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And that was when Dahmer just wanted so badly to
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have company. Sounds like such a textbook psychological thing, you know,
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abandonment syndrome, but this was at the heart of what
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made him so needy for company.
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And then when the guy said he wanted to leave,
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Dahmer clubbed him on the back of the head with
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a barbell and then strangled him, then ultimately disposed of
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the body, removed all the flesh, and eventually dissolved it
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in acid.
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And pulverized the bones with a sledgehammer.
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This is a really, really brutal crime, and he disposes
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of the body parts in the woods behind his house,
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and that's a really symbolic place for Jeffrey Dahmer, because
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this is a place where he's dismembered animals before, where
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he's displayed mutilated dogs on tree trunks. So we're seeing
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that this place is special to him.
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Dahmer had experienced taking the life of another human for
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the first time.
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I think that the first murder is a real milestone
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for Jeffrey Dahmer. So he knows now that he's capable
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of this. He knows that he's capable of taking someone
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else's life. So it's not just a fantasy anymore. It's
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now a reality. He's gone from harming animals to harming people,
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and he's not going to stop.
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He's not desperate, but he becomes accustomed to it.
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He becomes ready to kill again and just kill and
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kill and kill and kill until he gets caught.
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But it wasn't until 13 years later in August 1991
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that Dahmer was finally apprehended after one of his potential
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victims escaped from his Milwaukee apartment. Once in custody, Dahmer
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confessed to killing 17 young men and boys. The man
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whose job it was to prosecute the relentless killer was
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Milwaukee District Attorney Mike McCann.
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The word evil doesn't come up very often. It just doesn't. Guilty,
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not guilty.
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Did he do it?
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Didn't he do it?
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Culpability, yes.
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But not often evil, because evil is almost a moral issue.
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The word came up with Dahmer. You couldn't help see
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what he did. Innocent people, strangers, to take for a
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couple of hours of sex, to take a human being's life.
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That's so evil. So evil.
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Dahmer's case made headlines across the world after the details
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of his grisly confession were leaked.
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A New York Times reporter compromised the integrity of a
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worker at our building and got a copy of the confession.
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It was a detailed 38-page confession, so the details of
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the gory things he had done again captured people's interest.
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So that's how it rapidly became a matter.
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Of The confession outlined the life of a deranged serial killer.
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After murdering Stephen Hicks and desecrating his body in 1978,
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Dahmer didn't kill again for nine years. After dropping out
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of Ohio State University after just one semester, he was
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spending most of his days drinking until his father urged
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him to enlist in the U.S.
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Army.
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The alcohol continued as a theme when he joined the
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army and he moved to Germany. One of his former
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colleagues remembers him just sitting in his room drinking gin
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all day long, not even leaving his room to eat.
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So there was a real dependency on alcohol.
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In 1981, 21-year-old Dahmer was discharged from the army after
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his drinking rendered him incapable of serving. After spending a
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month sleeping rough on the beaches of Florida, he returned
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to Ohio. But his father had had enough and shipped
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him off to start a new life in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.
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He was sent to live with his grandmother, who was
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the one adult apparently he had, you know, something approaching,
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you know, a normal affection for.
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I was there. He really embarked on this career of horror.
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By 1986, Dahmer had been arrested a couple of times
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for exposing himself in public once in front of a
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group of children. The hopeless alcoholic had managed to find
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work at a local chocolate factory in Milwaukee and was
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frequenting gay bars and bathhouses.
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I think being homosexual affected Dahmer in two ways. Firstly,
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it was a source of shame for him because it
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was quite a stigmatized social identity at the time. but
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also it enabled him an opportunity when it came to
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his killing behavior. So being homosexual at this time, it
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was something that happened in the shadows. It was something
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that happened underground, and this was the ideal place for
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someone like him to go hunting.
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It was this exposure to the gay scene that seemed
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to reawaken the dark sexual urges inside of him. And
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by September 1987, over nine years since the murder of
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Stephen Hicks, Jeffrey Dahmer was ready to kill again.
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His idea was to drug people and keep them with
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him so that they wouldn't answer back to him, they
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wouldn't argue with him, they wouldn't fight him. They would
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stay with him. That's what he wanted. He wanted companionship.
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So he would go to the bars on Milwaukee's near
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south side, and he would have conversations with people in
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these bars. And when he was talking to these people,
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these prospective victims, he would say, so what was it
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like when you came out? How was your family about it?
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So if your response was, oh, my family has been great,
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they're so supportive, I'm very close to my parents, that
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person wasn't going to be a victim. But if the
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person answered, my parents aren't speaking to me anymore, I'm
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estranged from my family. I'm kind of on my own now.
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That was the perfect victim for Jeffrey Dahmer because he
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wanted to choose people who wouldn't be missed.
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Between September 1987 and March 1988, Dahmer killed three men,
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the youngest a 14-year-old boy who he paid to pose
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for nude photographs before drugging and strangling him to death.
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He would dissolve the bodies in acid.
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He cleverly developed a program to destroy the bodies, to
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get rid of the bodies, left no evidence. This was
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a very clever killer, very clever killer.
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Dharma would dissolve his victims, presumably to make it easier
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to dispose of them. Dissolving tissue and chemicals can certainly
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interfere with identifying it as human tissue. It'll interfere with DNA.
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You're really left predominantly with skeletal remains to try and
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identify features such as age, sex, race.
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Dahmer murdered two of the victims at his grandmother's house
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where he was living.
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His grandmother became aware that he was bringing these young
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guys back to her house. I mean, she fought for
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gay sex. Obviously, she had no inkling of the atrocities
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he was committing on their bodies, although she was complaining
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also about a foul odor that she noticed.
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On September 25th, 1988, Dahmer moved into his own apartment
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on North 25th Street in Milwaukee and didn't wait long
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before attacking again. The very next day, September 26th, he
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enticed a 13-year-old boy back to his home and drugged him.
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One of the methods that Dahmer used to subdue his
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00:15:04.860 --> 00:15:08.950
victims was to use benzodiazepines, the same family of drugs
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00:15:09.279 --> 00:15:12.759
as Valium. He'd put them in drinks. That would make
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00:15:12.799 --> 00:15:16.899
you woozy, sleepy, and then eventually go unconscious.
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Dahmer sexually assaulted the boy, but somehow, possibly due to
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00:15:22.389 --> 00:15:26.450
Dahmer passing out drunk, the 13-year-old escaped and went to
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00:15:26.490 --> 00:15:32.700
the police. In January 1989, he was convicted of sexual assault,
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00:15:33.100 --> 00:15:37.129
but the sentencing was delayed until May, during which time
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an unrelenting Dharma, unbeknownst to the authorities, managed to claim
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a fifth victim. The 29-year-old served 10 months in prison,
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00:15:47.970 --> 00:15:51.429
but when he was released in March 1990, he picked
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up right where he left off.
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00:15:54.409 --> 00:15:58.539
So Jeffrey Dahmer really did ramp up his offending. The
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scale and the nature of his behavior became all the
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00:16:02.279 --> 00:16:06.679
more grotesque. So he wasn't just killing people, dismembering them,
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and then disposing of their bodies.
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He started to do some really bizarre things.
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He was in the process of constructing some hideously diabolical
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00:16:19.549 --> 00:16:24.019
shrine in his bedroom. out of the skulls and skeletons
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00:16:24.100 --> 00:16:29.940
of some of his victims. It's almost as though some bizarre,
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00:16:30.159 --> 00:16:36.330
archaic thing had broken through and he was performing or
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00:16:36.429 --> 00:16:43.850
creating some sort of ancient, you know, human sacrificial temple
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in this little Milwaukee apartment.
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In 1990, Dahmer killed another four young men. His MO
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00:16:53.379 --> 00:16:55.620
was becoming more and more polished.
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He would offer his victims money to go back to
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his apartment with him to take pictures, nude photographs of them,
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and then perhaps to have sex. Every single one of
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his victims went with him willingly. He would offer them
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a drink, and once he found out what they wanted
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00:17:15.750 --> 00:17:17.369
to drink, he kept a lot of things on hand
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different kinds of alcohol, and that's when he would put
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a drug in it that would put them to sleep
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00:17:24.349 --> 00:17:26.869
or that would relax them so that they would pass out.
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They would pass out, he would then have sex with
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00:17:29.059 --> 00:17:31.180
them while they were passed out, do with them as
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he wished, but of course they couldn't do to him.
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00:17:33.400 --> 00:17:35.279
Then as they approached recovery, coming out of it, he
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00:17:35.319 --> 00:17:36.140
was strangled to death.
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00:17:36.579 --> 00:17:39.660
It seemed as though Dahmer got a thrill, not from
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00:17:39.700 --> 00:17:42.869
the murder, but from the dead bodies of his victims.
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00:17:43.210 --> 00:17:47.759
Dahmer liked necrophilia. He liked sex with unconscious people. He
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00:17:47.799 --> 00:17:50.539
wasn't a slasher in the sense that he took delight
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00:17:50.619 --> 00:17:53.920
in killing. His purpose was sex with these people, company
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00:17:53.940 --> 00:17:55.750
with these people. That's hard to believe.
294
00:17:56.329 --> 00:18:01.509
He would commit necrophiliac sex acts on the corpses, dismember
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00:18:01.529 --> 00:18:04.670
the corpses, dissolve parts of the bodies in these vats
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00:18:04.750 --> 00:18:08.130
of acid he had, keep certain organs in his refrigerator,
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00:18:08.630 --> 00:18:11.319
some of which he would actually cannibalize.
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00:18:11.339 --> 00:18:15.299
Dahmer said that the cannibalism that he engaged in was
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00:18:15.460 --> 00:18:20.799
born out of He wanted to find out, first of all,
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00:18:20.920 --> 00:18:24.039
what that would be like. He also said that there
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00:18:24.119 --> 00:18:26.980
was an element of wanting to make these people a
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00:18:27.109 --> 00:18:29.849
part of him so they would be with him forever.
303
00:18:30.829 --> 00:18:31.490
Dahmer from the.
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00:18:31.450 --> 00:18:37.369
Beginning, you know, was driven by this terror of being alone.
305
00:18:38.039 --> 00:18:40.859
He said he killed his first victim, Stephen Hicks, when
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00:18:40.920 --> 00:18:43.299
Hicks said he had to go, and Dahmer didn't want
307
00:18:43.339 --> 00:18:46.440
to be alone. There's some desire, which is part of
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00:18:46.599 --> 00:18:49.859
normal sexuality. You know, you love somebody, you know, somebody
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00:18:49.880 --> 00:18:51.539
will say, oh, I love you so much I want to.
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Eat you up.
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00:18:52.509 --> 00:18:58.049
With normal people, that's obviously metaphorical, but it does express
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00:18:58.529 --> 00:19:01.390
some desire to be so close to the person that
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00:19:01.410 --> 00:19:03.930
you want to incorporate them into, you want to merge
314
00:19:03.970 --> 00:19:07.349
with them. But with something like Dahmer, that becomes this
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00:19:07.430 --> 00:19:08.710
very literal horror.
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00:19:09.329 --> 00:19:14.210
And the horror only became worse when Dahmer began experimenting
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00:19:14.269 --> 00:19:16.170
with his semi-conscious victims.
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00:19:16.880 --> 00:19:20.220
He would drill holes in their skulls and put muriatic
319
00:19:20.420 --> 00:19:23.740
acid inside to see if he could get them to
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00:19:23.759 --> 00:19:28.180
a zombie state so that he could keep them alive
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00:19:28.589 --> 00:19:30.109
and subservient to him.
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00:19:31.720 --> 00:19:36.170
Essentially an amateur version of attempting to perform a lobectomy
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00:19:36.329 --> 00:19:39.490
or a lobotomy but it would be an incredibly unpleasant
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00:19:39.529 --> 00:19:42.769
and damaging thing to do to someone's brain if you
325
00:19:43.269 --> 00:19:46.970
affect the frontal lobes you will affect personality potentially make
326
00:19:47.009 --> 00:19:51.230
somebody docile if he's less accurate you could essentially cause
327
00:19:51.289 --> 00:19:54.950
a stroke that could cause paralysis speech problems it really
328
00:19:55.029 --> 00:19:58.839
very much depends on which part of the brain is actually.
329
00:19:58.579 --> 00:20:02.480
Damaged but of course that didn't work and his victims
330
00:20:02.740 --> 00:20:09.359
died one after another hearing about that is the stuff
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00:20:09.660 --> 00:20:12.720
of horror movies. And the fact that it was happening
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00:20:12.859 --> 00:20:18.690
in a city where we were known for manufacturing and
333
00:20:18.910 --> 00:20:24.309
beer and a very good Midwestern work ethic, tight families,
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00:20:24.990 --> 00:20:29.519
this isn't the kind of thing that happens here.
335
00:20:29.660 --> 00:20:34.380
In May 1991, 31-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer was in his killing prime.
336
00:20:34.970 --> 00:20:39.170
He'd already murdered 11 men and had begun collecting bones
337
00:20:39.269 --> 00:20:44.359
and skulls from his victims and cannibalizing their organs. What
338
00:20:44.390 --> 00:20:47.539
would have been a nightmare for most was a fantasy
339
00:20:47.619 --> 00:20:51.059
for him, and he carefully went about his killings under
340
00:20:51.099 --> 00:20:54.599
the radar of the police and the people of Milwaukee.
341
00:20:55.480 --> 00:20:57.980
Jeffrey Dahmer had a job in a local chocolate factory,
342
00:20:58.420 --> 00:21:00.920
and I think for him it enabled him to maintain
343
00:21:00.940 --> 00:21:04.170
a facade of normality. He was just an average Joe,
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00:21:04.230 --> 00:21:06.720
a regular guy who went to work every day.
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00:21:06.740 --> 00:21:09.900
I think he killed so many people without being caught
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00:21:09.960 --> 00:21:13.180
because of the fact that he looked like everyone else.
347
00:21:13.299 --> 00:21:17.799
He did what successful serial killers do. He blended. They
348
00:21:17.819 --> 00:21:21.589
blend in with society. Now, he was a Caucasian male
349
00:21:21.660 --> 00:21:26.150
living in a predominantly African-American neighborhood, but he didn't talk
350
00:21:26.170 --> 00:21:30.569
to anybody. He didn't bother anybody. He was barely someone
351
00:21:30.609 --> 00:21:38.009
people noticed. Barely noticed. He also was targeting people who
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00:21:38.490 --> 00:21:40.799
he found out might not be missed.
353
00:21:41.519 --> 00:21:44.039
For most people, if they were to commit the type
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00:21:44.059 --> 00:21:46.460
of acts that Jeffrey Dahmer did, they would in no
355
00:21:46.500 --> 00:21:49.380
way be able to function normally. But Jeffrey Dahmer was
356
00:21:49.440 --> 00:21:53.180
not most people. He hasn't got the same level of
357
00:21:53.240 --> 00:21:57.220
repulsion and shock at dead bodies or mutilated bodies that
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00:21:57.299 --> 00:21:58.200
most of us have.
359
00:21:58.619 --> 00:22:00.660
It was just another aspect of his life.
360
00:22:01.099 --> 00:22:03.240
It was not known that we had a serial slayer
361
00:22:03.259 --> 00:22:05.240
loose in our city. We did not know because he
362
00:22:05.279 --> 00:22:08.480
was so cleverly disposing of the bodies. The families were
363
00:22:08.519 --> 00:22:10.819
reporting the sons were missing, but the police were not
364
00:22:10.859 --> 00:22:13.920
finding bodies. And not infrequently, young men, something happens in
365
00:22:13.940 --> 00:22:16.819
their life, they just up and leave town. It happens
366
00:22:16.880 --> 00:22:18.799
enough that the police don't get worried. If it was
367
00:22:18.819 --> 00:22:21.619
a woman, they'll immediately commit resources to investigate, but the
368
00:22:21.640 --> 00:22:22.200
young men, they don't.
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00:22:22.960 --> 00:22:28.950
But on May the 26th, 1991, Dahmer came agonizingly close
370
00:22:28.970 --> 00:22:32.730
to capture after an encounter with a 14-year-old boy.
371
00:22:33.549 --> 00:22:38.220
Dahmer had taken Conorac's synthesis phone. A young Asian male
372
00:22:38.779 --> 00:22:40.500
who he found attractive, he met him in the mall,
373
00:22:41.119 --> 00:22:44.380
offered him money to go back to his apartment. He
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00:22:44.420 --> 00:22:49.779
went and he began to work the ritual. Dahmer would
375
00:22:50.119 --> 00:22:53.559
drug him. And then he began the process of this
376
00:22:54.380 --> 00:22:58.220
crude lobotomy. And he had drilled a hole in this
377
00:22:58.480 --> 00:23:01.289
young man's head. He took a break. He ran out
378
00:23:01.349 --> 00:23:05.329
to get more beer. While he was gone, Conorac ran
379
00:23:05.369 --> 00:23:08.690
out of the apartment. He was naked. He was completely dazed.
380
00:23:09.230 --> 00:23:11.809
And he was running up the alley next to Dahmer's
381
00:23:11.849 --> 00:23:17.490
apartment building. A woman in another apartment building saw him
382
00:23:17.670 --> 00:23:21.259
running up the alley. and said, there's a boy running
383
00:23:21.319 --> 00:23:25.099
up the alley, something's going on, and then these women
384
00:23:25.119 --> 00:23:25.779
call the police.
385
00:23:26.240 --> 00:23:27.619
And then Dahmer appeared.
386
00:23:27.660 --> 00:23:31.910
And again, this is another, like, remarkable characteristic of these
387
00:23:31.950 --> 00:23:37.710
psychopaths is that they have an ability to maintain, you know,
388
00:23:37.730 --> 00:23:45.299
a kind of coolness under the most extraordinarily high-pressure circumstances.
389
00:23:45.740 --> 00:23:48.480
So he walked up to the officers, good evening officers.
390
00:23:48.539 --> 00:23:53.019
He's very polite. He's sober, and he said, this is
391
00:23:53.059 --> 00:23:56.240
my boyfriend. He came to stay with me. We had
392
00:23:56.259 --> 00:23:57.839
a little bit too much to drink, and he ran
393
00:23:57.859 --> 00:24:00.740
out of the house. He said, how old is he?
394
00:24:01.440 --> 00:24:06.349
Dahmer said, he's 19. And the officers said, okay, well,
395
00:24:06.730 --> 00:24:10.029
just to make sure, let's all walk back up to
396
00:24:10.069 --> 00:24:10.950
the apartment together.
397
00:24:11.690 --> 00:24:13.890
The cops went in and looked around. They even peeked
398
00:24:13.930 --> 00:24:16.410
into the bedroom where there was a decomposing corpse of
399
00:24:16.470 --> 00:24:19.359
one of Dahmer's previous victims, but You know, they took
400
00:24:19.400 --> 00:24:21.279
such a cursory look at it that they didn't even
401
00:24:21.339 --> 00:24:21.799
notice it.
402
00:24:23.099 --> 00:24:26.359
Assuming the couple were having a lover's tiff, the two
403
00:24:26.420 --> 00:24:30.779
police officers left Konorak alone with Dahmer in the apartment building,
404
00:24:31.380 --> 00:24:34.079
and in the early hours of the morning, he murdered
405
00:24:34.119 --> 00:24:38.319
the 14-year-old boy. An opportunity to catch the killer had
406
00:24:38.380 --> 00:24:38.920
been missed.
407
00:24:39.319 --> 00:24:42.559
I think that really speaks volumes about the attitudes of
408
00:24:42.579 --> 00:24:45.619
the police at the time in terms of ethnic minorities,
409
00:24:45.680 --> 00:24:48.369
in terms of young people, in terms of the gay community.
410
00:24:49.039 --> 00:24:52.299
and that was another victim that could potentially have been saved.
411
00:24:54.160 --> 00:24:57.700
So there's this terrible thing going on behind closed doors,
412
00:24:58.009 --> 00:24:59.230
and people just aren't seeing it.
413
00:24:59.309 --> 00:25:00.730
People aren't wanting to see it.
414
00:25:01.150 --> 00:25:03.569
Even the police are not joining up the dots and
415
00:25:04.430 --> 00:25:07.069
finding out what's really going on. So this is allowed
416
00:25:07.130 --> 00:25:09.269
to just bubble away and get worse.
417
00:25:09.990 --> 00:25:13.640
After evading capture, Dahmer was free to continue.
418
00:25:14.119 --> 00:25:17.380
There was two sides, really, to Dharma's pleasure that he
419
00:25:17.400 --> 00:25:20.410
got from killing his victims. So he was a sadist
420
00:25:20.470 --> 00:25:23.650
who enjoys the pain and suffering of other people. And
421
00:25:23.710 --> 00:25:27.329
with sadists, that thrill ends when the victim dies. But
422
00:25:27.369 --> 00:25:30.599
Dharma was also something of a necrophiliac who was interested
423
00:25:30.880 --> 00:25:35.079
in having corpses around and doing things with those corpses.
424
00:25:35.200 --> 00:25:38.019
And that means that the thrill starts with death. So
425
00:25:38.059 --> 00:25:41.400
he has this continuous fulfillment going on. And he's always
426
00:25:41.440 --> 00:25:44.109
fully in control. And I think that's what's really at
427
00:25:44.119 --> 00:25:47.190
the root of Jeffrey Dahmer. It's power and it's control
428
00:25:47.230 --> 00:25:49.670
and it's the feeling that he has all this knowledge
429
00:25:49.849 --> 00:25:52.329
about what he's done and nobody else quite knows what
430
00:25:52.349 --> 00:25:52.890
he's up to.
431
00:25:54.089 --> 00:25:59.799
By July 1991, Dahmer's desire to kill had become insatiable.
432
00:26:00.319 --> 00:26:04.119
In just 16 days, he murdered four more men, bringing
433
00:26:04.180 --> 00:26:08.880
his total number of victims to 17. But Dahmer's reign
434
00:26:08.920 --> 00:26:11.640
of terror was about to come to an end. On
435
00:26:11.680 --> 00:26:15.470
July the 22nd, he met a man called Tracy Edwards.
436
00:26:15.990 --> 00:26:20.750
While they were together in the apartment, Dahmer threw a
437
00:26:20.809 --> 00:26:23.970
handcuff on him. This was now the beginning of his ritual.
438
00:26:25.069 --> 00:26:28.309
Dahmer had taken photographs of his victims in various stages
439
00:26:28.349 --> 00:26:32.329
of dismemberment, Polaroids. And those were sitting on the dresser
440
00:26:32.750 --> 00:26:35.799
inside the bedroom. They weren't sitting out in the main
441
00:26:35.839 --> 00:26:39.299
living room. but there was some speculation that Tracy Edwards
442
00:26:39.359 --> 00:26:43.960
had perhaps seen that. And he ran out of the
443
00:26:44.000 --> 00:26:47.900
apartment in his underwear, ran down the street, and when
444
00:26:47.960 --> 00:26:51.299
he saw the police car, Tracy Edwards has said his
445
00:26:51.359 --> 00:26:54.579
intention was just to get the handcuff off. That's all
446
00:26:54.619 --> 00:26:56.559
he wanted. He stopped these cops to say, hey, can
447
00:26:56.579 --> 00:26:59.480
you just get this off of me? So he stopped,
448
00:26:59.819 --> 00:27:03.180
and the officers start talking to him about what he saw,
449
00:27:03.960 --> 00:27:06.880
and then they said, well, we should, Probably check this out.
450
00:27:06.960 --> 00:27:11.529
Let's all go back to the apartment. Dahmer answered, and
451
00:27:11.569 --> 00:27:14.069
the minute he saw that it was the police, he
452
00:27:14.109 --> 00:27:16.450
tried to shut the door on them. The police pushed
453
00:27:16.470 --> 00:27:18.769
the door open a bit. They started struggling with him,
454
00:27:19.329 --> 00:27:24.359
and then finally he just gave in. And that was
455
00:27:24.460 --> 00:27:28.619
when Dahmer was officially finished. He was finished killing, and
456
00:27:28.660 --> 00:27:30.819
he knew that he was finished.
457
00:27:31.240 --> 00:27:35.720
The police officers immediately arrested Dahmer after finding the remains
458
00:27:35.799 --> 00:27:38.109
of some of his victims in his apartment.
459
00:27:38.480 --> 00:27:40.329
They saw the body parts, and then one of the
460
00:27:40.390 --> 00:27:42.230
officers said he heard a scream, then he realized later
461
00:27:42.329 --> 00:27:43.950
he was the one who screamed when he saw the body.
462
00:27:44.450 --> 00:27:46.509
So they knew they were dealing with a very serious offense.
463
00:27:46.970 --> 00:27:49.390
Dahmer did not resist, a little slight resistance, but Dahmer
464
00:27:49.430 --> 00:27:52.160
was taken into custody. and the investigation was initiated.
465
00:27:52.599 --> 00:27:56.559
What followed was an incredible media circus on Dahmer's doorstep
466
00:27:56.920 --> 00:28:00.799
as unbelievable stories about what was being uncovered inside his
467
00:28:00.859 --> 00:28:02.299
apartment were revealed.
468
00:28:02.779 --> 00:28:07.779
It was so fantastical that you think people are making
469
00:28:07.819 --> 00:28:10.160
it up when they're telling you the details, but as
470
00:28:10.220 --> 00:28:11.819
it turned out, they weren't making it up.
471
00:28:12.039 --> 00:28:12.319
It was.
472
00:28:13.380 --> 00:28:15.759
All of the atrocities that we heard about that had
473
00:28:15.799 --> 00:28:17.599
happened in that apartment really did happen.
474
00:28:18.059 --> 00:28:21.019
The medical examiner who was called to the scene didn't
475
00:28:21.059 --> 00:28:22.720
know what was happening. It was so strange. There was
476
00:28:22.789 --> 00:28:25.349
a freezer there, bodies, parts in the freezer, called in
477
00:28:25.369 --> 00:28:29.630
a hazmat crew. Well, our television stations cover the police radio.
478
00:28:29.650 --> 00:28:32.210
When they hear that, they dispatch crews there. The first
479
00:28:32.250 --> 00:28:35.869
day was local television. Second day, national television. By the
480
00:28:35.890 --> 00:28:37.329
third day, it was international television.
481
00:28:37.509 --> 00:28:42.609
They were able to show video of these items coming
482
00:28:42.730 --> 00:28:45.289
out of the front door of this apartment building that's
483
00:28:45.349 --> 00:28:48.650
not usual at a crime scene. Saw a large blue barrel.
484
00:28:49.049 --> 00:28:51.470
in which we know that Jeffrey Dahmer was trying to
485
00:28:51.529 --> 00:28:55.410
dissolve body parts. It had a refrigerator that was holding
486
00:28:56.349 --> 00:29:00.430
skulls and also was holding body parts. So these are
487
00:29:00.470 --> 00:29:04.960
coming down the stairs and people were just incredulous to
488
00:29:05.000 --> 00:29:08.259
watch it. When I wrote the story for the Milwaukee
489
00:29:08.299 --> 00:29:12.319
Journal that morning and it was released in the paper
490
00:29:12.339 --> 00:29:16.559
about eight o'clock, I think, in the morning, normally we
491
00:29:16.599 --> 00:29:19.309
were an afternoon paper, but we went out early with
492
00:29:19.349 --> 00:29:21.150
it because it was such an incredible story.
493
00:29:21.829 --> 00:29:24.920
But no one quite knew the enormity of the crimes
494
00:29:25.240 --> 00:29:29.099
until Dahmer confessed to detectives at the local police station.
495
00:29:29.400 --> 00:29:33.059
When I've spoken to the detectives that were working this case,
496
00:29:34.309 --> 00:29:38.309
they have said, this was not a great whodunit. This
497
00:29:38.450 --> 00:29:41.750
would have been a whodunit if Jeffrey Dahmer hadn't confessed
498
00:29:41.789 --> 00:29:42.329
to everything.
499
00:29:43.049 --> 00:29:44.799
When Dahmer was arrested, there were already a number of
500
00:29:44.859 --> 00:29:48.599
bodies in his quarters. He gave full confessions to the police,
501
00:29:48.700 --> 00:29:53.339
detailing his involvement in 16 separate slayings. Most of the time,
502
00:29:53.359 --> 00:29:55.119
he did not know the name of the victims.
503
00:29:55.839 --> 00:30:00.059
When Dahmer remembered that he might not have shared with
504
00:30:00.180 --> 00:30:03.220
the detectives, he would have the jail call him, whether
505
00:30:03.240 --> 00:30:05.039
it was the middle of the night or the middle
506
00:30:05.059 --> 00:30:08.519
of the day, and say, I remembered something else. Please
507
00:30:08.559 --> 00:30:11.700
come over. Dahmer had said he wanted to make sure
508
00:30:11.740 --> 00:30:14.809
that he didn't forget anything because he wanted those families
509
00:30:14.849 --> 00:30:19.390
to have closure. I'm not sure about that. That may
510
00:30:19.430 --> 00:30:23.269
be giving Jeffrey Dahmer more credit than he is deserved,
511
00:30:24.130 --> 00:30:27.430
but he did claim to want to try and remember
512
00:30:28.009 --> 00:30:31.190
so that all of those families would have closure.
513
00:30:31.809 --> 00:30:34.619
One of the interesting things about Dahmer that does differentiate
514
00:30:34.640 --> 00:30:38.160
him from other killers of his breed is that he
515
00:30:38.460 --> 00:30:40.880
did seem to be capable of a certain degree of
516
00:30:40.940 --> 00:30:45.319
remorse and certainly recognized the extent of his depravity.
517
00:30:46.480 --> 00:30:49.819
Although he confessed to killing 16 people in the state
518
00:30:49.859 --> 00:30:53.480
of Wisconsin, Dahmer was first charged with four counts of
519
00:30:53.569 --> 00:30:58.089
murder on the 25th of July, 1991, and a further
520
00:30:58.089 --> 00:31:02.950
11 counts were added in August. The following month, investigators
521
00:31:03.009 --> 00:31:07.230
in Ohio found teeth and bone fragments belonging to Stephen
522
00:31:07.289 --> 00:31:11.410
Hicks in the woods near Dahmer's family home. A preliminary
523
00:31:11.490 --> 00:31:15.789
hearing was set for January 1992. His legal team were
524
00:31:15.809 --> 00:31:18.329
going to argue that the killings were the work of
525
00:31:18.390 --> 00:31:18.910
a madman.
526
00:31:19.450 --> 00:31:20.680
The issue wasn't going to be, did he do it
527
00:31:20.720 --> 00:31:22.319
or not? The issue was going to be, was he
528
00:31:22.380 --> 00:31:24.559
sane or insane when he did it? And his hope
529
00:31:24.599 --> 00:31:26.339
was that at least in even one of the cases,
530
00:31:26.380 --> 00:31:28.579
he could induce the jury to believe that he was insane.
531
00:31:28.920 --> 00:31:31.789
Under those circumstances, he would be sentenced not to a prison,
532
00:31:32.009 --> 00:31:34.450
but to a mental health facility. People would say to me, Mike,
533
00:31:34.890 --> 00:31:38.450
this guy killed 16 people. He was drinking their blood,
534
00:31:38.529 --> 00:31:41.140
eating parts of their body. He must have been crazy.
535
00:31:41.579 --> 00:31:43.819
It sounds like he's crazy to say that. but that's
536
00:31:43.839 --> 00:31:45.140
not what the insanity rule is.
537
00:31:45.500 --> 00:31:49.380
The city wanted justice. They wanted to see the man
538
00:31:49.420 --> 00:31:53.420
the press were calling the Milwaukee Cannibal locked away in
539
00:31:53.519 --> 00:31:57.970
prison for the horrific crimes he had committed. The trial
540
00:31:58.029 --> 00:32:00.829
of Jeffrey Dahmer would be one of the biggest in
541
00:32:00.869 --> 00:32:05.410
the history of not just Wisconsin, but the entire USA.
542
00:32:06.069 --> 00:32:09.250
My reaction to it then was the same reaction I
543
00:32:09.509 --> 00:32:13.950
think that everybody who lived in Milwaukee had. when they
544
00:32:13.970 --> 00:32:16.349
heard about the case. No, it can't be.
545
00:32:16.930 --> 00:32:17.750
This is Milwaukee.
546
00:32:18.059 --> 00:32:20.670
Those kinds of things don't happen here. This is the Midwest.
547
00:32:21.440 --> 00:32:23.839
This is a very nice place.
548
00:32:25.220 --> 00:32:31.079
The trial of Jeffrey Dahmer began on 30 January 1992
549
00:32:31.079 --> 00:32:32.380
and had a front-row seat.
550
00:32:33.000 --> 00:32:38.240
The courtroom was an odd spectacle because court TV was
551
00:32:38.319 --> 00:32:43.579
still new in the game back then. And the idea
552
00:32:44.380 --> 00:32:47.900
that you would come to court and you'd be on
553
00:32:47.960 --> 00:32:52.089
television was still kind of new to people. It was
554
00:32:52.309 --> 00:32:56.089
the kind of media attention to a trial that Milwaukee
555
00:32:56.150 --> 00:32:59.630
hadn't seen in a very, very long time, if ever.
556
00:33:00.470 --> 00:33:03.369
I can remember so clearly the first time Jeffrey Dahmer's
557
00:33:03.410 --> 00:33:07.670
initial appearance in court when he walked in. I think
558
00:33:07.690 --> 00:33:10.430
the real fear that people had when they first saw
559
00:33:10.490 --> 00:33:14.529
Jeffrey Dahmer was that he looked like everybody else. He
560
00:33:14.569 --> 00:33:19.380
was a good-looking young man, and he is not the
561
00:33:19.420 --> 00:33:22.599
person that you would look at and say, stay away
562
00:33:22.680 --> 00:33:23.339
from that guy.
563
00:33:23.720 --> 00:33:27.140
It would be up to Milwaukee DA Mike McCann to
564
00:33:27.200 --> 00:33:31.109
attempt to prove that Dahmer was sane and responsible for
565
00:33:31.160 --> 00:33:31.769
his actions.
566
00:33:32.470 --> 00:33:34.390
Guilty wasn't going to be an issue, but we wanted
567
00:33:34.410 --> 00:33:36.390
the jury to know enough about the facts and so
568
00:33:36.430 --> 00:33:38.710
did the defense to say, all right, what really happened here?
569
00:33:38.730 --> 00:33:40.849
How atrocious was it? How planned was it? How was
570
00:33:40.869 --> 00:33:44.210
he behaving? what skills were involved. He couldn't control himself.
571
00:33:45.410 --> 00:33:49.750
It was a lot to take in because the testimony
572
00:33:49.990 --> 00:33:54.420
was so graphic. We all knew Mike McCann. He was
573
00:33:54.440 --> 00:33:59.720
a religious man, and we've seen him in court. He
574
00:33:59.759 --> 00:34:03.720
was a good attorney. But the kinds of things that
575
00:34:03.779 --> 00:34:06.930
he was reciting out of the criminal complaint and the
576
00:34:06.970 --> 00:34:12.110
confession were unheard of. These things were unheard of. and
577
00:34:12.130 --> 00:34:14.329
they happened right here in our city.
578
00:34:15.369 --> 00:34:16.510
He did it quietly.
579
00:34:16.650 --> 00:34:20.300
He concealed the bodies, cleverly concealed, destroyed the bodies, planned
580
00:34:20.320 --> 00:34:22.539
it well, laid in the equipment, got the drugs that
581
00:34:22.559 --> 00:34:25.139
he used, knowing that he worked there, thought he was insane.
582
00:34:25.460 --> 00:34:28.159
The way he conducted himself was in a way that
583
00:34:28.900 --> 00:34:31.039
it seemed that he was sane, and that's what we
584
00:34:31.079 --> 00:34:32.119
wanted to get across to the jury.
585
00:34:32.639 --> 00:34:37.199
Mike employed the help of psychiatry expert Dr. Philip Resnick.
586
00:34:37.599 --> 00:34:42.309
The more bizarre the crimes, such as involving cannibalism, the
587
00:34:42.349 --> 00:34:45.190
more the lay public wants to think that guy had
588
00:34:45.230 --> 00:34:47.909
to be out of his mind. But in looking at
589
00:34:47.949 --> 00:34:53.480
it from the actual strict definition of insanity, generally the
590
00:34:53.559 --> 00:35:00.539
diseases of paraphilias, like necrophilia, where someone has trouble controlling themselves,
591
00:35:00.980 --> 00:35:05.239
are not viewed, for the most part, as diseases which
592
00:35:05.340 --> 00:35:10.820
qualify for insanity because of the social implications. One of
593
00:35:10.860 --> 00:35:14.019
the points that I made as a consultant is even
594
00:35:14.079 --> 00:35:18.809
if you have necrophilia and even if you have trouble
595
00:35:18.869 --> 00:35:24.010
controlling your impulse, the majority of necrophiliacs will select a
596
00:35:24.190 --> 00:35:29.250
setting where they can accomplish this without homicide. So some
597
00:35:29.769 --> 00:35:36.440
become assistants in morgues or assistants in pathology labs where
598
00:35:36.460 --> 00:35:40.300
they may have access to dead victims. Others will actually
599
00:35:40.480 --> 00:35:45.099
disinter bodies after they're buried so that one does not
600
00:35:45.159 --> 00:35:51.349
have to actually kill to exercise the necrophilias impulse, and
601
00:35:51.389 --> 00:35:53.349
that's one of the reasons I felt that he didn't
602
00:35:53.389 --> 00:35:54.570
qualify for insanity.
603
00:35:54.849 --> 00:35:59.860
The trial was essentially a debate between specialist psychiatrists about
604
00:35:59.900 --> 00:36:03.139
the mental state of Dahmer, who sat watching the whole
605
00:36:03.219 --> 00:36:05.199
thing play out over two weeks.
606
00:36:05.940 --> 00:36:08.460
Dahmer was very calm in court. When you talk of
607
00:36:08.500 --> 00:36:10.940
you assessing a person by what you see, no one
608
00:36:11.039 --> 00:36:14.380
studying him would believe he was insane. He was watching
609
00:36:14.420 --> 00:36:17.460
what was going on. He wasn't reacting in any negative way.
610
00:36:18.099 --> 00:36:21.159
He conducted himself in a very rational way, a very
611
00:36:21.239 --> 00:36:24.039
proper way. This was a case to tell the world
612
00:36:25.079 --> 00:36:27.360
that I did what I did not for reasons of hate.
613
00:36:27.820 --> 00:36:30.829
I hated no one. I knew I was sick or
614
00:36:30.969 --> 00:36:34.070
evil or both. Now I believe I was sick.
615
00:36:34.590 --> 00:36:37.909
On February 15th, the jury had reached a verdict on
616
00:36:37.949 --> 00:36:38.929
Dahmer's sanity.
617
00:36:39.409 --> 00:36:42.530
Someone like Dahmer comes along who has never been in
618
00:36:42.570 --> 00:36:47.539
a psychiatric hospital and alleges insanity. Juries are going to
619
00:36:47.559 --> 00:36:51.519
be skeptical of it, and then when it's all in
620
00:36:51.539 --> 00:36:55.679
the form of his sexual drive rather than a traditional
621
00:36:56.059 --> 00:36:59.610
psychosis where someone's out of touch with reality and he's
622
00:36:59.650 --> 00:37:03.349
taking careful steps to cover his tracks, it's very difficult
623
00:37:03.409 --> 00:37:06.440
to succeed. with insanity with that type of case.
624
00:37:07.199 --> 00:37:10.139
Jeffrey Dahmer was ruled to be sane by the jury.
625
00:37:10.730 --> 00:37:15.530
On February 17, 1992, Judge Lawrence Graham sentenced him to
626
00:37:15.610 --> 00:37:18.929
life imprisonment for each of the 15 counts against him.
627
00:37:19.489 --> 00:37:22.300
When the verdict was announced in court, there was a
628
00:37:22.360 --> 00:37:27.940
great shout from the gallery, especially from the victims' families.
629
00:37:27.960 --> 00:37:28.500
They cried.
630
00:37:28.519 --> 00:37:32.389
I was pleased in the sense, happy, not exuberant. but
631
00:37:32.449 --> 00:37:35.010
happy that this danger was removed from our community, that
632
00:37:35.050 --> 00:37:36.969
the jury had not been hoodwinked, that the jury realized
633
00:37:37.329 --> 00:37:38.889
this chap was not insane.
634
00:37:39.170 --> 00:37:42.280
The state of Wisconsin does not have the death penalty,
635
00:37:42.579 --> 00:37:46.500
but Dahmer would have to serve a minimum of 936 years.
636
00:37:47.059 --> 00:37:51.489
He was immediately sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage.
637
00:37:52.159 --> 00:37:55.920
Three months later, on the 1st of May 1992 in Ohio,
638
00:37:56.300 --> 00:38:00.480
Dahmer was also found guilty of murdering Stephen Hicks in
639
00:38:00.480 --> 00:38:03.460
1978 and given yet another life sentence.
640
00:38:04.199 --> 00:38:08.579
Dahmer always said that he was compelled to kill, that
641
00:38:08.599 --> 00:38:11.239
there were urges. He said, I had urges that I
642
00:38:11.480 --> 00:38:15.579
could not control. He also said that even though he
643
00:38:15.639 --> 00:38:20.000
was in prison, he was relieved that the killing was
644
00:38:20.099 --> 00:38:24.639
done He still had the urges. They didn't go away.
645
00:38:26.139 --> 00:38:27.699
He was just in a place where he couldn't act
646
00:38:27.719 --> 00:38:27.900
on them.
647
00:38:29.280 --> 00:38:32.429
Locked away for the rest of his life, Dahmer found
648
00:38:32.530 --> 00:38:37.050
comfort in the Bible. And by 1994, he decided to
649
00:38:37.090 --> 00:38:41.510
get baptized. The prison called on local minister Roy Ratcliffe.
650
00:38:42.239 --> 00:38:44.500
So I was quite surprised to be escorted to a
651
00:38:44.519 --> 00:38:49.000
little room and left alone, and then Jeff comes to
652
00:38:49.019 --> 00:38:51.429
the room, and he closes the door, and then there's
653
00:38:51.489 --> 00:38:54.750
he and I sitting together across the table, and I'm
654
00:38:54.769 --> 00:38:57.590
thinking for a moment, wow, I'm in a room with
655
00:38:57.650 --> 00:38:59.570
a man who's killed several people. So yeah, that was
656
00:38:59.590 --> 00:39:02.679
a little bit disconcerting, but I was there for a
657
00:39:02.699 --> 00:39:04.500
purpose and for a reason, so I wanted to find
658
00:39:04.539 --> 00:39:06.579
out what was going on and see what I could
659
00:39:06.599 --> 00:39:09.980
do to help. So my fears were set aside primarily
660
00:39:10.000 --> 00:39:11.949
because of my focus on what I was trying to do.
661
00:39:12.760 --> 00:39:15.070
Jeff was a normal guy, courteous, very.
662
00:39:14.909 --> 00:39:16.170
Respectful to me.
663
00:39:16.829 --> 00:39:19.289
When we shook hands, I noticed his hands were rather small.
664
00:39:19.730 --> 00:39:21.969
Looking at his hands and thinking, wow, these are the
665
00:39:22.010 --> 00:39:24.789
hands that strangled people, these are the hands that murdered people,
666
00:39:24.809 --> 00:39:26.789
these are the hands that dismembered people.
667
00:39:27.190 --> 00:39:31.619
On May the 10th, 1994, the same day that notorious
668
00:39:31.679 --> 00:39:36.440
serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed, Jeffrey Dahmer was
669
00:39:36.519 --> 00:39:38.860
baptized in a prison bathtub.
670
00:39:39.360 --> 00:39:41.429
Then the door opened and I walked into the room
671
00:39:41.469 --> 00:39:43.750
and Jeff had already crawled into the tub and the
672
00:39:43.889 --> 00:39:45.789
only thing that was above the water was just simply
673
00:39:45.829 --> 00:39:48.280
his head. And so I baptized you in the name
674
00:39:48.300 --> 00:39:50.139
of the Father, Son, and the Holy Spirit for the
675
00:39:50.159 --> 00:39:52.420
forgiveness of your sins and pushed his head down under.
676
00:39:52.440 --> 00:39:54.519
And then when he came back up, I said something
677
00:39:54.579 --> 00:39:56.539
I often say to people when I baptize them. I said,
678
00:39:56.599 --> 00:39:59.199
welcome to the family of God. He said, well, thank
679
00:39:59.219 --> 00:39:59.760
you very much.
680
00:40:00.400 --> 00:40:06.369
But just six months after his baptism on November the 28th, 1994,
681
00:40:06.369 --> 00:40:11.190
Dahmer and another convicted murderer, Jesse Anderson, were attacked and
682
00:40:11.289 --> 00:40:13.190
killed by a fellow inmate.
683
00:40:13.210 --> 00:40:19.349
Christopher Scarver. took a barbell, went into the bathroom, and
684
00:40:19.449 --> 00:40:23.079
beat both Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson to death. There
685
00:40:23.119 --> 00:40:26.599
were a number of people who felt that Jeffrey Dahmer
686
00:40:26.619 --> 00:40:29.260
got exactly what he deserved. And I called his mother.
687
00:40:29.960 --> 00:40:32.300
She said, well, now everybody got what they want. The
688
00:40:32.360 --> 00:40:35.920
monster is dead. And then she said, he was my son.
689
00:40:36.500 --> 00:40:37.139
He was my boy.
690
00:40:39.019 --> 00:40:41.320
It was a terrible, terrible death in that sense there.
691
00:40:41.769 --> 00:40:43.699
But for some people, it was a relief. They were
692
00:40:43.719 --> 00:40:45.519
glad because all they could think about were the crimes
693
00:40:45.559 --> 00:40:48.099
he committed. They're not thinking about what I'm thinking about.
694
00:40:48.480 --> 00:40:50.440
Here's a person who's trying to serve God as best
695
00:40:50.460 --> 00:40:52.739
as he can, and now his life is being taken
696
00:40:52.780 --> 00:40:52.969
from him.
697
00:40:53.000 --> 00:40:56.989
I mean, some people see some sort of poetic symmetry
698
00:40:57.250 --> 00:41:01.289
in the fact that Dahmer's first murder was the one
699
00:41:01.329 --> 00:41:05.030
in which he bludgeoned the teenage hitchhiker Stephen Hicks to
700
00:41:05.050 --> 00:41:08.780
death with a barbell, and that he himself died in
701
00:41:08.820 --> 00:41:09.760
a very, very similar way.
702
00:41:12.050 --> 00:41:16.369
The apartment on North 25th Street that housed Dahmer's macabre
703
00:41:16.409 --> 00:41:20.110
collection of victims' remains and where 12 young men lost
704
00:41:20.150 --> 00:41:26.389
their lives was demolished in November 1992. But Dahmer's twisted
705
00:41:26.489 --> 00:41:30.460
legacy has been impossible to wipe out. He has become
706
00:41:30.579 --> 00:41:33.880
one of the most infamous serial killers in the world.
707
00:41:34.440 --> 00:41:36.639
I think of Dahmer as sort of like the flip
708
00:41:36.679 --> 00:41:40.179
side of somebody like Mozart. How do you account for
709
00:41:40.650 --> 00:41:43.690
somebody creating that kind of music. Ultimately, how do you
710
00:41:43.750 --> 00:41:47.630
account for somebody who is luring young men to his
711
00:41:47.730 --> 00:41:51.150
apartment and drilling holes in their skull and injecting brains
712
00:41:51.190 --> 00:41:54.929
with muriatic acid to turn them into zombies? There's something
713
00:41:54.969 --> 00:41:56.619
there ultimately inexplicable.
714
00:41:57.320 --> 00:42:01.239
Jeffrey Dahmer committed some of the most evil acts that
715
00:42:01.440 --> 00:42:05.400
I have ever written about or heard about or seen
716
00:42:05.440 --> 00:42:09.820
on a television show because they were real. I don't know...
717
00:42:10.429 --> 00:42:14.110
if he was sane or insane, because that's not my
718
00:42:14.170 --> 00:42:17.889
training to figure that out. But I can absolutely say
719
00:42:18.820 --> 00:42:22.940
that he did some of the most evil acts.
720
00:42:23.559 --> 00:42:24.079
Known to man.
721
00:42:25.059 --> 00:42:27.840
Dahmer's crimes would not feel out of place in a
722
00:42:27.900 --> 00:42:31.119
perverse horror movie. He was a man who killed to
723
00:42:31.199 --> 00:42:36.139
satisfy his unhealthy sexual perversions. keeping parts of his victims'
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skeletons as trophies and eating their organs. Jeffrey Dahmer truly
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is the stuff of nightmares and, unquestionably, one of the
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world's most evil killers.