DAHMER: The Inspirational Story Of The Most Notorious Serial Killer

Confession of the Crimes

In the early hours of July 23, 1991, Dahmer was asked questions by Detective Patrick Kennedy about the murders he had committed and the evidence found at his apartment. In the following two weeks, Kennedy and, later, Detective Dennis Murphy conducted numerous interviews with Dahmer which, when combined, had a total of over 60 hours. Dahmer waived his right to have a lawyer present throughout the interrogations, adding he wished to confess all of what he had "created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it." He openly admitted to having murdered sixteen young men in Wisconsin since 1987, with one further victim Steven Hicks killed in Ohio in 1978. Most of Dahmer's victims had been unconscious before their murder, although some had died as a result of having acid or boiling water injected into their brains. As he had no memory of killing his second victim, Steven Tuomi, he was unsure whether he was unconscious when he got beaten to death, although he did say it was possible that his viewing of the exposed chest of Tuomi, while he was drunk, may have led him to unsuccessfully attempt to tear Tuomi's heart from his chest. Almost all the murders Dahmer committed after moving into the Oxford Apartments had involved a ritual of posing the victims' bodies in suggestive positions typically with the chest thrust outwards before the dismemberment of the bodies. Dahmer admitted to engaging in necrophilia with several of his victims' bodies, including sexual acts with their viscera as he dismembered their bodies in his bathtub. Having noticed that much of the blood pooled inside his victims' chests after death, Dahmer first removed their internal organs, then suspended the torso so the blood drained into the bathtub, before slicing any organs he did not wish to retain and skinning the flesh from the body. The bones he disposed of were destroyed or acidified, with Soilax and bleach solutions used to aid in the preservation of the skeletons and skulls he wished to keep for himself. Dahmer confessed to eating the hearts, liver, biceps, and portions of the victim's thighs he had killed in the Oxford Apartments and he also kept the flesh and organs of his other victims for intended consumption. Dahmer would then make the body parts tender for which he after would be intended for consumption before preparing meals flavoured with various condiments. his reasons for consuming the victims, Dahmer stated he initially consumed portions of his victims due to "curiosity" before saying: "I suppose, oddly, it made me feel they were, even more, a permanent part of me." two months before his arrest, Dahmer stated he had been "completely swept along" with his compulsion to kill, he stated "It was an incessant and never-ending desire to be with someone at whatever cost. Someone good-looking, really nice-looking. It just filled my thoughts all day long." When he was asked why he had preserved a total of seven skulls and the entire skeletons of two victims, Dahmer said he had been in the process of constructing a private altar of his victims' skulls which he intended to display on the black table located in his living room and which he had photographed the bodies of many of his victims.

An illustration provided by Dahmer depicting the private altar he had been planning to create at the time of his July 1991 arrest.

This display of the skulls was to be adorned at each side with the complete skeletons of Miller and Lacy. The four severed heads found in his kitchen were going to have all the flesh removed and used in the altar, as with the skull of at least one future victim. Incense sticks were going to be used to be placed at each end of the black table, above which Dahmer was going to place a large blue lamp with extending blue globe lights. The construction was to be placed before a window covered with a black, opaque shower curtain, in front of which Dahmer was intending to sit in a black leather chair. In an interview on November 18, 1991, to who the altar was dedicated, Dahmer replied: "Myself ... It was a place where I could feel at home." He also further described that he intended on using the altar as a "place for meditation", where he believed he could draw a sense of power, also adding: "If this arrest had happened six months later, that's what they would have found."