True Crime All The Time - Jeffrey Dahmer

Episode Date: December 11, 2017

Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and sex offender who was known the world over. He murdered at least 17 males, both men and boys, between the late 1970s and early 1990s. Dahmer became infamous not just for the sheer number of murders he committed but the extremely sadistic methods he used. He would be dubbed by the media as "The Milwaukee Cannibal".Join Mike and Gibby as they explore the cannibal killer Jeffrey Dahmer. How did his early life shape the murders that he would commit? Was this a case of nature/nurture or did Dahmer just decide to commit these horrible acts because he wanted to? Either way, Dahmer is one of the most infamous serial killers that ever lived. You can help support the show by going to patreon.com/truecrimeallthetimeVisit the show's website at truecrimeallthetime.com for merchandise and contact information. While you are on the website please go through our Amazon link for all of your Amazon holiday shopping.Credits:Writing/Research - Maggie Dobschuetz See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

One and welcome to episode 56 of the True Crime All the Time podcast. I'm Mike Ferguson and with me as always is my partner in true crime, Mike Gibson, give-e-e. What's going on? Gib-a-gib-a-gib-a. I don't know what that was. I do good, man. Good, good. Now you're supposed to ask me how I'm doing.

Hey, how are you doing? I'm doing good. But not like Joey. I'm doing me to say you sound like Joey. Are you doing? How you doing? Like you're trying to pick me up or something, man. I'm right here across the thing from you.

Don't worry. I wouldn't want to pick you up. You're going to put the moves on me? No. Come on now. That's weird. We've got a podcast to do. Quick getting weird on me.

All right. So let's talk about our new supporters. We had on Patreon, we had Cynthia Holmes. Sherlock's, yeah. Nicole Rogers, Samantha Mayberry. I like it. I know you do. Warm and fuzzy.

Dina Seigart. Seagart. Don't know. Stephanie Pellucci. Pellucci. Deborah Avis. Elena. Wait.

No last name? No last name. Okay. Robert Lopez Portillo. Like it. Drake Jackson. Drake. I like Drake.

So anybody's got Drake in their name. No. Drake's cool. Yeah. I think he actually left us a voicemail that we'll play at the end of the show. Julie Bailey, Shonda Shepard. And then on PayPal, we had Ashland. Stanley, Harvey Kira's, Alana Bush, and Amy Hussie.

And then going back into the Patreon Vault Gibbs, this week we selected Deb from Missouri. Deb. Awesome. She's been supporting us for a long time. She thinks you heard me when I yelled? She probably did. She knows. Oh, you mean before the podcast comes out?

No. Yeah. I don't think she heard you from the studio. But, you know, we appreciate Deb for all her support over the many months. and everybody that supports us, whether it's new folks on Patreon, PayPal, all the people that continue to support us month after month. And we can never forget our supporters on social media, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter. It's just been exploding. That private group is almost headed to 8,000. Yeah, it's amazing. And, you know, we get a lot of

emails from people with show ideas and some of them are great. some that I didn't have. So I always put those on the list. And I want to give a big shout out to Kimberly Brown. So Kimberly mailed us a package, got our address off of the True Crime All Time website. And she makes these coasters out of like tile. Yeah, they were really cool. Individual tiles.

And she took the TCAT logo. She took the TCAT Unsolved logo. And I don't know if she does. I don't know if you call it deco pod, mage, mage, don't ask me how I know what all that stuff is. It's carrying me now, man. I know you're going to.

I have three women in my house, so I can make my way around to Michael's. Like, it's nobody's business. It sounds like we have four women in the house then. Nah, that's a good one. That's a good one. But I want to give a huge shout out to Kimberly. It's awesome that she sent that to us. And she has a store on Etsy.

Check it out. It's called Drink Sitters Coasters. Yeah, if you own a bar. Very cool. And make sure you check out, True crime all the time unsolved. Right now there's an episode out on Julianna Redding, model aspiring actress, 21 years old, had her whole life in front of her and was mysteriously murdered. And the facts around this case, they're very intriguing around how everything around

this case shakes out. You got to listen to it. All right. I want to give a huge shout out to Maggie. you know, she's been wanting to do the subject of this episode for quite a long time. You know, this is in her backyard. And Gibbs, we're talking about Jeffrey Dahmer. Big timer. We haven't done a big timer in, you know, sometime. Doesn't get a whole lot more big timer than Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah, this is, this is it.

People are fascinated by him. I've always been fascinated by him. And, you know, Maggie's in Wisconsin. I mean, not just in Wisconsin. I mean, this is like in her backyard. So I know she was really excited to, to work on Jeffrey Dahmer. So let's get right into it. Let's dive in.

The Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born May 21st, 1960 in West Alice, Wisconsin. His parents were Joyce Annette, maiden name was Flint. And his dad's name was Lionel Herbert Dahmer. And Jeffrey's mom worked as a teletype machine instructor. And his father was actually enrolled at Marquette University obtaining a degree in chemistry. And we're probably going to spend a lot of time in this episode talking about Dahmer's early years. Because there's a lot to get to with Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, as a small child, you know, he was the first and only child of Joyce and Lionel.

So they doaded on him. They loved him. But his mom was not really known for having a great reputation. It was said that she could cause fights, not only within the family, but she caused fights with neighbors. You know, what I got was that she really just, she wanted to be the center of attention. We know people like that, Gibbs. I'm sitting right across from one.

You son of it. No, she wanted to be a center of attention all the time. and whether it was creating drama or, you know, some people like that are a little, can be a little trying sometimes. Yeah. They actually their own little soap opera going on all the time. Yeah. And if there's nothing going on, they might create something.

Oh, they absolutely do. They might write a new episode for that soap opera just to get things stirring. Yeah. Now, when Dahmer was about four years old, he underwent a double hernia surgery as a four-year-old. I had a double hernia surgery. Did you? I was a little. I think, but I think I was like just months old.

Oh, really? Like, yeah, really? Yeah. Like you didn't develop right coming out of the womb or? Yeah, I got two scars down there. Down where? Down where the hernia operation was. In your nether region?

Well, I don't know. No, it's like. You don't know where your own scars are? I know. I don't know how to describe it. It's the pubic region. Oh, really? Like down that far?

Yeah. Okay. That's where, just right above it, you know, just like, right, just slightly above. I don't know. You keep saying it. Like, what is it? That area. Oh, above the area.

Yeah, above the area. Okay. Yeah. North of the equator. Oh, so we learn something every episode. Yeah, there you go. Gibby had a double hernia operation. I don't know.

And this is probably not going to be the only thing that we talk about where you're a lot like Jeffrey Dahmer, if I had to guess. I think there's going to be a lot of probably parallels. Scary, man. We find every episode where you somehow have something in common with... I did have blonde hair up until, I don't know, 30-something. Still kind of blonde. Now's his dirty blonde.

Dirty blonde. Brownish. But it's after this double hernia surgery that it was said that Jeffrey Dahmer went from being described as a very bubbly, very happy child to much more reserved and quiet. I don't know why. I wonder what that surgery would have done. like he's got his, you know, like when you take a dog and get him sniffed, you know. It's just a hernia, man.

It has nothing to do with anything. I don't know, yeah. I mean, you were saying you didn't change or you, well, maybe this hernia surgery. I didn't have, I didn't have enough time to be anything. That's true. By the time I had mine done. Yeah. So at four years old, they knew a little bit more about him.

Yeah. But his parents were fighting a lot during this period of time. And the house was full of tension. It's a young family. He's only four. Parents are still pretty young. And it would be when Dahmer was about six years old in the first grade, his mother began isolating herself to the bedroom.

And basically all she would say is that she was dealing with some type of unknown, undiagnosed illness. Now, his dad's away. He's still in college. He's trying to get this degree. So he's not home all the time. But you go back to Jeffrey's mother. talking about how she needed to be the center of attention.

I'm not sure if maybe this is the way that she was trying to get that attention by saying she was sick. I mean, there are people that do that. Oh, absolutely. Some people do that to their kids. Their kids.

That's horrible. So things were not going well with his parents. You know, home life was tense. There was a lot of fighting. I think there was some unhappiness. And people would later talk about Dahmer in grade school as this quiet, very shy child. He had a teacher who even marked on his report card that it seemed like Jeffrey

felt like he was being neglected. Well, if his dad is away at college, there all day, takes the train, however you get back. The mom is laying in bed back in the bedroom. Yeah, she's holed up in her bedroom. He's not getting in. No, he's kind of probably on his own at at the age of six for a lot of the time. You leave kids alone. Their minds will create A different realm. Oh, man, his, his creates one for sure. We know that. I think what's going to come out about his, his mother is that, you know, she's not well mentally.

You know, it was said that she would make herself very anxious, almost to the point of making herself sick over, like, trivial stuff, the smallest type of thing. And this would force Lionel to do whatever she wanted. It was the only way to get her to feel. better. Again, creating drama to get what you want. I mean, she even tried to overdose at some point on medications that she'd become addicted to. It didn't work. I think the bottom line is that his parents were very wrapped up in whatever they had going on. And there was very little time devoted to Jeffrey.

But at the same time, I think they loved him. They weren't beating him. It's like they didn't feed him. It's just I don't think they were showering him with affection or attention or, you know, anything like that. Love is a very broad statement. Would you like to elaborate on that? Or you just want to make that very broad statement?

Yeah. We were right there. And lay it right there. I mean, you can love spaghetti. You can love what? Spaghetti. Right? I do love spaghetti.

You do love spaghetti, but you don't love it the way you love your daughter. Oh, no. No, I get what you're saying. Yeah, the word love has very broad uses. Sure. Yeah. And so they love him, but they're not really doing a good job of showing how much they love him. Yeah. The thing about Dahmer is there's a lot of audio of him.

So we can actually hear him talking about different parts of his childhood. I sort of lived in my own little fantasy world when things got too heated in the household. And I carried that over for years, I guess. I had some anger. Probably every kid has some anger, you know, about their childhood. It really wasn't a terrible childhood, though. You know, there were a lot of good times. It wasn't a really terrible time.

You know, when you're in a house with parents that argue, especially at a younger age, it kind of scares you. And it's easy for you to initially the first time, you don't know what the thing, the second time. Eventually you learn how the pattern goes. And eventually, I can see how you kind of turn in your own head to get through. and to get through those hours of all that argument, you kind of make up your own little world. I understand what he's saying.

No, he talks about a lot. I mean, he had a very vivid fantasy life. And that, you know, started at an early age. It's going to continue all the way up to adulthood. But the other thing that happened at a very early age for Jeffrey Dahmer is he developed an interest in animals. And you'd have to call it a fascination. It said that it probably started around the age of four when he saw his dad taking some animal bones from under the house.

And his father would later talk about this, about how he could see even at a young age that Jeffrey was almost like oddly thrilled by the side of the bones, the sound that the bones made inside the metal bucket as he was carrying them. A little clickety, clack, clack. Yeah, he talks about, like, he could see it in his eyes. Yeah. And Jeffrey Dahmer would go on to develop an obsession with collecting animal bones, playing with them.

Now, he started out by collecting bugs, butterflies, putting them in jars. That's pretty normal. Yeah. A lot of kids do that. Yeah. Lightning bugs. You probably did the lightning bugs. bug thing when you were younger. Old time. Or fireflies.

Fireflies, yeah. Depending on what part of the country you live in. But as he got a little bit older, he started to search out like roadkill. So animals that were hit by cars laying on the side of the road. And he would take these animals and he would cut into them either in the woods behind his house or he would take them home when nobody was there. A country boy will survive. That's for sure.

You know, because I knew some country boys that would find Roakil. And they'd take it. If it was fresh enough, they'd clean it up. Eat it. Yeah. That doesn't surprise me one bit that you would have friends like that. Not one bit. Yeah.

Don't let anything go to waste. But Dahmer would dissect these animals who's fascinated by, you know, looking inside, seeing the insides of an animal, but he would keep different parts of the animal, the bones. You keep them in jars. He would later say that he liked seeing how animals fit together, how they were put together. There's one story where he even impaled a dog's head on a stick behind his home. So this fascination with animals started young. Yeah.

And it just grew and grew in this morbid curiosity. My childhood wasn't filled with any great tragedies or anything. There were good times and there were bad times. I think it was fairly normal. In ninth grade, in biology class we had the usual dissection of fetal pigs. I took the remains of that home and kept the skeleton of it. And I just started branching out dogs. dogs, cats. I suppose it could have turned into a normal hobby like taxidermy, but it

didn't it veered off into this. Why I don't know. All I know is that I wanted to see what the insides of these animals looked like. Take them back in the woods, skin them sometimes, slit them, slit them all the way open, look could the organs feel them. There was a sort of general excitement for me. I don't know why. It was exciting to see. I'm always fascinated Gibbs when we have the actual audio of the killers. Yeah. Because a lot of them, they just talk so matter-factly about some of these things that are so strange to the rest of us, things that we would never think about doing. No, I think you're right. I mean, all these really terrible people, when you get these taped interviews with them,

it's just amazing how it's just like telling you, like an instruction manual, someone reading it to you. I did this, then I went home with this, and, you know, it just amazes me. Yeah, I mean, there's no remorse. There's never, you know, a lot of times it's just, it's just so matter-of-factly. And Dahmer, you know, he's a guy that to look at him, you wouldn't be scared of Jeffrey Dahmer. No, not at all. I mean, he looks like... It's like sitting across from you.

Yeah, some guy that would be in a cubicle at work and... Yeah. Or your next door neighbor. I mean, to me, he's not scary at all. Now, there are some of the guys that we profile that if you saw him walking down the street, you would be like, let's, you know, steer clear of that guy. But, and maybe that's the reason why Jeffrey Dahmer was able to do some of the things he do. You know, I go back to like a Herb Baummeister, you know, somebody that that kind of was able to,

blend in pretty well and was able to do some normal things that allowed them to carry out some really vicious, heinous things and get away with it. I thought it was wonderful. He was fun. We did all the normal things that people do. It's hard to be asked questions that go back 30-some years when you never expected that anything but good would happen in your family. What would you look for?

If I'd seen something that had been a clue of any kind, I'd like to think that I would have done something about it immediately. No, there wasn't anything unusual about Jeff. He was a normal young boy. So that's Dahmer's mother, Joyce, in an interview. basically saying she had no idea. And, you know, that can be a very true statement. I think you can develop tricks to hide the way you feel about certain things.

I think you can definitely mask who you are and give a persona of somebody else. No, I agree with you. And the other thing is, you know, and he talked about it, I don't think they were paying a lot of attention to him. So I think a lot of the things. that he was doing with the animals and this and that, that was pretty much under the radar probably to them. He was doing that in secret. Yeah. I don't doubt her that there probably wasn't a whole lot of signs, especially anything that was going to foreshadow the unspeakable acts that he's going to

do down the road. You just don't know what people were doing. I mean, they're in your presence for a short period of time. What the heck they're doing outside of that? You don't know. Yep, I'd agree. You don't know what I do after I leave here. I have no idea and I don't want to know. Yeah. Might be the stuff of nightmares. Could be. The family would move to Doylestown, Ohio in October of 1966. Joyce was pregnant with a second child. The baby was born on December 18th, 1966, and they actually let Jeffrey name the baby. So he chose the name David. Now, around this time, Jeffrey's father, Lionel, got his degree, and he started working as an analytical chemist in Akron, Ohio. So the Dahmer's are in our home state, Gibbs. Yeah, a little Ohio action there.

Akron, probably for one of the tire companies. Yeah, I wouldn't doubt it. Yeah. I mean, back then, a lot of people did work for the tire companies in Akron. Yep. Now, the family would move to Bath, Ohio in 1968. And one day at dinner, the family is having their meal. They're having some chicken. And Jeffrey's dad would later recount that Jeffrey asked him a question, a very strange question. And it was, what would happen if you took the chicken bones and put them in bleach?

Seems like a strange question to me. It was a little strange. And this wasn't, you know, kind of all by itself. You know, his dad had been very worried about him around that time because Domer just didn't seem to care about anything at that point. He was isolating himself. So his dad was actually happy that he was taking this interest because you got to remember, his dad's a scientist.

Sure. So he's like, oh, it's great. You know, he's taking an interest in scientific type things. Yeah, he wants to know what the reaction of a bone. into some bleach is going to do. Yeah, he's not thinking of the future that's going to happen. And I don't think any father would at that point in time. At that age, most kids only when it came to the chicken was, you know,

you and your brother or sister, whatever, grabbing the chicken bone, the wish bone, and yanking on it to see who got to make the wish. But because of that, his father taught him the proper way to bleach and preserve bones. Oh. So he's teaching Jeffrey, which he probably thinks he's doing a good thing. Sure. You know, piquing his scientific interest. Right.

But what Jeffrey did is he used this information and these processes to aid him in keeping these animal bones that he was collecting. Now, we know he's going to do other stuff like that in the future. It's going to be much, much worse. I mean, I get where the dad's coming from, too, though, because. I thought it was my kid wanting to keep and collect animal bones, I'd probably, because he says I'm got a little OCD in me, I'd want them clean if they're going to be in my house. But let's bleach those.

Well, I don't know if he knows at this point that he's killing animals and collecting the bone. I think he just helped him with the chicken bones. I gotcha. I could be wrong, but. Yeah. Well, even if he wants to keep the chicken bones, I'd want them. You'd want them nice and neat. I would.

Because I know you got a little OCD. A little bit. You know, Dahmer began attending Revere High School and he was an outcast. I mean, people would look back at him and say, you know, he didn't have many friends. And another thing that they would say about him is that he had already developed a drinking problem at this young age. You know, fellow students would later recall that, you know, he would smuggle beer and booze into school inside of this army fatigue jacket that he wore.

I've seen people like that. I know. that's the way you used to do it. I did drink at our early age. I think a lot of us did. So I'm not condemning that. Okay. I don't want my kids to do it.

There's a lot of things I don't want my kids to do that I did. Exactly. My stepdad used to have this bottle of Johnny Walker Red. Yeah. And I really got a taste for this Johnny Walker Red when I was younger, like pretty young. That's an expensive taste for a kid. Yeah. And so I would fill up a shot glass and I would take a shot.

Yeah. Yeah, that's probably 14. Yeah. And then I would fill it up with water after I drank so much of it. Yeah. Thinking that he wouldn't know. You know, so now many, many years later, he says, yeah, I knew. Like, of course I knew.

As soon as I poured my drink, I would know it's watered down. Yeah, we used to do the same. We used to take Coke or Pepsi for any of the bourbon or whiskey because it had that caramel color. And we'd refill that. And then any clearer we would use water. Yeah. So. Yeah.

What are you going to do? We weren't angels. But we're not Jeffrey Dahmer's either. No. No, we're in here. Hey, we turned out okay. Yeah, we'd all right. But they said he kept this booze in his locker and he would just take a nip, you know,

like in between classes. He'd just drink all day long. Man, make some of those classes go a little bit better, maybe. I don't know how somebody teacher or something wouldn't figure this out. But, you know, it said he drank before school, during school, after school. he's just drinking all the time. One fellow student that would come out later and say that he remembered that Jeffrey Dahmer drinking a cup of gin and he asked him what he was doing and Dahmer said that it was his

medicine. He had to have it. It tastes like medicine. I don't like gin at all. But throughout his first year of high school, you know, he was described as polite, somewhat intelligent, didn't say much kept to himself besides the fact he had a drinking problem. You know, his grades were average. but he didn't seem to care about them.

But apparently he was a pretty good tennis player and, you know, he joined the band for a little while. So he wasn't like totally uninvolved. He did try some things and some sports and stuff like that. But it was around this time, you know, this high school period of time that Jeffrey Dahmer realized he was gay. You know, kind of when he hit puberty. He never came out to his parents. But he would say later on that he had a very, very big.

brief relationship with another young man. They never had sex, but they had some type of relationship. Early on, I really didn't know that much about it myself. All I knew was that it was something that was to be kept hush, hush, not talked about, not even thought about. So I just kept it all within me and never talked about sexual issues at all, really. with anybody. Talking about it, I don't think would have made that much difference. Because, like I said, there were things going on in my head that I would have never opened up and talked about with anybody.

I had thoughts, I had fantasies, but there was no outward show of anything that was wrong. I kept it inside, didn't share any of my thoughts or emotions with anybody. So how would I ever know? No, you never saw any of it, as far as I know. not really hear from anyone about any of these activities. And that's what really strikes me now, is if I would, if I would have known, what would I have done about it? I think I would have done a lot about it. I feel it's wrong for people who commit crimes

to try to shift the blame onto somebody else, onto their parents or onto their upbringing or living circumstances. I think that's just a cop-out. cop out and my parents my relatives had no knowledge of what I was doing they're absolutely not responsible for any of it in any way and I take full responsibility so this is kind of a a strange interview because his dad's in there in the interview with him sure and you know so hear from the mom here from the dad he's such a good guy man just letting you know

know that his parents didn't have nothing to do with it. It's all on me. I get the sarcasm coming from you, and I understand why. But I also think there's some truth to what he's saying in a strange way, because there have been a lot of killers who said, oh, you know, I blame my parents. They did this. They did that. You know, he's coming out and saying, hey, man, this is all me. Yeah. And I get that. And I appreciate that. Doesn't make it any. better what he's you know what he did but it's also this time when he started to have more and more twisted fantasies and most of these fantasies centered around dominating another human being so he wanted to be dominant he wanted to have a completely submissive partner that would do

anything and everything he wanted so getting back to like you being zipped up in your little rubber suit. Yeah, what is it with you in that rubber suit? I don't have a rubber suit. Okay. Latex suit. But these twisted fantasies at this pretty young age, I mean, this is foreshadowing, big time, what he's going to do later on in life or what he's, you know, some of these things that he's going to try to do. Absolutely, it is. And it's really a pretty natural transition, I think, for Jeffrey Dahmer to make from, you know, years and years of dissecting animals to start having these twisted fantasies about humans that are also going to include dissecting humans, right? So he wanted to see how animals worked. He wanted to see how they were made up on the inside. Well, that's going to extend

to wanting to know that same thing about human beings. And one of the, fantasies that he would talk about later in life that again started pretty young was about a male jogger he he wanted to render a male jogger passing by his house unconscious and then he wanted to use his body sexually while he was passed out right so he would have complete control he would be completely dominant and i think that was the key that was The big key to this fantasy was that the man had to be passed out. He had to not be able to resist, not be able to do anything. Okay.

And he started to put a plan in motion to make this happen. You know, he would hide in some bushes with a bat. He was waiting for a jogger to come by and he was going to jump out and attack him. But the opportunity never came about, never presented itself, I guess. It never happened. But he said that this was the first time that he had these thoughts about attacking a human being. I think it was around age 14 or 15. Started having obsessive thoughts of violence intermingled with sex.

And it just got worse and worse. I didn't know how to tell anyone about it. So I didn't. I just kept it all inside. I've talked with a few psychologists about it. They have their theories, but they don't have any concrete answers either. But I never dreamed that it would become a reality. 15 on, I had this reoccurring fantasy of meeting a hitchhiker on the road

and of taking him hostage and doing what I wanted with him. So we talked about Dahmer being a loner. he didn't have a lot of friends, but he had this weird dichotomy where he was also known as kind of a class clown, which seems very strange. Normally, when you're a loner and you don't have a lot of friends, you keep to yourself, you don't put yourself out there to be the class clown type as well. Yeah, normally you don't want to be ridiculed. Yeah, or ridiculed. Or ridiculed. Or ridiculed. Yeah. It's a Midwest thing. You keep saying everything's a Midwest thing. That's what I'm going with this week. But there's a bunch of us in the Midwest that are saying, we don't say that. Yeah.

We don't say that. Very specific Midwest region. Just to your street and particular house. Yeah, exactly. But he would, I mean, he would pull pranks on people. You know, he would try to get laughs, try to get attention. And in school, I mean, he did it so much that people started calling these types of pranks pulling a domer. I mean, he would make sheep noises, fake seizures. He would just do all kinds of stuff

to get attention. Now, you go back and you kind of think about his mom and maybe he did learn some of that stuff from his mom. It's just strange for that type of person to want attention. Normally, they're trying to do anything not to get attention. You learn to make sheep noises from his mom? No, we learned how to get attention. Oh, okay. I don't know. Maybe she did teach him how to make sheep noises. I don't know. Yeah, I just wondering. How does a sheep noise go, Mike? I don't know. Come on. I know you know a lot more about sheep noises than I do.

I have a feeling you know that. I have not been around sheep in my life. Waitly in a while. At least two or three weeks. Okay. So we fast forward to his junior year. It's 1977. His grades are getting worse. He's still drinking all the time. Are you born yet? Yes, I am born. Okay. And so are you. Well, yeah. But his parents hired him a tutor. And I think that is a telling fact because obviously they did care about him. My parents hired me a tutor also.

Well, they obviously cared about you. I just feel like they didn't get their money's worth. Hey, again, just one more parallel between you and Jeffrey Dahmer. Yeah. Yeah. Actually, I told you there would probably be a bunch. I had a few tutors. Had the English tutor?

Sorry, mom and dad, if you're listening. If you're listening. But I don't think the tutor helped him very much. I mean, he wasn't willing to put in the work, right? A tutor's one thing, but you've got to put in the work. That's true. To make it worthwhile. Got to do the homework.

Now, it was about this time that his parents started seeing a counselor. You know, they had trouble off and on, but they were trying to save their marriage. Unfortunately, it didn't work. And his parents decided to do. divorce started out as a mutual thing where they both said they needed to go their separate ways, but ended up in a pretty vicious fight causing his dad to move out. Lionel and I discovered very early on that we were very different people. I was more emotional and more outgoing than he was.

and marriage became really a very unhappy place. And how much that affected the children at the time. I didn't think that it affected them in any really harmful way because they were never physically abused. There was nothing unusual about that. And Jeff is not the result of what is going on in every home in America. He's not the result of that. I mean, is that really just her deflecting the blame?

I mean, that's what it sounds like to me. I mean, she could be correct. But just to say, not every kid in a... in a divorce situation or in a unhappy marriage situation is going to react the same way as every other kid in America, not every other kid in America. They're not all reacting the same way. No, what I get from her is that, you know, obviously she feels horrible about what happened. Yeah. Or what, you know, in our story, what's going to happen. But she doesn't want to believe that the divorce and the fighting, you know, had to be. You know, had. You know,

anything to do with what he's ultimately going to become. And I don't know if it did or not. Right. But you just, you know, you can tell from her, she doesn't want to have to, to think about the fact that maybe it did. Yeah, don't you, don't you put that blame on me. Don't you put that on me, Ricky Bobby. Now in 78, Dahmer's getting ready to graduate. And right before graduation, a teacher catches him drinking beer in the parking lot. And he's going to report this, but Dahmer gives him a sob story about, you know, everything that's going on at home. And he, he's allowed to graduate.

But this divorce, I mean, it caused kind of a strange thing to happen. So his younger brother, David, left with his mom and they moved in with some of her family. Adomber by this time is 18. So his dad's gone. He's left by himself living in the family home. which seems very odd. Does seem odd. I don't think it's that odd, though.

No, I mean, he's 18 years old. It's just, so if both parents leave, who the hell's paying for this house? That's the odd part to me. Right, yeah, I got you. The family split apart when Jeffrey Dahmer turned 18. A court order kept his father away from the house. His mother, who had been hospitalized for mental problems, left too.

It was when he was alone in the house that Jeffrey Dahmer committed his first murder. Let me put this in perspective. There are millions of people. who get divorced. There are millions of people who have step-parents. And what does it do to them? Well, it doesn't make them kill. It doesn't make them cannibalize. I think we've got to understand that we might be able to explain part of this, but we're not able to predict who's going to turn out to be a serial killer. So a couple of things in that clip, right? We're knocking on the door of Jeffrey Dahmer's first murder. We're getting ready to talk about it. The second part of that

was, you know, a guy talking about how many kids go, go, parents go through divorce, you know, how many kids are a product of a divorced household more and more these days. Oh, yeah. I mean, probably, I want to say like 80% today. I don't know. I don't know what the number is. That's back when I was a little kid. It was probably like 20%, you know, 30%.

Yeah, I was definitely a lot lower back then. But what I, what I, what. What was really telling about that, that clip was that, and it makes a lot of sense, right? And it's probably not 80%, but you know me. Tons of kids that go through divorce, very small percentage of them end up being serial killers. Right. So divorce, you're not blaming Jeffrey Dahmer. No.

And what he's to become on divorce. On divorce. When it comes to the episodes that we've done, Gibbs, there's not a lot in his childhood that you could say, wow, that's, you know, that caused him to go down the path of being a serial killer. No, it gave him reasons to be a little freaky on some things. Yeah, it's just not one where you could really point at something and say, oh, that, you know, that, that's the smoking gun. Yeah, you're right. You just didn't have the typical signs that we would see. No, not that we've seen in a lot of the episodes or, you know, with a lot of these, uh, with these serial killers. But Domer would

kill his first victim just three weeks after he graduated from high school. So they kind of talked about in the clip, right? His father was not allowed in the house. He's living in a nearby hotel. His mother had moved to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Chippewa Outlaw. Is that Tim McGraw? It is. Tim McGraw. I knew who that was. There you go. Along with his younger brother. And Dahmer would pick up a hitchhiker by the name of Stephen Mark Hicks. who was only 18 years old himself and go back to Dahmer on the clip, you know, he had a number of fantasies. We talked about the jogger fantasy,

but you hear from his own words, he had another fantasy about picking up a hitchhiker. And this is exactly what he does. So he invites this Stephen Hicks over to the house. They're having some beers together. You know, Stephen was hitchhiking. because he was on his way to a concert,

but he thought, you know what, I could have a few beers. So he goes back to Dahmer's house. I was 18 years old. Driving home, I saw this hitchhiker about a mile from my house. Thought to myself, should I stop and pick him up or should I just keep on going?

I wish I'd just keep on, kept on going, but I didn't. I turned around, picked him up. And that's when that's when the nightmare became a reality. It just seems so bizarre to me that this obsession that I had been thinking about and wanting, just all the, all the parts are there and they make it possible to make it happen. So again, hearing Dahmer talk about this, you know, talk about the, you know, how many years, and is it a daily thing Gibbs where he's having these sick twisted fantasies and you can hear him say like all of a sudden it's coming to fruition.

Yeah, frog demons really active man. Yeah. So it's coming out before it was just thoughts, right? Probably maybe a little sexual gratification mixed in with these violent thoughts. But now it's real. So Dahmer and Stephen are having some beers. And at some point, Stephen says, you know what, I got to go. Man, I got to get to this concert.

But Dahmer didn't want him to go. And he ends up beating Stephen with a 10 pound dumbbell. Strikes him from behind twice while Stephen is sitting down. The blows caused him to pass out. And while he was passed out, Dahmer strangled him with the, the bar part of the dumbbell. Easy to do. It would be very easy to do on somebody that's passed out.

Yeah. And maybe somebody is awake, depending on how strong. But this goes back to, you know, kind of what we talked about earlier. The fantasy is that I'm going to dominate another human being, right? He wants this person to be incapacitated. He wants to control this person so that they won't leave. leave him. And this is going to be, you know, a major theme in his murderous acts to come. That's one way you do it. Knock him out. Yeah. It's all about trying to find somebody that he can do

whatever he wants to do with. Yeah. And that person has no ability to leave him. Yeah. So either you got to hit him over the head with something or roofie him. Your choice. Yeah. He's going to go a lot farther than that. Well, you know what I mean. Because if you drug, yeah, if you drug somebody, eventually that drug is going to wear off and they're going to leave. Well, I mean, initially, and then for you to go ahead and successfully go to the next level. Right. You don't have to tell us all your plans and all your schemes. Nah, I keep, you know. Keep some of it in the dark. I teach you what you know. I don't teach you everything I know. Oh, that's a good. Yeah. I'm put that on T-shirt. Do you? And wash my car with it. Nice. So he murdered. He murdered.

Stephen Hicks and he takes all of Stephen's clothes off and then he proceeds to masturbate over the corpse. Okay. Twist. I mean, this guy's twisted. There's, there is no way around that. Yeah. I don't get it. But yeah.

Okay. But he doesn't stop there. He would eventually the next day dissect the body in the crawl space under his house and then bury the body in a shallow grave behind the house. Now, that's, you would think it would be over at that point, right? He's, he's killed his victim. He's done some sick, twisted stuff to the body. Yeah.

He's buried it. It's over. But now the time for the science to kick in. Oh, my gosh. Nothing's over with Jeffrey Dahmer because a few weeks later, he digs up the body and he proceeds to peel the flesh from the bones. How you peel the flesh? Well, I don't know.

first thought is maybe similar you ever a fillet or a yeah a catfish I know how to fillet no have you ever done a catfish though where you got to peel the the kind of the outer skin off first all first before you yeah so you make like a like an incision usually take a pair of pliers kind of twist them around then you pull down yeah I'm not saying that's how you do it that's maybe one way I don't know okay I've done the catfish yeah I have no experience whatsoever you don't take it to that level And I will never with human beings. So I'm just speculating there.

But then he takes all the flesh. He puts it in acid to dissolve it. So again, I think you hit it on the head, Gibbs. The science is kicking in. I don't know how he's getting a perverse sexual thrill out of that part. I think he had that. He already had that. Yeah.

So now he's moving on to just the... Experimentation. Yeah. It's intriguing to him. Yeah, he's experimenting. He's seeing what, what will happen if I do this? I mean, that's the sense that I get. Eventually, he flushes this acid mix down the toilet.

He used a sledgehammer to crush the bones into, you know, much smaller pieces. And then he threw them in the woods behind the house. That's a lot of work. A lot of manual effort that has gone into, you know, all of the, of these things that he's done. Yeah. To what end? I don't know. I don't know what he got out of it.

He probably could have just paid somebody 50 bucks to masturbate on and for him to act like he's incapacitate it. But see, to people like this, it wouldn't be the same. No, they want to have that, that. It wouldn't be real. That would be, you know, like make believe. They want the chase. This is real to him.

Right. They want that high, that rush. Just like, it was a Tommy Lynn sales? Was it got that rush when he was taking the life out of somebody by strangling him? Oh, he talked about it a lot. I mean, he was watching the eyes. And, I mean, that's really, I think what he got off on that. Yeah.

Of seeing that life kind of leave. That's what made him, yeah, for sure, blow. Yeah. So you talk about sadistic. Now, his dad, about six weeks after this murder, comes back to the house. He's already engaged to another woman at this point. He finds Dahmer living alone. Now, this part's hard to talk about, Gives, because...

You're hurting me, man. I know. Jeffrey Dahmer enrolled at the Ohio State University. Killing me. We have to associate that with him. And I have to say, I could have left it out, but I wouldn't be true to the podcast. Yeah. I hate putting down the Ohio State University like that, but they did let Jeffrey

Dahmer in. Well, they do have a great agricultural school. Well, he was going to major in business. That too. But he was only there for one semester. didn't go well. Because remember, this guy's drinking at an all-star level. He has a drinking problem.

He's got a homicidal problem too, but he does have a drinking problem. So, I mean, he's definitely has an addiction issue. I mean, to alcohol, for sure. But I think you could look at the other stuff that he's doing as, I don't know if it's, you wouldn't classify it as an addiction, but it's a, it's pretty darn close. It could. Some type of form. sexual addiction.

Yeah. I mean. You're right. I think you could. So he drops out of college and in 1979 he joins the army. You know, his dad's like, your life's not going well. This would be something good for you. It's going to turn your life around.

And in the army, he trained as a field medic in Houston and then got shipped over to West Germany. Back when we had East and West. East and West, right. Yeah. This is back in the day before the wall fell. Average soldier. Now, there were some allegations.

while he was in the army that he raped two fellow soldiers during his time in the army. One of these men said that this happened over and over for a period of 17 months, while the other person said that he was drugged and raped in the back of an armored vehicle. But Dahmer was drinking heavily in the army as well. And because of this, he was discharged in 1981. he did receive an honorable discharge. But there was some stuff in the research Gibbs that says around the time that Jeffrey Dahmer was over in West Germany, you know, serving in the army. There were five unsolved murders that included mutilation of the corpse.

Now, I don't know that any of those have ever been tied to him. I just thought it was a very interesting fact. Yeah, I think it is. I still think that the army should, you know, some. should have pulled a code red on on domer yeah the old code red the old code red they should have pulled something on him well yeah that's true too so in march of 81 he flies back home he's at fort jackson to be debrief and he's given a plane ticket to go anywhere in the country after leaving the army but he doesn't want to go home because according to him he felt like he just couldn't disappoint his dad

once again. So he decides to go down to Miami Beach, Florida. Pretty good decision, Gibbs. You know, Ohio, Miami Beach, Florida. Yeah. Not too tough for me, I wouldn't think. Well, for you, it's a little tougher because you don't like the ocean and the beach. Oh, yeah. I like the nightlife. In Miami. Miami, South Beach. But he did say, you know, he didn't, you know, as we sit here in like 20 degree weather, he said he didn't want to deal with the cold anymore. And he just, you know, he kind of wanted to be away from everybody. He wanted to live on his own. So he gets a job at a sandwich shop. He rents a room at a motel.

But it's while Dahmer is living in Florida, there's this weird connection because this is the time when Adam Walsh goes missing. You know, the son of John Walsh, America's Most Wanted, very famous case, Adam Walsh. You know, it's what started the Code Adam that I think Walmart. uses and maybe some other places as well. And most people know that story, but, you know, Adam goes shopping with his mother. They're out of Sears. She leaves for a second to go to another aisle. When she comes back, he's gone. They try to page Adam. You know, he doesn't show up. And she calls the police. And it's two weeks after that that they find Adam's severed head, August 10th,

1981, they find it in a drainage canal and it's found by two fishermen. And ultimately, they have to match his identity through dental records. And the rest of his body has never been found. Now, there's a lot of people that think Otis Tool was involved in, you know, the murder of Adam Walsh. I think he even claimed it at one point in time. But a lot of it, you know, they go back and forth. I think they figured out that it couldn't have been him. But there are a lot of people that think you could make a case that Adam Walsh could have been a victim of Jeffrey Dahmer. There was a woman who was at the mall that said she saw Adam Walsh with a man that she probably thought later was, you know, was his kidnapper. She was shown a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer and she

thought it was him. She also made a statement that she saw a blue van and that matched to the description of a van that that Dahmer was driving at the time. So apparently she called the police, but they never interviewed her. And she even called America's Most Wanted, I guess, in 1996. But again, eyewitness statement. A lot of those, you know, can be wrong. And there's really no evidence that it was Dahmer. I just think it's, it's a fascinating connection.

The fact that he's in, you know, he's down there in Florida at the time that, you know, this famous abduction and murder occurs. So Dahmer's in. you know, Miami. He's spending every dime he makes on drinking, drinking nonstop to the point where he gets evicted from the motel he's staying at. He's living, sleeping on the beach, working at this sandwich shop. And then one day, he calls his dad and asks if he can return to Ohio. I guess he's had enough of sleeping on the beach. So he does just that. You know, he moves back to Ohio and he's living with his father and his stepmother, but they expected certain things from him.

You know, they wanted him to help out around the house. They wanted him to do chores, and they wanted him to get a job. But all Jeffrey Dahmer wanted to do was drink. So again, Gibbs, another parallel between you and Jeffrey Dahmer. Oh, come on, man. I don't drink. No, you don't drink that much. Not much. Especially on when we record. You're really good about that. Drink nothing but water. Wada. Wada. And Dahmer is arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. You know, he's fined $60. I think he spends a few days in jail for this.

And all the while, his dad is really trying hard to get him sober. But nothing that he is doing is working. So because of this, Jeffrey Dahmer is sent to live with his grandmother in West Dallas, Wisconsin. Because nothing says sober up. Like being with your grandmother. Yeah, living with your grandma and being sent to. Wisconsin. I don't know. You know, some of those grandmothers, they will beat your ass.

Grandma, my granny was a sweetie, man. She didn't do any ass beating? Nah. My grandpa, now, mine didn't either, but my grandpa, you know, he was the go pick out your own switch guy. Oh, yeah, no. And then he would bust your ass with it. Yeah, my, my, my granny was a sweetie, man. She'd take the switch for me. But there are some grandmothers that are, that can be pretty tough. I don't think. Yeah, my, my grandma on my mom's side was tough. You know, she's old old school south. She's from South Boston, you know. She's a Southie?

Yeah. So she didn't put up with jack shit. She's like Goodwill hunting? She's like, yeah. How do you like them, Apple? Yeah. What do you think I get my mathematical skills from? I can just look at that blackboard and go, yep, I know the number.

I solved why. I know the number. I do. I solved why. The equation is done. It says 23 and you're like, yeah. That's it. I can tell.

That says 23. That works. That's funny. But he does. He goes to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin, and it would come out that his grandmother was really the only member of his family that he really ever had what you would call like a genuine affection for. I wonder if they watched Laverne and Shirley together.

Why? Because that was set up in Wisconsin? Yeah. Shemiel. Shemazo. Something. Something. Something.

Incorporated. Yeah. Oh, my goodness. But I think this is part of the reason. that they sent him there. They knew that he really loved her. Yeah, he gets some attention. And I think his family thought,

if nobody else, he would listen to her and she would be able to help him get on the right track. The problem is we know that doesn't happen. Yeah. Because the worst of the worst of Jeffrey Dahmer and what he does, it's all going to happen in Wisconsin. In Grandma's house. Yeah.

I believe in the beginning what they set out to do does kind of work. You know, he starts living with his grandmother. His life seemed to be, you know, getting on track. He's going to church with her. It was said that he did chores. He was following the rules of the house. But he's still drinking. And I think it started smoking some at this point too.

But he gets a new job. And he started working at the Milwaukee blood plasma. center. Taking blood. Taking blood from other people. He probably liked that. Sticking the needle in. Yeah, he was only there for about 10 months before he was laid off. And he wouldn't have a job for the next two years. So he's living with his grandmother, living off of the money that she's giving him, drinking. I mean, he's got a pretty cushy set up here. He's really not being asked to do a lot. He's being supported by his grandmother. But in 81, he gets arrested again. disorderly conduct, resisting arrest.

And then in August of 82, Domer is arrested for indecent exposure. And the story goes that he exposed himself to 25 women and children at the Wisconsin State Fair. That's a lot of people. At one time. Yeah. I don't. You were walking around with it hanging out of your zipper? I guess.

Every now, like, we're moving the hat that's covering it? Which is somewhat strange to me because we know that Jeffrey Dahmer likes men. Yeah, that is weird. So I don't understand his thought process behind exposing himself to a bunch of women, and especially children. I don't get that at all, but the Wisconsin State Fair is right down the street from where Maggie lives. Aw, it's kind of sentimental.

So hopefully she wasn't. wasn't there in 82. I'm sure she wasn't. She wasn't even born. She wasn't even born. Her mom might not even been born yet. I'm sure she was, but, but he does get convicted of this indecent exposure charge, and he pays the, the whopping sum of $50. So that's like 50 cents per peep show. Hey, look at my, look at my buddy down here. 50 cents. I'll pay the 50 cent fine for you to take a glance at this thing. 50 cents per life that he's probably altered forever. Yeah, I'm sure it scares a few people. Or scar, I mean, it could have scarred some of those kids.

Yeah. $50. It just doesn't seem like... Just that time you went streaking? Yeah. Scared the shit out. I still have nightmares. We were going to KFC.

Yeah. We went streaking through the quad, folks. You don't have the hair on top of your head, but you don't have no problem growing it on your ass. That's just wrong. That's wrong. wrong. I make myself laugh. I'm talking about him exposing himself to children,

and you're giving me a hard time about my hair line and other places. Oh, that's all I get through it. No, but really, 50 bucks, Gibbs. I know, that's ridiculous, man. Obviously, he didn't kill anybody, but it seems like a... Should be serious, right, to expose yourself to children? Children, yeah, we think they would, like, put them up for a couple nights at least. Maybe put them on a little list.

He's pretty quiet for a few years. In 85, he gets a job working as a mixer at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. Why does it sound wrong, but he's doing that. Well, and there's a lot of jokes that are going to be made about this after the fact because of what's going to come out that he did and his connection to this chocolate factory, you know, about what was in the chocolate. I've heard them all. Willie Winkah.

Willie Yankah? But he worked third shift. He worked like an 11 to 7 shift, worked six days a week. And it's during this time that he's approached by a man while Dommer sitting reading a book inside of the West Alice Public Library. Is this Maggie's library? Yes. This is the library that Maggie actually goes to.

She goes to help us with research. Yep. Okay, good. Reads her books, gets her books. Yeah, good. And the story goes that this man approached Jeffrey Dahmer, gave him a note offering him a BJ, but Dahmer didn't take him up on the offer. Why, I don't know, but he didn't.

He decided not to. Nah, I don't need no BJ today. I don't need that today. But what it did is I think it really started to bring back those creepy, twisted, sadistic thoughts that he had been having probably never really went away, right? I don't think you just stopped thinking about that type of stuff. He was probably more like, no, no BJ, but boy, I sure like to masturbate over your dead body. He might have been. Yeah. But all those thoughts about control, dominance. I don't know if this incident, you know, sparked it, but things really start to

take off. He starts cruising around Milwaukee. and specifically around the gay scene in Milwaukee. He's going to gay bars, bookstores, bathhouses. Now, how cool if the timing could align perfectly that he would have met her Baumeister at like a gay club? And the battle of the wits begin. Two serial killers matching wits? Yeah.

That'd be a good movie. Who would get who? Who would, you know. I put my money on Dahmer. Would you? Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I would. Although Herb was pretty, he was pretty cunning. Yeah. And some of the stuff that he did too. Be interesting. I don't know. Dommer was, I think he might be a little more sadistic. He's definitely, I think he's definitely more sadistic in his methods.

Yeah. Or worse, they team up together. That would have been bad. Write that script. But Dahmer also stole a male mannequin from a store. and it was said that he was using this mannequin to get off. Do what? To get off?

On a mannequin? Yeah. A piece of plastic? I don't know the logistics and the mechanics of it all. Okay. This is just how the story goes. Interesting. Maybe it was like that movie mannequin.

Yeah. Maybe it's like the Elaine mannequin in Seinfeld. That looked just like Elaine? Yeah. Strange. A mannequin. But his grandmother finds it in the closet and she calls him out on it.

And she said, this is creepy. What are you doing? And she throws it in the trash. Can she tell by residue what he was doing? Probably. Yeah. But if you think about it, Gibbs, this could have been like a really bad thing. Now, she would have no way to know it.

She probably threw away the one thing that was satisfying his twisted fantasies. Yeah. Because, you know, sitting here thinking about it now. know, mannequin, lifeless, took care of that. Can never leave. Can never leave. Yeah. He has complete dominance over this.

Now, it's inanimate, but he has complete dominance over. True, true. I don't want to blame the grandma, right? She had no idea what she was doing. She just found a creepy-ass mannequin in her closet and said, I'm throwing this in the trash. Yeah. I just didn't want her son masturbating in her house either.

He's masturbating. But after the fact, looking back on it, I mean, this really could have been like a trigger for him. He didn't have that. Right. So no more creepy sex doll mannequin. No. Now.

Back in my UPS days, I had this house that I would deliver to. You know, and this guy lived by himself. And he had probably a dozen mannequins in his house. And he would dress them. And then he would position them different every day because he would receive packages. all the time. And every time I went, they were always, they were all female. And you would knock on the door and you'd say, special delivery. Got a package for you, buddy. But it was really weird because he would actually position, move them around like they were part of the family. Yeah. It was like a

home alone thing? Did he have like one on a train that would pass by the window? No, wasn't that wasn't that allowed. Have you told this story before? I think I might have. I think you might have. Yeah. Yeah. We're probably getting emails. Like, Gibbs repeating his stories now. I experienced a lot of things when I was a UPS driver. You might have touched on it in the Herb Balmeister. Because remember Herb also used mannequins.

I think I did. And that's where it was. Still a good story. Yeah, excellent story. So he lost his sex doll slash mannequin. He starts going to the bathhouses again. This is 1985. You ever been to a bathhouse?

No, I have not. I just ask him. I don't even know what a bathhouse is. You just get in the bath with a bunch of men. I think a steam room and sauna. I've been in a sauna. Yeah. I don't think that's the same as a hot springs type of pool that you get in afterwards.

And you just don't have men being around, you know, hanging out manly, getting to steam. It doesn't seem manly to me. No. Maybe it's not. Maybe. You and I might have very different. I'm thinking like. Opinions.

I mean Keanu Reeves and that newer movie he's in. John Wick. Yeah. Remember when he goes for that Russian son. Yeah. Is that a bath house? Yeah. Yeah.

I don't know. Just probably not the way it was back in 85. These bath houses are definitely different. I think these are spots for gay men to, you know, interact with each other. And he's cruising these bath houses. He was having sex with men. And some of these men would live to talk about the fact that, you know, they experienced Jeffrey Dahmer. And some of the things that would come out is that he,

He would get very upset when they moved or even breathe too loudly. So he really wanted them to lay there and... Like a mannequin or like they were passed out. I mean, this is how sick and twisted it is where even in a, I guess what you would call a consensual situation, you know, he's expecting these people to... He really only likes it one way, I guess. I don't know how else to say it. No, I think you said it pretty clear, Mike. Yeah.

Now, he would come out later and describe it as he really did see people as objects that were to be used for his pleasure. He did not see him as people at all. And what Dahmer would start to do, you know, in these bathhouses, obviously it's full of men. He's meeting men. But he would start to lace their drive. drinks with sleeping pills. So that would cause them to pass out. And then he would take advantage of them.

And he did this a number of times. And after a whole bunch of these encounters, they finally figured out what he was doing. And he was barred from the bathhouse. But it was said, you know, it took him like 12 times to figure out what he was doing. That he was lacing the drinks of these men. He was raping them. It took 12 times for this to happen before. anybody figured it out. Must have been some pretty good sedatives. I'm guessing that they couldn't

remember that. Yeah, I mean, I don't think a couple of sleeping pills in a drink is going to do that, right? It's got to be a little stronger than that. Yeah. I don't know. But I mean, maybe not, you know, I mean, what's a, is a roofie is sleeping pill? I think it's a lot stronger than that because a lot of people that take roofies, they say that they don't. Oh, yeah, they don't remember anything. Yeah. I think sometimes. Now, I think it's, I think it's different. I mean, it's a sedative, but I think it's much, much stronger. Maybe I can find some. Then your normal sleeping pill.

Give you one during a podcast to see what happens. Do not roofie me in the middle of a podcast. It would be funny. The podcast will go downhill real quick. You're saying I couldn't carry it for the remainder of the show? Well, how are you going to explain it? I would describe that right now I'm taking a black sharpie and writing something on Mike's forehead.

Drawing something inappropriate? Yeah. But, you know, again, Giz, we don't know, you know, whether how many of these men reported it, maybe they were embarrassed. I just don't know. But it was said that it happened 12 times before they figured it out. I don't know how I'd feel about it. You know, I'd say that happened to me.

I'd kill somebody, you know. We know what you would do. Yeah. I just, yeah. But apparently not a single person called the police. All that happened was, you know, they said that he couldn't come back to the, you know, to the bathhouse. And after this happened, Dahmer's sitting around reading the paper.

and he sees a story about an upcoming funeral for an 18-year-old man who just died. So what does Dahmer do? He decides that he's going to steal the body. He's going to become a grave robber. He wants this body so that he can take it home with him, much like he did with the mannequin and use it for sexual gratification. There's the turning point. Not that.

Well, he's had a couple, but... Yeah, but this is like, to me... This is another one. This is like the big pivot. This is it. This is like... Pivot. Pivot.

Yeah. You've done some pretty bad shit. But this is like... He did murder people already. Yeah, but this is like... It seems like a big turning point. But this is really... This is...

He makes it sound like... Well, you're saying stealing a dead body. It's like, oh my gosh, he's going way down hill. Yeah, but this is like this is going to be his norm, you know? No, I. Okay, I get that point. Yeah. Yeah.

Well, he's graduated from the mannequin. He's graduated from that to... He went from plastic to the real deal. Stealing a dead body. Yeah. But he wasn't able to do it. You know, he tried to dig up the coffin. Apparently the ground was too hard.

So he gave up on that plan. And then in August of 86, he gets arrested again. And this time, he gets arrested for masturbating. in front of two 12-year-olds down by the river. I don't get it, man, but whatever. Well, no, you and I could never get that. It just doesn't, normal people don't get that because it's not normal. So he gets charged with indecent exposure again.

Was it another $50 fine? Well, he tries to get out of it by saying that, you know, he was peeing. He had no idea that there were kids around. Gave it one too many shakes. So I think they drop the indecent exposure and he only gets charged with disorderly conduct, slapped with one year probation and some counseling. A lot of good that did. Well, again, he's got to, you know, he already had a record.

It seemed like they could have went back and seen that, you know, he did expose himself to 25 people at the state fair. Yeah. So the odds are I'm not just staying here peeing. It's a habit. I'm exposing myself. Sure. But man, we are just.

getting started. I mean, we haven't even, it's barely the tip of the iceberg for this guy. Oh, yeah. You're just starting to dig in. Literally. Literally. Yeah, literally. Starting to dig in. Dig in. All right. So I think this is a good place to cut off for the first episode. I think so. Uh, Jeffredama. It's going to get much, much worse. It's already been bad, but it's going to get much worse in the second episode. You probably have to excuse my humor, because that's how I'm going to have to get through this. Well, yeah, I know.

That's kind of how we cope with it. Right. A lot of people do, right? I'll try to refrain, but it's going to be hard. We're going to need some lightning of the mood as it's going to get really dark. Yeah, it will. All right, Gibb, so we got some voicemails. Let's go through those.

Hello, Mike and Gibby. I just wanted to say I love your podcast. I'd love to hear this voicemail on. one of the upcoming episodes. My biggest thing is I'd love to hear a episode on the Green River Killer as I am from the state of Washington. I mean, a huge case, obviously, as you guys know, be a very good episode for you guys to do. Thanks again for all you do.

Listen to you guys all the time. Stay safe and keep your own time kicking. Thanks, guys. Take care. All right. So, you know, Grace, great voicemail. And you heard the voicemail. It's on this episode.

It's this one. Right now. Right now. The one you're listening to. So you just heard it. It's right. It's live, but record it. Hey, this is Amy from Virginia.

And I just wanted to tell you guys that I've never listened to a podcast before. And then I discovered true crime all the time. And it's like amazing. And I think that you guys are awesome and you have awesome chemistry. And I'm a social worker. So I send all this time on the road traveling to people's houses and you have made my commute, you know, the highlight of my day, really. Sometimes that I get a little edgy whenever I have just listened to this, you know,

rather disturbing true crime story and then I'm about to walk into a stranger's house and do some work. So that's a little scary. But other than that, I really, really love you guys and keep doing a great job and keep your own time picking. That's a great voicemail. What I like about it, I love to hear how people go about their day. They're listening to the podcast, what they're doing. Yeah, you know what I like about it is that they think we're actually two people? They don't realize that this is just one person doing two different voices.

Right. So I'm really good at impressions. Yeah. You've got this voice that you're doing right now called Gibby. And then I switch over and I do the one called, you know, Fergie. Yeah. You're kind of like that puppet master. that Jeff Donham.

But, you know, back to her voicemail, that's a tough job. That is a tough job. You know, social worker. And I never really thought about it, though, but, you know, you are going into kind of a lot of unknown situations. Oh, yeah. You don't know what you're going to... What you're going to encounter. No.

You know, a lot of people in... Could be bad situations, desperate situations. Yeah. Could be a buffold bill. Well, let's not... hope, let's hope not for her sake. She's got to stay safe and keep from time taking. Everything's good.

They're all loving people. She's going to be listening to this on her way to an appointment. Right before walking into. Get yourself, K-bar. I'm done for today. I'm taking the rest of the day off. Hey, Mike and Gibby. This is Drake Jackson.

I just signed up for your Patreon today. And I want to let you guys know that you're my favorite podcast of all. And I have one special request. My girlfriend is turning 25 this Saturday, the 9th, and I just wanted to send a message to her and say, Happy birthday, Winter. I love you. You guys are awesome. Thank you so much for your podcast.

Stay safe and keep your own time ticking. Thanks. Very cool from Drake. Yeah. I think he said what he wanted to say. He did. If Winter didn't pick that up, I don't know. We should say very, very happy birthday to winter.

Yeah, happy 25th. Man, wouldn't it be great to be 25 again? I'd love it, man. I'd make a good 25-year-old. I don't even know how to respond to that. It sounded weird. Everything about that just didn't sound right. Happy birthday winner.

Yeah, happy birthday. And thanks a lot, Drake, for your support, for the praise of the podcast. It means a lot. And, you know, everybody that... Love his clothing line. He liked Drake's clothing line. I like his music. But everybody that, you know, we get messages all.

the time, emails, Facebook messages, Twitter, DMs or whatever you call them. And when people tell us, because a lot of people don't want to call in, they don't want to share it, but they'll send it to us individually, it always makes us feel amazing when somebody says, you know, how much they love the show or it got them through this hard time or whatever it is. Yeah. It's just really cool. It makes us feel like we're doing something worthwhile that people like. You know, we're making a difference. Even when they say they fall asleep to us in their ear. I like that too.

Yeah. We're helping them sleep. I know. Finally. All right, Gibbs. Let's call this one. Episode one. Next time, part two.

Part de. Part de. Of the Jeffrey Dahmer saga. Yeah. This is going to get much, much worse. Definitely going to ramp up. All right. So another episode of true crime all the time.

Come back next week. Hear more about Jeffrey Dahmer. So for Mike and Gibby. Stay safe and keep your own time ticking.