The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer
Brian Masters
CORONET BOOKS
Hodder and Stoughton
Copyright © 1993 by Brian Masters
First published in Great Britain in 1993 by Hodder and Stoughton Ltd
Approximately 200 words from Equus in Three Plays by Peter Shaffer, copyright © Peter Shaffer 1973 (first published by Andre Deutsch 1973, Penguin 1976). Reproduced by kind permission.
British Library CIP
A CIP catalogue record for this title is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-340-59194-3
The right of Brian Masters to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
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About the Author
Brian Masters began his career with five critical studies in French literature and proceeded to write the first full history of all the dukedoms in Britain. His subjects for biography have ranged from John Aspinall to E.F. Benson, from Marie Corelli to Georgiana Duchess of Devonshire. He has also rescued twentieth-century society hostesses from footnotes into a book of their own, and traced the origins of the ruling family of Udaipur in India. His penetrating study of mass murderer Dennis Nilsen, Killing for Company, won the Gold Dagger Award for non-fiction in 1985, after which he found himself invited to lecture on murderers as well as dukes, gorillas and hostesses. Masters is well-known for his interviews in the Sunday Telegraph, and he reviews regularly for that paper as well as The Spectator.
Dedicated to the late James Crespi
Acknowledgments
A book of this nature depends for its content upon the co-operation and trust of a number of people, and for its conclusions alone upon the author. I have been fortunate in having been offered assistance where it was most valuable, and would like heartily to acknowledge my many debts before the text gets under way.
Mr Gerald Boyle, Jeffrey Dahmer’s attorney both before and during his trial, was ever courteous and patient with my enquiries so long as I was careful not to allow them to intrude upon professional confidentiality, and helped clarify the burden of his defence effort. His entire staff were likewise tolerant of my frequent interruptions of their working day. I am grateful to District Attorney E. Michael McCann for a long interview in which he graciously set forth his view of the legal and moral implications of the case he had prosecuted.
Mr Dan Patrinos of the Milwaukee Journal made me welcome in Milwaukee at a time when he was besieged by journalists with a far more obvious right to attend the trial than I, and I am beholden to him for his good nature and practical assistance. Mr James Shellow explained to me the intricacies of the Wisconsin Statute with regard to criminal responsibility, which he helped to frame, as well as giving me the benefit of his reflections upon Anglo-Saxon jurisprudence. His wife Gilda and daughter Robin, both in legal practice, were unfailingly obliging in putting up with my questions and encouraging my undertaking.
My sojourn in Milwaukee on several occasions, and over many weeks, was made agreeable by the cheerful staff of the Milwaukee Athletic Club, where I stayed, and the Wisconsin Club, where I repaired every day to ruminate, both welcoming me with the courtesy they would accord to a member of long standing.
The Forensic Unit at the Safety Building became my office over a long period, thanks to the tolerance of the two ladies who run it, Lois Schmidt and Karen Marzion, to both of whom I am most grateful. The doctors who work there additionally accepted my presence among them. I am also indebted to Dr George Palermo and Dr Samuel Friedman for various opinions and views freely expressed. Dr John Pankiewicz was especially helpful in pointing me towards important essays in psychiatric journals which would otherwise have escaped my attention. Similarly, in England, Dr Christopher Cordess alerted me to other articles germane to my task, for which I wish to express my indebtedness.
I made it a point not to descend upon the families of those who died, out of respect for their privacy; despite this, the brothers and sisters of Eddie Smith made me welcome in their home and shared some of their memories with me, which I appreciate with full heart. It is to Theresa Smith that I owe the use of a photograph of Eddie not previously published. For similar reasons, I did not attempt to impose myself upon Dr Lionel and Mrs Shari Dahmer, father and stepmother of the defendant, and yet they always treated me with warmth and understanding in the most difficult circumstances. I shall long cherish the meals we had together, in which they spoke of their attitude towards the crimes and trial off the record, with a confidence which I have respected and not betrayed in these pages.
Photographs of court exhibits, notably the interior of Dahmer’s apartment and portraits of his victims, were taken for me by Greg Gent Studios.
My editor, Bill Massey, has been so scrupulous and thorough in his analysis of the text as to improve it beyond a point at which mere gratitude would suffice, and my agents, Jacintha Alexander and Julian Alexander, have been entirely supportive at times when my very purpose has been questioned.
In the pages which follow, all quotations from family, schoolfriends and acquaintances of Jeffrey Dahmer are taken from statements made to Milwaukee or Ohio police officers in the course of their enquiries, and contained in file 2472 of the Milwaukee Police Department. In addition to this, Detective Dennis Murphy allowed me the privilege of a personal interview.
I reserve until the last my appreciation to Jeffrey L. Dahmer for the permission he granted to Dr Kenneth Smail (and, by extension, to myself) for his interviews with Dr Smail to be used for professional purposes. Except for a few instances specifically indicated, wherever I have quoted Mr Dahmer’s words directly they have been taken from these interviews and are identified in source notes by the letters J.L.D. and the date of the interview. It follows from this that my deepest debt is to Dr Smail himself, who has not only entrusted me to treat the material with proper respect and restraint, but has himself contributed a postscript to the book, explaining for the first time why he felt unable to support the case for the defence.
In view of the above, it must be obvious that the opinions I express in this book, and the tentative conclusions I posit, are mine and mine alone, while Dr Smail is responsible only for the views he has put forward in his postscript.
Brian Masters, London, 1992
‘And hence one master-passion in the breast,
Like Aaron’s serpent, swallows up the rest’
Alexander Pope, An Essay on Man, Epistle 2, line 131
Chapter One
The Charges
‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you are about to embark upon an odyssey.’
So began Gerald Boyle’s opening statement at the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer on 30 January, 1992. They were heavy, ominous words to use in a cosy courtroom in Milwaukee, where lawyers habitually lounge and banter, and in summer address the judge in shirt-sleeves. But this was not summer, and there was nothing remotely cosy or comforting about the case which Mr Boyle ha
d to present. His voice presaged a distinct warning. From months of preparation, he knew what lay ahead. His task was to open a window upon depths of iniquity and perversion as could scarcely be imagined, and still protect his, and the jury’s, capacity to reason without prejudice, to understand without disgust. Boyle seemed almost to apologise for what he was about to demand of his audience, to identify with them in wishing to avoid contamination by the evidence he would have to display before them. To some extent, he distanced himself from his own client. By the end of the day, it was not difficult to see why.
The odyssey had begun, for the public at least, at 11.30 on the evening of 22 July, 1991, on the corner of Kilbourn Avenue and North 25th Street in Milwaukee. It was a sultry night and a dangerous hour, for this was a somewhat tense part of town, the scene of many a late-night argument and fight. Police Officers Rolf Mueller and Robert Rauth were driving along in their squad car, alert but relaxed, certainly not anticipating any significant incidents, when they were flagged down by a thirty-two-year-old black man, Tracy Edwards, who had a handcuff dangling from his left wrist. The squad car stopped and officers Rauth and Mueller got out. Edwards told them that some ‘freak’ had placed the handcuffs on him, and could they please remove them. ‘I just want to get it off,’ he said. The officers tried to unlock the handcuffs, but their keys did not fit that particular brand. Had they fitted, Edwards would most likely have thanked them for their help and made his way home (he lived on Kilbourn Avenue and could have walked). The story of Jeffrey Dahmer’s distorted dramas may have remained hidden from the world for several more weeks, or even months.
Since Tracy Edwards appeared to be stuck with the handcuffs, and since the officers were curious, though not yet overtly suspicious, Edwards took them to the apartment where the ‘freak’ lived, at 924 North 25th Street. It was a block of apartments mostly inhabited by black or Asian families. The tenant of No. 213, however, was white, and it was with him that Edwards had spent the evening, since about 6.30 p.m. The three men knocked on the door. It was opened by Jeffrey L. Dahmer, thirty-one years old, sandy hair, glasses, six feet tall with regular features, but a pallid complexion and stark lack of cheerfulness. He invited them in, holding the door open. The living room was small but pleasantly furnished, with a large comfortable arm-chair, a healthy pot-plant on a tall pedestal, an oriental rug, blue curtains at the window, some fine pictures on the wall, and one framed picture of a naked male model. There was nothing seedy or squalid about the room; rather did it appear surprisingly neat and tidy for the neighbourhood.
Dahmer was vague but co-operative at first. He said he worked as a mixer at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory downtown. What was the problem with the handcuffs, he was asked; why not unlock them, was he some kind of psycho? He acknowledged that he had placed the handcuffs on Edwards, but could not say why. Edwards now went further. Dahmer had brandished a large knife at him, he said. Dahmer did not react to this, but told the officers he thought the key to the handcuffs must be in the bedroom, and pointed to the door. He invited Officer Mueller to go into the bedroom himself and retrieve the key, but then moved towards the door, as if he had suddenly remembered something, and was intercepted by Officer Rauth, who told him to ‘back off’.
Meanwhile, Mueller immediately noticed that there was indeed a large knife lying just beneath the bed, and that the top drawer of a chest was open, revealing scores of Polaroid photographs of naked men. He looked further and realised, with some shock, that many of them were pictures of severed heads, dismembered limbs, decomposing torsos, and from the evidence of the decor in the pictures, it was clear that they were not commercially produced fakes, but had actually been taken in that same bedroom. Incredulous, Mueller came back into the living room with photographs in his hand. ‘These are real pictures,’ he told Rauth.
At this point, Dahmer seemed to come to his senses. Rauth went to restrain him, and the two men fell to the floor, struggling. The policeman was on top of Dahmer, holding one arm, but Dahmer was able to reach behind him and pinch Rauth’s thigh. Rauth then shouted in pain, and Mueller joined him to subdue Dahmer. They called another squad car, and Officer Schoessow turned up at 11.50 p.m. to find the suspect being pinned to the ground. He went back to his car for handcuffs, and Jeffrey Dahmer was duly placed under arrest.
For him it was the end of a very long road, but for the police it had scarcely begun. Tracy Edwards told them that Dahmer had clapped his own handcuffs on him as he was approaching the refrigerator to get himself a beer, and had told him that there was something in there which he would not believe. Rolf Mueller thereupon opened the door of the refrigerator, and saw, on the bottom shelf, a cardboard box containing the severed head of a black man, face upwards. He closed the door quickly. Dahmer, still being held to the ground, turned his head and muttered, ‘For what I did I should be dead.’ The officers then called the Criminal Investigation Bureau, and by soon after midnight Dahmer’s tiny apartment was crammed with policemen, medical officers, and firemen.
First to arrive was Detective James Devalkenaere at 12.05 a.m. He proceeded to inspect the bedroom more thoroughly and begin the laborious task of compiling an inventory, while Detectives Michael Dubis and Patrick Kennedy, who were on the scene by 12.15 a.m., questioned the suspect. It was Kennedy who would read out the first part of the confession to an utterly silent courtroom six months later. At 12.30 a.m. the office of the Milwaukee County Medical Examiner, Dr Jeffrey Jentzen, was notified, and he immediately alerted his staff. Shirley Gaines arrived at the apartment by 12.45 a.m., Dr Allen Stormo joined her at 1 a.m., and Dr Jentzen himself, with the Assistant Medical Examiner Dr John Teggatz, were there shortly afterwards. Another police officer, James Schoenecker, also arrived with an expert in identification, Ralph Basile. It was these two who spent the night taking one hundred and six photographs of the scene and of items to be removed. Finally, the Chief of the Fire Brigade, Kevin Clarke, came with an engine and ladder, and a so-called Hazardous Material Unit, specifically to take away a large blue drum from the bedroom, from which issued a noxious chemical odour.
In the meantime, the suspect was driven away in the company of Detective Patrick Kennedy and taken to the police station for questioning. This, their first interview, lasted for nearly six hours from 1.30 a.m. until 7.15 a.m., and it would be followed by another two hours later and many more such marathon talks over the next two weeks. The suspect was now not only resigned and co-operative, but anxious to confess, to relieve his soul of its massive burden, to purge himself of intolerable poisonous memories. ‘I think in some way I wanted it to end,’ he said much later, ‘even if it meant my own destruction.’ He referred to the confession as ‘cleaning out . . . refreshing’.1 Jeffrey Dahmer proceeded to tell a blinking Detective Kennedy, who was unaware that any crimes had been committed, that he had killed sixteen men in Milwaukee over a period of four years, six of them in the past few weeks; that he had decapitated them, dismembered them, defleshed them and thrown what was left of them into the garbage; that some of the skulls he had retained, and some of the bodies he had placed in acid to liquefy them; that he had started as long ago as 1978 in Ohio, when his first victim had been smashed to pieces with a sledgehammer and scattered in the woods; that three men had been murdered and dissected in his grandmother’s house; and – in a flat, bland, monotone voice – that it took about an hour to boil a human head.
Detective Kennedy was understandably reeling from the sudden access of all this information, and emerged from the interview room in a daze of disbelief. He told one of his colleagues that Dahmer must be a fantasist or fruitcake, but Kennedy had yet to learn that, while he had been talking to Dahmer all night, the investigators at Apartment 213 had been assembling evidence which corroborated every word of the confession. Kennedy was made to realise that he had been listening not to a grandiose attention-seeking half-wit, but to the simple truth shorn of emotion or wonder. It was a devastating moment.
It is time to look at precisely what was fou
nd in Dahmer’s apartment, if only to start with the same parcel of knowledge as confronted the District Attorney, the defence counsel Gerald Boyle, and the seemingly endless parade of psychologists and psychiatrists, as they all grappled with the unpalatable, some in a painful endeavour to understand what had happened and why, others in a barely concealed effort to bend the facts towards a favoured conclusion. But none of them started in ignorance, and neither must we.
The doors of Apartment 213, both inner and outer, were heavily secured with multiple locks and an alarm system. On the walls in the bedroom and hall were framed photographs and posters of male nudes taken in ‘artistic’ poses and clearly intended to be attractive to a homosexual man. There were some empty beer cans and dirty dishes, and a number of pornographic videos lying around, mostly of the explicit kind commercially made in California. Among the titles which Dahmer possessed were, Cocktales, Chippendale’s Tall Dark and Handsome, Rock Hard, Hard Men II, Hard Men III, Peep Show, and Tropical Heat Wave. Other non-sexual videos included two that would be referred to several times at the trial, Exorcist II and The Return of the Jedi. Somewhat incongruously, a lecture on evolution was also found on videotape, and an episode from The Bill Cosby Show.
On the kitchen floor were four boxes of muriatic acid. The refrigerator contained, in addition to the man’s head already noted, some blood drippings on the bottom, and, in the freezer compartment, three plastic bags. Two of them each contained a heart, and the third some portion of muscle. Against another wall was a floor-standing freezer in which were found three more human heads and a plastic bag containing a human torso. Stuck to the bottom of this freezer was another plastic bag the contents of which appeared to include flesh and various human internal organs; Dahmer subsequently revealed that it had been there for several weeks because he had been unable to wrench it away from the ice. The Medical Examiner decided that this entire freezer should be sealed and removed, with its load, for detailed examination later.
The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer Page 1