Kennedy Patrick - GRILLING DAHMER: The Interrogation Of The Milwaukee Cannibal

GRILLING

DAHMER

THE INTERROGATION OF

THE MILWAUKEE CANNIBAL

PATRICK KENNEDY

and ROBYN MAHARAJ

WildBluePress.com

GRILLING DAHMER published by:

WILDBLUE PRESS

P.O. Box 102440

Denver, Colorado 80250

Publisher Disclaimer: Any opinions, statements of fact or fiction, descriptions, dialogue, and citations found in this book were provided by the author, and are solely those of the author. The publisher makes no claim as to their veracity or accuracy, and assumes no liability for the content.

Copyright 2021 by Patrick Kennedy and Robyn Maharaj

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

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ISBN 978-1-952225-64-2 Trade Paperback

ISBN 978-1-952225-63-5 eBook

Cover design 2021 WildBlue Press. All rights reserved.

Interior Formatting/Cover Design by Elijah Toten

www.totencreative.com

A serial killers victims are randomly chosen to fulfill an uncontrollable need to kill. Often he leads an ordinary lifehis family and friends unaware of his homicidal passions.

Jim Kallstrom

Former FBI Assistant Director

New York City

Acknowledgments

This book is dedicated to those who serve on the front line as police officers and detectives in law enforcement.

It is also dedicated to all of Jeffrey Dahmers victims*.

***

I would like to thank the late Patrick Francis Kennedy for sharing his story with me. Thanks to Patricia Kennedy for allowing me to share Patricks story with others and for encouraging and inspiring me during the entire process.

Thanks to Natalie Ballard for her incredible editing skills and to her and Richard Chip Smith for their directional input. Thanks to Dan Zupansky for his skills and expertise during the reading stages of the manuscript.

I would like to thank the staff at Wild Blue Press for taking this book on and allowing it to reach a wider true crime audience.

I would also like to thank David and Dianne Maharaj for their love, patience, support, and understandingalways.

For Patrick

I worked on this book because I wanted to honor a man who had a story I believed needed to be told despite his sudden death. I was afraid that his manuscript might be put back into a desk drawer, never to be read again. Patty, his widow, and I both wanted his story to be available to a larger audience.

Patrick Kennedy was someone who Jeffrey Dahmer seemed to look up to and wanted to please immensely. Kennedy, who as a devout Catholic was naturally drawn to the spiritual and literal confessional model, had a gentle, unassuming, and nonjudgmental method that built a significant rapport that helped Dahmer feel comfortable with finally confiding to someone in authority. Pat demonstrated a willingness to share private truths about himself in a way that worked with this particular and unique suspect.

What drew me to tell Pats story was his compassionate ability to see the humanity in a man who everyone in the world called evil. From the beginning, he chose to hear that mans story and not to judge him as so many people lined up to do. That man, who experts and family said would normally shut down when faced with authorities and confrontation, opened up to this particular detectivea cop he believed from the beginning he could trust to listen to him and help him take on the weight of the story about his murderous crimes.

Pat heard and saw firsthand all that Jeff had done and yet he still chose to treat him humanely, to respect him for agreeing to talk, and to help devastated families find out the fate of their missing loved ones.

Note

Since Grilling Dahmer s first incarnation, there has been an even greater interest in true crime, serial killers, and crime stories. Podcasts have sprung up everywhere and true crime proves to be a popular genre of discussion from shows who profile cold cases and unsolved crimes to shows that look back on famous and infamous killers as a form of education and entertainment.

My Friend Dahmer , a 2017 film directed by Marc Meyers and based on the graphic novel by John Derf Backderf, came out and featured actor Ross Lynch as Jeff Dahmer in high school and his life as a young person prior to his first murder. Netflix is due to release Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, directed by Ryan Murphy and featuring Evan Peters as Dahmer, in spring 2022.

Dahmer has been portrayed in books, films, and documentaries since he was first captured in 1991. Dahmer, like so many others, unfortunately, inspires others to tell and retell the story in the form of literature, art, film, and stage. Hopefully something comes from the exploration of some of the most horrific crimes we have ever seen in our times but as time moves forward, these serial killers go from becoming an article or story in the news and in magazines that we read and remember reading to people who make up the criminal history we are so fascinated by. Its interesting that some of the young actors selected to portray Jeffrey Dahmer now werent even born when his crimes were discovered, he was caught, sentenced and eventually brutally killed in prison.

Sometimes, the further a crime gets from us, the less real it becomes. When you have actors auditioning for the roles of real people (still living sometimes), there is a weird dichotomy of reality and art occurring when true stories are told by people who are telling a story from those perspectives. How do members of the families of victims of serial killers feel about these books, movies, and podcasts? Too often we focus on the perpetrators of violent crimes and rarely the victims and we shouldnt.

I was twenty-one when I first heard the name Jeffrey Dahmer, so he was a real person to me when he was first in the news and then later when I had the opportunity to meet Patrick and work on this book. I was focused on telling the real story as it was coming from one of the people directly involved in the case. At the same time, I hoped to accomplish telling Patricks story as artfully, as literarily, as truthfully, and as respectful as possible. Now, exactly thirty years later, Grilling Dahmer , reissued and released by Wild Blue Press, is one telling of the Jeffrey Dahmer story.

Our scars have the power to remind us that the past was real.

Hannibal Lecter, Red Dragon by Thomas Harris.

* List of Jeffrey Dahmers known victims

Steven Hicks, 18

Steven Tuomi, 26

Jamie Doxtator, 14

Richard Guerrero, 25

Anthony Sears, 24

Eddie Smith, 36

Ricky Beeks, 27

Ernest Miller, 22

David Thomas, 23

Curtis Straughter, 16

Errol Lindsey, 19

Tony Hughes, 31

Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14

Matt Turner, 20

Jerimiah Weinberger 23

Oliver Lacy, 23

Joseph Bradehoft, 25

Introduction

I was first introduced to former Milwaukee Homicide Detective Patrick Kennedy during a short interview with Kennedy and Christopher James Thompson at the SXSW (South by Southwest) Festival in 2012, where Chriss film The Jeffrey Dahmer Files made its world premiere. I was interested in Kennedys approach to Dahmer when he questioned him on the night of Dahmers arrest.

Several months earlier, I had experienced the devastation of losing a family member to homicide. A paternal uncle who lived in Freeport, Trinidad, and Tobago, West Indies, burned to death in a fire that was later determined to be arson. That crime is still unsolved (as of this printing), and leaves a loss, emptiness, and the knowledge that someone decided to intentionally kill a member of my family and got away with it.