The Crime Book

293

See also: Jack the Ripper 266–73 ■ Ted Bundy 276–83

J

ust before midnight on

22 July 1991, a distraught

young man with a handcuff

dangling from his wrist approached

two Milwaukee police officers. He

said that some “freak” had tried to

restrain him. The three men headed

back to the aggressor’s apartment.

They were greeted at the door by

the tenant, Jeffrey Dahmer.

Dahmer tried to talk his way out

of the situation, but the appalling

stench of death gave him away. In

Dahmer’s bedroom, an officer found

Polaroid photos of nude male bodies

in varying stages of dismemberment.

The background in the photos

indicated that they had been taken

in the very same room. Dahmer

was immediately arrested. The

police then searched his apartment

and discovered boxes, a 215-litre

(57-gallon) drum, a freezer, and a

fridge filled with human body parts.

Several painted skulls and a human

skeleton hung from his showerhead.

Back at the police station,

Dahmer confessed to the murders of

17 young men, and engaging in

necrophilic acts with their corpses.

Dahmer also admitted that he had

experimented with cannibalism, by

eating the body parts of his victims.

Trial and death

Dahmer’s trial began on 30 January

1992. The purpose of the trial was to
      determine whether or not he was
      criminally responsible for his actions.
      Despite persuasive arguments from
      both sides, he was declared sane,
      and received 15 life sentences. He
      was beaten to death with a metal bar
      by a fellow prison inmate Christopher
      Scarver on 28 November 1994. ■

SERIAL KILLERS

IN CONTEXT

LOCATION

Ohio and Wisconsin

THEME

Necrophilic killings

BEFORE

1947–52 Ed Gein steals

bodies from cemeteries in

Wisconsin and makes

keepsakes from the remains.

1964–73 Edmund Kemper

embarks on a crazed spree

of necrophilia, serial killing,

and cannibalism in his

native California.

1978–83 Dennis Nilsen

strangles and kills around

12 men at his home in London,

England. He stores some of the

bodies under the floorboards.

AFTER

1994–2004 Sean Gillis rapes

and murders eight women in

Louisiana. He is unable to

account for the brutality of

his mutilations.

I WAS SICK

OR EVIL, OR

BOTH

JEFFREY DAHMER, 1978–91

I acted on my fantasies

and... everything

went wrong.

Jeffrey Dahmer

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