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The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 8
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The Journal News from White Plains, New York • Page 8

Publication:
The Journal Newsi
Location:
White Plains, New York
Issue Date:
Page:
8
Extracted Article Text (OCR)

Serial killer's death A8 Tuesday, November 29, 1994 Rockland Journal-News 5 Victim kin: 'Finally the monster was gone Dahmer case among the most gruesome 1 'f "7 USA TODAY Jeffrey Dahmer's bloody death in a prison bathroom yesterday was a dramatic some say a fitting end to the life of a killer and cannibal. "I was so happy" to hear he was dead, says Janie Hagen, sister of Richard Guerrero, one of at least 16 "young men murdered by Dahmer, who also had dismembered, sexually abused and eaten some of them. "I was so excited that finally the monster was gone. He was just plain evil. That may sound harsh, but when you lose a brother says Hagen.

Dahmer, 34, was cleaning a toilet next to a basketball court Monday morning when, out of the sight of prison guards, he was beaten to death. The suspect, Christopher J. Scarver, is a convicted first-degree murderer from Milwaukee. Murder trail Dahmer's gruesome murders between 1978 and 1991 made him one of the nation's most infamous criminals. He pleaded guilty in 1992 and was sentenced to 16 consecutive life sentences in Wisconsin, a state that doesn't have the death penalty.

His death at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage brought an emotional and conflicted reaction from families, police and prosecutors as well as the general public. Hagen calls the inmate who killed Dahmer "a hero." But Milwaukee District Attorney E. Michael McCann, who prosecuted Dahmer, calls his death "a sad ending to a very sad story. That's not justice. That's murder." And he hopes Dahmer's killer "doesn't emerge as a folk hero." What happened? Details of are sketchy.

what happened still Officials say Dahmer and other inmates were taken to two the prison gym at 7:50 a.m., a routine assignment Dahmer had done for three weeks. At 8:10 a.m., guards led two more inmates into the gym to exercise and discovered Dahmer breathing, but bloody and unconscious from head injuries in a staff bathroom. He was pronounced dead at 9:11 a.m. I Corrections Secretary Michael Sullivan would not say if any guards were in the gym when the murder occurred, or if they should have been. CRIME SCENEi Men in chemical suits remove a barrel on July 23, 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer lived.

Police had discovered body parts in the apartment. The Associated Press from a Milwaukee apartment where ness' concerns that the boy was really in trouble and had joked about the incident over their radios. In the poor, largely minority neighborhood, the actions confirmed suspicions that police were indifferent to the disappearances of young gays and minorities. Neighbors at the low-income apartment building just northwest of downtown had long suspected something was seriously amiss in Apartment 213. For months they had heard sawing, scuffling and screaming coming from the apartment.

For a year they had complained among themselves about the smell. Neighbor called police No one called police, they said, because people in the neighborhood believe it is better to mind your own business. But Glenda Cleveland did call police after her daughter and niece told her of the naked boy. She repeatedly asked an officer if he was certain Sintha-somphone was an adult. "As positive as I can be," the officer said.

Police recordings also reveal that one officer laughed as he reported finishing his investigation. "Intoxicated Asian, naked male," the officer said. "Was returned to his sober boyfriend." "My partner is going to get deloused at the station," he said with more laughter. Dahmer was arrested two months later when a handcuffed man managed to escape the apartment and flag down police. The officers who handled the Sinthasomphone investigation were fired but won reinstatement after a two-year court battle.

Although r. ahmer often targeted ga. aiid minorities, he said race and sexual orientation had nothing to do with his preference for victims. his dead or drugged victims, and how he cut up their bodies in a bathtub and used hydrochloric acid to destroy the bones. He flushed brains down the toilet but kept and painted some skulls as mementos.

Dahmer ate parts of his victims. Some heads and hearts were kept in his freezer, and bodies in a 55-gallon drum. Most victims' families say they feel a sense of closure now that his horrific life is over. "There's a sense of relief to know that justice in some kind of way has been done. My son suffered in his hands what Jeffrey Dahmer had to suffer under someone else's hands," says Inez Thomas, mother of victim David Thomas.

"I dreamed of this day and then it actually happens," says Carolyn Smith, sister of victim Edward Smith. "My whole body started shaking. Right now, I'm very pleased. But I'm Catholic. I don't believe in capital punishment but some days, the evil side comes out of me." baptized him in a prison whirlpool in May.

Dahmer was attacked in the prison chapel on July 3, but the toothbrush-turned-knife broke apart and he suffered only a scratch. Inmate Osvaldo Durruthy, serving time for weapons and drug offenses, will be sentenced for the attack Dec. 19. "Jeffrey told me the attack was an exception," says Ratcliffe. "He said he was attacked by a Cuban who had just gotten into his cell and had never spoken to him, someone who was trying to do something so bad he'd get deported." Gerald Boyle, Dahmer's attorney, says "Dahmer had a death wish and I know he didn't have the gumption to do it himself, so I predicted that the day would come when he would be killed in prison." His stepmother, Shari, told a television station, "From the day he got arrested, he felt he deserved anything he got." Gruesome crimes Dahmer's crimes revolted the nation.

He told how he had had sex with Dahmer was sent to the maximum security prison in February 1992 and spent his first year in isolation. He had been allowed to mix with other prisoners since then. In March 1992, a small razor blade was found hidden in an envelope in his garbage can. Dahmer temporarily lost TV and commissary privileges. But, otherwise, his life had been mostly quiet inside the crowded maximum security facility.

Dahmer wore a green khaki uniform, and ate and socialized freely with other inmates in his cellblock. He worked lVa hours a day sweeping and mopping the area. Inside his 8-by-10-foot cell, he spent much of his time studying the Bible, most recently the book of Revelations, the final book in the New Testament. He was permitted 25 books, 15 magazines and a Bible. No safety concerns Both Dahmer and prison officials thought he was safe.

"He did not feel in danger at all, and I asked him that specifically," says the Rev. Roy Ratcliffe, who saw Dahmer last Wednesday and The Associated Press MILWAUKEE Friends were hard to come by for the solitary Jeffrey Dahmer. So when he invited attractive young men he met at shopping malls and gay bars home for drinks, he wanted them to stay. Forever. Even if he could keep only parts of them.

When police finally burst into Dahmer's apartment on July 22, 1991, they found torsos soaking in acid, severed heads in the refrigerator and freezer, skulls in boxes, a hand, and a genital organ in a 80-quart kettle pot, and photos of victims in various stages of dismemberment. Two human hearts and a bicep muscle Dahmer said he planned to eat were in the freezer. A sickening stench permeated the whole scene. "I should have stayed with God," Dahmer told a judge at his sentencing in February 1992. "I tried and I failed, and created a holocaust." A murderous life As gruesome as the discovery was, it merely swung wide a door into a secret, murderous life Dahmer had been living for 13 years, during which he claimed 17 victims.

The nation was stunned by the depravity of the murders, the dismemberments, the cannibalism. In Dahmer's neighborhood, that shock was tempered with rage. He killed his four final victims only after a close call with police in May, when two officers returned to his custody a 14-year-old Laotian boy found staggering naked in the street. Dahmer told police the boy was his homosexual lover and had drunkenly wandered out of his apartment. After his arrest two months later, he admitted killing 14-year-old Konerak Sin-thasomphone moments after police left.

Officers had dismissed wit Drawing 12 24 94 Easy Parking 4nn linmi Jersey Leather! Camera Whse. i Warm Up The Holidays A psychological retrospective Notorious inmates killed with weaters from The Muc Ltl in prison were convicted of kidnapping and slaying a young neighbor in Chicago just for the thrill of it. Loeb and Leopold, then 18 and 19 respectively, were sentenced to life terms for the murder plus 99 years for the kidnapping. Famed attorney Clarence Darrow argued successfully against the death penalty. Loeb was killed In a prison fight In 1936.

Th Associated Prats sexual partner who would be compliant, not demanding or critical, and faithful. He tried everything. "The one thing he neglected was trying to make a friend," Dietz said. Dietz and Dr. Fred Berlin, founder of the sexual disorders unit at Johns Hopkins Medical Institutions in Baltimore, said that Dahmer suffered from a rare condition known as necrophilia he got sexual pleasure from dead people.

"I felt he had a mental disorder and could not control himself," said Berlin, who was hired by Dahmer's lawyers to examine him. "He had difficulty becoming aroused by living people." Albert DeSalvo claimed he was the "Boston Strangler" who killed 13 women in the Boston area from 1962 to 1964. Police lacked evidence to bring him to trial and he was tried for unrelated assaults, convicted and sentenced to life in prison. He was stabbed to death in his cell in 1973. Richard Loeb and Nathan Leopold created a nationwide sensation in 1924 when they able to overcome his guilt by dehumanzing his male victims, viewing them as sex objects.

Dahmer's behavior he drugged his victims and drank himself into a stupor before he killed and cannibalized them suggests also that he didn't want to torture his victims. Serial killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy said they wanted their victims to suffer. "This was an extremely needy man who never made any attachments," Fox said. "He didn't want people to leave him and this was the only way he knew to keep them." Dietz agrees, saying that Dahmer was in search of the ideal Newsday Most people will remember Jeffrey Dahmer as a monster. But to experts who study serial killers, Dahmer stands as a reminder of how little is known about the human psyche gone awry.

"I liked the man," said Dr. Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist in Newport Beach, who spent dozens of hours talking and listening to Dahmer's gruesome tales. Dietz was struck by Dahmer's willingness to figure out why he did what he did. "He was interested in understanding himself," Dietz said. "We'd sit watching his favorite movies, stopping frame by frame to talk about what got him excited." Even Dahmer's apology to the relatives of his victims suggested to some experts that he felt guilt and shame, which are not the usual personality features of a sociopathic killer.

"Not all serial killers are sociopaths," said James Alan Fox, dean of the college of criminal justice at Northeastern University and coauthor with Jack Levin of "Overkill," a book about mass murder and serial killing. Fox believes that Dahmer was FINE A Latest Fashions Designer Sweaters Largest Variety Lowest Prices Highest Quality Factory Outlet Direct From Factory To You Petite To Plus Sizes Men's Sweaters Available YOU CAN WIN 100 In SWEATERS Save An Additional 5 With This Coupon ARTS ANTIQUES MINI-MUSEUM ffffflia NAME I ADDRESS PHONE No Purchase Necessary The Farmers Mkt. Rock Modell's Marshall's NBO Bottom Route 59 iNanuetMall fl mi mm I jt i Huropa fHastrrs (gallery Over 35 years of distinctive service Member: American Institute of Conservators A complete restoration conservation service As well as a varied selection of fine 18th, 19th and 20th Century paintings, antiques, and antique Jewelry. All work done on premises by European-trained master artists. Come in or call for an appointment to visit our gallery at 16A Lafayette A Suffern, New York.

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