<Archive Obituary> Jeffrey Dahmer (November 28th 1994)
Bill Schenley
Families Of His Victims Feel 'Relief'
Photo:
http://www.mugshots.net/jeffrey_dahmer/jeffrey_dahmer.jpg
FROM: USA Today (November 29th 1994) ~
By Dennis Cauchon and Haya El Nasser
Jeffrey Dahmer's bloody death in a prison bathroom Monday was a
dramatic - some say a fitting - end to the life of a killer and
cannibal.
"I was so happy" to hear he was dead, says Janie Hagen, sister of
Richard Guerrero, one of at least 16 young men murdered by Dahmer, who
also had dismembered, sexually abused and eaten some of them.
"I was so excited that finally the monster was gone. He was just plain
evil. . . . That may sound harsh, but when you lose a brother . . ."
says Hagen.
Dahmer, 34, was cleaning a toilet next to a basketball court Monday
morning when, out of the sight of prison guards, he was beaten to
death. The suspect, Christopher Scarver, like Dahmer, is a convicted
first-degree murderer from Milwaukee.
Dahmer's gruesome murders between 1978 and 1991 made him one of the
nation's most infamous criminals. He pleaded guilty in 1992 and was
sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences in Wisconsin, a state that
doesn't have the death penalty.
His death at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage brought
an emotional and conflicted reaction from families, police and
prosecutors as well as the general public.
Hagen calls the inmate who killed Dahmer "a hero."
But Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann, who prosecuted
Dahmer, calls his death "a sad ending to a very sad story. That's not
justice. That's murder." And he hopes Dahmer's killer "doesn't emerge
as a folk hero."
Details of what happened still are sketchy.
Officials say Dahmer and two other inmates were taken to the prison
gym at 7: 50 a.m., a routine assignment Dahmer had done for three
weeks. At 8: 10 a.m., guards led two more inmates into the gym to
exercise and discovered Dahmer - breathing, but bloody and unconscious
from head injuries - in a staff bathroom. He was pronounced dead at 9:
11 a.m.
Inmate Jesse Anderson, in prison for killing his wife, was found
beaten in a separate bathroom. He was in critical condition last
night.
"It appears he killed one, then (attacked) the other," says Wisconsin
Corrections chief Michael Sullivan, of the suspect.
Sullivan would not say if any guards were in the gym when the murder
occurred, or if they should have been. He also declined to say if the
suspect's motive was known.
Dahmer was sent to the maximum security prison in February 1992 and
spent his first year in isolation. He had been allowed to mix with
other prisoners since then.
In March 1992, a small razor blade was found hidden in an envelope in
his garbage can. Dahmer temporarily lost TV and commissary privileges.
But, otherwise, his life had been mostly quiet inside the crowded
maximum security facility.
Dahmer wore a green khaki uniform, and ate and socialized freely with
other inmates in his cellblock. He worked 1 1/2 hours a day sweeping
and mopping the area.
Inside his 8-by-10 foot cell, he spent much of his time studying the
Bible, most recently the book of Revelations, the final book in the
New Testament. He was permitted 25 books, 15 magazines and a Bible.
Pornographic magazines involving bondage were prohibited.
Both Dahmer and prison officials thought he was safe.
"He did not feel in danger at all, and I asked him that specifically,"
says the Rev. Roy Ratcliffe, who saw Dahmer last Wednesday and
baptized him in a prison whirlpool in May.
Dahmer was attacked in the prison chapel on July 3, but the
toothbrush-turned-knife broke apart and he suffered only a scratch.
Inmate Osvaldo Durruthy, serving time for weapons and drug offenses,
will be sentenced for the attack Dec. 19.
"Jeffrey told me the attack was an exception," says Ratcliffe. "He
said he was attacked by a Cuban who had just gotten into his cell and
had never spoken to him, someone who was trying to do something so bad
he'd get deported."
Gerald Boyle, Dahmer's attorney, says "Dahmer had a death wish and I
know he didn't have the gumption to do it himself, so I predicted that
the day would come when he would be killed in prison."
His stepmother, Shari, told a television station, "From the day he got
arrested, he felt he deserved anything he got."
Dahmer's crimes revolted the nation.
He told how he had had sex with his dead or drugged victims, and how
he cut up their bodies in a bathtub and used hydrochloric acid to
destroy the bones. He flushed brains down the toilet but kept - and
painted - some skulls as mementos. Dahmer ate parts of his victims.
Some heads and hearts were kept in his freezer, and bodies in a
55-gallon drum.
Most victims' families say they feel a sense of closure now that his
horrific life is over.
"There's a sense of relief to know that justice in some kind of way
has been done. My son suffered in his hands what Jeffrey Dahmer had to
suffer under someone else's hands," says Inez Thomas, mother of victim
David Thomas.
"I dreamed of this day and then it actually happens," says Carolyn
Smith, sister of victim Edward Smith. "My whole body started shaking.
Right now, I'm very pleased. But I'm Catholic. I don't believe in
capital punishment but some days, the evil side comes out of me."
Dahmer's death dominated TV news programs and talk radio Monday, and
revealed a public torn between hatred of Dahmer and aversion to
vigilantism.
"It hasn't been a bloodthirsty response," says talk show host Jerry
Bott of WISN-AM in Milwaukee. "On the other hand, there's certainly no
deep and abiding sympathy for Dahmer."
Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer for the families of eight victims, sums it
up for many. "The chickens have come home to roost," he says. "What
comes around, goes around."
Jacobson hopes the families now can raise "hundreds of thousands of
dollars" by auctioning off Dahmer's possessions to help collect an $
80 million judgment against the murderer.
Items they plan to sell: the refrigerator where Dahmer stored skulls,
a lava lamp, a toothbrush, homosexual pornography and an 80-quart
kettle used to boil body parts.
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Photo:
http://www.tornadohills.com/dahmer/renamed2/dahmer33.gif
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A Twisted Passion Of Possession
FROM: Newsday (November 29th 1994) ~
By Jamie Talan, Staff Writer
Most people will remember Jeffrey Dahmer as a monster.
But to experts who study serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer stands as a
reminder of how little is known about the human psyche gone awry.
"I liked the man," said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist in
Newport Beach, Calif., who spent dozens of hours talking with Dahmer
and listening to his gruesome tales. Dietz was struck by Dahmer's
willingness to figure out why he did what he did.
"He was interested in understanding himself," Dietz said.
Even Dahmer's apology to the relatives of his victims suggested to
some experts that he felt guilt and shame, which are not the usual
personality features of a sociopathic killer.
"Not all serial killers are sociopaths," said James Alan Fox, dean of
the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University and
co-author with Jack Levin of "Overkill," a book about mass murder and
serial killing.
Fox believes that Dahmer was able to overcome his guilt by dehumanzing
his male victims, viewing them as sex objects. Dahmer's behavior - he
drugged his victims and drank himself into a stupor before he killed
and cannibalized them - suggests also that he didn't want to torture
his victims. Serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy said
they wanted their victims to suffer.
"This was an extremely needy man who never made any attachments," Fox
said. "He didn't want people to leave him and this was the only way he
knew to keep them."
Dietz agrees, saying that Dahmer was in search of the ideal sexual
partner who would be compliant, not demanding or critical, and
faithful. He tried everything. "The one thing he neglected was trying
to make a friend," Dietz said.
Dietz and Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the sexual disorders unit at
Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, said that Dahmer
suffered from a rare condition known as necrophilia - he got sexual
pleasure from dead people. "I felt he had a mental disorder and could
not control himself," said Berlin, who was hired by Dahmer's lawyers
to examine him. "He had difficulty becoming aroused by living people."
Dahmer said he killed his first victim at 18. During the following
eight years, Dahmer has said he tried in morbid ways to distract
himself from his urge to kill. He stole a male mannequin to fondle. He
read obituaries in the paper and went to the graves of young men to
exhume their bodies. But the ground was too cold to dig and sounds of
howling dogs spooked him, he told doctors.
In bath houses, he would drug men and have sex for hours and they
wouldn't remember anything. He stopped after someone overdosed. He was
banned from the baths.
At age 26, he woke up in a hotel and realized he had killed a man. "He
said he decided that it must be his destiny. He turned himself over to
the illness," Berlin said.
He eventually began luring young men home, where he would drug them,
strangle them, have sex, take photos and then cut up his victims.
Three of the 17 victims underwent crude lobotomies. Dahmer thought
that if he could destroy their will he could keep them forever. But
they died. Dietz said that Dahmer even considered buying a
freeze-drying machine, hoping to immortalize one of his victims
forever, which would have ended his need to seek out and and kill
others. The machine was too expensive.
Dietz said that alcohol played a major role in triggering Dahmer's
underlying pathology. "The motive comes from his perversion but the
willingness to kill comes from the drinking," he said.
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Photos:
http://www.cnn.com/interactive/us/0210/gallery.serial.killings/jeffrey.dahmer.jpg
http://www.spsmvbr.cz/cesky/os_stranky/jedlicka/vyroci/unor/dahmer2.jpg
Dahmer in art:
http://ntnmania.iespana.es/31835.jpg
http://www.derfcity.com/crap/yjd1.gif
http://www.derfcity.com/crap/yjd2.gif
http://workingforchange.speedera.net/www.workingforchange.com/webgraphics/wfc/TMW6-01-05.jpg
MWB
thaw out for lunch.
I don't like nuking them, the hearts pop.
Seriously
Mark