Shortly after, Jeffrey started college at Ohio State University in Columbus, Ohio. He stayed there only long enough to finish out the first quarter of his freshman year. On December 29, 1978, Jeffrey started a three-year hitch in the U.S. Army. Not even a year later Jeffrey completed his training as a medical specialist and was assigned post in Baumholder, Germany. About two years later, on March 26, 1981, he was discharged from the army in South Carolina because he was drinking so heavily and was always depressed. After that he somehow found his way to South Florida. In 1982 Jeffrey moved back West Allis, Wisconsin, to live with his grandmother. Things began to look better for a while. He had stopped drinking so heavily and was thinking that he would like to get married and maybe start a family. That little fantasy didn’t last very long. It all changed when he exposed himself at the Wisconsin State Fair, and was arrested for indecent exposure. In 1985 he was hired at the Ambrosia Chocolate Company as a laborer. A year later, he was arrested once again for urinating in public.
... a .. few .. more .. victims ...
Steven W. Tuomi was a twenty-four year old from the quite town of Ontonagon, Michigan, who came to Milwaukee for a little more excitement. On September 15,1987, he crossed paths with Jeffrey. They started talking and then went back to Jeffrey’s house and Steven was murdered then butchered like a cow when he said it was time for him to leave.
Jeffrey picked up a fourteen-year-old Native American boy named James E. Doxtator about four months later. He took him back to his house in West Allis, and killed him in the basement. The boy could not be identified at first because his body was so decayed. He was identified a little while after Jeffrey was arrested.
In March of 1988, only about two months later, Jeffrey killed again. His next victim was Richard Guerrero. Guerrero was on his way to his friends’ house to visit him for the day. Somewhere along the way he was intercepted by Jeffrey and taken back to the West Allis home and killed. Needless to say, he never made it to his friend’s house that day.
During this time Jeffrey’s grandmother was getting tired of Jeffrey’s strange behavior and she told him he had to move out. She later to the police that he would stay in the basement for hours at a time and there was always a nauseating smell coming from down there. She would hear him banging on things at all hours of the night. She told him she was getting to old to be his babysitter. Once again Jeffrey felt rejected and unwanted. What made it so bad for him was that it was his own grandmother pushing him away. In 1988 he moved out of his grandmother’s house and into his own apartment at the Oxford Apartments on North Twenty-fifth Street.
... the .. killing .. spree ...
In August 1988, Jeffrey was arrested for molesting a thirteen-year-old boy. He later found out that it was the brother of the Laotian boy he would kill May 26, 1991.
On March 25,1989, Jeffrey met Anthony Sears at LaCage bar. The LaCage bar was a very popular place for homosexuals to go to meet others. Jeffrey went there quite often for that purpose. Jeffrey said that if Anthony would go back to his house with him, they would drink, take nude photographs, and make love. Anthony accepted the offer. They went back to Jeffrey’s grandmother’s house, engaged in sex, and then Jeffrey slipped some homemade sleeping potion into Anthony’s drink. After he had passed out, Jeffrey chopped him up and began the normal procedure. He boiled the head and peeled the skin back. After it had dried, he painted the skull gray and took it home as a souvenir.
On May 24,1989, Jeffrey was sentenced to three years in prison for second-degree sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. It was later reduced to one year on a work-release program. After he served his year, he was on a five-year probation. The court prohibited that he have any contact with anyone under the age of eighteen.
In the next year or so, Jeffrey went on a major killing spree, taking the lives of twelve innocent men. Edward W. Smith, Raymond Smith, Ernest Miller, David C. Tomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Anthony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy, and Joseph Bradehoft. Although all of those killings were very tragic, there is one that stands out the most.
Konerak was the murder that stood out so much because it could have been prevented. While Konerak was at Jeffrey’s apartment, he was drugged. While he was passed out, Jeffrey walked to the store to get some beer. For some reason the sleeping potion did not work right on Konerak and he escaped. He ran out of the apartment, bleeding from his anus and stumbling from the sleeping potion. Some girls that were walking past saw him and ran over by him and called the police. Jeffrey saw him with the girls and went and tried to pull him away from the girls and back to his apartment, but the girls wouldn’t let go. When the police came, they told the girls they could leave, and they all went up to Jeffrey’s apartment to talk about what was going on. Somehow Jeffrey managed to convince the police that he and Konerak were gay lovers. They wouldn’t even listen to Konerak because they said he was too drunk to know what was going on, when really he was acting like that because of the drugs Jeffrey had given him. The police then left without even doing a background check on Jeffrey. When they reported what it was about on their radio, the police were laughing because they were gay and because Konerak was so drunk.
... the .. end .. for .. jeffy .. d ...
On July 22, 1991, Jeffrey's luck turned bad. It started out as all the other murders. Jeffrey met Tracey Edwards and they decided to go back to his apartment and drink some beers for a while. Jeffrey really liked Tracey so he decided he would let him live a little longer then the rest of his victims. There was a television on in the bedroom playing The Exorcist. That just happened to be Jeffrey’s favorite movie, so they went to the bedroom to watch it for a while. Tracey knew something was definitely not right when he smelled a horrid smell coming out of a big blue barrel which was used to put extra body parts in, and he saw the pictures hanging on the walls of men who had been chopped up. Just then Tracey felt Jeffrey trying to handcuff him; he struggled to keep his other hand from being handcuffed too. Jeffrey had a large butcher knife and pierced Tracey just above the heart. Tracey apologized to Jeffrey to try to ease his rage a little, he was trying everything he could think of to stall Jeffrey. Tracey made several trips to the bathroom, trying to find a way out of the apartment. The turning point came when Jeffrey forced Tracey to the floor and told him he was going to cut out his heart and eat it. Jeffrey wanted to take a few more nude pictures before he killed him. He turned his head to get the camera and Tracey punched him in the face. Jeffrey fell to the side and Tracey got up and kicked him in the stomach doubling him over. After clawing at the locks, finally the door opened and he was free; however, Jeffrey was not far behind him. Shortly after Tracey was outside, he saw a police car patrolling the streets. He ran to them and they all went up to Jeffrey’s apartment to find out what was going on. They told Jeffrey to give them the key to the handcuffs, which were dangling around Tracey’s left wrist. Jeffrey refused to get it. Within a few seconds it was like a wrestling match between the two police and Jeffrey. A match Jeffrey was sure to lose. After they had him in custody, they found the remains to eleven bodies in his apartment.
The police that were called to the incident involving Konerak Sinthasomphone were in a great deal of trouble because they had not done a background check on Jeffrey, which is required. Because they were so irresponsible, it created a lot of rage throughout the city.
Jeffrey admitted to all the murders and he even told the authorities where some other bodies were hidden. He pleaded insanity. Jeffrey was charged with sixteen life sentences. He had really killed seventeen people but they couldn’t find the body of Steven W. Toumi, so he wasn’t charged for it.
On November 28, 1994, Jeffrey’s body was found in the restroom of the Columbia Correctional Institute. He had been murdered by a black man who had also killed another racist white man at the same time. The three men had been assigned to mop the restroom floors when an argument started. An argument ending in tragedy to some and joy to others. It was later described that Jeffrey’s head looked like it has been repeatedly smashed into the wall or floor. It resembled a watermelon that had been dropped a couple times.
For Jeffrey’s family it was a very hard time, despite all the grief he had caused to innocent families, they still loved him. The reporters were also very hard for the Dahmer family to deal with. To many it was just the end to another nightmare.
