All language subtitles for dahmer.on.dahmer.a.serial.killer.speaks.s01e01.alternative.cut.web.x264-underbelly_track3_eng

- Your Honor, it is over now.

[eerie music]

I know society will never
be able to forgive me.

# #

I know the families
of the victims

will never be able to forgive me

for what I have done.

- Jeffrey, I hate you,
motherf... er!

I hate you!

- For sexual pleasure,
he took the life

of a human being.

- He told us how he cooked them,

what they tasted like.

- Never would I have believed

that he was a killer, ever.

- Well, you're looking good.

- I have to start eating
at home more.

# #

- We're investigating
a homicide.

- What would lead a human being

to take 17 lives?

- He was more normal
than we want to think he was.

- No one had a clue
as to what was happening

for over a decade.

- When you killed these men,

afterwards, were you repulsed?

Were you upset?

- No, it...

At the time, it was...

It was almost addictive.

- I don't consider myself
a victim.

I consider myself a survivor.

- As a 17-year-old kid,

would you really get that out
in your unit

that Jeff Dahmer raped you?

- I know Jeffrey

who used to stay
across the hall from me.

That Dahmer guy
is somebody else.

- You must understand
we protect our family.

He was our son.

- He fooled so many people

as to his real feelings.

- I knew I was sick or evil
or both.

[siren wailing]

- For years, a serial killer

had been preying
on the city of Milwaukee.

Finally, in the summer of 1991,
it all comes to an end

when a frightened man
in handcuffs

approaches police.

He leads them to the home
of Jeffrey Dahmer.

- We're investigating
a homicide which occurred.

- Obviously that there is...
Has been a number

of human specimens found.

- The victim count?
17.

- Police were lead there
by a man who told them

he had been attacked
with a butcher knife.

- The details are shocking.

- Sources close to the case say

the motive includes elements
of sexual violence

and cannibalism.

- Jeffrey Dahmer

is a quiet
chocolate factory worker

who confesses
to the most gruesome crimes.

- Jeff Dahmer is apologetically
admitting responsibility.

- Do you know what started it?

Was there any kind of incident
that you can remember?

- To this day, I don't know
what started it.

And the person to blame is
sitting right across from you.

That's the only person...

Not parents, not society,
not pornography.

I mean, those are just excuses.

- I'm Nancy Glass.

In 1991, I'm sitting
in a newsroom,

and a story comes in

that there's been
a serial killer in Milwaukee.

He killed people,
he dismembered them,

and, worse, he was a cannibal.

Well, at first,
you just don't believe this.

I mean, you got to look
at it twice.

And then, as a journalist,
you say,

"I really want to get
this story."

So I started communicating
with Jeffrey Dahmer's parents

and built a relationship
with them.

Eventually, Jeffrey and I
started writing back and forth.

And then,
a year and a half later,

I found myself
sitting opposite him

at the Columbia Correctional
Institute in Wisconsin.

You know, people always wonder,
was I afraid of him?

Well, I wasn't,
because by the time

I was sitting opposite him,
his killing spree was over.

In fact, he appeared to be
completely normal.

That was actually
what was so unsettling.

Were you molested?

- Never.
Never.

- In your childhood,
you have any memories

of anything
that you would associate

with what you became?

- No, that's the strange thing.

I can't pinpoint anything.

- So there was nothing
in your childhood...

- No, no abuse...

No physical abuse,
no verbal abuse.

It was a normal childhood
in a good home.

Something went awry
in my thought life.

I don't know why.

- There's no single history

that causes someone to become
a serial killer.

Many of the individuals
who are serial killers,

not all of them but many,

have had very traumatic
early life experiences.

In Mr. Dahmer's case,

none of that
seemed to be present.

- Jeffrey's father, Lionel,
now in his 80s,

wanted to talk to us
about the boy he knew.

But he only agreed
to an on-camera interview

if he could wear sunglasses.

In his mind, they make him
less identifiable.

- He loved the place
that we lived in,

and it was
a heavily wooded place.

He enjoyed

his small group of friends.

- He was raised
in a somewhat affluent family.

His father had a doctoral
degree in chemistry.

The family lived on
a 1 1/4 quiet, wooded acres

with a pond.

- While Jeffrey indicated

nothing in his childhood

could have fueled
his desire to kill,

according to Lionel
and his wife, Shari,

who'd been part
of Jeffrey's life

since he was 18,

there was something
that affected him

even before he was born.

His mother, Joyce, struggled
with mental illness

and took 27 pills a day when
she was pregnant with Jeffrey,

including antidepressants,
growth hormones,

and progesterone.

- Doctors met with us,
and they said

those medicines could have
affected the fetus.

And when Jeff was born,

the grandparents were not
allowed to hold the baby.

Joyce didn't want anybody
touching the baby

or breathing on it.

She was afraid of germs.

They virtually had no contact
with Jeff as a baby.

- In my conversations
with Lionel,

he told me that in infancy,

Joyce herself
rarely touched Jeffrey

except to change his diapers
or hold him for a photo.

- There was so much illness
with his mother at that time.

She was involved
with gestalt therapy

at a local mental health center,

wandering around in the dark,
touching people.

Nothing... nothing helped.

- In the midst of this,

Lionel
and his first wife, Joyce,

have a second child.

- Jeff noticed that when
his younger brother was born,

Jeff no longer had
fairy tales from his mother,

stories read at night,
and tucking him in.

Jeff felt somewhat left out.

- We were moving at the time,

and he had to leave
his favorite kitten behind.

And going to a new school
and being only six years old,

he became a little bit more shy,

much like I was in my youth.

- During his adolescence,
Dahmer develops a hobby

that would raise eyebrows
in the years that followed.

Were you obsessed
with dead animals?

Is that true?

- I was interested
in taxidermy in high school

and experimented
with preserving the bones

of dogs and things like that.

And whether that had
anything to do

with the escalation
of the crimes, I don't know.

- He went into further detail

in this interview
with a forensic psychologist.

- There are numbers
of young people

who might have those same kinds
of interests

and don't end up being
serial killers.

So in retrospect, had I spoken
with him as a teenager,

I don't know that either he or I

would have predicted
at that point

that he was gonna end up

being the serial killer
he turned out to be.

- Now, I lived
with this young man.

He lived in our home.

He had
his father's intelligence.

And on the phone,

you could not tell Jeff
or Lionel apart.

Jeff was always very gentle,
very kind.

- In high school,
friends begin to notice

Jeffrey is becoming
a different person.

- Jeff's behavior began
to be so strange

that I felt very uncomfortable
being with him alone.

He liked to act,
in his words, "crazy."

He would just start

shrieking,

or he would twist himself up

in a grotesque way

and run with a limp,

almost like Quasimodo.

And I remember one time
asking him

why he behaved this way,
and he said,

"I just like
to shake people up."

- I remember when we had
our senior pictures taken,

he got into
a lot of the group photos

that he was not a member...

The National Honor Society
group.

Whoever was in charge
of that in those days,

they blacked out his face,
and it's really creepy.

- I had a classmate who said,

"Years ago, we thought
that photo was hilarious.

And it's not so funny anymore."

- His brazen behavior continues
in the classroom.

- He was drinking beer.

Sometimes he kept it
in his locker,

and I guess he kept beer
in his car.

Did teachers do anything
about it?

Did they know about it?

I'm sure some teachers knew
about it.

- I remember distinctly
one morning

sitting in class next to Jeff,
who had his cup of scotch.

And I said, "Jeff,
what is that?"

He just tossed his head back

as though it was no issue
at all,

and he said,
"It's my medicine."

There was a collective sense
of blinders going up,

that people didn't notice

because they didn't want
to notice.

- According to Dahmer,

alcohol was a way to drown
his growing dark desires.

- I started having
these obsessive thoughts

when I was about 15 and 16,

and they got worse and worse.

- What were
your fantasies about?

- [sighs]

They were sexual fantasies
of control, power,

complete dominance.

They became reality.

- Was there pleasure
in that fantasy?

- There was excitement,

fear, pleasure
all mixed together.

- He found certain
male joggers attractive

and sought opportunities
to watch them

and fantasize about them
as they jogged past.

There was one particular man

that he would fantasize about
having sexual contact with,

but he had no concept
of how to make a relationship

with this or any other man.

- He took a bat,

sawed it off
and fashioned it as a club,

hid in the woods,

anticipating that he would
assault this man.

[dramatic music]

- Teenage Jeffrey sits
nervously,

waiting to attack.

But the jogger he has his eye on

doesn't pass that day.

# #

His first target
has slipped away,

but his next
wouldn't be so lucky.

Up next, the growing desire
to kill

is only the beginning.

- I had had fantasies
about picking up a hitchhiker

and taking him back to the house

and having complete control
and dominance.

- In the spring of 1976,

high school sophomore
Jeffrey Dahmer's

first planned assault fails.

He's 15, a time
when most teenagers

are worried about school
and making friends.

And he's already on a path
toward his terrible crimes.

- I had normal friendships
in high school,

but after that, I started in
with the alcohol, drinking,

a lot of solitary drinking,

and really never had any
close friendships after that,

after high school.

Just sort of lived
in my own thought life,

fantasy world.

- As high school ends,
his parents divorce,

and his mother takes off
with her younger son,

leaving Jeffrey alone
in the house.

- Jeff was left behind

with no money
and spoiled milk in the fridge.

I came into the family

at the tail end
of Lionel's divorce.

They'd been separated two years.

Lionel was living
out of a motel.

Jeff was detached at that point.

He felt somewhat abandoned.

- The first time
anybody asked me

about his parents,
I was struck by the fact

that I could only answer,
"I never knew he had parents."

He just seemed like
he was kind of a satellite

floating alone.

- He did not like that feeling.

He didn't like
his parents leaving him.

And it's in that context

that he committed
his first homicide.

- You do sound, though,
like the kind of person

who could have said to himself,

"This is wrong.

I must stop."

- I always knew
that it was wrong, but...

after the... the first...

The first killing
was not planned.

I was coming back
from the shopping mall

back in '78.

I had had fantasies
about picking up a hitchhiker

and taking him back to the house

and having complete control
and dominance over him.

- Dahmer's violent fantasies
become reality-

when he crosses paths
with 18-year-old Steve Hicks

looking for a ride
to a nearby rock concert.

- He picked up a young man
that was hitchhiking

and offered him a good time

if he wanted to just stop
and visit with him

for a little bit.

Jeffrey Dahmer was attracted
specifically

to this individual because
he wasn't wearing a shirt.

Throughout the evening,
they drank alcohol,

and I understand there might
have been marijuana involved.

Finally, Steve Hicks said
that "I should be going."

- He said, "We drank,
he wanted to leave,

and I hit him with a barbell,
and I killed him."

He says, "I didn't want him
to leave me."

- For sexual pleasure,

he took the life
of a human being.

- All of Dahmer's victims
were men.

His attraction to men

is what both motivated
and repulsed him.

- Never understood it.

There was no use
trying to fight it,

because I couldn't rid myself
of it.

It was... it was too powerful
and persistent.

- Do you dislike it?

- Yes, it's caused
a lot of problems

for me.

A lot of conflicts
and unanswered questions.

- Jerry Boyle
was Dahmer's lawyer.

He believes
that Jeffrey's sexuality

did not lead him to violence.

- He was just really
very forthright with me.

It is my first belief
that if he was a heterosexual,

he would have killed girls.

- After Dahmer dismembers
Steven Hicks's corpse

and stuffs the remains
in a deep drainage pipe

in his parents' backyard,

he panics and decides
to dig up the body parts

and dispose of them elsewhere.

- He decided late at night
towards midnight

to drive it to a local dump.

He was so nervous

that he was driving erratically,

and he was stopped
by a police officer.

Mr. Dahmer kept
his wits about him.

He told the police officer

that his parents
had recently divorced.

He said he couldn't sleep

and wanted to take a garbage bag

to the garbage dump.

The police officer
shined a flashlight inside

and saw a green garbage bag.

[ominous music]

- The officer had no reason
whatsoever

to believe that there was
anything unusual

other than he might have been
a little bit nervous.

But most people are nervous when
there's a traffic stop made.

- Jeff was very good
by that point

at convincing adults
for whatever it was

he wanted to convince them of.

- Jeffrey Dahmer definitely
was a manipulator.

He was able to convince

not only the individuals
to come to his place,

but he was also able
to convince people

that nothing was wrong

when there was something
very wrong.

- It all could have ended
at that moment.

But in the first
of many close calls

when he could have been stopped,

Dahmer's let off
with only a ticket.

- He took him home,

smashed him all up,

and he spread the bones
in the woods.

- Steven Hicks's parents
reported him missing in 1978

but don't get any answers
until 1991,

when Dahmer confesses.

- That family had no idea
what had happened

to their 18-year-old son.

He disappeared
off the face of the Earth.

Talk about inflicting pain
if you're a parent.

- Later that summer,

Lionel and Shari moved back
into the Dahmer home

with 18-year-old Jeffrey.

- He would come home
a time or two

pretty well loaded.

If he was totally drunk,

he would forget where
he took his dad's car.

We had to track the car down
several times,

because Jeff just drew a blank.

- Frustrated,
Lionel forces Jeffrey

to enroll in college.

- I attended
Ohio State University,

and Jeff did as well.

The last time I saw him,

he was laying on the sidewalk,
passed out dead drunk.

I went over to him, and I tried

to shake him into consciousness.

And I kept saying,

"Jeff, wake up.
Wake up."

I knew then that Jeff was gone.

- We found out he was drinking
at school and failing out,

so we brought him home.

We took Jeff
for psychiatric care.

We took him to institutions.

But as the old saying goes,

you can lead the horse to water,
but you can't make it drink.

- I was just thinking

of normal-type, everyday things

that I could encourage him on
to do.

And the Army was

the logical place, I thought.

- During this time,
Jeffrey claims

his violent impulses
remained quiet.

What happened to you
in the nine years in between

that you were able to stop,

that you were able
to control yourself?

- Just wasn't an opportunity

to fully express
what I wanted to do.

There was not just
the physical opportunity

to do it then.

- While investigators
never had any reason

to doubt Dahmer's claim,

for the first time,
two of his fellow servicemen

are making accusations

the public has never heard
before.

Up next...

- As a 17-year-old kid,

would you really get that out
in your unit

that Jeff Dahmer raped you?

- After one failed semester
in college,

Jeffrey Dahmer's dad
implores his son

to find a direction in life.

He decides to enlist
in the Army.

Jeffrey says his evil urges
were quieted

while in the service

and he hoped
it would remain that way.

But according to those
he served with,

they did not.

We've uncovered two victims

who've agreed to speak
for the first time.

- You know, you really
don't know someone

until you live with them.

- Billy Joe Capshaw
was Dahmer's roommate

for 15 months while stationed
in Baumholder, Germany.

He arrived to replace
someone else in Dahmer's unit,

Preston Davis.

- We were out
on a field exercise.

It was a two-week exercise.

And the last three or four days
of the exercise,

our vehicle broke down.

During that timeframe,

I was drugged and
sexually assaulted by Jeff.

- Preston says
the attack haunted him,

and he eventually unraveled.

- My career went downhill
after this.

I got a DWI
in 1985 in the military.

I had a rocky marriage
with my first wife.

I wound up getting out
of the military in '86,

divorcing her,
became estranged from my son.

Substance abuse.

Alcohol abuse.

That's what a lot of victims do

to try to suppress that pain.

- But Preston wasn't
the only victim.

Billy Capshaw
shared a room with Dahmer

for over a year

and says he faced
an even more intense ordeal.

- He had me tied up, naked,
to a bunk, you know,

and was...

beside me, naked hisself,

and holding me
like I would hold a woman.

He raped me,
sexually molested me.

He tortured me.

The attacks,
the things like that,

were continuous
and almost every day.

- Billy told us his shame
over what was happening to him

kept him quiet.

- There's guys in there

and they got guns,
and they're mean.

They've been to Vietnam.

As a 17-year-old kid,

would you really get that out
in your unit

that someone raped you?

- The fact that Dahmer
would be so open

about all of his crimes

yet never address
these allegations

only creates more questions.

Why did he leave this out?

And what else could there be
that we don't know about?

- The fact
that he didn't disclose

the incidents in the military

just doesn't surprise me.

Jeffrey Dahmer wanted
to talk about

what he wanted to talk about.

- In March of 1981,

Dahmer is discharged
from the Army

not for violent behavior
but for excessive drinking.

- Was I disappointed in...
Of course.

I was disappointed
in his inability

to achieve something,

you know, in normal working
or living.

- That fall, 21-year-old
Jeffrey Dahmer

moves back
into his parents' home

in Bath, Ohio.

Directionless,
he continues to drink heavily.

His father and stepmother
push him

to get professional help.

- I did as much
as I thought I could.

He seemed to be

an alcoholic,

so we got help that way

and that sort of thing.

- Lionel would drop him off,

and Jeff would go
out the back door.

So he wasn't going
for counseling.

And we reached a point
where we said,

"We're going to send you up
to Grandma's house for a while

and see if you can get
your life together."

- Dahmer's grandmother believes
that through God,

Jeffrey will change
his sexuality.

So he attends church

and gets a job drawing blood
at a local blood bank.

But at this point,
his depraved urges

become harder and harder
to control,

and he acts out.

He exposes himself to a group
of women and children

at the Wisconsin State Fair
and is arrested.

In court, he appears remorseful,

which will become a routine
for him,

and all he gets is a fine,
$50 plus court fees.

At this point, Dahmer tries to
find a substitute for killing,

and what he settles on
is truly disturbing.

- His goal was finding
the partner

who would lie there all night

so that he could have
the illusion

of all the time in the world
to be close to that person.

And his strategies
for finding that partner

were creative and varied

but mostly ineffective.

They included
scanning obituaries,

going to the funeral
if there was a viewing

to see if it was someone
he'd find attractive,

and then trying to dig up
the grave.

[ominous music]

On the two occasions
that he did that,

the ground was too frozen.

He couldn't get anywhere
trying to dig it up.

He found an attractive
store mannequin.

He hid in a restroom
in the department store

till after closing,
stole the mannequin,

managed to get out
of the building,

took the mannequin home
to his grandmother's house,

and for some period of time
was satisfied

lying next to
the attractive mannequin.

# #

His grandmother found
the mannequin

and disposed of it.

- He spent a number of months,

if not longer,
going to gay bath houses

in both Chicago and Milwaukee.

He would slip Halcion
into the drinks

of men that he would meet there.

They would fall asleep.

He would fondle them,
pretending in his own mind

that they were dead.

- That was satisfying to him
for a time.

But he gave too much of the drug
to one of the men.

- The bath house operator

couldn't wake
one of these fellows,

had to call to get medical help.

They realize
that Dahmer's doing this,

so they banned him
from the bath houses.

- Once again,
he could have been stopped,

and once again, he wasn't.

- When I moved to Milwaukee
in '81,

I started reading pornography,

going to the bookstores.

Eventually, that lead to

frequenting the gay bars.

And then I...

One time, I brought
this young man

back to the hotel room,
the Ambassador Hotel,

was just planning
on drugging him

and spending the night with him.

I had no intention
of hurting him.

When I woke up in the morning,
he had a broken rib here.

It was heavily bruised.

Apparently, I had beaten him
to death with my fists.

- And you have no memory of it.
- I have no memory of it.

But that's what started
the whole spree all over again.

- He tells me
it wasn't premeditated

and that he then needed
to find more time

in order to dispose of the body.

- It has been nine years
since his last kill.

And in what seems like
an instant,

he goes into a mode
that is familiar to him:

the cover-up.

Up next,
Dahmer's crimes escalate,

and the bodies are piling up.

- I was saving body parts

such as skulls and skeletons.

- In the fall of 1987,

Jeffrey Dahmer wakes up
in a hotel room in Milwaukee.

He is in bed
with the bludgeoned body

of his second victim.

He says he has no memory
of killing the man.

- He had to sign in

for a second night

in order to now have time
to get rid of the body

by stuffing it into a suitcase

and ultimately removing it.

- He took it
to his grandmother's house

to put it in the basement

until he was able to cut it up
and get it in the garbage.

And he knew the routine
of the garbage men,

so he'd cut it up Sundays
while Grandma went to church,

have it in the garbage
by Monday,

and it would be gone.

- Police would later determine

the victim was 24-year-old
Steven Tuomi.

He'd recently moved to Milwaukee

from northern Michigan

and met Dahmer
after he finished his shift

at a local restaurant.

- I had these obsessive
desires and thoughts,

wanting to control them, to...

I don't know how to put it.

Possess them permanently.

- And that's why
you killed them.

- Right, right,

not because I was angry
with them,

not because I hated them

but because I wanted
to keep them with me.

And as my obsession grew,

I was saving body parts

such as skulls and skeletons.

- At his grandmother's,

Dahmer's desire to kill
escalates.

He takes two more lives
in the winter of 1988,

raising his victim count
to four.

James Doxtator
is only 14 years old

when Dahmer lures him
with the promise of $50

to take a few pictures.

And six weeks later,

it's 23-year-old
Richard Guerrero.

Both face the same fate:

drugged, strangled, dismembered.

It's at this time
Dahmer hones his craft

in disposing of bodies,

learning how flesh dissolves
in acid

and bones would need to be
crushed up

and tossed in the trash.

According to Lionel,
his grandmother objects

to the smells
coming from the basement

but apparently doesn't
figure out what's going on.

Or maybe
she just doesn't want to.

- I would send Lionel up
to his mother's house

to deal with problems,

but I really wasn't aware
at that time

that Lionel was too naive
to handle the situation.

Lionel didn't believe his son
was doing anything wrong.

- He was doing strange things.

We thought it was with roadkill.

That's what he told us,

and I... I believed him.

But I said, "Jeff," you know,

"your grandma just can't take
this sort of thing.

You really need to move out."

- Now on his own,

Jeffrey Dahmer's free
to give in to his urges.

Just one day after moving
into his own apartment,

Dahmer brings home
a 13-year-old boy,

drugs and fondles him.

Dahmer is arrested

for sexual assault
against a minor.

This is the boy's testimony.

We should warn you
it's shocking and disturbing.

- How did the authorities
find out about this?

Well, for some reason,
when the boy wanted to leave,

Dahmer let him go.

- We talked about the incident
that he was involved in.

It was pretty clear to me

that he was
a little bit different.

- Jerry Boyle is hired
by Lionel and Shari Dahmer

to represent Jeffrey
in this case.

- I think my son was
a freshman in high school

at the time.

I think he could have
whipped Dahmer in a minute.

Never would I have believed

that he was a killer, ever,

because there was nothing
to indicate to me

that he was that way.

I mean, it just wasn't there.

- Dahmer's ability to deceive

is only matched
by his desire to kill.

Between his conviction
in January of 1989

and his sentencing in May,
he is not deterred.

Dahmer takes his fifth life,

24-year-old Anthony Sears,
on March 25th.

This murder marks
a depraved turning point

in Dahmer's process.

- I kept the mummified head
and skull

of one of the victims

in a carrying case
in my locker at work.

- Were you almost flaunting it?

- Yes, but that's how strong
the compulsion was.

That's how bizarre
the desire was.

I wanted to keep something
of the person with me.

- But during
the sexual assault trial,

no one had any knowledge
of that,

which is why Jerry Boyle fought
to keep Dahmer a free man.

- The outcome in the case was,

Jeffrey admitted
to everything he was accused of,

except he was vehement in saying

that he never touched a child.

I didn't believe
what he was telling me,

but my job is to try
and figure out what do for him

and for society

by getting him a sentence
that made sense,

and I think we did that.

- He fooled his attorney

that was representing him.

He fooled so many people
as to his real feelings.

Unfortunately,
I didn't realize it at the time.

- Dahmer avoids jail time.

Instead, he's given work release

and mandatory time with
a mental health professional.

Another close call,

another opportunity where
he could have been stopped.

And once again,
he acts remorseful.

He writes to the judge.

"What I did was deplorable.

"The world has
enough misery in it

"without my adding more to it.

"Sir, I can assure you

that it will never happen
again."

We now know nothing could be
further from the truth.

- He would go see a psychiatrist

and not say a word
for ten sessions,

and they'd let him walk
out the door.

Probation officer, he'd say,

"You have these feelings
of, you know,

sexual perversion
and all that?"

He says, "No, I read books
and masturbate to that."

He's out there killing people.

- Up next...

Do you ever think
about your victims?

- Uh, I've often wondered
why I haven't had

more dreams or nightmares
about what I've done.

- By May of 1989,

Jeffrey Dahmer's body count
is at five.

Then he is sentenced

to one year
in a work release program

for the drugging and fondling
of a 13-year-old boy.

He claims during that time,
there were no killings.

After he's released
and on probation,

he finds a new place to live,
somewhere off the beaten path.

- I had asked him

a number of times,
"Why are you down here,

"you know, when you can go
somewhere else

"and stay, like, in West Alice
at your grandmother's house

"or something like that?

"And you would rather be here,

where you're surrounded
by blacks."

And that's all that
was over there,

was black people
and some Asian people.

He was like, "I like it better
down here,

'cause I can keep more
to myself."

- Pamela Bass, who lives
across the hall from Dahmer

in the Oxford Apartments,

develops a soft spot

for the man she would describe
as an unassuming bachelor.

- You know, me and my husband
at that time

were trying to get him
a girlfriend,

because we thought that,
you know,

he was over there by hisself,
and he didn't get out much,

and all this here kind of stuff.

So he said, "No, no, I'm fine.

I just want to work
and be left alone."

[ominous music]

- Within a week of settling in
to apartment 213,

Dahmer lures 32-year-old
Raymond Smith

home for a drink,

laces it with drugs,
strangles him to death,

and dismembers his body.

A month later,
Dahmer repeats the process

on a 27-year-old acquaintance,
Edward Smith,

raising his victim count
to seven.

Before you went out
to pick up a man,

was there any kind of ritual
you went through?

- I'd go to the nightclubs,
drink,

watch the strip tease shows.

And if I didn't meet anyone
at the bars,

I'd go to the Bath clubs

and meet someone there,

offer them money,

and we'd go back
to the apartment,

have a few drinks.

I'd have
the sleeping pill mixture

already prepared.

The person would drink it,
fall asleep.

And that's when they would be
strangled.

- The question of how
Mr. Dahmer chose his victims

I don't think
is a complicated one.

He tried to find people
that were attractive to him

and who were willing

to go with him voluntarily.

He wasn't jumping out of cars
and attacking people and so on.

- The men he's inviting back

don't want to just lie there.

They want to get it on,
get it over with,

and get going.

He found that
enormously frustrating.

Some of them rolled him.

Some of them were nasty to him.

He didn't want to get
into an argument

or get into a fight
or get robbed.

He wanted somebody to lie there
with him.

But he was picking
the wrong guys

to try to achieve that,

so he began drugging them
at his apartment.

- He wanted his victims
to be still and quiet

so he didn't have to face
their humanity.

- It's a process.
It doesn't happen overnight.

When you depersonalize
another person

and view them as just an object,

an object for pleasure

instead of a living, breathing
human being,

it seems to make it easier

to...

do things you shouldn't do.

- It struck me
that classifying murder

as a "thing you shouldn't do"

minimizes the horror
and brutality

of Jeffrey Dahmer's actions.

- Dahmer drugged his victims,

so they weren't pleading
for their lives.

They weren't crying out in pain

as he inflicted a torture
on them.

So he was in many ways
different,

frighteningly different.

- Do you ever think
about your victims?

- Uh, I've often wondered
why I haven't had

more dreams or nightmares
about what I've done.

For some reason, it's like
it's blocked off

from part of my mind.

If I dwelled on the subject
all the time,

I would...

I wouldn't be able to function.

- In talking to Jeffrey Dahmer,

I realized that one of
his most peculiar traits was,

no matter how well
he knew his victims,

he didn't view them as people.

That's why,
in his 160-page confession,

he could describe
everything he did to them

in excruciating detail,

but he couldn't remember
their names.

In the second half
of this two-part special,

my conversation
with Jeffrey Dahmer

becomes even darker

as we talk about the most
shocking things he did

and look more deeply
into the mind

of the world's
most notorious serial killer.

- He told us how he cooked them,

what they tasted like.

- He seemed like
a very normal person.

He covered up so much.

- I was branching out.

That's when
the cannibalism started.

- He just was crazy sick.

- Things just began
to deteriorate.

He became like a killing
machine out of control.

- There just seemed to be
an absence

of any moral compass
in the man at all.

- I didn't believe
in the concept of evil.

But now I do.

- For more
about "Dahmer on Dahmer,"

go to Oxygen.com.