I knew my life wasn’t going to be easy and I was a little afraid. I knew that sometimes men who were in prison had a difficult time adjusting to life outside of prison. It can be hard to get back on their feet and sometimes they pick up right where they left off because that’s all they know. I wasn’t sure what to expect, but I knew what I wanted and I knew I didn’t want to go back to prison.
The first thing I did when I got to Milwaukee was make a beeline to Janice’s house. That was a big mistake. She had a new boyfriend and they didn’t want anything to do with me. She wouldn’t even let me see my son, mainly because she and her new boyfriend were on drugs and she was pretty spaced out.
I needed to get away from there. If I associated with anyone doing drugs while I was on parole, I could be sent back to prison. I left with just two hundred dollars in my pocket, no place to stay, no job, and no prospects.
I called Nancy and Jerry Christianson. Jerry was in prison many years ago, but God saved him, and now he and his wife run New Song Ministries. They picked me up and took me to meet Vern, a friend of theirs in West Allis who was also involved in New Song Ministries.
There were six of us at Vern’s place. We prayed, praised God, and sang songs. The whole time I felt that the devil was still trying to tempt me, saying, “you’ve been gone too long and I know you want to get back into the mess of things.”
I couldn’t sit still. I kept getting up, trying to find excuses not to sing. I’d go out for a cigarette. Then I’d come back in and sit down. Then I’d get up again. I just wasn’t ready for all this singing and praising God. I needed to do something.
When I looked back on that afternoon, I realized the devil was having a heyday with me. All afternoon I was up and down, up and down thinking, wanting to go, but not knowing where.
The devil worked hard inside me. I prayed, asking God to help me relax. I knew that God had sent me Jerry and Nancy and I needed to put my faith in what God had in mind for me.
Trouble was, I was scared that before long I’d be doing some of the things I did before. Finally, I gave in to the devil, left Vern’s place, and went back to my old girlfriend’s apartment to pick up some clothes I’d left there before I went to prison.
She kicked me out and told me I couldn’t ever stay there again. She shut the door on me. I decided to go to the Salvation Army and ask for help.
I got into a cab but, on the way, asked the cab driver to stop when I saw a woman walking on the street near 20th and Lisbon. I knew prostitutes frequented that neighborhood. That woman was one and I stayed with her that night.
The next morning I felt terrible. I was upset with myself for giving in to the devil and hooking up with that prostitute, and because my old girlfriend was with another man. I thought I still loved her.
One thing’s for sure, I still had all my same old problems. No money, no job, no prospects, and here I was sinning again.
That afternoon I went to the Milwaukee Rescue Mission and called Jerry and Nancy again. They were supportive. They picked me up and prayed for me. They got me a room at the Philadelphia Church of God in Christ on North Martin Luther King Drive.
Pastor Barden ministers to prisoners and he let me stay in the Brotherhood House over the church. When you stayed there, the pastor expected you to attend Pentecostal church services three days a week, including Bible study. I stayed for a short time while I worked a few temporary jobs.
All the while, I thought about my kids and my old girlfriends. A lot of my previous sins and crimes came into my head. The devil worked me over pretty good in those days, but because I followed the Brotherhood House rules, I stayed out of trouble.
One day I met another brother who belonged to Parklawn Assembly of God church. He invited me to meet Pastor Harvey and to attend services there. I met a woman on the bus who was also on her way to Parklawn. We talked about Christ and got to know each other a little more whenever we saw each other at services.
One night the woman called me and said she was lonely. I knew if I left the Brotherhood House and spent the night with her, I’d break curfew and get kicked out… but I did it anyway. Why, I kept wondering, is the flesh so weak?
It was a big mistake. It added nothing but chaos to my life. She was a married woman, separated but not divorced. One day the pastor’s sermon discussed the immorality of being unfaithful to a spouse and the sinfulness of trying to covet thy neighbor’s wife. It seemed like he and everyone in the church was talking directly to me. I finally told the pastor about the woman but he said he already knew.
I got a room elsewhere and worked various temporary jobs. I eventually went back to the woman’s house because every other place I ended up was nothing but a drug house. People dealt and took drugs all around me, and I couldn’t risk being caught with folks like that.
By the second week in November 1994, I knew I needed to leave Milwaukee altogether. I called my sister and brother in St. Louis and asked them to come and get me. For a fleeting moment, I missed prison and I understood why some people wanted to go back. In prison you don’t have to worry about women, money, finding a place to sleep, or finding a job. In prison there also isn’t the everyday struggle of trying to stay clean from drugs and alcohol. There is a lot less temptation in prison.
I thought about Jeff and wondered how he was doing. I hadn’t written a letter to him since my release. I heard about him in the news occasionally. Both his parents had been in the media, discussing their roles in Jeff’s life. His father, Lionel was writing a biography on Jeff and their family life. Jeff had said to me once during our time together that someday the world would be writing books about him–I guess he was right.
His mother, Joyce, also had been in the news a few times and talked about how she loved Jeff even though he did terrible things.
Apparently both his parents visited him in prison. In some ways I was jealous of Jeff, having parents who loved him regardless of his wrongs. He had people there for him, who supported him; he even had priests and people like me who wrote him letters about staying with God. I needed that kind of support. I started to think that maybe I needed a letter telling me about God, love, and strength more than he did right now. I felt lost.
My family picked me up and I moved to Florissant, Missouri, a St. Louis suburb where my sister lived.
Four days after Thanksgiving, on November 28, 1994, I received a shocking call from an old Milwaukee friend.
“Calvin, did you hear that Dahmer’s dead?”
I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. My friend told me that I needed to come to Milwaukee because reporters wanted to interview me. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to talk about Jeff right then but, at the same time, I knew there was a side to Jeff that no one else saw or understood. A lot of people, most people, called him a monster. However, I believed there really was a good side to Jeff, one that the world needed to see.
I boarded a plane that night and flew back to Milwaukee. I read the Chicago papers during a layover.
That’s when it hit me.
Jeffrey Dahmer was dead.
His search for peace and understanding of the Lord’s forgiveness was over. I was sad as I read those newspapers in Chicago.
As soon as I got to Milwaukee, I caught pneumonia and was admitted to St. Joseph’s Hospital. Reporters from Channel 12-TV interviewed me, but the interviews weren’t good because I was too sick.
Jeff’s death struck me to the core. It hurt to think that he was gone. I felt sorry for him and I felt bad, partly because of the way he died. He had already suffered so much in prison, but I told myself that God looked out for him.
I knew Jeff had requested and been baptized in May 1994 by a Church of Christ minister named Roy Ratcliff from Madison. Jeff wore a white robe and Radcliff submerged him in the prison’s steel whirlpool normally used for handicapped inmates.
I was so happy Jeff was baptized. He finally let Jesus into his heart. During an interview, Ratcliff said that Jeff was completely sincere and wanted t
o live a new life. He wasn’t baptized for selfish reasons; Jeff did it because he wanted to be with God and looked forward to a life and an afterlife with God. Jeff finally let go of his demons.
For me personally, I knew in my heart that God forgave Dahmer’s sins. That gave me some peace of mind during the next days. I felt relief knowing that our time together had helped him, in some form, to realize God’s goodness and helped him to see that even a serial killer’s soul could be saved.
Twenty-Four
The Murder of Jeffrey Dahmer
For the time has come for judgment, and it must begin first among God’s own children. And if even we who are Christians must be judged, what terrible fate awaits those who have never believed in the Lord? (I Peter 4:17, TLB)
November 28, 1994.
The headline of the Milwaukee Journal blared across the page in thick, black letters: “Dahmer Slain in Prison.” Jeffrey Dahmer had served a little more than two years and nine months of his sixteen consecutive life sentences.
When he was brutally murdered in the bathroom near the prison gymnasium on that gray November day, Jeffrey was thirty-four years old. That morning he ate breakfast with the other prisoners in his unit. At 7:50 a.m., officers escorted Jeff from his cell to his job cleaning the gym. Just twenty minutes later, security found Jeff and another white prisoner, Jesse Anderson, both in pools of blood with multiple skull fractures, both men savagely beaten.
An ambulance sped Dahmer to Divine Savior Hospital in Portage, just a few miles from the prison. At 9:11 a.m., just an hour after he was beaten, Dahmer was pronounced dead from massive head injuries.
Anderson died two days later from his injuries.
Later another prisoner, twenty-five year old Christopher J. Scarver, confessed. He worked with the two inmates, cleaning the prison gym bathroom. He used a twenty-inch metal bar he had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the gym to bash Dahmer’s head during the attack.
Scarver was a convicted murderer serving a life sentence at Columbia for the 1990 execution-style shooting death of Steven J. Lohman. Lohman had worked with Scarver at the Wisconsin Conservation Corps. Even before he murdered Dahmer, Scarver would not have been eligible for parole until 2042.
After Dahmer’s death, people asked why Jeffrey had been alone and unsupervised in the prison bathroom. Officers at Columbia said Dahmer could have asked for a more segregated, more secure living and working arrangement, but he chose to be out with the general prison population. I heard that, because it was during the holidays, the prison guards were more relaxed. The guards thought since nothing had happened in the past so nothing would happen then. Scarver and Dahmer were unsupervised for a little more than twenty minutes.
The night of Jeff’s death, as I was on my way to Milwaukee, I watched the news on TV and I read the coverage in the newspapers. Some people said it was tragic that Dahmer was dead because now he couldn’t assist medical science by telling them what made him do the things he did. They believed that because he was an intelligent, articulate man, he could have helped society deal with or perhaps prevent other potential serial killers from murdering.
In St. Louis, Chicago, and Milwaukee, I heard people talking about Scarver’s motive for killing Dahmer. Were his actions racially motivated? Was Scarver angry with whites in general? Various media reports over the next few months said Scarver had depression, psychosis, delusions, bi-polar disorder, manic depression, and schizophrenia, and took anti-psychotic medications. Scarver claimed to hear voices that would tell him what to do, say, and whom to trust. He said those voices told him that he was the Son of God, the “chosen one,” and that he was suppose to kill Dahmer. Scarver apparently planned the murder.
Scarver entered a plea of not guilty due to mental illness during his trial for the murders of Dahmer and Anderson. However, the judge ruled Scarver was mentally competent to stand trial. Scarver was charged with both murders and received two more life sentences in addition to his current life sentence for Lohman’s murder.
I found out that a year or so after Scarver’s conviction, he was transferred to the federal prison in Florence, Colorado, known to be one of the most secure prisons in the U.S. federal system. The Wisconsin prison system thought he was too dangerous and feared for the safety of the guards and inmates.
Scarver eventually returned to Wisconsin to the Supermax prison in Boscobel, the state’s most secure maximum-security prison, where he continues to serve his time.
During the week after Jeffrey’s death, the media interviewed many family members of Dahmer’s victims. Few expressed sadness over his death; most were glad he was gone.
The general lack of remorse over Dahmer’s death was understandable. And, although few people actually mourned his passing, I was among those who did grieve. I remembered all the late-night talks I had with him from our adjoining cells at Columbia. I remembered his anguished, twisted feelings about his victims and the way he carried out the murders. I recalled the many conversations we’d had about Jesus Christ and the lessons for living a good life that Jesus had left for us in the New Testament.
I thought about all the letters I’d written to Jeff, the ones written when we were both at Columbia and the dozens of letters I wrote to him after I was moved from the cell next to him, to Racine, and finally to Kettle Moraine.
Since March 1992, I’d tried so hard to share with Jeff the goodness of the Lord in those letters that when he was murdered, I truly felt emptiness inside me. I wondered if Jeff was at peace. Had my messages gotten through to him? Had he truly accepted Jesus Christ as his Lord and Savior? Did Jeff really believe that Jesus died for his sins, the most brutal, vicious sins imaginable? I wondered and thought and prayed.
That night I opened my Bible to II Timothy.
I have fought long and hard for my Lord, and through it all I have kept true to him. And now the time has come for me to stop fighting and rest. In heaven a crown is waiting for me which the Lord, the righteous Judge, will give me on that great day of his return. And not just to me, but to all those whose lives show that they are eagerly looking forward to his coming back again. (II Timothy 4:7-8, TLB)
Was Jeffrey Dahmer now at total rest and peace with God in heaven? I remembered the many times I’d read Jeffrey the comforting words in Ephesians.
Stop being mean, bad-tempered and angry. Quarreling, harsh words, and dislike of others should have no place in your lives. Instead, be kind to each other, tender-hearted, forgiving one another, just as God has forgiven you because you belong to Christ. (Ephesians 4:31-32, TLB)
After I’d read those words to Jeffrey, I’d say, “Jeff, it doesn’t matter what you’ve done, if you repent sincerely, God will forgive you. He will forgive anyone for anything, many, many times. He has forgiven me so many times. Alleluia, thank you, God!”
I recalled another of what seemed like Jeffrey’s favorite verses from Mark.
But when you are praying, first forgive anyone you are holding a grudge against, so that your Father in heaven will forgive you your sins too. (Mark 11:25, TLB)
It seemed Dahmer had slowly but surely come to grips with the knowledge that even his sins could be forgiven.
I remember he told me once he especially liked the way Psalms 102 began: “Lord, hear my prayer! Listen to my plea!” Jeff liked that verse because he, too, was crying out. He was tired and wanted forgiveness.
I hoped that I helped to show Jeff the way. I believe I gave him the tools. With the help from other ministers, priests, nuns, and his baptism, Jeff had everything he needed.
I don’t think Jeff ever thought about God and forgiveness until he got to prison. That’s why prison was the best thing that ever happened to him. Prison gave him the opportunity to be with people filled with God’s forgiving spirit.
Jeffrey Dahmer did horrible things and hurt many people. He suffered a lifelong battle with Satan. I’m sure it is easy for people who did not experience what I had experienced to doubt Dahmer’s sincerity. Only after his arr
est did he begin to have an interest in faith. This leaves us with many questions. Was Jeff’s decision to be baptized and learn about God all for selfish, earthly motives? Was he just doing it to have people take pity on him, with hopes of getting a lighter jail sentence down the road? Was he like the hypocrites Jesus talked about in the Bible, people who act holy to get good graces but in reality have hearts of stone? Or was Jeff truly sorry for the wrongs he committed and wanted to live a new life with God?
Everyone must draw their own conclusions about Dahmer’s sincerity and decide for himself or herself what was really in his or her heart.
But the most important spiritual question will always remain: Did God forgive Jeffrey Dahmer for his horrible sins against humanity?
Truly, only God can answer that question.
I believe with all my heart that as long as Jeffrey didn’t blaspheme our Lord Jesus Christ, and if he truly asked for it, he certainly received the gift of forgiveness. I believe he was earnestly seeking God and wasn’t putting on a show for sympathy. As time went on, both while I was with him and in the next couple of years when I saw him on TV, it was evident to me by his voice, facial expressions, and the things he said that he seemed truly sorry for his sins. Jeff apologized to the ones he hurt and said he wished he had never done the things he did.
Furthermore, he wanted to learn about God. He wanted to learn about a life not shrouded by Satan’s darkness but filled with the forgiving truth and light of God. It is my conviction that in the end the truth really did set Jeffrey free. Just as it will for all of us, if we only believe.
Today you will be with me in Paradise. This is a solemn promise. (Luke 23:43, TLB)
Take Care – Jeff
AFTERWORD
If you only knew what a wonderful gift God has for you, and who I am, you would ask me for some living water! (John 4:10, TLB)
My experience with Jeffrey Dahmer was both frightening and enlightening. He was, for many, the scariest, most evil man on earth. I heard in the media that even after he died and was taken to the morgue at the University of Wisconsin hospital in Madison, his feet remained shackled.
Serial Killer's Soul Page 16