Anne E. Schwartz - Monster: The True Story of the Jeffrey Dahmer Murders

I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.

Jonathan Swift

More than three decades following that first trip I made across the threshold of Jeffrey Dahmers abattoir in July 1991, I took another journeyback to those whose lives and careers were irrevocably and savagely altered by this case, including my own.

Since that day, there remains a global, morbid curiosity to know the details, but its more than thatthere is a rapaciousness, not unlike Dahmers, for information. Some, presumably, think that knowing will help them figure out how to ensure that this never happens again. Others, quite simply, just want to know the details.

Make no mistakethis was a horrific story to cover for the daily news, one I lived with as I wrote my first version of this book, The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough, in the ten months after the discovery in 1991. It lives with me todaynot so much the gory details, but the way the public reacted to the information then and now. Today, the public is largely inured to serial-killer discussions, given the current graphic depictions on television and in movies. But for me, it has been the story of a lifetime for a young cops and courts reporter. It is a story that has led me to inexorably be linked to one of the most famous serial killers of our time, Jeffrey Dahmereven more than three decades later.

The realization that a serial killer had lived in our midst in the Milwaukee area for ten yearswhere it was discovered he had murdered seventeen malesset the city on its heels and remains a subject into which few locals want to delve. I am welcome to discuss my work of twenty-six years as a crime reporter and nearly a decade working in law enforcement, including sharing the most unsavory case details of crimes that made the headlines. But I am not welcome to discuss the Dahmer case in my home state. Not here in Wisconsin. Almost never.

Since 1991, the case has been professionally presented and scrutinized in professional circles among law enforcement officers, FBI profilers, prosecutors, defense attorneys, medical examiners, journalists, and all those for whom the Dahmer case was part of the most surreal days at the office ever. So, what is the perspective from those of us who had a front-row seat to one of the grisliest shows the world has ever seen?

I returned to the scene of the crime, so to speak, to interview some of those with whom I shared the lasting repercussions it has had on our lives and professions. I sat for hours with Dahmers defense attorney, Gerald Boyle, who quietly continued to visit with the serial killer in prison and maintained perhaps the closest relationship with the Monster of anyone in the two years before Dahmer was murdered. Surprisingly, now-retired police detective Dennis Murphy, who secured Dahmers 150-page confession, also continued conversations with the killer in prison in an unending quest to answer what we all want to know: Why? Murphy is a popular speaker about the Dahmer investigation for homicide conferences and as an interview subject for countless documentaries.

Former Milwaukee County district attorney E. Michael McCann reflected on the case, saying he wasnt scarred by the horrific details because he has always kept a fair amount of religion. Some thirty years later, McCann says hearing all he did during the Dahmer case prompted him to run an inventory on his own fantasiesand he urges others to do the same.

Dr. Jeffrey Jentzen was the Milwaukee County medical examiner who performed the autopsies on whatever remained of the victimssometimes a skeleton, sometimes human organs found in a cooking pot in Dahmers apartment. He is currently active emeritus professor of forensic pathology at the University of Michigan.

He continues to present on his experiences working the Dahmer murders and says there was a great hypocrisy that justice was served in the case. He, like all those involved, has selected memories. He attributes the dearth of his own to the fog of war.

I reached out to Jentzen's successor, Dr. Brian Peterson, who also is the immediate past president of the National Association of Medical Examiners; Dr. Peterson tells me the case is a model for the NAME membership when it comes to the profession then and now.

Michael Dubis was one of the first Milwaukee police detectives on the scene when the horrific discovery was made amid the unbearable stench of a small Milwaukee apartment. He tells me his memories are triggered by anything that resembles the smell of that crime scene.

The media played a huge role in influencing public perception of the case in the 1990s and most certainly has evolved into an unrecognizable animal today. Renee Raffaelli Bakken was a young television segment producer at WISN-TV (ABC) in Milwaukee when I broke the story at the newspaper. We eventually would work together at the TV station when she produced a nightly recap of the days trialsomething unheard of back thenand I would serve as an analyst of the events. Renee is still at the station in 2021, now as its managing editor, and sat down with me to remember those days and the painstaking discussions in the newsroom over what could be aired. Content for broadcast and reporters approach to crime has, to put it mildly, changed.

In thirty years, there have been books, documentaries, movies rife with imagined reenactments, stage plays, guided Milwaukee Dahmer tours, comic books, trading cardseven a Jeffrey Dahmer action figure. The courts have consistently ruled in favor of free speech and all the aforementioned projects were realized. There most assuredly will be more.

My memories are of the long hours spent confirming endless details revealed to me by sources. I am interviewed for all manners of legitimate documentary projects. And yes, I would eventually speak to Jeffrey Dahmer. My impression these many years later remains the same as it was when I first wrote about him.