Milwaukee, Wisconsin. February 12th, 1992.

After nearly three weeks, the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer has only one witness left to bare testimony, courtesy of the prosecution.

Dr. Park Dietz is a renowned forensic psychiatrist, former expert witness at the John Hinckley trial, professor of Psychiatry and Biobehavioural Sciences at the University of California¹, contributor to the routinely referenced ‘DSM-III-R’ and – as will become apparent – the prosecution’s smoking gun.

Having interviewed Dahmer for 18 hours across three days, 43-year-old Dietz has spent more time with the defendant than any other expert witness. Though these interviews have been videoed (their first tape showing only a row of bookshelves in lieu of a self-conscious Dahmer, who’d objected to being caught on camera unshowered and in the midst of a bad hair day), the recordings will not be played in court, nor ever publicly released. “[Dahmer] talked about taking the skin off Eddie,” Carolyn Smith (sister of Dahmer’s seventh victim) says of their content, after several of the victim’s family members later request to view them. “It’s like he’s working in a laboratory doing experiments on an animal. You can’t believe he’s talking about a human being.”

Yet despite the gruesome details he was acquainted with, Dr. Dietz’s first impression of Dahmer was that he had been “shy” (and that the first thing Dahmer had said to him was that Dietz had a nice watch). Although initially quite restrained, Dahmer had become very open once he realised the doctor was going to listen to him without judgement. “He saw it as an opportunity to understand how he had got that way,” Dietz later said. “From that point on, it became two reserved people trying to understand a person and solve a puzzle.”

Dr. Dietz’s testimony is distinct in its presentation as, for the most part, he turns to address the jury directly. Prosecutor Michael McCann need only to rattle off questions here-and-there in his distinct manner of a gatling gun, and Dietz will reply meticulously at length, virtually unaided by notes and with responses that can last up to five minutes or more.² “He knew his facts,” one account from ‘The Milwaukee Sentinel’ states afterwards. “When the defence tried to lead him off in the meandering meadows, he stuck with his facts.”

Even defence attorney Gerald Boyle will have to give Dr. Dietz his dues and admit, in his closing statement, that the doctor had been “so impressive, I wanted to pitch my tent and go home.”³

Whilst he was allowed to represent either the defence or prosecution, depending on the conclusion he reached, Dr. Dietz will ultimately argue that Dahmer’s paraphilia (primarily the necrophiliac desire to have sex with the dead and an attraction to human viscera) is not indicative of insanity. In Dietz’s opinion, a paraphilia is a motivation but not a compulsion – and therefore Dahmer is not legally insane. It’s an assessment he will remain staunch on when interviewed two years later. “If I can chew this shit to satisfy the physical response,” Dietz says, reaching for a piece of nicotine gum in place of the cigarettes he’s given up, “a paraphilic can go into the bathroom and masturbate.”

Because Dr. Dietz testified across two days and for a combined total of around 10 hours, his transcribed testimony has had to be split into several parts. Below follows the first part of such testimony as recorded in 1992 by Court TV. Some minor alterations have been made for the sake of clarity and grammar, but other than that, everything that follows is in the words of Dr. Park Dietz and Michael McCann.

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Free to Testify

MICHAEL MCCANN: Dr. Dietz, will you please advise the jury of your educational background, beginning with college?

* Dr. Dietz spends close to an hour talking through his resume and establishing his credentials for the benefit of the jury *

For the sake of relative brevity, I have summarised Dr. Dietz’s CV – as drawn from the information obtained directly from his exchange with McCann – below:

Reproduction CV for Dr. Dietz, based on his work by the time of the Dahmer trial

MICHAEL MCCANN: Dr. Dietz, when were you first contacted in this case?

DR. PARK DIETZ: Sometime in December 1991.

MM: And what was the nature of that contact? 

PD: The first contact was a telephone call from you, Mr. McCann. 

M: And did you eventually agree to conduct an evaluation on behalf of the Milwaukee County District Attorney’s Office of the defendant in this case? 

D: Yes, I did.

M: Were there any ground rules agreed upon for your evaluation? 

D: Yes, there were. 

M: And would you share those with the jury? 

D: Well, in the initial discussions that we had, Mr. McCann asked me if I would be available and willing to evaluate Mr. Dahmer. And I told him that I would enjoy the opportunity to evaluate Mr. Dahmer, but there were certain conditions that we would have to agree on before I could do that.

One of those conditions was that I’d have free access to any information that the government had acquired – and Mr. McCann volunteered to make everything available to me that the government had learned in the course of its investigation of Mr. Dahmer.

A second condition was that I be free to testify for either side. That if, at the conclusion of my evaluation, my findings were such that the defence thought I would be a favourable witness, I would be free to testify for them if they asked me to. And that, if my findings were such that Mr. McCann thought that he would like to call me as a witness, that I’d be free to do that, too.

And finally, we discussed payment and agreed on a budget – because Mr. McCann told me that the county funds were limited and that we would have to agree on how much could be spent on this. And we did agree.⁴

M: And what did you subsequently do to conduct that evaluation of the defendant?

D: The first thing I did was to obtain various documents and to review those documents. The documents didn’t arrive all at once, they continued to come by the carton, but they included (eventually) what I believe to be:

• All of the police reports that concern Jeffrey Dahmer
• All of the police reports that were interviews with witnesses who had actually observed Mr. Dahmer or spoken to him at any time in his life
• All the police reports that were from people who might have actually known something about Jeffrey Dahmer (though at the time they were sent to me, it wasn’t always clear if they were talking about the correct person or not)
• All of those investigative reports that had to do with the investigations at the scenes of various crimes
• All of those photographs that were taken by Mr. Dahmer and recovered during the investigation
• All of those photographs taken by police in the course of their investigation
• All of the documents that professionals or administrators had prepared about Mr. Dahmer over the years (such as his military records, school records, medical records, counselling records of various kinds, the correctional records about him and the court records about him)
• The testing that had been done since his arrest and the results of that
• The reports of all of the people who had examined him since his arrest
• The notes of at least Dr. Fosdal, Dr. Becker and Dr. Berlin
• The notes of those who had attempted to treat him in the past (such as Dr. Rosen and Dr. Crowley)

Offhand, those are the documents that come to mind. I may be omitting some.

Environment of the Defendant

M: Did there come a time when you met with the defendant?

D: Yes.

M: Can you tell us on what day (or days) that you met with the defendant?

D: I met with him on three days in January of 1992. One of them was the 6th.

M: Was it the 6th, 7th and 8th?

D: I think that’s correct, yes.

M: And did you meet with him in a room off this very courtroom?

D: Yes.

M: And, while that was being conducted, were you alone with him?

D: I was alone in the room with Mr. Dahmer. However, there were other people present outside the room.

M: And how many hours did you spend in those three days that you met with the defendant? How many hours in total did you spend with him?

D: Approximately 18 hours. 

M: And the subject of the discussion was his background, his involvement in the various offences that transpired, and other matters that were of interest to you in preparing a psychiatric evaluation. Would that be basically accurate in the broad term?

D: That’s true.

M: Before we discuss each of the separate homicides, would you please tell us how a forensic psychiatrist goes about making an assessment that a defendant does or does not appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of the criminal acts.

* Boyle attempts to object unless it’s made clear on the record that this is only Dr. Dietz’s opinion of what a forensic psychiatrist does. Judge Gram allows the question to continue *

D: The most important thing is to do as much as the resources permit to try to learn about the defendant and the defendant’s mental state at the time of the charged offences.

For example: In addition to the documents that I mentioned reviewing and my examination of Mr. Dahmer, I also visited some of the places that Mr. Dahmer had visited around the time of his crimes. Because those visits might give me some insight into his mental state at the time of the crimes. By seeing his environment, I know a bit more about what he’s responding to in the world – and sometimes there are important observations that can be made. 

So I went to the apartment building where Mr. Dahmer had committed the larger number of offences. I went to some of the places where he had met his victims and recruited them – such as the gay bars. I went out with investigators from the district attorney’s office to see what the locations were like and what the atmosphere was like.

I looked at the pornography that had been confiscated from Mr. Dahmer – both on an earlier occasion when he was arrested for something else⁵ and at the time of the present arrest. I looked at selections of pornographic videos with Mr. Dahmer (he directed me to particular passages) and [also] had a couple horror films also that we watched portions of together.

Anything that could help me understand his mental state at the time of the crimes was germane to what it was I wished to do.

Kinds of Evidence

But generally, when a forensic psychiatrist seeks to evaluate whether a defendant appreciated the wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of the crime, the questions that have to be addressed are:

First: Whether the defendant had any mental condition that could possibly have interfered with his ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct.

Some mental disorders can affect a defendant’s ability to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct; some can’t possibly do it; and some can only do it under particular circumstances. And so one has to look for what mental disorders there are and see if he has any of the kind that might impair his appreciation of wrongfulness at the time of a crime.

Secondly, one has to look at: Whether the behaviour of the defendant at the time [of each crime] indicates an awareness – an appreciation, in particular – of the wrongfulness of his conduct.

And lastly: One has to look at what the defendant says his awareness was, or his thoughts were, at the time.

But behaviour during a crime always speaks more loudly than defendant statements after a crime. And so looking at the behaviour during the crime, as far as one can tell, becomes quite important.

Unfortunately, we often have to rely on what defendants say about behaviour during a crime – particularly in unwitnessed homicides – because there may not be any other living witness. And in order to try to verify what defendants say at the time of a crime in which there are no other living witnesses, we look at physical evidence; we look at the setting in which it occurred; [and] we look at their behaviour at other times.

And because of that need to look at behaviour at other times, it even becomes important to look at the life history and what other people have observed about a defendant’s behaviour.

MCANN: Without going into the details in each case at this time, can you please tell the jury some of the kinds of evidence you used in determining whether Mr. Dahmer appreciated the wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of the commission of the offences to which he has pled guilty?

D: Well, some examples (in broad strokes only) of the kinds of evidence that I considered in determining whether Mr. Dahmer appreciated the wrongfulness of his conduct at the time of these crimes were: 

First, I began to ask him one by one – at the time that he killed James Doxtator, for example: Did he appreciate that what he was doing was wrong? And Mr. Dahmer said yes, he did. And I asked him that for another victim and he said yes, he did. And another and yes, he did. And he then said that the answer would be the same for all of them: that, at the time of the crime, he appreciated the wrongfulness of what he was doing.

But this is a statement made by Mr. Dahmer in January 1992. There have been events in between and I never rely solely on what a defendant says if I have the opportunity to look beyond that. And so that wasn’t the end of my assessment. I also looked at what other evidence there was.

A second example was that Mr. Dahmer – in at least some of the instances – took steps to reduce the chances that he would be the last individual seen with a victim. So, for example, there are instances in which he sought a particular person who was alone, rather than with someone else.

There are multiple reasons for doing that. One of them is to be able to isolate someone alone. And, of course, he always took his victims someplace where he was alone with them. And he took steps in some instances to ensure that whoever drove him there (such as a taxi driver or friends of the victim) didn’t see exactly where he and the victim were going – but rather would be dropped off a few blocks away, so that they wouldn’t be able to identify the particular address.

That’s an indication that, at those times that he did those things, he knew that what he was going to do was wrong and that he wanted to avoid detection for what he already planned to do.

Another kind of example is that he, in fact, always committed the charged crimes – namely the homicides – while alone with victims. None of the charged homicides was done in the presence of any other witness. None was done in public view. None was done in a way that others would be able to see him. And by taking [the victim] to a private place and by, in fact, seeking privacy with him, he’s showing an awareness that it’s wrong to do these things with people where you will be observed.

Yet another kind of example is Mr. Dahmer’s statements on a number of occasions (including statements to me more than once) that he drank to overcome inhibitions about killing the victims.

He would drink at several intervals during the course of time with the victim, but here I’m addressing the aspect that – because he was inhibited against killing them and found that aspect of his behaviour distasteful – he would purposely drink more in order to overcome his inhibition against doing a part of this that he didn’t like, didn’t seek out and, in fact, felt uncomfortable about.

His discomfort with the killing is an indication that he knew that killing was wrong.

Yet another example is that Mr. Dahmer reported (and his behaviour showed) that at various times when he was drugging a victim or staying with a drugged victim or, in fact, killing a victim or being with an already dead victim or dismembering a victim or disposing of evidence of a killing, he would – at all those various times – be aware and take steps to prevent being observed by other parties who might report him to the police.

That’s because he knew – at each of those stages – that what he was doing was wrong and that, if he were detected doing those things, he would be in trouble for it. And so he went to some lengths to try to prevent other people from seeing him do any of those things, including the killings (which is the aspect with which he’s charged).

Another example, in general terms, of the kinds of evidence that I looked for to make this assessment was evidence that indicates that he (at the time of these events) sought to destroy incriminating evidence by disposing victims’ clothing, parts of victims and, in many instances, their identification. And even those identity cards that he still retained, he told me he meant to get rid of – he just hadn’t gotten to that yet.⁶

But he wanted to rid himself of much of the incriminating evidence (though he also retained mementos that could incriminate him).

Now, those are merely some examples and a broad outline of the sorts of evidence of behaviour – at the time of a crime – that one has to look at in trying to make such an assessment.

MCCANN: That doesn’t exhaust the evidence on which your opinion is based. To do that you would have to look – and you will – at each of the separate cases. Is that correct?

D: That’s correct.

The Capacity for Control

M: Dr. Dietz, before we get into the details of each case, can you tell us how a forensic psychiatrist goes about determining that a person possesses – or lacks – substantial capacity to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law?

D: This is a more difficult task. One goes about it in the same general way: which is first to determine whether the individual has any mental disorder that might (under some circumstance) impair an individual’s ability to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.

Some mental disorders – psychiatrists would be in great agreement – can never do that; can never have that effect. Other mental disorders – we would agree – could have that effect. And there’s some for which there wouldn’t be agreement and some for which psychiatrists would say, “well, that kind of condition could, under some circumstances, impair a person that way.”

So the first step is to look at whether there’s a relevant disorder that might impair a person – in that particular way that the law requires – that we examine.

The second step is to look at the defendant’s behaviour during the time of the crimes to see whether the behaviour at that time (and at other times) tells us whether the individual had the capacity to conform his conduct to legal requirements or not.

And, in the process of that, one of the things we do is to ask defendants how they subjectively perceived themselves at that time. And, once again, behaviour speaks more loudly – insofar as we can find it [and] identify it – than defendant statements. But we try to consider all of this.

MCCANN: In terms of any particular considerations, does that exhaust the evidence that you considered with respect to conformity? Or will you address the facts on each case separately that address the issue of conformity?

D: I will case-by-case describe the evidence that I relied on. But, in general, there was a kind of evidence common to a number of cases that is the kind of evidence I directed my attention to in making that assessment. And the general kinds of evidence, which are just examples, include such things as Mr. Dahmer’s own statements to me. 

I asked him – once again starting with Mr. Doxtator – whether if, at the time he was killing Mr. Doxtator, his grandmother had walked in (or some other witness) would he have killed him nonetheless? And he said no. That he wouldn’t have if somebody had walked in on him.

Likewise I asked him: if Mr. Doxtator had agreed to stay with him for a few weeks, would he have killed him? And he said no, he wouldn’t have killed him.

Well, as I asked him that for several victims, he then said that the answer would be the same for all the rest: That – at the time of all of these killings for which he’s charged – if his grandmother (or if someone else) had walked in, he would not have done the killing. And likewise, if the victim had agreed voluntarily to stay with him, he would not have done the killing.

Now, assuming that that’s correct, that’s an indication that he could control his behaviour.

That is that, if detection were imminent, he would have stopped. Or if he could have obtained the company of these men (and sexual contact with them with less drastic means) he would have stopped. There was no force pushing him to kill, there was merely a desire to spend more time with the victim. And had that been possible through some other means, the killing would have become irrelevant to him. 

A second kind of evidence, that bears on the capacity of Mr. Dahmer to control his conduct, is that he did not engage in these behaviours without reflection.

On each occasion he made preparations for doing those acts that led up to a murder. Including – not in each case, but from time to time – having powderised the [sleeping] tablets in advance. On most of the occasions, he had already crushed a tablet (or several tablets) and had it ready so that he could drug the victims when he brought them back. So before he even went out, he prepared the drug.

On some occasions, he would prepare himself for going out to recruit a victim by watching particular scenes and videotapes that he had – both pornographic videos and horror films. Which he’d use to pump himself up and to get himself in the proper mood to go out looking for a victim.

Covers of some of the videos found in Dahmer’s apartment at the time of his arrest

He would, of course, devote time to finding an attractive victim, because he always knew the physique that he was looking for. For Mr. Dahmer, it was a particular kind of masculine physique that was most appealing to him.

And he would go out hoping to find someone with that kind of physique whom he could bring back to where he would be in private with him.

And he would devote time to that surveillance for an attractive, appropriate person to bring back.

And on a number of occasions, he had a conscious awareness (he later reported) of planning to kill them – even as he’s on the way back with the victim. In every instance, he drugged the victim before committing those acts that resulted in the victim’s death. And all of that preparation – from preparing the tablet in advance; having the equipment handy that he would need; finding the attractive victim; bringing them back; whatever preparations he made with them once they were with him – all of that is an indication that these behaviours were not impulsive.

The killing was never an impulsive act.

It was always a planned and deliberated act. Though sometimes he said the actual decision to kill was made only a matter of an hour – or 20 minutes or half-an-hour or some specific time – before the killing. In other instances, he knew before he was even home with the victim that he would kill that victim. So none of it was impulsive. None of the killings.

Yet another kind of behaviour – or type of evidence one looks at – is the timing of offences. That is: Does an individual commit offences randomly with respect to time (as one might expect if someone could not control their behaviour or couldn’t conform their behaviour to the law) or do they confine their behaviour to those times when it best suits them?

In Mr. Dahmer’s case, he generally liked to confine himself to weekends. And there was a simple practical reason for that – which is because he worked nights and had already received some absences (particularly toward the end) and didn’t want to overdo his risk-taking about losing his job. He would like to be able to spend a lot of time with his victims, and the way he could maximise the time he spent with victims was to bring them home on a Friday night so he would have all that night, all day Saturday and all night Saturday (before he’d have to go to work Sunday evening) to spend with the victim. Or to spend destroying the evidence – because it was a very time-consuming process.

And so he would confine his behaviour often (but not always) to cruising for victims on Friday and Saturday evenings, rather than engaging in victimisation randomly.

Likewise, one looks at whether the distribution of the crimes – geographically, spatially – is random or whether it shows a pattern in which the defendant controls when he commits his crimes.

And that’s particularly telling in this instance because – as opposed to someone out of control who commits crimes wherever they happen to have the urge – Mr. Dahmer always commits the offences with which he’s charged at a place of his choosing, behind closed doors. He never committed homicides while with an attractive man with the right physique in a peep show booth or in a bathhouse – even though sometimes in the bathhouses he had them drugged and could readily have done so. Except he would have had the disposal problem.

He controls himself not to kill them in that setting. Only when they are somewhere else – where he has complete control behind closed doors – does he engage in homicide.

And of course he learned, after an uncharged offence, that it was a problem to dispose of a corpse on someone else’s property. As at the Ambassador Hotel⁷ [where] he had to buy the suitcase and take the body home, and so on. And that made it more difficult.

So the distribution, spatially, of where the killings occur is an indication of his ability to conform his behaviour to the requirements of the law – and to delay this process until it meets his practical needs for doing this privately.

The evidence I already alluded to of Mr. Dahmer purposely drinking to overcome his inhibitions against killing is – in addition to being evidence of his knowledge of the wrongfulness of it – evidence of his capacity to conform his behaviour in that it shows that he had to take this additional step to overcome his natural inhibition against the killing. If he had an impulse to kill (or a compulsion to kill) he wouldn’t have to drink alcohol to overcome it. He only has to drink alcohol to overcome it because he’s inhibited against killing.

So his drinking more alcohol to overcome his inhibition against killing is very important evidence that there was no compulsion to kill – and no impulse to kill – and that he could conform his behaviour and had to drink alcohol to help himself do the crime that he’d rather not have done because of the distaste of the killing part.

Those are examples of the sorts of evidence that I looked for in evaluating each crime.

MCCANN: Does that exhaust the evidence on which your opinion is based? Or will you have to – as you go through each case – touch on additional items?

D: One has to look at each case and the evidence surrounding each charged offence.

Disorders and Paraphilias

M: Have you reached any diagnostic opinions regarding Jeffrey Dahmer?

D: Yes, I have.

M: And what are they?

D: Well, in my opinion, Mr. Dahmer suffers from two kinds of mental disorder.

The first is technically described today as alcohol dependence – which is the current term used for alcoholism. The Diagnostic Manual contains a scale for rating the severity of alcohol dependence and I think the fairest ratings for Mr. Dahmer would be that his alcohol dependence, prior to his arrest, was at a mild to moderate level.

The second kind of mental disorder that I diagnosed is what is technically known as a paraphilia – which is the current term for sexual deviation.

‘Sexual deviations’ were the term last used and, before that, a term that was often used in the professions was that of ‘perversions.’ But psychiatry sought to get away from that term because it’s important to distinguish sexual deviations, of the kind that we’re now talking about, from homosexuality. Which is not considered a perversion or a sexual deviation or a paraphilia. 

And so (in part to move away from an older view that could confuse homosexuality with all of this) psychiatry has changed the terms. And it’s been an important move for the profession. 

By coincidence, it happens that Mr. Dahmer is gay, but that has nothing to do with what I’m describing as paraphilias. Which is something else altogether.⁸

MCCANN: Doctor, did you serve – or do you serve – on the subcommittee on paraphilias to prepare the DSM-III-R⁹ manual?

D: Yes, I did.

M: That’s a reflection of your professional involvement in it, your writings in the area, and your interests. Is that correct?

D: I presume so.

M: Would you tell us what the term paraphilia means? And what is a paraphilia?

D: The term paraphilia comes from Greek roots and was reintroduced in 1980 as a means of getting away from the term ‘sexual deviation’ that had been used before that time. The Greek roots refer to the idea that what a person with a paraphilia is sexually attracted to is something alongside the normal – or other than the normal area of sexual interest.

And each of the paraphilias, for which we have a name, refers to a more or less common form that unusual sexual interests may take.

Some passages from the ‘DSM-III-R’ (1987) regarding paraphilias

Now, the fact is that anything – or just about anything – can become sexually attractive to an individual. All manner of unusual, even bizarre, sexual interests are observed – but only some of them happen often enough that it’s been useful to develop a particular name for that kind of sexual attraction. 

There’s a recognition in DSM-III-R (certainly among people who work in this area) that the names that happen to be mentioned in the book are not quite sufficient because there are so many other kinds of sexual interests that can occur and become a particular preference, or interest, of an individual. And so, to accommodate those other ones that aren’t specifically named or listed, there is a heading referring to ‘paraphilias not otherwise specified’ – and it’s possible to identify a very long list of the kinds of paraphilias that exist.  

But the word [‘paraphilia’] means no more than what we used to mean by ‘sexual deviation.’ In other words, it is a pattern of an enduring sexual interest in a particular kind of unusual image.

It’s considered that the ordinary (or usual) sexual image that someone finds erotic is an adult human being who is alive. And when individuals find something else sexually exciting and persist in that pattern of sexual excitement for long enough (we happen to use six months as an arbitrary cutoff point), then we label that a paraphilia. 

Now, there was one political issue that came up during the DSM-III-R discussions about which there’s some disagreement. And that is whether one should call a particular interest a ‘paraphilia’ if the person never acts on it? And the way the debate was resolved was to say that we will only agree on using the term ‘paraphilia’ for the purposes for which DSM-III-R was devised: when an individual has strong sexual urges toward a particular unusual kind of activity and either is bothered by those urges, acts on them, or both.

So if a person has such urges, doesn’t mind having them, and doesn’t act on them, it’s technically not a paraphilia. 

I was in the minority on that particular vote because I think if someone fantasises [about] torturing a woman every time he has sex with his wife, it’s a paraphilia – even if it doesn’t bother him. But my colleagues outvoted me and think that it shouldn’t be given a label unless it bothers him or he acts on it.

So a paraphilia is: Wanting to do some unusual sexual behaviour repeatedly – over at least six months – and either being bothered by one’s desires or acting on them.

Desires and Drive

MCCANN: Can you list some of the more commonly known and recognised paraphilias?

D: Well, some of the more familiar ones are:

Exhibitionism. In other words, individuals who have the desire to expose themselves to unsuspecting strangers. If they repeatedly, for more than six months, have such desires and are either bothered by that or act on it, then that’s the diagnosis of exhibitionism. A kind of paraphilia.

If an individual, likewise, has the interest in peeping into people’s windows and watching strangers undress or have sex and is bothered by that – or does it for long enough – then that’s the paraphilia of voyeurism.

If an individual likes to make obscene phone calls and is bothered by that – or does it for long enough – that’s the paraphilia of telephone scatologia.

If an individual wishes to rub up against unsuspecting strangers – as men are known to do in subways in New York and crowded elevators everywhere – then that is (if he does it or is bothered by the desire) the paraphilia of frotteurism.

If one wishes to have sexual contact with a corpse and is either bothered by the idea or does it, that’s the paraphilia of necrophilia.

If an individual wants to have sexual activity with children under 12 and either does it or is bothered by the urge, that’s the paraphilia of paedophilia.

All of those, I think, are described specifically (or at least mentioned by name) in DSM-III-R. But that doesn’t even begin to cover the turf because there are so many unusual things that people, from time to time, find sexually exciting.

Fetishism is another one that’s described there – in which an individual has a specific sexual interest in some kind of inanimate object or material (such as latex, leather garments, high-heeled shoes or some kind of underwear). If someone wishes their partners to use such things, or likes to masturbate while fondling such materials or things, and they’re either bothered by that or act on it, that’s the paraphilia of fetishism. 

And all the paraphilias are the same in being nothing more than what it is someone wishes to do. Technically, we only give the label if they wish to do it long enough and if they’re bothered by the wish or if they do it. But it’s nothing more than what they have an urge to do. 

MCCANN: And this is essentially a sexual urge?

D: Yes.

To put it another way – I mean, a more scientific way – to make the diagnosis really would be to look at what gives men an erection. And that’s how, in a research laboratory, one studies paraphilias: by seeing what stimuli will produce an erection in the male. And if men regularly can become erect to a particular kind of unusual image, then that is what, scientifically, we mean by a paraphilia. So it has to do with what is a turn-on.

Now if it’s a normal kind of image that the culture accepts then we don’t call it a paraphilia. So, in the United States, no one would call it a paraphilia for men to be attracted to the kinds of women portrayed in Playboy centrefolds, because many men will respond to that image with an erection. But if they’re responding in the same way to a picture of someone who is bound and chained, that would be called a paraphilia because that’s not an acceptable image in our culture.

So you can see that – to some extent – it’s what’s accepted by the culture and society that determines which interests become labelled paraphilias and which do not.

MCCANN: And the term paraphilia relates, really, to what excites the person sexually. It does not, as such, apply to the strength of the sexual drive. Would that be accurate? 

D: That’s very accurate. The strength of sex drive is something altogether different from what it is one wishes to do. An individual can have paedophilia (the attraction to children) and yet have a low sex drive and only be motivated to have sex with a child once every six or eight months and not be particularly motivated the rest of the time. Or an individual can have a high sex drive and also be paedophilic and want to have sex with a child many times a day.

The strength of the drive is separate from whether they have the paraphilia or not. And people have a lot of variation in the strength of their sex drive.

MCCANN: Do some persons have more than one paraphilia at the same time?

D: Yes, it’s quite common for individuals to have multiple paraphilias simultaneously. That’s partly a byproduct of the way we classify the paraphilias.

We’ve broken the more common forms down into clusters that we’ve given names – and because of the way we’ve named them, someone who likes to expose himself and make obscene phone calls would be given two paraphilias. But we could have named it differently. We could have said that we’ll call it a particular paraphilia of courtship – ‘a courtship disorder’ – if someone goes about interrupted courting rituals and either just exposes himself or makes phone calls or just touches people or rubs against them. Those are all examples of tidbits of normal courting behaviour because, in a normal courtship, one would look at people and call them on the phone, and there’d come a time that they would touch and perhaps rub and see each other naked. But in the paraphiles, there may be just a piece of all of that that they’re particularly interested in. And we’ve broken it down with these different names.

But it’s very common to have multiple paraphilias and one line of research indicates that, on average, someone who has one paraphilia is likely to have two to three paraphilias.

MCCANN: How do persons who have the paraphilias adapt to the paraphilia?

D: Well, there are a variety of adaptations possible to those who are going to live with these urges and not make any effort to change them. Those who choose to live with the disorders can adapt lawfully or quasi-lawfully or unlawfully.

At the lawful end of the scale, the paraphile may confine himself completely to fantasy – so that when he is masturbating he fantasises about his unusual interest. When he is having sex with an adult partner, he fantasises about his particular interest (and of course there’s nothing illegal about that) and he’s able to achieve an orgasm by fantasising his favourite activity – even if he’s engaging in sex with a partner who doesn’t quite fill the bill for what he’d most like to be doing. The fantasy in his mind allows him to have all the excitement necessary to achieve orgasm, and so he’s relieved the biological urge – or he’s relieved his sex drive – in that way. 

Another way that people lawfully adapt is to find a partner who’s willing to simulate whatever the unusual desired activity is, and who (by agreement) will wear particular kinds of clothing or perform particular kinds of acts or pretend to be something they are not in order to fulfil the partner. And that too is perfectly legal.

So, for example, men with necrophilia may merely fantasise about corpses while they masturbate, or fantasise about corpses while having sex with a live partner. Or they may find a consenting partner who will simulate death. And so this accounts for men who, from time to time, will ask their wives to take a cold bath before having sex and to lie still with their eyes closed. That simulates a death-like condition and some wives will gratify their husbands’ fantasies and desires that way, which is lawful. One of the lawful adaptations of a necrophile.

In addition to those, there are some things that begin to skirt some legalities. Such as making use of illegal obscenity or pornography to fulfil the fantasy by looking at pictures of whatever it is that is stimulating and unusual. Or by finding a paid partner who performs either frank prostitution services of an unusual kind or else some simulation.

For example, in West Hollywood there are (or at least there were when I went out with the Vice Squad and toured these places) at least half a dozen specialised bondage and domination parlours where, for a fee, a man can have a partner who will simulate being a sexual master [and] will chain the client and spank him, whip him or beat him. Or, on demand, will play the role of a slave and allow the client to restrain and spank – and otherwise abuse – the person who works there. Some such places engage in outright prostitution and sell explicitly sexual services, others don’t. Some prostitutes cater specifically to clients with these unusual tastes.

And through those means (using pornography, these services or prostitutes) many paraphilic individuals can gratify their sexual drives, actually engage in some of the sorts of things that they fantasise as most arousing, or have particularly high-quality photographs or images of what they like best. And [they] can fulfil their sexual drives and gratify themselves in those ways.

And then there are those, of course, who adapt unlawfully and who act on their paraphilic desires by committing crimes. Or [who] commit crimes in order to be able to fulfil the paraphilic desire.

So, for example, there are fetishists who like a particular kind of underwear and who will lawfully purchase it at a store, or quasi-lawfully purchase it by mail soiled from somebody in the business of selling soiled underwear. But there are also others who will commit the crime and shoplift underwear, steal it from the laundromat, steal it from a clothesline – or even burglarise a house to go through an underwear drawer and steal underwear from a victim.

Those are all varying ways that someone with that fetish can adapt to the desire. But only some people commit the crimes to fulfil their sexual urges.

The Freedom of the Paraphile

MCCANN: Are there some paraphiles who never act out their paraphilia?

D: Probably most paraphiles never act on their paraphilias in any criminal way.

M: In terms of the person who wants to stop involvement in the paraphilia, would you respond to what that person can do? Looking first to the fantasy aspect and then to the activity aspect – the acting out aspect.

* Boyle objects on the grounds that such question is “immaterial and irrelevant” – considering how some paraphilles are unable to do certain things relative to their paraphilias (like stopping themselves from having particular fantasies). His objection is overruled. *

D: Well, the paraphile who chooses not to commit a crime need not commit the crime. The paraphile is as free as any other human being to choose whether to commit a crime to gratify his wishes or to not commit a crime to gratify his wishes. Just as an individual who would like to have money fast and lots is, in our society, free to choose to commit a crime to get that money or go about it the hard way and earn it.

An individual who would like a particular kind of sex – soon and a lot – is free to commit a crime to gratify that desire, or choose not to commit the crime but gratify the desire in these other lawful, quasi-lawful ways. The choice is exactly the same. The freedom to make it is the same.

The paraphilia provides no more than the motive for what a person would like to do. It does not determine whether the person does it. It does not impair an individual’s appreciation of wrongfulness. Nor does it impair an individual’s capacity to conform conduct. It only determines what it is one wishes to do.

Now, some paraphiles do commit crimes to gratify their desires. And when one looks at the paraphiles who commit crimes to gratify themselves, they are different in certain ways from the paraphiles who don’t. Just as people who want money and commit crimes to get it differ from people who want money and don’t commit crimes to get it. And it turns out that the differences are basically the same:

The people who commit crimes to get what they want either have something wrong with their personality – their character – so that they are not inhibited from the crime. Because they don’t have the strength of character, they don’t have the principles, the morality – the usual things that keep people from committing crimes.

Or else the other very common difference is that people who abuse substances much more often commit crimes to gratify their desires than people who don’t. And so one finds that paraphilic criminals are much more often personality disordered, alcoholic or drug abusers than paraphilic non-criminals. Just as robbers are much more often personality disordered, alcoholic or drug abusers than other people who’d like money but don’t rob. 

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Sources:

• Court TV
• Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer tapes on Netflix
• DSM-III-R by the American Psychiatric Association (1987)
• A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer (1994)
• The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters (1993)
• Portage Daily Register, The Milwaukee Sentinel
• John Hopkins Magazine, Real Crime Magazine

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. At the time of the trial ↩︎
2. Author Brian Masters, present at the trial, later wrote that: “Obviously, Dietz had told him what the prompt cues were, and [McCann] had only to read them out.” Regardless, it made for an impressive display of prep ↩︎
3. Boyle was, however, critical about what he percieved to be Dietz’s inability to commit to a conclusion as to whether-or-not Dahmer had a mental disease – as well as the doctor’s claim that Dahmer’s alcoholism had been responsible for his incapacity to control his behaviour in the last month before his arrest. While Dietz argued that Dahmer’s need to drink in order to overcome his inhibition against killing was evidence that he did not have a natural impulse to do so, Boyle countered that Dahmer clearly still would’ve continued killing even if he had stopped consuming alcohol ↩︎
4. Dr. Dietz’s fee for his work on the Dahmer case was reported to have been $39,000. Equivalent to about $87,730 today (2025) ↩︎
5. In 1988, Dahmer had been arrested for molesting a 13-year-old boy. In a shockingly bizarre coincidence, the boy had turned out to be the brother of Dahmer’s thirteenth victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone ↩︎
6. The ID card of Oliver Lacy, and the driving licences of Tony Hughes and Joseph Bradehoft, were found in Dahmer’s apartment at the time of his arrest ↩︎
7. Dahmer was never formally charged for the murder of 25-year-old Steven Tuomi, who died at the Ambassador Hotel on the night of November 21st, 1987. Dahmer had no recollection of what had happened to the man he’d met outside a club, taken back to a pre-reserved room, and then awoke to find dead – chest caved in, blood coming from his mouth. Steven’s body was escorted back to Dahmer’s grandmother’s house in a suitcase, where it was dismembered and disposed of. Nothing of Steven remained come the time of Dahmer’s arrest and Dahmer’s inability to remember what had happened to him meant there was insufficient evidence to plot Steven’s disappearance along the timeline of Dahmer’s confessed murders ↩︎
8. At this point there is a court recess. If watching the trial today on Court TV, this would equate to the end of Part 1 of Dr. Dietz’s testimony. However this transcript will continue on into what has been uploaded as Part 2 of his testimony – although it will not cover all of that video ↩︎
9. The DSM is published (and periodically revised) by the American Psychiatric Association. It clarifies mental disorders via their standard criteria and – despite some criticism – is widely considered one of the principle guides of psychiatry (especially at the time of Dahmer’s trial) ↩︎