Jeffrey Dahmer: Monster or Madman? - Defense Opening Statement (1992)

very harry harry served at court branch 33 intercourt milwaukee county is now in session the honorable lawrency grant junior presiding silence is commanded you may be seated jurors at the beginning of every trial lawyers are afforded an opportunity to make what we call an opening statement i've heard recently a lot of people refer to it as an opening argument it's not an argument it's an opening statement it's something it's it's not evidence in the case but rather it's something that's designed as an aid to you the jurors for it gives each of the lawyers an opportunity to give you an outline thumbnail sketch sometimes it's referred to as a roadmap of worries going with the case another way it's sometimes pictured and i note that i know thanks to one of our court reporters you have some jigsaw puzzles back there in the jury room if you kind of view a case as being a jigsaw puzzle and as the various witnesses come to the witness stand they give you various pieces of that puzzle but anybody who's ever worked on those puzzles if you've got that cover in front of you that you can see what the whole picture is supposed to look like it's a lot more helpful as far as putting those various pieces together the opening statement is that big picture and that's what the lawyers are trying to accomplish when they make their opening statements now we have a certain order that we follow throughout this trial and as we've talked in jury selection this is kind of unique in terms of the order we have here because in this case the defendant has the burden of proof and so throughout the trial it's the defendant who will always go first and thus mr boyle has the opportunity of making the first opening statement mr boyle yes ladies and gentlemen of the jury we now begin an odyssey the results of which in a short period of time will result in a decision to be made by you and you alone as to whether or not jeffrey diamond did at the time he committed these horrific murders to which he has pled guilty whether or not he was suffering from a mental disease the result of which that he lacked substantial capacity to either appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or to conform his conic to the requirements of law it is very difficult for an advocate not to be an advocate not to argue not to try and convince at all stages i cannot attempt to convince you of anything now the time for that to happen will come in what's called closing argument when i will say in closing argument that as it relates to some one or all of these offenses that i have proved to a reasonable certainty by the greater weight of the credible evidence that mr dahmer was not responsible because of this mental disease and the legal definition of insanity as i've said now i know from having been with you folks for the last three days that we have a jury here that is fresh that has no opinion and is going to listen to the evidence but it's very difficult for you to understand what the rest of us understand because we've been working on this case for so many months and we are here trying to tell you things for not any other reason than to hopefully make you understand as this is progressing down the road of evidence as to what is happening in this courtroom so you can say good i understand if i were trying to explain to you the game of football in order for you who have just come in from some place that never saw the game played it might take me hours if not weeks for you to understand all the nuances what i'm doing here in a very very brief period of time is trying to lay out for you what i say i have accepted to be my burden and that is my burden and i understand that so in that regard what i want to do is to tell you to completely disregard that long list of witnesses that i read to you because now that we're at this point in time certain decisions had to be made by myself with the advice and counsel of the people who are assisting me as to how this case should proceed and it really hasn't varied for a long period of time but we had to name a lot of witnesses because at the last moment if something became important and we hadn't put that witness's name down we might be foreclosed and that's why both mr mccann and i have done what we've done and i would like to tell you how this case is going to be proceed proceed before i get into some of the other details i anticipate and i know that the judge is going to give you some general idea as to what mr dahmer pled guilty to the 15 counts you see there are 17 homicides but 15 charged the evidence is going to show that the first homicide took place in a place called bath ohio in the year 1978 that the second homicide took place in milwaukee but because of the nature of the homicide it was not a charge homosap is going to be discussed it's going to be discussed everything is going to be discussed but that certainly is going to be discussed the rest of the homicides that took place took place in milwaukee county you will be made no you will be made known about every aspect of it and the person that's going to speak to you about every aspect of it is jeffrey dahmer but he is going to speak to you through the members of the milwaukee police department the first of whom i'm going to summon as my very first witness and that is the detective and or detectives dependent upon how they want to split up the testimony who are going to read a very very very long confession to you and this confession is going to have details that will cause you to be uncomfortable but i'm sure that you will listen to the words for the purposes that you must know all of this information because subsequent to this confession jeffrey dahmer talked to a lot of other people he talked to a whole bevy of psychiatrists and psychologists and others and the reason he did that was because every citizen in this country has an absolute right to have it investigated as to whether or not when they did any act any act that they were of sound mind and i'm going to use these phrases sanity sanity with the clear-cut understanding as mr mccann brought to your attention and as i have brought to your attention that the legal definition for the purposes of the criminal justice system of insanity is the one i have just told you as the one i'm confident mr mccann will remind you of and as the judge will instruct you so if i use the word sane or insane if i use the word cookie crazy all those words are being used to portray a state of mind and i and i submit to you that the testimony that the doctors will bring to your attention all the doctors will give to you a very sound deep basis for you making the ultimate decision i am going to call into this courtroom three doctors two psychiatrists and one psychologist dr berlin of johns hopkins university a phd in psychology and a doctor of medicine with especially in psychiatry is going to testify in this case i'm going to bring into this courtroom a doctor carol wallstrom a psychiatrist a doctor of medicine who's at rush presbyterian hospital in the field of psychiatry who's going to testify as to his opinion i'm going to bring into this courtroom a doctor by the name of judith becker a doctor of psychology who is from the university of arizona in tucson who is going to come in and testify as to her opinion as to jeffrey dahmer's mental state at the time that he committed these offenses but they are not the decision makers you are going to be the decision makers and for you to make those decisions i must and i am duty-bound to bring to your attention every single aspect of mr dahmer's life of mr dahmer's conduct so that you when you make your decision will be able to say i had the facts needed for me to make the decision whatever it may be i know because under the system of laws we are forced to trade information with the other side that mr mccann is likewise going to feel field in this courtroom super professionals who are likewise going to give their opinions and the court will likewise have an expert that will testify in this court so you're going to be equipped when it's all over with with everything you need to know to make your decision and the purpose of this court proceeding is a search for the truth and in that regard we must not keep anything from you you're entitled to here we obviously make tactical decisions so that you may make the proper decision on the on the night of mr dahmer's arrest a man by the name of tracy edwards was present with mr dahmer the evidence is going to show that he was about to be the next victim through faith he did not become a victim and the saga of mr dahmer ended at that time and in fact began at that time it was subsequent to his arrest very shortly thereafter as the police will tell you as detective murphy or detective kennedy will tell you that mr dahmer confessed to all to everything as best he could under the constraints that he was placed in he gave a full and complete statement to the milwaukee police department to the officers from bath ohio to the officers from the west allis police department because in fact acts took place in west allis and one act took place in bath ohio and you're going to hear every bit of that and i want to say unequivocally a number of things that i think the evidence is going to show this was not racial the evidence is going to show after you hear the testimony of mr dahmer is told to the milwaukee police department and is told to the doctors dr becker dr wahlstrom and dr berlin that mr dahmer's obsession was to body form not color it is also a fact as you know that there was a lot of homosexual tendencies here and the obsessiveness of mr dahmer was clearly in the vein of fulfilling his sexual desires which happen to be of a homosexual nature this is not a case about homosexuality so in that regard i would like to give you some ideas as to what i think i'm supposed to be doing up here today first of all i am your servant and i will be for as long as it takes to try this case i'm an advocate of my client's cause i'm an officer of the court but i'm a servant of the jury to bring to your attention that which you need so when it's all over with you say he did his job for me and i appreciate that i am not going to argue here i have the greatest of respect for the people who are sitting in the position of the state of wisconsin a co-worker with mr mccann at one time in my life a man of enormous wonderful reputation as is his staff this is not going to be a combat show this isn't the the you see the case is over mr dahmer has pled guilty to these 15 homicides the case continues because under the law as i have said we are trying to find out the mind of this man was he evil or was he sick and i use that in a very shortened phrase does he meet the definition of insanity as the law will be defined to you for one some or all of these i am going to tell you basically what you can expect to learn from the witnesses about jeffrey dye that he is 31 years of age he was born in milwaukee and his early life was very unremarkable as the doctors will tell you moving from this place to that place as his family moved that when he was five years of age he had a brother was born into the family dr becker is going to start indicating certain facts that she is going to use to support her opinion not absolutely but matters of interest and i don't think it's my job to stand here today and tell you every single fact that these doctors are going to testify to but i think it necessary for me to give you a general understanding of jeffrey dahmer and his life and his actions and his conduct to assist you that when these doctors are testifying there will be a better flow in their testimony because you have some idea of how the game has been laid out to be played in this courtroom and i don't mean game i don't mean game in the sense that this is not the most important matter that all of us will ever probably be confronted with in our entire lives but we have to lay out the plan so that so as to help you when jeffrey dahmer was in eighth grade he started in doing some things of a sexual nature that were really the embryo of his as what the doctors would testify remember i'm saying when i don't say the doctors will testify as a given these are things that i learned from the doctors that the doctors are going to testify to not what i'm going to testify to that the police department has brought to everyone's attention through the confession of mr dahmer and statements mr dahmer has made we're going to find that when mr dahmer was in eighth grade he started into a series of sexual movements and they took on the form of two things he started masturbating on a daily basis and the object of his fantasies while engaged in that self-abuse or self-conduct or whatever is called as the doctors will tell you were thoughts concerning young men of his age young boys of his age we will [ __ ] you will find in the testimony and i don't want to say the testimony show the testimonial show except that that's what i'm talking about the testimonial show that even as an early teenager he started becoming interested in bones of dead animals he would take him home he would bleach him he would study them none of this was discovered by any members of his family none of the interests that he had were known to his family the doctors are going to testify that basically his early years were unremarkable no greatly different than most but a few things different that they will tell you what you might consider the import of that to be it was when he was 14 years of age as he has told the parties and and i'm confident at this juncture when detective murphy and detective kennedy testify you will get some understanding and you will be able to judge the credibility of jeffrey dahmer in his dealings with all the parties concerned but it was when he was about 14 years of age he first came up with the idea of using a corpse for sexual purposes he fantasized either having a corpse or a mannequin to use and it was at that time that he had his first actual consensual homosexual encounter with a peer he discovered his homosexuality and accepted it he will tell you through the doctors he didn't understand it but it cost him no concern other than the fact that he realized what he was it was while he was in high school that this fantasy is doing things with dead things started showing up when in a biology class he dissected a baby pig and took these the head home with them took the skin off and kept the skull through doc three doctors are going to come into this courtroom and they're going to tell you that their opinion is that jeffrey dahmer suffers from a mental disorder and it is called paraphilia without my trying to be a doctor and defining it for you except generally paraphilia is an arousal of a sexual nature to an inanimate object a body part or a process and this paraphilia there's all kinds of paraphilias the doctors are going to tell you about the different kinds of parallels but the paraphilia that best exemplifies the paraphilia that jeffrey dahmer had which they will claim is in their opinion a mental disorder which they will state in jeffrey dahmer was a mental disease their paraphilia that they found was necrophilia and necrophilia is a disorder of the mind where there is a desire to have sexual contact with dead bodies that's what they're going to say jeffrey dahmer was there's a lot more than that but that's the mainstay of his condition was his desire for dead bodies to have sex with dead bodies armed with that information here now i'm going to continue on in the chronology of jeffrey dahmer's life so that you may understand how that embryo that may fit as the doctors will testify there came a time in 1975 or 76 that jeffrey dahmer's obsession with this sexual desire and fantasy and obsession got to the point where he saw a man who lived somewhere in the general area where he lived running jogging every day he would see him jogging down the road and he became so attached to the concept of having sex with this man that he went home and he sought off a baseball bat so that he could get on his bike and ride past the man and hit him in the head with the baseball bat and knock him out so as to take him up into the woods and have sex with him that's what his quest was and he put that quest in the play and got on that bicycle and went out to find this man and thanks be to god the man had never jogged that way again so it didn't happen but the doctors are going to tell you what that meant in the grand scheme of things as it is to the mind of jeffrey dunn beginning when he was about 16 years of age and this would be in the years of 76 77 he started collecting animals always dead animals and there's going to be testimony as to why that's significant never killed a live animal but would go on the roads and find roadkill dogs other type of animals that have been struck by cars that were laying there and he would take him home and he started having a fascination of wanting to see what they look like inside and he would open them up one time he took off the head of a dog and put it on a stake and hung it out so everybody could see it primarily for shock value this obsession of this dead animals and doing things with them started becoming something that became more and more into his life into his head the way he conducted himself in high school will be made known to you take it for what it's worth and what it meant doctors are going to be asked they're going to be testifying to how a person who starts acting like this at a certain age and as now as 31 can go on day in and day out living what ostensibly appears to be the kind of things that most people would do goes to work eats eats food goes out for dinner goes to the store they're going to tell you what that means in the mind of a jeffrey dahmer whose life starts taking on an obsession and a fantasy that is so foreign to us that we can't even comprehend it but for the next two weeks we're going to be asked to at least listen to it and try and understand what it's all about his home life changed a lot there was some problems in his mother and father's marriage there was an ultimate divorce he was about 18 at the time it was traumatic and he became somewhat of a reckless he isolated himself spent a lot of time alone started internalizing as the doctors would tell you started internalizing his feelings and they'll explain that to you internalization means you keep him to yourself then as he became a senior in high school he started getting these thoughts about going out and finding a hitchhiker and killing him and having sex with him that started to become his quest the thing that he wanted to do the desire that was staying with him at all times after he graduated from high school there came a time in his life when because of his family situation he was alone and one night to the regret of the world at large for the regret of the victim victim's family mr dahmer and his family the horror scene starts he is driving around and he sees a hitchhiker and a hitchhiker doesn't have a shirt on and jeffrey dahmer wants his body his body that's his fantasy the body not the height not the age not the color the body and he picks up this hitchhiker and he takes him back to his home and suddenly he picks up a barbell and he renders the man unconscious and he killed him he strangled he undressed him the evidence is going to show that at that time now having his fantasy a reality he masturbated on the dead man's body two days later having hidden a body he opened it up he wanted to see what it looked like on the inside he put the body in a bag tempted to drop it off get rid of it stop by the police for a traffic violation of some sort took the body back because he was afraid it would be discovered obviously and he hid it he separated the skull from that body and masturbated in front of it now make no mistake this is a sad commentary i'm telling you i take absolutely no delight in telling anybody any of these things i tell them to you because you must know these things i grieve for the family mr hicks anyone who doesn't believe that choose not to but i do but if i don't tell you these things i should not be a lawyer in this courtroom so i'm going to continue to tell you this horrific story i also ask that if any time you're uncomfortable for any reason whatsoever if any of you need a break while i am talking for any reason if you raise your hand i'm sure the judge will take care of whatever situation there is whatever discomfort is and then we can take a short recess and convene i'm not suggesting because of the description i'm just suggesting for any reason after mr dahmer finally succeeded in his first quest a lot of other things started happening to him he started drinking a lot testimony is going to show he started crying about what he had done he became very nervous very high strung and at that time having graduated from high school some career decisions had to be made and followed and they were and he went to ohio state university only to fail in the first six months fail because as the doctors will tell you what he had done a few months before was too haunting for him to concentrate on what he was supposed to be doing so he escaped to the military and he escaped to the military and became a field medic stationed in germany and was there for a long period of time and there started coming into his life a lot more ways of handling his fantasies handling his desires and handling his obsessions and he got very heavy into pornography he got very heavy into excessive masturbation to try and stop these urges from growing or at least put the lid on and he started drinking an awful lot now a lawyer in a courtroom is to present facts and not have policy statements issued this is not a policy statement on the pluses or minuses of pornography that's not the issue here what is the issue here is what effect it had on jeffrey dahmer one way or the other and that will be discussed and he came out of the service he went down to florida to try to live in that environment that geographical change but he didn't stay there very long he came back to bath ohio one time i think the testimony is going to show we're going to talk about his troubles with the law there was a drunken disorderly problem that he had in the state of ohio at about this time florida was not a pleasant thing coming back to bath ohio was not pleasant and his first order of business about coming back to bath ohio was he had to get rid of that body had secreted that body because he didn't know what to do with it but when he came back he got rid of it he destroyed it you're going to learn that jeffrey dahmer in the performance of these horrific homicides was in fact making what was human beings disappear into into oblivion by destroying the very materials that made up the body except for those parts that he wished to retain for his purposes so he got rid of the body parts he smashed him up and got him into the woods and then he left bath ohio and he went to west allis to live with his grandmother his fantasies never changed they were ever present as the doctors will tell you as we have learned in this story but he was able to cap him off without destruction by utilizing things available to him such as pornography masturbation and things of that nature in august of 82 he was charged with and convicted of disorderly conduct because he had exposed himself in former urination at state fair apart he started to frequent sexually explicit bookstores for magazines but he never approached anybody in those stores because of his personality which was as it will be testified to quiet shy alone it'll be shown that he had no friends as we understand that concept and as a result he was very isolated the doctors will indicate during this period of time he was very depressed and lonely four and a half years after he had killed mr hicks in the mid 80s violated the law again by a shoplifting charge where he took a jacket 1983 he got a job at the blood center his fantasies were such that he tasted blood while in the performance of that job didn't like it never did it again but the fantasy the desire the obsession will be brought to your attention as to why he would do that a period of time thereafter he continued to frequent these bookstores his fantasies stayed the same 83-85 we have a period of life of attempt to control and control he tried to change he tried to cut down on his masturbation got it down to a once a week occurrence he started going to church with his grandmother he started reading religious books he tried to repress his fantasy and he stayed away from pornography as best he could he tried got a job at a chocolate factory here in town and then something happened in 1985 that the doctors will tell you are is significant it was significant because jeffrey dahmer who was trying was sitting in a library reading a book and as he was reading the book according to the reports that he gives to the doctors to which the doctors will testify suddenly a sheet of paper in the form of a note was thrown into the book he was reading and as he saw this young fellow walking away who had thrown the book the sheet of paper in the book he opened it up and the words were meet me in the bathroom i'll give you a [ __ ] we now have a critical moment in time where jeffrey dahmer the man of many fantasies is for the first time propositioned but he doesn't fall doesn't fall yet but very shortly thereafter his control started falling apart the reading religious books to go into church to trying to change your life around the control of the fantasies as best he could and he gave up he started going back to the video games video rooms see the see the pornography started meeting people started having sex real sex with people in the desire to have his full fantasy fulfilled it wasn't that satisfying having sex with live people but he did it to try and control he started going to gay bars and he started finding that he couldn't stop following these desires he had no relationship with anyone other than a fast one night stand one action stand then he started thinking if i can keep them they can't leave me so he started thinking about drugging people he started thinking about drugging people so that he would have control over them and that they would have to do his bidding because they couldn't resist doing his bidding he desperately wanted to have somebody remain with him but in order to fulfill his fantasies having killed one fella he tried to do a couple of things he stayed all night in boston's store one night until all the doors were closed and he stole the mail mannequin brought it home with them thinking that this might be a way out form of his fantasies grandmother found the mannequin and mannequin idea went didn't work he started looking in the obituary section of the paper to find young people that might have died he went to various funeral homes to see the remains and he decided that he found one and he attempted to go to the cemetery to dig up that body but he wasn't able to do it because the crown was so frozen so he had no body his sexual problems continued and in 86 he was arrested for exposing himself in public 86 starts to become a crucial year as the doctors will tell you because he bought a large tv in vcr and started buying very heavy porno videos he started going to a lot of bath clubs and his object was looking for the best looking guy and then he would do is he would drug that person in those bath houses the person he chose with a drug called helsion which he was getting prescribed to himself for his alleged inability to sleep but he didn't use it it was only to put others out so in their state he could control and fulfill the fantasies that had been in his mind all this time he would masturbate and masturbate and masturbate when this was happening with these drugged peoples he would engage in light sex with them and then when they were out he would do them as he saw fit but not killing any of them he never injured at least by physical trauma any of these men that he drugged up until this point in time that he met at the bath houses part of the reason that his fantasy was such that it was taking on his courses because when they were awake to engage in consensual sex he was unable to perform for the most part it was only after they were unconscious that his performance level went to the point where he was satisfied with it he had to have that in order to perform did this about 10 to 15 times and suddenly became pretty clear as to who was dropping the knockout pills so he was barred from these bath clubs no longer able to go there so he started taking men to hotel rooms and we have a number of times seven eight nine ten times where he would take consenting adults go to a hotel and do whatever they do and then it would be over he didn't hurt him didn't drug him this would be ended but he would have no relationship thereafter the world as we know it to be started getting singed in november of 1987 when jeffrey dahmer started on a killing spree since the murder of mr hicks did not occur in the state of wisconsin it is a matter for the ohio authorities you're going to hear the name of mr toomey who is mr dahmer's second victim first victim in milwaukee county but an uncharged homicide for reasons that will become clear the rest of the 15 murders that took place after that for the charge murders he met this gentleman and he took him to the ambassador hotel and it was agreed that they would have consensual sex his intention was not to kill him his intention was to drink and have sex and that took place except that mr dahmer and mr toomey passed out from very very strong rum that they were drinking 150 proof from when mr dahmer woke up he was laying on top of mr toomey toomey was dead dead a massive bruise was viewed by mr dahmer so he knows he killed him but he didn't know when or how but he knew this man was dead and he was now in the ambassador hotel the dead body having signed in for just the night so he went down trying to figure out what he was going to do about this terrible problem and he went down to one of the malls bought a big suitcase i went back to the ambassador hotel signed up for another night and in the stealth of the night he put his body into this large suitcase called the cab and took it to his grandmother's house where he was living put it down into a fruit cellar and left it there for a period of time and then one morning while his grandmother was at church he took the body out of the suitcase and he slid it open and he masturbated and he removed the head and retained it for a long period of time and his sexual fantasies that he had and his conduct with that horrible thing that happened will be the subject matter of some discussions by the doctors dr berlin and dr wahlstrom and dr becker will tell you when he woke up in the ambassador hotel it was all over mr dahmer would continue to do this until it was stopped i am to tell you that his experimentation and bodies started at that time started boiling and bleaching the skull and he saved the skull for at least a week and he would masturbate on a few occasions before he disposed of the body which he did in the cellar of his grandmother's house by having the spillage through the sewer system by smashing the bones and by putting him in disposal bags and putting him in garbage cans if i had my druthers i would love to tell this story without mentioning anybody's name but i can't do that so when i mention the names of the victims i do it hopefully with a religious intonation because they were the most unfortunate victims anyone can imagine that they had this happen to them i'm going to ask mr lefevre to stand up here and hold up some cards to show you as i will read down the names of these people as to when they died so that you will understand what i am i'm talking about as i talk so you come up and grab the first one the victims and i don't know if you can see it from there but maybe we can stand up here we have listed the victims of mr dahmer's murders as i said the first one was a mr stephen hicks who died in june 25 1978 the second one uncharged for the reasons that should be clear there's no recollection of how it happened because mr stephen told me who died in november of 1987. the first charge murder is that of mr james doxtator a youngster born in 1973 died in january of 88 mr guerrero was the second victim charge victim i'm going to say charge victim because concentrate on those because you're going to have to make a decision on each one of these which man was killed in march of 88 mr anthony sears was killed in march of 89. and if you as i'm talking see the difference in the months that that took place almost a year later the next gentleman who was killed was mr raymond smith who died in may of 1990 he was also known as beach july of 1990 mr edward smith was killed and then two months later mr ernest miller called i believe at this juncture prior to this killing uh these were folks from milwaukee except milwaukee area except for them let me indicate to you that preparation for my opening statement i do as much as i can to be accurate on facts i'm sure you're not going to hold me to every single thing if i said something happen on a tuesday that might not happen on wednesday that's not important the evidence will tell you what the exact facts are i'm trying to give you an overlay so if it's later it turns out that i was wrong on a name or a place even that's my error doesn't mean that i was trying any way to take advantage of anybody by fooling that's just a pure error so please give me the next gentleman was mr david thomas who was killed in october of 1990 and then in february of 1991 and up to the end of this killing spree what with victim number eight we find whole bevy of homicide mr slaughter dining on february of 91 mr earl lindsay dying in april of 1991. mr anthony hughes a month later may of 1990 and then in that same month the very very distressing manner of mr tyrek and symptoms of smoke the one that we were talked about oftentimes in in the confines of the judge's chambers and a month later mr matt turner and it was a very short time thereafter mr jeremiah weinberg a very short time after that mr oliver lacy a very short time after that joseph then tracy edwards incident i believe on the 23rd four days later and thanks be to god at the end of this time so with that in mind as i go through the next few days mentioning these human beings who became sacrificial lambs to mr dahmer's fantasies i do it with as much respect as i can muster up he killed mr doxtator and he kept his body a weak and he would lie with it he would masturbate with it he defleshed it kept the skull his compulsion the doctors will tell you was in full swing sexual acts as the doctors testify were more erotic when the victim was dead his fantasies were having the person comatose and then after they died having sex with them he did not want them to leave he wanted to keep them as he did mr guerrero and then september of 88 he was arrested for a crime all of that is going to be explained to you in detail involving a youngster and he was prosecuted for that successfully prosecuted pled guilty to that received a sentence with the hope of treatment in a form of probation and it never took it never took as the testimony will show because jeffrey dahmer did not want it to take he did not want to stop what now had become his obsession his fantasies and his compulsions while waiting to go to jail he killed another man during the time that he was in jail for approximately nine months he was unable to carry out his killing spree but he certainly didn't have it or get it under control he didn't want to give up these body parts that became so important to him for his purposes of his compulsion so he went even before he had to go to jail and bought a barrel a sealed barrel that he could keep so that he could retain these these parts that became so important to him he went about the business of finding out how he could preserve these things so they would not deteriorate these things that were so important to him in his obsession he would take things out and look at him and masturbate he kept body parts such as the genitalia he played with heads painted them colored them the skulls of these poor creatures in some things he he was able to go to work and he kept them at his place of employment so he could look at him while he was spending his nights in jail he was under supervision he just flat out rejected it he fled out rejected as he has told and will tell you through the statements he made to the detectives he did it he didn't want it he wanted to continue he had an experience in one day off that he had during his period of incarceration where he was victimized where he became a victim but survived obviously the thing that was happening between him and another person when he got out of the institution he took his sixth victim now he started taking pictures showing the carnage that he was causing these people as he was going along in this killing spree he even attempted to can keep a complete skeleton but was unable to do that he didn't know how to preserve it it called taxidermist to see how to do things like that and then we see a jeffrey dahmer getting into some things that i'm sure the doctors and others will tell you of some interest one way or the other interpretation of these facts are going to be done not by me but by the doctors he started reading it started watching some videos and the first one that seemed to really help him understand what he really wanted to be was something called the return of the jedi because in that he saw and he started thinking that he was who wanted to be like a character and that is the emperor who was portrayed therein this emperor who had total control and power over subjects subjects being people he would bring the victims to his place where he was staying before he'd kill them and make sure that they watched the same thing he went so far as to buy yellow tinted contact lenses because the emperor in that movie had those kind of eyes that came out gave him a feeling of power people commented that he looked good with those his eyes looked good when he would go about the praying upon these taverns and other places where he could find his prey he'd watch it time and time again his method of operation his method of operation was to find a person who best fit his desire for body the person with the body that he became obsessed with was his prey whoever fit that description of that body that physique was in harm's way if mr dahmer could persuade that person to come back to his apartment to watch videos to pose for pictures and in fact the incentive was that he would pay them for doing that these men these victims were not all of that same sexual orientation it's not a material fact the material fact is that they were solicited and they were brought back with the avowed purpose that mr dahmer was going to drug him up take them from life through dying through death into death to make them come back into life his life by the way he would conduct themselves with them after they were dead he ate body parts and the purpose of which as he has expressed it as the doctors believe it to be so that these poor people he killed would become alive again in him the doctors will tell you about this necrophilia which they will say in mr dahmer was a mental illness a mental disease of him on this program this plan of taking people from life through death into death and retaining them after death to bring them back into himself the retention of body parts the keeping of these many skulls came a time when the doctors will tell you that he started maintaining these to build a shrine and the shrine was a shrine to himself and that will come up in the testimony his experimentation with these body parts and these bodies and their body parts that are retained is mind-boggling mind-boggling for us to understand to hear to think about boiling skulls to see whether or not that was a way of preserving them how to dispose of these flesh that remained after his mutilation then there came a time where the killing as i've obviously became very clear started escalating and his conduct in reference to these body parts started to escalate and it got so sad that he started doing surgical experimentation on his poor souls before they died so as to keep them from dying but not because he cared but because he wanted him for his purposes he wanted to create zombies people that would be there for him he would have all kinds of sexual contact with the dead bodies oral anal into the viscera all kinds he became enamored overwhelmed caught up by a character in a movie called exorcist 3. the doctors will tell you that the character that he became caught up with was satan because satan was the personification of evil and mr dahmer felt that because of what he was what he had done what he was doing that there was no entity to relate to other than satan when he brought that youngster up the one that we've talked about conrad and the police went up in the next room in his bedroom there lied the dead body of another one of his victims mr dahmer persuaded those police officers that what he was doing was okay in reference to that young man and that testimony is going to be made known to you and aired in this courtroom i think it's important now for me to start telling you some things that will bring my opening statement to some sort of conclusion my role as an advocate is to convince you based upon the greater weight of the credible evidence to a reasonable certainty that this young man was mentally ill i am his advocate nothing that i have said can should might be interpreted as my believing other than my obligation my duty and my desire to prove to you that he was mentally ill we are precluded in a courtroom all of us lawyers from telling you what our personal opinion is it is not appropriate to do that i have said a lot of things about this young man that are so absolutely evil that one would have to say are you saying that he was evil and i'm saying to you that i accept the responsibility of proving to you that this was not an evil man this was a sick man whose sickness rose to the level of mental illness that he was suffering from a mental disease at the beginning of these killing sprees during these killing sprees which mental disease i submit to you will be shown by the doctor's testimony to be growing and growing and growing to the point where he became absolutely unable to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law and in fact to really appreciate really appreciate what he was doing the wrongfulness of misconduct that as this killing spree continued along with this young man as you will get to know him through the doctors this isolated person not the one who isn't out in the world but isolated in his own mind certainly isolated in his private private life who lives on his fantasies and who works out his fantasies was a mentally diseased human being and as a result of it he could not have the capacity to conform to the requirements of law until in god's providence tracy edwards escaped from his grasp and the police came back and it all unfolded my purpose is not to quarrel with mr mccann my purpose is not to quarrel with anyone my purpose is to let you decide now that you've heard as much horror it can't get any worse than this there will be more details but the bad part is over it's as bad as it can possibly be thought to have been and i don't want to walk down here and sit here and say i'm making excuses for my representation of this human being because i am not i am a lawyer i have bringing into this courtroom and i know the ones that the other people are the other sides are bringing in and i will tell you absolutely unqualifiedly that in this courtroom in the next two weeks will be the finest the best this country has to offer to bring not only to your attention but whomever else is interested as to how this horrible horrible tragedy could have occurred because of an effect of a human mind this everything we do is for you those who are interested the very very unfortunate victims families who don't need my sympathy i can't ever make it right by them ever no matter what but i am sensitive to it and i respect the state of wisconsin for coming in and fighting these charges because that's that's what they feel they should just as i know i have to do what i'm doing and i make no excuses for it when i get to talk to you again it'll take on i think a different type of type of statement because then i'll be able to argue i can't argue now i can only tell you what i know i have to do and i can also tell you that i'm going to do it i am hopefully going to call a gentleman who's had some law enforcement experience allowed to do so as we progress so that you may hear some things about how law enforcement finds things and people of of this kind of mindset but i won't say anything more than that one of the biggest problems in an opening statement if you say you're going to prove something you don't prove it a jury might say well he told us he was he promised to something and he didn't come through well i promise you this i'll promise you that i'm bringing in three great professionals whose opinions are going to be disagreed with by others but it doesn't make them wrong you're the ones who are going to have to make that decision we all came into this courtroom this morning because of the questions you answered during the last few days with no opinion you 14 folks have no opinion and you won't have an opinion until you hear everything and i believe that so i ask that you believe what i've told you and if i have if i've said things that are out of whack if i misplace something the evidence you hear is the barometer of that if i've said anything that's offended you because i'm telling you this story i submit to you that there's no way you 14 can feel that way because we all promised each other that this is what i was going to do when you were ready to accept it and i appreciate that your candor as soon as i sit down as far as i'm concerned you no longer exist my job is to get information out so that you may think about it and then in the final analysis we'll talk about it and i thank you very much for your attention at this juncture i will move it along quickly tracy edwards perhaps somebody from law enforcement certainly a member of milwaukee police department or two there will be three professionals in the form of two psychology psychiatrists and one psychologist and i'm not going to stay and ask any more questions that i think you want me to ask i'm not going to keep them on and say the same thing over and over and over again a jury individually and a jury collectively is very bright and i know i don't have to do that so we'll get to the heart of the problem so you can get to the meat of the question and address it in the final analysis thank you

Channel: COURT TV

Views: 42,875

Keywords: Court, Courtroom, Jeffrey Dahmer, Jeffrey Dahmer Full Trial Serial Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer court, Jeffrey Dahmer serial killer, Law, Live Court, News, Opening Statments, Real Crime, True Crime, WI v Jeffrey Dahmer, court tv, court tv full trial, court tv live, court tv live trial, dahmer, defense for Jeffrey Dahmer, how did jeffrey dahmer die, jeffrey dahmer court fight, serial killer trial

Id: 0GHpngi3HRs

Length: 72min 15sec (4335 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 20 2021