Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, November 29, 1994 TAG: 9411290116
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: LENGTH: Medium
Jeffrey Dahmer, who confessed to killing 17 men and boys in a cannibalistic, homoerotic murder spree that horrified the world, was beaten to death Monday in a prison bathroom.
Dahmer suffered massive head injuries - possibly inflicted with a broom handle - while he was on cleanup duty in the gymnasium at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wis. He died at nearby Divine Savior Hospital, prison officials said.
Another prisoner who was in the bathroom at the time and whose clothes were splattered with blood was being held in connection with Dahmer's murder. A third inmate also was attacked and was hospitalized with serious head injuries, said Wisconsin Corrections Secretary Michael Sullivan at a news conference.
Sullivan declined to speculate on a motive or to identify the suspect beyond saying that he is a convicted murderer from Milwaukee who had no connection with any of Dahmer's victims or their families.
He also said Dahmer, 34, who had been allowed to mix at times with the general prison population and was unsupervised at the time of the attack, was considered without ``undue risk'' and never had asked for special protection.
Dahmer had been attacked in prison at least once before. During a chapel service July 3, an inmate tried to slash his throat with a razor blade attached to a homemade plastic handle. But the blade snapped off and Dahmer suffered only a scratch.
``It's a sad ending to a very sad story,'' said Milwaukee District Attorney Michael McCann, who had prosecuted Dahmer. ``He's inflicted so much pain on families and now, unfortunately, his family will feel the same thing.''
Dahmer, a former chocolate factory worker, was serving 16 consecutive life terms at the prison about 80 miles northwest of Milwaukee. He would not have been eligible for parole for 936 years.
Since Dahmer confessed to the killings, the only issue at his 1992 trial was whether to accept his plea that he was criminally insane - hence not responsible for his actions - at the time of the murders.
Dr. Park Dietz, a Newport Beach, Calif., forensic psychiatrist hired by the state of Wisconsin to interview Dahmer, concluded he was not criminally insane, as defined by Wisconsin law, and therefore was responsible.
In a prepared statement released Monday, Dietz said he found Dahmer to be ``more pleasant, polite, free of prejudice and gentle than people are prepared to accept.''
``He was genuinely remorseful for his crimes, correctly realizing he would not have killed had he not been drinking,'' Dietz said. ``And had a sincere desire to understand what brought him to such perverse sexual pursuits.''
Dahmer's sentencing in Milwaukee County Circuit Court on Feb. 17, 1992, followed 12 days of macabre testimony describing how he lured victims away from gay bars, shopping malls and other public places to his home. There, Dahmer drugged his victims' drinks, then tortured and killed them, in many cases drilling holes in their heads, having sex with the bodies and in some cases cannibalizing them.
Dahmer's reign of terror came to an end July 22, 1991, when a handcuffed man escaped from his apartment and flagged down a police car. Officers were led back to Dahmer's foul-smelling one-bedroom apartment, where they discovered painted skulls and severed heads - one of them in a refrigerator - a kettle containing body parts and torsos in a vat brimming with acid.
The next day, Dahmer admitted to the slayings, telling police investigators that ``I carried it too far, that's for sure.''
Keywords:
FATALITY
by CNB