Dahmer on Dahmer: A Serial Killer Speaks (2017) - full transcript
"Dahmer on Dahmer: A Serial Killer Speaks" offers a fresh look at the infamous serial killer's life through the eyes of the woman who became his closest confidant. With new interviews from ...
- Your Honor, it is over now.
[eerie music]
I know society will never
be able to forgive me.
♪ ♪
I know the families
of the victims
will never be able
to forgive me
for what I have done.
- Jeffrey, I hate you,
motherf---er!
I hate you!
- For sexual pleasure,
he took the life
of a human being.
- He told us
how he cooked them,
what they tasted like.
- Never would I have believed
that he was a killer, ever.
- Well, you're looking good.
- I have to start eating
at home more.
♪ ♪
- We're investigating
a homicide.
- What would lead
a human being
to take 17 lives?
- He was more normal
than we want to think he was.
- No one had a clue
as to what was happening
for over a decade.
- When you killed these men,
afterwards, were you repulsed?
Were you upset?
- No, it--
At the time, it was--
it was almost addictive.
- I don't consider myself
a victim.
I consider myself a survivor.
- As a 17-year-old kid,
would you really get that out
in your unit
that Jeff Dahmer raped you?
- I know Jeffrey
who used to stay
across the hall from me.
That Dahmer guy
is somebody else.
- You must understand
we protect our family.
He was our son.
- He fooled so many people
as to his real feelings.
- I knew I was sick or evil
or both.
[siren wailing]
- For years,
a serial killer
had been preying
on the city of Milwaukee.
Finally, in the summer of 1991,
it all comes to an end
when a frightened man
in handcuffs
approaches police.
He leads them to the home
of Jeffrey Dahmer.
- We're investigating
a homicide which occurred.
- Obviously that there is--
has been a number
of human specimens found.
- The victim count?
17.
- Police were lead there
by a man who told them
he had been attacked
with a butcher knife.
- The details
are shocking.
- Sources close
to the case say
the motive includes elements
of sexual violence
and cannibalism.
- Jeffrey Dahmer
is a quiet
chocolate factory worker
who confesses
to the most gruesome crimes.
- Jeff Dahmer is apologetically
admitting responsibility.
- Do you know
what started it?
Was there any kind of incident
that you can remember?
- To this day, I don't know
what started it.
And the person to blame is
sitting right across from you.
That's the only person--
not parents, not society,
not pornography.
I mean, those are just excuses.
- I'm Nancy Glass.
In 1991, I'm sitting
in a newsroom,
and a story comes in
that there's been
a serial killer in Milwaukee.
He killed people,
he dismembered them,
and, worse, he was a cannibal.
Well, at first,
you just don't believe this.
I mean, you got to look
at it twice.
And then, as a journalist,
you say,
"I really want to get
this story."
So I started communicating
with Jeffrey Dahmer's parents
and built a relationship
with them.
Eventually, Jeffrey and I
started writing back and forth.
And then,
a year and a half later,
I found myself
sitting opposite him
at the Columbia Correctional
Institute in Wisconsin.
You know, people always wonder,
was I afraid of him?
Well, I wasn't,
because by the time
I was sitting opposite him,
his killing spree was over.
In fact, he appeared to be
completely normal.
That was actually
what was so unsettling.
Were you molested?
- Never.
Never.
- In your childhood,
you have any memories
of anything
that you would associate
with what you became?
- No, that's the strange thing.
I can't pinpoint anything.
- So there was nothing
in your childhood--
- No, no abuse--
no physical abuse,
no verbal abuse.
It was a normal childhood
in a good home.
Something went awry
in my thought life.
I don't know why.
- There's no single history
that causes someone to become
a serial killer.
Many of the individuals
who are serial killers,
not all of them but many,
have had very traumatic
early life experiences.
In Mr. Dahmer's case,
none of that
seemed to be present.
- Jeffrey's father, Lionel,
now in his 80s,
wanted to talk to us
about the boy he knew.
But he only agreed
to an on-camera interview
if he could wear sunglasses.
In his mind, they make him
less identifiable.
- He loved the place
that we lived in,
and it was
a heavily wooded place.
He enjoyed
his small group of friends.
- He was raised
in a somewhat affluent family.
His father had a doctoral
degree in chemistry.
The family lived on
a 1 1/4 quiet, wooded acres
with a pond.
- While Jeffrey indicated
nothing in his childhood
could have fueled
his desire to kill,
according to Lionel
and his wife, Shari,
who'd been part
of Jeffrey's life
since he was 18,
there was something
that affected him
even before he was born.
His mother, Joyce, struggled
with mental illness
and took 27 pills a day when
she was pregnant with Jeffrey,
including antidepressants,
growth hormones,
and progesterone.
- Doctors met with us,
and they said
those medicines could have
affected the fetus.
And when Jeff was born,
the grandparents were not
allowed to hold the baby.
Joyce didn't want anybody
touching the baby
or breathing on it.
She was afraid of germs.
They virtually had no contact
with Jeff as a baby.
- In my conversations
with Lionel,
he told me that in infancy,
Joyce herself
rarely touched Jeffrey
except to change his diapers
or hold him for a photo.
- There was so much illness
with his mother at that time.
She was involved
with gestalt therapy
at a local
mental health center,
wandering around in the dark,
touching people.
Nothing--nothing helped.
- In the midst of this,
Lionel
and his first wife, Joyce,
have a second child.
- Jeff noticed that when
his younger brother was born,
Jeff no longer had
fairy tales from his mother,
stories read at night,
and tucking him in.
Jeff felt somewhat left out.
- We were moving at the time,
and he had to leave
his favorite kitten behind.
And going to a new school
and being only six years old,
he became
a little bit more shy,
much like I was in my youth.
- During his adolescence,
Dahmer develops a hobby
that would raise eyebrows
in the years that followed.
Were you obsessed
with dead animals?
Is that true?
- I was interested
in taxidermy in high school
and experimented
with preserving the bones
of dogs and things like that.
And whether that had
anything to do
with the escalation
of the crimes, I don't know.
- He went into further detail
in this interview
with a forensic psychologist.
- There are numbers
of young people
who might have those same kinds
of interests
and don't end up being
serial killers.
So in retrospect, had I spoken
with him as a teenager,
I don't know
that either he or I
would have predicted
at that point
that he was gonna end up
being the serial killer
he turned out to be.
- Now, I lived
with this young man.
He lived in our home.
He had
his father's intelligence.
And on the phone,
you could not tell Jeff
or Lionel apart.
Jeff was always very gentle,
very kind.
- In high school,
friends begin to notice
Jeffrey is becoming
a different person.
- Jeff's behavior began
to be so strange
that I felt very uncomfortable
being with him alone.
He liked to act,
in his words, "crazy."
He would just start
shrieking,
or he would twist himself up
in a grotesque way
and run with a limp,
almost like Quasimodo.
And I remember one time
asking him
why he behaved this way,
and he said,
"I just like
to shake people up."
- I remember when we had
our senior pictures taken,
he got into
a lot of the group photos
that he was not a member--
the National Honor Society
group.
Whoever was in charge
of that in those days,
they blacked out his face,
and it's really creepy.
- I had a classmate who said,
"Years ago, we thought
that photo was hilarious.
And it's not so funny anymore."
- His brazen behavior continues
in the classroom.
- He was drinking beer.
Sometimes he kept it
in his locker,
and I guess he kept beer
in his car.
Did teachers do anything
about it?
Did they know about it?
I'm sure some teachers knew
about it.
- I remember distinctly
one morning
sitting in class next to Jeff,
who had his cup of scotch.
And I said, "Jeff,
what is that?"
He just tossed his head back
as though it was no issue
at all,
and he said,
"It's my medicine."
There was a collective sense
of blinders going up,
that people didn't notice
because they didn't want
to notice.
- According to Dahmer,
alcohol was a way to drown
his growing dark desires.
- I started having
these obsessive thoughts
when I was about 15 and 16,
and they got worse and worse.
- What were
your fantasies about?
- [sighs]
They were sexual fantasies
of control, power,
complete dominance.
They became reality.
- Was there pleasure
in that fantasy?
- There was excitement,
fear, pleasure
all mixed together.
- He found certain
male joggers attractive
and sought opportunities
to watch them
and fantasize about them
as they jogged past.
There was one particular man
that he would fantasize about
having sexual contact with,
but he had no concept
of how to make a relationship
with this or any other man.
- He took a bat,
sawed it off
and fashioned it as a club,
hid in the woods,
anticipating that he would
assault this man.
[dramatic music]
- Teenage Jeffrey sits
nervously,
waiting to attack.
But the jogger
he has his eye on
doesn't pass that day.
♪ ♪
His first target
has slipped away,
but his next
wouldn't be so lucky.
Up next, the growing desire
to kill
is only the beginning.
- I had had fantasies
about picking up a hitchhiker
and taking him back
to the house
and having complete control
and dominance.
In the spring of 1976,
high school sophomore
Jeffrey Dahmer's
first planned assault fails.
He's 15, a time
when most teenagers
are worried about school
and making friends.
And he's already on a path
toward his terrible crimes.
- I had normal friendships
in high school,
but after that, I started in
with the alcohol, drinking,
a lot of solitary drinking,
and really never had any
close friendships after that,
after high school.
Just sort of lived
in my own thought life,
fantasy world.
- As high school ends,
his parents divorce,
and his mother takes off
with her younger son,
leaving Jeffrey alone
in the house.
- Jeff was left behind
with no money
and spoiled milk in the fridge.
I came into the family
at the tail end
of Lionel's divorce.
They'd been separated
two years.
Lionel was living
out of a motel.
Jeff was detached
at that point.
He felt somewhat abandoned.
- The first time
anybody asked me
about his parents,
I was struck by the fact
that I could only answer,
"I never knew he had parents."
He just seemed like
he was kind of a satellite
floating alone.
- He did not like
that feeling.
He didn't like
his parents leaving him.
And it's in that context
that he committed
his first homicide.
- You do sound, though,
like the kind of person
who could have said
to himself,
"This is wrong.
I must stop."
- I always knew
that it was wrong, but...
after the--the first--
The first killing
was not planned.
I was coming back
from the shopping mall
back in '78.
I had had fantasies
about picking up a hitchhiker
and taking him
back to the house
and having complete control
and dominance over him.
- Dahmer's violent fantasies Dahmer's violent fantasies
become reality- become reality
when he crosses paths
with 18-year-old Steve Hicks
looking for a ride
to a nearby rock concert.
- He picked up a young man
that was hitchhiking
and offered him a good time
if he wanted to just stop
and visit with him
for a little bit.
Jeffrey Dahmer was attracted
specifically
to this individual because
he wasn't wearing a shirt.
Throughout the evening,
they drank alcohol,
and I understand there might
have been marijuana involved.
Finally, Steve Hicks said
that "I should be going."
- He said, "We drank,
he wanted to leave,
and I hit him with a barbell,
and I killed him."
He says, "I didn't want him
to leave me."
- For sexual pleasure,
he took the life
of a human being.
- All of Dahmer's victims
were men.
His attraction to men
is what both motivated
and repulsed him.
- Never understood it.
There was no use
trying to fight it,
because I couldn't rid myself
of it.
It was--it was too powerful
and persistent.
- Do you dislike it?
- Yes, it's caused
a lot of problems
for me.
A lot of conflicts
and unanswered questions.
- Jerry Boyle
was Dahmer's lawyer.
He believes
that Jeffrey's sexuality
did not lead him to violence.
- He was just really
very forthright with me.
It is my first belief
that if he was a heterosexual,
he would have killed girls.
- After Dahmer dismembers
Steven Hicks's corpse
and stuffs the remains
in a deep drainage pipe
in his parents' backyard,
he panics and decides
to dig up the body parts
and dispose of them elsewhere.
- He decided late at night
towards midnight
to drive it to a local dump.
He was so nervous
that he was driving
erratically,
and he was stopped
by a police officer.
Mr. Dahmer kept
his wits about him.
He told the police officer
that his parents
had recently divorced.
He said he couldn't sleep
and wanted to take
a garbage bag
to the garbage dump.
The police officer
shined a flashlight inside
and saw a green garbage bag.
[ominous music]
- The officer had no reason
whatsoever
to believe that there was
anything unusual
other than he might have been
a little bit nervous.
But most people are nervous when
there's a traffic stop made.
- Jeff was very good
by that point
at convincing adults
for whatever it was
he wanted to convince them of.
- Jeffrey Dahmer definitely
was a manipulator.
He was able to convince
not only the individuals
to come to his place,
but he was also able
to convince people
that nothing was wrong
when there was something
very wrong.
- It all could have ended
at that moment.
But in the first
of many close calls
when he could have been
stopped,
Dahmer's let off
with only a ticket.
- He took him home,
smashed him all up,
and he spread the bones
in the woods.
- Steven Hicks's parents
reported him missing in 1978
but don't get any answers
until 1991,
when Dahmer confesses.
- That family had no idea
what had happened
to their 18-year-old son.
He disappeared
off the face of the Earth.
Talk about inflicting pain
if you're a parent.
- Later that summer,
Lionel and Shari moved back
into the Dahmer home
with 18-year-old Jeffrey.
- He would come home
a time or two
pretty well loaded.
If he was totally drunk,
he would forget where
he took his dad's car.
We had to track the car down
several times,
because Jeff just drew a blank.
- Frustrated,
Lionel forces Jeffrey
to enroll in college.
- I attended
Ohio State University,
and Jeff did as well.
The last time I saw him,
he was laying on the sidewalk,
passed out dead drunk.
I went over to him,
and I tried
to shake him into consciousness.
And I kept saying,
"Jeff, wake up.
Wake up."
I knew then that Jeff was gone.
- We found out he was drinking
at school and failing out,
so we brought him home.
We took Jeff
for psychiatric care.
We took him to institutions.
But as the old saying goes,
you can lead the horse to water,
but you can't make it drink.
- I was just thinking
of normal-type,
everyday things
that I could encourage him on
to do.
And the Army was
the logical place, I thought.
- During this time,
Jeffrey claims
his violent impulses
remained quiet.
What happened to you
in the nine years in between
that you were able to stop,
that you were able
to control yourself?
- Just wasn't an opportunity
to fully express
what I wanted to do.
There was not just
the physical opportunity
to do it then.
- While investigators
never had any reason
to doubt Dahmer's claim,
for the first time,
two of his fellow servicemen
are making accusations
the public has never heard
before.
Up next...
- As a 17-year-old kid,
would you really get that out
in your unit
that Jeff Dahmer raped you?
After one failed semester
After one failed semester
in college,
Jeffrey Dahmer's dad
implores his son
to find a direction in life.
He decides to enlist
in the Army.
Jeffrey says his evil urges
were quieted
while in the service
and he hoped
it would remain that way.
But according to those
he served with,
they did not.
We've uncovered two victims
who've agreed to speak
for the first time.
- You know, you really
don't know someone
until you live with them.
- Billy Joe Capshaw
was Dahmer's roommate
for 15 months while stationed
in Baumholder, Germany.
He arrived to replace
someone else in Dahmer's unit,
Preston Davis.
- We were out
on a field exercise.
It was a two-week exercise.
And the last three or four days
of the exercise,
our vehicle broke down.
During that timeframe,
I was drugged and
sexually assaulted by Jeff.
- Preston says
the attack haunted him,
and he eventually unraveled.
- My career went downhill
after this.
I got a DWI
in 1985 in the military.
I had a rocky marriage
with my first wife.
I wound up getting out
of the military in '86,
divorcing her,
became estranged from my son.
Substance abuse.
Alcohol abuse.
That's what a lot of victims do
to try to suppress that pain.
- But Preston wasn't
the only victim.
Billy Capshaw
shared a room with Dahmer
for over a year
and says he faced
an even more intense ordeal.
- He had me tied up, naked,
to a bunk, you know,
and was...
beside me, naked hisself,
and holding me
like I would hold a woman.
He raped me,
sexually molested me.
He tortured me.
The attacks,
the things like that,
were continuous
and almost every day.
- Billy told us his shame
over what was happening to him
kept him quiet.
- There's guys in there
and they got guns,
and they're mean.
They've been to Vietnam.
As a 17-year-old kid,
would you really get that out
in your unit
that someone raped you?
- The fact that Dahmer
would be so open
about all of his crimes
yet never address
these allegations
only creates more questions.
Why did he leave this out?
And what else could there be
that we don't know about?
- The fact
that he didn't disclose
the incidents in the military
just doesn't surprise me.
Jeffrey Dahmer wanted
to talk about
what he wanted to talk about.
- In March of 1981,
Dahmer is discharged
from the Army
not for violent behavior
but for excessive drinking.
- Was I disappointed in--
of course.
I was disappointed
in his inability
to achieve something,
you know, in normal working
or living.
- That fall, 21-year-old
Jeffrey Dahmer
moves back
into his parents' home
in Bath, Ohio.
Directionless,
he continues to drink heavily.
His father and stepmother
push him
to get professional help.
- I did as much
as I thought I could.
He seemed to be
an alcoholic,
so we got help that way
and that sort of thing.
- Lionel would drop him off,
and Jeff would go
out the back door.
So he wasn't going
for counseling.
And we reached a point
where we said,
"We're going to send you up
to Grandma's house for a while
and see if you can get
your life together."
- Dahmer's grandmother believes
that through God,
Jeffrey will change
his sexuality.
So he attends church
and gets a job drawing blood
at a local blood bank.
But at this point,
his depraved urges
become harder and harder
to control,
and he acts out.
He exposes himself to a group
of women and children
at the Wisconsin State Fair
and is arrested.
In court, he appears
remorseful,
which will become a routine
for him,
and all he gets is a fine,
$50 plus court fees.
At this point, Dahmer tries to
find a substitute for killing,
and what he settles on
is truly disturbing.
- His goal was finding
the partner
who would lie there all night
so that he could have
the illusion
of all the time in the world
to be close to that person.
And his strategies
for finding that partner
were creative and varied
but mostly ineffective.
They included
scanning obituaries,
going to the funeral
if there was a viewing
to see if it was someone
he'd find attractive,
and then trying to dig up
the grave.
[ominous music]
On the two occasions
that he did that,
the ground was too frozen.
He couldn't get anywhere
trying to dig it up.
He found an attractive
store mannequin.
He hid in a restroom
in the department store
till after closing,
stole the mannequin,
managed to get out
of the building,
took the mannequin home
to his grandmother's house,
and for some period of time
was satisfied
lying next to
the attractive mannequin.
♪ ♪
His grandmother found
the mannequin
and disposed of it.
- He spent a number of months,
if not longer,
going to gay bath houses
in both Chicago and Milwaukee.
He would slip Halcion
into the drinks
of men
that he would meet there.
They would fall asleep.
He would fondle them,
pretending in his own mind
that they were dead.
- That was satisfying to him
for a time.
But he gave too much of the drug
to one of the men.
- The bath house operator
couldn't wake
one of these fellows,
had to call to get medical help.
They realize
that Dahmer's doing this,
so they banned him
from the bath houses.
- Once again,
he could have been stopped,
and once again,
he wasn't.
- When I moved to Milwaukee
in '81,
I started reading pornography,
going to the bookstores.
Eventually, that lead to
frequenting the gay bars.
And then I--
One time, I brought
this young man
back to the hotel room,
the Ambassador Hotel,
was just planning
on drugging him
and spending the night with him.
I had no intention
of hurting him.
When I woke up in the morning,
he had a broken rib here.
It was heavily bruised.
Apparently, I had beaten him
to death with my fists.
- And you have no memory of it.
- I have no memory of it.
But that's what started
the whole spree all over again.
- He tells me
it wasn't premeditated
and that he then needed
to find more time
in order to dispose of the body.
- It has been nine years
since his last kill.
And in what seems like
an instant,
he goes into a mode
that is familiar to him:
the cover-up.
Up next,
Dahmer's crimes escalate,
and the bodies are piling up.
- I was saving body parts
such as skulls and skeletons.
In the fall of 1987,
Jeffrey Dahmer wakes up
in a hotel room in Milwaukee.
He is in bed
with the bludgeoned body
of his second victim.
He says he has no memory
of killing the man.
- He had to sign in
for a second night
in order to now have time
to get rid of the body
by stuffing it into a suitcase
and ultimately removing it.
- He took it
to his grandmother's house
to put it in the basement
until he was able to cut it up
and get it in the garbage.
And he knew the routine
of the garbage men,
so he'd cut it up Sundays
while Grandma went to church,
have it in the garbage
by Monday,
and it would be gone.
- Police would later determine
the victim was 24-year-old
Steven Tuomi.
He'd recently moved
to Milwaukee
from northern Michigan
and met Dahmer
after he finished his shift
at a local restaurant.
- I had these obsessive
desires and thoughts,
wanting to control them,
to...
I don't know how to put it.
Possess them permanently.
- And that's why
you killed them.
- Right, right,
not because I was angry
with them,
not because I hated them
but because I wanted
to keep them with me.
And as my obsession grew,
I was saving body parts
such as skulls and skeletons.
- At his grandmother's,
Dahmer's desire to kill
escalates.
He takes two more lives
in the winter of 1988,
raising his victim count
to four.
James Doxtator
is only 14 years old
when Dahmer lures him
with the promise of $50
to take a few pictures.
And six weeks later,
it's 23-year-old
Richard Guerrero.
Both face the same fate:
drugged, strangled,
dismembered.
It's at this time
Dahmer hones his craft
in disposing of bodies,
learning how flesh dissolves
in acid
and bones would need to be
crushed up
and tossed in the trash.
According to Lionel,
his grandmother objects
to the smells
coming from the basement
but apparently doesn't
figure out what's going on.
Or maybe
she just doesn't want to.
- I would send Lionel up
to his mother's house
to deal with problems,
but I really wasn't aware
at that time
that Lionel was too naive
to handle the situation.
Lionel didn't believe his son
was doing anything wrong.
- He was doing strange things.
We thought it was
with roadkill.
That's what he told us,
and I--I believed him.
But I said, "Jeff,"
you know,
"your grandma just can't take
this sort of thing.
You really need to move out."
- Now on his own,
Jeffrey Dahmer's free
to give in to his urges.
Just one day after moving
into his own apartment,
Dahmer brings home
a 13-year-old boy,
drugs and fondles him.
Dahmer is arrested
for sexual assault
against a minor.
This is the boy's testimony.
We should warn you
it's shocking and disturbing.
- How did the authorities
find out about this?
Well, for some reason,
when the boy wanted to leave,
Dahmer let him go.
- We talked about the incident
that he was involved in.
It was pretty clear to me
that he was
a little bit different.
- Jerry Boyle is hired
by Lionel and Shari Dahmer
to represent Jeffrey
in this case.
- I think my son was
a freshman in high school
at the time.
I think he could have
whipped Dahmer in a minute.
Never would I have believed
that he was a killer, ever,
because there was nothing
to indicate to me
that he was that way.
I mean, it just wasn't there.
- Dahmer's ability to deceive
is only matched
by his desire to kill.
Between his conviction
in January of 1989
and his sentencing in May,
he is not deterred.
Dahmer takes his fifth life,
24-year-old Anthony Sears,
on March 25th.
This murder marks
a depraved turning point
in Dahmer's process.
- I kept the mummified head
and skull
of one of the victims
in a carrying case
in my locker at work.
- Were you almost
flaunting it?
- Yes, but that's how strong
the compulsion was.
That's how bizarre
the desire was.
I wanted to keep something
of the person with me.
- But during
the sexual assault trial,
no one had any knowledge
of that,
which is why Jerry Boyle fought
to keep Dahmer a free man.
- The outcome in the case was,
Jeffrey admitted
to everything he was accused of,
except he was vehement
in saying
that he never touched a child.
I didn't believe
what he was telling me,
but my job is to try
and figure out what do for him
and for society
by getting him a sentence
that made sense,
and I think we did that.
- He fooled his attorney
that was representing him.
He fooled so many people
as to his real feelings.
Unfortunately,
I didn't realize it at the time.
- Dahmer avoids jail time.
Instead,
he's given work release
and mandatory time with
a mental health professional.
Another close call,
another opportunity where
he could have been stopped.
And once again,
he acts remorseful.
He writes to the judge.
"What I did was deplorable.
"The world has
enough misery in it
"without my adding more to it.
"Sir, I can assure you
that it will never happen
again."
We now know nothing could be
further from the truth.
- He would go see
a psychiatrist
and not say a word
for ten sessions,
and they'd let him walk
out the door.
Probation officer, he'd say,
"You have these feelings
of, you know,
sexual perversion
and all that?"
He says, "No, I read books
and masturbate to that."
He's out there killing people.
- Up next...
Do you ever think
about your victims?
- Uh, I've often wondered
why I haven't had
more dreams or nightmares
about what I've done.
By May of 1989,
Jeffrey Dahmer's body count
is at five.
Then he is sentenced
to one year
in a work release program
for the drugging and fondling
of a 13-year-old boy.
He claims during that time,
there were no killings.
After he's released
and on probation,
he finds a new place to live,
somewhere off the beaten path.
- I had asked him
a number of times,
"Why are you down here,
"you know, when you can go
somewhere else
"and stay, like, in West Alice
at your grandmother's house
"or something like that?
"And you would rather be here,
where you're surrounded
by blacks."
And that's all that
was over there,
was black people
and some Asian people.
He was like, "I like it better
down here,
'cause I can keep more
to myself."
- Pamela Bass, who lives
across the hall from Dahmer
in the Oxford Apartments,
develops a soft spot
for the man she would describe
as an unassuming bachelor.
- You know, me and my husband
at that time
were trying to get him
a girlfriend,
because we thought that,
you know,
he was over there by hisself,
and he didn't get out much,
and all this here kind of stuff.
So he said, "No, no, I'm fine.
I just want to work
and be left alone."
[ominous music]
- Within a week of settling in
to apartment 213,
Dahmer lures 32-year-old
Raymond Smith
home for a drink,
laces it with drugs,
strangles him to death,
and dismembers his body.
A month later,
Dahmer repeats the process
on a 27-year-old acquaintance,
Edward Smith,
raising his victim count
to seven.
Before you went out
to pick up a man,
was there any kind of ritual
you went through?
- I'd go to the nightclubs,
drink,
watch the strip tease shows.
And if I didn't meet anyone
at the bars,
I'd go to the Bath clubs
and meet someone there,
offer them money,
and we'd go back
to the apartment,
have a few drinks.
I'd have
the sleeping pill mixture
already prepared.
The person would drink it,
fall asleep.
And that's when they would be
strangled.
- The question of how
Mr. Dahmer chose his victims
I don't think
is a complicated one.
He tried to find people
that were attractive to him
and who were willing
to go with him voluntarily.
He wasn't jumping out of cars
and attacking people and so on.
- The men he's inviting back
don't want to just lie there.
They want to get it on,
get it over with,
and get going.
He found that
enormously frustrating.
Some of them rolled him.
Some of them were nasty
to him.
He didn't want to get
into an argument
or get into a fight
or get robbed.
He wanted somebody to lie there
with him.
But he was picking
the wrong guys
to try to achieve that,
so he began drugging them
at his apartment.
- He wanted his victims
to be still and quiet
so he didn't have to face
their humanity.
- It's a process.
It doesn't happen overnight.
When you depersonalize
another person
and view them as just an object,
an object for pleasure
instead of a living, breathing
human being,
it seems to make it easier
to...
do things you shouldn't do.
- It struck me
that classifying murder
as a "thing you shouldn't do"
minimizes the horror
and brutality
of Jeffrey Dahmer's actions.
- Dahmer drugged his victims,
so they weren't pleading
for their lives.
They weren't crying out
in pain
as he inflicted a torture
on them.
So he was in many ways
different,
frighteningly different.
- Do you ever think
about your victims?
- Uh, I've often wondered
why I haven't had
more dreams or nightmares
about what I've done.
For some reason, it's like
it's blocked off
from part of my mind.
If I dwelled on the subject
all the time,
I would...
I wouldn't be able to function.
- In talking to Jeffrey Dahmer,
I realized that one of
his most peculiar traits was,
no matter how well
he knew his victims,
he didn't view them as people.
That's why,
in his 160-page confession,
he could describe
everything he did to them
in excruciating detail
but he couldn't
remember their names.
Up next.
- Told us how he
cooked them.
What they tasted like.
- He seemed like a
very normal person.
He covered up so much.
I was branching out
that's when
the cannibalism started.
He just was crazy sick.
Things just began to
deteriorate.
He became like a killing
machine out of control.
It just seemed
to be an absence
of any moral compass
in the man at all.
- I didn t believe in
the concept of evil.
And, now I do.
No one, no one had a clue
as to what was happening
for over a decade.
[eerie music]
♪ ♪
- He became
like a killing machine
out of control.
- There just seemed to be
an absence
of any moral compass.
He was an evil man.
- The manager came up
and complained about the smell.
He told the manager,
"Well, my fish died."
- He had a very good disguise.
- It's a process;
it doesn't happen overnight
when you depersonalize
another person
and view them as just an object,
an object for pleasure,
instead of a living, breathing
human being.
I had these obsessive desires
and thoughts,
wanting to control them.
- He immediately said,
"When you find out what I did,
you're gonna want to kill me."
- You love
who the true human being is,
and you take that with you
to your grave.
- He seemed like
a very normal boy.
He covered up so much.
- Murder.
- Necrophilia.
- Zombies.
- Religious ritual.
- Vats of acid.
- Body parts.
- Aroused.
- Consuming.
- Willing.
- Cooked them.
- Bad people.
- [tearfully] He was our son.
from Jeffrey Dahmer
tting across
in a small prison
meeting room.
And face-to-face,
I can see how he got away
with his terrible crimes.
He appears completely normal.
That's what made him
so frightening.
In the second half
of our conversation,
he talks about
the most vicious acts--
cannibalism, murder,
dismemberment--
in the most casual way.
He even says he's sorry.
He sounds thoughtful.
He sounds sincere.
But Jeffrey Dahmer was
a psychopath.
When you killed these men,
afterwards,
were you repulsed?
Were you upset?
- No, it--at the time,
it was--
it was almost addictive.
It was almost...
a surge of energy.
I wouldn't have to worry
about any of their needs
or anything.
I just had complete control
of the situation.
- The right way to think of him
is as having necrophilia.
Now, usually, we think
of necrophilia
as being about corpses.
I think it's more than that.
I think it is control
over the completely passive,
compliant partner
that he could fondle, hug,
touch, and lie with
as long as possible.
- He always said he didn't enjoy
murdering people.
He said that.
I don't doubt that.
But he enjoyed getting sex,
and he enjoyed getting it
against their will,
and he did what he had to do
to get it.
- He told me
his motivating force
was to have sex with a partner
who wouldn't leave him.
But more than that,
he wanted to be the aggressor,
and he didn't want
to be touched.
What do you want to say to
the families of the victims?
- I had no intention
of hurting them.
I was--I--
I was extremely selfish.
I was only thinking of myself,
my own pleasure, my own...
perverted desires.
- In the meantime,
he has men dying.
To dispose of them
required dismembering them.
He hated this process.
But if he drank enough,
he could lay down
sheets of plastic
and begin the process
of cutting
and the hard work
of dismembering
and putting body parts
in vats of acid.
- When the bodies were
still in your apartment,
there was no time
when you would see them
and say, "This is grotesque"?
"What have I done?"
- There were times.
There were times.
But the compulsive obsession
with doing what I was doing
overpowered any feelings
of revulsion.
- In September of 1990,
Dahmer's victim count
is seven,
and he would have
yet more bodies to dispose of.
22-year-old Ernest Miller
is a dance student
he meets outside a bookstore.
Dahmer murders
the talented dancer,
stuffs his entire skeleton
in the bottom
of a filing cabinet
in his apartment
and his heart and biceps
in his freezer.
Three weeks later,
Dahmer brings home
and strangles David Thomas,
a 22-year-old man
he meets outside a mall.
He has claimed nine lives,
and his routine becomes
even more twisted.
Why did you photograph them?
- It was my way of remembering
their appearance,
their physical beauty.
I also wanted to keep some--
If I couldn't keep them there
with me whole,
at least I felt that
I could keep their skeletons.
And I even went so far
as planning on setting up
an altar
with the ten different skulls
and skeletons.
- And what was the purpose
of the altar going to be?
- Uh, as a sort of memorial,
a point where I could...
I don't know.
It's so bizarre and strange,
it's hard to describe.
A place where I could collect
my thoughts
and feed my obsession.
- This is a sketch of the altar
drawn by Jeffrey Dahmer.
- The altar was not
of any religious ritual
involved.
It was as a memory of the people
that he had killed.
There just seemed to be
an absence
of any moral compass
in the man at all.
He was an evil man.
- And in Jeffrey Dahmer's mind,
this macabre ritual
has a purpose,
and it's something he has
no trouble describing
down to the goriest detail.
- I was branching out.
That's when
the cannibalism started,
eating of the heart
and the arm muscle.
It was a way of making me feel
that they were a part of me.
At first,
it was just curiosity,
and then it became compulsive.
- Contrary
to what one might expect
of some wild frenzy
of consuming raw flesh,
what he did was to cook
a filet of biceps
that he'd kept in his freezer,
sit at a table,
and make a meal of it
while looking at photographs
of that person alive.
- Up next, Jeffrey Dahmer's
most terrifying idea yet.
- I tried
to keep the person alive
by inducing
a zombie-like state.
It's 1990, and Jeffrey Dahmer
is in the middle
of a killing spree,
which continues uninterrupted
and unnoticed for years.
He was pulled over
by the police
with body parts in his car.
He had been arrested
for exposing himself
and for sexual assault
on a minor.
He was caught drugging men
at a bathhouse.
And still he wasn't stopped.
Emboldened
by these multiple close calls,
his violent compulsions
begin to evolve,
intensifying and becoming
more and more perverse
as he preys upon men
in Milwaukee.
How did you live
that double life?
How did you go to work?
How did you have
a normal relationship
with your family?
- When you try to keep
a terrible secret, like I was,
it warps every other aspect
of your life.
But I managed to--
I managed to go to work,
conduct myself
just like anyone else would.
- Well, I've been surviving
mostly on McDonald's food.
It's just so much easier just
to pop into the restaurant.
But like I've said before,
it gets too expensive,
and I have to start eating
at home more.
- Even his neighbors
were fooled.
- I don't know where he was
getting them guys from,
but he would take them
in his apartment, you know?
And there were a couple of them
that I didn't see them
come out of there,
and I had asked him about that.
He said, "Oh, well, maybe
you were in the bathroom
or something like that,
'cause they're gone."
- Why was it so easy, though,
for you to hide it all?
- I desensitized myself to it.
I--I--
I...
[exhales]
I don't know.
I went to great lengths.
I bought security systems,
installed them myself
in the apartment.
I had a video camera
in the corner of the room,
installed locks on the doors,
sirens and stuff
in case anyone broke in
to the apartment.
- I was there,
and because I taught the boys
how to clean
and take care of a home,
I went through the refrigerator,
the bathroom,
behind the shower curtain.
The fridge was fine.
The bathroom was fine.
Nothing had taken place
at that time.
- They said it was
absolutely clean, perfect.
- Right.
- How'd you hide from them?
- Everything was locked up,
either in the freezer
or in the file chest.
And so there was no evidence
laying in the open.
There was nothing abnormal
about the look of the apartment.
- Dahmer's father, Lionel,
is talking about his son
after years of silence.
He says he wants to share
his thoughts
on Jeffrey's terrible deeds
one last time.
- Everything that he did was...
You know, he seemed like
a very normal person.
He covered up so much.
And I wish that I had
really pushed harder
to find out what he's thinking
in his--about everything.
- You need to understand
at that point
in Lionel's life,
he was very, very naive.
If there's no communication,
you don't know
what the truth is.
- Did his father know
that at times,
his son was keeping secrets?
Yes.
But could he,
in his wildest dreams,
have imagined
that the secret was
that he was a serial killer
who had necrophilia
and had killed 17 people?
I can't imagine
that's the case.
- And what's just as puzzling
is the fact
that neither the authorities
nor the general public
had any idea a serial killer
was systematically
removing men
from the streets of Milwaukee.
- Every year,
many young men disappear.
They have a fight
with their girlfriend,
get fired from the job,
have a fight with the family,
and leave.
And they're gone a couple weeks
and come back home.
They give it very different
investigative efforts
compared when a young woman
disappears.
No one had even a suspicion
that a serial slayer was afoot.
- By the spring of 1991,
Dahmer's victim count
reaches double digits.
He lures 17-year-old
Curtis Straughter
from a bus stop,
then strangles him to death.
Next, Dahmer would move on
to a new obsession.
- Mr. Dahmer had been
sexually aroused
by the idea of having sex
with a dead body.
He also, at times,
had fantasies
about having sex
with what he referred to
as "zombies,"
human beings that existed
somewhere between being dead
and being alive,
something he later on
actually ended up acting upon.
- His experiments lead
to the death
of his 11th victim,
Errol Lindsey.
A month later, he fails again,
this time
with 31-year-old Tony Hughes,
a deaf man
who Dahmer communicates with
through written notes.
- I tried
to keep the person alive
by inducing
a zombie-like state...
By injecting first
a dilute acid solution
into their brain
or hot water.
And it never did
completely work.
- Could someone like you
be stopped?
Could you be helped?
- No, I was--
I was dead set on going
with this compulsion.
It was the only thing
that gave me any...
any satisfaction.
- He later shares the details
with a forensic psychologist.
- After two failed attempts
at creating zombies,
Dahmer tries for a third time
in May 1991.
That would lead
to his closest call yet.
- He looked like a little kid.
He had a towel around,
and it had blood,
and he had blood running
down his leg.
- The boy is 14-year-old
Konerak Sinthasomphone.
Injured and drugged,
he escaped
when Jeffrey Dahmer
left the apartment
to buy beer.
In a terrible twist of fate,
he's the younger brother
of the boy Dahmer was arrested
for molesting
three years earlier.
- What had already happened
that the police
couldn't possibly have known
is that Mr. Dahmer
had drilled a small hole
in the skull of this young man
and poured a caustic substance
into it,
thinking that he now created
a zombie.
- They didn't see the drillings
into the head
that he had conducted.
Apparently, it was under
the hairline.
- The incoherent boy
is with the police
when Dahmer returns,
but instead of fleeing
the scene,
he acts as cool as ever.
- Dahmer went right up
to the police and says,
"This is my lover.
"If you come, I'll take you back
to my apartment.
Here's his clothes."
They were all folded
on the couch.
- Mr. Dahmer did keep his wits
and persuaded them by showing
some pictures
that this young lad
had voluntarily taken
that these were just two
consenting homosexual adults
engaging in sexual activity.
I don't think the police
recognized the age
of this young man
at that time.
- The body of the last victim,
Tony Hughes, is still there,
but the police
don't look around.
Instead, they leave the boy
in the apartment with Dahmer.
- Did that play an element
in it,
that there were homosexuals
involved, possibly?
I can't assess that.
I think that would be
a harsh judgment.
- During the incident
where the police were called...
- Mm-hmm.
- And the young boy
was returned to you,
that didn't wake you up
at all?
The police on your doorstep?
- They were--they were
in the apartment.
They were actually in
the apartment,
and there was a dead young man
in the bedroom
on the floor.
I couldn't believe it when--
when it turned out
that they--they--
they didn't see anything.
I just--I couldn't believe it.
And yes, it did shock me
but not enough to quit.
That's how strong
the compulsion was.
- Any neighbors
with lingering suspicions
are assured by the police
that nothing
is out of the ordinary,
as you'll hear
in this 911 call.
- Well, the next day,
Dahmer killed him.
- Konerak Sinthasomphone
was Dahmer's 13th victim.
Up next...
Did you like feeling evil?
- No.
No, I didn't.
After the close call
After the close call
with the police
in May of 1991,
Jeffrey Dahmer's killing
accelerates
to a dizzying pace.
Within a week, he murders
20-year-old Matt Turner
and 23-year-old
Jeremiah Weinberger.
Only ten days later,
he strangles
24-year-old Oliver Lacy.
- Things just began
to deteriorate.
He became like a killing machine
out of control.
There were just body parts,
at the end, all over the place.
- Before long, his neighbors
report a foul stench
coming from somewhere
on their floor.
- Ooh.
I can't even describe it.
It's a horrible smell.
I know me and Jeff went up and
down the hallways, smelling--
you know, trying to see
where it was coming from.
- The landlord eventually
tracks the smell
to Dahmer's apartment.
- He told the manager,
"Well, my fish died."
Then he told him,
"My meat spoiled."
And then the third time,
the manager came up
and told him--
complained about the smell,
he told him,
"You're gonna be evicted
next month."
- I went in
to help him clean up,
and he told me--he said,
"It's the freezer over there
"that my grandma has sent me
some meat,
"and I put it in there,
and I went back to her house,
and I forgot to plug it in."
I haven't been around
no dead people.
I don't know anything
about how they smell.
He had a very good disguise.
That's what it was.
- Jeffrey Dahmer begins
to miss work
and is fired from his job
at the chocolate factory.
Killing becomes
his only function in life.
Two days later,
25-year-old Joseph Bradehoft
becomes Dahmer's 17th
and final victim.
Three days later,
Dahmer's reign of terror
comes crashing to a halt.
- Oh, Lord.
[chuckles]
That was not a good night
for me.
I was home by myself,
and Jeff was having--
Jeff was having some company
or something,
'cause I could hear music,
a radio or something playing.
- The company she hears
is Tracy Edwards,
a man Jeffrey Dahmer met
at a mall
and convinces to come back
to his apartment.
- He was out of Halcion,
so he had handcuffs,
and he persuaded Edwards
to get one handcuff on,
and he said he wanted
to photograph him in bondage,
so he wanted to put
the other one on.
Well, Edwards says,
"You're not gonna put
that second one on."
- At the trial, Edwards gives
a harrowing account
of the night's events.
- He told me
to lay down face down,
put both of my hands
behind my back.
I kind of, like,
laid on my side.
For some reason, I guess
God told me not to lay flat down
and let this person handcuff me,
so I didn't.
He kind of laid across me,
put his head across my chest
at that point
like he was listening
to my heart,
'cause at that point,
he told me
he was gonna eat my heart
at that point.
The "Exorcist" movie
was playing at that time.
- This was part
of Jeffrey Dahmer's ritual.
He would watch "Exorcist III"
before every murderous outing.
- I felt so hopelessly evil
and perverted
that...
that I actually derived
a sort of pleasure
from watching that tape.
- Did you like feeling evil?
- No, no, I didn't.
But I had tried to overcome
the thoughts,
and it worked for a while,
but eventually I gave in.
- Jeffrey took him
into his room.
They were both sitting
on the bed.
And Dahmer was rocking
back and forth
and kind of humming,
making noises.
[ominous music]
- I said, "Well, at least
I'm gonna die trying.
I'm not just gonna sit here."
And then I just--
for some reason, I said,
"Well, I need to go
to the bathroom,"
and he didn't follow me
at that point.
And I ran out.
- He goes up to a squad car,
says, "Hey,
can you help me
take this handcuff off?"
The police ask him
what's happening.
They try.
They can't.
So they head back
to Dahmer's house
to get the key.
- So they went back
to the apartment with Edwards.
Dahmer, of course,
was drinking or drunk.
- In an open dresser drawer
in plain sight
are close to 80 Polaroids
documenting Dahmer's victims--
naked, posed, and dismembered.
- Officer yelled,
"Get the cuffs on him"
or something like that.
And the other one came out
in the hallway,
and I was running down that way
to get out of the way,
'cause I said, "I don't know
what they're doing.
I don't know what they found."
- We're investigating
a homicide that's occurred
in the apartment building
in the 900 block
of North 25th Street.
- It's obvious that there is--
has been a number
of human specimens found
within the apartment.
- The evidence collected
is straight out of
a horror film:
severed heads,
bleached skulls,
a 57-gallon vat of acid
used to dissolve human flesh.
And inside the refrigerator,
neatly packaged body parts
ready for consumption.
What was the turning point
for you
that made you suddenly realize
that you had done something
terribly wrong,
something you should be
sorry for?
- It was the night
of the arrest.
I have no memory
of what happened
during the s the srs
before the last victim ran
out of the apartment.
I heard a knock on the door,
and the police were there
with the last victim.
They asked me where the key was
to the handcuffs.
I was--my mind was in a haze.
I sort of pointed
to the bedroom,
and that's where they found
the pictures.
And they yelled, "Cuff him."
I was handcuffed.
And it was just the realization
that there was no point
in trying to hide--
hide my actions anymore.
The best route was to help,
help the police
identify all the victims
and just make
a complete confession.
- Well, at 3:00,
I got a phone call.
They had a subject in custody
that had skulls
in his apartment
and body parts,
at which time
I immediately said,
"You're screwing with me."
I went in
and introduced myself to Jeff,
and he immediately said,
"When you find out what I did,
you're gonna want to kill me."
Then we says, "Well, let's
start from the beginning."
And he said, "Well, that was
a long time ago."
And we said, "What--what year?"
And he says, "'78."
- Starting
with the disappearance
of Steven Hicks
back in Bath, Ohio,
Dahmer describes every murder
in detail
all the way up
to Joseph Bradehoft
just days before the arrest.
It starts to become clear
that Dahmer had a type.
- Interestingly enough,
disproportionately,
Dahmer's victims
were African-American.
- 10 of your 17 victims
were black.
Were they racially motivated
crimes?
- It was not
racially motivated.
It was not sexual preference.
It was just to find--
an obsession
with the best-looking
young man I could find.
- The only time I saw Dahmer
get mad
is when he was accused
of being biased against blacks.
It wasn't true.
He just was crazy sick.
- Everyone
in the law enforcement,
ranging from the policemen
who arrested him
to the attorney,
thought he covered up
everything
so extremely well
that they had no idea of what
was going on in his mind.
- We didn't hear
about the extent
till it came out in the papers
and he was in jail.
It's not a pleasant experience
to go through.
But my concern was taking care
of my husband.
- But Lionel's main concern
was his mother,
who lived in the house
where murders three, four,
and five were committed.
- All the four newspapers,
they were camped out
across the street,
and it was just endless.
- She just couldn't imagine.
She just--it didn't register
how bad it was.
We kept it from her,
but when she finally was told,
she finally succumbed
to dementia.
- Despite the terrible effect
the discovery of Jeffrey's
crimes had on the family,
they wanted to go to trial.
- At that time, I was thinking
that the mystery could be solved
as to why he did these things
by being examined
by a psychologist.
As it turned out, it--
it seemed to me
a useless exercise.
I know the real reason:
there was a lack of connection
with our creator.
- Up next...
How should you be punished?
- Well, there's no question
that I deserve
the death penalty.
In early 1992,
serial killer Jefferey Dahmer
is about to stand trial
for 15 of his 17 murders.
But this trial
isn't to establish guilt.
That has been weighed.
This is to determine sanity.
His family wants him
declared insane
so he can be treated by
mental health professionals.
- All rise.
[gavel bangs]
- Despite the pain
of hearing the details
of their son's crimes,
the Dahmers never miss
a day in court.
- If you look at the early films
of Jeff in court,
you'll see him
in this striped shirt,
looking somewhat like
a vagabond.
Well, I took Lionel's suit in,
and we gave it to Jeff.
He went to court
looking like a gentleman.
[tearfully]
Because he was our son.
- Hearing about the crimes
was just horrible.
I mean, it was just
overwhelming.
And all we could do
was sit there and listen
with the hope that the
psychologists that were involved
could find out what caused him
to do these things.
But I think, in the end,
the reason
that caused him to do
what he did--
he just wasn't with God.
- Jeffrey Dahmer told me he
never wanted to go to trial.
He just wanted to go to prison
and take his punishment.
But that didn't happen.
You're wearing glasses now.
- Right.
- You didn't
during the trial.
Why not?
- I--I didn't want to--
I felt uncomfortable
looking anyone in the face.
I didn't want to...
see anyone's face clearly.
It helped me dissociate myself
from what was happening.
- Dahmer didn't have to look,
but he did have to listen.
- He tried tasting
the flesh and the heart.
He reported that it had
a beef-like flavor.
- Do you still feel
those same urges?
Do you still feel
that compulsion, that obsession?
- I wish I could say
that it just left completely,
but no, there are times
when I still do--
still do have
the old compulsion.
- Could someone like you
be stopped?
Could you be helped?
- No, I was--
I was dead set
on going with this compulsion.
It was the only thing
that gave me any--
any satisfaction.
- Jerry Boyle argued
that Dahmer was like
a locomotive out of control,
speeding down the track
as he killed more people,
lost any sensitivity to it.
That would come under
the hypothesis, then,
that he was insane,
'cause he couldn't control
what he was doing.
I can understand
that someone might say,
"He must be crazy."
I can understand that.
He was not.
- Did the defendant,
Jeffrey L. Dahmer,
have a mental disease?
Answer: no.
[people cheer]
- Ultimately, the jury
finds Dahmer guilty
and legally sane
at the time of the murders.
After the verdict,
the families of the victims
are allowed to address
the killer.
- Jeffrey, I hate you,
motherf---er!
I hate you!
This is out of control!
- One woman in particular
really got angry.
What did you think
when she was doing that?
- I couldn't blame her
a bit.
I'm surprised
there wasn't more of that.
- You know, there's nothing
that you can say to someone
who is extremely distraught
except to give them empathy
and try to convince them
that you really do care
very, very much.
And I do.
- [yelling]
- Mr. Dahmer,
you do have the right
to address the court
at this time.
- Your Honor, I know that you
are about to sentence me.
I ask for no consideration.
Thank you, Your Honor,
and I am prepared
for your sentence,
which I know will be
the maximum.
- The court will impose
the mandatory life sentence...
[dramatic music]
Plus an additional ten years
on the habitual criminality.
- With the death penalty
not an option in Wisconsin,
Dahmer is given
more than 15 life sentences
equaling 936 years.
Soon after, he's extradited
to Ohio...
- To the charge
of aggravated murder...
- Where he's convicted
for the murder
of his first victim,
Steven Hicks.
Dahmer is never charged
with the 1987 murder
of Steven Tuomi.
Although he claimed
responsibility,
Dahmer says he was blacked out
during the act,
and there was
no further evidence
linking him to the crime.
It was the only murder
he confessed to
that he was not convicted of.
Regardless, the sentences
are more than enough
to put minds at rest.
Jeffrey Dahmer would spend
the rest of his life
behind bars.
- When he had first gotten
locked up down there,
he wanted me to come down there
and see him.
But by then, I was terrified
of him.
I know Jeffrey who used to stay
across the hall from me.
That Dahmer guy
is somebody else.
No.
- He confided
that he stayed up all night
and slept all day
because he couldn't face
the daylight
and the memories
of the brutal crimes
that defined his life.
- Usually wake up
at 6:30 in the morning,
go eat breakfast,
and then sleep until noon,
wake up for lunch,
and sleep until about 4:00
in the afternoon,
eat dinner,
and then spend
the greater portion of the night
watching TV.
- But how does a family
even attempt
to reconcile the thought
that a man who is
their own flesh and blood
is also the most evil criminal
imaginable?
- I had these many, many
discussions with him
on the phone.
It was always Shari and I
who would visit him
at the prison,
and Shari was extremely
instrumental
in bringing Jeff and I
and her together
into a very loving relationship.
- He was very embarrassed
about being in prison.
He would try to hide
his handcuffs.
He was embarrassed.
He apologized,
but you have to understand
he's not--
he's not going to sit there
and bleed about his crimes.
- It really was irrelevant,
at that point,
to talk about.
- No, no.
What would it serve
to be angry with him?
- I try not to think too deeply
about anything,
because then I get depressed.
I try to figure out
why this happened,
what started these thoughts
in my head
at such a young age,
whether this has any--
any meaning to it
or whether this is all
just a horrible coincidence,
you know, all the events
in my life.
I feel that I'm better off here
than I was on the outside,
doing what I was doing.
- You're glad
you're in prison.
- I think it's best
for everyone, right.
- As prisoners often do,
Dahmer turns to God
while behind bars.
- Got a phone call.
It was from a minister friend
of mine in Milwaukee
who said that there was
an inmate
who wanted to be baptized.
I said, "Okay, I've never
done this before, but sure.
What's his name?"
He said, "You better sit down
for this one.
It's Jeffrey Dahmer."
- Up next...
What do you think happens
after you die?
- Right.
That's the big unknown.
- Sentenced to almost
- Sentenced to almost
a millennium in prison,
convicted serial killer
Jeffrey Dahmer
embraces religion.
He asks Roy Ratcliff,
then a minister
in the Church of Christ,
to baptize him.
- He'd begun to think
more deeply,
and that was primarily
to save his soul,
to get his soul right with God.
- Dahmer's father, Lionel,
by now a devout Christian
himself,
uses this opportunity
to bond with his son.
- I told him that there are
many, many, many people
in this world
who think that Genesis,
the first book of the Bible,
is some type of a myth
instead of actual history.
And he ordered roughly 13 books
on the evolution-creation
controversy,
and he became convinced,
and then he attempted
to follow through
and live as holy a life
as he could.
- But at the same time,
Dahmer told me
he never conquered
his deadly impulses.
If you were out
on the street now,
would you still be
committing the crimes?
- Probably.
If this hadn't happened,
there's no doubt
I probably would be.
I can't think of anything
that would have stopped me.
- Jeff told us
when he was in prison
that he should never be
turned loose,
because he would do
the same thing again.
Now, that requires
a great deal
of soul-searching and honesty.
- You know the families
of the victims
don't believe
in your conversion
or your sorrow.
- Oh, right.
And if I was on the--
on their end of the table,
I wouldn't either.
Ultimately, I'm accountable
to the Lord Jesus Christ.
He'll be my final judge.
- Can your sins
be forgiven?
- The Lord Jesus Christ's
shed blood
is powerful enough
to wipe out even my sins.
- One of the most beautiful
things that occurred
when Jeff was in prison,
if you can call it beautiful--
I made friends with one of
the victims' sisters,
and I was able to get her in
to visit Jeff.
As nervous as Jeff was,
he was able to tell her
how her brother died.
And she needed that for closure.
- And she ended up saying
that she forgave Jeff,
because she knew
that it was something
that was completely
overpowering Jeff.
- How should you be punished?
- Well, there's no question
that I deserve
the death penalty.
I've wondered myself
why I don't have
the death penalty.
That's what I deserve;
I deserve death.
- What do you think happens
after you die?
- Right.
That's the big unknown.
I've thought of--I've had
thoughts of suicide.
But I just haven't been able
to carry them through.
So I don't know
what the future will hold.
- Mr. Dahmer was the subject
of an attack
at the Columbia
Correctional Institution.
- He was beaten to death
in prison yesterday.
- The slaying ended a life
of sadism, serial murder,
and cannibalism.
- Dahmer is beaten to death
by a fellow inmate.
Ironically, he's killed
by a barbell,
the same object he'd used
on Steven Hicks
16 years earlier.
For the first time,
Jeffrey's father talks
about his son's death.
- How did his death
affect me?
- It--
I was brought into a room
where he was lying
after being bludgeoned.
And it struck me so emotionally
that I touched him
and I said, "Oh, Jeff.
"Jeff.
Jeff."
It was extremely
emotionally devastating
just to see him.
Disregarding
all of the horrible things
that his demented state
caused him to do,
I was at least very, very glad
that he had done
what we believers believe.
- Lionel said that his son
didn't put up a fight
when he was attacked.
Well, when I talked to Jeffrey,
it was clear
that he wanted to die.
He said
he even considered suicide.
But after embracing
Christianity,
he felt that, of all things,
would be too great a sin.
- I love the human beings
who have been in my life
and who may have failed.
I have failed.
But the important thing is,
you love
who the true human being is,
and you take that with you
to your grave.
- I'm very, very proud
that in the end,
he did everything
that was required
for the initial salvation.
I believe he's with God.
He forgave Jeff
according to what's said
in the Scriptures,
and therefore I forgive Jeff.
- Originally, I didn't believe
in the concept
of evil,
but now I do.
I'm talking about someone
who exhibits
unbelievable cruelty on others
simply for their own purposes,
I think is a pretty good
definition of evil.
And I think
it's a pretty good understanding
of Jeffrey Dahmer.
- For more
about "Dahmer on Dahmer,"