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Dahmer wanted
to give the appearance of cooperation, and to impress me with
the idea that he was looking back on what he had done with
some objectivity, as though it had been another and very different
person who had committed the murders.
Please keep
in mind that it was not my task to get Dahmer to admit his
crimes he had already confessed but rather to try and gain
some insight into his reasons for the crimes, and into his
state of mind at the time they were committed. At the outset
of our conversation, I tried to impress on Dahmer that he
was in a unique position to provide information that would
be helpful in preventing the future crimes of others, and
that would be of prime assistance in helping attorney Boyle
prepare to properly defend him in court. With the preliminaries
over, we started right in on his earliest memories of violence.
RESSLER: This goes back to Bath, Ohio,
with your first human offense, of taking a life. Prior
to that time... ?
DAHMER:
There was nothing.
RESSLER:
No assaults, anything like that?
DAHMER:
No. Violence against me. I was attacked for no reason.
RESSLER:
Give me a short rundown on that.
DAHMER:
I was up visiting a friend's, and was walking back home
in the evening, and saw these three seniors, seniors in
high school approaching. I just had a feeling that something
was going to happen, and sure enough, one of them just
took out a billy club and whacked me on the back of the
neck. For no reason. Didn't say anything, just hit somebody.
And I ran.
RESSLER:
I imagine that was pretty frightening to you.
DAHMER:
Yeah.
RESSLER:
Did that stick in your mind for a long time?
DAHMER:
Not until... Yeah, it did, for about a year.
RESSLER:
So this was the first time that you were involved in any
kind of violence, and you were the recipient. Let's go
back and discuss your family, the breakup of your family.
It's hurtful to a lot of people, to people that have done
what you have done, and that becomes an element in your
life, as well. So let me ask you: Was there ever a sexual
assault against you by any member of your family at any
time?
DAHMER:
No.
RESSLER:
Inside or outside of the family?
DAHMER:
NO.
RESSLER:
So that was not a factor in your case. Now, I've read
about your interest along the lines of dissecting animals
and things of that nature. When did that start?
DAHMER:
About fifteen or sixteen. It was off and on.
RESSLER:
That was after you had been hit by those guys, right?
DAHMER:
Er...yes.
RESSLER:
Did it start with a biology class in school?
DAHMER:
I think it did. We had to do we were dissecting a baby
pig.
RESSLER:
And how would you describe your fascination with, uh,
dismemberment [Dahmer chortles], with the animals, y'know?
DAHMER:
It just was... Well, one of them was a large dog found
by along the side of the road, and I was going to strip
the flesh off, bleach the bones, and reconstruct it, and
sell it. But I never got that far with it. I don't know
what started me on this; it's a strange thing to be interested
in.
RESSLER:
Yeah, it is.
DAHMER:
It is.
Some interviewers might try to be
objective when dealing with a person in this situation, thinking
that by doing something else either showing agreement with
him or revulsion at his acts they would stop the flow of his
conversation. My technique is different. When something is
strange, and it feels appropriate in the moment to say so,
I express that overt judgment. In this instance, I think,
it helped Dahmer to feel as though I, too, was looking back
with amazement on the odd things that he had somehow been
involved in, and from which he now wanted to distance himself.
RESSLER: Now about the dog, there was something about
a head on a stick out behind your house?
DAHMER:
That was just done as a prank. I found a dog, and cut
it open just to see what The insides looked like, and
for some reason I thought it would be a fun prank to stick
the head on a stake and set it out in the woods. And brought
one of my friends back to look at it and said I'd stumbled
upon that in the woods. Just for shock value.
RESSLER:
Uh-huh. And how old were you then?
DAHMER:
Probably... sixteen.
RESSLER:
What year was that?
DAHMER:
Around late seventies.
RESSLER:
That's interesting.
At that time, I was at the FBI Academy in Quantico, but retained
ties to the Cleveland area, where I had worked as an agent
for several years. Cops in Ohio forwarded a set of photographs
to me, which depicted dismembered and beheaded animals on
sticks, in a circle, situated in a wooded area. They wanted
to know whether this reflected cult or Satanic activity, and
asked if I could provide any clues as to the sort of personalities
that might be involved in such activity. Therewasn't enough
information for me to really come up with anything at that
time. I thought it was adolescents, messing around. During
my interview with Dahmer, though, I became unnerved by the
idea that I might have had a glimpse into the developing mind
of someone who would later become one of the nation's worst
serial killers and hadn't known it. Even if I had called attention
to the possibility that the perpetrator of the dog-head circle
was someone who might later become a fu11-fledged danger to
society, nothing would have happened, because the perpetrator
was just a juvenile, and his crimes had not yet become fully
developed. During the interview, I asked Dahmer whether he
had really been involved in this dog-head circle, and he denied
it had any significance.
DAHMER: I wasn't into any occult then,
it was just a prank.
RESSLER:
So you weren't involved in any sort of thing with a group
of these heads?
DAHMER:
No. Where was it located?
RESSLER:
Somewhere south of Cleveland.
Now we were ready to head into the more serious territory,
that of the murders themselves. Note, in the following section,
how Dahmer applies magical thinking to the story of how he
came upon his victim as though events conspired to just sort
of make it happen. This kind of thinking tries to absolve
the thinker from responsibility for his actions. He has a
scenario in his mind, a pickup of a hitch- hiker, and when
it begins to happen in real life, he feels he is swept up
in it, and has to complete the final parts of it.
RESSLER: You're about eighteen years old when this first
murder takes place? Just kinda give me a rundown on that.
This guy was a hitchhiker, right?
DAHMER:
I had been having, for a couple of years before that,
fantasies of meeting a good-looking hitchhiker, and [dramatic
pause] sexually enjoying him.
RESSLER:
Did that come from any movie or book or anything like
that?
DAHMER:
It didn't; it just came from within.
RESSLER:
From within.
DAHMER:
And that just happened to be the week when no one was
home Mom was off With David, and they had put up at a
mote1 about five miles away; and I had the car, above
five o'clock at night; and I was driving back home, after
drinking; and I wasn't looking for anyone but, about a
mile away from the house, there he was. Hitchhiking along
the road. He wasn't wearing a shirt. He was attractive;
I was attracted to him. I stopped then passed him and
stopped the car and thought, "Well, should I pick
him up or not?" And I asked him if he wanted to go
back and smoke some pot, and he said, "Oh, yeah."
And we went into my bedroom, had some beer, and from the
time I spent with him I could tell he wasn't gay. I, uh,
didn't know how else to keep him there other than to get
the barbell and to hit him, over the head, which I did,
then strangled him with the same barbell.
RESSLER:
Okay, stop right there. You said that the fantasies you
had the fantasies for several years? That would go back
to first stage when?
DAHMER:
Sixteen.
RESSLER:
Do you have any idea at all, in your recollection, of
what would start bringing this type of fantasy to mind,
of actually taking somebody physically by force or was
killing involved, too? Taking a life?
DAHMER:
Uh, yeah. It all it all revolved around having complete
control. Why or where it came from, I don't know.
RESSLER:
Did you feel inadequate in relationships with people,
like you didn't, couldn't have relationships that would
endure?
DAHMER:
In the township where I was at, homosexuality was the
ultimate taboo. It was never discussed, never. I had desires
to be with someone, but never met anyone that was gay,
that I know of; so that was sexually frustrating.
RESSLER:
Okay. You say that the guy was going to leave, and you
didn't particularly want Him to leave, and that hitting
him was a way of delaying him. You took the barbell and
what, rendered him unconscious? And what transpired after
that?
DAHMER:
Then I took the barbell and strangled him.
RESSLER:
And after that? Had there been sexual activity before
then?
DAHMER:
No. I was very frightened at what I had done. Paced the
house for a while. Ends up I did masturbate.
RESSLER:
Were you sexually aroused by the event? By having him
there?
DAHMER:
By the captivity.
Dahmer keeps trying to shock me
with his homosexuality and his perverse sexual gratification,
but I am not going to allow that to happen. On the other hand,
I do want him to know that I am following his reasoning, and
understand it.
RESSLER: Now he's unconscious, or he's
dead, and you have him, and you know he's not going anywhere,
and that was a turn-on?
DAHMER:
Right. So later that night I take the body to the crawl
space. And I'm down there and I can't get any sleep that
night, so I go back up to the house. The next day, I have
to figure out a way to dispose of the evidence. Buy a
knife, a hunting knife. Go back the next night, slit the
belly open, and masturbate again.
RESSLER:
So you were aroused at just the physique?
DAHMER:
The internal organs.
RESSLER:
The internal organs? The act of evisceration? You were
aroused by the cutting openof the body?
DAHMER:
Yeah. And then I cut the arm off. Cut each piece. Bagged
each piece. Triple-bagged it in large plastic trash bags.
Put them in the back of the car. Then I'm driving to drop
the evidence off a ravine, ten miles from my house. Did
that at three o'clock in the morning. Halfway there, I'm
at a deserted country road, and I get pulled over by the
police. For driving left of center. Guy calls a backup.
Squad. Two of 'em there. They do the drunk test. I pass
that. Shine the flashlight on the backseat, see the bags,
ask me what it is. I tell 'em it's garbage that I hadn't
gotten around to dropping off at the landfill. And they
believe it, even though there's a smell. So they give
me a ticket for driving left of center and I go back home.
A peripheral note: I recalled this description by Dahmer of
bagging the body in regard to a case in Japan, where body
parts were discovered in separate trash bags in Tokyo's Inokashira
public park. There, the disposal seemed unique, and worthy
of great comment and wonder. But such a method had been used
by Dahmer, and by several other serial killers in the United
States. What seems highly unusual to one observer is often
not unusual at all just something about which most laymen
have little knowledge.
RESSLER: Were you nervous when they stopped you?
DAHMER:
That's an understatement.
RESSLER:
Well, they apparently didn't perceive your nervousness,
though, to the point of pursuing the bags, or anything
like that. They just got into a routine.
DAHMER:
Yeah.
RESSLER:
And then you did what with the bags?
DAHMER:
Put them back, under the crawl space. Took the head, washed
it off, put it on the bathroom floor, masturbated and
all that, then put the head back down with the rest of
the bags. Next morning we had a large buried drainage
pipe, about ten feet long put the bags in there, smash
the front of it down, and leave it there for about two
and a half years.
RESSLER:
When did you come back for it?
DAHMER:
After the army, after working for about a year in Miami.
When the rest of the family was away, while they were
at work, I opened up the drainage pipe, took the bones,
smashed them into small pieces scattered them in the underbrush.
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