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Milwaukee, July, 1991.
In a rundown apartment building on North 25th Street, tenants had been complaining for weeks about the smell.
It seeped through the vents, clung to the wallpaper, and curled under locked doors.
And some said it was spoiled meat, while others thought that it was just plumbing.
But one man who lived in apartment 213 always had an explanation.
He was always quiet, always polite, always alone.
And that night, a man ran screaming from that apartment.
He was handcuffed, barefoot and terrified.
And he would flag down police officers and lead them inside.
And what they found would shock the world.
Crime, conspiracy, cults, serial killers, and murder.
All things that I love to consume, and I know you do too, you sick twisted beautiful, intellectually minded freak.
And today we are talking about probably the most infamous serial killer of all time.
If you say his name, you know who he is.
There's very few people, I think, that don't know who he is, even if they're not into true crime.
And that is Jeffrey Dahmer.
And today we are doing a deep dive deep dive into this man's life, trying to figure out who he is, why he is the way he is and what atrocities he committed over his lifetime.
So, without further ado, let's unbuckle our seatbelts, go Mach 5 down the highway, slam on the brakes and bust through this windshield into this infamous serial killer together.
So before the headlines and before the horrors, there was a quiet boy growing up in a quiet town, in what seemed like a quiet home.
But beneath the surface, something was festering.
And Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born May 21st 1960 in Milwaukee Wisconsin, to Joyce Annette and Lionel Herbert Dahmer.
And from the outside, the Dahmers looked like any other middle-class American family.
Lionel was a college educated chemist and Joyce was a teletype machine instructor.
And they had two children, Jeffrey and David.
But behind closed doors, the household was far from peaceful.
And, as Lionel would later admit in his book A Father's Story, the home was marked by constant tension.
Joyce herself suffered with anxiety and was a hypochondriac, and Lionel was often absorbed in academic or professional work.
So their relationship was pretty strained due to this.
And the emotional distance only widened after Jeffrey was born.
And by the time Jeffrey was four years old, and some accounts say he was six years old.
At this point, a traumatic event may have left a deep imprint, because he underwent a double hernia surgery.
And at this time it was a very painful and invasive procedure that some speculate contributed to his early feelings of violation and disconnection.
Because it was after this surgery that his behavior began to change.
But, you know, he's four years old.
At this point, you don't really know who you are.
So I feel like it may have been a factor, you know, but I feel like it's a nature nurture kind of thing.
But anyway, once happy and energetic toddler Jeffrey became increasingly withdrawn, quiet and emotionally distant.
And people described him as polite, but isolated.
Often sitting alone and showing little interest in his peers.
Lionel.
Jeffrey Dahmer's father would say.
I saw early on that Jeffrey was somehow more withdrawn, less connected than other kids, but I didn't know what it meant.
None of us did.
And the family would move several times during Jeffrey's youth, which is a lot.
I mean, that's a lot for a kid.
From Milwaukee to Doylestown Ohio, and eventually settling in Bath Township, which was a wooded suburban community.
And it was there, in an ordinary ranch-style house, that some of Jeffrey's darkest fascinations began to take root.
So even as a child, Dahmer distributed disturbing curiosity with death.
And he was known to collect roadkill, dissect dead animals and dissolve flesh from bones using chemicals.
You know, like every 10-year-old does.
And by every 10-year-old, I mean mostly not.
Most not.
Because this behavior just went beyond boyish curiosity.
And at one point, he even impaled a dog's head on a stick in the woods.
Red flags.
And it may be important to note that Jeffrey's fascination did not actually lead him to abuse animals, because he was obsessed with things that were already dead.
So that's...
Kinda good, I guess.
I don't know.
I could see like a parent being like, hey, don't play with dead things.
But at this point, he's not going up to live animals and hurting them.
He's just trying to find dead things.
So I mean, as a parent, I'd be concerned.
But would I assume my son would grow up to be a serial killer at this point?
Not just yet, but there will be signs.
Because he did make note later in interviews that he actually once intended to kill an Irish setter, only to then skin it and dissect it.
But when the dog looked into his eyes, he just couldn't do it.
And then he let the dog go.
So there is a part of him that has that empathy, I guess.
But by high school Dahmer started to abuse alcohol and his alcoholism was daily and severe because he was drinking straight hard liquor during class, hiding bottles in his locker.
And teachers just mostly turned a blind eye, different time.
At the same time, Dahmer was grappling with an intense inner turmoil.
Because his emerging homosexuality and an obsessive desire for total control over others was all that consumed him.
And at this point in his life, there were desires he didn't really understand.
Again, different time.
A little therapy and acceptance, who knows where he could have ended up, you know?
But that is not the case.
And as we know, he would never learn to manage these things.
So he began fantasizing about dominating unconscious men, even dead bodies pretty early on.
But in real life, he had no close relationships at all.
He was very introverted.
Like he didn't have romantic, sexual or platonic friends.
So he was very, very much alone.
And to top off that loneliness, his parents' marriage, already crumbling, ended in a divorce.
And allegedly, his parents fought custody over who would get his little brother.
But they didn't seem to worry too much about how Jeffrey would be affected, which...
Can't imagine how that would be on the psyche of a lonely, depressed, very confused child.
And in the summer of 1988, Jeffrey's life would change forever, because it was in this summer, during a weekend, where he would be left alone at home.
And it was in that vacuum of no family, no supervision and no connections that the dam finally broke.
So it started with a hitchhiker.
It was a warm summer afternoon, a house in the woods and a teenager who would never make it to his concert.
So just three weeks after graduating high school, 18-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder, as he knew his family would be gone for a few days.
And for the first time, Dahmer was completely alone in the family home in Bath Ohio, which is kind of crazy to believe.
He was 18 and he'd never been home alone, but whatever, i digress.
So on june 18 1978, dahmer was driving down a rural road when he spotted a teenage hitchhiker and that hitchhiker was named stephen mark hicks, who was also 18, and he was shirtless and in the summer heat and he was thumbing for a ride to a rock concert at chippewa lake park and dahmer, seeing an opportunity pulled over, i had had uh Fantasies about picking up a hitchhiker and taking him back to the house and having complete control and dominance over him.
So he offered Hicks a ride, but suggested that they stop at his place to drink some beers before going to the concert.
And Hicks agreed.
And he had no idea what that invitation would cost him.
So Jeffrey would drive Hicks to his house.
They would go inside and the two of them would drink and talk and listen to music for hours.
But eventually Hicks would stand up and say that it was time to leave, because he was going to a concert after all.
And it was in that moment that something in Dahmer snapped.
He would say in a later interview I don't know exactly why I hit him, except I wanted to stay with him longer.
So while Hicks was still in the room with him, Dahmer would grab a dumbbell and strike him in the back of the head.
And when Hicks slumped forward, Dahmer used the dumbbell handle to strangle him to death.
And then, with his fantasy, finally realized Dahmer would strip the body and he would have sex with it.
And the next day he would drag Hicks's body to the basement and begin this gruesome process of dismemberment.
First, he would cut up the body and then he would place the remains in trash bags.
And then he would drive a short distance and bury some of the remains in a very shallow grave.
But he couldn't leave it there.
So later on, he returned and then dug up the body.
And then he would proceed to strip the flesh from the bones and dissolve the soft tissue in acid.
And then, after the tissue was all up the bones, he would use a sledgehammer to pulverize the bones and crush them up, and then he would scatter the fragments in the woods behind the house.
And to eliminate all traces, he threw Hicks's necklace and the dismemberment knife into the Cuyahoga River.
Sorry if I said that wrong.
And incredibly, no one suspected him, and Hicks would be listed as a missing person.
And after that Dahmer's family wouldn't notice anything and he would go off to college shortly after.
But this would be his first and last kill for nine years, very long cool down period until he killed again.
But given the meticulous detail of his first kill and how he got rid of it, it was clearly on his mind for a very very, very long time, very long time like.
The meticulous nature of how he got rid of hick's body is disturbing to say the least.
So after killing stephen hicks in june 1978, 18 year old dahmer was adrift.
Having narrowly avoided detection for that first murder, he experienced a lull in his violent behavior, as we know, But his personal life at the same time was completely unraveling.
And in the fall of 1978, Dahmer briefly attended Ohio State University at his father's urging.
But he would drop out after one semester due to failing grades and rampant alcohol abuse.
Don't abuse alcohol, kids.
So with few prospects, he was persuaded by his father to enlist in the US Army in January of 1979.
But Dahmer's military service, not unlike his college time, was short-lived and revealing.
He would train as a medic and was stationed in Baumholder, West Germany.
Baumholder.
Am I saying that right?
I don't know.
And initially, Dahmer was reported to be an average or slightly above average soldier.
Nice.
However, his chronic drinking problem persisted and worsened in the army's barracks environment.
I imagine a lot of guys were drinking back then to just get them through it.
And by early 1981, his performance had deteriorated due to intoxication on duty.
And military superiors decided his alcoholism made him unfit for service.
So he would be honorably discharged.
How are you honorably discharged from being an alcoholic?
But okay, in March of 1981, after about two years in uniform.
And while Dahmer did not commit any known murders at this time, disturbing allegations later emerged that foreshadowed his future crimes.
Because two fellow soldiers, Billy Joe Capshaw and Preston Davis those sound like movie star names reported that Dahmer SA'd them during the service in Germany.
And these incidences, if true, indicate that Dahmer was already acting on violent sexual urges, albeit short of murder, inside a constrained environment.
And as we move through his life and through this case, we will find that this is a pattern.
And he would later admit, It just wasn't an opportunity to fully express what I wanted to do.
There was just not the physical opportunity to do it.
Then implying that his homicidal urges never went away.
And after his discharge, Dahmer spent some time drifting aimlessly.
And instead of returning home to Ohio immediately, he went to Miami, Florida in 1981.
And he would take a job at a sandwich shop and attempted to live independently.
But his alcoholism again don't abuse alcohol, kids and inability to hold a job just led him to sleeping on the beach for a time, basically just being homeless.
And he eventually obviously ran out of money.
So Dahmer would phone his father up for help and return to Ohio.
And at this point Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer's father, had remarried at this point to Sherry Dahmer.
And they really tried to straighten Jeffrey out because he had failed so many times.
But Jeffrey would be arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct shortly after and he would be fined with 60 and given a 10-day sentence in jail.
But by late 1981 it was decided that Jeffrey might do better with a change of scenery and more supervision.
Thus, in late 1981, Dahmer was sent to live with his paternal grandmother, Catherine Dahmer.
And this was in West Allis, Wisconsin, which was a suburb of Milwaukee.
And his grandmother was one of the few family members he felt close to.
And initially this move actually provided some stability for Jeffrey.
And for a while Dahmer helped with chores and attended church with his devout grandmother.
And he even found employment.
And in 1985, he began working at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory as a mixer.
And it was a job that he would hold for several years.
And his family just hoped that living in a structured religious home would kind of curb his drinking and troubling proclivities.
But unfortunately Dahmer's inner demons would follow him to Milwaukee and he would continue to drink heavily and he began to go out into the city to the gay bars and bathhouses.
And it was during this period that Dahmer honed a practice of drugging men for sexual gratification without any resistance, because Jeffrey Dahmer didn't like when his partners moved, which is just foreshadowing beyond belief.
And he was actually banned from at least one bathhouse in multiple instances where he laced other patrons' drinks with sedatives, leaving them completely unconscious.
And obviously he got caught for it.
But he would effectively use their bodies while they were incapacitated.
And he called this passive sex.
But this predatory behavior just escalated his sense of control over partners.
So he began the process of not seeing other people as people. but just things for him to exploit.
And in the summer of 1986 he was arrested for lewd behavior after exposing himself and masturbating in front of two boys.
And Dahmer would receive a one year suspended sentence and was required to undergo counseling for the 1986 offense.
And incidents like this just kind of show that Dahmer was just testing the waters, testing boundaries and acting out in sexually risky ways long before he resumed murder.
And a particularly telling incident occurred in 1987.
And this was before his second murder.
So Dahmer would tell his probation officer an alarming fantasy that he was having.
And his fantasy was about a male corpse.
In fact Dahmer later admitted around 1986 he came very close to acting on this idea to steal a freshly buried body from a cemetery.
And he went so far as to find an obituary of an 18 year old male and he would even attend the funeral to see the body.
And then after that, he would attempt to dig up the grave days later.
Just nasty.
But he would abandon this plan because the ground was too hard and there was a dog in the graveyard that chased him off.
So not because he had, you know, reserved feelings, just because it was a little cold outside basically, and there was a dog.
So his necrophilic desires were reaching a breaking point.
Because at this point, as we know, he was willing to break graves to satisfy them.
But he still hadn't killed yet.
Yet.
Because the threshold between fantasy and reality was thinning.
And by thinning, I mean he was ready to murder again.
And he would do that in November of 1987, which is almost a decade after the first.
And the victim would be 24-year-old Steven Tuomi, whom Dahmer encountered at a gay bar in Milwaukee.
And Dahmer, now living in Wisconsin, persuaded Steven to join him for drinks at an upscale Ambassador Hotel because Dahmer had rented a room for the night.
And according to Dahmer's later statements, he did not initially plan to kill Steven.
His intent was to drug the man into unconsciousness and lie beside him to indulge in his control fantasy, without actually taking his life.
Just way better, way better situation.
It's not.
So Steven would agree and they would go back to his hotel room and they would drink heavily in his hotel room.
And Dahmer claims that he blacked out in an alcoholic haze shortly after.
Just bullshit.
And when he awoke the next morning he was horrified to find that Stephen was laying dead beside him in bed, because in his intoxicated stupor, Dahmer had savagely beaten Stephen to death.
But he later insisted that he had no memory of committing this murder.
And you know, maybe it's true, but it It doesn't matter regardless, because he was going to drug him and take advantage of him.
His plan was to do awful illegal things to him anyway.
So the whole, oh, I don't remember is just like thrown into the wind.
But notably, Stephen is actually the only victim in Milwaukee for whom Dahmer was never charged for.
Because, without a body or a crime scene, authorities initially had no evidence that the murder even occurred.
So seeing Stephen beside him in bed, dead, Dahmer panicked.
And he knew that he had to dispose of the body discreetly.
So he would go out and purchase a very large suitcase.
And using this, he would cram Stephen's lifeless body inside and check out of the hotel.
And in the elevator and the lobby, nobody realized the heavy suitcase held a corpse.
And nobody realized that he didn't have luggage when he checked in.
But I guess you wouldn't assume, you know, people walking around with a lot of luggage.
There's a body in there, I guess.
But I don't know.
It's just heartbreaking, you know, for Steven's family.
Like it's...
And in fact Dahmer would actually later recount that an unsuspecting taxi driver even helped him load the luggage.
And when the driver remarked about a foul odor coming from the bag, Dahmer just kept silent and he would transport the body to his grandmother's house.
And there in the basement he proceeded to dismember Steven's body, just like he had done with Hicks.
But Dahmer would wait about a week before carrying out this dismemberment, letting the corpse kind of decompose slightly.
And he then would cut the body into pieces and put the parts into garbage bags for disposal, with the weekly trash pickup, which is horrifying to think about.
I wonder if garbage people think about that, like if there's any sort of body in any of the trash bags, like if there's a certain smell coming in.
Oh my God, I can't, I can't, my brain can't go there.
Anyway, I digress.
But this time Dahmer did something new with his victim, Steven.
He would keep a part of Steven as a souvenir.
So Dahmer severed Steven's head and retained it for a time.
Just fascinated of the idea of preserving a piece of the man he'd killed.
She was like, oh, I didn't mean to do it.
But meanwhile he has Steven's head in a freezer like.
So he would keep Steven's head wrapped in a blanket for about two weeks in the freezer.
And then he would attempt to permanently preserve it by boiling the head in a chemical bath.
So the boiling process stripped the flesh, but ultimately rendered the skull too brittle.
So when the skull just crumbled in Dahmer's hands, he would pulverize the rest of the pieces and get rid of them.
So in the end, no remains of Steven were ever found.
And his murder remained a missing persons case until Dahmer's confession.
I can't even imagine how the family felt during this time.
But Dahmer's ability to eliminate all evidence of the crime ensured that at a time police did not even classify Steven as a homicide.
So this was his second murder and it was a near perfect crime, if you can call it that.
And it just emboldened Dahmer to continue.
So in early 1988, Dahmer would strike again.
And his third victim would be James Jamie Dox Tater.
And Jamie was a 14 year old runaway from home and was just surviving on the streets of Milwaukee.
So Dahmer met the young teen at a bus stop near the city's gay nightlife district around January 16th 1988.
And exploiting the boy's desperation, Dahmer promised James easy money.
And he offered him $50 in exchange for the boy coming home with him to pose for nude photos.
So Jamie would agree and he would accompany Dahmer to the West Allis house where he lived with his grandmother.
And once they were alone in the basement, Dahmer drugged the teen by spiking his drink with sleeping pills.
And after Jamie fell unconscious, Dahmer would say him.
Then he would repeat his now established method.
And Dahmer would strangle Jamie to death.
And after that, he would leave Jamie's body in the basement for about a week.
And it was after this week that Dahmer would proceed to get rid of the body how he got rid of the others.
And this would ensure that no physical evidence of the boy would ever be found.
And, like Steven Jamie, remained a missing person until Dahmer's arrest, when the killer provided details of the murder.
So at this point, Jeffrey Dahmer was refining a very deadly routine.
Approach a stranger, lure him with the promise of money or sex, drug him into unconsciousness, then strangle him and then dispose of them, and he would learn how to carry out murder and disposal with chilling efficiency.
So Dahmer's fourth victim was Richard Guerrero, and he was a 25-year-old man from Milwaukee.
And on March 24th, 1988, Guerrero met Dahmer outside a gay bar in the city's south side.
A Dahmer would approach him in the early morning hours and offered 50 for Guerrero to accompany him home for the night.
And Guerrero unfortunately accepted.
So Dahmer would bring him back to his grandmother's residence and follow his now standard script.
He would spike his drink with sleeping pills and wait until he was unconscious.
And then when he was unconscious, he would be strangled to death and assayed.
So this was now just his MO, his pattern.
And he often even went on to commit necrophilia, deriving a perverse thrill from violating his victim's bodies after death.
And then after Dahmer set out to dismember Guerrero within roughly 24 hours after the murder.
And, like his other victims, he attempted to preserve the skull and then would later pulverize it and get rid of it.
And Guerrero's family was just desperate for answers at this point.
But the search for him, as we know, was just in vain.
And he was only ever identified after Dahmer's 1991 confession, when Dahmer was able to point out Guerrero's photograph and acknowledge his fate.
However, by this time, hiding the evidence was proving to be challenging for Dahmer, because dismembering bodies and storing parts at his grandmother's house was causing foul odors, as you could imagine.
In fact, Dahmer's grandmother, Catherine Dahmer, had begun complaining about horrible smells emitting from the basement and garage.
And she also grew alarmed by her grandson's habit of bringing young men home late at night.
And Dahmer managed to explain the smells away by saying oh, it's rotting meat or it's sewage backups.
But he was aware that his activities were raising suspicions at this point.
But still, he had remained undetected.
Because I'm assuming you know your grandma doesn't assume that you're doing all the things she's doing.
So after Guerrero, Dahmer lured a man named Ronald Flowers Jr his grandmother's basement, but that evening his grandmother came down to check on him and saw the two of them together.
Unfortunately this was before flowers had passed out from the drugs dahmer had given him.
So dahmer did not hurt flowers that night and instead he actually took him to the hospital.
Thank god for grandma, because flowers, having been seen by dahmer's grandmother that evening, ultimately just saved his life, and dahmer knew that if anything were to happen to him he would get caught.
So by the summer of 1988 Dahmer had killed four people in Wisconsin without discovery.
And the mounting decomposition, odors and the grandmother's unease finally pushed Dahmer out of her home.
Because Catherine, disturbed by the smells and her grandson's odd business hours, she requested him to move out.
And in September of 1988, shortly after Richard Guerrero's murder, Jeffrey Dahmer did move into his own apartment.
And the move would lead to a temporary pause in his killings.
But that pause however, was not due to a crisis in conscience, but to Dahmer's arrest for a different crime.
And that was an essay of a 13-year-old minor.
So luckily this boy escaped from Jeffrey's clutches and would report on it.
But Dahmer would be released on bail, having only spent a week in jail.
But before his forced hiatus, Dahmer would claim one more victim.
Anthony Sears was 24 years old and became Dahmer's fifth victim on March 25th 1989, which is Easter weekend of that year.
And Sears was an aspiring model with a lively personality and big dreams.
And Dahmer would encounter Sears at a gay bar in Milwaukee and the two struck up a conversation.
And at the time Dahmer was awaiting sentencing from a previous sexual offense.
But despite the risk, Dahmer proceeded to hunt another victim.
Cool down period is getting real fucking short now.
And, fearing he was being watched by police, he chose to take Anthony Sears back to his grandma's home instead.
And in the early morning hours in his grandmother's basement Dahmer drugged Sears and then strangled him to death.
And with Anthony Sears, Dahmer crossed a new line and he began trophy keeping, Because Sears was the first victim in which Dahmer deliberately preserved body parts as keepsakes.
So, after killing and dismembering, Anthony Dahmer carefully cut off the man's head and also removed his genitals.
And he would treat these parts in acetone to preserve them.
And they would be kept together in a small wooden box.
And Dahmer stored this grisly box of mementos in his closet and later at his workplace.
In fact, while serving his jail sentence in 1989 for the earlier molestation case, Dahmer hid Sears' skull and preserved remains in his work locker at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, only to retrieve them after he was released on probation.
The concealment is just jaw-dropping, because for months a box containing a human head sat quietly at his job site, unbeknownst to anyone.
And Dahmer would even occasionally open the box and look at the remains of Anthony Sears, deriving a sick sense of comfort and arousal at the same time.
And Dahmer would even speak candidly about these souvenirs later on.
A box in my bedroom closet and it contained the mummified head and genitals of a young man I met in one of the bars down in Milwaukee.
And it was a locked metal box.
So preserving parts of his victims, Dahmer explained, was a way to possess them even after death.
And it just fed his necrophilic urge to control.
So by keeping body parts, Dahmer could relive the murders and feel that a piece of the person stayed with him.
Aww, what the fuck?
And this behavior just escalated after Sears.
Because, from this point on, collecting trophies skulls bones, even preserved organs, just became part of his regular Dahmer ritual.
And, as one psychiatrist later noted for Dahmer, the trophies were gratification, reliving the experience of knowing these people.
Yeah, whatever, dude.
It was just basically a twisted way of memorializing his victims and keeping their presence in his life.
Some people keep photos, but not Dahmer.
You'll just keep your fucking femur in a box.
But not long after the murder of Sears, Dahmer faced accountability for earlier essays.
And in May of 1989 he was actually sentenced to 12 months in jail with work release and five years probation.
And this enforced jail time meant a temporary halt to his murders.
Thank God.
However, the dark trophies of Anthony Sears waited for him.
And Dahmer would actually be released early in 1990 and he would retrieve his preserved head and genitals and he would bring them back to his new apartment at 924 North 25th Street in Milwaukee.
And there he placed Sears' skull in a filing cabinet, which was a grim foundation for what would become a personal shrine of skulls and bones.
So Jeffrey Dahmer was now fully entrenched in his pattern.
Kill, violate, dismember, preserve, and repeat.
And with his own apartment, Apartment 213 the infamous Apartment 213 and no watchful relatives living with him, his killings were about to accelerate with horrific pace.
So apartment 213 was a one bedroom unit in a nondescript building on North 25th Street in Milwaukee.
And rent was dirt cheap.
And neighbors just kind of kept to themselves.
And behind one locked door, the unimaginable was unfolding.
So it was May of 1990 that he would move into this apartment.
And on paper, it looked like a fresh start.
He had recently been released from jail and was on probation.
And he was working at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory.
And to most people, he seemed like a quiet, if somewhat odd, tenant.
But inside the apartment, Dahmer was spiraling into a depth of depravity no one around him could see.
And here, the ritual just evolved.
And it was no longer just about killing.
It became about preserving, collecting, and consuming.
A new thing.
Wow.
A new part of the ritual.
He basically just built a private ecosystem of horror.
He would get a 57 gallon drum in the corner which was used to dissolve torches torsos, a freezer and refrigerator stocked with severed heads and human flesh, a growing collection of skulls neatly cleaned and displayed in drawers and polaroids of his victims.
Oh, he did keep photos.
And those weren't enough.
And some posed in life, others staged in death, with some documenting the step-by-step process of dismemberment.
Oh, it's so fucking horrifying.
And, above all, just a craving for absolute control, not just over the moment of death, but over the victim's body long after they died.
And it was also at the Oxford apartments where cannibalism became part of his routine.
Because Dahmer began eating portions of his victims, including their hearts and biceps.
And he would just cook them the way you cook any other meat.
And it obviously wasn't out of hunger, but it was about possession.
Everything he did was about possessing these people during and after death.
It made me feel like they were a permanent part of me.
Meanwhile neighbors were complaining about foul fucking odors, loud power tools and very strange behavior.
But Dahmer would deflect with practice lies.
Again, it was spoiled meat.
It was plumbing issues.
It was a broken freezer.
And his quiet demeanor just kind of made him seem harmless.
And he wasn't like this big hulking guy like Ed Kemper.
He was kind of like spindly and looked, you know, kind of nerdy and just like unassuming.
So between May 1990 and July 1991 Dahmer would murder 12 more young men and boys inside apartment 213, accelerating in cool down period frequency, boldness and brutality.
And he even experimented with new methods as well, including chemical lobotomies and preservation attempts.
And yet for over a year, he remained undetected.
So the Oxford apartments weren't only the scene of Dahmer's most gruesome crimes, they were the epicenter of one of the most horrific killing sprees in American history.
And what followed would stun the world.
And it all began with a man he met on May 20th, 1990, Raymond Smith.
So after his release from jail in 1990, Dahmer did not take long to kill again.
His sixth victim and his first victim killed in Dahmer's infamous North 25th Street apartment was Raymond Lamont Smith.
And Raymond was a 32-year-old man whom friends also knew by the alias Ricky Beaks.
And Smith at this point in his life had fallen on hard times and occasionally engaged in sex work.
And on May 20th 1990 Dahmer prepositioned Raymond Smith, offering him 50 in exchange for sex at Dahmer's apartment.
And Smith would agree thinking nothing of it and would accompany Dahmer to apartment 213.
So inside the apartment, Dahmer would mix a cocktail for Raymond Smith and it was spiked with a sedative.
And once Smith fell unconscious on the couch, Dahmer would proceed to strangle him to death.
So, with Raymond Smith's body now at his disposal, Dahmer indulged in acts that were becoming habitual for him.
So he posed the corpse in erotic suggestive positions and used his Polaroid camera to take a series of photographs.
And these Polaroids showing Smith's lifeless body, arranged in various erotic portrayals, were kept by Dahmer as a personal trophy and aid for alone time fantasies.
And the recovery of these disturbing photos later by police would provide undeliable evidence of Dahmer's crimes.
So, after capturing his photo shoot, Dahmer set about dismembering Raymond Smith in his small bathroom of his apartment.
And, after dismembering and separating the flesh from bone, he would boil the flesh in a large pot with a caustic chemical solution which was a mix of Soylex and bleach to reduce the sludgy substance.
And this allowed him later to flush or dispose of the soft tissue easily.
And the remaining bones, he dissolved in a vat of acid that he obtained for this purpose.
And in the end, almost nothing of Raymond Smith remained, except for his skull.
Just, I just, again, just horrible, horrifying.
I just think every time I'm talking.
I just think about the families and them having to hear about this and it makes me want to throw up and I feel so awful.
Like I feel horrified for them.
My heart always goes out to the families with these cases.
So Dahmer would keep Smith's skull and store it in the filing cabinet next to Anthony Sears' skull.
And this is where his personal collection of human skulls would form.
And, not surprisingly, the process of dismembering and dissolving Raymond Smith produced very strong odors.
And neighbors in the Oxford apartments noticed the foul stench emanating from Dahmer's unit.
And when complaints were raised, Dahmer shrugged them off with an excuse.
And he simply said that his refrigerator had malfunctioned and a bunch of meat spoiled inside, causing the terrible smell.
And this lie apparently placated people for the time being.
And remarkably, no one investigated further at that moment.
And it would be just a few weeks later, in June of 1990, that Dahmer would kill again, this time experimenting with a new method of preserving his victims.
So the seventh victim was Edward Warren Smith, and he was a 27-year-old acquaintance of Dahmer's.
And despite sharing a last name, Edward Smith was not related to Raymond Smith.
So Eddie Smith was known in Milwaukee's gay community and was known to be very friendly.
And he even had a nickname, The Sheik, for his habit of wearing a turban-styled bandana.
And it's believed that Dahmer met Eddie Smith at a bar and lured him on the pretext of just hanging out and making some easy money, much like his prior victims.
And in late June 1990 Smith went to Dahmer's apartment 213th and, like the others, was given a sedative lace drink.
And once incapacitated, Dahmer would strangle him to death.
But what distinguished Edward Smith's case was Dahmer's attempt to retain the body instead of immediately disposing of it.
So, after killing Smith Dahmer placed the body in his apartment chest's freezer instead of dismembering it right away.
And he had hoped that freezing might prevent the corpse from decomposing.
And this was an experiment to see if he could have a long-lasting specimen.
And for several months, Smith's frozen corpse was kept intact.
And perhaps Dahmer just fantasized that he could revive it, or at least that would satisfy his necrophilic urges to have an unrotted body at his disposal.
Unfortunately for Dahmer's aims, the experiment failed because the freezing process caused the tissues to become dried out and freezer burned.
So when Dahmer eventually thawed the body, he found it had decomposed badly and was not in a condition to be preserved or displayed.
So frustrated, Dahmer proceeded to get rid of Edward Smith's remains entirely.
And he defrosted and dismembered the body and then used his now standard method of destruction acid and pulverization.
In fact, Dahmer actually tried another tactic.
He actually attempted to dry Smith's skeleton in his oven, which caused the bones to explode from heat.
I just need a minute.
It's a lot.
Are you good?
You good to continue?
All right, we're gonna continue.
So this obviously ruined any chance of keeping the skeleton intact.
And in the end, Dahmer disposed of all of Eddie Smith's remains.
So not a single bone or body part was recovered by the police in 1991.
When he was eventually caught, meaning Dahmer successfully destroyed all of the evidence.
And he had derived a sort of excitement from the idea of keeping a whole body or significant parts of one.
And when asked about Edward Smith, Dahmer laminated that the freezing had ruined the flesh and he was upset that he did not get to keep any of Smith's body parts.
And this failure may have spurred him to refine other methods of preservation in subsequent murders.
And it's notable that around this time Dahmer's murderous focus was intensifying he was killing roughly one person a month in 1990 and finding new ways to fulfill his disturbing fantasies, because preserving skulls was just no longer enough for this guy.
He wanted entire bodies, or at least larger sections, to keep with him.
So the tragic case of edward smith illustrates the escalation, and sadly this meant that edward smith's life was gone and even his remains were lost to his grieving family and And in early 1991 Edward's sister allegedly received a prank phone call and it said don't bother looking for your brother, he's dead.
Which is so, so incredibly sad.
And though he was reported missing shortly after his disappearance, the family did not learn the truth of his fate until Dahmer's arrest by september 1990.
Dahmer was growing more depraved in his actions and his eighth victim, ernest marquis miller.
Ernest marquez miller was killed on september 2nd 1990, and with this murder dahmer introduced both cannibalism and new killing technique into his pattern.
So ernest miller was a 22 year old and was a former dance student who graduated from milwaukee high school of the arts, and he was in town from chicago to visit family over labor day weekend And Dahmer encountered Miller loitering outside a bookstore near 27th Street of Wisconsin Avenue.
And the young man was very low on funds and he was looking for a good time.
So Dahmer approached him and offered him 50 if Miller would come back to Dahmer's apartment for a few drinks and some photographs.
And Ernest Miller, unfortunately, agreed.
So inside Dahmer's apartment, the situation proceeded like the previous incidences, up to a point.
Cause Dahmer gave Miller a drink laced with sedatives but realized he had only a few sleeping pills left.
So it wasn't enough to knock Miller fully out.
So as Dahmer began to make advances, Miller reportedly said, quote unquote, that'll cost you extra.
And Dahmer then decided to act quickly.
So, in deviation from his strangulation method, Dahmer grabbed a knife and actually slashed Ernest Miller's throat, cutting the carotid artery.
So Miller would bleed to death within minutes on Dahmer's bedroom floor.
And this was the only known instance in which Dahmer used a knife to kill his victim.
So, with Ernest Miller's dead body before him now, Dahmer indulged in some of his grisliest behaviors.
He would pose the body in various ways to get his pictures, and then he would move his body to the bathtub where he would dismember him.
And he allegedly kissed and spoke to his severed head while doing all of this.
And, while dismembering Miller, he also decided to eat parts of him while he was doing it, a practice that he had been contemplating, I guess, in the back of his mind.
So he would remove sections of Miller, notably the heart, the biceps and a portion of his leg, and set it aside in the freezer to be eaten later.
And over the following days, Dahmer would cook and consume pieces of Ernest's flesh, frying them in a skillet and seasoning them to taste.
And this was the beginning of Dahmer's reputation as the Milwaukee Cannibal.
And he would later admit that he found the meat tasted like beef.
And that consuming his victims gave him pleasure and a sense of permanent ownership over them.
And in addition to cannibalizing Miller, Dahmer preserved other body parts as well.
And he not only kept the head, but he also kept Ernest's entire skeleton as well.
So psychologically, this was allegedly Dahmer's way of overcoming his fear of rejection, because if he ingested or physically retained parts of his victims, they could never leave him.
And when Miller's family reported him missing, they had no idea he had met such a fate.
And, in a heartbreaking footnote, about two weeks after Miller vanished, his grandmother received a prank phone call as well, where a faint voice on the line cried help, help.
It's just, that gives me chills.
That just makes me so, so incredibly sad for the family.
The call was unlikely related, but it underscored the agony of Miller's loved ones.
And yet again, they would not know the true fate of Miller until Dahmer confessed in 1991.
So, three weeks after Ernest Miller's murder, Dahmer would kill again, claiming his ninth victim, even though, by his own account, his desires for this particular victim had waned.
And this victim was David C. Thomas.
And he was a 22 year old man and father of a two year old girl.
Dahmer would meet him on September 24th, 1990, near the Grand Avenue Mall in Milwaukee.
And the two would strike up a conversation, and Dahmer, ever on the prowl, offered Thomas money to come back to his apartment for drinks and photos.
And Thomas reluctantly agreed, not realizing the deadly trap he would be walking into.
So back at apartment 213, he followed his routine.
He would give him a drink and he would wait till he was unconscious.
However, Dahmer later said that once Thomas was passed out, he actually realized that he didn't find him as attractive as his other victims.
So this presented Dahmer with a problem, because Thomas was alive and unconscious in his apartment.
But Dahmer wasn't compelled by him.
But ultimately Dahmer decided he had to kill David Thomas anyway.
And this wasn't out of desire this time, but it was out of self-preservation, because he knew that if Thomas woke up, he could potentially fight back or report the drugging.
So, despite the lack of interest, Dahmer strangled David Thomas to death while the man was still unconscious.
And after killing him, Dahmer made no effort to keep any mementos from Thomas, though he still documented the dismemberment process via photos.
But after he was done with his body, he would discard of all of it.
And unfortunately, nothing of David Thomas was ever recovered.
And tragically, Thomas's ex-girlfriend and family spent months looking for him, not knowing he had been brutally slain.
And at Dahmer's trial, David Thomas's mother Inez, addressed the court, saying through tears you took away his two-year-old child's father.
She sits at the window asking, where is Dada?
It's just so fucking sad.
So the full horror of what happened to Thomas only emerged when Dahmer gave a detailed statement.
And until then, Thomas's case was a missing persons mystery with no leads.
And by the end of 1990, Jeffrey Dahmer had killed four people that year.
Smith, Smith, Miller, and Thomas.
So he had, at this point, murdered nine individuals.
But his appetite for destruction was not satisfied.
In fact, it was accelerating.
And when 1991 began, Dahmer's killing spree would reach its climax with the most shocking crimes yet to come.
Curtis Durrell Strouder was Dahmer's 10th victim.
He was just 17 years old and had recently lost a job as a nursing aide.
And he was known by his friends as a gentle, fun-loving teen who sometimes went by the nickname Demetra in the local gay community.
And on February 18th 1991 Dahmer spotted Curtis Strouder waiting on a bus stop near Marquette University in Milwaukee.
And seizing the opportunity, Dahmer approached Strouder and struck up a conversation.
And he quickly offered him money in exchange for posing for nude photographs and sex.
And Curtis would agree and accompany Dahmer back to apartment 213.
And inside the apartment, Dahmer handed Strouter a drink laced with sedatives, rendering the teenager unconscious.
And then Dahmer would methodically strangle him to death using a leather strap.
And then he would continue his routine as he did all the others.
He would photograph, dismember, and then retain trophies.
And Curtis's disappearance in 1991 was deeply felt by his family and the community because he had lived with his grandmother and had plans to get his GED and attend modeling school.
But they had no idea what had actually happened to Curtis until the horrifying truth came out.
But for Dahmer, however, Stratter's murder only fueled his desire to continue.
Errol Lindsay was the 11th victim of Jeffrey Dahmer.
He was a 19-year-old man described by a family as an outgoing mama's boy, who loved joke telling and had a bright future ahead.
But on April 7th 1991 Lindsay left his home to go get a key cut at a local shop, and he never returned.
And it's believed that Dahmer encountered Lindsay on the street that day.
And Dahmer, now extremely practiced in deception, managed to get the teenager to accompany him to his apartment.
And at apartment 213, Dahmer carried out his familiar routine at first.
He gave Lindsey a drug to drink that rendered him unconscious.
But then Dahmer had a different plan for Lindsey, because his obsession for control had reached the point where he wanted a compliant breathing partner, essentially just a mindless sex slave.
So once Lindsay was unconscious, Dahmer fetched an electric drill.
And in a truly nightmarish procedure, Dahmer drilled a hole into Lindsay's skull while the young man was still alive but sedated.
And then Dahmer would inject a solution of hydrochloric acid through the hole directly into Lindsay's brain.
And Dahmer hoped this would chemically induce a zombie-like state, even though he had No business doing this and had no idea if it would work.
But this procedure left Lindsay alive, but in a vegetative, unresisting condition.
So this was the first time Dahmer tried to improvise a lobotomy technique.
But not shockingly, the experiment did not go as Dahmer envisioned.
And after the acid injection, Lindsay woke up.
And he actually regained consciousness, reportedly saying, "'I have a headache.
What time is it?'
And this was a sign that he was not incapacitated enough.
And Dahmer was kind of astonished that Lindsay was still functional.
So he quickly gave Lindsay more sedatives to subdue him again, and then he would strangle him to ensure that he was dead.
But for all we know, Lindsay had already been dying from the head trauma that he endured.
So with Lindsay now deceased, Dahmer continued to push the boundaries of his depravity.
So he would decapitate Lindsay's body as he did the others, and he would put his head aside for processing later.
But this time, instead of dismembering the corpse, he decided to fillet the corpse, meaning he peeled the skin from Lindsay's body.
And Dahmer would attempt to preserve the skin, presumably to keep it supple and perhaps to later use it to display it.
And, according to his confession, he soaked Lindsay's skin in a saline solution and stored it for a few weeks in hopes it wouldn't decay.
And ultimately this attempt failed and the skin became too frayed and smelly and Dahmer reluctantly disposed of it.
But the fact that he tried indicates the extreme lengths he was willing to preserve a physical piece of his victims.
And Lindsay's murder is also very significant because of the psychological insight it provides.
Because Dahmer's attempt at creating a zombie slave reveals the depth of his need for control.
Then I tried to keep the person alive by inducing a zombie-like state by injecting first dilute acid solution into their brain or hot water, and it never did completely work.
And Lindsay's family was absolutely devastated by this loss, because they had lost a beloved son and brother in the most horrifying way imaginable.
And Lindsay's mother Mildred, struggled to understand how her shy, home-loving boy even met Dahmer, saying he wasn't the type to talk to just anybody.
He went to work and then he came home.
He wouldn't even go out with his friends without calling me to see what I was doing.
So the randomness and brutality of his death at the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer would forever haunt them.
Anthony Tony Hughes was 31 years old and was murdered by Dahmer in May, 1991.
And Tony Hughes was unique among Dahmer's victims because he was actually deaf and mute.
He had lost hearing when he was an infant due to illness.
So on the night of May 24th, 1991, Hughes went out dancing in a nightclub in Milwaukee.
And it was there that he would cross paths with Jeffrey Dahmer.
And communication between them was done through written notes and perhaps some lip reading on Tony's part.
And Dahmer invited Tony back to his apartment for a photo shoot proposition, offering him money in return, as he does.
And Tony Hughes, who was visiting from Madison, was staying with family in Milwaukee at the time.
And he would be last seen alive on May 24th.
And we know from Dahmer's confession that Hughes went to Dahmer's apartment willingly that night.
And once inside, Dahmer wasted no time in drugging his guest.
And Tony Hughes, unable to hear, would not have realized if Dahmer locked the door or if any unusual sounds occurred.
So he drank the laced beverage and became unconscious.
And Dahmer would then attempt to make another zombie, drilling a hole into Hughes' head and then injecting hydrochloric acid.
But this time the attempt was fatal.
So at this point Dahmer had another corpse in his apartment, but he did not immediately dispose or dismember Tony Hughes.
For whatever reason, Dahmer left Hughes' body intact on the bedroom floor for a couple of days.
And the corpse of Tony Hughes was laying in Dahmer's apartment on the evening of May 26th 1991 when Dahmer decided to go out to find another victim.
And this decision would prove almost catastrophic for Dahmer's freedom, as it set the stage for an infamous incident.
And eventually, after the events with Conorac, which will be detailed next, Dahmers returned to Tony Hughes' body and he would take Polaroid photos.
And then he would continue to dismember Hughes, keeping two significant pieces of Tony, which was the skull and his vertebrae.
And Shirley Hughes, which was Tony's mother, had to endure the confirmation that those remains belonged to her son.
And in court she movingly spoke and even signed in sign language.
I love you.
To her deceased son as a farewell.
And the Netflix dramatization of Dahmer's story highlighted Tony's chapter, imagining a deeper relationship.
But in reality, Dahmer and Tony only met that night and there was no romance.
I don't know why the fuck they would do that.
It actually makes me fucking sick to my stomach that Hollywood thinks that they need to like, romanticize this and to make it feel don't know like deeper than what it was when, when jeffrey dahmer was literally just a monster and they're so dishonest to his real story.
And for the family to watch that and see them like make a fake story about their son is just it just infuriates me, because tony was simply ensnared by dahmer's false friendliness, like all the others, and he would be victim number 12.
And his murder directly preceded one of the worst failures of law enforcement in the Dahmer case.
And Tony Hughes' mother later said of her son's murderer I don't see how someone could be that evil.
He destroyed my family.
And Tony's story just underscores the utter vulnerability of Dahmer's victims.
Even a cautious, kind man who couldn't hear his predator's footsteps was not spared.
Conorac sent them some fun.
Age 14, suffered perhaps the most infamous and heartbreaking fate of all of Dahmer's victims, largely because there was a moment when he could have been saved.
So Conorac was the younger brother of Somsak, who was the boy mentioned earlier that Dahmer had assayed, not killed but escaped, and then went to jail for in 1988.
And the Sthasampham family were refugees from Laos and had no idea the man who had assaulted their older son years before would come for Conorac.
But on May 26th 1991 Dahmer went out looking for another victim and he would find Conorac on Wisconsin Avenue.
Despite being only 14.
Conorac was out alone that evening and Dahmer would meet him and convince the boy to come back to his apartment, offering money to pose for nude photos.
And once they reached apartment 213, Dahmer gave Konrack drugged liquor as he had done with others.
And with the 14-year-old now unconscious, Dahmer carried out yet another one of his zombification procedures.
He had attempted on Lindsay.
He would drill a hole in Conorac's skull and inject hydrochloric acid into his frontal lobe of his brain.
And Conorac was smaller and younger than Lindsay, and the acid put him into a deeply unconscious and semi lobotomized state.
And Dahmer would just leave his body on the floor next to Tony Hughes' dead body and went out to purchase more alcohol.
So we're kind of going back to that timeline where he went to go look for another victim when Tony Hughes was still on his bedroom floor.
So now they were just lying on the floor next to each other.
This was before he disposed of Tony.
So it was now in the early hours of May 27th, 1991.
And during Dahmer's absence, Conorac actually woke up and escaped the apartment, which was a rare opportunity for one of Dahmer's victims.
But despite the skull fracture and acid in his brain, the resilient teenager regained consciousness enough to stumble out of the door.
And naked and bleeding and obviously disoriented Conorac made it to the street outside the apartment complex.
And there, at about 2 a.m., three women spotted the boy.
And their names were Sandra Smith, Tina Spivey, and Nicole Childress.
And they were alarmed.
I mean, this was a teen boy who was nude and bruised and seemed completely incoherent.
And they would call 911.
Where is he at?
So, as they tried to help the dazed boy, Dahmer returned to find his experiment literally out on the street, surrounded by concerned bystanders.
And that's when a tragic miscarriage of justice ensued, because Milwaukee police officers John Belkerzak and Joseph Gabrish arrived in response to the 911 call.
And Dahmer, ever composed under pressure, told the officers that the boy was his 19-year-old boyfriend and that Konorak was just drunk after a lover's quarrel.
But the three women who decided to call 911 empathetically argued with Dahmer and the police that the boy was a child in danger.
But Dahmer convinced the officers that Konorak was an adult.
And he produced his Polaroid snapshots of Conorac posing in his underwear as supposed proof of their relationship.
And the officers, unfortunately, decided to believe Dahmer's story.
And they literally escorted Conorac, who was weakly protesting, back into apartment 213 with Dahmer.
And inside they did notice the foul smell coming from Tony Hugh's body, which was inside Dahmer's bedroom at this point.
But Dahmer casually explained it all away as he usually did.
And the police did not investigate any further.
And they did not run Dahmer's name through any system.
Just... fucking failure of the justice system, like incredibly so.
I'm sure they felt so much guilt after the fact and they should, because that is a miscarriage of justice.
So after they brought Conorac and Dahmer back to the apartment, they would say take good care, and they would leave.
And the women were outraged and tried to warn the police, but they were threatened to butt out of what the officers considered a domestic issue.
And once the police left, Dahmer wasted no time and he would inject a second load of acid into Conrack's brain, this time using a larger quantity.
And the boy would die shortly after.
And then the following days, he would dismember Conrack and he would dispose of him once again, saving his skull.
The Conorac incident is one of the most notorious episodes in American true crime.
It's just exemplified that not only Dahmer's cunning, but also systemic failures, but potential racial biases, discrimination towards gay couples and just sheer negligence.
And after Dahmer's arrest, it was revealed via police radio recordings that the two officers had actually made discriminatory remarks and jokes after leaving the scene, even laughing about how they reunited lovers.
So obviously the community was outraged and these police officers were later fired, though they were reinstated years after, which I don't even want to talk about.
And for the family, the pain was indescribable.
Not only had they endured one son's abuse by Dahmer, but they lost another son to him, due in part to the preventable police blunder.
And Dahmer himself admitted that after the police returned the boy to him he could not believe his luck.
And it just emboldened him to continue feeling untouchable at this point, and he would go on to kill four more people after Conrack, confident that he could deflect any sort of suspicion even under the most unlikely circumstances.
So just a few weeks later, Dahmer continued his murderous spree.
And his 14th victim, Matt Turner, a 20-year-old young man from Chicago, had just participated in the Chicago Pride Parade on June 30th 1991.
And at a bus station after the Pride event, Turner happened to meet Jeffrey Dahmer.
And Dahmer, likely scouting the bus station for potential targets.
Returning from the festivities, struck up a conversation with Turner.
And he offered an all-expenses-paid trip to Milwaukee to participate in a professional photo shoot.
And eager for such an opportunity, Matt Turner agreed and boarded the Greyhound bus with Dahmer from Chicago to Milwaukee that very day.
And upon arriving in Milwaukee, Dahmer brought Turner to apartment 213.
And almost immediately, he proceeded with his routine spiking his drink, giving him sedatives and knocking him unconscious and then, after strangling him to death and then dismembering his body.
And while doing so, he would decapitate Turner and keep his head in his freezer.
And Dahmer would leave Turner's dismembered torso submerged in a chemical bath to break it down.
And then there was Jeremiah Weinberger, who was 23 and became Dahmer's 15th victim.
He was another young man from the Chicago area.
And Weinberger was a very cheerful, organized individual who worked in a customer service at a video store and just loved art.
And on July 5th 1991 Jeremiah went to a popular Chicago gay bar called Carol's Speakeasy for a night out.
And it was there that he would meet Jeffrey Dahmer.
And Dahmer would invite Jeremiah to spend the weekend with him back in Milwaukee, framing it as just like a fun getaway.
And Jeremiah's friends later recount seeing him leave the club with an unidentified man.
So they would take a Greyhound bus from Chicago to Milwaukee, arriving at Dahmer's apartment the very next day.
But Dahmer did not kill Weinberger immediately.
Reportedly they actually spent the first date together and Weinberger's even consented to some sexual activity with Dahmer.
However, that following day, Weinberger mentioned that he wanted to return to Chicago sooner than planned.
And unwilling to let Weinberger leave because he likes to possess the people he's with, Dahmer knew that this was the time to act.
So, after Weinberger was unconscious, Dahmer did attempt to zombify him as well, this time using boiling water instead of acid.
But the scalding water would cause irreparable damage to Weinberger's brain.
And Weinberger did not wake up or get revived after the procedure.
However, he did not die instantly.
He allegedly was rendered into a comatose state and clung to life for a day or so during this condition, which I can't even imagine what that was like for him.
Dahmer proceeded to dismember his body and decapitate him.
And his severed head would also go in Dahmer's freezer and the rest of him would be placed in an acid drum.
But at this point, the acid drum still contained Matt Turner's remains.
So it was at this point where his acid drum was actually getting quite full, which is fucking disgusting to think about and horrifying.
And back in Chicago, Weinberger's friends became concerned when he didn't return after the weekend.
So they would post missing persons flyers all over Chicago when he failed to come home.
But sadly, Jeremiah was already gone.
And next was Oliver Lacy, who was 23 years old and was Jeffrey Dahmer's 16th victim.
Oliver was an athletic man originally from Oak Park, Illinois.
And in July 1991 he was living in Milwaukee with plans to eventually bring his fiance and young son he had a two-year-old to join him.
And Lacey had actually moved to Milwaukee shortly after his father's passing.
And he was described by family as very outspoken and very friendly.
And he was always wearing a cross around his neck for good luck.
But unfortunately Lacey would cross paths with Jeffrey Dahmer on July 15th in 1991 near 27th Street.
And Dahmer would proposition him with a familiar offer of money to pose for nude photos.
And he went with Dahmer back to his apartment.
And once there, the two actually engaged in sexual activity before Dahmer drugged him.
However, Dahmer did something different this time.
He actually attempted to prolong the experience to the fullest.
And Dahmer would use chloroform on Lacey repeatedly over the course of a day, trying to keep him in a long lasting daze.
But obviously it didn't work indefinitely.
And Dahmer phoned in to work to request a day off and it was granted.
But finally, Dahmer strangled Oliver Lacey to death when he could no longer keep him under.
And once Lacey was dead, Dahmer did what he did always with the corpse.
He would defile the corpse, dismember it, and decapitate him.
And he would actually place Lacey's heart in the refrigerator.
And he would put Lacey's head next to the other heads that he had in his freezer.
And Lacey's other remains were handled similarly as Dahmer's other victims.
But he would actually put Lacey's skeleton in the freezer as well, alongside other collected bones from earlier victims.
But outside his successful murder spree, Dahmer's life was beginning to unravel externally, because he was actually fired from his job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory for missing too many shifts.
And the firing just sent him into a despairing spiral.
So jobless and with an eviction looming over him, Dahmer felt the world closing in on him.
And it made him both reckless and desperate.
And he would strike again very quickly.
Joseph Arthur Braidhoff was 25 years old and was Jeffrey Dahmer's 17th and final victim.
Joseph was a Midwestern father of three who had come to Milwaukee from Minnesota in a search for employment.
And in July 1991 he was temporarily staying at his brother's family's on the north side of Milwaukee while looking for work.
And on July 19th, 1991, Joseph spent the morning job hunting and had an interview scheduled.
But unfortunately, that afternoon, he would cross paths with Jeffrey Dahmer at the bus stop.
And Dahmer prowling yet again, even though there was chaos ensuing in his life, struck up a conversation.
And he would invite Breidhoff back to his apartment.
And Breidhoff would accept.
And inside the apartment, the pattern repeated once again.
They had consensual sex, and then Dahmer handed Breidhoff a drugged drink.
And once the young man was unconscious, Dahmer strangled him with a leather strap.
And Joseph thus met the same fate as the 16 victims before him.
And after killing Joseph, he actually laid him on his bed.
And he just left Joseph's corpse lying on the bed for a couple days while he rested and plotted his next move.
However, by July 21st, Dahmer knew he had to get rid of Joseph's body, especially since it was decomposing faster due to the summer heat.
Because, even though it had only been a couple days, he had actually found maggots covering the head when he uncovered the body.
So he would get rid of the body, same as he did the others, and he would keep the trophies, same as he did the others.
And little did Dahmer know that this would be the last victim that he would claim.
So after 17 murders across 13 years, it ended with the one man who said no.
The one man who ran and the one man who lived.
So on the evening of July 22nd, which was a day after he got rid of his last victim, Jeffrey Dahmer left his apartment with the intention of finding victim number 18.
And that man would be Tracy Edwards.
And Tracy was a 32 year old man living in Milwaukee and he was outgoing and very street smart.
And Dahmer would meet him near Grand Avenue Mall and he would offer him 100 to come back to his place to pose for photos and have a few drinks.
And Edward would agree, as many before him did.
So Jeffrey and Tracy would go back to apartment 213.
And from the moment he stepped inside, Tracy felt something was off, because the smell was overpowering inside the apartment.
Boxes of hydrochloric acid were sitting just out in the open and he got suspicious immediately.
So they talked briefly and Dahmer directed Edwards to look at his tropical fish.
And that is when he would place a handcuff on one of Edwards' wrists.
And Edward grew visibly uncomfortable asking, what's happening?
And that's when Dahmer attempted to place the other handcuff on Edwards, but he was unsuccessful.
And he was trying to guide him to the bedroom to pose for photos.
And in the bedroom Edwards saw the blue 57 gallon drum where the smell he noted before was coming from.
And he also noted a TV playing the Exorcist III on VHS, a movie Dahmer said he watched frequently.
I felt so hopelessly evil and perverted that I actually derived a sort of pleasure from watching that tape.
That's when Dahmer would pull a knife on him.
And Edwards also noticed that Dahmer's rocking back and forth, chanting under his breath I'm going to eat your heart.
It's so fucking horrifying.
I literally can't even imagine.
That's when Edwards attempted to keep Dahmer calm through conversation while looking for a way out.
Very smart man.
He would even ask to use the bathroom, and then he asked if they could have a beer in the living room afterwards.
And Dahmer would then agree, and they would move into the living room.
And that's when Edwards requested to go to the bathroom again, noting that Dahmer's concentration had lapsed.
And that's when he would punch Dahmer and escape through the front door and he would run down the street with a cuff still attached to his wrist.
Fucking metal.
And that's when he would flag down a Milwaukee police officer, Robert Roth and Ralph Mueller, telling them that a freak had just tried to kill him.
And that's when he led them back to apartment 213.
And Dahmer would answer the door, very calmly.
And when the officers stepped inside, they noticed the smell immediately.
And they would ask about the key to the handcuff that was still on Tracy's wrist.
And Dahmer mentioned it was in the bedside drawer and he would actually attempt to try to get it before the officers did, but he was instructed to back off.
So officer Mueller would walk into his bedroom and open the drawer.
And that's when he would completely freeze.
Because inside were Polaroid photographs, dozens of them, showing dismembered bodies, decapitated heads and images taken during the process of dismemberment itself.
So Mueller picked up the photos and brought them to Ralph and said, these are real.
And Dahmer realized at that moment what was happening.
And he would lunge toward the officers, but it was too late.
And he was wrestled to the ground and arrested immediately.
And inside the apartment authorities would find two human hearts and a portion of bicep in the fridge, four severed heads in the kitchen, a 57 gallon drum filled with acid and decomposing torsos, an entire torso in the freezer.
Seven skulls, some painted, some bleached, displayed like trophies, multiple hands, penises and internal organs.
74 Polaroids documenting each stage of murder and mutilation.
The scene was just completely beyond comprehension.
And in the middle of it all was Dahmer.
And he was initially distraught, saying, I can't believe I was so stupid.
I never thought I'd get caught like this.
I was always so careful.
But then he was very quiet and cooperative, just realizing that there was nothing he could do.
And he would say, for what I did, I should be dead.
And eventually Dahmer would go over 60 hours of confession to detectives describing all 17 murders in chilling precise detail.
And the world would begin to understand the horrific scale of what had happened inside apartment 213.
So on July 22nd 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer sat down in an interrogation room with detectives Patrick Kennedy and Dennis Murphy.
And over the next six weeks He would speak openly, calmly and in graphic detail about the murders of 17 young men and boys, giving investigators a blow-by-blow account of every killing, every method and every motive.
And according to Kennedy, Dahmer never actually asked for a lawyer.
He said that he created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it.
So Dahmer would confess to everything to luring victims with money alcohol, modeling gigs, to drugging them, to strangling them, to performing essay acts on the corpses, to dismembering them, to committing necrophilia, to keeping body parts as trophies, to taking Polaroids, to attempting zombie experiments by injecting acid or boiling water into his victim's brains, to eating body parts of his last three victims.
And he had parts of his other victims stored for eventual consumption as well.
And finally, building an altar of skulls and bones, meant to be a memorial, where he could sit and feed his obsession.
And what was the purpose of the altar going to be?
As a sort of memorial.
A point where I could... I don't know.
It's so bizarre and strange, it's hard to describe.
A place where I could collect my thoughts... and feed my obsession.
And Dahmer was just unusually self-aware and deeply, deeply disturbed.
And he told police that his killings weren't driven by hatred or rage, but by the need to possess.
I had these obsessive desires and thoughts wanting to control them to I don't know how to put it possess them permanently.
And that's why you killed them.
Right.
Dahmer would say, the killing was a means to an end.
That was the least satisfactory part.
I didn't enjoy doing that.
That's why I tried to create living zombies with uric acid in the drill, but it never worked.
No, the killing was not the objective.
I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted.
Despite the horrific nature of his crimes, Dahmer remained very polite, respectful and almost eerily calm during his entire confession.
And he didn't seem to regret his actions either.
In fact, he regularly claimed that he would have continued doing this if he hadn't gotten caught.
But he didn't seem confused as to why he had the compulsions he did.
And he recognized that they were wrong, but he owned it and made no excuses.
And, in the end, Dahmer helped police identify each victim, often recalling names, dates and even details from memory, aided by photographs that he had taken.
And his confession became the core evidence in his trial to come.
But it also served as something else.
And that was a horrifying map of the mind of a man who for 13 years killed in secret and told no one.
So Dahmer would be charged with 16 counts of first degree murder.
But the legal process that followed would be viewed by the world and raised disturbing questions about mental health, justice and the very definition of evil.
So on July 25th, 1991, Dahmer would be formally charged with four murders.
And over the next few weeks, additional charges were filed, eventually totaling 15 murder charges in Wisconsin and one murder charge in Ohio for the 1978 killing of Stephen Hicks.
And he ultimately stood trial for 15 murders committed in Wisconsin between 1987 and 1991.
And the trial would begin January 30th 1992 in Milwaukee County Circuit Court before Judge Lawrence Graham.
And Dahmer would plead guilty, but insane to all charges.
Yeah, fucking right, dude.
Acknowledging that he had committed the murders, but arguing that he was suffering from a severe mental disease at the time.
And the courtroom was...
Because in the gallery sat families of the victims and behind the defense table sat Dahmer listening quietly as his crimes were recounted in detail.
And he was very calm and clean cut during the whole trial.
And the prosecution's goal was very clear to prove Dahmer was sane and that he knew what he was doing and understood the consequences.
But the defense argued that he suffered from necrophilia, borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and psychotic compulsions so overwhelming that he was incapable of stopping himself.
Okay.
So over the course of the trial, many witnesses were called, and these included FBI profilers testifying about serial offense offender behavior, forensic psychologist debating whether Dahmer fit the legal definition of insanity, and detectives describing the contents of apartment 213, medical examiners detailing the cause of death for each victim and family members giving powerful victim impact statements.
But none were more searing than Rita Isbell, which was a sister of the victim, Errol Lindsay, whose outburst toward Dahmer became one of the most iconic moments in true crime history.
And she said I'm gonna kill you.
My mother have to go through this again?
Never, jeffrey.
And she actually had to be physically restrained and dahmer just showed no reaction and when asked if he wanted to speak, dahmer would read from a prepared statement that lasted about five minutes long and his voice was flat and his expression was unreadable and he would say your honor, it is over now.
This has never been a case of trying to get free.
I didn't ever want freedom.
Frankly, i wanted death for myself.
This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, not for a reason of hate.
I hated no one or both.
Now I believe I was sick.
The doctors have told me about my sickness and now I have some peace.
I know how much harm I have caused and I understand their rightful hate.
I should have stayed with God.
I tried and failed and created a Holocaust.
Thank God there will be no more harm I can do.
I know my time in prison will be terrible, but I deserve whatever I get because of what I have done.
That is like a compacted version of what he said.
And on February 15th 1992 the jury returned its decision and he would be found guilty on all 15 counts of murder and obviously criminally sane and criminally responsible for each killing.
And Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms and there would be no death penalty.
And a few months after his conviction in Milwaukee, Dahmer faced trial for his first murder in Ohio.
And he pleaded guilty in the sentence to a 16 life sentence on May 1st, 1992.
And with that Dahmer was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage Wisconsin, where his final chapter would begin.
So Dahmer was initially placed in protective isolation due to his notoriety of his crimes and potential threats from other inmates.
So for approximately a year Dahmer was kept mostly separated, and he was allowed out of a cell only with restraints and under guard.
But he was described as a model inmate.
He was quiet, compliant, and not prone to trouble.
And during his early imprisonment, Dahmer experienced a personal transformation, becoming increasingly remorseful and turning to religion.
And in May of 1994 he would actually be baptized into Christianity by minister Roy Radcliffe within the prison.
And the baptism occurred on May 10th, 1994.
And the same day serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed in Illinois.
And there was also a solar eclipse.
So I don't know what the fuck that means, but it's weird.
But Dahmer expressed a desire for forgiveness and salvation and acknowledged that many would view his conversion as skeptical.
Which yeah, fair enough.
But after about a year of protected custody in mid-1993 Dahmer was allowed limited interaction with other inmates.
And he was assigned to simple work duties, such as cleaning prison bathrooms or working in the library, under supervision.
And then eventually convinced authorities to let him into the gen pop, which is general population of the prison on a limited basis, understanding the risks involved.
And in gen pop, Dahmer initially tried to keep a low profile.
But But infamy made that impossible.
And some inmates were openly hostile while others were morbidly fascinated.
And Dahmer would sometimes lean into his dark reputation, making macabre jokes and shaping prison foods into severed limbs, using ketchup as blood.
Real Christian of you.
And these antics were reprimanded by guards and angered fellow inmates.
And in July 1994 inmate Osvaldo Dorothy attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade shank after chapel service.
But Dahmer would receive only superficial wounds.
And prison officials would offer him a return to protective isolation, but Dahmer would refuse.
And he actually maintained a very close relationship with his family during his prison time as well, particularly with his father Lionel, who visited regularly and maintained contact.
And his mother, Joyce, who had moved to California, began speaking with him by phone.
And they would actually have weekly calls.
But his brother, David, was the exception.
He had allegedly distanced himself from the family completely.
Understandable even changing his name and living an anonymous life completely disconnected from all of it.
And Dahmer also had people write to him.
He received letters, money orders and other items from admirers of morbid curiosity, which is so disgusting.
On the morning of November 28th 1994, Dahmer was assigned to a cleaning detail in the prison gym bathrooms with two other inmates, Christopher Scarver and Jesse Anderson.
And the three men were left unsupervised by guards for approximately 20 minutes, which was against protocol for high risk inmates, which Dahmer was.
And according to Scarver's later account, one of the two, either Dahmer or Anderson, poked him in the back while they were cleaning, as if joking around.
And Scarver, already harboring anger towards Dahmer, confronted him with a newspaper clipping about his crimes.
And Scarver would then retrieve a 20-inch five-pound steel bar from the weight room and bludgeon Dahmer, crushing his skull with multiple heavy blows.
And then he attacked Anderson with the same bar, inflicting fatal head injuries.
And the guards would then return and find Dahmer barely alive with severe head trauma.
And he would be pronounced dead about an hour later at a nearby hospital.
And Anderson would also die from his injuries two days later.
So Jeffrey Dahmer was now dead.
And the reaction to his death came in different waves.
Dahmer's mother Joyce, was distraught and questioned whether he had truly found peace with God before he died.
And his father Lionel, was heartbroken, hoping Jeff's conversion was genuine and that he could have aided research or been a case study.
But Dahmer's body was cremated in September of 1995, and his ashes were divided between his parents.
And an actual legal dispute arose over his brain, which was retained separately.
And Joyce wanted it studied for potential biological factors behind his behavior, while Lionel, his father, objected.
But Jeffrey's will had requested that he be cremated.
So the judge eventually ordered the brain destroyed at Lionel's request, honoring what was said to be Jeffrey's own wishes, which I don't know how he has allowed to have a say in what happens, but okay.
And Christopher Scarver received two additional life sentences for the murder of Dahmer and Anderson and remains incarcerated.
And for the families of the victims, Dahmer's death brought no true closure.
Most had received no remains to bury and some had endured media harassment, racist policing and neglect from the justice system that discriminated against homosexuals.
And Milwaukee itself was forced to confront a series of hard truths.
How did the police miss multiple opportunities to stop Dahmer, especially including Conorac's escape?
And why was Dahmer's behavior dismissed as a gay domestic dispute rather than investigated with urgency?
And how many lives could have been saved if one officer had simply looked around?
Thankfully, after Dahmer's incarceration, the Oxford apartments ultimately were demolished in November of 1992 as well, because
No one wanted to live there anymore, obviously.
But Dahmer's case just sparked an explosion of coverage that continues to this day.
A notable media inspired by the case include books like A Father's Story, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, dozens of documentaries like The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, Mind of a Monster, Conversations with a Killer, The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes.
And there was also feature films and TV dramatizations like Dahmer Raising Jeffrey Dahmer, My Friend Dahmer Dahmer Monster, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
And then Evan Peters, who played Dahmer and won best actor in a limited anthology series, actually sparked backlash for re-traumatizing victims' families.
And Dahmer just became a cultural phenomenon a quiet man with glasses hiding something in the fridge.
So many have rightfully asked, Why do we keep romanticizing and Hollywoodizing this story?
And the question lingers, was Jeffrey Dahmer born a monster or was he made into one?
And psychologists remain divided.
Some point to early brain trauma from the hernia surgery, extreme social isolation alcoholism, family dysfunction and repressed homosexuality that collided with intense necrophilic fantasies.
And others argued he showed signs of antisocial personality disorder, borderline personality disorder and sexual sadism, but they empathize that he remained lucid, calculated and fully aware of right and wrong.
And even Dahmer himself offered no clear answer.
In the end, Dahmer wasn't a horror movie villain.
He was worse because he was real.
And for 13 years, he got away with murder, again and again and again and again.
And his story is not one of madness, but of missed warnings, systemic failure and the terrifying truth that monsters don't always look like monsters.
Sometimes they just look like normal people.
And that is the end of today's video.
It was a long one.
A lot of you guys requested it.
So if you have any other cases you want me to go over, let me know down below.
I always read the comments and make sure to be safe out there and take care of yourself, okay?
I will see you beautiful face in the next video.
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