0.cached.png
By Newsweek Editors
Share
Newsweek is a Trust Project member
See more of our trusted coverage when you search.Prefer Newsweek on Googleto see more of our trusted coverage when you search.
The voice on the tape was desperate and pleading. "I'm on 25th and State, and there is this young man. He's buck naked. He has been beaten up ... He is really hurt ... He needs some help." So went a taped conversation on May 27 between a neighbor of confessed serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and the Milwaukee 911 emergency service. The neighbor repeatedly told 911 operators and police-that she had seen a young boy, bleeding and incoherent, on the street near Dahmer's apartment. Police investigated, but after questioning Dahmer in his home, they dismissed the incident as a domestic dispute between adult homosexuals. "Intoxicated Asian, naked male," one was recorded as saying, amid laughter, "was returned to his sober boyfriend." Shortly after the police left, investigators now suspect, Konerak Sinthasomphone, a 14-year old Laotian boy, became victim number 13.
The tapes were the latest revelation in a horrifying case that has spread to two states and prompted bitter charges of racism and homophobia on the part of the Milwaukee police force. Last week, with police placing the toll from Dahmer's killing spree at 17, the inquiry into the 31-year old chocolate worker's alleged crimes moved to Bath Township, Ohio, where investigators uncovered more grisly evidence. Meanwhile, Milwaukee Police Chief Philip Arreola moved to quell a storm of public protest by bringing departmental charges against the three officers involved in the May 27 incident. The week's events prompted allegations of a widening division between city police and minorities. Says Gwendolynne Moore, a state legislator who is black: "It was sort of like pulling a scab off a very deep wound."
The citizens of Milwaukee weren't the only ones in a state of shock last week. So were the residents of Bath-population 9,015. Outside the contemporary stone-and-wood house where Dahmer lived as a teenager, a platoon of investigators turned the 1.7-acre hillside property into an archeological dig. William Berger, the house's current owner, wandered outside the property wearing an old camera slung around his neck to blend in with reporters. He watched as police and county authorities cut away the underbrush on his property, sifting through the dirt for human-bone fragments. By the weekend, they found more than 120 bits of bone, mostly human, including three teeth-two incisors and a molar. The teeth showed no signs of dental work; Steven Hicks, the only victim thought to be buried on the property, had no fillings.
Read More on News
In a recent confession, police say Dahmer told them he killed Hicks in the bedroom and dismembered the body in a crawl space; he then placed it in plastic bags and buried it by a drainpipe. Weeks later, police say Dahmer said, he dug up the corpse and smashed it on a cliff with a sledgehammer; twirling around, he scattered the pieces in a full circle. "He told us we would not find anything larger than a hand," says Summit (Ohio) County coroner William Cox, who investigated the case. "And I'd have to say this is exactly what has happened. Mr. Dahmer was very thorough."
Dahmer appears to have been equally meticulous about choosing his victims. He often visited gay hangouts, where his approach to picking up men made him seem harmless, even vulnerable. Todd Stratton, who works at a local cafe, remembers Dahmer as an innocuous, if eccentric, regular who talked to himself and read from computer manuals. A former Lutheran minister recalls counseling Dahmer several times about five years ago. The two met at a church office, sometimes two or three times a week for a period of six weeks. "He was obviously terribly tormented by his sexuality. He talked openly about why he shouldn't be gay."
Though Hicks was white, the majority of Dahmer's alleged victims were minorities. So, too, were Sandra Smith and Nicole Childress, the neighbors who reported the incident involving the Laotian boy. In the eyes of the black community, the white police officers took the word of a convicted sex offender over that of two upstanding young black women. Another criticism leveled at the police is that they failed to run a computer warrant cheek on Dahmer; blacks in his neighborhood say that's routine practice any time an African-American is pulled over. Last week a protest march of mostly blacks wound its way from Dahmer's apartment to city hall.
Blacks weren't the only ones crying foul. Put off by news reports about "homosexual murderer" Dahmer, members of Milwaukee's gay community say they, too, feel victimized. By ignoring alleged signs of child molestation and domestic violence, they say, the police effectively labeled Dahmer and Sinthasomphone as untouchables. "The police treat us like they do people of color, poor people and people who live in bad neighborhoods, which is to say very badly," says Kitty Barber, of the Lesbian Alliance of Metro Milwaukee. "How sensitive do you have to be to see a 14-year-old boy naked on the street to respond in a human fashion?"
The police involved in the May 27th incident say they did behave with sensitivity. In a voice wavering with emotion, police union lawyer Laurie Eggert, gave the following account of the incident: Responding to a report of "a naked man down," the three officers arrived and inspected Sinthasomphone in the street and inside Dahmer's apartment. They found him naked, but not bleeding from the anus, as suggested by the neighbors who reported the incident. They observed that he seemed calm and that his only wound was a scuffed knee. Once inside the apartment, the police officers saw pictures Dahmer had taken of the boy in his underwear, but believed the young man had simply been posing for his friend. "Based on everything they knew at that time," said Eggert, "there was a caring relationship [between the two]."
Many minority residents hope the controversy surrounding the killings will eventually increase police sensitivities and help restore harmony to the racially torn community. "You're never the same after a crisis of this kind and sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you recover," says Moore. Until then, residents of Milwaukee and Bath watch and wait as the news about Dahmer continues to unfold. For now William Berger is spending the nights away from home. But the first evening of the ordeal, after learning from television that his house had been the site of a gruesome killing, he drifted out into the backyard. Then he sat down under the full moon-and wept for Steven Hicks and for Jeffrey Dahmer.
After Milwaukee police returned a bleeding 14-year-old boy to Jeffrey Dahmer, one woman called the station to ask why. Excerpts from the conversation:
My daughter and my niece witnessed what was going on. Do you need information or anything from them?
No, not at all.
You don't?
Nope. It's, uh, an intoxicated boyfriend of another boyfriend.
Well, how old was this child?
It wasn't a child. It was an adult.
Are you positive? This child doesn't even speak English.
It's all taken care of ma'am.
Are you sure?
Ma'am, I can't make it any more clear. It's all taken care of. He's with his boyfriend at his boyfriend's apartment, where he's got his belongings.
I mean, are you positive this is an adult?
Ma'am. Like I explained to you. It is all taken care of. It's as positive as I can be. I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life.
I'm not saying anything about that, but it appeared to have been a child.
No, he's not. OK?
Submit Correction
View Editorial & AI Guidelines