Jeffrey Dahmer's bloody death in a prison bathroom Monday was a dramatic - some say a fitting - end to the life of a killer and cannibal.
"I was so happy" to hear he was dead, says Janie Hagen, sister of Richard Guerrero, one of at least 16 young men murdered by Dahmer, who also had dismembered, sexually abused and eaten some of them.
"I was so excited that finally the monster was gone. He was just plain evil. . . . That may sound harsh, but when you lose a brother . . ." says Hagen.
Dahmer, 34, was cleaning a toilet next to a basketball court Monday morning when, out of the sight of prison guards, he was beaten to death. The suspect, Christopher Scarver, like Dahmer, is a convicted first-degree murderer from Milwaukee.
Dahmer's gruesome murders between 1978 and 1991 made him one of the nation's most infamous criminals. He pleaded guilty in 1992 and was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences in Wisconsin, a state that doesn't have the death penalty.
His death at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage brought an emotional and conflicted reaction from families, police and prosecutors as well as the general public.
Hagen calls the inmate who killed Dahmer "a hero."
But Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann, who prosecuted Dahmer, calls his death "a sad ending to a very sad story. That's not justice. That's murder." And he hopes Dahmer's killer "doesn't emerge as a folk hero."
Details of what happened still are sketchy.
Officials say Dahmer and two other inmates were taken to the prison gym at 7:50 a.m., a routine assignment Dahmer had done for three weeks. At 8:10 a.m., guards led two more inmates into the gym to exercise and discovered Dahmer - breathing, but bloody and unconscious from head injuries - in a staff bathroom. He was pronounced dead at 9:11 a.m.
Inmate Jesse Anderson, in prison for killing his wife, was found beaten in a separate bathroom. He was in critical condition last night.
"It appears he killed one, then (attacked) the other," says Wisconsin Corrections chief Michael Sullivan, of the suspect.
Sullivan would not say if any guards were in the gym when the murder occurred, or if they should have been. He also declined to say if the suspect's motive was known.
Dahmer was sent to the maximum security prison in February 1992 and spent his first year in isolation. He had been allowed to mix with other prisoners since then.
In March 1992, a small razor blade was found hidden in an envelope in his garbage can. Dahmer temporarily lost TV and commissary privileges. But, otherwise, his life had been mostly quiet inside the crowded maximum security facility.
Dahmer wore a green khaki uniform, and ate and socialized freely with other inmates in his cellblock. He worked 1 1/2 hours a day sweeping and mopping the area.
Inside his 8-by-10 foot cell, he spent much of his time studying the Bible, most recently the book of Revelations, the final book in the New Testament. He was permitted 25 books, 15 magazines and a Bible. Pornographic magazines involving bondage were prohibited.
Both Dahmer and prison officials thought he was safe.
"He did not feel in danger at all, and I asked him that specifically," says the Rev. Roy Ratcliffe, who saw Dahmer last Wednesday and baptized him in a prison whirlpool in May.
Dahmer was attacked in the prison chapel on July 3, but the toothbrush-turned-knife broke apart and he suffered only a scratch. Inmate Osvaldo Durruthy, serving time for weapons and drug offenses, will be sentenced for the attack Dec. 19.
"Jeffrey told me the attack was an exception," says Ratcliffe. "He said he was attacked by a Cuban who had just gotten into his cell and had never spoken to him, someone who was trying to do something so bad he'd get deported."
Gerald Boyle, Dahmer's attorney, says "Dahmer had a death wish and I know he didn't have the gumption to do it himself, so I predicted that the day would come when he would be killed in prison."
His stepmother, Shari, told a television station, "From the day he got arrested, he felt he deserved anything he got."
Dahmer's crimes revolted the nation.
He told how he had had sex with his dead or drugged victims, and how he cut up their bodies in a bathtub and used hydrochloric acid to destroy the bones. He flushed brains down the toilet but kept - and painted - some skulls as mementos. Dahmer ate parts of his victims. Some heads and hearts were kept in his freezer, and bodies in a 55-gallon drum.
Most victims' families say they feel a sense of closure now that his horrific life is over.
"There's a sense of relief to know that justice in some kind of way has been done. My son suffered in his hands what Jeffrey Dahmer had to suffer under someone else's hands," says Inez Thomas, mother of victim David Thomas.
"I dreamed of this day and then it actually happens," says Carolyn Smith, sister of victim Edward Smith. "My whole body started shaking. Right now, I'm very pleased. But I'm Catholic. I don't believe in capital punishment but some days, the evil side comes out of me."
Dahmer's death dominated TV news programs and talk radio Monday, and revealed a public torn between hatred of Dahmer and aversion to vigilantism.
"It hasn't been a bloodthirsty response," says talk show host Jerry Bott of WISN-AM in Milwaukee. "On the other hand, there's certainly no deep and abiding sympathy for Dahmer."
Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer for the families of eight victims, sums it up for many. "The chickens have come home to roost," he says. "What comes around, goes around."
Jacobson hopes the families now can raise "hundreds of thousands of dollars" by auctioning off Dahmer's possessions to help collect an $80 million judgment against the murderer.
Items they plan to sell: the refrigerator where Dahmer stored skulls, a lava lamp, a toothbrush, homosexual pornography and an 80-quart kettle used to boil body parts.
