All language subtitles for Episode 06 Jeffrey Dahmer

-Shortly before midnight
on July the 22nd, 1991,

two Milwaukee police officers
were flagged down

in their patrol car by a man
with a pair of handcuffs

dangling from one wrist.

The police had no idea
that this bizarre encounter

would lead to the arrest

of one of the most prolific
serial killers in U.S. history.

-That night people were afraid.

People were whispering
under their breaths,

you know, it was the devil.

It's the devil.

-The man had escaped from
a small one-bedroom apartment

on North 25th Street.

When the officers
went to investigate,

they found themselves
in a living nightmare.

-They saw the body parts
and then one of the officers

said he heard a scream.

Then he realized later he was
the one who screamed

when he saw the body.

-Without detection,
31-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer

had killed 17 young men
across a 13-year period.

-He hasn't got the same level
of repulsion and shock

at dead bodies or mutilated
bodies that most of us have.

It was just another aspect
of his life.

-Jeffrey Dahmer had etched
his name in history

as one of the world's
most evil killers.

The name Jeffrey Dahmer
has become synonymous with evil.

Between 1978 and 1991 he killed
17 young men and boys

by drugging them
before strangling them to death.

As the revelations
of the murders came to light,

it was the behavior of Dahmer
once he'd killed his victims

that really stunned the world

with stories of necrophilia
and cannibalism.

The first journalist to arrive
at the crime scene

was Anne E. Schwartz.

-It wasn't a gory crime scene.

It was really quite antiseptic.

It was a very simple one-bedroom
with a kitchen

and a living room.

And it looked like a regular
single guy lived there.

You know some dishes
in the sink, but by and large,

this was not
some chamber of horrors

like people will describe it.

Certainly, not at first look.

Once detectives and officers
started searching further,

that's when they found out
the actual horror

was in that apartment.

-The story of this
macabre killer begins 30 years

before his arrest.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin

on May the 21st, 1960.

The family moved to Iowa
before settling in Ohio in 1966.

-He lived with these parents
who were constantly,

constantly as he put it
"at each other's throats."

You know, his mother
appeared to have been

this raging bundle
of neurotic behavior.

Parents were constantly
fighting and screaming.

You know, Dahmer himself
evidently throughout much

of his early life

was completely, completely
ignored by both of them.

They were so caught up in
their own psychological turmoil.

-Jeffrey Dahmer never really
made close social links

with any of his peers.

He was a little bit odd.

And if you speak to his
school friends at the time,

he didn't seem to have a lot
of empathy for other children.

So when children would fall over
in the playground

or get hurt or cry,

he didn't appear
to be affected by that

and would sometimes
laugh at them.

So something wasn't quite right
with a young Jeffrey Dahmer.

-Feeling ostracized
by his family and classmates,

Dahmer spends a lot of time
playing alone in the woods

surrounding his Ohio home.

-Well, he had a really
morbid curiosity with death

from quite a young age.

And this started with a fairly
innocent insect collection,

and he would keep the bodies
of insects inside jars

full of chemicals.

This soon progressed.

He would go fishing,
and he was interested

in what the fish
looked like on the inside,

so he would chop up the fish
to have a look at this.

-Dahmer took his fish
and cut it open.

Was fascinated with
the inside of the fish,

and one of his little
friends asked him,

"Jeffrey, why do you...

what are you doing?"

And he said, "Just look at it."

-You know,
and this escalates to the point

that he's apparently
killing stray dogs

and decapitating them.

-One of the young boys
in the neighborhood

was walking in the woods
behind Dahmer's house

when Dahmer was a teenager,

and he came across
the body of a dead dog,

and it was mutilated,
and it was nailed to a tree.

-So, there's some early interest
in animal anatomy

that blossoms into this
very, very dark obsession,

and then somehow becomes tangled
up with his own sexuality.

-Dahmer continued to struggle
to fit in at high school

and turned to alcohol
from a young age.

-Well, Dahmer started drinking
when he was at school,

and one of his former
classmates remembered

that he used to
come in with a cup

and he didn't have tea
or coffee in this cup.

He had scotch whiskey in it.

So this was quite a disturbing
behavior for a teenager.

-There's a thought that
in hindsight you ask

why more people
didn't try to intervene.

You've got a kid
coming drunk to school.

But back in the '70s

when Dahmer's coming
to school intoxicated,

nobody thinks, "Gee, we better
make sure we take care of this

because what if he turns out
to be a serial killer?"

-In the summer of 1978 Dahmer's
parents finally divorced.

-The breakdown of Jeffrey
Dahmer's parent's marriage

was quite a tough time for him.

His parents were
at each other's throats.

It was not an amicable
divorce at all.

And each of them was forcing him
to side with them,

so he felt very much torn
between his parents.

So this was a real source
of conflict for him.

And I think at this time
children often,

who have these experiences,
will retreat into themselves.

They will preoccupy themselves
with things

that they're interested in

and will lose themselves
in their own fantasy world.

And I think that's very much
what happened with Dahmer.

-Having just recently
graduated from high school,

Dahmer soon had no one
around him at all.

-Well, in 1978 Jeffrey
Dahmer was 18.

His mother had gone away
with his younger brother,

and his father
was living in a hotel.

So he's alone,
and he's ruminating,

and he's fantasizing,

and things are going to
take a turn for the worse

quite soon after this.

-On June the 18th, 1978,
Dahmer's fantasy world

collided with the real one
when he pulled over to pick

a 19-year-old hitchhiker
called Steven Hicks.

-Dahmer picked him up
and invited him back

to his house
to have some drinks,

and I guess maybe
smoke some dope.

-They were in the basement
of his parents' home.

They had had sex.

And then Steven Hicks
wanted to leave,

and that was when Dahmer just
wanted so badly to have company.

Sounds like such
a textbook psychological thing.

You know, abandonment syndrome,
but this was at the heart

of what made him
so needy for company.

-And then when the guy said
he wanted to leave,

Dahmer clubbed him on the back
of the head with a barbell

and then strangled him.

Then, ultimately, disposed of
the body, removed all the flesh,

and eventually
dissolved it in acid

and pulverized the bones
with a sledgehammer.

-This is a really, really
brutal crime.

And he disposes
of the body parts

in the woods behind his house,

and that's already symbolic
place for Jeffrey Dahmer

'cause this is a place where
he's dismembered animals before,

where he's displayed
mutilated dogs on tree trunks.

So we're seeing that this place
is special to him.

-Dahmer had experienced taking
the life of another human

for the first time.

-I think that the first murder

is a real milestone
for Jeffrey Dahmer.

So he knows now
that he's capable of this.

He knows that he's capable
of taking someone else's life,

so it's not just
a fantasy anymore.

It's now a reality.

He's gone from harming animals
to harming people.

And he's not gonna stop.

-He's not desperate,
but he becomes accustomed to it.

He becomes ready to kill again,
and just kill and kill

and kill and kill
until he gets caught.

-But it wasn't until
13 years later in August 1991

that Dahmer was finally
apprehended after one

of his potential victims escaped
from his Milwaukee apartment.

Once in custody Dahmer
confessed to killing

17 young men and boys.

The man whose job it was to
prosecute the relentless killer

was Milwaukee District Attorney,
Mike McCann.

-The word evil
doesn't come up very often.

It just doesn't.
Guilty. Not guilty.

Did he do it?
Didn't he do it?

Culpability, yes.

But not often evil because evil
is almost a moral issue.

That word came up with Dahmer.

You couldn't help see
what he did.

Innocent people, strangers,

to take for
a couple of hours of sex

to take a human being's life.

That's so evil.

So evil.

-Dahmer's case made headlines
across the world

after the details of his
grizzly confession were leaked.

-A New York Times reporter

compromised the integrity
of a worker at our building

and got a copy
of the confession.

It was a detailed
38-page confession.

So the details of
the gory things he had done,

again, captured
people's interest.

So that's how it rapidly became
a matter of intense interest.

-The confession
outlined the life

of a deranged serial killer.

After murdering Steven Hicks and
desecrating his body in 1978,

Dahmer didn't kill again
for 9 years.

After dropping out
of Ohio State University

after just one semester,

he was spending
most of his days drinking

until his father urged him
to enlist in the U.S. Army.

-The alcohol continued as
a theme when he joined the army,

and he moved to Germany.

One of his former colleagues
remembers him

just sitting in his room
drinking gin all day long,

not even leaving
his room to eat.

So there was
a real dependency on alcohol.

-In 1981, 21-year-old Dahmer

was discharged from the army
after his drinking

rendered him
incapable of serving.

After spending a month sleeping
rough on the beaches of Florida,

he returned to Ohio.

But his father had had enough
and shipped him off

to start a new life
in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

-He was sent to live
with his grandmother,

who is the one adult
apparently he had,

you know, something approaching
a normal affection for.

It was there he really embarked
on this career of horror.

-By 1986 Dahmer had been
arrested a couple of times

for exposing himself in public,

once in front
of a group of children.

The hopeless alcoholic
had managed to find work

at a local chocolate factory
in Milwaukee

and was frequenting
gay bars and bathhouses.

-I think being homosexual
affected Dahmer in two ways.

Firstly, it was
a source of shame for him

because it was quite
a stigmatized social identity

at the time.

But also it enabled him
an opportunity

when it came to
his killing behavior.

So being homosexual
at this time,

it was something
that happened in the shadows.

It was something that
happened underground,

and this was the ideal place for
someone like him to go hunting.

-It was this exposure
to the gay scene

that seemed to reawaken the dark
sexual urges inside of him.

And by September 1987,
over 9 years since

the murder of Steven Hick,

Jeffrey Dahmer
was ready to kill again.

-His idea was to drug people
and keep them with him

so that they wouldn't
answer back to him,

they wouldn't argue with him,
they wouldn't fight him.

They would stay with him.

That's what he wanted.

He wanted companionship.

So, he would go to the bars
on Milwaukee's near south side,

and he would have conversations
with people in these bars.

And when he was talking
to these people,

these perspective victims,
he would say,

"So what was it like
when you came out?

How is your family about it?"

So if your response was,
"Oh, my family has been great.

They're so supportive.

I'm very close to my parents."

That person wasn't
gonna be a victim.

But if the person answered,

"My parents aren't
speaking to me anymore.

I'm estranged from my family.

I'm kind of on my own now."

That was the perfect victim
for Jeffrey Dahmer

because he wanted to choose
people who wouldn't be missed.

-Between September 1987 and
March 1988, Dahmer killed 3 men.

The youngest a 14-year-old boy

who he paid to pose
for nude photographs

before drugging
and strangling him to death.

He would dissolve
the bodies in acid.

-He cleverly developed
a program to destroy the bodies,

get rid of the bodies,
left no evidence.

This was a very clever killer.

Very clever killer.

-Dahmer would dissolve
his victims,

presumably to make it easier
to dispose of them.

Dissolving tissue in chemicals
can certainly interfere

with identifying it
as human tissue.

It'll interfere with DNA.

You're really left predominately
with skeletal remains

to try and identify features
such as age, sex, race.

-Dahmer murdered
two of the victims

at his grandmother's house
where he was living.

-His grandmother became aware

that he was bringing these
young guys back to her house.

I mean, she thought for gay sex.

Obviously, she had no inkling
of the atrocities

he was committing
on their bodies,

although she was complaining
also about a foul odor

that she noticed.

-On September the 25th, 1988,
Dahmer moved into

his own apartment on
North 25th Street in Milwaukee

and didn't wait long
before attacking again.

The very next day,
September the 26th,

he enticed a 13-year-old boy
back to his home

and drugged him.

-One of the methods that Dahmer
used to subdue his victims

was to use benzodiazepine.

It's the same family
of drugs as Valium.

He put them in drinks.

That would make you
woozy, sleepy,

and then eventually
go unconscious.

-Dahmer sexually assaulted
the boy,

but somehow, possibly due
to Dahmer passing out drunk,

the 13-year-old escaped
and went to the police.

In January 1989, he was
convicted of sexual assault,

but the sentencing was delayed
until May,

during which time
an unrelenting Dahmer,

unbeknownst to the authorities,
managed to claim a fifth victim.

The 29-year-old
served 10 months in prison,

but when he was released
in March 1990,

he picked up
right where he left off.

-So, Jeffrey Dahmer really
did ramp up his offending.

The scale and the nature
of his behavior

became all the more grotesque.

So he wasn't just killing
people, dismembering them,

and then disposing
of their bodies,

he started to do some
really bizarre things.

-He was in the process
of constructing

some hideously
diabolical shrine in his bedroom

out of the skulls and skeletons
of some of his victims.

It's almost as though
some bizarre archaic thing

had broken through and he was
performing or creating

some sort of ancient
human sacrificial temple

in this little
Milwaukee apartment.

-In 1990, Dahmer killed
another four young men.

His M.O. was becoming
more and more polished.

-He would offer
his victims money to go back

to his apartment with him

to take pictures,
nude photographs of them.

And then perhaps to have sex.

Every single one of his victims
went with him willingly.

He would offer them a drink,

and once he found out
what they wanted to drink,

he kept a lot of things on hand,
different kinds of alcohol,

and that's when he would
put a drug in it

that would put them to sleep

or that would relax them
so that they would pass out.

-They would pass out.

He would then have sex with them
while they were passed out.

Do with them as he wished,

but of course,
they couldn't do to him.

Then as they approached
recovery, coming out of it,

he would strangle them to death.

-It seemed as though Dahmer got
a thrill, not from the murder

but from the dead bodies
of his victims.

-Dahmer liked necrophilia.

He liked sex
with unconscious people.

He wasn't a slasher in the sense
that he took delight in killing.

His purpose was sex
with these people,

company with these people.

That's hard to believe.

-He would commit necrophiliac
sex acts on the corpses,

dismember the corpses,
dissolve parts of the bodies

in these vats of acid he had,

keep certain organs
in his refrigerator,

some of which he would
actually cannibalize.

-Dahmer said that the
cannibalism that he engaged in

was born out of a curiosity.

He wanted to find out, first of
all, what that would be like.

He also said that there was
an element of wanting

to make these people
a part of him

so they would be
with him forever.

-Dahmer, from the beginning,
is driven

by this terror of being alone.

He killed his first victim,
Steven Hicks when Hicks

said he had to go and Dahmer
didn't want to be alone.

There's some desire, which is
part of normal sexuality.

You know you love somebody...

Somebody will say, "I love you
so much I want to eat you up."

With normal people,
that's, obviously, metaphorical.

But it does express some desire
to be so close to the person

that you want to
incorporate them into,

you want to merge with them.

With somebody like Dahmer
that becomes

this very literal horror.

-And the horror
only became worse when Dahmer

began experimenting
with his semi-conscious victims.

-He would drill holes
in their skulls

and put muriatic acid
inside to see

if he could get them
to a zombie state

so that he could keep them
alive and subservient to him.

-It's essentially
an amateur version

of attempting to perform
a lobectomy or a lobotomy,

but it would be
an incredibly unpleasant

and damaging thing to do
to someone's brain.

If you affect the frontal lobes,
you will affect personality,

potentially make
somebody docile.

If he's less accurate, you could
essentially cause a stroke

that could cause paralysis,
speech problems.

It really very much depends
on which part of the brain

is actually damaged.

-But, of course,
that didn't work,

and his victims died
one after another.

Hearing about that is
the stuff of horror movies,

and the fact that it was
happening in a city

where we were known for
manufacturing and beer

and a very good
Midwestern work ethic,

tight families, this isn't the
kind of thing that happens here.

-In May 1991, 31-year-old
Jeffrey Dahmer

was in his killing prime.

He'd already murdered 11 men
and had begun collecting

bones and skulls
from his victims

and cannibalizing their organs.

What would've been a nightmare
for most was a fantasy for him,

and he carefully went
about his killings

under the radar of the police
and the people of Milwaukee.

-Jeffrey Dahmer had a job
in a local chocolate factory.

And I think for him
it enabled him

to maintain a façade
of normality.

He was just an average Joe,

a regular guy
who went to work every day.

-I think he killed so
many people without being caught

because of the fact that
he looked like everyone else.

He did what successful
serial killers do.

He blended.

They blend in with society.

Now he was a Caucasian male

living in a predominantly
African-American neighborhood,

but he didn't talk to anybody,
bother anybody.

He was barely someone
people noticed.

Barely noticed.

He also was targeting
people who he found out

might not be missed.

-For most people,
if they were to commit

the type of acts
that Jeffrey Dahmer did,

they would no way be able
to function normally,

but Jeffrey Dahmer
was not most people.

He hasn't got the same level
of repulsion and shock

at dead bodies or mutilated
bodies that most of us have.

It was just another aspect
of his life.

-It was not known that we had a
serial slayer loose in our city.

We did not know because
he was so cleverly

disposing of the bodies.

The families were reporting
the sons were missing,

but the police
were not finding bodies.

And not infrequently young men
something happens in their life,

they just up and leave town.

It happens enough that
the police don't get worried.

If it's a woman, they'll
immediately commit resources

to investigate,
but a young man they don't.

-But on May the 26th, 1991,

Dahmer came agonizingly
close to capture

after an encounter
with a 14-year-old boy.

-Dahmer had taken
Konerak Sinthasomphone,

a young Asian male
who he found attractive.

He met him in the mall.

Offered him money
to go back to his apartment.

He went, and he began
to work the ritual.

Dahmer would drug him,
and then he began

the process
of this crude lobotomy,

and he had drilled a hole
in this young man's head.

He took a break.
He ran out to get more beer.

While he was gone, Konerak ran
out of the apartment.

He was naked.
He was completely dazed.

And he's running up the alley

next to Dahmer's
apartment building.

A woman in another apartment
building saw him running up

the alley and said,

"There's a boy
running up the alley.

Something's going on."

And then these women
call the police.

-And then Dahmer appeared.

Again, this is another
remarkable characteristic

of these psychopaths
was that they have an ability

to maintain a kind of coolness

under the most extraordinarily
high-pressured circumstances.

-So he walked up
to the officers.

"Good evening, officers."
He's very polite.

He's sober.

And he said,
"This is my boyfriend.

He came to stay with me.

We had a little bit
too much to drink,

and he ran out of the house."

Said, "How old is he?"
Dahmer said, "He's 19."

And the officers said,
"Okay, well, just to make sure

let's all walk back up
to the apartment together."

-The cops went in
and looked around.

They even peeked
into the bedroom

where there was
a decomposing corpse

of one of Dahmer's
previous victims,

but they took such
a cursory look at it

that they didn't even notice it.

-Assuming the couple
were having a lover's tiff,

the two police officers

left Konarek alone with Dahmer

in the apartment building.

And in the early hours
of the morning,

he murdered the 14-year-old boy.

An opportunity to catch
the killer had been missed.

-I think
that really speaks volumes

about the attitudes
of the police

at the time in terms
of ethnic minorities,

in terms of young people,
in terms of the gay community.

And that was another victim

that could potentially
have been saved.

So there's this terrible thing
going on behind closed doors,

and people just
aren't seeing it.

People aren't wanting to see it.

Even the police
are not joining up the dots

and finding out
what's really going on,

so this is allowed to just
bubble away and get worse.

-After evading capture,
Dahmer was free to continue.

-There was two sides really
to Dahmer's pleasure

that he got from
killing his victims.

So he was a sadist
who enjoys the pain

and suffering of other people.

And with sadist that thrill ends
when the victim dies.

But Dahmer was also something
of a necrophiliac

who as interested
in having corpses around

and doing things
with those corpses.

And that means that the thrill
starts with death.

So he has this continuous
fulfillment going on.

And he's always
fully in control,

and I think that's what's really
at the root of Jeffrey Dahmer.

It's power, and it's control,
and it's the feeling

that he has all this knowledge
about what he's done

and nobody else quite knows
what he's up to.

-By July 1991, Dahmer's desire
to kill had become insatiable.

In just 16 days,
he murdered four more men

bringing his total
number of victims to 17.

But Dahmer's reign of terror
was about to come to an end.

On July the 22nd, he met a man
called Tracy Edwards.

-While they were together
in the apartment,

Dahmer threw a handcuff on him.

This was now the beginning
of his ritual.

Dahmer had taken photographs
of his victims

in various stages
of dismemberment.

Polaroids.

And those were sitting on
the dresser inside the bedroom.

They weren't sitting out
in the main living room,

but there was some speculation

that Tracy Edwards
had perhaps seen that.

And he ran out of the apartment
in his underwear.

Ran down the street.

And when he saw the police car,

Tracy Edwards has said
his intention

was just to get
the handcuff off.

That's all he wanted.

He stopped these cops to say,

"Hey, can you just
get this off of me?"

So he stopped, and the officers
start talking to him

about what he saw.

And then they said, "Well, we
should probably check this out.

Let's all go back
to the apartment."

Dahmer answered,
and the minute he saw

that it was the police he tried
to shut the door on them.

The police pushed
the door open a bit.

They started
struggling with him,

and then finally
he just gave in.

And that was when Dahmer
was officially finished.

He was finished killing, and
he knew that he was finished.

-The police officers
immediately arrested Dahmer

after finding the remains
of some of his victims

in his apartment.

-They saw the body parts
and then one of the officers

said he heard a scream.

Then he realized later
he was the one who screamed

when he saw the body,

so they knew they were dealing
with a very serious offense.

Dahmer did not resist.

A little slight resistance, but
Dahmer was taken into custody,

and the investigation
was initiated.

-What followed was
an incredible media circus

on Dahmer's doorstep
as unbelievable stories

about what was
being uncovered inside

his apartment were revealed.

-It was so fantastical that you
think people are making it up

when they're telling you
the details.

But as it turned out,
they weren't making it up.

All of the atrocities
that we heard about

that had happened in that
apartment really did happen.

-The medical examiner
who was called to the scene

didn't know what was happening.

It was so strange.
There was a freezer there.

Body parts in the freezer.

Called in a Hazmat crew.

Well, our television stations
cover the police radio.

When they hear that,
they dispatch crews there.

And the first day
it was local television.

Second day, national television.

By the third day,
it was international television.

-They were able
to show video of these items

coming out of the front door
of this apartment building.

That's not usual
at a crime scene.

We saw a large blue barrel
in which we know

that Jeffrey Dahmer was trying
to dissolve body parts.

It had a refrigerator
that was holding skulls

and also it was
holding body parts.

So these are coming down
the stairs,

and people were just
incredulous to watch it.

When I wrote the story for the
Milwaukee Journal that morning,

and it was released
in the paper about 8:00,

I think, in the morning.

Normally, we were
an afternoon paper,

but we went out early with it

because it was
such an incredible story.

-But no one quite knew
the enormity of the crimes

until Dahmer confessed
to detectives

at the local police station.

-When I've spoken
to the detectives

that were working this case,

they have said this was
not a great whodunit.

This would've been a whodunit
if Jeffrey Dahmer

hadn't confessed to everything.

-When Dahmer was arrested
there were already

a number of bodies
in his quarters.

He gave full confessions
to the police

detailing his involvement
in 16 separate slayings.

Most of the time he did not know
the name of the victims.

-When Dahmer remembered a crime

that he might not have shared
with the detectives,

he would have the jail call them

whether it was
the middle of the night

or the middle
of the day and say,

"I remembered something else.
Please, come over."

Dahmer had said
he wanted to make sure

that he didn't forget anything

because he wanted those
families to have closure.

I'm not sure about that.

That may be giving
Jeffrey Dahmer more credit

than he is deserved,

but he did claim
to want to try and remember

so that all of those families
would have closure.

-One of the interesting
things about Dahmer

that does differentiate him
from other killers of his breed

is that he did seem
to be capable

of a certain degree of remorse,

and certainly recognized
the extent of his depravity.

-Although he confessed
to killing 16 people

in the state of Wisconsin,

Dahmer was first charged
with four counts of murder

on the 25th of July, 1991,

and a further 11 counts
were added in August.

The following month,
investigators in Ohio

found teeth and bone fragments
belonging to Steven Hicks

in the woods
near Dahmer's family home.

A preliminary hearing
was set for January 1992.

His legal team were going
to argue that the killings

were the work of a madman.

-The issue wasn't going to be
did he do it or not.

The issue was going to be was he
sane or insane when he did it.

And his hope was that at least
in even one of the cases

he could induce the jury
to believe that he was insane.

Under those circumstances,

he would be sentenced
not to a prison

but to a mental health facility.

People would say to me, "Mike,
this guy killed 16 people.

He was drinking their blood,
eating parts of their body.

He must've been crazy."

It sounds like
he's crazy to say that,

but that's not what
the insanity rule is.

-The city wanted justice.

They wanted to see the man
the press were calling

The Milwaukee Cannibal
locked away in prison

for the horrific crimes
he had committed.

The trial of Jeffrey Dahmer

would be one of the biggest
in the history

of not just Wisconsin
but the entire U.S.A.

-My reaction to it
then was the same reaction

I think that everybody
who lived in

Milwaukee had when they heard
about the case.

No, it can't be.

This is Milwaukee.

Those kinds of things
don't happen here.

This is the Midwest.

This is a very nice place.

-The trial of Jeffrey Dahmer
began on

the 30th of January, 1992.

Anne had a front row seat.

-The courtroom was
an odd spectacle

because Court TV

was still new in the game
back then.

And the idea that you would
come to court

and you'd be on television
was still kind of new to people.

It was the kind of media
attention to a trial

that Milwaukee hadn't seen in
a very, very long time if ever.

I can remember so clearly
the first time Jeffrey Dahmer's

initial appearance
in court when he walked in.

I think the real fear
that people had

when they first
saw Jeffrey Dahmer

was that he looked
like everybody else.

He was a good-looking young man,

and he is not the person
that you would look at and say,

"Stay away from that guy."

-It would be up to
Milwaukee D.A., Mike McCann,

to prove that Dahmer was sane
and responsible for his actions.

-Guilty wasn't going
to be an issue,

but we wanted the jury
to know enough about the facts

and so did the defense to say,

"All right, what really happened
here?" How atrocious was it?

How planned was it?
How was he behaving?

What skills were involved?
He couldn't control himself.

-It was a lot to take in

because the testimony
was so graphic.

We all knew Mike McCann.

He was a religious man.

And we've seen him in court.

He was this good attorney.

But the kinds of things
that he was reciting

out of the criminal complaint

and the confession
were unheard of.

These things were unheard of.

And they happened
right here in our city.

-He did it quietly.

He concealed the bodies.

Cleverly concealed.
Destroyed the bodies.

Planned it well.
Laid in the equipment.

Got the drugs that he used.

No one that he worked
with thought he was insane.

The way he conducted
himself was in a way

that it seemed that he was sane,

and that's what we wanted
to get across to the jury.

-Mike employs the help

of psychiatry expert
Dr. Phillip Resnick.

-The more bizarre the crimes,

such as involving cannibalism,
the more the lay public

wants to think that guy
had to be out of his mind.

But in looking at it from
the actual strict definition

of insanity, generally,
the diseases

of paraphilias like necrophilia

where someone has trouble
controlling themselves

are not viewed
for the most part

as diseases
which qualify for insanity

because of the social
implications.

One of the points that I made
as a consultant is

even if you have necrophilia,

and even if you have trouble
controlling your impulse,

the majority of necrophiliacs
will select a setting

where they can accomplish this
without homicide.

So some become assistants
in morgues

or assistants in pathology labs

where they may have
access to dead victims.

Others will actually dissenter
bodies after they're buried

so that one does not
have to actually kill

to exercise
the necrophiliac impulse,

and that's one
of the reasons I felt

that he didn't
qualify for insanity.

-The trial was
essentially a debate

between specialtist
psychiatrists

about the mental state of Dahmer

who sat watching the whole thing
play out over two weeks.

-Dahmer was very calm in court.

When you talk are you assessing
a person by what you see?

No one studying him
would believe he was insane.

He was watching
what was going on.

He wasn't reacting
in any negative way.

He conducted himself in a very
rational way, a very proper way.

-This was a case
to tell the world

that I did what I did
not for reasons of hate.

I hated no one.

I knew I was sick
or evil or both.

Now I believe I was sick.

-On February 15th,
the jury had reached a verdict

on Dahmer's sanity.

-Someone like Dahmer
comes along who has never been

in a psychiatric hospital
and alleges insanity.

Juries are gonna
be skeptical of it.

And then when it's all
in the form of a sexual drive

rather than
a traditional psychosis

where someone's out
of touch with reality,

and he's taken careful steps
to cover his tracks,

it's very difficult
to succeed with insanity

with that type of case.

-Jeffrey Dahmer was ruled
to be sane by the jury.

On February 17, 1992,
Judge Lawrence Gram

sentenced him
to life imprisonment

for each of the
15 counts against him.

-When the verdict
was announced in court,

there was a great shout
from the gallery,

especially from
the victims' families.

They cried.

-I was pleased in the sense,
happy, not exuberant,

but happy that this danger
was removed from our community,

that the jury had
not been hoodwinked,

that the jury realized
this chap was not insane.

-The state of Wisconsin
does not have the death penalty,

but Dahmer would have to serve
a minimum of 936 years.

He was immediately sent
to the Columbia Correctional

Institute in Portage.

Three months later,
on the 1st of May, 1992 in Ohio,

Dahmer was also found guilty of
murdering Steven Hicks in 1978

and given yet another
life sentence.

-Dahmer always said that
he was compelled to kill.

That they were urges.

He said, "I had urges
that I could not control."

He also said that even
though he was in prison,

he was relieved
that the killing was done.

He still had the urges.

They didn't go away.

He was just in a place
where he couldn't act on them.

-Locked away
for the rest of his life,

Dahmer found comfort
in the Bible.

And by 1994,
he decided to get baptized.

The prison called on
local minister Roy Ratcliff.

-So I was quite surprised
to be escorted

to a little room and left alone,

and then Jeff come to the room,
and he closes the door.

And then there's he and I
sitting together

across the table,
and I'm thinking for a moment,

"Wow, I'm in a room with a man
who has killed several people."

So, yeah that was
a little bit disconcerting,

but I was there for a purpose
and for a reason,

so I wanted to find out
what was going on

and to see
what I could do to help.

So my fears were
set aside primarily

because of my focus
on what I was trying to do.

Jeff was a normal guy.

Courteous,
very respectful to me.

When we shook hands, I noticed
his hands were really small.

Looking at his hands
and thinking,

"Wow, these are the hands
that strangled people.

These are the hands
that murder people.

These are the hands
that dismembered people."

-On May the 10th, 1994,

the same day
that notorious serial killer

John Wayne Gacy was executed,

Jeffrey Dahmer was baptized
in a prison bathtub.

-Then the door opens,
and I walk into the room,

and Jeff had already
crawled into the tub.

And the only thing
that was above the water

was just simply his head.

And so said, "I baptize you
in the name of the Father, Son,

and the Holy Spirit for
the forgiveness of your sins,"

and pushed his head down under.

And then when he came back up
I said something I often say

to people when I baptize them.

I said,
"Welcome to the family of God."

He said,
"Well, thank you very much."

-But just six months
after his baptism,

on November the 28th, 1994,

Dahmer and another convicted
murderer, Jesse Anderson,

were attacked and killed
by a fellow inmate.

-Christopher Scarver
took a barbell,

went into the bathroom,

and beat both Jeffrey Dahmer
and Jesse Anderson to death.

There were a number of people

who felt that Jeffrey Dahmer
got exactly what he deserved.

When I called his mother,
she said,

"Well, now everybody
got what they want.

The monster is dead."

And then she said,
"And he was my son.

He was my boy."

-It was a terrible, terrible
death in that sense there.

But for some people,
it was a relief.

They were glad because
all they could think

about are the crimes
he committed.

They're not thinking about
where I'm thinking about

is here's a person who is trying
to serve God as best as he can

and now his life
has been taken from him.

-I mean, some people see
some sort of poetic symmetry

in the fact that
Dahmer's first murder

was the one
in which he bludgeoned

the teenage hitchhiker,
Steven Hicks,

to death with a barbell,

and that he himself died
in a very, very similar way.

-The apartment
on North 25th Street

that housed Dahmer's macabre
collection of victims' remains,

and where 12 young men
lost their lives,

was demolished in November 1992.

But Dahmer's twisted legacy
has been impossible to wipe out.

He has become one of the most
infamous serial killers

in the world.

-I think of Dahmer as
sort of like the flip side

of somebody like Mozart.

How do you account for somebody
creating that kind of music?

Ultimately, how do you
account for somebody

who is luring young men
to his apartment

and drilling holes
in their skull

and injecting brains
with muriatic acid

to turn them into zombies?

There's something there
ultimately inexplicable.

-Jeffrey Dahmer committed
some of the most evil acts

that I have ever written about
or heard about

or seen on a television show
because they were real.

I don't know
if he was sane or insane

because that's not my training
to figure that out,

but I can absolutely say

that he did some of the most
evil acts known to man.

-Dahmer's crimes
would not feel out of place

in a perverse horror movie.

He was a man
who killed to satisfy

his unhealthy
sexual perversions.

Keeping parts of his
victims' skeletons and trophies

and eating their organs.

Jeffrey Dahmer truly
is the stuff of nightmares,

and unquestionably one of
the world's most evil killers.