Dahmer’s crimes, capture and incarceration have been widely documented for decades, but less attention has been given to those who had to figure out what to do with him after his arrest.

Who were the people responsible for putting Dahmer in prison? How were they vetted to ensure they were up to the task? And what issues came with trying to judge one of America’s most notorious serial killers?

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The Insanity Plea

The Selection

The Jury

The Verdict

The Aftermath

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The Insanity Plea

“We now begin an odyssey. The results of which, in a short period of time, will result in a decision to be made by you – and you alone – as to whether or not Jeffrey Dahmer, at the time he committed these horrific murders to which he has pled guilty, was suffering from a mental disease, the result of which meant that he lacked substantial capacity to either appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law.”

– Gerald Boyle addresses the jury in his opening statement

On the 13th January 1992, Wisconsin attorney Gerald P. Boyle announced to the press that his client was changing his plea from ‘not guilty by reason of insanity’ to guilty but insane. 

His client, 31-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer, was facing trial for the murder of fifteen¹ people in Milwaukee, and had been found with the remains of eleven of them in his apartment.

While the evidence gathered by hazmat-suited personnel was incriminating enough, Dahmer then confessed to acts of cannibalism, necrophilia and attempts to create living ‘sex zombies’ by drilling into human skulls and injecting muriatic acid onto the brain.

Under Wisconsin law, an insanity trial was to determine whether Dahmer was insane at the time of these murders and where he would henceforth be confined. 

Boyle’s defence team argued that the defendant had been unable to control his killing, and was therefore the perfect candidate for medical treatment at a mental hospital. Dahmer was, in Boyle’s view, a “very, very sick young man.”

The prosecution, however, believed Dahmer’s faculties had been lucid enough that he could refrain from his murderous activities whenever he wanted, or in order to evade detection. They believed Dahmer belonged in prison.

Though Dahmer’s guilt was never in question, the thought of him being found insane and sent to a mental hospital was seen by many as undermining the gravitas of his crimes.

“I know he’s not insane,” said Theresa Smith, sister of victim Eddie Smith. “I think he knew exactly what he was doing and how he was going to do it. There’s nothing wrong with Jeffrey Dahmer except I just know he’s evil. If they had a plea for that, that’s what he’d get: evilness.”²

Her sister, Carolyn, agreed. “Since day one everything has been done to protect Jeffrey Dahmer’s rights,” she said – indignant that the details of Dahmer’s crimes would not emerge as fully if his guilt wasn’t needing to be established. “My brother had a right to live [and] Jeffrey Dahmer knows what he is doing. All of us want him to go to prison and take justice like a man.”

Shirley Hughes, mother of victim Tony Hughes, was also disappointed. “His lawyers are trying to get him off on an insanity plea and he doesn’t deserve it,” said Hughes. “He’s shown no remorse and he’s sitting up there [in court] so calm.”

However, Boyle was adamant that even if Dahmer were found insane, the fact he might, in theory, be eligible for release every six months was irrelevant.

‘I don’t think anybody needs to be alarmed by this,’ Boyle told the press. “Anyone who thinks that a person sentenced to a mental institution gets out in six months or a year or a year and a half should go about the business of doing some research. It’s extremely difficult to get out, especially when it was a violent crime that has taken place.”

David Thomas’ mother remained unconvinced. To her, hospitalisation would be “an easy way out” for her son’s killer, giving Dahmer a more “cozy” environment than prison.

To resolve the question of where Dahmer was to reside, the Milwaukee County Safety Building opened its doors to the world’s media, the bereaved loved ones of the deceased, more than thirty witnesses who had known Dahmer personally or had been hired to assess him psychiatrically, a small number of public spectators – and the twelve³ carefully selected jurors tasked with judging the state of his sanity. 

[ BACK ]

The Selection

“It’s a strange situation to be in. I mean, I was so intent on having a great deal of control and shaping my own destiny, and now it’s all out of my hands.”

– Jeffrey Dahmer

Jury selection for Wisconsin v. Dahmer began on Monday the 27th of January, ‘92. 

Presiding judge Laurence Gram had rejected Boyle’s earlier request to select a jury outside of Milwaukee, despite the attorney’s belief that tensions within the county were running so high – largely due to public outcry against the police department’s performance⁴ and the disproportionate number of men of colour among Dahmer’s victims – jurors might be subjected to “wrath” from those unhappy with the final verdict.

“These people would not be able to go back into the community and in any way be antiseptic to their decision,” Boyle argued. “Most of the time it’s not a problem, but I think in this case it is.” 

Although Dahmer’s story had traveled worldwide, Boyle pointed out that other parts of the state had not had the same intensity of coverage as Milwaukee, and that jurors from the Madison, Appleton or Green Bay areas could instead be brought in for the trial.

Prosecuting attorney Michael McCann supported his rival’s request, but Gram emphasised the elaborate arrangements the state had already made to ensure security (including installing a $15,000 bulletproof wall in the courtroom to separate Dahmer from spectators and ordering that none of jurors be photographed or televised by the media⁵), and countered that there would still be nowhere in Wisconsin which hadn’t heard of Dahmer’s crimes.

As one former County Prosecutor put it: “If we had to locate 12 people who never heard of Jeffrey Dahmer, it would be a tough row to hoe!”

150 Milwaukee County residents – randomly selected from voter rolls and driver’s license records – were therefore summoned to the Safety Building as potential jurors, while dozens more had phoned in, volunteering to serve.

Of the 70 initially questioned, 25 were immediately excused when financial or familial reasons meant they would be unable to take the expected three weeks away from work or home – including one woman who said her birds would die if she was unable to hand-feed them daily, much to Dahmer’s visible amusement⁶.

Another woman said her mother would go blind if she were not there to care for her, while one man said he was too busy handling the estate of a deceased friend – adding, “I already have my mind made up.”

The inherent nature of Dahmer’s crimes also served to quickly drain the jury pool.

“There are going to be graphic statements relative to Mr. Dahmer as related to the killings,” Boyle told a group of prospective jurors. “Are any of you queasy about your ability to handle [descriptions of] human carnage, killing, mutilation, cannibalism, everything you can possibly imagine?” 

Several people raised their hands.

“I believe it would be upsetting to the point where I’d close my mind and stop listening to the testimony,” said one lady. “I don’t think I could deal with it.”

Another admitted they were mentally unable to cope with being part of a murder trial – especially Jeffrey Dahmer’s – while a third prospective juror was more blunt:

“I just don’t have the stomach for it,” she told the court, before being promptly excused.

Judge Gram had also tried to quell the anxieties of a very nervous looking young man by telling him, “Just relax. Nobody back here bites.”

When Boyle asked if anyone felt that his client was trying to escape justice through his insanity plea, five more raised their hands.

The remaining candidates were then taken into the judges chambers one by one for questioning by the attorneys in the presence of three sheriff’s deputies, three members of the media, and the stone-faced defendant.⁷

This process continued over the next three days to further gauge any potential prejudice towards the material that would govern the trial. 

“You’re going to hear about things you probably didn’t know existed in the real world,” Boyle told one woman. “Will you be able to handle that?”

Other questions asked by Boyle and McCann during jury selection included:

• “Dahmer deliberately drank to prepare himself for homicide. Do you believe someone who drinks voluntarily and then commits a crime should be held accountable?” – McCann
  
  
• “Do you feel you have a duty to make a decision one way or the other because many of the victims were also black?” – Boyle to one of only three black men retained from the pool of potential jurors
  
  
• “There have been suggestions that this was a racial crime and yesterday I said in open court that it wasn’t. Can you trust me on that?” – Boyle to one woman (who assured the attorney, “yes, I’ll trust you.”)
  
  
• “Does anyone suggest they’ll come in with ‘guilty’ on the white victims but ‘insane’ on the black victims?” – McCann to black members of the pool
  
  
• “Do you believe psychiatry is just mambo jumbo or hocus-pocus, and therefore, no matter what [the psychiatrists] say, you will not listen to them?” – Boyle
  
  
• “Do you read those stories about people in outer space having babies and them becoming president and all that junk? Do you believe it?” – Boyle, regarding some of the media’s more sensational stories
  
  
• “You’re going to hear about sexual conduct before death, during death and after death. Will you be so disgusted by that you won’t be able to listen?” – Boyle to one woman (no, she said)
  
  
• “Would you be able to walk into work the day after you make your decision and say ‘I did what was right’?” – Boyle
  
  

Boyle also asked everyone about their attitudes towards homosexuals and “the kind of lovemaking they engage in,” adding, “Are you going to be so turned off you can’t sit and listen to the evidence and make the proper judgement?”

Only one person expressed discomfort in that area.

It was imperative to find jurors who understood that the burden of proving insanity rested with the defence; people who didn’t believe homosexuals lived in sin or whose sexuality was a mental illness; and people who wouldn’t automatically judge Dahmer insane solely because his crimes were so heinous.

“I don’t have to prove [Dahmer is] sane,” McCann told the jury pool. “As we sit here in this courtroom right now, the law says he’s sane… Just because he committed 15 murders does not mean he’s insane. Merely because he has committed acts that you think are unnatural does mean he must be insane.”

A penchant for horror movies was also favourable as it meant jurors would be unlikely to be as shocked by the gruesome testimony. 

“I myself do not attend horror movies,” McCann said (apparent when one prospective juror corrected his pronunciation of ‘Freddy Krueger’), “I had to be educated on the subject by my children [as] I wanted some people on the jury who watched horror movies.”

By the end of the third day, many more people had been dismissed. Including:

• A woman who didn’t know if she could set aside the opinions she’d already formed about the case and who believed psychiatrists were a waste of money. “You go to one and sit down – or lie on the couch – and talk and they charge you for it,” she said. “I could talk to myself.”
  
  
• A man in his 20s who thought the insanity defence was “a cop-out” and who was insistent that nothing would change his mind.
  
  
• A born-again Christian who had a problem with homosexuality (which, Boyle admitted, might be a problem) and who openly stated that he “shouldn’t sit on the jury” as he “wouldn’t be fair.”
  
  
• Several black men and women who acknowledged they had too much of an opinion on the case, or who admitted they could not put aside the belief that Dahmer was sane. McCann praised their forthrightness.
  
  
• A man who said his brother had worked with Dahmer at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. “He just told me [Dahmer] was like a normal guy,” the man said.⁸
  
  
• A 48-year-old black man who said he could not serve on the jury because his religion prohibited him from sitting in judgment of others.
  
  
• A man who claimed he’d served in Vietnam, only to be so vague about what it was he’d actually done during his service that the attorneys concluded he’d never served at all.
  
  
• A 75-year-old man with a hearing problem who told Judge Gram that – although he’d liked to have been on the jury – if he couldn’t hear a witness he’d end up approaching the judge to tell him, “I give up.” Gram had already tested the issue moments earlier by asking, in a very loud voice, “Why would you find it impossible to serve on this jury?” The man looked up and replied, “Pardon me?”
  

Prospective jurors were also asked if they’d recently read any tabloid magazines covering the case – a way to determine if anyone had seen the latest edition of the satirical Weekly World News, whose headline proclaimed the defendant had killed his cellmate and that other convicts feared becoming “Dahmer’s next meal.”

“As far as we know, there is no basis for this,” said assistant DA Carol White.

After the pool of acceptable jurors reached 28, Boyle and McCann each used seven peremptory challenges – striking more potential jurors without giving reason – leaving a panel of 12, plus two alternates, to decide the outcome of the case.

As the majority of Dahmer’s 17 victims had been young black men, there was some controversy about a jury with only one black member.⁹

“The law says you should be tried by a jury of your peers,” Jeannetta Robinson, the director of a social service agency tasked with counselling the victims’ families, said. “A jury of your peers! Who did this man go to bed with and eat up? There should be at least half blacks and gays on that jury.” 

A statement compiled by several of the victims’ family members also registered their disgust. “In a county where Blacks make up 20 percent of the total population, this is racist and preposterous!” it read.

To closely mirror Milwaukee’s racial population, a 14-strong jury should’ve included two Black members – but other relatives weren’t so concerned. 

“I’m kind of disappointed, but it’s something I can’t change, so I’m not going to just dwell on it,” said Dorothy Straughter, whose son was killed by Dahmer. 

Shirley Hughes, another black grieving mother, wasn’t worried about the jury’s ethnic makeup either, “as long as they bring back justice.”

[ BACK ]

The Jury

A brief sketch of each man and woman chosen to sit on the Dahmer jury is as follows:

• Woman, 30s: Single. Worked as a service rep at a telephone equipment firm. Considered herself “gay sympathetic” and had fundraised for homosexual groups. Was a fan of horror movies.
  
  
• Woman, middle-aged: Admin assistant. Liked Stephen King novels and horror movies. Admitted to DA Michael McCann that she thought Dahmer “must be nuts” but that she had an open mind and knew his insanity had to be proven.
  
  
• Man, 20 years old: Machinist. Single. Lived with parents. Occasionally watched horror movies. Said he had no previous opinion on the Dahmer case and had not followed it closely or discussed it with anyone at work.
  
  
• Man, middle-aged: Milwaukee native. Machinist. Married with a son and a grandchild. Had previously sat on another jury and told Boyle: “I try to be fair and objective.” 
  
  
• Woman, middle-aged: Worked as a secretary for the past 14 years. Mother of two daughters. Enjoyed playing bridge, reading and running.
  
  
• Man, 22 years old: Punch press operator. Corrected McCann’s mispronunciation of ‘Freddy Krueger’ – the antagonist of the Nightmare on Elm Street series – during jury selection. Was the only black member of the jury.
  
  
• Man, middle-aged: Hobbies were fishing and hunting. Served in the Army in Germany and who, from his military experience, didn’t think he’d be bothered by the trial’s gory testimony. 
  
  
• Man, 46 years old: Supervisor for a trucking company. Married with two children. Experience in the military meant he too would have had no problem hearing graphic descriptions of Dahmer’s crimes. “I think it’s their own business,” he said when asked his view on homosexuals and their lifestyle.
  
  
• Man, 60s: Born in Poland, moved to Germany after World War II, then immigrated to the US in 1952. Landlord and retired American Motors Corp. worker. Turned 65 during the trial, which prompted Judge Gram to wish the “birthday child” a ‘Happy Birthday!’ before the court in (what Brian Masters described as) “faulty German.” “As serious as this trial is, life goes on,” Gram added.
  
  
• Woman, 25 years old: Degree in Fashion Merchandising. Manager of a woman’s specialty store. Grew up in De Pere (city in Wisconsin) and had moved to Milwaukee four months before the trial. 
  
  
• Woman, young: Registered nurse. Studied psychology in school. “I feel I can weigh what is presented and make a decision,” she said.
  
  
• Woman, young: Telephone operator. Married, no children. Originally from northern Wisconsin before moving to Milwaukee three years before the trial. Told the attorneys she’d recently learned that her husband’s sister’s fiancé thought he might be related to one of Dahmer’s victims.
  
  
• Woman, 32 years old: Developed computer software for an insurer. Single. Told McCann she knew consuming drugs or alcohol didn’t constitute having a mental disease – “otherwise we’d probably all be insane.”
  
  
• Man, middle-aged: Member of the National Guard. Four children. Worked in marketing for a telephone company. Grew up in Clintonville.

Straight after being formally selected, Judge Gram ordered that the jury be sequestered to Milwaukee’s Holiday Inn West – eight miles from the County Safety Building – and where, for the duration of the three-week trial, they were not permitted to contact their families or talk one-on-one with their fellow jurors.

“They plucked me off the face of the earth,” juror Lori Sundt told TMJ4-News 30 years later. “There wasn’t any social media like we have today, but even without social media we weren’t allowed to talk to any family members, or anyone we knew. We had our own bedrooms, so we were alone, or all together.”

TV was kept behind lock and key, and each individual juror’s room had its landline disabled. “If we wanted to talk to a bailiff or get coffee in the morning, we had to actually go [get it],” explained Sundt.

This extended period of relative-isolation led one of the jurors to liken the experience to “being pulled into the black hole” – while another revealed that her “sleepless nights” were the result, not of the gory evidence heard in the trial, but the “long days and wondering what was going on in the outside world.”

To help pass their hotel time, jurors read and swapped books, played card games like Sheepshead, knitted, needlepointed, smoked, or watched movies like Green Card, Naked Gun 2 ½ and City Slickers. As an example of the tight restrictions placed on the jury: one request for Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves was rejected because it featured a scene with a person’s hand being cut off. 

Sundt also took up crocheting and made a 140-square blanket for her mother – which she had initially planned to call her “jury afghan.”

Subtle evidence of this boredom-busting made its way into the courtroom when Sundt also put acrylic fingernails on two of her fellow jurors, wondering if the media would notice. Juror Clare Horvath then used the testimony of Dr. Park Dietz as an opportunity to sit modelling her own newly knitted sweater. “We were all proud of her on that one,” said Sundt. “The neatest thing is that there wasn’t another one like that!”

Being cloistered together for nearly three weeks brought the jurors together like a family – with some members taking on the nickname of ‘mom’, ‘dad’ or ‘uncle.’ “Since we weren’t allowed any outside contact, we had to get along with each other,” juror Elba Duggins explained. 

Fellow juror Russell Fenstermaker agreed. “We came together as 14 strangers and we left as a family,” he said.

For the real relatives of the jurors, the time apart was also a struggle. 

“It’s been real different,” Sundt’s husband told The Milwaukee Journal, after nearly three weeks without his wife. “It’s difficult. This is the first time we’ve been apart for any length of time.” Looking around the house, he admitted, “I’ve kind of fallen back into my bachelor habits… I’ve got to clean this place up!”

Any personal items Lori needed from home were passed along through sheriff’s deputies.

Listening to hours upon hours of grave revelations was to take its toll on the men and women who had been summoned to do their civic duty and were confronted with explicit details of rape, dismemberment and cannibalism.

“I got extremely depressed,” Sundt said following the verdict. “You could see it in all the jurors.”

Years on, she described how:

“The first night I went back to my jury room I was looking under my bed… It was being in the presence of Jeffrey Dahmer – and hearing, in detail, the gore of his crimes – that just came as a shock… Because no matter what I had heard on the media previously, not that amount of information was available to the public.” 

– Dahmer juror Lori Sundt talking to TMJ4 News in 2021

However as the trial went on, Sundt said she’d become more “desensitised” and “it became like [doing] a job” – although an antihistamine helped her sleep better back at the hotel. 

To relieve tensions, some of the jurors would kid amongst each other, said Duggins. “We would joke about like ‘Gee, did you see Mr. Boyle’s tie today?!’” 

Boyle had told the jurors at the start of the trial to raise their hands if they ever needed a break from the testimony, but none did. 

[ BACK ]

The Verdict

“What kind of a – pardon my expression – but what kind of a kook, insane person, would do something like that to somebody else?! And then, on the other hand, was it all calculated? Did he have all these murders premeditated?” 

– Juror Lori Sundt talking to Court TV immediately after the Dahmer verdict, 1992

To rule Dahmer an insane man, the jury had to answer two questions for each of the 15 murders he was on trial for:

1. Was Dahmer suffering from a mental disease at the time of the killing?

2. If he was suffering from a mental disease, was he unable to appreciate the wrongfulness of his crimes or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law?

If the jury answered yes to both questions, Dahmer would not have been held responsible for his actions and would be committed to Mendota Mental Health Institution, 80 miles from Milwaukee.

If the panel returned a mixed verdict (finding Dahmer insane during some killings but not others) he would have gone to Mendota for the counts judged insane, then been transferred to Columbia Correctional Institution to serve prison time for the counts deemed sane.

“If I’m a juror, I’m going to wonder about this guy chanting, rocking, praying, eating body parts, taking showers with two dead bodies in the bathtub, [and] whether we’ve got somebody who’s got some delusion thinking,” defence attorney Boyle told the press a few days before the end of the trial.

But prosecutor McCann was relentless in his reminders that Dahmer had heard no voices, had no hallucinations, seemed to know exactly what he was doing, and simply gave into lust and a selfish thirst for power.

“If he got up there and said he was getting commands from a dog like the Son of Sam serial murderer, people would say that guy is really mentally ill,” McCann said. “But to say he’s got a sex drive – well, I’ve got one, and you’ve got one, and he’s got one, and [everyone’s] got one – and if you don’t take care of it, you’ve got trouble? He [just] didn’t take care of his.”

As Wisconsin law stated that “no verdict on the plea of not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect may be valid or received unless agreed to by at least five-sixth of the jurors,” only 10 of the 12 jurors had to agree on Dahmer’s insanity. 

It took just five hours for the jury to find Dahmer sane.¹⁰

“He was a con artist,” said juror Karl Stahle. “If the last victim wouldn’t have come by and got loose on him, he probably still would have kept on going… He had plans and he had just one thing on his mind: to satisfy his ego and to satisfy himself. And he didn’t even think of anybody else.”

“We all agreed there was a problem [with Dahmer],” added Elba Duggins, “[but] whether we interpreted it as a disorder or a disease was what we discussed. When you’re listening to all these experts and even the experts don’t agree, your mind does have to go back and forth. You have to weigh each expert and what they testified to.”

The psychiatrists who found Dahmer mentally ill had offered varying diagnoses, including borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizotypal personality disorder (StPD), mixed personality disorder, substance use disorder, and a psychotic disorder – with Dr. Fred Berlin describing Dahmer’s necrophilia as a “love sickness.” However, not all of the experts agreed he was legally insane or that these disorders led to irresistible impulses.

Only two of the jurors believed that Dahmer had a mental disease, leading to dissenter Russell Fenstermaker receiving death threats at his home. 

Fenstermaker had explained after the trial: 

“I’m not so sure I would call it dissension, but a difference of opinion as to what constituted a mental disease and as to what was a mental disorder.” 

Although he’d still believed Dahmer could have controlled his conduct, even if he had been mentally ill.

Forensic psychiatrist Dr. Park Dietz had what one Marquette University law professor called a “tremendous advantage.” By testifying last, he’d been able to “pull things together for the jury,” and his manner of addressing the jurors directly was seen as “a very engaging, very effective way for a witness to connect with them.” 

Dietz was adamant that Dahmer’s paraphilia (namely his desire to have sex with the dead and an attraction to human viscera) did not compel him to kill, and that even Dahmer’s attempts at human lobotomies didn’t constitute an extenuating delusion because they’d been approached with pragmatic reasoning. “I’ve never seen anybody who suffered only from a paraphilia qualify for an insanity defence,” Dietz told Boyle. “I don’t think anybody kills just because their fantasies are strong. I think they kill because their inhibitions are lowered and they indulge themselves.”

Many observers later credited the doctor’s testimony as decisive in putting Dahmer in prison. However, for some jurors, it was Dahmer’s confession – recounted by Detectives Kennedy and Murphy – that resonated more clearly than terms like ‘paraphiliac disorder not otherwise specified.’

“We had never heard of ‘paraphilia’ or ‘necrophilia’ – let alone trying to spell it,” Duggins said.

Karl Stahle also acknowledged that “the professional words were confusing,” but said that in the end it was Dahmer’s “whole conduct” which proved “he was not sick when he committed the crimes.”

“All we had to do was go by the facts,” Stahle added. “He had planned well and he is above average intelligence, and that’s all we went by.”

Lori Sundt expressed a little more doubt, having found that the whole thing “just got to be very overwhelming [and] I had a hard time understanding if Jeffrey Dahmer was, in fact, mentally ill… What I got was a sense that, partially, the system failed him. There were so many instances where he was almost caught.”

Three decades later, Sundt admitted that her mind had to be changed by the convictions of her fellow jurors as she’d initially thought Dahmer might’ve been insane.

“I realised there were souls behind the names, and the victims’ families were in the audience, and it was a heavy weight to carry,” she added. “But I didn’t go that far to think there were going to be the ramifications of society [public backlash or wider consequences] once I come out of this jury room, if I don’t find in their favour or the way they want. We were addressing the way the court said, and the outside world, as far as I was concerned, did not come into play.”

After the verdict, Dahmer himself was noted by Boyle to be “not much different today than he was yesterday or the day before or the day before. His mood never really varies.”

However, Lionel Dahmer – allowed to say goodbye to his son in private for a few minutes after sentencing – noted that Jeff was visibly shocked and shaken.

[ BACK ]

The Aftermath

“Somebody asked me yesterday where the party was, where we’d be celebrating. There’s nothing to celebrate in a case like this. You just wish it could be all undone.”

– Prosecuting attorney Michael McCann the day after the Dahmer verdict

Dahmer’s trial was a gruelling experience for the men and women forced to weigh the gravity of his guilt against his plea of insanity – and their discomfort was palpable during a press conference straight after sentencing.

“Each one of us had to deal with it individually,” said Elba Duggins, when asked how she’d felt listening to all the terrible things Dahmer had done. “I already dealt with it partially by leaving the room and crying.” 

As the jurors protectively huddled together, alternate juror Jean Firber turned the question back on the reporter. “I wanna know how YOU felt,” she snapped. “I mean, our feelings are no different to what you go through.” 

“We felt terrible,” the reporter immediately admitted. “We were a mess!” 

Juror Russell Fenstermaker had earlier recalled the day one psychiatrist testified how Dahmer had sex with the slit-open abdomen of some of his victims. The revelation, he said, “shocked” him, and he coped by simply “putting it out of the mind.” He wasn’t sure how he’d been abe to, but explained that “you had to divorce yourself from the emotion of the trial or it would kill you.”

Fenstermaker didn’t doubt that the case might even, “somewhere down the road”, hit him “like a ton of bricks.” The experience had made him start to think “there is no such thing as normal after this.”

For two of the youngest jurors, the weight of the trial was too much to speak of right away.

According to the concerned father of juror Michael Weddle, the 22-year-old had “felt the trial was gross, just unheard of” and needed a few days to wind down without talking or thinking about it.

Darryl Malicki also shared Weddle’s need to retreat. “I don’t really want to talk about anything that happened,” he told reporters once they’d eventually tracked him down. “I just want to take off for a while.”

In an attempt to negate any long-term psychological damage, jurors had spent an hour with psychiatric support following the verdict. 

Dr. Roger Bell and Dr. Ted Feldman of the University of Kentucky told the press they were struck by the Dahmer jury’s resilience.

“On the whole they look like a very, very good stable group of people,” Dr. Bell said. “I was really impressed with a lot of enthusiasm and a high level of humour, given the circumstances, and I think that’s a good indication of high quality mental health among this group.” 

Bell also acknowledged that, while no one could predict if mental issues would transpire down the line, “we were really impressed with the fact they’ve gone through three weeks being separated [from their families], having had their social support systems decreased [and] having a number of normal stimuli that they ordinary would get reduced. They’ve handled that really well.” 

This brand of stoicism, Bell said, was part of a “unique phenomenon” where juries turn an “ad hoc group” of strangers into a “real group where they provide all kinds of internal social support for one another and really care about one another – and that really helps them get through a lot of the disturbing parts of the trials.”

“The jury’s that we’ve had a chance to work with have all formed a very strong internal group,” added Dr. Feldman, “and that provides the support they’re not getting from their families… This particular jury had a very strong bond and that’s helped them to deal with the stress of the trial and the changes in their lives that the trial has caused. It should go a long way toward offsetting future problems that they may have.”

REPORTER: They may have this bond now, but they didn’t really get a chance to express it or share it until yesterday when they deliberated [on the verdict]. What does it do to that group when they listen, for the better part of three weeks, to all this grisly testimony and they can’t talk about it? 

DR. BELL: That bond [between jurors] really developed very early on because of what happens in the early part of the instruction: the judge tells them that they cannot talk about the most significant parts of the things going on in their lives, so they start talking about personal issues and this groupness develops very early on in the trial. That’s something we’ve observed in a number of trials. It’s a really interesting phenomenon.

– Dr. Bell on how jurors, barred from discussing the trial itself, talk about their personal lives instead – creating stronger bonds more quickly

Dr. Feldman cautioned that although jurors were “very glad the trial is over and very anxious to get home,” they were unlikely to “feel real great over the next few days” as they transitioned back into “a very different role than they’ve had for the last three weeks.” He urged them to rest, avoid intrusion, and gain some distance to reflect.

When asked how the jurors might display signs of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) as time went on, Dr. Bell was reluctant to use such a loaded term on the grounds “that implies a real sort of severe disorder.”

He did, however, acknowledge that “there’s going to be – without question – normal reactions to stress: irritability… sleeplessness…” Many of the jurors had reported that they’d already experienced some of those, and the doctor’s said such things were typical among those who’d served on juries dealing with violent cases.

Re-entry problems and a “little bit of abrasion” were also to be expected as jurors reconnected with their former lives and, for some, being pulled back toward their real families and away from their ‘surrogate family’ carried a bittersweet trade-off between new bonds and old ones. For others, it meant a starker return to solitude.

“A couple of the jurors referred to this group as their ‘family’,” Bell explained, “that’ll give you a notion about how important this group experience became to them. Now they’re going to be separated from that family and they’re actually going to go home, several of them, and be by themselves. So they’ll have some separation anxiety from this group that’s been really important to them for the past three weeks.” 

Juror Karl Stahle agreed it would be tough for some. “Personally, I think I’m lucky,” he said. “I’ve got a family to go back to and I’m retired, so I don’t have to worry about a job, whereas [some] jurors have to go back to an empty house all by themselves. I think that’s a little harder.” 

Bell and Feldman were confident the jurors could handle it though, and believed they’d been more unsettled by the separation from loved ones, the “limited interaction” with their support systems, or being taken out of their normal routine, than by the morbid nature of the case.

While some jurors had been shocked by the particularly graphic details omitted from earlier media coverage, Bell noted that “they felt they had heard enough [about the case] prior to the time the trial had even gotten underway, so they were, in some ways, already sufficiently satiated with it.” As a group, they never became “numbed” to what they were hearing, either.

Such a distinction mattered, as being shocked meant the testimony still registered as abnormal, while desensitisation risked dulling the jurors’ sensitivity until Dahmer’s atrocities became just a minor detail. To judge whether he was truly unable to control himself, jurors needed to feel the full magnitude of his crimes.

Dr. Bell went onto explain that, in other cases, “every now and then [gruesome scenes] will be shown by defence or prosecutors and jurors receive that as an intrusive thought. We’ve followed another jury now for over two years, and there are some things that this original jury is still experiencing around the anniversary of the event and around the anniversary of the decision… This was a bus accident, so when they hear the squealing of tires they see the replay of the event in their head.”

“When certain stimuli that are reminiscent of the traumatic event occur, more memories, more feelings come back,” Feldman elaborated. “For the most part the [bus] jury have done very well, but some of these stress reactions that Dr. Bell is mentioning are very common and will probably occur with [the Dahmer] jury as well.”

Members of the jury were also heedful of the effects the case would have on them.

“It will change my life,” Lori Sundt noted, reflecting on the trial’s emotional toll. “It was very stressful.”

Fenstermaker agreed. “I think there are 14 other victims,” he said, “and that is the 14 jurors. They have been through some traumatic times.” 

As the weeks went on, however, several jurors reported that the case had less of an effect on them than they’d thought.

“I just went back to my normal life and put it out of my mind,” said Darryl Malicki, who’d initially been so shaken by the trial he’d tried to hide from the press to avoid talking about it. He also admitted he hadn’t kept in touch with the other jurors as most were older than him and “run in different circles” – although shortly after the trial, all had attended a picnic together at Judge Gram’s house.

Five months after hearing how Dahmer had eaten part of a human heart and seasoned a bicep muscle with steak sauce, Sundt admitted she had problems cooking. “At times while I’m processing the beef and getting ready to marinate, it crosses my mind – the dismemberment and how he dressed the body and took the meat off the bones,” she told a reporter. “But it comes and goes in a split second. It’s not like I can’t get over it.”

“I didn’t realise how much publicity there was,” she added. “It was a shock to find out I was instantly so popular!”

Sundt never questioned if she’d made the right decision in voting Dahmer sane – although she never went out of her way to learn more about the case afterwards and never wished to serve on another jury again, having given enough of herself to the Dahmer trial.

Kahl Stahle also dismissed the notion that it’d had any wider effect on his life. “We talked about it shortly afterward, but not now,” he said. “We are trying to put it behind us.”

However, not every member of the 14-person jury shared how the trial had left them feeling, and even recent studies have found that a minority of jurors may be at increased risk for psychopathology as a result of their service, especially in cases involving violent crime. 

“If you could come out of something like that and say it could not have changed your life, you are a liar,” Fenstermaker told the press. ”I think all of us came home with a greater appreciation of what our families meant to us, what our friends mean to us.”

Though it had been a difficult experience, ultimately the jurors’ decision brought a sense of closure to the victims’ families and to the community at large. It also became a source of pride for prosecuting attorney Michael McCann.

“[Dahmer] was an unusual individual and I think the jury saw through it,” he said. “They met my fondest hope.”

[ BACK ]

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The twelve jurors of the Dahmer trial:

Carl E. Schultz of Milwaukee; John M. Horn of Wauwatosa; Elba C. Duggins of Milwaukee; Russell Fenstermaker of Milwaukee; Lori Sundt of Milwaukee; Clare M. Horvath of Milwaukee; Kay M. Feller of West Allis; Darryl E. Malicki of Cudahy; Todd P. Tomlin (foreman) of Milwaukee; Alvin J. Olszewski of Hales Corners; Karl W. Stahle of Milwaukee; and Michael G. Weddle of Milwaukee.

Serving as alternates were: Arlene A. Urbaniak of Milwaukee and Jean M. Firber of Milwaukee.

⚖️

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Sources:

• The Milwaukee Journal, Journal Times, The Oshkosh Northwestern, Stevens Point Journal, The Times Leader, The Washington Post and various other contemporary news reports
• Dahmer’s police confession
• TMJ4 News
• Court TV
• ScienceDirect
• The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters (1993), A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer (1994)
• 1992 Jeffrey Dahmer Jury Press Conference

Footnotes:

1. Dahmer would later be tried in Ohio for the 1978 murder of Steven Hicks. For his first murder in Wisconsin, there was insufficient evidence to try him ↩︎
2. By the end of the trial, however, Theresa was more of the belief that Dahmer was sick. Later she would attend his own funeral and had formed a strong friendship with his father and stepmother ↩︎
3. Plus two alternates ↩︎
4. After it emerged that officers had returned 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone to Dahmer’s apartment (believing the drugged boy was his intoxicated adult lover) Chief Arreola dismissed them for gross negligence. Public anger over the preventable circumstances of Konerak’s death led to protests, fueled by recordings of the officers making homophobic jokes and by the belief that the white officers had ignored the warnings of three young Black women about the Laotian teenager ↩︎
5. WITI-TV producer Mark Zoromski confirmed Gram’s order would be followed closely. “This community is quite frankly fed up with Dahmer,” he said. “If any one of us causes a mistrial by identifying a juror, the public will hang us. They want it over, and they want to move on with their lives.” ↩︎
6. Dahmer was also noted to have made an unknown quip to Police Lt. Ken Meuler following this revelation ↩︎
7. Jury selection was conducted off-camera and the journalists who’d attended testified that it had been a dull process. “It was so slow,” said Anne Schwartz (a former Milwaukee Journal crime reporter consulting with WISN-TV) “you had the media interviewing each other.” “It was so slow,” wrote The Journal, “we watched Judge Gram zipping his robe through an open door – that being Wednesday’s most valuable visual.” ↩︎
8. Interestingly, in 2010, John Backderf – author of the best-selling comic My Friend Dahmer – was dismissed from jury duty in Cleveland after telling the judge: “I had a close friend in high school who killed 17 people.” ↩︎
9. Seven white women and six white men formed the rest ↩︎
10. Jurors had been too tired to discuss the case on the afternoon of closing statements, so reconvened the next day ↩︎