Killer Stories with Harvey Guillén - The Serial ‘70s: Jeffrey Dahmer

Episode Date: July 14, 2022

He was a cannibal, a necrophiliac, and even kept his victims' dismembered body parts carefully preserved in his refrigerator. Yet, Jeffrey Dahmer's horrific crimes don't mesh with his timid personality. His pathological fear of being alone meant finding people he could make stay with him forever. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hi, Parcast listeners. It's Vanessa with some incredible news. You can purchase your copy of our book, Cults, inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who joined them. Available now at parcast.com slash cults. Cults is an expanded look at the people who led and followed the most radical groups in history, with an unflinching exploration into what happens when the most vulnerable recesses of the mind are twisted into the lowest forms of malevolence. details not featured on our podcasts. We're so proud to bring you this fantastic compilation of stories, and we're forever grateful for your support. Without you, none of this would be possible, so thank you. Visit parkast.com slash cults to order your copy of cults, inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who joined them.

That's parkast.com slash cults to order today. Due to the graphic nature of this episode, listener discretion is advised. This episode includes discussions of murder, necrophilia, and cannibalism. We advise extreme caution for children under 13. Though it wasn't a seasonably warm night in Milwaukee, 17-year-old Nicole Childress was shivering. She couldn't process what she was seeing. A figure was running down the street, heading straight for Nicole and her friend Sandra.

Instinctively, she wanted to run, but then her eyes adjusted to the darkness and she saw how young he was. The boy couldn't be older than 14. He was naked and bleeding and could barely stand. As Nicole moved towards him, he collapsed into her arms. Sandra ran to call the police while Nicole hunched on the ground with the boy. She knew they could be waiting for a while. They didn't live in the best neighborhood and the cops were stretched thin.

She spoke softly to the boy trying to console him, telling him that help was on the way. but it was hard to tell if he could even hear her. He wasn't responding at all. His gaze strangely blank. Suddenly, Nicole heard footsteps. She looked up hoping to see police approaching, but the man jogging towards them definitely didn't look like an officer of the law.

He was in his early 30s and looked dishevelled, like he'd just woken up, and he was staring at the boy with an expression Nicole didn't like. The man greeted the boy with exaggerated relief. Then he looked at Nicole and said, I'm really sorry. He's had too much to drink. I can take care of him from here. Nicole hesitated. She said the police were on their way and the boy clearly needed medical attention. At that, the man's expression changed. His eyes became dark and strangely lifeless as he snapped at her.

This has nothing to do with you. In that moment, Nicole knew, she just knew, she was looking at a monster. Hi, I'm Greg Poulson, and this is the final episode of our special series. serial killers fifth anniversary series. I'm here with my co-host, Vanessa Richardson. Hi, everyone. You can find episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. In our previous three episodes, we've discussed how Edmund Kemper, John Wayne Gacy, and Ted Bundy created and perpetuated some of the public's core beliefs about serial killers. Today, we'll explore the nightmarish story of a killer whose crimes

seemed almost too gruesome to be real. Murder is always a dehumanizing act, but what Jeffrey Dahmer did to his victims was on another level. He was a cannibal and necrophiliac and kept his victims dismembered body parts carefully preserved in his refrigerator. Yet despite his grisly ammo, Dahmer wasn't a confident monster you might expect. Today we'll dig into what made him so unusual and why his spree still haunts us to this day. We've got all that and more coming up. Stay with us. This episode is brought to you by Shopify. Bonnie and Clyde, the lonely hearts killers,

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Try Activia today. Enjoying Activia twice a day for two weeks as part of a balanced diet and healthy lifestyle may help reduce the frequency of minor digestive discomfort, which includes gas, bloating, rumbling, and abdominal discomfort. Are killers born or made? For true crime fans, that's the eternal question. We spent a lot of time digging into murderous origin stories, searching for clues as to how they became so twisted and vicious.

In most cases, a combination of nature and nurture is probably to blame. After all, a huge number of people experience trauma in early life, and very few of them grow up to become violent criminals. Still, we tend to assume that all serial killers were mistreated as children. Over the past three episodes, we've seen how Edmund Kemper, John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy, were all shaped by early abuse, creating a well of deep, unresolved rage that arguably drove them to kill. But Jeffrey Dahmer is different. By his own admission, he had loving parents, grew up in a supportive environment, and was never abused in any

way. So what happened? Well, that's the million-dollar question. Born in 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, Dahmer realized at an early age that his parents had a lot of love for him, but not much for each other. The couple fought bitterly, and his mother Joyce suffered bouts of crippling depression. Dahmer himself was a quiet, timid boy without many friends, but at the age of four, he developed a fascination with bones after watching his father clear out animal carcasses from beneath the house. Lionel, who was training to become a research chemist, was thrilled to foster his son's interest in science. He taught Dahmer how to clean the flesh and tissue from the bones, then showed him how to polish them until they shone. Dahmer soon had a pailful of immaculate bones to carry around.

He loved the sound they made when he shook the container and began using it as a makeshift toy rattle. The family called this Jeffrey's Fiddlesticks, and that lighthearted name speaks volumes. Nobody seemed alarmed by Dahmer's bone fixation. But in fairness, his parents had other things on their mind. they were about to uproot their lives. In 1968, when Dahmer was six, the family moved to Ohio so that Lionel could take a job at a lab in Akron. The family settled in Bath Township, a rural enclave on the outskirts of the city. Their house was nestled in an acre of woodland, surrounded for miles by trees and wildlife.

A lot of kids might have felt lonely there, but not Dahmer. He busied himself by roaming the forest, gathering dead dragonflies and moths. He'd bring the carcasses home and preserve them in bottles of formaldehyde. Soon, Dahmer grew bored of insects and started searching for larger trophies. He collected roadkill, squirrels, chipmunks, sometimes even cats and dogs, and cleaned their skeletons, just like Lionel had taught him. He buried some of the bones in a makeshift cemetery and preserved others in more bottles of formaldehyde. By the time he was 10, Dahmer had an impressive variety of animal remains.

which he kept on a shelf inside the garden shed. But he wasn't merely a collector. Dahmer was obsessed with the insides of things. He sometimes dissected dead animals he found, fascinated by the inner workings of their bodies. Interestingly, it doesn't seem as if Dahmer ever actually killed any of these animals. By all accounts, they were dead when he found them. But as he became an adolescent, his obsession with death began to mingle with a burgeoning interest in sex.

But this was not a straightforward sexual awakening. For one thing, Dahmer realized that he was attracted to men, which he knew would make him an outcast. But his sexual urges were tinged with something else, something society would be even less willing to accept. To be fair, though, this proclivity was taboo for perfectly valid reasons. See, whenever Dahmer fantasized about sex, he always imagined his partner remaining very still, barely reacting in any way. In fact, more often than not, his fantasy lover wasn't even breathing. At 13, Dahmer tried to make this dream a reality. That year, he became obsessed with a jogger who he kept seeing run through his neighborhood.

The jogger began to consume more and more of his thoughts. He imagined attacking him, knocking him out, then sexually assaulting him while he was unconscious. Finally, Dahmer couldn't stand it any longer. One morning, he snuck out onto the road, holding a baseball bat. He waited there for hours, but the jogger never came. He must have skipped his run that day. Eventually, Dahmer trudged home, feeling frustrated and defeated. He never looked for the jogger again, and over time, the memory of him faded.

But Dahmer's depraved fantasies only grew stronger, and by the time he started high school, his mental health was declining. At a glance, he seemed like any other 14-year-old. He was polite, had average grades, and played tennis in his spare time, though he still didn't have close friends. He got along well enough with his peers, who knew him as a class clown. But anyone who looked more closely could see the cracks in his facade. Domer developed a drinking habit, and often came to school with a bottle of liquor hidden in his jacket. When a friend asked him why he was drinking in class, he responded, it's my medicine. What he thought he was

treating isn't totally clear, but it's possible that Domer started drinking to deal with the deteriorating situation at home. His parents' marriage had gone from bad to worse, and when Dahmer was 17, Lionel moved out of the family home into a motel. A year later, the couple finally divorced. Joyce, struggling to cope with the fallout, decided to move back in with her parents in Wisconsin. She took her younger son David with her, but left 18-year-old Dahmer behind. Lionel was still absent, which left Dahmer all alone in an empty house with no money and no food. Perhaps his parents assumed their son could fend for himself.

but the abandonment had a devastating impact on him. Dahmer had long suspected that David was his mother's favorite, but now he had concrete confirmation, and with his high school graduation approaching, he had no family to celebrate with. He spent his last few weeks of schools skulking around the parking lot, drinking to numb the loneliness. He was desperate for connection,

but had no idea how to find it. That is until June 18, 1978, when an opportunity fell right into his lap. After drinking for most of the morning, Dahmer set out on an aimless drive down a rural road. That's where he noticed a young man with his thumb outstretched trying to hitch a ride. Just like Dahmer, 18-year-old Stephen Hicks

had recently graduated from high school. That evening, he was on his way to a rock concert nearby and was thrilled when Dahmer offered him a ride. Once Stephen was in the car, Dahmer asked if he wanted to come back to his place to hang out for a while. The concert wasn't due to start for hours, and it was only a short drive away, so Stephen agreed. The two men went back to the empty Dahmer house and drank a few beers together.

Dahmer was attracted to Stephen, but realized pretty quickly that he was straight. He kept talking about girls. Still, company was company, so Dahmer kept up the conversation, but eventually Stephen got restless. He told Dahmer they should start driving to the concert. Dahmer felt wounded by Stephen's eagerness to leave. He was abandoning him just like his parents and brother had, and he couldn't bear to let him go. So when Stephen's back was turned,

Dahmer bludgeoned him over the head with a barbell, knocking him unconscious. Then he strangled Stephen to death by using the handle of the barbell. Once Stephen was dead, all of Dahmer's anxiety and sadness seemed to drain out of his body, replaced by a feeling of calm. Human relationships were painful and frightening, but corpses he could handle.

And though this body was much larger than the animal carcasses he'd collected as a child, he'd treated it no differently. Dahmer dismembered Stephen's body, taking it apart piece by piece. He buried Stephen in a shallow grave outside the house, just yards from the animal skeletons. As he scraped the soil back into place, he felt like a child again, carefree as if nothing could harm him. And he didn't want to let that feeling go. Coming up, Dahmer's mental state deteriorates with deadly consequences.

Hi, listeners, it's Vanessa. I'm so excited to tell you that our first book is on sale now. This is such a big moment for the whole podcast family, and we can't wait for you to read it. It's called cults, inside the world's most notorious groups, and understanding the people who join them. And you can purchase it today by visiting. podcast.com slash cults. This is a passion project years in the making and only made possible by you.

With your support, we've been able to get back to our storytelling roots. This time with a wealth of research and insights under our belt and intimate details not covered on our podcast before. Shame, exploitation, power. Cults unfolds the many motives behind groups like nexium, Heaven's Gate, the People's Temple, and more. feeling eye-opening details which will surprise even the most devoted true crime fan. Visit parcast.com slash cults to order your copy of cults inside the world's most notorious groups and understanding the people who join them. That's parkast.com slash cults.

And on behalf of everyone here at Parcast, thank you for joining us on this journey. We hope you enjoy. Are you looking for support in your weight management journey? Zepbound tersepetite. may be able to help. Zepbound is a prescription medicine used with a reduced calorie diet and increased physical activity to help adults with obesity, or some adults with overweight who also have weight-related medical problems to lose excess body weight and keep the weight off. Zep bound is approved as a 2.5, 5, 7.5, 10, 12.5, or 15 milligram injection. Zepound contains terseptide and should not be used

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Taking Zepbound with a sulfonal urea or insulin may cause low blood sugar. Side effects include nausea, diarrhea, and vomiting, which can cause dehydration and worsen kidney problems. Talk to your doctor. Call 1-800-545-99 or visit Zepbounds.lily.com. Now back to the story. In the fall of 1978, a couple of months after killing his first victim, 18-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer was in crisis. He'd enrolled at Ohio State University in a bid to please his father, but couldn't keep up with the pace of life on campus.

He also couldn't relate to any of his fellow students. Killing Stephen Hicks had only widened the gulf that Dahmer felt between himself and the rest of humanity. Watching other freshmen laugh and flirt with each other. other in the quad, he felt more alienated than ever. Feeling listless, he dropped out after less than three months, much to his father's dismay. The Lionel Dahmer had been absent for some time. He seemed determined to make up for lost time and get his son back on track. So in January of 1979, at his father's suggestion, Dahmer enlisted in the army. For a while, it stuck.

Dahmer trained as a medical specialist, which allowed him to embrace his fascination with human anatomy. He even served as a combat medic in Germany for a while. But the structure and discipline of the army couldn't keep Dahmer's demons at bay for long. He began drinking heavily again, and in March of 1981, he was discharged. Now 21, Dahmer returned to Ohio right back at Square One. Despairing, his father decided to send him to live with his grandmother in Milwaukee. Dahmer had always loved his grandmother, and Lionel hoped that her influence might finally be enough to stabilize him. Like the Army, it worked for a while.

Dahmer found a job at a blood plasma center and helped his grandmother with chores around the house in his spare time. He even started to socialize more. Unlike anywhere he'd lived before, Milwaukee had an actual gay scene. Dahmer started to frequent bathhouses and bars and hook up with other men. But it didn't feel like much of a liberation. Dahmer's grandmother was very religious, and he knew she wouldn't approve of his lifestyle,

so his personal life had to remain. a guilty secret. On top of this, Dahmer rarely felt fulfilled by any of his encounters. He still yearned for a passive, motionless partner, an object, rather than a person. So he tried to get his kicks in other ways. He was arrested twice for indecent exposure in the fall of 1986 and sentenced to one year of probation. But the authorities had no idea that this crime was just the tip of the iceberg, or just

how much danger the public was about to be. be in. On September 15th, 1987, just days after completing his probation, Domer rented a room at the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee. Then he headed out to a gay bar nearby. He drank a few shots, loading up on Dutch courage. Then, buoyed with confidence the booze lent him, he struck up a conversation with 25-year-old Stephen Tuomi. Then he invited him back to the hotel. According to Dahmer, his plan was to drug Tuomi with sleeping pills and sexually abuse him while he was unconscious. But that's not how things played out. After getting back to the hotel, the pair drank heavily. At some point, Dahmer passed out, and when he woke up, he was lying on top of Toomi's lifeless body. Tuomi's chest was crushed,

covered in bruises, and he wasn't breathing. Though he claimed to have no memory of it, Dahmer knew that he'd killed him. If he was shocked at all, he shook it off quickly. Then he went out and bought the largest suitcase he could find and stuffed Tuomi's body inside. He brought it back to his grandmother's basement, where he sexually abused the body, then dismembered it and threw it into the trash. But he held on to Tuomi's severed head. He planned to keep the skull for sexual use. Dahmer tried to disintegrate the skin and tissue using bleach, but that just made the skull too brittle. Frustrated, he threw the whole thing away. Still, killing

Tuomi had given him the feeling of direction he'd been lacking in his life. It was the one thing that made him feel fulfilled, and now he had a blueprint for how to ensnare victims. Dahmer killed again just one month later, luring 14-year-old James Dox Tater to his basement lair by promising him beer. He murdered him, then cut him up and disposed of his body. In March of 1988, he struck again, killing and mutilating 25-year-old Richard Guerrero, Once again, he used bleach to clean and preserve the bones. He also started taking Polaroid photographs of his victim's bodies, yet more trinkets to add to his collection.

By this stage, Dahmer's grandmother had started to notice some of his unusual activities. She had no idea that he was killing people, but she did know that he was bringing strange men home to her basement at night, which was probably odd enough for her. The last straw came when she smelled a harsh chemical odor emanating from the basement. When she asked Lionel to investigate, he discovered Dahmer's bone collection. Though the family assumed the bones belonged to animals, it was still too much for his grandmother to tolerate in her home. She asked Dahmer to move out. Without missing a beat, Dahmer found himself a one-bedroom apartment and went right back to his routine. In the spring of 1988, he picked up a 13-year-old boy, drugged him, and sexually assaulted him.

But he was sloppy this time. The boy managed to escape and went to his routine. the police. Days later, Dahmer was arrested and charged with second-degree sexual assault. He pleaded guilty. Astonishingly, Dahmer was allowed to remain free while he awaited sentencing. In the meantime, he struck again. On March 25, 1989, he murdered 24-year-old Anthony Sears and preserved several of his body parts in acetone. Yet at a sentencing hearing for the sexual assault, Dahmer showed no indication of this

brutality. In fact, he appeared remorseful for what he'd done to the 13-year-old, so he got off lightly. The judge sentenced him to just one year behind bars, in addition to psychological counseling. We don't have any information on how those counseling sessions went, but what we do know is that Dahmer's time in prison did nothing whatsoever to reform him. Within days of being released in May of 1990, he claimed his sixth victim. He invited 32-year-old sex worker Raymond Smith to his apartment. promising him $50 in exchange for sex. Once they were inside, he gave Raymond a drink spiked with sleeping pills and waited for him to pass out.

After that, he strangled Raymond to death and began his usual grisly routine, boiling and bleaching the bones, dissolving some of them in acid and keeping others as trophies. Then he placed Raymond's skull inside a filing cabinet alongside Anthony's. Nobody felt like he'd finally perfected his preservation technique. Dahmer started to experiment. After killing and dismembering his next victim, 27-year-old Edward Smith, he tried storing some of his body parts in the freezer. A few months later, in September, he ventured into a new realm of depravity. He killed two victims

within weeks of each other and experimented with eating parts of their bodies. Dahmer later said that he did this in order to make his victims a part of him to ensure they could never leave him. But while this symbolic act felt good to him in the moment, it didn't solve his loneliness. In early 1991, more than three years into his spree, Dahmer began to fantasize about a more permanent solution to that particular problem. He wanted a way to create a partner with no free will of their own, a living human, but one who could never leave him.

Essentially, he wanted to create a zombie. And on April 7th, he put his plan into action. He lured 19-year-old Errol Lindsay to his apartment and drugged him, with sleeping pills. Then he pulled out an electric drill. He drilled a hole in the front of Errol's skull and poured hydrochloric acid into it. This was essentially a crude attempt at a frontal lobotomy. Dahmer hoped it would transform Errol into a submissive, compliant companion. But when Errol regained consciousness, Dahmer realized things hadn't gone to plan. The teen was groggy but agitated and complaint of a headache.

Dahmer drugged Errol again, then strangled him to death. Disappointed by his failure, he took a different tack with the preservation this time. He decapitated Errol, but tried to preserve his intact body using cold water and salt. But the experiment was yet another failure, and he had to dispose of everything but the skull. Undeterred, Dahmer tried again the next month. He crossed paths with 14-year-old Konorak Synthesisphone on a Milwaukee store. street and invited him back to the apartment. Once they were inside, Dahmer drugged the teen and injected hydrochloric acid into his brain.

Then, in a decision that shows just how reckless he was becoming, Dahmer left the unconscious teenager at his apartment and went out to buy alcohol. As Dahmer should have anticipated, Konorak woke up and staggered outside into the street. There, he collapsed in front of two teenage girls. 17-year-old Nicole Childress and 18-year-old Sandra Smith were walking home from the movies. When they saw Conorak naked and bleeding and barely able to stand, they were horrified. Nicole stayed with Conorak while Sandra ran to a nearby phone box to call the police, but moments after she returned, Dahmer appeared.

He tried to laugh off the situation, telling the girls that this was his friend, Jim, who had too much to drink. But Nicole and Sandra knew something was very wrong. When they refused to let Dahmer take Konirak, he turned on them. He started aggressively pulling at the boy's arm, trying to drag him back into the apartment. He snapped at the girls, saying, this has nothing to do with you. Thankfully, the police soon showed up. But the girl's relief soon turned to horror as they watched the officers interacting with Dahmer.

He told the police that the disoriented teen was his boyfriend and that he'd fled their apartment after a drunken argument. They seemed to believe him. Frustrated, Nicole and Sandra pointed out that Conorak was bleeding and seemed barely able to stand, but the cops basically told them to mind their own business. An officer escorted Dahmer and Conorak back inside the apartment, then left, noting the incident as a domestic dispute. Little did he know he'd just signed a child's death warrant. After the police left, Dahmer injected more acid into Conorak's skull.

This time, it killed him. The story of Konorak's synthesis phone is heartbreaking and infuriating. Had the police taken the time to search Dahmer's unit or even asked around the building, they would have quickly realized something was a miss. Dahmer's neighbors had already started to complain about foul smells coming from his apartment. He'd been getting more and more sloppy, not disposing of bodies in a timely manner, and as a result, his home smelled the decay. Yet the police missed all of this, and so Dahmer remained at large.

Over the course of that summer, he killed three more victims and stored their heads and other body parts in his refrigerator. The conditions inside his apartment were deteriorating as fast as his mental state, and eventually the chaos caught up with him. On July 22nd, Dahmer met 22-year-old Tracy Edwards in a bar and invited him home for a drink. But as soon as Tracy set foot inside the apartment, he was on edge. He noticed the foul smell, a queasy mix of chemicals. and rotten flesh. He also spotted several bottles of hydrochloric acid in Dahmer's kitchen. Noting Tracy's discomfort, Dahmer quickly put a handcuff onto his wrist. Then he pulled out a knife and told Tracy to undress for a photo shoot. Afraid to agitate Dahmer, Tracy did as he was told.

As he took off his shirt, he noticed that Dahmer was swaying from side to side, chanting excitedly to himself. Then, according to Tracy, Dahmer walked up to him, laid his head on his chest and murmured, I'm going to eat your heart. Trying to keep Dahmer calm, Tracy asked if they could go into the living room which had air conditioning. He suggested they'd drink some beers and talk. Surprisingly, Dahmer agreed to this. Deep down, he still craved company. As soon as Dahmer was distracted, Tracy punched him and ran for his life. He escaped out into the street and flagged down two police officers.

He told them what had happened, and fortunately for him, these cops. They went back to Dahmer's apartment with Edwards. There, Dahmer tried once again to pass the incident off as a lover's quarrel, and the police almost believed him. But then, one of the officers noticed the Polaroids, scattered carelessly around Dahmer's apartment, were photographs of dismembered human bodies. Unnerved, the police arrested Dahmer. Once they conducted a thorough search of the apartment, the grisly extent of his crimes became clear.

The police found human heads and limbs stuffed into the refrigerator and freezer, two preserved skulls on top of a computer, and several decomposing bodies inside a 57-gallon drum. A forensic sweep confirmed that these were the remains of at least 11 separate victims, but back in the interrogation room, Dom were ultimately confessed to 17 killings, and the details of the murders set off a media frenzy. Twelve years after Ted Bundy had been sentenced to death, America had a new boogeyman to obsess over. The Grim saga of the Milwaukee Cannibal was covered feverishly by the international

press, and the horrified public ate up every detail. When his trial began in January of 1992, the Milwaukee County Courthouse was swarmed by journalists. Though he'd confessed, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, but after a month of testimony, the jury rejected this claim, finding that he was sane and able to distinguish right from wrong at the time of the killings. Shortly after this ruling, Dahmer made an unusual statement to the court. Standing at a lectern in the courtroom, he expressed his remorse over what he'd done to his victims' families and to his own. He said he didn't want freedom and even suggested that he deserved the death penalty. He ended by stating that he knew the judge would impose the maximum sentence

and that he did not want any special consideration. Sure enough, he received 15 consecutive life sentences. In the end, Dahmer did get the death sentence he wanted, just not from the state. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institute. That inmate, Christopher Scarver, was also a convicted murderer. But when he read about the details of Dahmer's crimes, he said he was disgusted. It turned out Dahmer was the kind of monster who gave other killers nightmares. Intrigingly, Scarver always also told the New York Post that Dahmer seemed totally unrepentant about his crimes. So you have to wonder if his remorse in the courtroom was all an act. Or perhaps prison hardened him.

Dahmer was full of contradictions like this. Even after you know his story, it's clear that his motivations are a mystery that will likely never be solved. But that doesn't mean we won't try. In a moment, we'll dig deeper into Dahmer's uniquely twisted psychology and where he fits in the pantheon of serial killers. This episode is brought to you by Prime. Obsession is in session. And this summer, Prime originals have everything you want. Steamy romances,

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more closely at Dahmer's childhood, it's possible to see where his alienation could have taken root. Dahmer's mother, Joyce, lived with mental illness, including severe depression. She attempted suicide on at least one occasion when Dahmer's. was young, and it's here that we might get our first foothold into the killer's psyche. But before we continue with the psychology for this episode, please keep in mind that neither Vanessa or myself are licensed psychologist or psychiatrist, but we've done a lot of research for this show. Thanks, Greg. There's been plenty of research that suggests that

childhood exposure to parental suicide attempts can cause a variety of poor mental health outcomes, including an increased risk of suicidal behavior. One 2015 study also suggests that children whose parents attempt suicide may be at higher risk of developing substance abuse disorders later in life. This is significant because by the time Dahmer was 14, he was heavily dependent on alcohol. His drinking had a severe impact on a schoolwork, his social skills, and ultimately his ability to build a productive adult life for himself. But as we discussed earlier, alcohol was a lot of.

Dommers' only unhealthy outlet. Long before he took his first drink, he developed a fascination with death. It began when, as a four-year-old, he witnessed his father clearing out animal carcasses from underneath their rural home. He was fascinated by the sound of bones, and soon began building his own collection. In his teenage years, Dommers' morbid obsessions dovetailed with a burgeoning interest in sex. According to forensic psychiatrist Carl Wallstrom, who interviewed Domer and testified at his trial, Dahmer's libido was off the charts as an adolescent. He was preoccupied by erotic daydreams that took up most of his waking hours,

but they weren't ordinary teenage fantasies. His dream partners were often corpses. Even among serial killers, that's incredibly unusual. Of all the people who commit sexual homicide, necrophilia is associated with less than 1% of these crimes. Psychologists often theorize that necrophilia is motivated by the desire for an unresisting or unrejecting partner, a partner who can't hurt or abandon you. So, going by this theory, necrophiliacs may be motivated by desire to have intimacy,

without any of the messy consequences that typically accompany it. This also goes for Dahmer's eventual attempts to turn his victims into lobotomized zombies. According to Frederick Faustal, a psychiatrist who testified for Dahmer's prosecution, his interest in corpses was secondary. But he really wanted was a partner with no autonomy or will of their own. a partner who was an extension of himself. Researchers often divide serial killers into categories, according to what motivates them. One of the most common subcategories is a power-control-oriented killer,

which indicates that a murderer derives pleasure from exerting total control over their victims. Many experts theorize that power-control-oriented killers are driven by previous experiences where they were denied control. For example, child abuse. But again, as far as we know, Dahmer wasn't abused. His childhood wasn't perfect, and certainly involved some trauma, but there's nothing we can point to in Dahmer's history that explains his insatiable, twisted lust for control over others. Of course, Dahmer's unremarkable childhood isn't the only unusual thing about him. Bizarrely, he actually seemed to have a distaste for killing.

Far from taking pleasure in the act, he had to psych himself up beforehand by getting drunk. Alcohol is often used as a social lubricant because it reduces anxiety and significantly lowers a person's inhibitions. The fact that Dahmer needed Dutch courage before he could kill suggests that he felt a lot of resistance to the act of murder itself. This doesn't exactly jive with our image of a bloodthirsty monster, as so many of us picture when we hear the term serial killer. This is part of what makes Dahmer's story so compelling. His gruesome crimes just don't mesh with his timid. personality. It defies logic that a person could dislike killing, yet find immense pleasure in dismembering, defiling, and even eating a body. It seems that Dahmer wasn't motivated by cruelty or

sadism, but instead by a pathological fear of being alone. Though the motivations for cannibalism aren't well understood, one theory is that literally consuming a victim is a sick grasp at intimacy. By killing his victims and then eating their remains, Dahmer made them, a part of himself. Given all of that, it's tempting to point to Dahmer's complicated MO as evidence that he was an incredibly organized criminal. After all, most murderers don't take the time to dismember their victims, bleach their bones, and store their individual organs inside a refrigerator.

But in fact, Dahmer was pretty sloppy. Towards the end of his spree, he was downright slapdash, often storing multiple bodies inside his small apartment because he couldn't dispose of them fast enough. Neighbors in his building even complained about the smell, and yet, astonishingly, Dahmer got away with it for years. He got away with it even when Konurak's synthesem phone escaped into the street, half- incapacitated and naked, and called the police. Dahmer simply told them Konurak was his boyfriend, and the police believed him. As witnesses on the scene tried to argue, the cops escorted the 14-year-old to his death, inside Dahmer's apartment. To better understand why this story is so important, it's helpful to know a little more context

about all the players. Konirak was Asian, while Dahmer was white. The two witnesses, Nicole Childress and Sandra Smith, were both black women, and Dahmer was the one who the cops believed. This chilling incident speaks to an idea that we've discussed throughout this anniversary series. There's a myth around legendary serial killers, that they're able to outsmart law enforcement because they're geniuses.

But this is almost never true. Dahmer didn't get away with his crimes because he was a genius. He got away with them because nobody ever suspected him, even when they had overwhelming evidence handed to them on a silver platter. It wasn't tactics. It was a systemic flaw that allowed him to flourish. When the details of Conorak's death later emerged, the cops involved were suspended.

The Milwaukee police were widely accused of racism for believing Dahmer's story. Even as Nicole and Sandra protested, even as Koonerak himself was clearly in danger, they defaulted to believing the one person on the scene who looked like them. In this way, Dahmer exemplifies the privilege that has been a running theme throughout all the killers we've discussed. White men in America are far more likely to get the benefit of the doubt, and they're also more likely to be elevated to legendary status when they commit acts of violence. Throughout this series, we've been dissecting common myths about serial killers. Here's another one you've no doubt heard parroted a lot.

They're all white men. In fact, less than half of America's recorded killers over the last century have been white. According to the FBI, the racial makeup of murderers tallies pretty closely without the population at large. Nonetheless, white killers are more likely to become larger than life cultural figures, which is why they seem overrepresented. One possible explanation for this is that serial killers typically kill within their own race, and white victims get more media attention. According to a 2020 study,

homicides in black neighborhoods received less media coverage than those in white neighborhoods. By extension, so do their killers. However, Dahmer is an exception to this rule. His victims were predominantly men of color, and yet he's one of the most famous killers of all time. Dahmer is infamous because he got away with such exceptionally horrific crimes

over a period of several years. and in a perversely ironic twist, the racial makeup of his victims may well have been part of why. Statistically, the police are much less likely to solve homicide cases where the victims are black. And according to sociologist Donica Gordon, predominantly black neighborhoods are both over-policed in terms of surveillance and under-policed when it comes to emergency assistance. In other words, non-white people are both more likely to be unfairly targeted or searched by the police and less likely to get swift help when they're victims of a crime. Even knowing all of that, Dahmer doesn't seem like he was a particularly strategic killer,

so it's not clear that he deliberately chose non-white victims because he thought he'd be more likely to get away with it. But he did have some awareness of what he was doing. According to multiple news sources, Dahmer went out of his way to endear himself to the cops during the Konorak Synthesem phone incident, telling them how much he appreciated their work. he knew the advantage he had and he milked it hard.

And when he was finally apprehended, his spree made him a twisted kind of celebrity. Just like Gacy and Bundy before him, the details of his crimes in trial were inescapable, plastered on television screens and newspaper front pages. Dahmer became a household name because his story was everywhere. Within a decade, the news would become increasingly fragmented, thanks to the rise of cable channels and the internet. But at the time of his trial, a single single story, news story could still dominate, and it did.

The singularity of the news cycle contributed to the mythology around all of the killers we've discussed. They were all active during the 1970s and 1980s, which is sometimes referred to as a, quote, golden age of serial murder in America. These days, our news sources are so fragmented that crime stories can be forgotten in a matter of days, and this may be part of the reason that the golden age began to fade after Dahmer's arrest. he was arguably the last culturally significant American serial killer. Today, murderers with multiple victims are pretty rare, never mind double-digit victim lists. According to crime historian Peter Bronsky, there are either less serial killers out there

or the authorities have gotten better at catching them earlier. That last part is certainly true. Over the past few decades, advancing forensic technology has been a game changer. The heyday of serial killers in the 1970s and 1980s, forced law enforcement to develop more sophisticated ways of tracking and analyzing their crimes. As a society, we're also beginning to grapple with racial biases in the justice system and the ways in which white privilege has allowed killers to escape capture in the past. There's also more advocacy around other groups who are particularly vulnerable to violent crime,

such as sex workers. Though there's a long way to go on both these fronts, it's possible that growing awareness has resulted in fewer opportunities for murder. Perhaps victims are just less readily available than they once were. Hitchhiking, for instance, is now a rarity. Thanks to the horror stories of men like Kemper, Gacy, Bundy, and Dahmer, were all a little more cautious than we used to be. But none of us should live in fear. If there's one thing we've learned from this anniversary series,

it's that no larger-than-life killer lives up to his legacy. Up close, with all the myths stripped away, it's clear just how possible. pathetic they are. Thanks again for tuning into serial killers. We'll be back soon with another episode. You can find all episodes of serial killers and all other Spotify originals from Parcast for free on Spotify. We'll see you next time.

Have a killer week. Serial Killers is a Spotify original from Parcast. Executive producers include Max and Ron Cutler, sound design by Carrie Murphy, with production assistance by Ron Shapiro, Nick John. Trent Williamson and Carly Madden. This episode of serial killers was written by Emma Dibdin, edited by Joel Callan, fact-checked by Haley Milliken, researched by Brian Petrus and Chelsea Wood, and produced by Joshua Kern. Serial Killers stars Greg Polson and Vanessa Richardson.

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