Milwaukee, Wisconsin. February 14th, 1992.

After nearly three weeks, 30 witnesses and over $100,000 of city money, the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer is drawing to its conclusion.

The momentous task of determining whether Dahmer was sane or insane at the time of his murders will be left to jurors following the days closing arguments¹ – in which both defence and prosecution have one last opportunity to convince the court that they should win the case.

With his client having long been branded a monster by members of the press and public – and a plethora of grisly physical evidence stacked against him – Gerald Boyle’s 70-minute closing argument appeals to empathy and preconceived notions of madness in order to highlight Dahmer as a sick man, rather than an evil one.

The thought of Dahmer’s crimes being somewhat pardoned by an illness that would have him treated, instead of punished, is seen as insulting to many of the victims families. For Geraldine Martin, sister of Dahmer’s fifth victim Anthony Sears, sending Dahmer to a mental institution “is an easy way out for him... He’ll still be getting his cozy care.” Ms. Martin felt that in prison, Dahmer wouldn’t have it “so cozy.” Others are disappointed that Wisconsin doesn’t have the death penalty.

Although the insanity defence would ultimately be dashed in favour of the belief that Dahmer was a selfish and sane killer, Boyle’s closing argument was lauded for its presentation. “That’s as good as I’ve [ever] seen,” one experienced trial attorney told ‘The Milwaukee Sentinel’ – rating Boyle’s performance a solid “A++”. “It would not at all surprise me for that jury to come back with some verdicts in [Dahmer’s] favour,” said another. Even prosecuting attorney, Michael McCann, would give his opponent due credit in his own statement by reminding the jury not to mix up the defendant with his lawyer. Following the verdict, McCann would also admit that: “Jerry Boyle’s argument was one of the most persuasive arguments I’ve ever heard. I waited [for the outcome] with trepidation.”

Below follows the entire transcript of Boyle’s closing argument (sans rebuttal²) as recorded in 1992 by WDJT-TV58. Some minor alterations and additions have been made for the sake of clarity and grammar, but other than that, everything that follows is in the words of Gerald Boyle unless otherwise stated. 

Justice and Disease

JUDGE LAURENCE GRAM: Jurors, at the beginning of the trial we gave the lawyers an opportunity to speak to you [and make] an opening statement where they presented you with an outline of what they thought the evidence would show. Now, we’ve heard all the testimony in the case and the lawyers again will have a chance to speak to you to make a closing statement or – as sometimes it’s called – a ‘final argument’. In which they will argue to you what they feel the evidence in this case has proved. Now, we followed a certain order throughout the trial which is a little different than what we usually have and that is [that] the defendant goes first and [is] then followed by the state. We continue to follow that order, so Mr. Boyle has the opportunity of making the first closing statement.

*Boyle steps up to the lectern, acknowledging the clerk; Mr. McCann and the prosecution team; and Boyle’s own defence team*

Then:

GERALD BOYLE: Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we had – at the close of business yesterday – agreed to some time constraints as to how long we would take as an ultimate. I pledge to you that I will not speak one minute longer than I feel I have to. I ask you to give to me – as I know you will – for the next 45 to 50 minutes, your undivided attention. There’s a lot of distractions in the courtroom and there’s a lot of reasons we look away. It doesn’t mean you’re not listening, I understand that, but the next exercise that I do in this courtroom has the imprimatur. It is the most important thing that’s going to happen in many of our lives.

See, we all do things as they affect us. We make decisions about ourselves. Sometimes as parents or spouses, we help make decisions on others. Sometimes we make decisions [like] where our kids go to school, the kind of car they drive, when they can go out. But rarely – rarely if ever – do we ever make decisions that affect another human being’s life. And we’re about to do that.

But I’m not going to do that – you are. Because I’m finished. I had a lot of things that I wanted to do at the start of this case and I think every one of them has been achieved.

I have a concept of the system of justice that may be different than other lawyers, but I find myself serving a lot of different roles:

First of all, every lawyer is an officer of the court and that means at all times he must respect and honour that court – whether he agrees with the judge or doesn’t agree with the judge. It’s like in the military: you respect the uniform, not necessarily the person wearing it. In the system of justice, you respect the court. And that’s because that’s the only way the system can function.

The other goal, that I feel as a lawyer, is as an advocate of my client’s cause. Not because it’s something that I’m paid to do or hired to do. It’s because I’ve taken an oath to do it. It’s that simple. It’s my oath – it’s my life – to be an advocate for my client’s cause. And that doesn’t mean to make up a cause. That means to take a cause and to allow 12 people to make a decision on whether or not I did what I was supposed to do in a court of law.

So therefore, even though my primary function is an advocate of my client and as an officer of the court, I serve another role. And my other role is to help you do the toughest thing that you’re ever going to do in your life and that is to make a tough decision. And if I don’t do that, then I’m not doing my job for anyone. And this is not to patronise. This is not to get into some good graces with you. This is just a fact.

Jeffrey Dahmer is here having pled guilty to 15 murders. Jeffrey Dahmer is here because certain doctors indicated that he was insane at the time he committed the offenses.

Now, we’re going to use a lot of words. We’re going to use a lot of words because a lot of the words say the same thing, but we know what the definition of ‘insanity’ is in the state of Wisconsin (and you probably can recite it as well as any lawyer who’s ever studied Law) and that is: Whether or not a person, at a given moment in time, was suffering from a mental disease. And as a result of that mental disease, [whether] that person lacked substantial capacity to conform his conduct to requirements of law or appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct.

Now the reason for that is clear because some people can conform but can’t appreciate and some people can appreciate but maybe can’t conform. There is no wrongfulness of the conduct issue here. It has been admitted, it has been not fought. It has been accepted that I have not been able to sustain my burden of proof – from the moment this trial started – on the question of whether or not he appreciated right from wrong. He did.

So I’m here to talk to you about whether or not this mental disease that we have proffered was met to a reasonable degree of certainty by the greater weight of the credible evidence – and if I have shown that. And I don’t mean ‘I’ like I’m an ego trip. My job is, if I have achieved that, then the next question is: As a result of that mental disease, did he lack substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of law? And I submit to you that’s the only question that you’re going to have to wrestle with because the mental disease was proven to a reasonable certainty by the greater weight of the credible evidence.

The definition in the jury instructions is not something that was just made up. This is a group of the greatest minds in the state that said [that] in our state, in all of the courts and in the Court of Appeals and the Supreme Court, we accept a person as being mentally diseased when he has an impairment of the mind (whether enduring or transitory) that affects his mental and emotional processes. And if you say, “you know what? He was mentally diseased” and you agree to that by the numbers that you have to pursue into law, then you go into the question of conformity.

So, in preparing myself for what I was going to do here today, I have made a lot of decisions. One of which is: I’m not going to bore you to death by telling you 10,000 times from Sunday what you already know. Secondly, I’m going to try and focus on Jeffrey Dahmer as a human being. Not for sympathy – he deserves absolutely no sympathy unless he was mentally ill. None. But if he was a product of a mental disease, then he deserves sympathy in the same way that a person who has a physical problem or disease deserves sympathy. But this is not a case of sympathy. This is a case of fact. And I have accepted that burden to prove to you that he was mentally diseased.

So, because I’m not going to stress a lot of facts, it’s because I don’t think they need to be stressed – except, hopefully, as I’ve done it to aid you.

We have all taken oaths. I asked the question in voir dire. We are all exactly the same as we stand here today having taken a solemn oath to see that the ends of justice are done. And none of us will violate that. That I’m certain of. None of us are going to say, “I’m going to make my decision on the basis of what’s going to be perceived later.”

I am so convinced that we are able, in this country of ours, to get jurors to call it the way they see it. Because when you take the oath, that’s what you say you’re going to do and you put no other things in consideration.

You know, we got a lot of à la carte Americans in this country. They want to rewrite the Constitution. They want to rewrite the Declaration of Independence. They want to tell you, “well, in this kind of a case, forget justice! Come on, he killed all these people. Forget it! It’s all over with. He doesn’t deserve the time of day. An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth!” They’re boat people. That’s what they are. They should get on boats and get out of here and go live in a country where that kind of stuff goes on. It doesn’t go on in America because we live in a country where we all are entitled to liberty and justice. And justice is met by your verdict, not by what I think. Not by what Mr. McCann thinks. Not by what these seven doctors think or the judge thinks. It’s what you think. That’s what justice is. And, whichever way you call it, it’s justice. As long as we subscribe to the oath that we took.

Now, the reason I say seven doctors is because I believe that you have heard from such star professionals. Each and every one of these men (and one woman) that came in here to talk to you, put their whole person on the line, to do what? Because they wanted to volunteer to come in on this big serial murder case? Nonsense. You see, justice in finite terms is decided by judges and courts and juries. Justice in the infinite term is decided by our maker, our creator. And we subscribe to the Christian Judeo philosophy which says that every human being will be judged someday. And those of us who run from our responsibilities are not going to be judged too well (I don’t know how badly). But my responsibility, the day I said “I’m your lawyer”, was to be his lawyer. Just as Mr. McCann – who I have the greatest respect for – says that, “as the sworn advocate of the people, I’m going to prove you’re wrong, Boyle. That ya didn’t prove it.” And you folks will be the ones who make the decision.

Milwaukee and the harm that has been caused to these 17 people (15 of whom died in this city) has been such a reprehensible concept that it appears as though Milwaukee is now a laughable place. Nonsense. We have spotlighted Milwaukee as the best place to get the fairest trial. We have cleansed that image and your verdict will do it no matter what your verdict is.

You didn’t have any poppycock professionals coming in here with poppycock ideas. You had great people whose lives are either devoted to treating people who are sick or to try and help other people understand what that sickness means.

So we stand here proud for getting this tragedy that has happened in order to make sure that Milwaukee is a place where justice is meted out, whatever your verdict is. And that will be achieved. And, that, I’m not concerned about.

And if anyone in the world suggests that, for one moment, I don’t really mean it when I say I feel sympathy for the victims and the families of the victims, then I don’t have to listen to anybody who would make that statement. Because I do.

Who Would Have Predicted It?

Mr. Dahmer pled guilty. He talked to the police for 60 hours to cleanse himself in the way [that] he thought he could for all of the harm and all of the evil that he has done. He doesn’t deserve credit for that, except it’s a fact. What more could he have done after his arrest? So that’s a part of the past. We [now] look to the present and the present is whether or not he was mentally ill.

He had a paraphilia that he didn’t choose, that he discovered. How many times have I read [about] “recurrent, intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies” that markedly distressed someone who acts on them. How would you like, at the age of 15, to wake up and start thinking: “I’m having fantasies about making love to dead bodies?” What kind of person would ever wish that on any human being? And who do you tell it to? Do you tell it to your mother? Do you tell it to your father? Who do you tell it to? Your best friend?

His family has been harmed. Anyone who knew him has been harmed. People who came across him have been harmed. Policemen have been harmed. Probation officers been harmed. Everybody’s been harmed because he was able to fool them.

I want to talk, if I can, about us as people. There are some who say [that] upon the moment of conception, everything is pretty predictable. If there was artists in your background, you might be an artist. If you were big into music, [then] somebody in your background [was big into music]. If your parents or grandparents were great athletes, you might be a great athlete. So at the moment of conception, we become something. And then we look at the person as they go along and choices are made. All kinds of choices are made. Some people go onto drink, some people go onto cocaine, some people go and become professionals, some become doctors, some become teachers, some become movie stars. We all become something. And we look at our lives and we say, “what do we look like out there?” Put the tentacles on and what are we?

So in order to show you what happened to him – not at the moment of conception but what he evolved to be – I have tried, in order to keep this thing to some kind of a logical explanation, drawn up the Jeffrey Dahmer Human Being.

*Boyle retrieves a diagram depicting a circle with ‘J.D’ at its centre and multiple lines protruding from it. Each spoke leads to an example of Dahmer’s bizarre behaviour*

And this is what I see about this Jeffrey Dahmer as a total human being:

A person who’s into fantasy, drugging, keeping skulls in lockers, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, disorders, paraphilias, watching videos, getting excited about eggshells³, drinking alcohol all the time, into a dysfunctional family, trying to create a shrine, showering with corpses, going into the occult, having delusions, chanting and rocking, picking up roadkill, having obsessions, murders, lobotomies, deflecting, masturbating four, three, four times a day – two, three times a day as a youngster. Going and trying to get a mannequin home so he can play sex with a mannequin. Masturbating in the open parts of the human beings body. Calling taxidermists, going to graveyards, going to funeral homes, wearing yellow contacts, posing people who are dead – that he killed – for pictures. Masturbating all over the place.

This is Jeffrey Dahmer.

My little star – my little circle – would say ‘lawyer’, ‘father’, ‘sports’, ‘happy’. I have only positives. There isn’t a positive thing on this.

This is a young man who never had a relationship with another male on a friendly basis for a day’s time. This is a boy who, at the age of 15 or 16, found himself sick.

And if it’s so simplistic that [you can say] “too bad, so bad, he could have done something about it. It’s his own fault, so anything that happened after that is his own fault” – then we’re not talking about justice. Then we’re talking about a lot of other things. We’re talking about just neglecting the realities of life.

But if we look at a guy who’s sick and say, “just how bad was that sickness?” then we’re doing justice to the question – whatever the result of the question is.

So in order to give you, hopefully, some idea of just how bad this sickness was, the two charts that I showed yesterday (where I have put down the names of the unfortunate victims of this steamrolling killing machine) start, basically, with Mr. Hicks in 1978. At 18 years of age.

Who would have predicted that this man would have killed a human being, kept his body, kept his skull, opened up his body and done the sexual things that he did, kept it there for two years – to have returned then to take it out, to smash it up and to get rid of it. Who would have predicted it? Who could have predicted that – at the young age that he was when he started into this fantasy business – that that would have happened when he was 18? No one.

And you know, from 1978 through 1987, this paraphilic Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t kill again. He drank alcohol – I don’t know how you wouldn’t have to, having done what you did to Mr. Hicks. How you wouldn’t have something that you had to do to get that out of your mind.

Oh, it didn’t surprise me that he became alcoholic. I don’t know how you could get up every day and think about that for nine years, having killed a human being.

I don’t know if you’ve ever dreamt about hurting anybody – I’ve had those dreams. And I wake up in the morning and the first thing I do is I thank my God that it was only a dream because the depression connected with that dream is so severe that it’s dysfunctional until you realise “oh, thank God. That was just a dream!” This wasn’t a dream. This wasn’t a dream. This was a sick boy right here. Plenty sick. And anybody who says [he was] just mean or evil is trying to sell you something that can’t be sold.

This is sick.

In the Gutter

We get him back in 1987 and what’s he trying to do?

But like what many of us do, we make the mistake of trying to heal ourselves. “I’m gonna get into religion.” Can you believe that all of a sudden somebody’s gonna get into religion that never was brought up in religion? It didn’t work. He was living with his grandmother. He was desolately lonely. He was all alone in the world and he was trying, because that’s what he wanted to do. He wanted to try and he failed.

You know, I don’t know why I always go back to alcoholism and anorexia and bulimia and things of that nature, because it’s the only thing that I can even relate to. I’ve never met anybody who told me that, “I have these real fantasies about doing this to somebody.” I’d walk away from a person that said that! So I don’t know how this paraphiliac business works and that’s why I had the likes of Dr. Berlin and Dr. Becker to give you an idea, because none of us can possibly have gotten anywhere near to the fantasy level that this kid was at when he was 14 or 15 years of age.

In my lifetime, I can’t even envision allowing my mind to get to the point where I would think about having sex with a dead person, an unconscious person. And he’s got dead at 14 and 15, and he’s masturbating two or three times a day, and Dr. Dietz says that’s normal behaviour – and I submit to you it isn’t.

You see, if you’re an alcoholic and you drink too much, you’re gonna die. That’s what’s gonna happen to you. You’re gonna drink yourself into the grave. If you’re taking narcotics too much, you’re gonna have an overdose and you’re gonna die. If you become bulimic or anorexic and you continue, you’re gonna die. But when your mind is in the gutter it stays in the gutter and it never gets out of the gutter until something changes it.

It’s an insatiable appetite. Filth is an insatiable appetite. There is no end to it – and that’s the living proof right there. There is no end to it until you destroy everything that is right in life. You destroy yourself. You destroy other people. That’s what happened here. An insatiable appetite.

He had to do what he did because he couldn’t stop it. This isn’t a matter of choice. Not when this pattern is here for these years.

So, in order to get away from it, he started doing all these great things that made a lot of sense, right? Video stores, peep shows… “I’m going to stop it. I’m going to get some sex, I’m going to stop this fantasy. This recurrent urge, that is markedly distressing me, of having sex with dead people. I’m going to stop it because what I’m going to do is start hanging around gay health clubs.”

It wasn’t working and each and every time he progressed to be worse and worse and worse.

“Okay, I’m going to go get a mannequin. That’s going to end it!”

That didn’t work. That’s foolish.

“Okay, I’m going to get a grave. I’m going to go out and find somebody I really want and I’m going to get them so I don’t end up hurting anybody. I’m going to bring a body home to my house and that’ll be the end of the problem for me.”

It didn’t work. Can you imagine what it would be like to even think about doing something like that? And what that would do to your mind?

So now what we have is – we have a Jeffrey Dahmer in 1987 who’s been going around really doing some great things to help him out of this problem. Like, “drugging people will help me get out of this! I can do my thing to them and it’ll be fine and that’ll be the end of it.” And it didn’t work.

Now, do we say, “well, tough luck, Dahmer. You were doing it, it didn’t work. So what?” Well, that’s all been taken care of. He pled guilty to all that. Question is now: What was his head like?

Perspectives on Paraphilia

You know, I see every once in a while – I go to the malls [and] you usually see them at the malls or at the Brewer games – these poor people who are in wheelchairs. Total paraplegics, quadriplegics. Youngsters. And I don’t care how tough you are – I don’t care how hard your heart is – you have sympathy. You have sympathy because you know their life is hell. Every function they do, somebody’s got to do for them. And the caring, loving people that help those people are saints. People who pick ‘em up and help them go to the bathroom. People who pick ‘em up and put them to bed at night. People who clean them and bathe them are saints because those people are helpless. I would rather be that for life than [be] Dahmer with these thoughts for one day. Because there isn’t anybody to help Dahmer until there is some tragedy. And the tragedy was when he was arrested it ended. All his self-help was for nowt.

And it’s so easy for us to say, “too bad, so bad.” But then we have to say, “is that what we agreed to do?” Just say, “too bad, so bad”? Or do we have to say, “let’s find out, Boyle, if you proved it to us.” So in order to try and suggest to you that I did, what I have done was to make up a little chart of the doctors…

We had the following people tell us:

The police, Berlin, Becker, Wahlstrom, Palermo, Friedman, Fosdal and Dietz.

That’s who we’ve had here.

We’ve had Tracy Edwards, we’ve had some co-workers, we had some other police here to talk about what they thought about his mental condition – but, basically, this is what it boils down to.

Tracy Edwards, in my opinion, is very important – and I’m going to get to him – but here you got police sticking with this guy for 60 hours. So when we start talking about how much time you spent [talking to Dahmer]⁴, big deal. That’s not important to me. What’s important to me is the projection that these people have in common or opposed to each other, relative to the time that they spent.

The police spent 60 hours with him. “Most cooperative. Gave us stuff that we would never have known about. Answered all of our questions. Gentle, cordial, totally cooperative. Talked without his lawyer being there. Don’t want his lawyer here. [Said:] ‘I want to talk. I want to help identify these people.’ Solving unsolvable crimes.” How did he act to you? Did he look like he was delusional or sick? “No, not at all.” Of course he didn’t, because he wasn’t acting on his paraphilia when he was talking to them. He wasn’t that way with any of these people!

The reason these people are in here is to help you.

And then what do we find?

Berlin: Necrophilia, paraphilia, not otherwise specified. Mental disease. Mental illness.

Becker: Necrophilia, not otherwise specified, paraphilia, mentally ill.

Wahlstrom: Necrophilia, paraphilia, not otherwise specified and psychosis.

Palermo: Nothing wrong with him, nothing. Knew that in three, four hours, he says.

Friedman: Mentally diseased. Had an impairment of the mind. His analysis of [Dahmer’s] personality disorders – and the totality of what he said – was [that Dahmer] was, under Wisconsin law, mentally diseased.

Dr. Fosdal: Paraphilia, not otherwise specified, mental disease.

Dr. Dietz: I still don’t know. The man was so impressive that I wanted to pitch my tent and go home – until I started finding out, cross-examination, that I think he said that he doesn’t know whether [Dahmer] was mentally diseased, “the jury is the one that’s supposed to answer that.” And I agree with that. But I was getting the idea that what [Dr. Dietz] was saying was: “If it’s only a paraphilia, forget it. No mental disease. Never happened. Nobody can ever convince me of that. I’ve held true to that since 1985. My colleagues have tried to concoct all kinds of stories to convince me differently. No way, Jose! If it’s paraphilia, he’s not mentally diseased.”

Doctor, was he suffering from an impairment of the mind that affected his emotional health? “Well, alcohol might have contributed.”

I don’t know what he said, but I don’t care. Because if these are the best forensic psychologists and psychiatrists in the world, then who’s right? Because I’ve got: mental disease, mental disease, mental disease, mental disease, mental disease.

Now, you are going to be told that you make the decision on who you want to give the weight to and what experts. In voir dire, I asked you a question: If you were on trial, would you want you making the call about you? Do you consider yourself to be so fair and objective that you, as a model person, [are] the kind of person that you would want judging you? And y’all said “yes” and I agreed with that. Because I know one thing – other than the fact of my advocacy – I would really like a guy like me making judgments about me because I would be able to say, “I’m right sometimes, I’m wrong sometimes. And when I’m wrong, I know I’m wrong. And when I’m right, I think I’m right. And sometimes I absolutely know I’m right!”

But when we get people who tell us “absolutely no way in the world can a paraphilia stand alone and be mentally diseased and I haven’t treated one in many, many, many years.” I have to say, “I think this guy’s got a mindset.” I don’t think I would agree with him because it doesn’t seem to me like he was ever going to come up with anything other than his mindset. Since 1985 he’s been saying, “no way a paraphilia can ever be mentally diseased, mentally ill. And even my colleagues have tried to convince me otherwise but they haven’t been successful.”

And still – to his great credit – very professional witness…

He was remarkable in the way he was able to tell us every single thing that was said between the parties. Well, I didn’t ask – I mean, I don’t think reporting that is really the crucial issue here. I think it’s the substance of what someone says.

And I’m not going to knock Dr. Dietz because I think the man’s a star. Testified in the John Hinckley case for the government (I don’t know what that means, but he did). And what it means is that the man works – works – to be a forensic psychiatrist. That’s his life. Just like mine appears to be a criminal lawyer. That doesn’t make me one dog wit smarter than anyone else. It’s the substance that counts, not the form. It doesn’t matter whether he was paid $39,000 or $350 as far as I’m concerned. You read into that anything you want to, but I will tell you that the man is a person who testifies for law enforcement and the people and the state. That’s what he does. Everything about him is “I’m on the opposite side.”

Now, he could tell me [that] once in a while he comes on the defence side, but I asked him: “Doctor, if I thought that my client had a paraphilia would I call you? I’d be wasting my time.” Because of his mindset.

Dr. Fosdal did a very thorough examination, but he was convinced that Jeffrey Dahmer was not a true necrophiliac so he was asking him to diagnose himself. And what he concluded was that, whatever [Dahmer] was when he was doing what he was doing, he was mentally ill. He was suffering from a mental disease but he could still stop. And I say to you: “Thank you, doctor, because you’re giving us something that we didn’t necessarily have to have from ya.”⁵ His candour about that, in my opinion, raised him to a very, very high level. Because I knew, coming in here – three weeks ago – I wasn’t going to change one person’s opinion. They weren’t going to change my peoples, I wasn’t going to change the court, I wasn’t going to change their people. It just was a given.

So, what we did in the exercise of what we did, is to ask you how much you want to rely upon whom – knowing that I have the burden of proof. They don’t have to prove anything, or disprove anything, and I accepted that. But Dr. Fosdal said, “mentally diseased. So, jury, in effect concentrate – if you believe me – on the question of conformity. And I think he can conform.”

You know, we get these words: “substantial capacity to conform your conduct to the requirements of law.” These are nice words, but they’re tough to understand.⁶ I think the question is: Without more [victims], could he have stopped? One day he wakes up and says, “boy, that’s it. I’ve stopped.” The alcoholic who wakes up and says, “I’m an alcoholic, I’ve had my last drink.” The young girl suffering from those insidious sicknesses of bulimia, gets up in the morning and says, “that’s it, it’s all over with. I’m going to get well now.”

That wasn’t going to happen here. His willpower was gone. And I submit to you my definition – which is only mine – that he was so impaired, as he went along this killing spree, that he could not stop. He was a runaway train on a track of madness, picking up steam all the time – on and on and on. And it was only going to stop when he hit a concrete barrier or he hit another train.

And he hit it – thanks be to God – when Tracy Edwards got the hell out of that room. Thanks be to God that this madness stopped.

Not An Evil Man

So, I want to award [the psychiatrists and police] here by saying, in my humble opinion, they were all great. All of them.

Whether he spent four hours, or two hours, or fifty hours, or a thousand hours [with Dahmer], these people came in here armed with sufficient information to help you make the decision you’ve got to make and my hat’s off to all of them – whether they agree with me or disagree with me.

Dr. Palermo – who came in here – was so candid you wanted to embrace him! “I knew in three hours there was nothing wrong with him.”

But Dr. Berlin says, “I knew in three hours I had Mr. Sicky on my hands.”

What’s the distinction in kind? They’re in here to render an opinion. Because a doctor comes and sits down whether he’s being paid on an hourly basis or a straight basis and spends five hours or 150 hours. Is that what we’re supposed to do? You know, what’s the function of a lawyer in a courtroom? To try and fool juries? “Uhhh… Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, my doctors were the greatest because they spent 600 hours.” Doesn’t mean a thing! And I wouldn’t do that. And I’m not suggesting they did that, I’m just suggesting that argument makes no sense to me at all.

Because I want to tell you something:

In my opinion, if I have a son and he’s starting to show what this guy was showing at 15 and 16 and I send him to a doctor and the doctor calls me up on the phone and says, “his two or three times a day masturbation, that’s in the normal range. His thinking about making love with the dead, that’s not something that you have to be concerned about. He’ll outgrow that. It’ll stop.” I’m getting a different doctor. This kid was plenty sick.

And Dr. Becker said – at that stage in his life when he started opening up dead dogs that he found on the highway, bringing them home and opening them up and looking at them – “if that had come to me, he would have been in the hospital.” But what’s the good in sending him to the hospital for? He’s sick. What’s the matter with somebody that would do that?

I mean, you know what? We – when we’re driving our cars – are so turned off by the sight of a dead animal on the highway that we move our car around so we don’t get anywhere near it. Even our car we don’t want to touch something like that. He’s bringing it home! This isn’t a sick kid, is it? And where is he going to get the help?

Now, the reason I emphasise that is because my belief is that the appetite (the wanting of something) so continues – and over a period of time – that whatever you try to do, it may not work.

Now I have to go back to the silly analogy of alcohol because I don’t know how else to explain it. “I’m only going to drink, honey, on weekends. I’ll only drink when we go on vacations and I’ll never drink during the day.” Well, I’m not an alcoholic. I don’t drink in the morning, I don’t take a drink at noon. All of us have seen or been touched by or have witnessed that. And there’s a person who’s talking about their problem to somebody. Who is [Dahmer] going to talk to about his problem? So you know what happened? He threw in the towel. He just became helpless in his own mind. “I’m no good, I’m rotten, I’m evil. And all of that being put together, I still want to fulfil these desires and I’m going to go do it.”

And I submit to you that, at some juncture along this killing spree, I proved (again an ‘I’, but not an I-I) to a reasonable certainty, if not absolute certainty, [that] at some juncture – not perhaps an early one, but at some juncture – one would have to be blinded not to accept the fact that he was so out of control that he couldn’t conform his conduct any longer to the requirements of law. At some juncture. And I think what I have to do, in the interest of being straightforward, is to tell you that, in my opinion, that started showing itself not right after Tuomi, with Mr. Doxtator [and] started getting sicker with Mr. Guerrero. But when we get to Mr. Sears, we got ourselves a very, very sick, uncontrollable young man.

Now, I have listed their names here and when they have died – and this is hopefully an understanding that these young men died because of a crazy man, not an evil man. But, in order to hopefully show you my belief as to when this sickness started getting so bad, I would like to have shown you this little chart I made:

*Boyle’s next chart depicts Dahmer’s descension deeper into madness following his first murder at 18 years old. Dahmer’s increasingly bizarre acts are listed beneath a number representing the victim they coincided with or befell*

Everything seemed not so abnormal until 15 or 16. He was just a kid. You know, his mother put the head to his heart. He has a little brother. There was nobody in the home, it wasn’t a lot of fun. I tell ya, I grew up with six in my family. It was a ball. It was World War III every day, but it was a ball. We played together, we fought together, we had a lot of fun together. This guy had nobody from birth, except as told to you by the doctors.

One would have to say, on balance, was he an active youngster, a semi-active youngster, an inactive youngster, a lonely youngster, a desolately lonely youngster? You make your own choices.

I don’t think his childhood was something that we would have prayed, any of us, for ourselves and for anyone we’re raising. But nothing so far out of line.

Did some things with tadpoles, did some things with fishes, started showing a little bit of an interest but now he starts in the fantasies. This is when we’ve got ourselves in harm’s way with the head of Jeffrey Dahmer. This is when his mind is really starting to go.

He starts masturbating, fantasising, thinking, planning. Can you imagine? Can you imagine at 17 years of age? Put yourself in the head of a 17 year-old boy saying, “I see this jogger running down the street or the highway and I want to go up and hit him the head and drag him in and have sex with him.” Can you imagine having that desire and that thought? How sad and how sick.

He kills at 18. He kills at 18 and then he desecrates this body by ejaculating on it.

Now what would have told anyone that this kid, up to this age, would have ever done anything like that? He’s starting to get sick.

And what he does then, from 18 to 27, he tries it his own way. And it doesn’t stop the paraphilia. The fantasy is there and it’s growing by leaps and bounds. And he kills at the Ambassador Hotel. And he doesn’t even know that he killed somebody until he wakes up and sees him. Think about that. Think about the reality of having that done by you.

So he starts saying, “what am I gonna do?” And he makes plans. See, what I keep on hearing is if you make plans, or if you think, ergo you’re not mentally diseased. Well, that’s nonsense. There isn’t a person in the world that can say that that rids oneself of the question of whether someone is mentally diseased. The anorexic, the bulimic, the alcoholic who’s got an alcohol dependency so bad that he’s able to go to work is not really diseased? Of course they’re diseased, but they’re thinking, they’re planning. They’re trying to correct the problem.

So he takes the young man home to his grandmother’s – and we know what he did – and he kept the skull. This is sick.

And then he kills twice more at his grandmother’s and then he gets caught. He does something and he gets caught with that youngster, S.S.⁷

He doesn’t kill him. Told the police he wasn’t planning on killing him. Everything he did with S.S indicated that, although bad, he wasn’t about to kill. But that doesn’t really matter because his sickness is well in place.

Here’s when he starts really getting out of line. Here’s when he starts really getting nutsy. Here’s when he starts really losing it:

As he is waiting to go to wherever, he kills again and saves a head and takes it to his place of work. Because when he’s in the House of Correction – where he can’t do his killings any longer because he doesn’t have a safe place – he’s still got the remembrance of this paraphilic disorder. The skull of a human being in a locker. Can you believe that? Can you believe that any human being in the world would say that a guy who did that isn’t mentally impaired, he’s just evil? No. That’s a mental impairment, whether we like it or not.

So now he gets out of this prison-jail situation that he’s in and he starts up again. And as you see – hopefully as I go through this as quickly as I can – you’re going to see how he starts doing different things.

Now he wants to be a part of the Jedi and he starts thinking about his temple that’s going to give him this power. So he’s going to start collecting things to help him with this table of altar. This shrine that’s going to give him this power.

And he starts now taking pictures and keeping skeletons of his victims. And now he starts taking pictures and keeping frozen body parts. And now he starts eating the body parts.

Why is he doing that? If he’s just evil, you’d think that all he wanted was to kill. He’s starting to experiment more and more because his paraphilia is getting greater and greater. And then he starts going down, he starts taking pictures, but now he’s into the viscera.

Now that’s not enough. He’s got to have more.

Well, people say, “come on. Stop it, Jeff. Don’t do that anymore.” “Okay, I won’t. I’ve got it now. I’ve got it under control.”

This is when he said he felt total depravity.

*Boyle gestures to the section marked: ‘Pictures of viscera. Felt total depravity. Worked for weekends‘*

This is when he knew that he was so bad.

He never said “you know, this is when I knew I really had a mental illness.” He never used the word mental illness. 60 hours talking to the police, never developed a hallucination. Never developed a delusion. Never said “I was really sick. I mean, my mind was gone, I mean…”

You know what he said? “Now I was totally evil. Totally depraved. Totally out of control.” He didn’t even know that he was mentally ill. He just thought he was bad. He didn’t invent a hallucination – ‘The devil made me do it. These people forced me to do it.” He said “I have no one to blame but myself. I had total depravity. All he wanted my own selfish gratification.”

It was a lot more than that. He was nuts.

Couldn’t Stop Until He Was Stopped

Now he starts doing the formaldehyde. He wants to keep the hands and genitals.

He’s into Exorcist III and now he says, “you know what I am? I’m Satan.” I’m Satan. Not ‘Satan forced me to do it.’ “I’m Satan. That’s how bad I am.”

Now he starts homemade lobotomies. Trying to keep skin. “What about that, doctor? The homemade lobotomies?” “Well, it could work, you know. It could have worked, yeah.”

I mean, if I said to you, you know – and I want to make sure that I’m not making light of any of this – if I told you that I have a pet at home that’s out in the farmyard and I really want to bring it in, but I got to make sure it doesn’t make noises that I don’t like. So I’m going to bring it in and do a little work on its head to try and see if I can’t pierce the head and knock out the noise that the animal makes – whether it be ‘baa baa’ or an ‘oink’ or whatever – because I want it to be more like a dog and I want it in the house. You got to say, “God, get that guy some help for Christ’s sake, something’s wrong! This man’s a nut! He’s a fruitcake!” Doctors say, “well, you know, he wanted a sex slave.”

Zombie One would have been dead the minute he saw Zombie Two because his paraphilia was in such control of him. Forget about the conformity right now, his paraphilia was in such control of him that he could not just leave it as it was. He had to have more and more and more.

Here we have Number 10 – and I’m not calling these ‘Number 10s’ because I’m showing any disrespect for these folks as persons. I’ve listed all of their names. I pray for their souls. So don’t let anybody misunderstand when I say that. I’m showing a progression of what’s happening in a series of chronologies, not depersonalising these poor folks by calling them numbers.

Number 10 victim, he left laying in a bed for two days in a small apartment. How about that, doctor? “Well, it was catching up on him now. He was too tired. He couldn’t get rid of the bodies.” I don’t agree with that, so I asked the doctors about Konerak Sinthasomphone and I said: “How about that one, Dr. Dietz?” And he says, “I think that showed guts. Just a lot of guts.”

Well, let me tell you what bothers me about that. You know, I don’t think Dr. Dietz can be the Star of the North on this one. If he had guts and he had his brain power intact and he was able to conform and he knew everything that was going on about him, how many body parts would have been in that apartment the next day? How many skulls would have been left? How about the barrel with skeletons in ‘em? And the freezers and the refrigerator? A guy with guts woulda cleaned that stuff out immediately so that if they did come back, he’d say: “You know, he must have wandered out like he did the night before when I was sleeping. I don’t know where he is. Come look around my apartment. It’s clean as a whistle. There’s nothing here.”

That’s what a guy with guts in mind would have done. But not the paraphilic who can’t conform his conduct to the requirements of the law because he couldn’t let him go – in spite of the fact that he had a cop at his elbow. And he went on and killed four more times.

He started saving skeletons in freezers. Three Milwaukee policemen are in his apartment. Firefighters see him. Naked boy on the street. Citizens viewing him. An Asian boy – a minority of minorities.

Dr. Dietz says he could conform his conduct to the requirements of law, it just showed he had a lot of guts [and] he knew how to control his environment. That’s not true. I submit to you [that] this time he’s so out of control that there’s no way he can conform his conduct to the requirements of law.

Before the early parts, I can’t stand before you and say I proved it absolutely. I am not certain if I’ve proved it to a certainty by the greater way. But I submit to you, [that] when he’s on his way to jail and he kills that poor Anthony Sears so that he can have his head in a locker while he’s at work, he’s out of control. Not somebody who’s just fulfilling their own selfish desires – they can quit anytime they want.

It’s a hell of a thing to have to ask you to even think about.

In your wildest dreams you couldn’t write this script. It wouldn’t be possible. It would be so unbelievable. And whoever read it would say, “well, at all times he could have stopped. He could have conformed.” The person would say, “well, I don’t think so…” There is a time when this guy let go to the point where he just lost it.

And they say alcohol is to blame. You know, there’s an awful lot of people in this world that have alcohol problems and we don’t see that kind of happening. I think it’s clear to me that when a doctor tells you that he’s an alcoholic, it’s clear that he’s an alcoholic. But his alcoholism, or his use of alcohol, isn’t causing him to kill these people. His paraphilia is causing him to kill these people.

His alcohol lowers his inhibitions. I asked the doctor about what Dr. Resnick – the nationally known person – says. “Alcohol is used to kill.” What difference does it make, doctor, that he drank? Would they not have occurred had he not ever had a drink of alcohol?

Not one doctor said they wouldn’t have happened if he didn’t have alcohol. And if they did, I think we’d all laugh them out of the courtroom. They weren’t alcoholic killings. These are the killings of an insane human being. Who couldn’t stop killing because of a sickness that he discovered – not chose – discovered when he was 15 and it never ever stopped growing.

And the little futile attempts to make it stop growing by Jeffrey Dahmer just didn’t cut it.

Crazy Thinking

He is taking showers with two dead bodies in the bath that have been in there with bleach and disinfectant. He could have said, “gee, this is too much now. I’m getting tired of doing this. This is too much work. I gotta find a – I’m going to go back to just going to the bathhouses again and doing my pill-drugging thing.” Nah. Would have been nice. Wasn’t in the cards.

Tracy Edwards would have been dead. Thanks be to God he isn’t. And you know, when I saw the locks on the door – when they showed me what they looked like from the inside – I might have said, when Geraldo or Donnie asked me, “I don’t know. I saw a couple hundred locks as far as I’m concerned.” What difference does that make? You heard the testimony: “I told them how long I talked to you, 15 minutes. When’s the first time we met? The night before.” “Oh, I’m going to fool this jury. I’m going to have this Tracy Edwards start saying, [Dahmer was] rocking and chanting, like he did on Donahue and Rivera. That’s going to sell the program.” Nonsense. What do you think was going on in that apartment for those four hours when Dahmer was in there and he got that Tracy Edwards up there? He was getting ready to kill him. And the only reason, in my opinion, that Tracy Edwards is not dead is because Tracy Edwards is very bright. He knew how to jive sufficiently to keep this guy from making the final move and the fatal move. And it was only after a period of time that he saw his escape route and got out of there.

And he runs down and he tells the police there’s a crazy guy up there. “This guy’s in and out of a trance”, he tells us. “He’s watching Exorcist III, rocking back and forth and mumbling and chanting.” Well, what would you expect a guy like Dahmer to be doing while he’s getting ready to kill a human being and keep their skull and deflesh him and cut him up?

And I asked Dr. Palermo that and he said “well, it’s like he’s going to work.” I mean, that’s just so silly. This is a sick guy.

And, thanks be to God, there’s a Tracy Edwards around to at least help you make your decision. But don’t be fooled because he went on Geraldo⁸ and Donahue who were cross-examining him. You know, I always heard impeachment, lawyer X asks the quid and “didn’t you say this and didn’t you say that?” Now we gotta contend with how Geraldo and Donahue ask their questions in front of television cameras and a whole audience full of people? With some poor young kid that was gonna get $50 for posing and wasn’t too sure he wanted to do that.

“How many locks did you see?” “A lot of locks, I saw a lot. About eight or nine locks he had.” Well, he did have a pretty good security system. That’s a fact. And, of course, the people across the way did too, because they had three locks on their door as you can see in the pictures. It was shown to you. So I don’t see what we really got down to with poor Tracy Edwards – trying to say, you know, “you’re making this up because, what? you want to be a star or something?” Nonsense. This guy was getting ready to kill him. He was going to be victim number 16, number 19.

And I am not Tracy Edwards’ protector, but thanks be to God Tracy Edwards is a human being and existed in this world. Because if he wasn’t, what we would end up doing is having all of these other people killed. Because this thing was never going to stop. Ever.

The doctors would say that at all times he was able to conform his conduct. Well, I submit to you that he wasn’t able to conform his conduct.

As far as the content of the statement of all of these people is concerned – as far as I’m concerned – they’re all equal. Some got a couple of more things than others, some went into further detail than others, but what they got was what he gave the police for 60 hours. He didn’t invent things after that. They say, “well, he invented this temple concept.” No, the police just didn’t get into the temple concept. He didn’t invent that. If he’s smart enough to start inventing, he’s going to start inventing hearing noises and hallucinations and delusions. He never said “I was having a delusion.”

Eating body parts. The doctor says, “well there’s, you know, some people believe that it’s part of the protein so you are what you eat.” He believed that this way he keeps them with him when he eats their body parts. That’s not bad thinking, huh? That’s not the thinking of a crazy man?

“I’m going to create a sex slave!” “No, that’s okay because frankly he might be able to do that.” That’s crazy thinking.

Chanting, rocking… Having an altar where you’re going to lay out the ten skulls of ten human beings you killed, to sit in a chair and to draw power from it in order to become successful in life – and maybe in the real estate business – is crazy thinking.

So I submit to you that you may not agree that I proved conformity, but I proved insanity.

Up and Over the Line

Now I got to ask you about the conformity. The conformity part, in my opinion – lawyers [have] got to say that: “In my opinion.” All the time. Part of the rules. The conformity part is a very tricky concept.

Back to the alcoholism. I don’t know how else to do it. I wish I could do it some other way.

A person takes his first drink when he’s in high school. Prom. Gets drunk. Goes to college. Fraternity parties. Goes in the army. A lot of drinking in the army. A lot of drinking in the army. It’s a man’s kind of thing.

Now, every time they start taking a drink, it doesn’t mean they’re alcoholic, because they progress into a state of heavy drinking. They’re not alcoholic. They’re probably not going to be too happy if they say, “hey, I’m finished. That’s it. No more hangovers for me. I’m done with them.” They’ve got control. They can stop. But when they cross that line – when they cross that line – they’re sick.

After a sporting event – go out to Milwaukee County Stadium and watch a Packer game or a baseball game. All of a sudden, all these nice people – who just are great all week long – suddenly become what they call ‘two-fisted slobbering’ and get everybody annoyed at them. These aren’t bad people. These are people who just drank too much. But some people are on the road to alcoholism. They’re going to become alcoholic.

And they may quit. I don’t care if 8 out of 10 quit. I don’t care if 9 out of 10 quit. I don’t care if 99 out of 100 quit. There is that one that can’t quit. It’s too late. It’s gone. So, in his alcoholism, a person is progressing in it – and we all have had somebody in our lives who is like the person I’m describing. Had that one drink too many and it’s all over. And when [Dahmer] got into the Anthony Sears time – as he’s going to jail to keep that thing in his locker – and as he starts going up taking these bodies like he was, he was past the time of self-help. It’s all over.

His sickness was so bad at that juncture that he couldn’t have conformed his crimes to the law.

Now, I guess one of the ways I can ask the question: If you really believed that at any given time, along this track of disaster, he could have said “that’s it, I’m finished. I’m not going to do this anymore. I’m going back to my old ways. I’m going back to the peep shows. I’m going to just go back to the bathhouses.” If you believe that, then you can say he could conform. But if you believe that – at any time on this track – he got to the point where he was out of control [and] it was all done with, then you must say (my opinion again) that he couldn’t conform his conduct to the requirements of the law. Because the law told him you can’t do any of that. Any of it.

And we’re talking about the killings and that’s why I asked Dr. Dietz: “At the moment of the killing, was he suffering from whatever he was suffering from?” “Yes,” he said. So, therefore the killings – whatever the ultimate purpose. Creating zombies that might live, might not live, saving body parts, eating body parts, having sex before, after, [with] viscera – doesn’t matter. At the moment of the killings, was he out of control? “No”, the doctor said. “He could have stopped from doing that. He just didn’t do that. He wasn’t getting any pleasure from that, so therefore, he wasn’t doing that because of his mental disease.” That’s nonsense. That’s nonsense. That’s like saying that the drunk who takes a drink because he can’t stand his hangover enjoys – or doesn’t enjoy – the act of drinking. What difference does it make? It’s what the act is that we look at. What his sickness was that we look at. And how he went about manifesting that sickness.

He was out of control by Sears. Whether he was so out of control that he could never stop after that, I don’t know. But I’ll tell you, as he was getting up the line with poor Mr. Smith and Mr. Miller – and he started creating these zombies with Mr. Lindsey, he got to young Konerak [and] goodbye.

And if you think I’m right – I think, I think I’ve recited the law properly. I think I said that I have proved to you to a reasonable certainty by the greater weight of the credible evidence that he was suffering from a mental disease. I think I’ve said that.

I did that with the rookie⁹, Wahlstrom. The rookie. “What do you know, Dr. Wahlstrom? You’ve never done this before!” Well, you know what? None of these people have ever testified in a Jeffrey Dahmer kind of case before. Dr. Fosdal says it’s internationally the only one he’s ever heard of. It’s precedent setting. So what difference if they’re used to testifying? It’s like saying that the only good trial lawyers are those who have done it 50 times. That’s nonsense. Doesn’t have anything to do with it. These people who are forensic psychiatrists are trained to tell juries – to look at juries and tell them what their opinions are.

So I should have gone out – I’m a dumbbell, right? I should have just gone out and got forensic psychiatrists? I went out and got psychiatrists who know what the heck is wrong with this guy. Isn’t that what you wanted to know? Isn’t that what my obligation was to you? To tell you? To bring to you somebody who can explain this madness so that the world out there knows? They’re seeing this. So that there’s some people out there that say, “good God, there’s help for those like him.” Because no human being in the face of the earth could do anything worse than what he did. Maybe just change the age or the sex of the victims – but the acts?

Nobody could be more reprehensible than this man if he’s sane. Nobody. The devil would be in a tie. But if he’s sick – if he’s sick – then he isn’t the devil. And I submit to you that he was so sick, the question that remains is “could he have stopped?”

Now, substantial capacity, in my opinion, means that he was so impaired – or became so impaired – that it was all over. He couldn’t stop. He couldn’t conform. He couldn’t say, “I’m not gonna do it.”

He was the alcoholic with the shakes sitting at the table with the bottle in front of him who takes the drink. It’s too late to ask that guy: “Hey pal, come on, don’t take that drink. You got control!”

He’s like the mentally ill alcoholic whose alcoholism is so bad that everyone in the world knows, without question, that he’s going to take that drink. That’s what Dahmer was.

A Pretty Sick Guy

I said 55 minutes, I’m an hour and ten minutes. I got a rebuttal and ‘rebuttal’ is a thing that lawyers do to say, “this is what I don’t think the other fellow made sense in telling you.” Mr. McCann will tell you, absolutely, that basically everything I said about the mental disease and the conformity is wrong and there’s no proof of it and I failed. And I’m not concerned about that because that’s his job to do that and I believe he believes that.

I think he believes all my doctors were nonsense people, although Dr. Dietz said that he would refer people with paraphiliac disorders to Dr. Becker and Dr. Berlin. See, there’s no ego in these courtrooms as far as I’m concerned. Anybody in the world thinks that I was going to change Dr. Dietz’s opinion about anything. I never – I mean, I would really think I’d be smart to be able to change anybody’s opinion about anything. That was not the test in this courtroom. It wasn’t a test to see who’s the smartest, who’s the best. It was to explore what they said so that you people can say, “you know, I got to rely upon Dietz. Dietz was so much better than the others and I don’t care what they said, I’m not listening to them. Dietz has it all figured out because he spent 18 hours with [Dahmer]. And what does Berlin know? He only spent 3 or 4 or 6.”

Well, probably he knew in the same way that I knew that I was dealing with a pretty sick guy in about the first half hour I talked with him… There’s an axiom in law called res ipsa loquitur… And it’s a cute little Latin word. It means ‘the thing speaks for itself’. And it’s not here. It’s not part of the thing that you can. If you’re walking down the street and somebody throws something out a window and hits you and you look up and you say, “that person injured me, I gotta go up and find out who that is. I’m gonna sue that person for throwing that thing out the window!” That’s a negligence case. Within negligence there’s a thing called res ipsa loquitur: the thing speaks for itself.

You don’t have to prove the negligence. Walking down the street, a brick comes off the top of the building and hits you on the head. How are you gonna prove negligence? My God, the building was built so that the bricks wouldn’t fall off and hit people on the head as they’re walking down the street – so all you have to do is prove how damaged you were. That’s what res ipsa loquitur is. Res ipsa loquitur here is: He had to be crazy!

First thing, this guy who does all of this is crazy. But I’m not a doctor. I never heard the word paraphilia. I never knew that there were human beings in the world that have “recurrent intense sexual urges and sexually arousing fantasies” that cause them to stress and that they act upon ‘em. That go on for a period of six months. I’ve never met anybody like that! And, if I had and somebody [like that] started talking to me, I’d probably leave them.

So I learned, as you were learning – hopefully from the doctors – as to what this fella had.

Nobody – not Dr. Berlin, Dr. Becker, Dr. Wahlstrom, Dr. Fosdal or Dr. Dietz -is saying he was anything other than paraphilic. They all agree on that. Dr. Palermo doesn’t think he was that and Dr. Freeman said he had personality disorders, but they were serious enough that it was a mental disease. So all the doctors are pretty much in agreement on that.

My doctors think he was out of control. The rest of them don’t think he was [but] it isn’t 5 to 4, 6 to 3. Because if it is going to be a numbers game, then you have to find that he was mentally diseased because the numbers say he was mentally diseased. You’re just going to have to say whether or not he was out of control and I want you to remember one thing:

My doctors said that, as he was going along this killing spree, it got worse and worse and worse – and his substantial capacity lessened and lessened and lessened until it was non-existent.

And that’s what I’ve said.

And your choices are going to be whether or not he was:

• Insane as to all
• Sane as to all
• Insane but able to conform
• Sane as to some
• Able to conform as to some
• Insane as to some
• Unable to conform as to some.

And in rebuttal I’m going to tell you the effect of that, as I’m allowed to.

You know, we all live by rules of the court of law, so there’s things I have to say and can’t say. But we’re going to all use our common sense here today and we’re going to walk out of here with pride. Pride in the fact that all of us have done what we took oaths to do and not be concerned about the world at large, because we can’t.

You know, I often said I try not to be a hero. I know I’m not a hero, but I try not to be a coward and I will not run from what I say I have to do. And I know you won’t run from what you said you will do.

So, with that, I’m going to sit down. I think we’re going to take a break and [then] Mr. McCann is going to argue and I’ll have rebuttal.

And I thank you for your consideration and your attention. 

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Sources:

• Original VHS recordings of WDJT-TV58 and TV6’s trial coverage
• Court TV
• The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters (1993)
• Stevens Point Journal, The Milwaukee Sentinel, Calgary Herald, The Journal Times, The Post-Crescent
• ‘Closing Argument’ at Legal Information Institute / Cornell Law School

Transcribing is time-consuming and can be a financial expense. If you find this transcript useful, please consider referencing me. I’d really appreciate it! 🙂

Footnotes:

1. Closing arguments take place after all the evidence has been presented and have a lot of power to impact the jury’s decision since they are the last part of the trial that the jury will hear. Closing arguments adapt a story-telling approach, wherein lawyers dramatise the case and may employ creative strategies or techniques to do so (Boyle makes use of several hand-drawn diagrams in his – while McCann would hold up pictures of each one of the victims when imploring the jury not to forget them). Only evidence that has previously been presented in the trial may be used ↩︎
2. Following McCann’s closing statement, the defence would be allowed to counter any points made by the prosecution for the final time. Boyle would continue to contend claims that the psychiatrists used by the defence weren’t as qualified as the prosecution’s and, again, emphasised how inconceivable it would be for Dahmer to have done the things he’d done (including keeping body parts in his apartment) were he not insane ↩︎
3. Marked ‘Fish eggs’ on Boyle’s chart, he is referring to the fascination felt by Dahmer as a child upon seeing his father cut open a fish to clean it. The bright orange egg sac had caught his eye and Dr. Becker found it significant that Dahmer’s typical monotone became more animated when recollecting the viscera and the parallels to his later evisceration of human beings ↩︎
4. Under cross-examination of the defences psychiatrist, Dr. Berlin, McCann had – somewhat unfairly – tried to undermine the relatively short amount of time Dr. Berlin had spent examining Dahmer. “It’s ridiculous to think you can do it in four and a half hours,” he told the visibly offended doctor. Conversely, the prosecutions golden boy star witness, Dr. Dietz, had spoken with Dahmer for 18 hours. Longer than any other expert ↩︎
5. For each of the 15 charges bought against Dahmer, jurors had to answer the question: At the time the crime was committed, did the defendant have a mental disease? If the juror answered ‘yes’, they would then have to answer the question: As a result of the mental disease, did the defendant lack substantial capacity either to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conduct to the requirements of law? Despite testifying for the prosecution, Dr. Fosdal’s admittance that Dahmer was indeed suffering from a mental disease had pleased Boyle as it painted Dahmer in a more sympathetic light and confirmed that he was at least unwell to some degree ↩︎
6. Indeed, after the verdict was read, juror Karl Stahle admitted that “the professional words were confusing.” Although he still found Dahmer to have been “a con artist [with] just one thing on his mind – to satisfy his ego and to satisfy himself.” ↩︎
7. In 1989, Dahmer was convicted of molesting 13 year-old Somsak Sinthasomphone, the brother of Konerak Sinthasomphone. Dahmer had no idea the two were related until after his arrest. “How many are the chances of that happening?” Dahmer later asked former FBI agent, Robert Ressler. “Astronomical.” ↩︎
8. Tracy Edwards appeared on the Geraldo and Donahue talk shows in September 1991 to discuss his ordeal in Dahmer’s apartment. Under cross-examination, Michael McCann grilled Edwards on some of the discrepancies between the initial, formal account Edwards gave to police and the dramatised story he told on TV ↩︎
9. A psychiatrist from Chicago, Dr. Wahlstrom had been scorned by the prosecution for having been fully qualified only a year at the time of the trial – with no formal publications under his belt. However his report on Dahmer had been thorough and he had studied a report by Dr. Kenneth Smail (the first psychiatrist to have met with Dahmer). Dr. Wahlstrom described Dahmer as ‘psychotic’ – a universal indicator of mental disease – and believed he needed continuous treatment ↩︎