Jeffrey L. Dahmer has confessed to three murders committed in the suburban Milwaukee home he shared with his grandmother before moving to the inner-city apartment where the remains of 11 victims were found, police said Monday.
Dahmer also has confessed to killing Eddie Smith, 28, of Milwaukee, who has been missing since June 23, 1990, police said. Dahmer has confessed to 17 murders in all, police said, although details on two of the slayings haven`t yet been released.
Authorities have not recovered Smith`s remains because Dahmer destroyed them, Milwaukee police said. But they declared him dead after corroborating Dahmer`s account of the murder with information from relatives about Smith`s disappearance.
Two of the victims in the suburban West Allis home also were disposed of, Dahmer told police, but investigators there don`t know their identities, said West Allis Police Chief John C. Boturac.
”We have very minimal information right now, except for the statements by Dahmer,” Butorac said.
Of those killed in West Allis, only Anthony Sears, whose remains were found last week in Dahmer`s apartment on Milwaukee`s Near West Side, has been identified positively by the medical examiner`s office.
Sears` skull and possibly other body parts apparently were brought along by Dahmer when he moved to his 25th Street residence in 1989. Sears, 24, was last seen March 25, 1989.
The two other murders at his grandmother`s home occurred in 1985 or 1986, Dahmer told police.
He said he met both victims at Milwaukee gay bars, then brought them back to the neat, colonial home of his grandmother, Catherine Dahmer.
Both men were Hispanic, in their late teens or early 20s and probably from Milwaukee, Dahmer told police. Of Dahmer`s 12 previously identified victims, 10 were black, one was Laotian, and one was white.
West Allis police would not comment on how Dahmer killed the two Hispanic men or disposed of their bodies.
Dahmer, who is under 24-hour guard at Milwaukee County Jail, has been charged with four first-degree murders. More counts are expected to be filed Aug. 6.
A search of the Dahmer family`s former home in Bath Township, Ohio, where he told detectives he buried Steven M. Hicks in 1978, will be conducted Tuesday morning, police said.
Meanwhile, the Dahmer case continues to serve as a focus for community discontent over the quality of police service in some areas of Milwaukee.
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Representatives of several homosexual and lesbian groups criticized the department for its ”failure to protect citizens who are people of color, gay and lesbian, or poor,” said Scott Kunkel, president of Lambda Rights Network. ”Incident after incident, victims of crimes have reported that police ignore them,” Kunkel said.
Calling the killings ”the most heinous crime committed in the history of Milwaukee,” Mayor John Norquist on Monday announced increased training in race relations for city workers.
He also said an eight-member team from the Washington, D.C.-based National Organization for Victim Assistance will counsel families of victims, residents of the immediate area where the crimes took place, and government employees close to the case.
Several citizens attending Norquist`s news conference called for an independent investigation of police procedures and the May 27 police encounter with Dahmer after witnesses reported him chasing a naked, bleeding 14-year-old Laotian boy. Dahmer was not arrested, and the boy was identified Friday as one of the 11 people whose remains were found in Dahmer`s apartment.
Police Chief Philip Arreola suspended the three officers involved in the incident, prompting the police union to schedule a non-binding vote Tuesday on whether to call for Arreola`s resignation.
Some 20 groups from the black community plan a rally and press conference at City Hall on Tuesday morning to announce a community task force to address issues of police response.
”Everybody in the city is in a state of grievance and amazement, sorrow and anger,” said Rev. LeHavre Buck, executive director-ombudsman for Harambee, a community-based organization.
Sgt. Lenard Wells, president of a black police officers` group called the League of Martin, said police recruits are ill-prepared to deal with a multicultural community such as Milwaukee.
”The sensitivity training stinks,” Wells said. ”The instructors at the academy may be experts on the subject matter, but they lack basic teaching skills.”
Other officers, however, vigorously defended the overall performance of their colleagues.
”If you are going to start pointing fingers, you have to take into account everything in this case: a judge who let him out early and a probation office that seems to have not adequately done their job,” said Sgt. Glen Frankovis, president of an officers group opposed to affirmative action in testing and promotion.