Towards the end of Jeffrey Dahmer's madness, he started collecting skulls and bones of his victims, wishing to build a shrine "for the Devil". Although he never actually built the shrine, Dahmer illustrated the image of what he wanted it to become to detectives. To Jeffrey Dahmer, it would be a work of art.
Killin' at Granny's
Richard Guerrero was a 23-year-old male whom Dahmer met on March 24, 1988, outside of the Phoenix Bar in Milwaukee. Comparable to Dahmer's previous catches, Guerrero was offered $50 to come back to Jeff's grandmother's home to take some seductive photos.
Jeffrey's grandmother had no clue that her grandson was even gay, much less bringing boys back to her house and beheading them in her basement. But soon this became a routine act for the distorted psychopath.
Killing, usually by strangulation, was not something Dahmer particularly relished doing. It was merely a means to fulfill his genuine needs, which was to possess the corpse and feel safe with its company.
In his book, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, the author Brian Masters writes, "From now on, this would be a constant theme, the act of killing as a grotesque distortion of the act of love. He now had Richard all to himself for another few hours, and performed oral sex upon his corpse."
He would hack up the body only when his grandmother took off for church.
Most of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims' remains would be picked up with the Monday trash, but as for the skull, he would bleach it and then masturbate into it for several weeks before it became too brittle to handle.
Brotherly Love
One huge, and perhaps eery, coincidence is that two of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims were actually brothers.
Somsack Sinthasomphone was a student at the Milwaukee School of Arts when he met the maniac who would attempt to kill him, and then kill his brother two years later.
Jeff offered $50 to Somsack, who hesitantly agreed, but went along anyway. Drugged and sexually assaulted, Somsack narrowly avoided his own murder by escaping and spending several nights in the hospital.
The boy led police to Dahmer's apartment, and they arrested him with the charge of Second Degree Sexual Assault and Enticing a Child for Immoral Purposes.
Dahmer would have to attend mandatory sex therapy and lockup in the House of Corrections. They granted him work release from the prison 6 days per week.
Jeff's father, Lionel Dahmer Phd, mailed a personal letter to the judge that read:
‘I have tremendous reservations regarding Jeff’s chances when he hits the streets.’ He concluded with the request that Jeff not be told he had written, presumably because he did not want him to realise he was urging more psychotherapy, and a touching imprecation: ‘I sincerely hope that you might intervene in some way to help my son whom I love very much and for whom I want a better life . . . This may be,’ he said, ‘our last chance.’
Jeff's Bone Zone
Ricky Beeks, 32, became Dahmer's first candidate for a prime position at his future shrine. Jeff saw his beheaded victims as works of art. Something beautiful... at least to him.
Using a camera, Dahmer took 72 polaroids of his deceased victims in various provocative photos. I have already posted a write-up about Jeffrey Dahmer's polaroid photos.
Once the flesh was completely pulled from the skulls and used enamel spray paint to help with their conservation.
"I had three of them by that time that I wanted to keep, so when they were dried I glued the teeth in to make sure they were fastened."‘I separated the joints, the arm joints, the leg joints, and had to do two boilings. I think I used four boxes of Soilex for each one, put in the upper portion of the body and boiled that for about two hours and then the lower portion for another two hours. The Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly-like substance and it just rinses off. Then I laid the clean bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom.’ Jeffrey Dahmer
Dahmer propped up the heads and hands in the sink so that the blood could fully drain.
"I noticed that all the blood tends to collect in the chest area, so I drained that off. You just lift the torso part up and it drains out, down the bathtub drain. Then you slice up the liver into smaller pieces, it’s quite large. You start cutting off the flesh, in the leg area or the arm area and just work your way down. Then when I was saving the heads I’d cut the neck bone, sever the head.’ This would eventually be placed in a saucepan of water. The eyeballs just boiled away, he said; the flesh took longer to dislodge. He used a dessert spoon to scoop out the brain material so as to be left with a perfect unblemished skull." Jeffrey Dahmer
Closer to his arrest, Jeff began getting lazy and not fully disposing, or even hiding properly, the pieces of his victims. The severed parts piled up and the stench of death continued to fill the entire complex.
"Things just went from bad to worse."
Jeffrey would shower with severed torsos floating in his bathtub and sleep next to the headless corpses in his bed. He was completely mad.
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