Weekly World Cannibal

Despite three weeks of grave testimony and gory subject matter, one of the most famous images from the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer captured the defendant in a moment of levity.

Returning from an afternoon recess on the day of closing statements, Dahmer made a beeline to show his attorney’s sister-in-law, Carol, a newspaper tucked into his notebook – before holding up the headline: ‘MILWAUKEE CANNIBAL KILLS HIS CELLMATE! Vicious convicts fear they’ll be Dahmer’s next meal!‘ as Carol gestured to the photo of him accompanying the allegation.

After a brief sit-down, Dahmer pulled the paper out again and got up to hand it to Carol – while assistant attorney Ellen Ryan scrabbled to try and stop him.

A photographer from the Milwaukee Sentinel captured the exchange for Saturday morning’s front page.

The cellmate scandal was courtesy of the Weekly World News: an entertainment tabloid specialising in bizarre fiction mixed with occasional real-life reports of strange goings-on from around the globe.¹

On Dahmer’s copy, the masthead of The Milwaukee Journal (Wisconsin’s largest broadsheet) had been plastered over the World News’ own to lend the revelation some credibility.

Dahmer himself enjoyed the headline, reportedly musing, ‘Isn’t it amazing what they come up with? It’s just amazing!’ before asking Carol to hold onto it.

The paper was then folded and made its way to a deputy sheriff during the next recess.

The Milwaukee County sheriffs did not find it as amusing as Dahmer, however, and from then on he was searched each time he was brought back into the courtroom.². 

Carol – who had taken a day off from her job in Chicago to attend the trial – likened being the chosen recipient of Dahmer’s contraband as such:

“You know when people call in sick and go to the ballpark and catch the home run ball? This is what it’s like with all the cameras on you! Oh gosh…”

During the days closing press conference, an increasingly bewildered and frustrated Gerald Boyle was also quizzed about his clients paper:

REPORTER #1: Gerry, can you tell us why Dahmer was upset again with The Journal, or The Weekly World Globe [sic], or something?

BOYLE: Oh, I don’t know about that. I saw that he had a paper and he turned it over to somebody, but I had no discussion about it.

REPORTER #1: He showed it to your sister-in-law and said: “Isn’t it amazing what they come up with?”

BOYLE: Oh, I don’t know… You know, some of these things about him… What was that one – that he devoured his cellmate? I mean…

REPORTER #2: That’s what it was! He was holding up The Weekly World News but it appeared to have The Milwaukee Journal flag [*reporters laugh*] – in other words, part of The Milwaukee Journal – across the top of it

BOYLE: Oh, I didn’t see it. I gotta be honest with ya, I didn’t see it.

REPORTER #3: Where did he get it, do you know?

BOYLE: No, I don’t know anything about it. I tell ya, I didn’t see anything… I just saw him handing something to my sister-in-law and I haven’t even asked her what was said.

REPORTER #3: He’s not allowed to take that in there. He had it out. Do you know anything about it?

BOYLE: You know, you ask me a question, I don’t know the answer to it so how can I answer you whether he’s allowed to or not! He’s entitled to get mail. It may very well have come in his mail. That’s what my guess is. That’s probably how it did happen. 

REPORTER #4: Just to be clear, he wasn’t attempting to show that to the jury, was he?

BOYLE: Oh, no, no, no, no! Jury wasn’t in there when that happened. Matter-of-fact, I think my instructions were very clear that nobody [on the defence team] was to talk at any time when the jury was in there to any of the people who were participating, except when it had to be. No, no, no – that was passed over. He’s been very compliant with whatever we’ve told him to do, so there was no attempt to do that.

A Sheriff’s Department official confirmed with Dahmer that it had indeed came in the mail – which Dahmer had received “significant amounts” of since his incarceration. The official also said Dahmer “had some intentions of possibly writing some people back.” An intention he later adhered to in prison.

When the photo of Dahmer holding the doctored tabloid hit the wire services, the Weekly World News newsroom was overjoyed. Managing editor, Sal Ivone, hung the picture on his bulletin board, remarking that:

“We’re very proud of the fact that we were called crazy by Jeffrey Dahmer. It’s kind of a fitting closure [to the story].”

Although Ivone was disappointed that his paper’s name was obscured, he admitted that particular issue had only reached moderate sales of about 800,000 copies or so anyway. “Because [the WWN is] doing bizarre tales every week, it doesn’t stand out,” he said. “We do cannibalism every other week.”

Additionally, the media was already so ablaze with Dahmer scrutiny that one Wisconsin vendor theorised the slow sales were due to the fact people “realise [the Dahmer case is] quite a convoluted story and that it would’ve come out in newspapers before this if it really happened.” The Star‘s story about Bill Clinton and his “alleged” lover sold much better.³

It wasn’t the first time the article had caused a stir in Dahmer’s legal proceedings.

Released ahead of its February cover date, Dahmer’s alleged cell-cannibalism found its way into jury selection on the 28th January, when Associate District Attorney Carol White brought a photocopy to the courts attention.

“As far as we know, there is no basis for this,” White confirmed.

Prospective jurors were asked if they’d gone grocery shopping since the paper had hit the newsstands (owned by National Enquirer, the Weekly World News would have been fairly prominent wherever it was displayed in supermarkets) and if they had read any tabloid magazines regarding the case during the past few weeks. None said they had.⁴

“Do you read those stories about people in outer space having babies and them becoming president and all that junk?” Boyle asked one young man. “Do you believe it?”⁵

Despite its over-the-top nature, even the article’s own disclaimer — ‘Whether the report is true or false, the idea that [Dahmer] is driven to murder even while in jail awaiting trial would tend to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that [he] is now, and was before his arrest, a homicidal maniac who isn’t responsible for his actions’ — could have influenced a particularly impressionable reader. If Dahmer couldn’t curb his craving for human flesh behind bars, they might conclude he must have been completely out of control when free, thus reinforcing the defence’s argument that he was unable to conform his conduct to the law – instead of just being unwilling to.

Furthermore, Dahmer’s crimes were generally considered shocking enough and already pushed the boundaries of plausibility for many who found the actual events – as one Canadian journalist put it – “more bizarre and disturbing than any horror movie.”

Even Milwaukee’s Medical Examiner, Jeffrey Jentzen, first thought the initial reports of a head found in Dahmer’s refrigerator were a false alarm.

Milwaukee Journal journalist Anne Schwartz was present during jury selection and recalled how the cellmate story had made them “all laugh, especially Jeffrey Dahmer.”

That glimpse of a more humanised Dahmer was enlightening, and Schwartz admitted that:

“He was an attractive man when he laughed… I could see how so many were taken in by him.”

The same issue of the Weekly World News had also announced that the Loch Ness monster was pregnant.

The Loch Ness monster was unavailable for comment.

Sources:

• Weekly World News on Wikipedia
• Original Court TV live VHS recordings
• The Milwaukee Sentinel, The Weekly World News, The Oshkosh Wisconsin, Democrat and Chronicle, The Akron Beacon, The New York Times, Wisconsin State, The Courier, The Sheboygan Press
• The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough by Anne E. Schwartz (1992)

Footnotes:

1. Other examples of hard-hitting Weekly World News journalism included sightings of Bigfoot, Elvis and Adolf Hitler; extra-terrestrial activity in the White House; numerous stories regarding shockingly obese people; claims that Dick Cheney was actually a robot; and the adventures of the nations half-bat, half-boy sweetheart, Bat Boy ↩︎
2. Though it might’ve seemed innocuous enough, there were several reasons officials would’ve taken umbrage to Dahmer’s paper. For one, the defendant could’ve attempted to induce a mistrial (something Charles Manson had done in 1970 whilst brandishing a Los Angeles Times headlined: “MANSON GUILTY, NIXON DECLARES” at his jury and prompting the Superior Court Judge to immediately question whether the incident had suddenly prejudiced each juror). There have also been incidents wherein prisoners have brought poison – or makeshift weaponry – into the courtroom and killed / attempted to harm themselves upon hearing a less favourable verdict. Finally, the court security and on-duty sheriffs would not have liked how it looked if a high-profile defendant was able to successfully sneak items into their courtroom (or if he was seen to be undermining the decorum of a serial-murder trial). It would’ve put pressure on everyone, particularly Dahmer’s counsel. ↩︎
3. Ownership of an original Weekly World News with the Dahmer cellmate-story seems to be in relative demand today, however, with the last two listings of a copy both going for around $150 on eBay at the time of writing (November 2023) ↩︎
4. By contrast, Dahmer had spent part of jury selection flipping through an old copy of Science Digest  ↩︎
5. Weekly World News would provide further ‘coverage’ of the Dahmer case – including their 1992 “Summer prediction” that he would escape from prison after chopping off three of his own fingers and breaking out of the infirmary. At least two other separate stories would claim human flesh was being smuggled into Columbia Correctional Institution for him to eat. In one of their rare moments of fact-telling, WWN posted a report of Dahmer’s 1994 baptism – most likely relishing the ‘strange but true’ aspect of the ‘BORN-AGAIN CANNIBAL BAPTIZED IN WHIRLPOOL!’ (their headline) ↩︎