← America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Man Who Escaped & Ended His Killing Spree Pt. 3
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Katie Ring
This is Crime House. When police finally entered Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, they found something so horrifying, it changed America's understanding of evil. This wasn't just the end of a serial killer spree. It was the exposure of a nightmare hiding in plain sight, one built on missed warnings, catastrophic failures, and discoveries so gruesome they stunned the entire world. Today, I'll break down the last weeks of Jeffrey Dahmer's murders, the apartment search that changed everything, and the arrests that brought one of the country's darkest chapters to an end. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of physical and sexual assault and murder, so please listen with care. This is our final episode on Jeffrey Dahmer, maybe the most infamous serial killer in modern history. Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer murdered at least 17 people. Today I'll take you through the end of his horrific killing spree, how the authorities finally caught onto him, the gruesome discoveries in his apartment, and why the name Dahmer still sends chills down our spines to this day. I promised I'd report back on my linen quince comforter, and the consensus is that it not only looks amazing, but it's also super soft, especially after a few washes. One of my main goals this year is replacing everything I own that is polyester with natural fabrics, from my bedding to my wardrobe. My my skin is extremely sensitive and Quint has high quality pieces that are not only soft on my skin but are also stylish. The price is also unmatched for the quality. Replacing so many items in your wardrobe with natural fabrics can be pricey, especially when you want all of the pieces to look elevated. Quince offers it all High quality clothing and fabrics that are soft on my skin look high end and don't break the bank. Refresh your everyday with luxury you'll actually use. Head to quint.cominfamouscrimes for free shipping on your order and 365 day returns. Now available in Canada too. That's Q-U I N C E.cominfamouscrimes for free shipping and 365 day returns. Quints.cominfamous crimes just got a new puppy or kitten.
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Katie Ring
In March of 1990, 29 year old Jeffrey Dahmer walked out of a county house of Corrections in Wisconsin after serving 10 months on a child assault conviction. Multiple psychologists had told the judge that Jeffrey would reoffend, but he was let out early anyway and he was about to prove his doctors right. He couldn't go back to the way things were though. Moving back in with his grandma was out of the question. So after a couple of months of looking, Jeffrey found an apartment in a low income neighborhood in downtown Milwaukee. He figured the police there would be too busy to pay much attention to him. And he was right. His building was the kind of place where people kept to themselves so Jeffrey could come and go at all hours of the night without raising an eyebrow. And he didn't waste any time seeking out his next victim. Less than a week after Moving in on May 20, 1990, he was at his usual haunt, Club 219, when he started talking to 32 year old Raymond Smith, who had a reputation for engaging in sex work. Raymond agreed to come back to Jeffrey's apartment for $50, but when he got there he made it clear this wasn't an all night thing. And as we saw again and again, the moment someone said they were leaving, something switched in Jeffrey. He reverted to his usual movie, offered to fix Raymond a drink, spiked it with sleeping pills, and within an hour Raymond had passed out and Jeffrey had murdered him. When he was living with his grandma, Jeffrey would get rid of his evidence in his grandma's basement, but that wasn't an option anymore. But this wasn't Too big of a deal for Jeffrey. Because now that he didn't have to worry about hiding what he'd done, he was ready to push the boundaries of his obsessions even further. Jeffrey had been fascinated with bodies his whole life. He'd cuddle dead bodies, preserve skulls, and keep her manes in buckets. But even then, he could only keep his trophies around for so long. He needed something that would last longer. Something more permanent. Something that would never leave him. When Jeffrey first moved into the apartment, he'd bought a long black table and placed it in the living room. In his mind, it was going to serve as a kind of altar to his victims. A way to remember them. He laid Raymond's body out on a table and arranged it in different poses, photographing each one with his Polaroid camera. Looking at those pictures gave him the feeling he'd been chasing for years. Total control with no possibility of rejection or abandonment. But while the pictures would stay with Jeffrey forever, the bodies wouldn't. He had to deal with the remains. And now, instead of just worrying about his grandma, he had to work around a crowded apartment building. Even though his neighbors minded their own business, carrying out trash bags of human remains was still extremely risky. So Jeffrey bought an 80 gallon pot, boiled the body in Soylex cleaning solution until just the bones were left, then dissolved those in a barrel of acid. After about a week, all that remained was a thick black sludge that was flushed down the toilet. As usual, Jeffrey held onto the skull and the process worked. None of his neighbors came knocking, and the police didn't come around looking for Raymond. Jeffrey had gotten away with another murder, and he was ready to keep going. A month later, he lured another man named Eddie Smith back from a bar called the Phoenix Club. Jeffrey used the same method as usual to kill him, then conducted his ritual again. The altar, the photographs, and the acid. It was starting to become a system. Jeffrey had now killed seven people and had gotten away clean every time. But when he went out looking for his next victim, something happened that genuinely surprised him. On the night of July 6, 1990, Jeffrey spotted a 15 year old named Luis Pinet at the Phoenix Bar and recognized him as a busboy from Club 219. He offered Luis money to come home with him, and he said yes. Everything pointed towards this night, ending the way every other one had. But it didn't. As the night wound down, Luis didn't try and leave. He just fell asleep in Jeffrey's arms. No sleeping pills or manipulation. And in that moment, for reasons we'll never fully Understand? Jeffrey decided not to kill him. Louis Pinay walked out of the apartment alive. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but for me, it has to come down to his severe abandonment issues and his need for control. But whatever flicker of restraint he had that night, it didn't last long. In September of 1990, Jeffrey killed his next victim, Ernest Miller. This time, he took his ritual to another level. After dismembering the body in a bathtub, Jeffrey tried eating some of the remains. Yep, this is around the time he descended into cannibalism. And less than a week later, when he killed David Thomas on September 24, he added yet another sickening element to his ritual. He spent two hours killing, carefully removing the skin from David's body. Something about that must have satisfied him, because Jeffrey went quiet after that. He didn't kill anyone from October 1990 through February of 1991. But then on February 17, he killed Curtis Stratter. And after that, the pace accelerated, killing Errol Lindsay in April and Tony Hughes in May. By this point, Jeffrey had stopped even pretending to be careful. The smell coming from his apartment was also impossible to ignore. His building manager even knocked on his door a few times, wanting to know what the heck was going on in there. But Jeffrey had a different excuse every time. Spoiled meat or a dead fish in his aquarium. And somehow, it kept working. Even with all of that heat on him, Jeffrey never thought about stopping. If anything, the near misses seemed to push him even further. He was fixated on a new idea, something that went beyond preserving skulls, taking photographs, or even eating human flesh. He wanted a living person he could control completely. Basically a servant who could never leave. And he was willing to go to disturbing lengths to accomplish this goal. DraftKings casino is changing the game with Flex spins. New players play $5 and get 1500 Flex spins 50 a day for 30 days. Then you choose how to play across your favorite games, like Huff and More, Puff, Cash, Eruption, and more. Download the app now and sign up with code infamous to claim 1500 Flex spins on your choice of slots. The crown is yours. In partnership with DraftKings Casino Gambling Problem. Call 1-800-GAMBLER in Connecticut. Help is available for problem gambling. Call 888-789-7777 or. 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Serial Killers and Murderous Minds Advertiser
House Original Podcast Serial Killers and Murderous Minds, we're diving into the psychology of the world's most complex murder cases.
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Katie Ring
From serial killers to cult leaders, deadly exes and spree killers, we're examining not just how they killed, but why.
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Serial Killers and Murderous Minds Advertiser
Is it uncontrollable rage? Overwhelming fear? Or is it something deeper? Serial Killers and Murderous Minds is a Crime House Studios Original new episodes drop every Monday and Thursday. Follow wherever you get your podcasts.
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Katie Ring
There's never been a better time to get outside and experience the benefits of nature, discover nearby trails and explore the outdoors. With all trails, download the free app today and find your outside on May 27, 1991, Jeffrey was out for lunch at a mall when he spotted a 14 year old boy named Konerak Synthasomphone. Jeffrey didn't know it, but Konerak was the younger brother of Somsack sent the Somphone, the boy Jeffrey had drugged and assaulted three years earlier. Just like he'd done before, Jeffrey offered Konerak money in exchange for photographs, and just like Somsack, Konerak took him up on it. Once Konerak was unconscious in his apartment, Jeffrey put his twisted plan into action. He got out a drill and made a hole in the top of Konerak's skull. Then, if that wasn't sick enough, he took a syringe filled with acid and injected it directly into Konerak's brain. Jeffrey's intention was to damage his brain enough to make Konerak completely compliant, a kind of living, breathing trophy who could, couldn't resist or run. Once the experiment was done, Jeffrey headed out to a nearby bar for a couple of beers while he waited to see what would happen. But while Jeffrey was out, something surprising happened. Konerak regained enough consciousness to stagger out of the apartment and onto the street, naked, bruised and barely coherent. Three women found him stumbling down the road and stopped to help. They couldn't understand what he was saying, and because his hair was covering the drill wound, they assumed he was on drugs. But they could see he was in serious distress, so they stayed with him. Jeffrey spotted the commotion on his way back and calmly walked over to the women and told them that Konerak was his boyfriend and that he just had too much to drink and he'd take care of him. He grabbed Konerak and started steering him back towards the apartment, but the women were not having it and one of them called the police. Two officers arrived within minutes, and once they were on scene, they separated Konerak from Jeffrey, wrapped him in a blanket, sat him on the hood of their car, and tried to figure out what was going on. What happened next is one of the most catastrophic failures of judgment in this entire case. Instead of being arrested on the spot, Jeffrey started talking. He told the officers that Konerak was actually a 19 year old man named John Maug and that they lived together. He said that John had just had too many drinks and that he'd get him to bed safely. The three women who called the police pleaded with the officers not to believe him. They could see something was deeply wrong here. The officers were a bit skeptical too, but they took Jeffrey's side and escorted him and Konerak back to the apartment. Inside, the apartment had a weird smell, but the living room was nice and clean. There wasn't any sign of struggle because Konerak had been attacked while he was already unconscious. And Konerak was a lot calmer now, probably because of the hole in his skull and the acid in his brain. So the officers didn't even really question Jeffrey or bother to really look around. They were barely there for five minutes before they left. The women who had helped Konerak were still outside. They watched the officers walk away and couldn't believe what they'd just seen. One of them called 911 again, but the dispatcher told her it was just a domestic issue and the officers had it handled. After the police left Jeffrey's apartment, he injected a second syringe into Konerak's brain. His body couldn't handle it, and less than an hour later, he was dead. Something about the experience sent Jeffrey into overdrive. Maybe it was the adrenaline from the close call with the police. Maybe it was that he thought he could figure out how to make this horrible experiment work. Whatever it was, he started killing with even more frequency and even less caution. After Conorack, Jeffrey killed three more victims in the space of less than three weeks. Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, and Oliver Lacey on July 12. He was fired from his job at the chocolate factory on July 19th because he wasn't even showing up to work, which meant he was running out of money. It wasn't going to be easy making rent, but none of that mattered to Jeffrey. He wasn't even trying to get rid of his victim's remains by now. Although, let's be honest, he wasn't really trying all that hard in the first place, but things were reaching a completely new level. All he cared about was his so called experiments. One time he tried boiling water instead of acid with his victim, Jeremiah Weinberger. Like with Konerak, Jeremiah survived the first round of it but didn't make it after the second. However, that didn't stop Jeffrey from his twisted mission and on the afternoon of July 2, 1991, he went back to the Grand Avenue Mall, the same place he'd found Conorac, and started looking for his next victim. After approaching a few men who turned him down, he found someone willing to come back to his apartment with him. A 32 year old man named Tracy Edwards. The moment Tracy stepped inside, he knew something was wrong. The smell hit him immediately and he saw jugs of myriadic AC acid on the floor, but Jeffrey said they were for cleaning bricks. For obvious reasons, Tracy was skeptical. But before he could get out of there, Jeffrey snapped a handcuff onto his wrist, although he only managed to get one cuff on before Tracy yanked his arm away. Still, Jeffrey was blocking Tracy's way out and his mask was now fully off. He pulled out a knife and told Tracy that he wanted to eat his heart. Then he told him to lie on his stomach and get fully cuffed. Tracy wasn't about to let that happen though, so to buy himself some time, he took his shirt off, which seemed to satisfy Jeffrey for the moment. He zoned out, drifting into a strange, repetitive chant, and stopped paying much attention to Tracy. The moment his back was turned, Tracy swung at him as hard as he could. And then he ran.
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Katie Ring
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Katie Ring
on the night of July 22, 1999, officers Rolf Mueller and Robert Routh were on patrol when they spotted a man running down the street with a handcuff dangling from one of his wrists. Even for cops who'd seen a lot, it was worth pulling over for. That man was Tracy Edwards. He told Mueller and Roth that a freak had put the cuff on him and begged them to take it off. The officers tried their own keys, but they didn't match. So the three of them decided to head back to Jeffrey's apartment and make him take it off himself. Tracy hadn't seen the bodies in there, so the officers had no idea what they were walking into. As far as they knew, this wasn't anything more than a domestic dispute involving some questionable fetishes. And when they got there, Jeffrey let them in without a fight. The living room looked almost normal, and nothing seemed out of place aside from the nauseating smell. There was a big armchair and a potted plant in the corner. The only thing that jumped out at them was a framed photograph of a naked man on the wall. But finally, for once, the officers didn't just write it off and leave. They told Jeffrey to get the handcuff key, and Jeffrey made a huge mistake. He said that it was in his bedroom, and for some reason, he said Officer Mueller could go grab it himself. By that time, he realized his mistake and tried to go instead, but it was too late. Routh held him back. As Mueller carefully opened the bedroom door, the first thing he saw was a huge knife sticking out from under the bed. The second thing was a dresser drawer that was open and stuffed with Polaroids. Mueller pulled a few out and looked at them, and what he saw would be seared in his brain forever. Chopped limbs, severed heads, and bodies in various stages of decomposition, all taken in the apartment he was standing in. He grabbed a few of them and walked back to the living room. The moment Jeffrey saw what Mueller was holding, he lunged for the door. Officer Routh grabbed him before he could get out, and the officers managed to get him onto the ground. They called for backup, and Jeffrey was officially placed under arrest. When the third officer arrived on scene, Tracy told them that he'd thought he'd seen something. When Jeffrey opened the fridge to grab a beer, one of them went to check and found a cardboard box containing a human head. Jeffrey was hauled down to the police station, and within the hour, his apartment was crawling with investigators. What they found there has become one of the most chilling crime scene inventories in the history of American law enforcement. In the hallway closet, there was a giant cooking pot containing dismembered hands and a penis. There were Two skulls on the shelf above it. There were also jars of formaldehyde holding preserved genitalia. The 57 gallon drum of acid was in the bedroom, although investigators didn't open it then and there. And in a filing cabinet, they found a complete human skeleton, three more skulls, a dried skin, scalp, and additional preserved remains. Finally, in the freezer, there were two bags of human hearts, a bag of unidentified muscle tissue, a separate chest freezer packed with three heads, a whole torso, bags of internal organs and pieces of flesh frozen to the bottom. And in a disgustingly ironic contradiction to all this death and decay, the living room had one more thing. A beautiful aquarium full of healthy, thriving fish. While all of this was being cataloged at the apartment, Jeffrey was sitting across from Detective Patrick Kennedy at the police station. The interrogation started at 1:30 in the morning and ran for nearly six hours. Detective Kennedy didn't have to push. From the moment they sat down, Jeffrey started talking without any prompting. He confessed to killing 16 people in Milwaukee over the past four years and one more in Ohio in 1978, and he didn't spare any details. Kennedy could barely believe what he was hearing. But when he emerged from that interrogation room after sunrise, his colleagues confirmed every word of it. Over the following weeks, Jeffrey cooperated fully. Investigators showed him hundreds of photographs of people who had gone missing over the years, and Jeffrey identified every single one of his victims. When they asked him why he was being so forthcoming, Jeffrey said, because I created this horror, and it only makes sense that I do everything to put an end to it. A complete end to it. I'd love to hear your thoughts on this, but for me, it's a striking statement from someone who, by all accounts, showed little sign of guilt or remorse throughout his crimes. But perhaps that same detachment explains his cooperation, not as an act of conscience, but an act of control. I also think by this point, he knew that the game was completely over with all of the evidence they had. For someone so methodical, confessing on his own terms may have also been its own form of power. In any case, on August 22, 1991, about a month after he was arrested, the state of Wisconsin charged Jeffrey Dahmer with the murders of 15 people. The only two he wasn't charged with in Wisconsin were his first two murders. Stephen Tuomi, because Jeffrey claimed he didn't remember the actual killing and there was no physical evidence left. And Steven Hicks, because that crime took place in Ohio, although he would eventually be charged and convicted for it there, despite freely confessing to everything, Jeffrey pleaded not guilty. At first. But as the trial date approached, he changed course and pleaded guilty under the reason of insanity. So when the trial started on January 27, 1992, the question at hand wasn't whether Jeffrey had killed his victims, but whether he was legally sane when he did it. Over three weeks, the jury and everyone in the courtroom heard about everything he had done in excruciating detail. In a darkly ironic twist, closing arguments were held on Valentine's Day. It only took five hours for the jury to make a decision. Jeffrey was found to be sane for all 15 counts of murder, which meant legally, he could face the maximum criminal punishments for his victims families. It was as close to justice as they were ever going to get. Nothing could bring their loved ones back, but at least there was an answer and there would be accountability. Dahmer's own family, however, was still trying to grapple with the reality. When Lionel Dahmer learned the truth about his son, he was genuinely stunned. He'd known Jeffrey was troubled, to say the least, but he'd never imagined anything like this. He later acknowledged that his failures as a father may have played some role in what Jeffrey became. And even though he could never forgive what Jeffrey had done, he chose to stay in his son's life. Meanwhile, Jeffrey's mother, Joyce, had been estranged from him for years by the time he was arrested. But like Lionel, she felt the weight of some responsibility for what Jeffrey had become. She didn't have the same level of involvement as Lionel, but she did speak to her son on the phone about once a week after he went to prison. As for his grandmother, Catherine, she had severe dementia. By the time of the trial, she never fully understood what happened in her home, and she passed away shortly after the jury made their verdict. Finally, Jeffrey's little brother David refused to attend any court proceedings. According to Lionel, he eventually changed his name entirely to distance himself from the darkness of the Dahmer legacy. When it came to Jeffrey's punishment, Wisconsin didn't have the death penalty. So the judge sentenced Jeffrey Dahmer to 15 consecutive life sentences in prison. But he served less than three years of it, because on November 28, 1994, Jeffrey was on cleaning duty at the Columbia Correctional Institution when he and another inmate were beaten to death by a fellow prisoner named Christopher Scarver. When asked why he did it, Scarver, who had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, said that God had told him to. With that, Jeffrey dahmer was gone. 17 lives were taken. 17 families were changed forever, and a laundry list of complete failures by the police and the justice system that could have stopped him for over a decade. And I think there's a reason his crimes are so haunting. When we think about serial killers, sometimes the scariest thing beyond the violence is the why of it, their twisted reasoning for doing what they did. But what makes Jeffrey Dahmer especially terrifying is the lack of why. Yes, he was terrified of people leaving him, but at the center of it all there was just this void, an emptiness, something beyond our understanding. Maybe that's why it took so long to catch him. Nobody can really grapple with the monster that Jeffrey Dahmer became. But for the sake of his victims, we need to try. Because in the face of that kind of darkness, we need to be the ones who bring the light. 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.
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Crime House Community Member
The Konerak sent the Somphone incident is the part of this story that I personally can't stop thinking about.
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Katie Ring
The stupidity and carelessness of the officers in this case is incomprehensible to me and actually fills me with rage. I genuinely believe it's one of the most catastrophic policing failures in almost any case that I've covered. Because this was a 14 year old boy stumbling alone on a public street in the middle of the night. He was naked, bruised, unable to communicate and barely able to stand. The women who called said that they thought he looked like he was 11 or 12 and were begging the police to not believe Dahmer when he said that he was 19. But despite him obviously looking younger, they didn't even ask for his ID to verify, they just completely took Dahmer's word for it. And even if they were in a relationship, he couldn't even speak or walk and had bruises all over him. At the very least, this was a domestic violence situation and this kid needed some kind of care. But they didn't even have the medics check him out. They waved off the ambulance that was already there once they sided with Dahmer. But instead the cops physically carried him into the house for Dahmer and didn't even search the house because as Dahmer would later say, if they had just gone into his bedroom, they would have seen his last victim. And despite all of this, the women called 911 again because they aren't satisfied and the police brush him off again. Not only brush him off, they threaten to arrest them. On top of this, apparently the officers wrote down in the report that this was A domestic squabble between homosexuals. And there were also recordings of them making homophobic jokes about reuniting lovers. It makes me sick to my stomach. And honestly, I think those officers should have been charged with negligence, because even if it was a domestic dispute, the kid couldn't even speak and had bruises and needed medical attention. The two officers were fired, but then they were reinstated a few years later with back pay. And one of them even went on to be elected president of the Milwaukee Police association in May of 2005. In my opinion, these officers have the blood of Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacey, and Joseph Bradhoff on their hands because all four of them were killed after Conrack. All four of them might be alive today if they had actually done their jobs.
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Crime House Community Member
Let's go back to Jeffrey's confession for a second here. Do you think he wanted to get caught?
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Katie Ring
I don't think Dahmer necessarily wanted to get caught. I think it was more so that his compulsions were getting so out of control that. And he was just starting to become careless. Yes, he sat down with detectives for six hours the night he got caught and confessed to everything. But you also have to realize that by the time he was caught, they had so much evidence on him that he realized that the game was already over. There was no point in trying to lie. And police had found four severed heads, seven skulls, and multiple body parts in his apartment, as well as all the Polaroids. So again, there was nothing really left to hide. Most clinicians pointed to borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a range of paraphilias. But he shared one trait in common with psychopathic individuals. A profound detachment not only from his victims, but also from any conventional sense of guilt or remorse. So he didn't kill out of rage or passion. He killed because of a desire for total control over his victims, over the one thing he feared most, which was being left alone. So when we look at his confession through that lens, I think cooperating and going into exhaustive details may have been less about conscience and more about authorship and ownership. He knew no one else could tell this story the way that he could. And for someone whose entire psychology was built around control, I think that dictating the narrative of his own crimes may have been the last form of control that he had left. So I don't think he necessarily wanted to get caught. I think it was more about he already knew he was caught, and this was his chance to correct the story and tell it from his view and take ownership and authorship of what he had done.
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Crime House Community Member
What does justice actually look like here? And does the sentence matter?
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Katie Ring
15 consecutive life sentences sounds enormous in Wisconsin. Not having the death penalty has been a point of controversy in discussions of this case ever since the verdict. But here's the thing I keep coming back to is that Jeffrey served less than three years of those 15 life sentences before Christopher Scarver killed him in prison. So whether or not you believe in capital punishment, the actual outcome was that Jeffrey Dahmer was alive for barely two more years after his sentencing hearing. So the philosophical debate about whether death or life imprisonment is the appropriate response to crimes of this magnitude gets complicated very quickly when you factor in that he died anyway, not just on the state's terms. What I do think matters more than the number on the sentence is what justice meant to the victim's families. And for many of them, the guilty verdict mattered enormously. Not because it fixed anything, obviously nothing could fix it, but because the world acknowledged what had been done and because someone was finally held accountable, which is not nothing for Jeffrey's family.
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Crime House Community Member
What was their responsibility and did they do enough in the end?
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Katie Ring
This one is a hard one for me because I genuinely feel conflicted about all three of them. Lionel Dahmer, by his own admission, was withdrawn, cold, and conflict avoidant. He buried himself in work and looked the other way at signs that something was deeply wrong with his son. And even after Jeffrey was arrested for child molestation in 1988, Lionel's response was to fall back to his lifelong pattern of avoidance rather than confronting what was right in front of him and actually helping Dahmer. So I think he was clearly a neglectful father who prioritized his career and his own emotional comfort over his son's well being for years. He also wrote a book called A Father Story, in which he grappled openly with his failures and his grief and chose to remain in Jeffrey's life after the arrest. Some viewed this as him capitalizing off his son's notoriety, which I think there is some trick proof to that. But he didn't necessarily profit off the book. Steven Hicks family sued him for wrongful death, citing parental neglect. And two other families also sued him for using their names without consent. So he used some of the funds for those legal fees, and then he did donate the rest of the proceeds to the victim's family. So that is one good thing he did. In terms of Joyce Dahmer, I think she was someone I have more difficulty with because her mental health struggles were very real and severe. She was genuinely ill. And I don't want to dismiss that. But that also doesn't negate the effects that had on her son. And I think the fact that she cared for Jeffrey's brother signals to me that she was capable of treating Jeffrey better than she did. For instance, she took his brother to visit family, but left him completely alone that summer, which is when he committed his first murder and didn't even tell his father that she was leaving. And then after all of that, she effectively kind of just disappeared from his life for years. She did call him about once a week after his imprisonment, but also I think that was obviously a little too late. In terms of his grandmother, Katherine, I think she was one person who he had like a stable, loving relationship with. In terms of her knowing whether he was murdering people in her basement, I don't think she knew, but I think she knew something was off. But she had dementia at the time of the trial, so she never really fully understand what had happened in her house. As for his brother David, I don't blame him at all for changing his name. He was a child when all of this happened, and he spent his entire adult life carrying the weight of being Jeffrey Dahmer's brother. Whatever he needed to do to build a life for himself, I hope he found it. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's most infamous crime so we can keep building this community together and to get all episodes at once. Ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Come back next week for another deep dive into a true crime that changed America.
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- [36:40]
Shopify Advertiser
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