The Akron Beacon Journal from Akron, Ohio • Page 6

Pae AS, Sunday, July 28, 1991 The Beacon Journal And so we ask: Who and why is this man? ilil The newspaper headlines scream of terror and gore. And story after story after story report horrific facts. Still, questions remain that may never be answered US" i Vf i 'it- tx mi: 11 (J: i I. 1 -I -i" ClBHPlgH! I 'Mil 'lETJj 03 '-I 1 Hit: u. Ml i CJjJf 1:1 I.k!: 1 1 1 1.

n'lm-i 11:. 'I'T-j rft'Sf 1 i it-1 iu 'JaoiiiET' -V i ir steSEJaii i''VMiil'i'if- MM.ii I'm 'tihadKfi Hi-ctWif: Vir(Hi ii tii iil ii ii i "iSPri" 'M Nli: Ntf-i'WVi I I Mfi' 'ii: in 1 1 Ifi-. i ilti i i. It: tl'W-i 1 lit" 1 'l science classes, he was fairly out of control." Lehr, like his mother, finds that the Jeffrey Dahmer he once knew is out of focus. Or, rather, it is the young Dahmer who is in focus.

What he apparently became is blurry. "He was an intelligent kid. He just took a wrong turn." He began drinking early Whatever was in Dahmer, the boy, whatever seed of unfeeling or coldness, seems to have been nurtured by a couple of things in his life. One was the divorce of his parents. The other was booze.

Joyce and Lionel Dahmer were divorced in 1978, after what court records indicate was a stormy battle. Relatives and friends said they noticed a marked change in Jeffrey's behavior after the divorce. Lionel Dahmer married Jeffrey's stepmother, Shari, shortly after the divorce. Jeffrey, who was 18, lived with the couple. Little has been learned about Jeffrey's relationship with his mother.

High school acquaintances said he drank often, as early as the beginning of junior high. By 18, drinking was a serious problem. Lionel Dahmer told the Milwaukee Sentinel that Jeffrey often drank until stupefied, that he got into bar fights and sometimes forgot where he parked the family car. Dahmer attended Ohio State University briefly in 1978, but did poorly. He joined the Army on Jan.

12, 1979, and was assigned to a medical unit and trained in cardiac care. He was eventually stationed in Germany, but was discharged several months before his required three years of active duty were up. Lionel Dahmer said the army jettisoned his son because of alcoholism. Jeffrey Dahmer returned to the United States in the early '80s and worked at a Florida sandwich shop for a time. Then he returned to Ohio to live with his father.

But problems continued; Dahmer was drinking heavily. A deadly arrangement When the situation at home became impossible, Dahmer moved in with his paternal grandmother, Catherine, in West AUis, a Milwaukee suburb. There were hints then that Dahmer might be homosexual, but no indication of criminally deviant behavior. In 1985, he took a job at the Ambrosia Chocolate in a worn-down neighborhood on Milwaukee's near west side. In 1988, he moved to the Oxford Plaza, a short distance from the chocolate factory.

About a month later, police said, Dahmer enticed a 13-year-old boy to his apartment for sex. The boy overdosed on a sleeping drug supplied by Dahmer and the crime was revealed. Convicted in January 1989 of sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes, Dahmer was sentenced to a year in the county's corrections facility. Before Jeffrey was released the following March, Lionel Dahmer pleaded with a judge for treatment of his son's alcoholism. Jeffrey Dahmer never received any help; nor was Dahmer, who was on probation, visited by a probation officer.

Probation authorities said the parole officer had too heavy a caseload and that the neighborhood Dahmer lived in made visits potentially dangerous. Instead, Jeffrey Dahmer visited the probation officer. The arrangement proved deadly. Outwardly, Dahmer was a blue-collar laborer, working at the chocolate factory, riding buses around the city, and returning to his tiny, one-bedroom apartment. He was nondescript a quiet loner of a man who went about his business and seemed to bother no one.

BY BILL O'CONNOR Beacon Journal staff writer The horrible and gruesome details of the murders in Milwaukee exploded onto the front pages of the nation's newspapers Wednesday, stunning readers. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, a former Bath Township resident, is accused of murdering as many as 17 men. Severed heads were found in his refrigerator; body parts were found floating in a vat of acid. Police said Dahmer admitted to having sex with the corpse of one of his victims; they said he cut out the heart of another, intending to eat it. On Friday, Beacon Journal readers saw a front-page picture of Dahmer, a picture that deepened the confusion.

They saw a handsome, outwardly calm, 31-year-old quietly conferring with his attorney. To all outward appearances, Jeffrey Dahmer was simply a fellow human being. But if he did what he is accused of and police say he has confessed Dahmer seems to be calling into question the very definition of human. Was he, in fact, some sort of monster simply disguised as one of us? That was the question residents of a four-story story apartment house in Milwaukee have been asking. Beacon Journal reporter Bob Springer, in Milwaukee to report the story, said that Dahmer's neighbors, like the rest of the nation and much of the world, first wanted to know what happened.

But as the enormity of the inhuman cruelty of those deeds began to emerge, Dahmer's neighbors had difficulty coming to terms with it. Their perception of reality suddenly was blurred, knocked out of focus. After aD, they had known this man, seen him, exchanged innocuous pleasantries with him. Confusion and fear Pamela Bass, 38, and her husband lived across the hall from Dahmer he in apartment 213, the Basses in 214. Pamela Bass had visited Dahmer and chatted while sitting on top of a freezer.

"How could he let me sit right on top of that freezer knowing there were human heads inside?" she asked. Pamela Bass' confusion was akin to what was felt by Dahmer's former neighbors in the Akron area, where he grew up. Dahmer was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960, but grew up in Summit County, at a home on West Bath Road in Bath Township. His father, Lionel, a research chemist for PPG Industries, and his wife, Joyce, are parents of two boys, Jeffrey and his younger brother, David. Now all aspects of Jeffrey Dahmer's life are being examined in the hope there is some clue, some way aberrant behavior can be anticipated, some way average citizens can protect themselves from the numbing fear that sweeps a community.

Georgia Scharenberg, who lives next door to the West Bath Road house where Dahmer grew up, remembered him and his brother as "very polite children." She said that when Jeffrey was about 10 years old, he and David would come to her house and ask permission to play ball on her property. "The brothers were together quite a bit," she recalled. "When he got into high school we didn't see much of Jeff at all," Scharenberg said. She did recall the time Dahmer, then in junior high, sold shrubs and tress for a nursery. Scharenberg said she bought some shrubberies from him.

The bushes are still on her property. A respectful boy The year the Dahmers moved to West Bath Road, Jeffrey and Ted Lehr, both fourth-graders, caught the school bus at the same stop and rode it to Bath Elementary. Two boys, sitting together on a school bus, traveling from comfortable homes in a well-to-do suburb to a clean, modern school. They were learning about their world, their society, learning its rules and regulations. Along with reading and writing, they were learning social skills, how to share their world with others.

Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted were grade-school pals. But friends, especially youthful ones, drift apart, and by the early to mid-'70s the pals gradually went their separate ways. They ran with different crowds in high school. Ted doesn't recall seeing Dahmer after high school. Lehr's mother, Sue, remembered Dahmer's visits, but said she didn't know the parents very well.

She remembered Dahmer assuming Ted's Beacon Journal paper route one summer in junior high while the Lehrs vacationed. "I see this little blond-haired, blue-eyed boy who always treated me with so much respect," Sue Lehr said. "I'm shaking right now. Jeff was very polite and well-mannered. It's very hard for me to understand that this young man I knew.

We really don't know what his childhood was like. There has to be something there." Years later in 1981 Sue Lehr bumped into Jeffrey Dahmer in a Click store. "I talked with him. I said, 'Hi, Jeff, how are He said he was at Ohio State, then went into the Army. He was in the military police.

I asked him what his plans were. He said he wanted to join the FBI." Sue Lehr looks across the years and sees the promise that dead-ended with the screaming headlines. She said she doesn't feel sympathy, not with the crimes that were committed. Then she remembered again. "He was a tall boy, very friendly." 'A wrong turn' Ted Lehr, 31, grew up to be a computer engineer.

He earned a doctorate from Carnegie-Mellon University. "It's hard for me to believe this was a boy I played with as a kid," Lehr said. "He was weird, but I met a lot of weird people in grad school, too." Lehr has difficulty with the news that this boyhood chum did not evolve into a graceful human being, but developed, instead, a twisted mind. "He was funny. When we were kids, he would make funny comments about things.

He had a predilection for what an adult would call morbid things, but interesting things. He was curious about living things. I don't want to paint a bleak picture of him because he was a fun kid to be around as a child." But he had his odd ways, Lehr said. "He wasn't a bully or malicious, but he wouldn't be sympathetic to someone who was hurt. He wouldn't be the first person to come to someone's aid.

He would laugh." Others noticed what Lehr saw. As Dahmer grew into his teens, his behavior became more insular. "When he got to high school, he was kind of a solemn person," Lehr said. "He wasn't as funny. We parted.

Our paths diverged. He continued along his craziness. They used to make Jeff Dahmer jokes in high school. I remember in some t't closet between the small kitchen and the bedroom and stuffed it into a 57-gallon barrel. Six days later on July 5 Dahmer returned to Chicago.

He met Jeremiah Weinberger, 23, at Carol's Gay Bar on Wells Street and offered to pay Weinberger to return with him to Milwaukee and pose nude. They took a Greyhound bus, then a taxi. The men arrived at Dahmer's and had oral sex. Weinberger stayed the night. The next day, Weinberger said he wanted to leave.

Dahmer offered him a drink. The drink was drugged. When Weinberger passed out, Dahmer wrapped his hands around Weinberger's neck and strangled him, then took photographs of the corpse. Then he cut off Weinberger's head, put it in the freezer and stuffed Weinberger's body into the barrel with Turner's. Ten days later, Dahmer lured Oliver Lacy, 23, to his apartment.

After Lacy was drugged, Dahmer strangled him, then had anal sex with the corpse. Dahmer cut off Lacy's head, put it in a box and put the box in the refrigerator. Then, he cut out Lacy's heart, intending to eat it later. Nine days later, he saw Joseph Bradehoft, 25, waiting for a bus near Marquette University. After having sex with Bradehoft at the apartment, Dahmer used a strap Beacon Journal to strangle Bradehoft, then cut off his head and put it into the freezer.

Now it's just numbers Everything ended Monday night, when police were flagged down by Tracy Edwards, 32, who had handcuffs dangling from one wrist. It was then that the secret life of Dahmer began to emerge. As the story unfolds, it grows more incredible. Police believe that Dahmer killed at least 17 men, including one in Summit County in the late 1970s. Authorities in Florida and Germany are investigating unsolved murders there.

What is being suffered here is the enormous sadness a sadness that touches the victims' families, Dahmer's family and, indeed, anyone who knew him. Dahmer's emotionally devasted father, Lionel, told the Milwaukee Sentinel that in raising Jeffrey he "didn't have the wisdom to do anything differently. And then there are the others here, where he grew up, who simply wonder what happened to the tow-headed, polite boy who disappeared somewhere. What is left for the rest of us, it seems, is simply bloody arithmetic. -Staff writers Regina Brett, Robert Hoiles, Eric Sandstrom and Thrity Umrigar contributed to this report.

questions A few of his victims But there was another Dahmer roaming the city a warped, wounded individual driven by some sort of cold, savage fury. Here are a few examples of what Dahmer did, according to reports from police who interviewed him. On June 30, Dahmer went to the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago and, while waiting to take the bus home, struck up a conversation with Matt Turner, 20, who also went by the name Donald Mon-trell. Although 10 years his junior and black, Turner had one thing in common with Dahmer: Both were gay and open to risky alliances. Dahmer suggested that Turner ride to Milwaukee with him and Turner accepted.

Dahmer also said he would pay Turner to pose nude. They boarded a Greyhound bus, and when they arrived in Milwaukee, Dahmer hailed a cab. At his apartment, Dahmer offered Turner a drink and sat with him while Turner drank. The drink was drugged. When Turner passed out, Dahmer took a strap and wrapped it around Turner's neck, then twisted the strap until Turner could not breathe.

After a few minutes of intense effort, Turner was dead. Dahmer cut off Turner's head and placed it in the freezer. Then he dragged Turner's torso into a "I'm sorry I lost my grandson, but he (Dahmer) hasn't had the attention he should have and it is negligence on someone's part." Beeks, 33, of Milwaukee his given name was Raymond La-mont Smith was last seen on May 1, 1990. Police say Dahmer lured victims to his apartment by offering them money to pose for photographs and watch videos. In 1988, Dahmer lured Koner-ak's older brother, now 15, to his apartment to pose for pictures.

Dahmer spent 10 months in jail on a work-release program for that offense. Three years later, Dahmer has been charged with killing Konerak, whom his sister described as a Families struggle with 'why' and other unanswered vr Jjj BY JOLENE LMBACHER AND CHRISTINE MALY Beacon Journal staff writers MILWAUKEE: The family of Jeffrey Dahmer's youngest known victim held tight to itself Saturday as the horror of his death swirled around it. Kei Sone Sinthasomphone said she doesn't know what to believe about allegations that police left her 14-year-old brother, Konerak, to die at the hands of a mass murderer on May 27. But the grandmother of another victim identified by police is not afraid to lay blame. "I don't blame Dahmer anymore than I do the police department," said Thelma Smith, 77, who raised Ricky L.

Beeks since "normal, typical kid with a life and dreams." "We never thought it would end like this," the 23-year-old sister said. "We were always a close family. Then when my brother was missing, the family just came closer." She said the family first believed Konerak had left home with friends, though he had never left home before. "After the second day, we didn't know what to expect. It's hard to believe he's really gone." Sinthasomphone said the family hasn't been able to plan for Ko-nerak's funeral.

The police haven't said when they will release the boy's remains. Mrs. Smith, a receptionist at I kir-" i i I vwt I Id the Booker Washington Community Center in Rockford, said she had asked the Red Cross to help find her grandson. The agency couldn't find him because he had changed his name. "It never hit my mind" that he was one of Dahmer's victims, she said.

She described Beeks as a drifter who had dropped out of high school in the 10th grade because "he wanted to," but said: "He respected me and I didn't find any fault with that." She believes most of Dahmer's victims were like her grandson vulnerable, perhaps desperate. "If you don't have any money, some money sounds good to you," she said. i Konerak Sinthasomphone Is the youngest known victim. believe he's sick, but if his probation officer had been keeping up on his case, maybe some of this could have been avoided. Victim Ricky Beeks, described as vulnerable and as a drifter.

he was a baby. "People have been calling them and they didn't investigate. You can't just lay it all on Dahmer. I.