“I have probably eaten someone’s body part,” Bass told documentary filmmaker Chris James Thompson, who also spoke to Police Detective Patrick Kennedy, who blames the Dahmer case for his divorce, and Milwaukee Medical Examiner Jeffrey Jentzen, who has images of items found in Dahmer’s apartment seared into his memory bank.
Thompson was making the documentary “The Jeffrey Dahmer Files,” which was released in 2013.
Did Dahmer kill Adam Walsh?
In October of 2015, a book by former Miami Herald press operator Willis Morgan was released, suggesting that Dahmer had kidnapped six-year-old Adam Walsh from a Florida mall.
In “Frustrated Witness,” Morgan recounted recognizing Dahmer immediately as the man he had seen in the mall the day Walsh disappeared when his mugshot appeared in the paper following his Milwaukee arrest.
Walsh’s decapitated head was later found off a main highway. His murder became one of the most well-known unsolved crimes in U.S. history after his father, John Walsh, introduced the world to “America’s Most Wanted,” a show designed to track down killers to prevent others from living with the horror of the unknown.
Morgan, however, thinks that he holds the key to the murder case, which ultimately was pinned on another man.
At the time of Walsh’s disappearance in 1981, Dahmer was living near Miami Beach, and as a sub shop delivery person, had access to the blue van that witnesses reported seeing leaving the mall.
He also matches the description another woman gave to police after her son was nearly kidnapped a week before Adam Walsh.
John Walsh himself agrees that there is plenty of evidence suggesting that Dahmer could have been responsible for his son’s death.
“Many people have forgotten that Jeffrey Dahmer started out as a pedophile, kidnapper, and torturer of young boys,” said Walsh in a letter that was included in a Milwaukee news story speculating about the link. “He certainly fits the profile of someone who might be capable of murdering a beautiful 6-year-old boy.”
Florida police did interview Dahmer, and determined there was no evidence against him, despite numerous witnesses describing him almost exactly.
“In 1992 I gave up trying to convince people,” he told Fusion. “I had called every newspaper, every TV station, anyone who would listen, and told them the story. And the one reporter who actually listened to me called me back and said ‘The police department has eliminated Jeffrey Dahmer as a suspect.’”
Walter Ellis
DNA mistakes almost let him get away
For more than 20 years, between stints in prison, Walter Ellis was roaming Milwaukee’s North Side, terrorizing women and earning the nickname the Milwaukee North Side Strangler for the women he killed between 1986 and 2007.
He was able to get away with his crimes for so long because he, like many other serial killers before him, sought out victims who were less likely to be missed.
“The victims were prostitutes. They had drugs in their system. They had multiple sources of DNA,” said Milwaukee homicide detective Steven Spingola.
Because he chose sex workers as his victims, Ellis was able to evade capture for decades, much like other serial killers who sought out prostitutes to satisfy their urges.
“I picked prostitutes as victims because they were easy to pick up without being noticed,” said Gary Ridgeway, who killed dozens of prostitutes working the Seattle area over his two-decade murder spree. “I knew they would not be reported missing. I picked prostitutes because I thought I could kill as many of them as I wanted without getting caught.”
Others chose sex workers because they felt it was their duty to rid the world of evil, although for those unlucky enough to hook up with a madman, the true evil was something else entirely.
Even more unsettling, all of them walked into their deaths willingly in the hopes of making a few bucks, maybe to support a drug habit, maybe to support their children.
And they had no idea that they were hooking up with a madman when they met with Ellis, he added.
“They were choked and they apparently went with him willingly up until the point the homicides occurred,” said Spingola.
It was an unfortunate night on the job for nine African-American sex workers, but serious mistakes by Wisconsin’s criminal justice system ensured that it would be decades before their killer was caught.
Chapter 1: DNA mistakes slow arrest
Ellis had been arrested numerous times throughout his 21-year murder spree, and should have had DNA samples in a state database. As it happened, when he was supposed to give a sample, he apparently enticed another inmate to give one in his place, keeping his own DNA profile from being available.
Even more disturbing, the DNA discrepancy was discovered, but was not rectified, leaving Ellis’ DNA out of the system despite his lengthy arrest record and history of anger.
“Yes, he does have a criminal history,” said Milwaukee Police Chief Edward Flynn after Ellis’ arrest. “His criminal history, however, does not lend one to immediately say, you know, ‘prime suspect.’”
Ellis’ charges include violent and property crimes, although his last conviction came in 1998, two years before DNA samples were legally required.
He was arrested for the 13th and final time when police executed a search warrant at his apartment and took samples of DNA from his toothbrush that matched DNA found on all eight known murder victims.
He was arrested a day later at the Park Motel in the Milwaukee suburb of Franklin after a struggle with police and charged with two counts of first-degree intentional homicide.
Police downplay mistakes
Police downplayed the DNA errors that allowed so much time to go by between Ellis’ first murder and his last, and instead pointed out the work they had done to finally catch the man who had terrorized Milwaukee for so many years.
“Good police work and good police science have led us to Walter Ellis,” Flynn said.
“I’m glad they got this man, because I just feel sorry for what my sister went through,” said Tara Noble, whose sister, Joyce Mims, was one of Ellis’ last victims. “We just think about how she was killed. My sister was found beaten and strangled. Those are words you don't ever want to tell somebody.”
Not who he seemed
An anonymous neighbor who lived downstairs from Ellis’ duplex apartment on Bobolink Avenue, a place he shared with his girlfriend Tressie Johnson, said what people always seem to say when they live near or know someone who turns out to be a serial killer.
“He didn't seem like that type of person,” said the woman, who said she saw the two on a daily basis. “It’s so scary now. I could have been a victim. I’m shaking right now.”
Chapter 2: Victim list spans 20 years
Debra Lynn Harris, 31, had moved to Milwaukee in hopes of a better life.
Her friend, Patricia Donald, called Harris a generous, loving person, who deserved nothing but a bright future.
Instead, she would wind up dead, strangled with a black and white handkerchief and tossed into the murky waters of the Menominee River on Oct. 10, 1986.
It was the start of what would be a ravenous killing spree for Walter Ellis, who would spend decades as a free man while family members of his victims waited and worried.
“He did not suffer enough for that family,” said Terry Williams, whose sister, Joyce Mims, who would later become one of Ellis’ victims.
One day later, a second victim dies
In reality, Walter Ellis had developed a taste for murder, and after the first one, the second one – a day later on Oct. 11, 1986, was that much easier.
Tanya Miller was 19 when she died in a Milwaukee backyard.
Bill Vogl, a detective with the Milwaukee Police Department’s homicide unit, immediately suspected that both women had been killed by the same person.
“I used the word serial, and I got reamed out,” Vogl remembered. “That was the end of the meeting. They didn’t want the word used. They didn’t want that to get out to the media.
”
Just like so much trash
On November 28, 1992, the body of Irene Smith was found dumped in a trash bin in an alleyway, bearing stab wounds to her neck and evidence of strangulation.
Because she was stabbed, she was the first victim whose death deviated from a pattern established by Ellis in 1986 when he killed his first two victims.
But she was found in the 3000 block of N. 6th Street, where Ellis lived with his mother at the time.
She would be one of many victims found in that area, and if Ellis’ DNA had been in the system, he might have been caught much sooner.
As it happened, many more women in and around the neighborhood would have to die before Ellis would be caught.
DNA match not enough for arrest
Although Ellis’ DNA was found on the body of 32-year-old Carron D. Kilpatrick, who was murdered in October of 1994, Ellis was not definitively linked to her death.
Instead, despite Kilpatrick’s body turning up in a trash bin in the same alley where Irene Smith’s body was found, her live-in boyfriend, Curtis McCoy, with whom the mother of five had a daughter, was targeted as a suspect.
It didn’t help that a man who lived with McCoy said he heard the two arguing before seeing McCoy drag Kilpatrick’s body into his van, or that Kilpatrick’s five-year-old daughter said she also saw McCoy drag her mother’s body out the front door.
“There was an overwhelming mountain of evidence against him,” said his defense attorney, Michael L. Chernin.
That evidence included what amounted to a confession, coerced out of a distraught McCoy by two detectives who’d gained his trust.
“Curtis was so distraught at the time they more or less convinced him through just talk therapy that maybe he was temporarily insane at the time,” Chernin said.
Meanwhile, Chernin’s investigators were poring over case files similar to Kilpatrick’s, and believed that it might have been the work of a serial killer, information that was not allowed to be used in McCoy’s criminal defense.
Despite the evidence, McCoy was acquitted of Kilpatrick’s murder, and he moved away to escape the notoriety. Kilpatrick’s death has now been unofficially linked to Walter Ellis, cementing the serial killer theories tossed about by Chernin and his investigative team.
Abandoned
On April 24, 1995, workers doing repairs at an abandoned house found the body of Florence McCormick dead in the basement, her wrists tied with a rope that was secured to a washtub sink.
The rope also was wrapped around her neck.
It was a sad, lonely place for the 28-year-old mother of two daughters to die.
But she would not be the only woman to be left in an abandoned house.
On June 27, 1995, the body of Sheila Farrior was also found in an abandoned house, her bra wrapped around her neck.
The mother of five had been strangled, leaving behind nothing but questions for her family.
“Obviously, I can’t say it was given a high priority,” said Farrior’s father, Sandy Farrior, in a 1997 interview with the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel. “They can’t do anything for my daughter, but perhaps they can prevent the deaths of others.”
Unfortunately, they couldn’t. Police had failed to acquire accurate DNA samples during the 12 times Ellis was in prison, including for assaulting his girlfriend with a hammer, and when he served as a government informant in order to spare himself jail time. There was nothing in the system to match future victims.
“Had it been a Caucasian lady, that killer would have been found,” said Shannon Farrior, who was 17 when her mother died. “I don’t understand how would a killer not make no mistakes that you can’t get a lead on him in 14 years. I know he’s not that clever."
Zola Farrior, Sheila’s sister, called Ellis “nothing but the devil.”
“He didn't only kill my sister, he killed my mother - she died of heartbreak after that,” Farrior said.
Hiding behind a new M.O.
Ellis only strayed from his modus operandi once, and that was when he killed 16-year-old Jessica Payne.
Her body was discovered beneath a discarded mattress behind a vacant house on Aug. 30, 1995. She had been raped and strangled, and her throat was slit.
The white teen was a runaway with a drug problem, and her murder was initially pinned on another man, Chaunte Dean Ott, who was convicted of first-degree murder after a friend’s confession linked him to the crime.
Ott spent 13 years in prison before DNA evidence determined a link between Payne’s murderer and two other victims of Milwaukee’s North Side Strangler.
Ellis, however, was never charged in Jessica Payne’s murder.
Too close for comfort?
On June 20, 1997, the body of Joyce Mims was found in a closet in an abandoned Milwaukee-area house, bruising on her chest and face.
An autopsy later determined that she died from manual strangulation, an intimate and sadistic crime that allows the killer to be fully engaged during the passage from life to death.
She was dating Ellis’ uncle at the time of her death, and everyone knew her killer, including her son, Purvis Mims, who had met him about six times.
“He just seemed like a regular guy,” he said. “It goes to show you never know what's going on behind closed doors.”
Being that close to a killer, however, turned out to be a fatal mistake for Mims.
“I know she wouldn't have gone in an abandoned house with a stranger, regardless of the circumstances,” said Purvis Mims. “She probably had a rapport of some fashion with him.”
Purvis Mims also said he was optimistic that police would eventually find his mother’s killer.
“I was pretty confident because a person who does those types of things, they don’t stop,” he said. “You don't just never do it again or never have any police interaction.”
“We just hated that it had taken so long for them to find her killer,” said Mims’ brother, Terry Williams.
“But you know, justice one day is better than no justice at all.”
Another prostitute chooses wrong mark
Milwaukee prostitute Maryetta Griffin was found strangled to death on Feb. 17, 1998, lying in a pile of garbage in a Milwaukee garage.
DNA samples taken from Griffin’s body matched Walter Ellis, although he was never charged with her murder.
Another man, William Avery – who operated a crack house near the home where Griffin’s body was found and was Griffin’s dealer - was a suspect in Griffin’s murder, but because there was no solid evidence, he was instead arrested on drug charges and sentenced to 10 years in prison.
It wasn’t until other inmates told police Avery had confessed to the crime that charges against him were brought, although police should have taken the inmates’ information with a grain of salt.
“The problem with jailhouse informants is credibility,” said Steven Spignola, who wrote extensively about Walter Ellis. “Most are convicted felons serving time for serious crimes. In some instances, offenders game the system to seek reductions in their sentences or assignments to a correctional facility with better living conditions. Ultimately, it is up to the jury to ascertain whether these inmates are telling the truth. These surly individuals are generally not Eagle Scouts out to do the right thing by stepping forward as witnesses.”
Avery later asked for a specific DNA sample taken from Griffin’s body to be tested, and it came back a match for Ellis.
“We're going to have to re-examine any cases that fit a general profile and make sure that we re-examine the integrity of all those cases to make sure that we’re satisfied that justice has been done,” said Milwaukee County District Attorney John Chisholm.
Making sure to leave evidence behind
Quithreaun Stokes did not go quietly, and because of that, police were finally able to close in on Walter Ellis.
When officers found her body on April 27, 2007, a can of pepper spray was discovered nearby, suggesting that she attempted to fight back whe
n her assailant ripped her clothing partially off to rape her before strangling her with his bare hands.
Police gathered evidence including fingernail clippings from the victim to capture any DNA from defensive actions as well as the pepper spray can, which was colored with a smear of blood.
That blood helped seal the fate of Walter Ellis, finally, after so many years.
It also helped solidify homicide detective Vogl’s long-held belief that Milwaukee was dealing with a serial killer.
“These types of people have something obviously wrong with them in their minds,” Vogl said. “I don’t know what gratification they get from doing it, but they don’t stop. That’s a true serial killer. They don’t stop.”
Chapter 3: Trial a farce for victims’ families
Walter Ellis initially pleaded not guilty to the murders, and told a judge that when his attorney, Russell Jones, came to see him, they didn’t talk much about his case. After Jones was then dismissed, Ellis prepared to defend himself in court.
Ellis announced twice that he would enter a plea deal, eliminating the need for a trial, but both times he backed out at the last minute.
Family members of the victims believe that it was a deliberate move by Ellis to torment them one more time, but the sister of victim Irene Smith told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel that she was not going to allow Ellis to get to her.
“He’s not going to psych me out anymore,” said Virgie Smith-Norwood. “He’s sick.”
“We’re going to all be all right. You don’t win. You don’t get to destroy lives anymore,” said Debra Harris’ friend, Patricia Donald.
Eventually, on Feb. 19, 2011, Ellis entered a plea of no contest to seven intentional homicides, a plea that immediately resulted in a conviction.
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 22