“He Is Definitely SPOOKY!”
Dahmer was not left alone to stew in his impulses and twisted fantasies. His grandmother remained in constant touch with Dahmer’s father, Lionel, who would come to Milwaukee to see his son. He suggested to Jeffrey a plan of action to put some direction back in his life. Dahmer passively agreed to everything his father proposed. Lionel enrolled him in some college courses and paid the tuition. A few weeks later, he learned that Jeffrey was not attending the classes. Jeffrey told him he couldn’t attend because he’d found some temporary work. Lionel would later write, “In that regard he had told the truth, something that, when I learned of it, actually surprised me. He had become the most artful of all deceivers, one who mixes falsehood with just a pinch of truth. Still his lies seemed relatively harmless. His life for all its disorder and lack of purpose, still seemed essentially harmless. For all Jeff had done, at least as far as I knew of what he had done, he had harmed no one but himself. I had no reason to believe that he would ever do otherwise.”27
In June 1987, Dahmer was drugging and raping victims in a private room in the Club Baths. One of his victims could not be revived and had to be rushed to the hospital; Dahmer was banned from the bathhouse.
Dahmer claims that all these years he had agonized with guilt and remorse over his spontaneous murder of Steven Hicks in 1978. He attempted to reform himself by adopting a disciplined life like service in the Army or attending church on Sundays with his grandmother. For nine years, Dahmer killed nobody, as far as we know. He managed to keep his demons and his fantasies under control.
But Dahmer’s self-control was slipping. On September 8, 1986, he was arrested for exposing himself in front of two boys in a Milwaukee park.
A condition of his bail was that he undergo psychological counseling for sexual deviance and impulse control, and the court referred him to clinical psychologists, one of whom concluded that Dahmer “could become a psychopathic deviate (sociopath) with schizoid tendencies. His deviant behavior will at least continue in some form if not be exacerbated. . . . Without some type of intervention which is supportive, his defences will probably be inadequate and he could gravitate toward further substance abuse with possible subsequent increased masochism or sadistic tendencies and behaviors.” The other wrote in her report, “No doubt at this time that he is a Schizoid Personality Disorder who may show marked paranoid tendencies. He is definitely SPOOKY!”28
Schizoid personality disorder (SPD) is a diagnosis that has often appeared in assessments of serial killers since the 1940s. The symptoms of SPD are said to be a lack of interest in social relationships, a tendency toward a solitary or sheltered lifestyle, secretiveness, emotional coldness, detachment and apathy. Affected individuals may be unable to form intimate attachments to others and simultaneously possess a rich and elaborate but exclusively internal fantasy world.29
Second Murder
On November 21, 1987, everything changed for Dahmer; again. Dahmer went out cruising gay bars, having booked a hotel room, as he had done several times before, to bring a pickup back for a night of sex. He had no luck at the bars, but after closing time, he met twenty-five-year-old Steven Tuomi waiting for a bus. Tuomi agreed to go with Dahmer to his room in the Ambassador Hotel. According to the police interview report:
Both DAHMER and TUOMI got undressed and laid on the bed. At that time they had what DAHMER called “light sex.” He described this as hugging, kissing, and mutual masturbation. After about an hour or two, DAHMER made a drink for TUOMI in which he put the sleeping pills. TUOMI drank this and fell asleep. DAHMER kept drinking and eventually fell asleep himself. DAHMER related that when he woke up he was lying on top of TUOMI and DAHMER’s forearms were visibly bruised. He then saw that TUOMI was obviously dead. He was bleeding from the head and his chest was crushed in and some of the bones were broken. DAHMER then carried TUOMI and placed him in a closet in the hotel room. DAHMER sat around the hotel room for a couple of hours, trying to figure out what to do.
At about noon he went to the Grand Avenue Mall. He bought a large suitcase with wheels on it and returned to the Ambassador Hotel. During that time he may have had some beers and he left the hotel room to get a bite to eat. At about 5:00 PM he returned to the hotel room and placed TUOMI into the large suitcase. DAHMER related that it was a very tight fit, but he was able to get him into the suitcase. DAHMER related that he had purchased the room for another night and he remained in the room that night until 1:00 AM.
At that time he left the room with the suitcase, taking an elevator to the ground floor. He got a cab and upon approaching the cab, had the cab driver help him place the suitcase in the backseat of the cab. He then took the cab to his grandmother’s house.30
Dahmer’s second murder, like his first nine years earlier, occurred spontaneously without much planning in advance. Moreover, Dahmer claimed he had no memory of the murder or what sparked it, strange considering how much force and fury it would take to kill a victim in that way with one’s bare hands. On the other hand, Dahmer kept in shape, lifting weights and working out. We will never know the whole story because Tuomi’s body would never be recovered.
Dahmer kept Tuomi’s corpse in his grandmother’s cold fruit cellar for a week. His family came by for Thanksgiving dinner while the corpse lay in the basement. After everybody left and his grandmother went to bed, Dahmer stripped himself naked and then severed Tuomi’s head with a kitchen knife and slit open his abdomen, extracting the intestines and organs, and emptied the torso of blood into the basement drain. He filleted the flesh from the body and cut it into small pieces that he collected into plastic trash bags. He wrapped the bones in an old sheet and then pulverized them into small fragments with a sledgehammer, the sheet preventing bone fragments from flying about the cellar.
Dahmer was in territory that even veteran homicide investigators rarely go. Dahmer assured them that there was nothing sexual in his being naked while dismembering his victims.
He stated that whenever he dismembered his victims, he was always completely naked, that he wore no shoes, socks, or any clothing of any type. He stated this was not in fact done because of sexual gratification, but simply for necessity because the job of cutting and dismembering his victims was quite messy and he did not wish to get blood and body fluids about his clothing.31
Dahmer put the bags of flesh out with the trash the next day but kept Tuomi’s head.
Dahmer called the Ace Hardware store asking for advice on how to remove flesh from a rabbit skull. The hardware store recommended boiling it in Soilax, a popular non-suds wall, floor, tile and woodwork cleaner first introduced in 1934. (In their reports, police misspelled it as “Soilex”—a different product, a detergent produced in Kenya, which confuses true-crime writers to this day. But crime scene photographs confirm boxes of Soilax. The product was discontinued in 2005.)
According to the police interview notes:
He states that this solution would help to turn the brain matter into a mushy substance and that after approximately 1 hr of boiling, the upper vertebra, located in the neck area, would become loose and he could dislodge them. At this time he would use a large serving spoon or utensil to dig into the back part of the skull and scoop out the brain matter which had turned into mush. After scooping out the brain matter and discarding it in the toilet, he would again place the skull into the boiling water and boil it thoroughly until it was completely clear of any flesh, hair, mucus, or brain matter.32
Afterward, Dahmer would masturbate with the skull. He had overcooked Tuomi’s head in the Soilax solution, and the skull eventually became too brittle and he was forced to destroy it. Without any physical evidence, police chose not to charge Dahmer with Tuomi’s murder.
The Psychic Abolition of Redemption
Two months later, on Saturday, January 16, 1988, Dahmer lured his third victim, fourteen-year-old James Edward Doxtator, to his grandmother’s house on
the pretext of fifty dollars for posing for photographs and watching videos. After having sex, Doxtator told Dahmer he needed to go home. That sealed his fate. Dahmer prepared a cup of coffee with Baileys Irish Cream into which he crushed some Halcion sleeping pills. Doxtator drank the concoction and soon fell asleep in Dahmer’s lap as Dahmer listened to his heartbeat. Later, Dahmer explained he had “an incessant and never-ending desire to have someone at whatever cost, someone good looking, really nice looking, and it just filled my thoughts all day long, increasing in intensity throughout the years when I was living with Grandma. Very overpowering, just relentless. . . . I knew my grandma would be waking up and I still wanted him to stay with me so I strangled him.”
He stored Doxtator’s body in the fruit cellar. The next day while his grandmother was at church, Dahmer carried the body into his bedroom and caressed and kissed it and had anal sex with the corpse. Every day after work he would cuddle and have sex with the corpse. By the end of the week, his grandmother began complaining of a foul odor from the cellar, and Dahmer told her it was the cat litter box and that he would take care of it. The next Sunday while his grandmother was at church, Dahmer destroyed Doxtator’s body in the same way he had Tuomi’s. He boiled Doxtator’s head in Soilax and kept the skull for a few more weeks to masturbate with. Again, he overcooked the skull and it became brittle, and Dahmer was forced to dispose of it after a few weeks.
Having killed three victims, Dahmer was now a serial killer by anybody’s definition.
Serial killer Ian Brady, who with his female partner, Myra Hindley, “the Moors Murderers,” killed five children and youths in Great Britain in the 1960s, would later write about the significance of a serial killer’s first three murders.
The first killing experience will not only hold the strongest element of existential novelty and curiosity, but also the greatest element of danger and trepidation conjured by the unknown. Usually the incipient serial killer is too immersed in the psychological and legal challenges of the initial homicide, not to mention immediate logistics—the physical labour that the killing and disposal involve. He is therefore not in a condition to form a detached appreciation of the traumatic complexities bombarding his senses.
You could, in many instances, describe the experience as an effective state of shock. He is, after all, storming pell-mell the defensive social conditioning of a lifetime, as well as declaring war upon all the organized, regulatory forces of society. In extinguishing someone’s life he is also committing his own, and has no time to stop and stare in the hazardous, psychological battlefield.
In another very significant sense, he is killing his long-accepted self as well as the victim, and simultaneously giving birth to a new persona, decisively cutting the umbilical connection between himself and ordinary mankind.
Having fought his former self and won, the fledgling serial killer flexes his newfound powers with more confidence. The second killing will hold all the same disadvantages, distracting elements of the first, but to a lesser degree. This allows a more objective assimilation of the experience. It also fosters an expanding sense of omnipotence, a wide-angle view of the metaphysical chessboard.
In many cases, the element of elevated aestheticism in the second murder will exert a more formative impression than the first and probably of any in the future. It not only represents the rite of confirmation, a revelational leap of lack of faith in humanity, but also the onset of addiction to hedonistic nihilism.
The psychic abolition of redemption.33
On March 24, 1988, Dahmer took twenty-two-year-old Richard Guerrero to his grandmother’s home, where the two had sex and afterward Dahmer drugged and strangled him and quickly disposed of his body before his grandmother complained of the smell. She complained anyway, about the smell of the acidic chemicals in the garage and the basement that Dahmer was using to soften the flesh for easier removal. He did not keep any parts of Guerrero. Dahmer made one last attempt to resist his “psychic abolition of redemption.” He managed to refrain from killing for a year after murdering Guerrero. It could have been an intellectual and moral choice to resist killing or it could have simply been the problem of having his grandmother around, complaining of the smell coming from the basement. His father brought it up with Jeffrey, who said he was experimenting with dissolving animals in various chemicals. Accustomed to his son’s “chemical experiments” since childhood, Dahmer’s father did not become alarmed. But his grandmother had another complaint: Jeffrey was bringing people home to her house late at night and it disturbed her. On September 25, 1988, Jeffrey moved out into an apartment of his own in the Villages Apartments on 808 North 24th Street, a block away from the Oxford Apartments, the scene of his last series of murders.
“Must Be Considered Impulsive and Dangerous”
The next afternoon, Dahmer encountered thirteen-year-old Milwaukee High School of the Arts student Somsack Sinthasomphone on the street. Somsack came from a large family of Laotian refugees. Dahmer offered Somsack fifty dollars to pose nude for some photographs. They returned to his new apartment where Dahmer gave Somsack a cup of coffee with Baileys Irish Cream and Halcion mixed in. Afterward, Somsack posed without a shirt on Dahmer’s bed for some photographs. When Dahmer attempted to fondle the boy, he leapt up, put his shirt back on and told Dahmer it was time for him to leave. Dahmer asked Somsack to sit with him for a few more minutes so that he could “listen to his stomach.” Dahmer was probably trying to stall Somsack long enough for the drugs to take effect. Somsack complied, but when Dahmer began kissing and licking his stomach from his navel down to his groin, Somsack got up, grabbed his school bag and left. Dahmer reminded him to take his fifty dollars and not tell anyone about their encounter. By the time Somsack arrived home, he was feeling sick from the effects of the drugs. As he began to have difficulty maintaining consciousness, his family took him to a hospital where Somsack revealed the encounter he just had with Dahmer.
Dahmer was charged with second-degree sexual assault and enticement of a child for immoral purposes. Compared to his previous charges, this was a serious charge. One of the court-appointed psychiatrists concluded that Dahmer was a “very psychologically problemed man. . . . There is no question that Mr. Dahmer is in need of long-term psychological treatment.” Jeffrey’s father hired a lawyer who retained a psychiatrist for a second opinion. The defense psychiatrist’s conclusion was even more severe than the prosecution’s: “would not show others the depth, severity or extent of his pathology. . . . Others may not take his behaviours as seriously as they should. . . . A seriously disturbed young man. . . . The pressure he perceives seems to be increasing. . . . He must be considered impulsive and dangerous.”
Apparently, this was the first time that Jeffrey and his father acknowledged that he was gay, his father insisting that he had no idea. In the meantime, Dahmer moved back into his grandmother’s house.
On January 30, 1989, Dahmer pleaded guilty and was sentenced to eight years’ imprisonment, but as this was his first serious conviction and he expressed remorse, the sentence was reduced to one year’s overnight detentions and five years’ probation. This meant he could keep his job at the chocolate factory and return to the jail at night. He was also to receive psychological treatment to deal with his sexual confusion and his dependence upon alcohol.
“Him I Like Especially Well”
Almost exactly a year to the day that Dahmer had murdered Guerrero, on March 25, 1989, Dahmer met twenty-four-year-old Anthony Lee Sears, an African American man. Dahmer told the detectives interviewing him that he had not killed anyone for over a year. He went out that night for a few drinks with no plans of meeting anybody or having any sexual encounters. He said that Sears had aggressively cruised him as Dahmer was leaving a bar. The two hit it off. Sears had beautiful curly hair and a short ponytail secured by a rubber band, which Dahmer found very hip and attractive. Dahmer told Sears he was visiting from Chicago and staying with his gran
dmother. Sears suggested they go to his grandmother’s house for a night of sex.
A friend of Sears’s drove the couple to grandma’s house, with Sears in the back seat serving Dahmer oral sex. Even Dahmer was taken aback by how horny Sears was for him. He said it was “a surprise. I didn’t think he was that anxious.”34
It was Sunday morning, 3:00 a.m., when Dahmer and Sears quietly slipped into the house and fumbled and tongued and groped each other in the kitchen before Dahmer took Sears into his bedroom, where he now went down on Sears. It was wonderful. Dahmer really liked Sears; he was smitten. He could do this all night and all day forever. Would Sears stay or come back later? he asked him. No, he had to go and he was not planning on coming back either, Sears replied.
Dahmer gave him a sweet kiss and said he’d make him a nice warm nightcap for the road. Quietly, as not to awake his grandmother, Dahmer padded down to the kitchen and prepared his usual coffee and Baileys Irish Cream drink for his guest. He crushed seven Halcion pills into it.
Sears gratefully drank the bracingly warm nightcap as Dahmer gave him a lingering goodbye hug, laying his head on Sears’s chest and listening to his heartbeat as he slipped into unconsciousness. Dahmer snuggled and smooched with Sears and fondled him, and then strangled him as his grandmother slept soundly with her Bible. It was Easter Sunday morning.
American Serial Killers Page 40
