TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/081291/0812107.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 5.5 KB | 117 lines

                                                                                NATION, Page 28

MILWAUKEE MURDERS

Did They All Have to Die?


Chagrined Milwaukeeans learn how the police let a serial killer
slip through their hands to kill again

By ALEX PRUD'HOMME -- Reported by Mary Cronin/New York and Georgia
Pabst/Milwaukee


    How can it have happened? Police officers are alerted
that a dazed, naked Asian boy is staggering on a Milwaukee
street. Jeffrey Dahmer, 31, convinces them that 14-year-old
Konerak Sinthasomphone is his homosexual lover. Dahmer happens
to be a convicted child molester, but the police do not check
him out. Instead of rescuing the young Laotian immigrant from
Dahmer, who has since confessed to murdering and mutilating 17
men over the past 13 years, the cops seem to laugh off the
incident as a gay love spat. They deliver the 14-year-old to
Dahmer's apartment. And as soon as they leave, Dahmer reportedly
proceeds to strangle the boy and dismember his body.

    The release of police-department radio and telephone
transcripts apparently showing how badly the officers had
blundered intensified the shock and anger that have gripped
Milwaukee ever since the decomposing remains of 11 bodies were
discovered in Dahmer's small apartment two weeks ago. Police
made their grisly find only because they came across another
fleeing victim, who told them Dahmer was trying to kill him.
Black and gay leaders, noting that most of Dahmer's victims were
nonwhite and some were homosexual, have accused police of years
of bigotry and neglect.

    Though police chief Philip Arreola attempted to defuse the
situation by suspending the three officers involved in the
Sinthasomphone case and filing administrative charges against
them, public indignation rose as new details came to light.
According to local news accounts, two black women called the
cops in the early-morning hours of May 27 and reported that they
found the youth, naked and bleeding, being chased by Dahmer.
Laurie Eggert, a police-union lawyer, said the three officers
who responded found the boy highly intoxicated and attributed
the bleeding to a scrape on the leg. Dahmer convinced the
officers that the boy was his 19-year-old lover and that they
had quarreled. When the officers returned the youth to Dahmer's
apartment, says Eggert, they saw nothing unusual.

    According to the Milwaukee Journal, they should have. The
paper said Dahmer told investigators that when the officers
brought the boy back, photographs of victims were strewn about
the apartment and the body of one victim was in the bedroom,
"smelling like hell."

    The police transcripts show that the officers involved
apparently joked and laughed about the incident with the
dispatcher. "Intoxicated Asian, naked male. Was returned to his
sober boyfriend," said a policeman, who added that his partner
"is going to get deloused." Glenda Cleveland, whose daughter and
niece initially spotted Sinthasomphone on the street, later
called the police and repeatedly asked what had been done about
the "child." One of the officers who had been at the scene
responded, "It wasn't a child, it was an adult . . . It is all
taken care of . . . It's a boyfriend-boyfriend thing."

    Milwaukee blacks are incensed because the cops believed
Dahmer, who is white, instead of the black women. "This is a
very racist city," said community activist Queen Hyler. "You
have a white guy killing people weekly, with bodies stacking up
in a building occupied mostly by blacks, but the cops are too
busy riding shotgun on the black community to pay any
attention." Black and gay leaders have called for an independent
investigation of the department, claiming that it is still
philosophically under the sway of Harold Breier, who retired as
police chief in 1984 after a rigid 20-year reign. Meanwhile,
Chief Arreola was facing sharp criticism from within his ranks
after suspending the three officers involved in the May 27
incident and ordering an internal investigation.

    As the investigation continued, a profile of Dahmer
emerged that seems to suggest he fits classic patterns of a
serial killer. Says Robert Ressler, a former FBI agent and a
pre-eminent expert on mass murderers: "Dahmer falls into the
subcategory of the sadistic, sexually oriented serial killer who
is inevitably a white male loner and usually intelligent." This
type of killer, says Ressler, generally comes from a broken
home, has had poor parenting and/or was abused early in his
life, usually doesn't marry, is often an alcoholic or drug
addict and can be suicidal. Dahmer -- who according to his
father was molested by a neighbor boy at the age of eight,
though Dahmer himself denies it -- seems to fit most of these
criteria.

    Last week police searched the grounds of the former Dahmer
house in Bath, Ohio, for the remains of Steven Hicks, who may
have been the murderer's first victim. In 1978 Hicks, 18, was
hitchhiking when Dahmer, also 18 at the time, took him home,
killed him with a barbell and smashed his bones with a hammer.
So far, about 100 bone and three tooth fragments have been
recovered from the grounds. Investigators plan to test them
against a lock of hair and dental records that Hicks' parents
provided in the hope of proving a match. In a statement issued
last week, the Hicks family said, "We have spent a great deal
of time trying to understand the motivation for such a heinous
crime and concluded that some acts are so evil they simply
cannot be explained."