Murder Weekly - Crime, Espionage, and Murder Thrillers · Caloroga Shark Media / Short Crime Mystery

"THE MILWAUKEE CANNIBAL: DAHMER'S 17 VICTIMS & THE SYSTEM THAT FAILED THEM - PART 1"

·29 min·5 clips

July 22nd, 1991. Milwaukee, Wisconsin. 1130 p.m. 32-year-old Tracy Edwards is running down North 25th Street. Shirtless. Terrified. Handcuffs dangling from his left wrist. He flags down a Milwaukee police squad car. Officers Robert Routh and Rolf Muller stop. Edwards is hyperventilating. Tells them a man just tried to kill him. Held him at knife point for four hours. Said he was going to eat his heart. The officers look at the handcuffs. Look at Edwards' face. This isn't a prank. This is real terror. Edwards points to apartment 213 at the Oxford Apartments. That's where he lives. Jeffrey Dahmer. He's got a knife. He tried to kill me. Officers Routh and Muller tell Edwards to get in the car. They drive one block to 924 North 25th Street. Walk up to apartment 213. Knock on the door. Jeffrey Dahmer answers. 31 years old. Calm. Polite. Soft-spoken. How can I help you, officers? They explain Edwards' allegations. Dahmer says it's a misunderstanding. He and Edwards had been drinking. Things got out of hand. The handcuff key is in his bedroom. He'll get it. But something isn't right. Officer Muller follows Dahmer into the bedroom. Sees photographs scattered on the bed. Polaroids. Dismembered bodies. Nude men. Body parts. Muller radios for backup. Tells Dahmer he's under arrest. Dahmer tries to resist. Dahmer's compulsions were escalating. The killing wasn't enough anymore. He wanted to create zombies. Living victims who would stay with him forever. Completely submissive. He started experimenting. Drilled holes into veins. Killed victims' skulls while they were unconscious. Poured hydrochloric acid or boiling water directly into their brains. Trying to destroy just enough of the frontal lobe to make them compliant without killing them. It never worked. The victims either died immediately or regained consciousness in agony, at which point Dahmer killed them. But he kept trying. Each victim became an experiment. How much acid? What angle? How deep? Let me paint you the picture of what Apartment 213 looked like by July 2000. July 1991. The refrigerator contained a human head. The freezer contained more body parts wrapped in plastic bags. The filing cabinet in the bedroom held Polaroid photographs of over a dozen murdered men in various states of dismemberment. A human skull, painted gray, sat on a shelf. A complete human skeleton hung in the closet. Jars containing human hands and genitals lined another shelf. The blue barrel in the bathroom contained three torsos dissolved. It contained a lot of acid. And Dahmer was planning to build more. He called it a shrine. A meditation space. Black table. Blue lights. Surrounded by skulls and skeletons. A place where he could sit and feel powerful. If this had happened six months later, that's what they would have found, Dahmer told investigators after his arrest. But before he could complete his shrine, he made a critical mistake. He picked the wrong victim. The victims in apartment 213 had names. Raymond Smith, 33 years old. Worked at an AIDS outreach center. His mother said he was a caring person who wanted to help people. Should be 68 years old today. Should have retired. Should have grandchildren. Ernest Miller, 22. Dance major. Dreamed of performing on stage. His grandmother got a phone call two weeks after he went missing. Groaning voice saying, Help. Help. Help. Dahmer taunting her. Ernest should be 57 years old today. Should have had a career. Should be teaching the next generation of dancers. Curtis Strotter, 17.

As heard by us

A blunt, straight-line account of the arrest that exposed Dahmer's apartment.

The episode opens on July 22, 1991, when Tracy Edwards, shirtless and handcuffed, flags down Milwaukee police after saying Jeffrey Dahmer held him at knife point for four hours.

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You want the arrest that began with Tracy Edwards running shirtless down North 25th Street.

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