Army Service
In January 1979, on his father’s urging, Dahmer enlisted in the United States Army. He underwent basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, before training as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was occasionally reprimanded for intoxication while stationed at Fort Sam Houston. On one occasion, an instance of insubordination resulted in his entire platoon being punished, earning Dahmer a severe beating from his fellow recruits.
On July 13, 1979, Dahmer was deployed to Baumholder, West Germany, where he served as a combat medic in 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division. According to published reports, in Dahmer’s first year of service, he was an “average or slightly above average” soldier.
Owing to Dahmer’s alcohol abuse, his performance deteriorated and, in March 1981, he was deemed unsuitable for military service and was later discharged from the Army. He received an honorable discharge, as his superiors did not believe that any problems Dahmer had in the Army would be applicable to civilian life.
On March 24, 1981, Dahmer was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for debriefing and provided with a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he felt he could not return home to face his father, so he opted to travel to Miami Beach, Florida, both because he was “tired of the cold” and in an attempt to live by his own means. In Florida, Dahmer found a job at a delicatessen and rented a room in a nearby motel. Dahmer spent most of his salary on alcohol and was soon evicted from the motel for non-payment. He initially spent his evenings on the beach as he continued to work at the sandwich shop until phoning his father and asking to return to Ohio in September of the same year.
1990 killings
On May 14, 1990, Dahmer moved out of his grandmother’s house and into 924 North 25th Street, Apartment 213, taking Sears’ mummified head and genitals with him. Although located in a high-crime area, the apartment was close to his workplace, was furnished, and at $300 per month inclusive of all bills excluding electricity, was economical. Within one week of his moving into his new apartment, Dahmer had killed his sixth victim, Raymond Smith. Smith was a 32-year-old male prostitute whom Dahmer lured to Apartment 213 with the promise of $50 for sex. Inside the apartment, he gave Smith a drink laced with seven sleeping pills, then manually strangled him.
The following day, Dahmer purchased a Polaroid camera with which he took several pictures of Smith’s body in suggestive positions before dismembering him in the bathroom. He boiled the legs, arms, and pelvis in a steel kettle with Soilax, which allowed him to rinse the bones in his sink. Dahmer dissolved the remainder of Smith’s skeleton—excluding the skull—in a container filled with acid. He later spray-painted Smith’s skull, which he placed alongside the skull of Sears upon a black towel inside a metal filing-cabinet.
Approximately one week after the murder of Raymond Smith, on or about May 27, Dahmer lured another young man to his apartment. On this occasion Dahmer accidentally consumed the drink laden with sedatives intended for consumption by his guest. When he awoke the following day, he discovered his intended victim had stolen several items of his clothing, $300, and a watch. Dahmer never reported this incident to the police, although on May 29, he divulged to his probation officer that he had been robbed.
In June 1990, Dahmer lured a 27-year-old acquaintance named Edward Smith to his apartment. He drugged and strangled Smith. On this occasion, rather than immediately acidifying the skeleton or repeating previous processes of bleaching, which had rendered previous victims’ skulls brittle, Dahmer placed Smith’s skeleton in his freezer for several months in the hope it would not retain moisture. Freezing the skeleton did not remove moisture, and the skeleton of this victim was acidified several months later. Dahmer accidentally destroyed the skull when he placed it in the oven to dry—a process that caused the skull to explode. Dahmer later informed police he had felt “rotten” about Smith’s murder as he had been unable to retain any parts of his body.
Less than three months after the murder of Edward Smith, Dahmer encountered a 22-year-old Chicago native named Ernest Miller outside a bookstore on the corner of North 27th Street. Miller agreed to accompany Dahmer to his apartment for $50 and further agreed to allow him to listen to his heart and stomach. When Dahmer attempted to perform oral sex upon Miller, he was informed, “That’ll cost you extra”, whereupon Dahmer gave Miller a drink laced with two sleeping pills.
On this occasion, Dahmer had only two sleeping pills to give his victim. Therefore, he killed Miller by slashing his carotid artery with the same knife he used to dissect his victims’ bodies. Miller bled to death within minutes. Dahmer then posed the nude body for various suggestive Polaroid photographs before placing it in his bathtub for dismemberment. Dahmer repeatedly kissed and talked to the severed head while he dismembered the remainder of the body.
Dahmer wrapped Miller’s heart, liver, biceps, and portions of flesh from the legs in plastic bags and placed them in the freezer for later consumption. He boiled the remaining flesh and organs into a “jelly-like substance” using Soilax, which enabled him to rinse the flesh off the skeleton, which he intended to retain. To preserve the skeleton, Dahmer placed the bones in a light bleach solution for 24 hours before allowing them to dry upon a cloth for one week. The severed head was initially placed in the refrigerator before being stripped of flesh, then painted and coated with enamel.
Three weeks after the murder of Miller, on September 24, Dahmer encountered a 22-year-old father of two named David Thomas at the Grand Avenue Mall. He persuaded him to return to his apartment for a few drinks, with additional money on offer if he would pose for photographs. In his statement to police after his arrest, Dahmer said that, after giving Thomas a drink laden with sedatives, he did not feel attracted to him, but was afraid to allow him to awaken, fearing that he would be angry over having been drugged. Therefore, he strangled him and dismembered the body—intentionally retaining no body parts whatsoever. He photographed the dismemberment process and retained these photographs, which later aided in Thomas’s identification.
Following the murder of Thomas, Dahmer did not kill anyone for almost five months, although on a minimum of five occasions between October 1990 and February 1991, he unsuccessfully attempted to lure men to his apartment. He regularly complained of feelings of both anxiety and depression to his probation officer throughout 1990, with frequent references to his sexuality, his solitary lifestyle, financial difficulties, and—shortly before Thanksgiving—his apprehension regarding meeting and facing his father and younger brother. On several occasions, Dahmer also referred to harboring suicidal thoughts.
1991 killings
In February 1991, Dahmer observed a 17-year-old named Curtis Straughter standing at a bus stop near Marquette University. According to Dahmer, he lured Straughter into his apartment with an offer of money for posing for nude photos, with the added incentive of sexual intercourse. Dahmer drugged Straughter, cuffed his hands behind his back, then strangled him to death with a leather strap. He then dismembered Straughter, retaining the youth’s skull, hands, and genitals and photographing each stage of the dismemberment process.
Less than two months later, on April 7, Dahmer encountered a 19-year-old named Errol Lindsey walking to get a key cut. Lindsey was heterosexual. Dahmer lured Lindsey to his apartment where he drugged him, then drilled a hole in his skull through which he injected hydrochloric acid with a baster. According to Dahmer, Lindsey awoke after this experiment (which Dahmer had conceived in the hope of inducing a permanent, unresistant, submissive state), saying: “I have a headache. What time is it?” In response to this, Dahmer again drugged Lindsey, then strangled him. He decapitated Lindsey and retained his skull. He then flayed Lindsey’s body, placing the skin in a solution of cold water and salt for several weeks in the hope of permanently retaining it. Reluctantly, he disposed of Lindsey’s skin when he noted it had become too frayed and brittle.
By 1991, fellow residents of the Oxford Apartments had repeatedly complained to the building’s manager, Sopa Princewill, of the foul smells emanating from Apartment 213, in addition to the sounds of falling objects and the occasional sound of a chainsaw. Princewill contacted Dahmer in response to these complaints on several occasions, although he initially excused the odors emanating from his apartment as being caused by his freezer breaking, causing the contents to become “spoiled”. On later occasions, he informed Princewill that the reason for the resurgence of the odor was that several of his tropical fish had recently died, and that he would take care of the matter.
On May 24, 1991, Dahmer encountered 31-year-old aspiring model Tony Hughes at a nightclub. He was lured to Dahmer’s apartment with an offer of money to pose for photographs. Hughes was drugged into unconsciousness before Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid into his skull in an effort to disable his will and render him submissive, although on this occasion, the drilling and injection proved fatal.
On the afternoon of May 26, 1991, Dahmer encountered a 14-year-old Lao teenager named Konerak Sinthasomphone on Wisconsin Avenue. Unknown to Dahmer, Sinthasomphone was the younger brother of the boy whom he had molested in 1988. He approached the teenager with an offer of money to accompany him to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. According to Dahmer, Sinthasomphone was initially reluctant to the proposal, before changing his mind and accompanying him to his apartment, where he posed for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer drugged him into unconsciousness and performed oral sex on him. Before Sinthasomphone fell unconscious, Dahmer led the boy into his bedroom, where the body of Tony Hughes, whom Dahmer had killed three days earlier, lay naked on the floor. According to Dahmer, he “believed [that Sinthasomphone] saw this body”, yet did not react to seeing the bloated corpse—likely because of the effects of the sleeping pills he had ingested.
On this occasion, Dahmer drilled a single narrow hole into the crown of Sinthasomphone’s skull, through which he injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe. Dahmer then drank several beers while lying alongside Sinthasomphone before briefly falling asleep, then leaving his apartment to drink at a bar and purchase more alcohol.
In the early morning hours of May 27, Dahmer returned toward his apartment to discover Sinthasomphone sitting naked on the corner of 25th and State, talking in Lao, with three distressed young women standing near him. Dahmer approached the women and told them that Sinthasomphone (whom he referred to by the alias John Hmong) was his friend, and attempted to lead him to his apartment by the arm. The three women dissuaded Dahmer, explaining they had phoned 9-1-1.
Upon the arrival of two Milwaukee police officers, John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, Dahmer’s demeanor relaxed: he told the officers that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, that he had drunk too much following a quarrel, and that he frequently behaved in this manner when intoxicated. Dahmer added his lover had consumed Jack Daniel’s whiskey that evening.
The three women were exasperated, and when one of the trio attempted to indicate to one of the officers—both of whom had observed no injuries beyond a scrape to Sinthasomphone’s knee and believed him to be intoxicated—that Sinthasomphone had blood upon his testicles, was bleeding from his rectum and that he had seemingly struggled against Dahmer’s attempts to walk him to his apartment prior to their arrival, the officer harshly informed her to “butt out”, “shut the hell up” and to not interfere.
Shortly after the arrival of the Milwaukee police officers, three members of the Milwaukee Fire Department arrived at the scene. These individuals also examined Sinthasomphone for injuries and provided a yellow blanket for the police officers to cover Sinthasomphone. One of the three believed Sinthasomphone needed treatment, but the police officers directed the fire department personnel to leave. Shortly thereafter, officer Richard Porubcan arrived at the scene. He and Gabrish—followed by Balcerzak—escorted Dahmer and Sinthasomphone to Dahmer’s apartment as Dahmer repeatedly commented on the general crime in the neighborhood and of his appreciation of the police.
Inside his apartment and in an effort to verify his claim that he and Sinthasomphone were lovers, Dahmer showed the officers the two semi- nude Polaroid pictures he had taken of the youth the previous evening. Though Balcerzak said he smelled nothing unusual, Gabrish later stated he noted a strange scent reminiscent of excrement inside the apartment. This odor emanated from the decomposing body of Hughes. Dahmer stated that to investigate this odor, one officer simply “peeked his head around the bedroom but really didn’t take a good look.” The officers then left, with a departing remark that Dahmer “take good care” of Sinthasomphone. This incident was listed by the officers as a “domestic dispute.”
Upon the departure of the three officers from his apartment, Dahmer again injected hydrochloric acid into Sinthasomphone’s brain. This second injection proved fatal. The following day, May 28, Dahmer took a day’s leave from work to devote himself to the dismemberment of the bodies of Sinthasomphone and Hughes. He retained both victims’ skulls.
On June 30, Dahmer traveled to Chicago, where he encountered a 20-year-old named Matt Turner at a bus station. Turner accepted Dahmer’s offer to travel to Milwaukee for a professional photo shoot. At the apartment, Dahmer drugged, strangled and dismembered Turner and placed his head and internal organs in separate plastic bags in the freezer. Turner was not reported missing. Five days later, on July 5, Dahmer lured 23-year-old Jeremiah Weinberger from a Chicago bar to his apartment on the promise of spending the weekend with him. He drugged Weinberger and twice injected boiling water through his skull, sending him into a coma from which he died two days later.
On July 15, Dahmer encountered 24-year-old Oliver Lacy at the corner of 27th and Kilbourn. Lacy agreed to Dahmer’s ruse of posing nude for photographs and accompanied him to his apartment, where the pair engaged in tentative sexual activity before Dahmer drugged Lacy. On this occasion, Dahmer intended to prolong the time he spent with Lacy while alive. After unsuccessfully attempting to render Lacy unconscious with chloroform, he phoned his workplace to request a day’s absence; this was granted, although the next day, he was suspended.
After strangling Lacy, Dahmer had sex with the corpse before dismembering him. He placed Lacy’s head and heart in the refrigerator and his skeleton in the freezer. Four days later, on July 19, Dahmer received word that he was fired. Upon receipt of this news, Dahmer lured 25-year-old Joseph Bradehoft to his apartment. Bradehoft was strangled and left lying on Dahmer’s bed covered with a sheet for two days. On July 21, Dahmer removed the sheet to find the head covered in maggots. He decapitated the body, cleaned the head and placed it in the refrigerator. He later acidified Bradehoft’s torso along with those of two other victims killed within the previous month.
Source: Wikipedia
