TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/080591/0805991.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.4 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                CRIME, Page 26

The Little Flat of Horrors


In a saga recalling The Silence of the Lambs, a Milwaukee man is
seized in a den of preserved heads and mutilated body parts

By ALEX PRUD'HOMME -- Reported by Ken Myers/Cleveland and Georgia
Pabst/Milwaukee


    For months residents sensed that all was not right at the
Oxford Apartments, a 49-unit low-rise building on Milwaukee's
crime-infested west side. A power saw buzzed at odd hours. The
putrid odor of rotting meat flooded the corridors. Occasionally,
a tenant would hear a cry or the thump of a falling object on
the second floor.

    When police entered Apartment 213 last week, they were
shocked to find a freezer covered with Polaroid photographs of
mutilated men. Inside they discovered two severed heads and one
more stashed in the refrigerator. A closet and filing cabinet
yielded more human skulls and a kettle containing what are
thought to be decomposing hands and a male genital organ.
Various body parts were strewn around the apartment, as were
bottles of acid and chemical preservatives.

    Unlike Hannibal ("the Cannibal") Lecter, the brilliant
mass-murdering psychiatrist in The Silence of the Lambs, the
creature who apparently turned Apartment 213 into a private
slaughterhouse is an unassuming 31-year-old ne'er-do-well named
Jeffrey L. Dahmer. The pale, sandy-haired Dahmer, who was
recently fired from his job at a Milwaukee chocolate factory,
immediately confessed to 11 murders. Police believe he may have
actually committed as many as 17 during the past 10 years. Most
of the apartment victims were black males, and some were
homosexuals. One trait Dahmer seems to share with the fictional
Lecter is an apparent penchant for cannibalism: he told police
he had saved a human heart "to eat later."

    Throughout much of his life, there were warning signs that
something was terribly wrong with Jeffrey Dahmer. His
stepmother, Shari Dahmer, who was interviewed last week by the
Cleveland Plain Dealer before clamming up to the press, said
that "when he was young, he liked to use acid to scrape the meat
off dead animals." At 18, Jeffrey witnessed the bitter divorce
of his parents and lived with his mother in Bath Township, Ohio.
But one day, said Shari Dahmer, his mother disappeared with his
younger brother, leaving Jeffrey with nothing. Often Dahmer
attempted to sedate himself with alcohol. "He was a gentle
person, but when he got drunk it would take four policemen to
hold him down," said Shari Dahmer.

    For six years Jeffrey lived with his grandmother in West
Allis, Wis. During the late 1980s, Shari Dahmer recalled, a
harsh chemical odor began to emanate from the basement and
garage. When Jeffrey's father Lionel, a chemist, found "bones
and the residue in the containers," Jeffrey told him that he had
been stripping the flesh from an animal he had found. "Now I
look at it, and I think that it's possible he was destroying
human body parts," said Shari Dahmer.

    Jeffrey Dahmer spent 10 months in prison for fondling a
13-year-old Laotian boy in 1988 and offering him $50 to pose
nude for pictures. On his release, Dahmer was put on probation.
Although he showed up at the probation office every month, his
caseworker never visited Dahmer in his home, as is usually
required. A state department of corrections spokesman said the
requirement had been waived because the agent was overworked.
Another serious lapse occurred in May, when police officers were
called by two women who found a naked, bloodied Asian boy on the
street. A man the women believe was Dahmer apparently convinced
the police that the boy was his homosexual partner; the police
declined to investigate. The 14-year-old boy, whose body has
been identified amid the carnage in Dahmer's home, was the
brother of the Laotian youth Dahmer molested in 1988. Three
police officers were suspended last week pending an
investigation into why they did not rescue the youth.

    Dahmer's murderous rampage might have continued
indefinitely had one of his victims not escaped last week.
Running down a Milwaukee street with a pair of handcuffs
dangling from one wrist, Tracy Edwards, 32, told police that
Dahmer was trying to kill him. Dahmer was arrested without a
struggle. He has since expressed remorse and briefed the
authorities on his modus operandi: he usually lured men from
shopping malls and bars by offering them money to pose for
pictures; after drugging them, he would strangle his victims and
dismember the bodies. Often he boiled their heads to remove the
flesh, and in at least one case, say authorities, he had anal
sex with a cadaver.

    By week's end police had identified all 11 of the victims
killed in Dahmer's apartment. Police are following leads to
determine whether he was responsible for other unresolved
slayings. At a hearing last week, Dahmer, who is being held on
a $1 million bond, sat impassively in a Milwaukee courtroom as
Judge Frank Crivello read out the charges on four counts of
first-degree intentional homicide, each of which carries a
mandatory life sentence. More charges are expected to follow
soon.

    "How do you handle something like this?" wondered Shari
Dahmer. "I saw a woman crying on the news last night. She was
crying for her missing son. My heart hurts for her. Jeff is
wrong. Jeff is sick."