No Romanticization - Blog Posts

Jeffrey Dahmer was a terrifying person and no one should forget that

Because of the Dahmer Netflix series, always more people approached the case and informed themselves by reading books or following old interviews. Jeffrey Dahmer’s figure is been brought back and became subject of discussion worldwide again after 30 years. He became a trend topic but it has also aroused much criticism, especially from the families of the victims.

But Jeffrey Dahmer was different, he was a unique type of serial killer, and this is the reason why he made people feel so fascinated. His crimes were gruesome, horrible and extreme, something that the human mind struggles to understand, yet Jeffrey Dahmer wasn’t a sadistic psychopath and he felt some kind of remorse too. At the end, he also wanted and tried to help victims’ families he felt sorry to. He’s indeed a man who surprised people with his behaviors and so many people came close trying to figure him out. But like a double-edged sword, some people’s response isn't all puppy dogs and rainbows.

Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991 in his first court appearance - via The Milwaukee Journal

People felt close to him, after the news broke out many people find themselves to feel for Jeffrey. It’s not a very big new news, the most infamous serial killers always found out themselves having “groupies” often assisting at their trials, or people writing to them stating how similar they felt. In the worst occasions, it was a case of Hybristophilia.

In modern days the same thing is happening and it’s too easy to forget the man’s abhorrent crimes. Too easily people tend to minimize the eerie of the acts, making appear Jeffrey like a wounded victim as well. Jeffrey suffered for some things too, and had a couple of mental diseases. It was undeniable that he too was a human being and displayed of human emotions. “Humanising” a serial killer is not a bad thing, it makes us realise we don’t have a monster but another person. Defining a criminal “monster” or “devil” only help us to dissociate from him, not considering him “one of us”. It makes us feel safer, having a demoniac entity to point the finger to, but the sad truth criminals are humans as well. Jeffrey was human.

Jeffrey Dahmer during Inside Edition interview with Nancy Glass in 1993.

But in the other side, some people tended to overemphasize the man’s problems too much, and made him become a new victim. But Jeffrey Dahmer was a murder first of all and took the life of 17 innocent people. He was selfish and careless, he saw people as objects for his own sexual purposes and he disposed of them when they were no longer needed.

“Reflecting on the invitation, Jackson remembered how he and Dahmer were outside on the rear landing. Dahmer on the steps going upstairs to the second floor while Jackson was below. Dahmer starred straight ahead, transfixed, never looking at Jackson when he extended the invitation.”

- From ‘Monster The True Story of Jeffrey Dahmer Murders’. Writer Anne E. Schwartz describes the meeting she had with a Oxford Apartments tenant Doug Jackson

Jeffrey Dahmer was aware of what he was doing, and even if he knew it was wrong, he allowed himself to act how he wanted. His modus operandi was the same: inviting the person at home, drugging them, raping them, killing them, using the corpse how he wanted to then disposing the body. Jeffrey Dahmer was responsible for the following crimes:

Serial murder

Rape

Child molestation

Sexual assault

Sexual harassment

Public nudity

Necrophilia

Cannibalism

Jeffrey Dahmer victims. From left to right: Steven Hicks; Steven Tuomi; James Doxtator; Eddie Smith; Oliver Lacy; Matt Turner; Ricky Beeks; Richard Guerrero; Ernest Miller; David Thomas; Joseph Bradehoft; Curtis Straughter; Errol Lindsey; Anthony Hughes; Konerak Sinthasomphone; Anthony Sears; Jeremiah Weinberger

“Konerak, colloquially known as ‘Khum’ or ‘Kolack’, was a friendly, high-spirited youngster who did not make enemies. The next evening, Saturday, 25 May, he went to a party at Crystal Palace with Laotian friends. On Sunday morning he took a shower at 10 a.m., then went downtown. That was the last time his brother saw him. The brother was called Somsack; for Konerak Sinthasomphone was about to be the second member of this immigrant family to fall into the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer”

- The Shrine Of Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey’s first victim was named Steven Hicks. It was 1978 and Jeffrey was just 18 years old. He found himself alone at home and decided to take a ride with his car. It’s when he met Steven, a hitchhiker, and together reached Dahmer’s house to have some fun. June 18 1978, the last day Steven Hicks was seen alive, his parents were waiting for him to come home to celebrate his dad’s birthday. Dahmer killed him because he didn’t want to let him go, he tried to dispose the body throwing the parts from a ravine he knew but when a police office stopped him he decided to spread the rests on the yard behind his house. After 9 years he tried to behave correctly trying to moderate his impulses, but in September 15, 1987 he fell again and Steven Tuomi, a 24 years old man, became his second victim. Dahmer put him in a suitcase and disposed of the body at the grandma’s house. Following these two killing accidents, many more would follow, and Dahmer would eventually surrender. He gave in to his impulses, making a total of 17 victims, among which two were minors of 14 years old of age. In between of the years before the homicides arrest, Dahmer was arrested for other crimes as indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and sexual assault of a 13 year old boy, Somsak Sinthasomphone. After that he was followed by probation officer Donna Chester, they had to meet twice a week, and even if Dahmer was a cooperative client, he never expressed himself about the crimes he was committing and he didn’t seek for help. He continued to commit his crimes, drugging and raping attractive gay men he found, killing some as well. He kept rests of the victims, reducing what was left to three black garbage bags, and so from a day to another a human being was wiped off the face of the Earth. And more he continued, less careful he became, turning himself into a killing machine. He lost his job, he was going to loose the apartment as well, but he was only interested to follow a sexual pleasure, trying to find more boys to carry home. He wondered around the place unstoppably asking from a man to another to come to his house, when the escape of Tracy Edwards followed and Dahmer was subsequently arrested.

From left to right: Shirley Hughes, mother of Tony Hughes; Catherine Lacy, mother of Oliver Lacy; Dorothy Straughter, mother of Curtis Straughter

“One of his workmates, Richard Burton, was driving with a friend when he saw him standing on a street corner and gave him a ride. Dahmer said he wanted to get out of Wisconsin and go to Florida. Burton wished him luck, and he got out. To his friend, Burton said he thought Jeff had ‘lost it all’ – no job, no friends. A little later he spotted him again talking to a black man at a bus-stop.

On 21 July, after dismembering the body of Joseph Bradehoft, he was wandering around the Grand Avenue Mall where, in two separate incidents, he propositioned Hispanic men with the invitation to earn money by posing for pictures and watching videos. They were Joseph Rosa and Ricardo Ortiz. Both refused.

The events of 22 July depict a mind at once unfocused, listless, and delirious, unhinged. Dahmer got up late, in the midst of his human debris, and went out for a beer. Sopa Princewill accosts him in the corridor with a 40-ounce bottle, and warns him that he may not last until his lease runs out at the end of the month – he may be evicted sooner because his place smelt so awful. He listens, but does not react in any noticeable manner. He goes downtown and is walking along 3rd Street near Wells Street at 2 p.m. when he sees a black man sitting on a sidewalk bench. This is twenty-year-old Ormell Holmes. He asks Holmes if he wants to earn $50. What do I have to do for that? asks Holmes. Pose for pictures and drink some rum. Holmes indicates that he is not interested in that kind of thing, and Dahmer moves on. He approaches another man in the same street, with the same result.

He now goes to his favourite haunt, the Grand Avenue Mall, and has some fast food. He is seen there at 3.30 talking to a man on one of the benches. A little later, he asks a sixteen-year-old black boy called Anderson to come home with him and watch movies, and his offer is again declined. At 4.30 Dennis Campbell, who works at Milwaukee’s famous German restaurant, Karl Ratzch’s, is in the Mall with his girlfriend Julie Weyer, and goes to the men’s room on the first floor. Having urinated, he is drying his hands on a wall dryer when the door opens and a scruffy white man with several days’ growth of beard walks in and stands behind him, then moves beside him. There is no long preparatory choreography. The white man says straight out, ‘Do you want to make fifty dollars real quick?’ ‘Doing what?’ says Campbell. ‘Come to my apartment and watch videos.’ ‘I don’t think so,’ says Campbell, and the man, whom he thought ‘weird, creepy and very unusual’, says, ‘O.K.’ He told Julie about it afterwards and she laughed.”

- The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer