Unseen Photos from the Dahmer Trial

In the Summer of 2024, I came across a lead for some rare photographs taken at the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Thinking I would maybe get a couple of lesser-seen pictures of the defendant, I sent a tentative email and, two months later (and thanks to the kindness of a man over 4,000 miles away), was remarkably in possession of one of the coolest things I’ve ever obtained throughout my research:

Over 2,500 unpublished images from Wisconsin vs. Dahmer – as shot by photographers from the ‘Milwaukee Journal’ / ‘Sentinel’ and presented on their original Kodak contact prints.

Though the obtainment of most of these images was conditional, I am permitted to share a few of them here for the first time ever, direct from the original negatives.

As told through the lens of those who documented the intensity and emotion of one of the most infamous events in American true crime history, here are some never-before-seen photos from the 1992 trial of Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer.

Jeffrey Dahmer re-enters the courtroom following a break in his sanity trial

Pleading guilty but insane on 15 counts of homicide, the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer began on Thursday the 30th of January, 1992 and was to last almost three weeks.

Because Dahmer had openly confessed to the murder of 16 young men in Wisconsin¹ – and had been banged to rights by the number of skulls, skeletons and various other human remains retrieved from his apartment – the onus on the jury was to determine whether he had been legally insane at the time of his crimes. If Dahmer was deemed beyond his mental faculties, he would be sentenced to time in a psychiatric hospital instead of prison.²

The thought of Dahmer evading direct responsibility for his crimes was seen as insulting to many. Geraldine Martin (sister of victim Anthony Sears) thought that hospital would be “an easy way out for him” and would provide a more “cozy” environment than prison. Another relative – Inez Thomas, mother of victim David Thomas – thought Dahmer had known “exactly what he was doing and how he was going to do it” and believed that there was nothing wrong with him. However others felt that Dahmer was genuinely mad. Dr. Judith Becker thought that he needed medication and special treatment best administered in a medical environment. Finding Dahmer sane would be, in Dr. Becker’s opinion, “a miscarriage of justice.” Correspondingly, Dr. Fred Berlin described Dahmer’s affliction as a type of “love sickness” in its bid to sustain a relationship the only way Dahmer knew how: with an unresponsive partner.

The prosecution therefore wanted Dahmer deemed sane, while the defence was trying to argue that Dahmer had killed during psychotic episodes when he was out of control.

Defence attorney Gerald P. Boyle and prosecuting attorney E. Michael McCann converse behind the defendant during a court recess

Centre stage of the trial, funnelling the dissection of the defendant’s life and mind, were two 55-year-old Irish Catholic lawyers with two very different styles.

Boyle amicably approached the courtroom – as one newspaper put it – “as if it were a good friends living room.” His courteous, almost casual, cross-examination in stark contrast to McCann’s intense combative approach – and whose voice “rises in a tone approaching indignation when he seeks to expose a weakness in the testimony of a defence witness.”

With the burden of proof (in this case, to show that Dahmer was insane) resting on Boyle, the defence untypically went first with their opening statement. That same burden of proof would later be described by Boyle’s assistant, Wendy Patrickus, as having been “an uphill battle.” Patrickus also admitted that “the percentage of [burden of proof arguments] that are won is very, very little. One lawyer said it was like winning the lottery.”

Dahmer’s father and step-mother are escorted through the Milwaukee County Safety Building

Also thrown into media scrutiny and subject to abuse were Dahmer’s own family members – who faced an onslaught of demands and questions that they themselves did not often know the answers to. Dahmer’s beloved Gramma had her home pelted with eggs on at least one occasion, while his biological mother, Joyce (a woman often unfairly demonised despite her own mental health struggles), later attempted suicide.

A chemist by trade, dad Lionel embarked upon an agonisingly analytical attempt to try and understand how the young boy who had once helped nurse a baby bird back to health (and who, according to Lionel, had been a “happy and ebullient child”) could grow up to become one of America’s most notorious serial killers. The introspective account, A Father’s Story, would serve as both a personal catharsis and a means to try and help other mothers and fathers identify potential red flags in their children – and in themselves as parents. As Lionel’s second wife, Shari Jordan (who had known and cared about Jeffrey since his late teens) explained: “If we understand more about Jeff and empathise only in what created this monster, then perhaps we can, in fact, help to prevent the monsters in others.”

Though tense at first, the relationship between the Dahmer’s and some of the victims families would later thaw through hugs and graces³. Shirley Hughes (mother of victim Tony Hughes) assured the Dahmer’s that she did not blame them for what had happened to her son. Lionel and Shari also befriended Theresa Smith (sister of victim Eddie Smith), who would openly express her forgiveness and attend Jeffrey’s funeral following his own murder in 1994.

“They’re victims too,” said one Baptist minister trying to console Lionel and Shari after the trial. “They’re hurting. They need help too.”

Potential victim, Tracy Edwards, speaks to a sheriff’s deputy prior to his testimony

At approximately 11:25pm on the night of July 23rd, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers were flagged down by 32-year-old Tracy Edwards. Edwards was keen to have the handcuffs dangling from his wrist removed and claimed that he had been threatened with a knife by the man who’d put them on him. After leading the officers back to Apartment 213, Dahmer’s 13 year killing spree came to an abrupt end and, a few days later, Edwards was telling the Milwaukee Sentinel how he that felt God had chosen him to stop it. “It was like confronting Satan himself,” he said.

Some of Edwards’ valour rubbed off, however, when McCann’s cross-examination drew notice to the array of discrepancies between Edwards’ formal version of events and the story he’d told Geraldo Rivera. In his talk show appearance, Edwards claimed Dahmer had pulled a 12″ machete on him⁴; made him look inside a refrigerator containing multiple skulls, a human heart and hand; shown him Polaroids of previous victims in various states of dismemberment⁵ – and claimed that the Milwaukee police officers had sent him back to Dahmer’s apartment unescorted. Other embellishments⁶ suggested Edwards was prone to exaggeration for financial gain, which risked discrediting the version of Dahmer’s derangement he presented to the court.

The sight of Edwards’ name in the press also drew the attention of the Tupelo police – who then arrested him on the sexual battery charge he was wanted for in Mississippi. Upon finding out that his arrest had led to Edwards’ own, Dahmer dryly remarked: “Well. God got two birds with one stone that night, didn’t He?”

Dahmer is escorted past prosecuting attorney Michael McCann on his way back into court

Following his arrest in July ’91, Dahmer took full responsibility for his actions. Speaking for his client, Boyle was authorised to tell reporters that, “the system tried properly to help him but he failed the system; the system didn’t fail him.” Dahmer – allegedly hurting from the harm he’d caused – made the decision to change his initial plea of ‘not guilty’ to ‘guilty but insane’, which would save the city a lot of time and money in legal procedures.

However, despite Dahmer’s cooperation, his trial was still the most expensive Milwaukee had ever hosted. Courtroom security was 13 times the cost of a typical felony trial; a $15,000 bulletproof plastic wall was installed to separate participants and spectators; jurors were paid $18 a day – not including their $73,000 food and lodging costs – and $65,000 was spent on expert witnesses (Dr. Dietz’s fee was a reported $39,000 alone).

Dependant on the verdict, it was estimated that it would’ve cost $27,156 a year to keep Dahmer in prison – or $59,565 a year to house him in a mental institution⁷.

Presiding judge, Laurence C. Gram, contemplates the testimony of Dr. Fosdal

Overseeing the most publicised trial in Wisconsin history was 60-year-old West Allis native, Laurence Gram.

A judge for almost 20 years by the time the Dahmer case hit his courtroom, Gram noted that people often expect a bizarre criminal to look appropriately bizarre and exhibit “strange physical actions and things like that.” However Dahmer looked “very normal, articulate, intelligent and [like] a cool customer,” Gram said, “and that hit a lot of people right between the eyes.”

Though many blamed the Milwaukee Police Department and others in the justice system for not putting a stop to the murders sooner⁸, Gram thought that blame was misplaced. “We get so taken up with the idea of pinpointing blame other places, I really think we lose sight of the fact that it starts with Jeffrey Dahmer,” he said. “The scary thing is, it was a perfect crime. And it was only because he kept doing it that he got caught.”

Gram’s personal feeling towards Dahmer was that he was a master manipulator whose repeated requests to speak to police had been a way of extending the time he was permitted to smoke (“he knew that by saying he wanted to talk some more, he would get his cigarettes”). Despite hearing countless hours of testimony presenting Dahmer’s motive as ultimately a desire to keep someone with him for as long as possible, Gram also felt that Dahmer had killed in order to prevent his lovers from outing him as a homosexual. “This is the kid who got his hand caught in the cookie jar,” Gram said a few months after the verdict. “Not everyone kills when they get their hand caught in the cookie jar, but Jeffrey Dahmer found that that was the easy way out. And so he killed.”

Dahmer stands alongside 20-something-year-old assistant attorney, Wendy Patrickus

Wendy Patrickus was just 25 years old when she was dispatched to the Milwaukee Police Station to interview a new client on behalf of her boss, Gerald Boyle. Despite the Jeffrey Dahmer story having all the elements of a particularly gory horror film, Patrickus found the man at the heart of it all to be “very gentlemanly” and “polite.”

Though Boyle spearheaded the defence, most of Dahmer’s legal interviews were with Patrickus – who found herself learning details Dahmer wouldn’t even tell an array of psychiatrists.

“He was just a person that I was employed to represent and I would treat him with dignity and respect, as I would any of my other clients,” Patrickus told a Wisconsin paper after the trial. “That’s why I had such good rapport with him.”

Dahmer eventually admitted to Wendy and Ellen Ryan (also of his defence counsel) that they were the closest friends he had ever had.

Former FBI agent and criminal profiling pioneer, Robert Ressler, sits behind the defence team on day two of Dahmer’s sanity trial

Having interviewed the defendant on behalf of the defence team, Ressler concluded that Dahmer was mentally ill and that the most appropriate setting for him would be a mental hospital.

Though Dahmer appeared to be able to control and even rationalise his behaviour at times, Ressler attributed those periods of lucidity to the gradient nature of insanity. “When someone is crazy, we expect that person to be wild-eyed, drooling at the mouth and never in control of his faculties,” Ressler later wrote. “But there are insane people who can frequently appear to be functioning, sane human beings, even though deep down, at a fundamental level, they are beyond sanity. Dahmer, in my view, was one of those people.”

Boyle wanted to use Ressler’s clout as a criminal profiler to have the court hear how Dahmer fit the pattern of a mentally disturbed ‘disorganised’ killer. However Ressler was blocked from sharing this assessment when McCann objected to theoretic evidence being used and the irrelevance of profiling someone who had already been identified and taken to trial.

Dr. Frederick Fosdal consults his notes during his second day testifying at Dahmer’s trial

Testifying for the prosecution, Dr. Fosdal said that Dahmer suffered from necrophilia (a desire to have sex with the dead) but that the disorder did not excuse his crimes.

“[It] explains his motivation and explains his behaviour, but [it] did not cause him to lack the substantial capacity [to adhere to the law]” the psychiatrist claimed. “He was able to refrain and he had some control over as and when he followed through with his sexual desires.” Fosdal referred to instances where Dahmer had let several young men go free after drugging them and the long periods of time which had sometimes elapsed between killings (such as from his first kill in 1978 to his second in ’87), as evidence of such restraint.

However cross-examination by Boyle confirmed that Dahmer wasn’t only drawn to the dead and that, had his attempts to create lobotomised sex slaves by means of pouring acid⁹ into a power-drilled hole in a skull been successful, Fosdal believed he never would have killed again. Such attempts to create a subdued and submissive partner were not deluded, in Fosdal’s opinion, but “realistic attempts” to disable the freewill of a living person and avoid the drudgery of body disposal. He directly quoted Dahmer as saying: “I didn’t want to keep on [killing] that’s why I tried the drill technique… To render them in a zombie-like state [and] keep them alive so they would be with me for a much longer period of time. Alive, interactive, but on my terms.”

Although Fosdal did not discuss the practical details of how Dahmer had planned to feed or care for his zombie.

Dahmer is escorted into court by a member of the Milwaukee Sheriff’s department on February 14th, 1992 – prior to Gerald Boyle’s closing argument

Boyle attempted to appeal to the jurors preconceived notions of crazy when reeling off example after example of Dahmer’s odd behaviour in order to establish him as mentally impaired.

Jeffrey Dahmer, in Gerald Boyle’s opinion, was an out of control “insane human being” who – among other things – was into “fantasy, drugging, keeping skulls in lockers, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia… trying to create a shrine, showering with corpses… having delusions, chanting and rocking, picking up roadkill, having obsessions, murders, lobotomies… going to graveyards, going to funeral homes… posing people who are dead… [and] masturbating all over the place.”

The defence attorney invited the jury to place themselves in Dahmer’s shoes and see him burdened with the same kind of unchosen affliction as an alcoholic, unable to stop or self-help. “Nobody could be more reprehensible than this man if he’s sane,” Boyle reasoned. “The devil would be in a tie [if he was sane]. But if he’s sick – if he’s sick – then he isn’t the devil.”

The jury ultimately disagreed with Boyle’s assessment, however, and a 10:2 verdict ruled that Jeffrey Dahmer was legally sane in the eyes of Wisconsin law.

Michael McCann gestures towards Dahmer during his two hour-long closing argument

McCann’s closing statement was more openly contemptuous than Boyle’s plea to empathise with Dahmer as a sick man.

“I want to tell you who I identify with,” McCann said – holding up a portrait of each one of the victims in turn and imploring the court not to forget Stephen Tuomi, James Doxtator, Richard Guerrero, Anthony Sears, Raymond Smith, Edward Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Tony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matt Turner, Jeramiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy or Joseph Bradehoft. All of whom, McCann reminded the jury, had died at the defendant’s hands for extended sexual pleasure.

Following the verdict, a victorious McCann dismissed the defences claim that Dahmer had been (in Boyle’s words) a ‘runaway train on a track of madness.’

“He could’ve stopped,” McCann said. “I didn’t believe he was a rolling train, I believe he was the engineer of a rolling train.”

Victims loved ones embrace one another and prosecuting attorney, Michael McCann, after Dahmer is found sane on 15 counts of homicide

In the eyes of 10 Milwaukee jurors (only two had dissented), Jeffrey Dahmer had not been suffering from a mental disease at the time he committed his murders.

As Judge Gram read off each verdict, the atmosphere in the room went from tense to electric in its emotion. Some of the victims loved ones shouted with pain, others sobbed with relief. By the final count they had leapt to embrace one another. McCann was also thrown into the celebrations as victims relatives thanked him with hugs, handshakes and one mans cries of “God bless you! I love you, my brother!” as the attorney left the room.

Though faith in Milwaukee’s law enforcement was still shaken for some – and though the pain of losing their loved ones would never truly fade for anyone – the verdict went a long way in helping many of the families to bridge some of that distrust. “[The prosecution] gave a powerful, powerful argument,” Teresa Smith said. “They brought back the faith I’d lost in the justice system.” Her sister, Carolyn, also found some relief in knowing their brothers killer would be spending the rest of his natural life in Columbia Correctional Institution, about 80 miles from Milwaukee. “I can smile better,” she said.

On Friday the 1st of May, 1992, Dahmer received yet another life sentence after a brief trial in Bath, Ohio -where he pleaded guilty to the murder of his first victim, Steven Hicks.

Shirley Hughes – mother of Dahmer’s 31-year-old deaf-mute victim, Tony Hughes – delivers her victim impact statement prior to Dahmer’s sentencing

Tony Hughes became Dahmer’s twelfth victim on the night of May 24th, 1991, after meeting him outside Club 219. Dahmer separated the good-natured Tony from his friends under the guise of photographing him for $50 – although the two were previously familiar¹⁰ with one another which might’ve also accounted for Tony’s misplaced trust. His skull was later retrieved from Dahmer’s apartment.

Tony’s death was particularly poignant in that he would’ve been unable to even cry out to his assailant in the event of a struggle ¹¹ – a handicap referenced by his mother via the poem she read out during her impact statement. “Although I can’t communicate with the loud voice, listen to me anyway,” pleaded Ms. Hughes as she addressed Dahmer through the imagined words of her son. “Try to have mercy on my moans. Look at the tears rolling down my face. See that each one is a cry for help and realise my signs are showing you that I want to live. Tell me just what is it that I’ve done to you to make you such a monster, to make you such a maniac, to make you such a devil.”¹²

Emotionally and spiritually wounded by the ordeal, Ms. Hughes became known for her religious devotion, kindly demeanour and desire to help other grieving families. Author Brian Masters described her as having been at the trial “every day, unsmiling and unconquerable, yielding neither to bitterness nor rage, in silent celebration of the closeness she and Tony had enjoyed in life.”

Jeffrey Dahmer makes his first public statement to the court on Monday the 17th of February, 1992, before being handed 15 consecutive life sentences

Victims families leaned forward to better hear the soft-spoken, 31-year-old former chocolate factory worker apologise to the people he had hurt – including the victims loved ones; the police officers who lost their jobs following the Konerak Sinthasomphone incident; Dahmer’s former parole officer and his own family. “If I could give my life right now to bring [the victims] back, I would do it,” he said. “I am so very sorry.”

Dahmer – whose cooperation with police was an attempt at atonement and who was insistent that his crimes had not stemmed from hate – believed he had been sick. The trial had been a way to “find out just what it was that caused me to be so bad and evil,” he told the court. In favour of being further studied during his incarceration, Dahmer also pledged “to talk to doctors who might be able to find some answers,” in the hope that it might help other people with similar disorders – and subsequently prevent more victims of them.

Quoting Timothy 1:15 (“Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of who I am the worst”), Dahmer further expressed his need to reacquaint himself with religion. Failing to stay with God had, in Dahmer’s own words, contributed to him having “created a holocaust.”

After acknowledging that his time in prison would be terrible, Dahmer refused to ask Judge Gram for any consideration and seemed to be as relieved as anyone that his crimes were now over. “Thank God, there will be no more harm that I can do,” he said.

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Sources:

• Court TV
• Chicago Tribune, The Morning Call, The Milwaukee Journal, Green Bay Press Gazette, Stevens Point Journal, Tampa Bay Times, The Akron Beacon, The Post-Crescent, LA Times
• Channel 6 interview with Shari Dahmer
• The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters (1993)
• A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer (1994)
• I Have Lived the Monster by Robert K. Ressler and Tom Shachtman (1997)

A very special thank you to Chris for his trust and time 🙂

Footnotes:

1. Dahmer’s first victim, Steven Hicks, had been murdered in Bath, Ohio, so he would later be extradited to stand trial there ↩︎
2. Had Dahmer been found insane at the time of just one or some of his murders, he would spend time in a psychiatric facility before serving the rest of his sentence in prison ↩︎
3. In somewhat stark contrast to the Hicks family – who filed a suit against the Dahmer’s for Steven’s wrongful death and claimed that Lionel, Shari and Joyce’s supposed negligence of Jeffrey was to blame ↩︎
4. A 12″ machete was not among the items retrieved from Dahmer’s apartment ↩︎
5. Numerous Polaroids documenting the dismemberment of victims were indeed found in Dahmer’s apartment, although it’s unlikely Dahmer would’ve shown them to Edwards. Dahmer’s lack of sadism, the fact the Polaroids were found hidden away in a bedroom draw and the fact Edwards originally had no other complaint to the officers other than wanting to have the handcuff removed, all suggest that much of Edwards later accounts were exaggerated. If it had been true, however, and Edwards concern had been only to ditch the handcuff with no mention of the full horrors – and victims – he had ran from, his acknowledgement as a hero is even less deserved ↩︎
6. Edwards also claimed, for example, that eight security locks had sealed the door to Dahmer’s apartment instead of the documented two ↩︎
7. Figures for Columbia Correctional Institution (Portage, Wisconsin) and Mendota Mental Health Institute (Madison, Wisconsin), respectively ↩︎
8. Police officers had infamously returned 14 year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone to Dahmer’s apartment after a dazed-and-drugged Konerak escaped onto the street outside. Dahmer convinced the officers that the boy was his adult drunk lover – then promptly murdered him once the pair were alone again. A group of black women had registered their concern for Konerak, attempting to save him (and, by unknown proxy, four subsequent victims) but had been dismissed by the white officers. This prompted accusations of racism within the cities infrastructure – a claim that was further exasperated by the fact that many of Dahmer’s victims were black and gay and missing persons reports for several of them were seen as not having been given their due attention ↩︎
9. Dahmer had also used boiling water to try and achieve this ↩︎
10. Several sources (including Ms. Hughes herself) claim that Tony and Dahmer had been friends for some time prior to Tony’s murder. Ms. Hughes claimed that Dahmer had attended both a Hughes family New Year’s Eve party and a birthday party – while other patrons of Milwaukee’s gay bars stated that Dahmer and Tony had been seen together several times. Dahmer had always denied ever knowing any of his victims prior to meeting them before their deaths. However, as many members of the gay community would frequent the same bars, it’s not implausible to think that, at minimum, Dahmer and Tony would have least recognised eachother in passing several times before the night of May 24th ’91 ↩︎
11. Dahmer and Tony had initially communicated by writing notes to one another ↩︎
12. The poem Ms. Hughes read out during her impact statement had been written by a friend of Tony’s ↩︎