Jeffrey Dahmer’s story is really interesting yet terrifying. That’s why his story that is portrayed in the Netflix series called Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story has amassed 1 billion hours viewed on the platform. For those who have watched the series or are interested in watching it, you may be wondering how he actually got caught? So, how did Jeffrey Dahmer get caught?
Jeffrey Dahmer was caught by police on July 22, 1991. It was after he asked three men who were at the bar to come to pose for nude photographs at his apartment. At the time, he offered them $100. One of these men named Tracy Edwards accepted his offer. However, when he entered Dahmer’s apartment, he smelled a foul odor. Not only that, the man also saw a few boxes of hydrochloric acid on the floor. When he was asked about these boxes of hydrochloric acid, Dahmer told him that all of them were used for cleaning bricks. When they were talking to each other, Edwards was asked by Dahmer to turn his head and look at his tropical fish. At the same time, Dahmer put handcuffs on his wrists. At first, Edwards was wondering about the situation. However, he followed him to his bedroom where the nude photographs took place.
In the bedroom, Edwards saw tons of posters of nude men hung on the wall. Aside from that, he also saw a videotape of The Exorcist II playing and a blue 57-gallon drum in the corner of the room, the place where the terrible smell came from. Then, Dahmer took out a knife and asked Edwards to take off his shirt. In an effort to make him calm, Edwards began unbuttoning his shirt while at the same time telling Dahmer that it could be done by himself if the handcuffs were taken off and if the knife was away from him. Unfortunately, his request was ignored by Dahmer and he felt Dahmer’s head was on his chest to feel his heartbeat. Then, he was told that the man in front of him wanted to eat his heart.
Even after hearing such a thing, Edwards tried so hard to remain calm. Instead of being rebellious, he chose to make Dahmer calm by telling him that he was his friend and did not have an intention to escape, which was clearly a lie. Then, he asked if it was possible for them to go back to the living room as he was more comfortable with air conditioning. Besides, he also told him that he wanted to drink a beer. Gladly, his request was agreed by Dahmer and these two returned to the living room. In the living room, he then asked Dahmer if he could go to the bathroom. When he stood up, he punched Dahmer right in the face and managed to run away through the front door after being stuck in Dahmer’s apartment for five hours.
At around midnight, Edwards met two police officers named Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller on the corner of North 25th street in Milwaukee. He said to them that he was kidnapped by a freak. As he still had a handcuff attached to his wrist, he asked for them to unlock them. However, they failed to do that. To unlock the handcuffs, he asked the officers to go back to the apartment where Dahmer lived.
When all of them were at Dahmer’s apartment, Dahmer was there. At the time, he admitted that he was the one who put the handcuffs on Edwards. Upon hearing this, Edwards then stated that he was also threatened by Dahmer with a knife and he was also told that Dahmer wanted to eat his heart. Surprisingly, Dahmer said nothing and calmly showed the officers where they could find the key, which was on his bedside dresser.
In the bedroom, one of the police officers, Mueller, saw a knife under Dahmer’s bed. Apart from that, he also saw an open dresser full of Polaroid pictures of dismembered human bodies. He took these photographs to the living room and showed them to his partner, Rauth. He said to him that all of them were for real. The moment when he saw Mueller holding these things, Dahmer started to rebel. He fought with one of them because he did not want to be arrested. Luckily, the officers won the battle and Dahmer could be successfully overpowered and handcuffed. After capturing Dahmer, Mueller went to the refrigerator to further search. What made him shocked was then when he found a severed head on the bottom shelf. Dahmer actually knew that he was guilty and told Mueller that he should be dead for what he did.
After that, the Criminal Investigation Bureau of the Milwaukee police conducted a search. Four more severed heads were found by them in Dahmer’s kitchen. In the same search, they also found seven skulls in his bedroom and closet, some of them were painted bleached, and a tray of blood in his refrigerator. In addition, they also managed to found some other things such as two human hearts, a part of an arm wrapped in plastic bags on the refrigerator shelves, a torso and a bag of human organs, flesh frozen in ice at the bottom of the freezer, two skeletons, a couple of severed hands, two severed penises, a mummified scalp, three more torsos dissolving in acid in the 57-gallon drum, and 74 Polaroid photographs found in detailing the dismemberment of each of his victims. Dahmer’s apartment was scarier than a cemetery. The chief medical examiner once said that it looked like someone’s museum rather than an actual crime scene.
Read also: What was Jeffrey Dahmer’s cause of death?
During the interrogations, Dahmer was questioned by Detective Patrick Kennedy and Detective Dennis Murphy. These two detectives investigated him for about 60 hours or about two weeks. To them Dahmer admitted that he created this horror and only made sense he did everything to put an end to it.
In 1991, the official charged Dahmer with four counts of 1st degree murder. In the same year, he got another charge with another 11 counts of 1st degree murder. It was for the crimes he committed in Wisconsin. Not only that, the man was also changed with another one after hundreds of bone fragments were found in the place where Dahmer confessed to taking the life of his first victim named Steven Hicks. As for the Edwards’ case, Dahmer was not charged with the attempted murder. It was the same with a man who went missing in 1987 and was believed to be killed by him named Steven Toumi. On January 13, the following year, Dahmer pled guilty to 15 counts of murder.
A bookworm and researcher especially related to law and citizenship education. I spend time every day in front of the internet and the campus library.
