Katie Ring (8:39)
Katherine Dahmer was a quiet, deeply religious woman who lived in West Alice, Wisconsin, a working class suburb in Milwaukee. Jeffrey grew up in a chaotic household with two parents that were not really present. But his grandmother Catherine, had always been a warmer, more stable presence in his life. So when Lionel asked her for help, she was happy to step up. And in late 1981, Jeffrey moved in. For a while, it looked like it might actually be working. Thanks to Jeffrey's military medic training, he was able to get a job drawing blood at the Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center. When he wasn't working, he helped his grandma with chores around the house. They watched TV together at night. And on the surface, he looked like a man quietly putting his life back together. But on August 8, 1982, Jeffrey was arrested again, this time for drunk and disorderly conduct at the Wisconsin State Fair. And with it came a new charge, indecent exposure. According to their arresting officer, Jeffrey had dropped his pants in front of approximately 25 people, including women and children. Whatever was driving that behavior, getting arrested seemed to jolt something in him. Jeffrey lost his job, but instead of turning to alcohol, Catherine got him hooked on religion. From the fall of 1982 through 1984, nothing especially notable happened. Then, in early 1985, Jeffrey was at the library when a stranger dropped a note in his lap asking to meet him in the bathroom for sex. Jeffrey didn't end up going, but the encounter ignited the same obsessive fantasizing he'd done as a teenager in his room, when he would picture the jogger who ran past his house. He wanted control. He wanted someone who couldn't say no, couldn't leave, couldn't have needs of their own. But he didn't want to kill anyone, not after what happened with Stephen Hicks. So he found what he thought was middle ground. He stole a mannequin from a local department store. For a while, that seemed to satisfy him. But mannequins aren't exactly easy to hide. And Jeffrey's grandma eventually found it and made him throw it away. Which meant that Jeffrey had to find another outlet for his fantasies. So he started going to bars and bath houses looking for anonymous encounters. Jeffrey liked the release, but he couldn't handle the reality of being with someone who had their own wants and needs or could abandon him. He needed that control, and he thought he knew how to get it. In June of 1986, Jeffrey visited a doctor and said he was having trouble sleeping after working his night shifts. To the doctor, it was a simple enough fix. He wrote Jeffrey a prescription for sleeping pills and sent him on his way. But Jeffrey had no intention of using them for himself. That night, he went to a bathhouse and convinced a young man to join him in a private room. Jeffrey made him a drink and slipped in a sleeping pill. Within the hour, the man was unconscious. Jeffrey got exactly what he wanted. A body he could be with without resistance, without the possibility of rejection or abandonment. And here's the thing. He was very intentional about who he went after. With all the stigma around the LGBTQ community, this wasn't the type of crime that would be seriously investigated. Not to mention, these types of encounters were purposefully anonymous. So just as Jeffrey planned, his victim didn't report the assault. And over the next few months, he drugged at least eight other men. But in the summer of 1986, he went a little too far and put someone into a coma for. For an entire week. The bathhouse couldn't turn a blind eye to that, so they finally banned him and told the police. But Jeffrey's instincts were unfortunately right. There wasn't a serious investigation, and all he had to do was move on to new hunting grounds. Instead of bath houses, Jeffrey started targeting bars and clubs, bringing men back to a room at the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee. Once he would get them to the room, it was the same routine. Make a drink, drop the pills in, and do what he wanted while they slept. He managed to do this at least six times throughout 1986 and 1987. Jeffrey was at his usual spot, Club 21 9, when he noticed a sandy haired young man at the bar. But he didn't make his move just yet. Jeffrey waited until closing time, then went up to him outside of the bar. His name was Steven tuomi. He was 26 years old, from a small town in Michigan, and worked as a cook at a local diner. This was one of Stephen's rare nights out. So when Jeffrey invited him back to the Ambassador Hotel, he was happy to say yes. Once they were there, Jeffrey ran his usual playbook. He mixed sleeping pills into Steven's drink. They spent some time together, and Steven drifted off. The next thing Jeffrey knew, it was morning. His head was pounding, and as he said, slowly came to. He realized he was lying on Top of Steven. There was blood coming from Steven's mouth. His chest had been savagely beaten and he wasn't moving. Jeffrey Dmer had killed again. According to him, he had no memory of doing it, although I think it's fair to be skeptical of that. Whether or not that's true, he had an immediate problem. There was a dead body in his hotel room. So he put up the do not disturb sign, headed out and bought the biggest wheeled suitcase he could find. Once he was back, Jeffrey crammed the body inside, then waited until the middle of the night to call a cab. But he couldn't exactly ask the driver to take him out into the middle of the woods. And Jeffrey didn't have a car to do it himself. So his only choice was to take the suitcase home to the house he shared with his 83 year old grandmother. When Jeffrey got back, Katherine was fast asleep, so she didn't hear him lug the suitcase inside and take it down to the cellar. His plan was to wait for a quiet evening, then dismember the body. But there was a big problem. In just a few days, the whole Dahmer family was coming over for Thanksgiving. So Jeffrey went about his life as normal. He ate with his family, went to his job at night, and smiled through it all. As he later put it, the week was anxiety ridden, but the suitcase held up and no one had any reason to go down to the cellar. So Thanksgiving went off without a hitch. That Sunday night, once Catherine was asleep, Jeffrey went down to the cellar and spent two hours dismembering Steven's body. He then split the remains into several garbage bags, which went out with the trash first thing that Monday morning. But he did keep one. The head. He wasn't ready to let go of it yet, so he tried to boil it in bleach and a detergent called Soylex so he could preserve the skull. He'd done something similar after killing Stephen Hicks, but this time felt different. This time, Jeffrey didn't feel any guilt over it at all. He was done fighting. The dark urges had won. And now that he'd stopped trying to suppress them, he wanted more. Drugging men and letting them leave in the morning wasn't going to be enough anymore. He needed to have them permanently. And if killing them was what that took, then that was what he'd have to do. Around the night of January 17, 1988, less than two months after killing Stephen Tuomi, Jeffrey Dahmer spotted 14 year old James Doxtetor at a Milwaukee bus stop and offered him $50 to spend the night. According to Jeffrey, he had no idea James was just a kid. But based on everything we know about him, it's hard to believe it would have changed anything even if he had known how old James was. After luring James in, the two of them took a bus to Catherine's house. Jeffrey brought him into the living room first, then after about an hour suggested they move to the basement. Probably because he was afraid Catherine might wake up. They spent another hour or two together. Then around 4am James said he needed to head home soon. We don't know if Jeffrey had already decided what he was going to do or if it was James saying he wanted to leave that triggered it. Either way, the moment someone said they were leaving, something switched in Jeffrey. He convinced James to have one more drink and mixed in the sleeping pills. About half an hour later, James was unconscious in Jeffrey's arms. Jeffrey cuddled him for a few minutes. Then he laid James on the floor and strangled him to death. And when he was done, he went upstairs and had breakfast with his grandmother. This was a Sunday morning, so after Catherine left for church, Jeffrey went back down to the basement. He brought James body up to his room and spent the rest of the morning with it. Before Catherine got back, he put the body back in the basement. He figured he'd do what he always wait for the right moment to dispose of the remains. But that moment didn't come for a while and Catherine started to notice a foul smell in the house. Jeffrey told her it was the cat's litter box and promised to clean it up. And she didn't question it. By the following Monday morning, the cat litter had gone out with the trash. Catherine had no way of knowing that while she'd been at church the day before, Jeffrey had spent his morning dismembering James Doxtator's body and boiling his skull. He was getting good at this and he had no intention of stopping. A couple of Months later, on March 27, 1988, Jeffrey killed again 23 year old Richard Guerrero. He used the same method, same house, but this time Jeffrey got rid of the body right away. Rather than waiting again, he kept only the skull, boiled it in Soylex and almost immediately he went looking for his next victim. The following weekend, back at Club 219, Jeffrey started chatting with 25 year old Ronald Flowers. Ronald's car had broken down and Jeffrey offered to help. He said that he could take a cab back to his house and use Jeffrey's car to give Ronald a jump. But of course, that wasn't Jeffrey's plan at all. But this time the night wasn't going to go the way he expected. When they walked through the front door, Katherine was still awake. In another room, Jeffrey called out that it was him and that he was going to make a coffee and said nothing about his guest. Ronald could already sense something was off. Jeffrey had been acting weird the whole cab ride over and Ronald hadn't seen a car in the driveway when they arrived. But at this point he was stuck. So he let Jeffrey make him a cup of coffee. The last thing he remembered was taking a sip of the coffee and trying to figure out how to leave. Two days later, Ronald woke up in a hospital bed. Doctors told him that someone had found him unconscious in a field and called an ambulance. There were bruises around his neck, but no drugs in his system and no sign of sexual assault. When he got dressed, though, he noticed his underwear had been turned inside out and there was blonde hair on his clothes. And while he didn't remember how he ended up in that field, he definitely remembered taking that cab back with Jeffrey Dahmer. Ronald went straight to the police and they brought Jeffrey in for questioning. He swore he didn't hurt Ronald and his grandmother backed him up. Catherine said she'd seen Jeffrey walk Ronald out of the house that morning. Again, it's impossible to say whether that was really true or not, but the police took their word for it and Jeffrey walked. Maybe it's true. Maybe Jeffrey started attacking Ronald but heard his grandma come down and didn't want her to discover what he was really doing. So he tried to make it look like he was just helping Ronald to get home safely. And that's what Catherine actually saw. But whatever really happened that night, she wasn't going to let it happen again under her roof. So Catherine asked Jeffrey to move out. At the very least, she knew he was bringing strangers home in the middle of the night. And she was done with it. So In June of 1988, Jeffrey, who is now 28, moved into a small apartment in downtown Milwaukee. For the first time in seven years, he was back on his own. He laid low through the summer, but by fall he couldn't hold it together together anymore. On the afternoon of September 26, 1988, Jeffrey approached a 13 year old boy walking home from school. His name was Somsack, sent the Somphone. Jeffrey told him he just bought a new camera and offered him $50 to model for an hour. Somsack was rightfully suspicious, but he couldn't turn down the money. For a while, everything seemed normal enough. They chatted, Jeffrey took a few pictures. But then he fixed him a coffee and everything shifted. After Somsack drank the coffee, Jeffrey tried to get him to take his pants off. When the boy hesitated, Jeffrey grabbed him. But thankfully, Somsack wrenched himself free and ran out of the apartment. He'd gotten out before the sleeping pills in the coffee could fully kick in. But by the time he got home, he was barely able to stand. His dad immediately knew something was wrong and took him to the hospital and they confirmed there were drugs in his system. Once Somsack recovered, he told the police everything. This time, Jeffrey couldn't talk his way out of it. The police tracked him to his workplace and arrested him on the spot, charging him with second degree sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. While Jeffrey sat in jail, police searched his apartment. They found the sleeping pills and the Polaroids he'd taken of Somsack. But. But in an almost unbelievable stroke of luck for Jeffrey, they didn't find the skull of his most recent victim, which was hidden in a drawer they didn't open. Jeffrey didn't want to push things after that, so In January of 1989, he pleaded no contest to the charges. The judge let him remain free while he waited for his sentencing hearing in May. You'd think facing criminal charges, Jeffrey would go quiet and stand out of trouble, and he did try. But two months later, on March 25, 1989, he couldn't hold it in anymore. Jeffrey ended up at a gay bar near Club 219 and for once, someone approached him. 24 year old Anthony Sears came up to him outside and asked if he had any cocaine. They started talking and Anthony agreed to go home with Jeffrey, who'd moved back in with Katherine after his arrest. Around 3am, a friend of Anthony's dropped them off at Catherine's house. This time she stayed asleep when Jeffrey came through the door and took Anthony up to his room. After a while, Jeffrey asked how long Anthony planned to stay. Had Anthony known what the question really meant, he'd have told Jeffrey he could stay as long as he wanted. But instead he said this was probably a one time thing and he'd need to head out soon. Jeffrey nodded, offered to make him a coffee and said he'd be right back. Thirty minutes later, Anthony was unconscious and Jeffrey strangled him to death. The next morning, Jeffrey sat down for his usual Sunday breakfast with Catherine. Once she left for church, he had sex with Anthony's body. Then dismembered it, keeping the head and the genitals. Later, Jeffrey called a taxidermist asking about the best way to preserve an animal. Following the advice he got, he bought a 10 gallon bucket, filled it with acetone, sealed his mementos inside, and left them for a week until they were perfectly preserved. His urges were satisfied for the moment and on May 23, 1989, Jeffrey appeared for his sentencing. Multiple psychologists had examined him by this point and they all reached essentially the same conclusion. Jeffrey Dahmer was a danger to society and was highly likely to reoffend. However, the judge was swayed by Jeffrey's promise that this time he would turn his life around. So he sentenced Jeffrey to one year in a minimum security county correctional facility with work release. With good behavior, Jeffrey was released two months early, on March 20, 1990. He had no intention of turning anything around and his killing spree was just getting started. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts, so make sure to comment below. I think the biggest takeaway from this episode is that the system failed repeatedly and people paid for it with their lives. Personally, the Dahmer case stands as one of the most troubling examples of law enforcement failure in American criminal history. First, the officer who pulled him over in 1978 with a dead body in the backseat. What kind of cop pulls someone over at 3am, sees trash bags in the backseat, smells a foul smell and just takes him at his word that he is throwing away trash at 3am? No sir. Then we have Ronald Flowers who reported Jeffrey. He said he was drugged, had bruises around his neck and was left in a field. Then next we have the bathhouse owner who banned Jeffrey and notified police after he put someone in a coma and once again they did nothing. Then we have the judge who only gave him a year in a minimum security facility with work release after multiple psychologists said that he would definitely reoffend. At every single one of these moments, someone had a chance to pull a thread and to catch this man, but no one did anything. And I think we also can't ignore the fact that racial bias and homophobia played significant roles in this case because the majority of his victims were men of color and were also gay. And the convergence of racism, institutional negligence and stigma allowed Dahmer to kill far longer than he should have. And every part of this case was a complete failure on behalf of the police and the justice system. There was a clear escalation from fantasy to violence in this case. Why does that connection matter? I think it's a very important question. I mean, Dahmer described developing dark fantasies from a very young age, beginning with the disturbing fascination with animal dissection in childhood and the bones and feeling them through the skin. Weird. But as he entered adolescence, one of the things that I believe escalated his behavior that isn't talked about as often as it should be is pornography consumption. And psychologists have argued that for someone already struggling with deep isolation and emerging sadistic impulses, early exposure to extreme pornography likely accelerates and shapes pathology rather than creating it outright. So, in short, exposure to porn won't make someone a serial killer. But for someone who is having those impulses, it can be a way to explore those fantasies. And many times it leads to escalation in real life. And I don't think this is talked about enough. But also for Dahmer, fantasy acted as a rehearsal rather than a release. So each imagined scenario deepened his compulsion. And by the time Dahmer committed his first murder at 18, he had been fantasizing about killing people for years. And by his own account, he said that the act felt anti climatic compared to those fantasies, which became a pattern that drove him to keep killing in pursuit of something that really could never fully satisfy or deliver those fantasies. And when they didn't deliver, he tried to find substitutes, like alcohol, mannequin, anonymous encounters, and drugging men at bathhouses. But also again with those. Each time, the substitute stopped being enough and he had to take it one step further. So the mannequin wasn't real enough. Drugging men and letting them leave was too temporary. And killing them and keeping the skull wasn't enough. So soon he was preserving body parts in a bucket in his closet. And the thing about escalation like this is that it almost never reverses on its own. And we have more understanding of that now. But back then, it wasn't as understood. Ronald Flowers was the one who got away. Can you talk a bit about what happened when he reported it? This one makes me so mad. And I can't even imagine how angry Ronald Flowers must have felt in this scenario. Because he did everything people expect of a perfect victim. There's no perfect victim. But if there was, he did everything. He survived what Jeffrey did to him. He escaped. He went to the police. He told them exactly what happened. He gave them everything he had, and the police took his statement. But then they talked to Jeffrey, heard Catherine's alibi, and closed the case without any further investigation. They completely dismissed him, despite being drugged, having Bruises around his neck, his underwear being turned inside out, and that there was a blonde hair on him that matched Jeffrey's. So, yeah, I just can't imagine being Ronald Flowers and knowing what had happened to you, knowing who did it, telling the authorities and watching them do nothing, and then find out three years later that he had kept killing all of these other victims. And the entire time, if the police actually did their job, then all these victims would have been saved. There's also the Somsack case. What does that sentencing tell us about how we value victims? The process between the police and the justice system was so incredibly frustrating. And I know I keep on saying that, but I have to drill it in because it is actually insane. And there are a lot of aspects to this. When Jeffrey was finally convicted for what he did to Somsack, the judge had an opportunity to actually serve justice. Like multiple mental health professionals had evaluated Jeffrey and concluded that he would absolutely reoffend if he was let go. Like it wasn't speculation. That was professional consensus. And the judge sentenced him to just a year in a minimum security facility with work release. One year, and that he only ended up doing 10 months. Addressing the victim part of that question, I think it's impossible to look at the sentence without also looking at who the victim was, because Somsack was the son of Laotian immigrants. He was a child of color in the late 1980s in Milwaukee. And the disparities in how the justice system has historically treated victims based on race and immigration status are real and well documented. And we can't know for certain that it was a factor in this specific sentencing. But we also can't pretend like the pattern doesn't and didn't exist back then. Do you think Jeffrey's drinking was a cause, a cover, or both? I think it was a mix of both. I mean, since high school, he was almost never, never sober. And from his teenage years through his arrest in 1991, alcohol was definitely a constant. And early on, I think it functioned more as a kind of escape. He was already isolated, already struggling internally, and alcohol helped numb that, as well as his urges and fantasies. I think it also lowered his inhibition, blurred boundaries, and made it easier for thoughts and impulses to go kind of unchecked. But over time, it also became a mix of both liquid courage and a cover on one end. It allowed him to lower his inhibitions and move through the world unnoticed. It helped explain some of his odd behaviors, helped him avoid confronting what was developing internally, and created kind of a fog, both for himself. And for the people around him and allowed him to get away with kind of this weird behavior that he was displaying. I think it also probably helped him compartmentalize afterwards to be able to go up and sit with his grandmother in the morning and eat breakfast with her after brutally murdering someone and just acting completely normal. So overall, I don't think it created the underlying patterns he displayed, but instead amplified them and then helped him later on then hide them. Thanks so much for joining me. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on Jeffrey Dahmer. If you haven't already, please subscribe to my YouTube channel at America's most infamous crimes. Thank you for supporting the show. I'm Kiana, and I leveled up my business with Shopify. Once I figured out that Shopify was a thing, I never turned back. I can create a site with my eyes closed. Shopify thinks ahead of us, you know, and it thinks about the customer more than anything. Every day I'm thinking about some other new business, but Shopify is doing it to me because it's so easy to use. It's like, I can't stop. I'm addicted.
