Dr. Eric Hickey is a criminal psychologist known for working with some of the world’s most notorious serial killers. In the first episode of Unraveling, he dives into the mind of Jeffrey Dahmer, and uses his actual interviews with Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother to shed some light on how this killer came to be.
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TVTranscript
00:00He is one of the most infamous serial killers in modern history.
00:05Jeffrey Dahmer, necrophiliac and cannibal, murdered 17 men and boys over the course of 13 years.
00:12But what was going on in the mind of this monster?
00:15Are killers born evil, or do they become evil over time?
00:24My name is Dr. Eric Hickey.
00:26I'm a criminal psychologist by trade, and my areas of expertise are homicide, sex crime and psychopathology.
00:32I work on the dark side, pretty much.
00:35Dr. Hickey has an unusual connection to the Dahmer case that no other criminal psychologist has.
00:41I became involved with the Dahmer case many years ago.
00:45I happened to be in a store.
00:47I saw a man who looked unusual.
00:50So I just walked over to him and started talking to him.
00:53And he said, he was from Chicago.
00:55I said, what brings you to California?
00:57And he said, my mom tried to kill herself.
01:00And I came out to help her.
01:01I said, I know who you are.
01:03You're Jeffrey Dahmer's brother, aren't you?
01:05So we became friends.
01:07I met his mother and interviewed her.
01:09And oh my gosh, that just led to so many other things.
01:13Because of that, that moment in the store, it led to a whole other avenue of investigation.
01:20Let's start from the beginning.
01:22Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 to Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Annette Rocky Dahmer.
01:29As a child, Dahmer was often isolated.
01:33Both of his parents struggled with depression and fought constantly throughout their marriage.
01:38So Jeffrey had a difficult childhood.
01:41There was problems in the home between the husband and wife.
01:45There wasn't a close-knit family.
01:47He didn't have the attachment that most people have growing up.
01:50And he felt alone.
01:52Of course, one day he comes home, I think when he was 17, his mother was gone.
01:57She took David, the son, the youngest son, and left.
02:00And that was traumatizing for him.
02:04The young Dahmer was painfully shy and withdrawn.
02:08He also displayed an interest in dead animals, dissecting carcasses and collecting chicken bones and bleaching them.
02:15He stated that this process excited him.
02:18This is not uncommon with any child that experiences trauma.
02:21And it's certainly a common trait among many serial killers.
02:25When we talk about animal abuse, setting fires, these are results of childhood trauma.
02:32Lack of attachment.
02:34Children can't express themselves, they can't tell you what's really bothering them.
02:38So they'll often set fires or hurt animals.
02:40That's their voice.
02:42This is a cry for help.
02:44The piece that we never talk about is the fantasies that fuel the fire.
02:53Dahmer's trauma and fascination with dead animals began to interact with his blossoming sexuality.
02:59He became obsessed with having control and power.
03:03It was also around this time that he realized he was gay, which made him feel ashamed and confused.
03:09He really was very conflicted as well.
03:12He was lonely, conflicted, had lack of attachment.
03:15All these things kind of set the groundwork for where he would go.
03:19It was a very interesting process because it wasn't one day he just woke up and said,
03:23I'm going to be a killer.
03:24I mean, he built into that over the period of several years.
03:29As you recall, in this case, he had fantasies about killing a young man.
03:35Over time, fantasies become behavior.
03:39I started having obsessive thoughts of violence intermingled with sex.
03:48And it just got worse and worse.
03:52I didn't know how to tell anyone about it, so I didn't.
03:55I just kept it all inside.
03:57He had a desire to be with someone who had been buried.
04:00So in paraphilic terms, he had this sexual fantasy about being with someone who was unconscious.
04:07Merriam-Webster defines paraphilia as a pattern of recurring sexually arousing mental imagery or behavior
04:14that involves unusual and especially socially unacceptable sexual practices.
04:19Now, there's different kinds of paraphilia, right?
04:21There's the non-criminal paraphilia.
04:23People get into latex.
04:25They get into plushies and furries, things like that.
04:29We do know by the time that young men reach the age of 18,
04:3499% of them have masturbated themselves into oblivion.
04:38We know that for a fact, okay?
04:40I'm always being concerned about that 1% who didn't.
04:43What happened to them? Are they lying?
04:45About 10% of American males are involved with different forms of paraphilia.
04:51Four of those 10 men are actually into criminal paraphilia.
04:55I mean, about half of those then get into the very, very violent types of criminal paraphilia.
05:02In high school, Dahmer began drinking heavily to cope with his dark fantasies.
05:07He was known to play pranks and fake epileptic fits.
05:11By the time he was 16, he began fantasizing about what it would be like to have sex with a dead body.
05:17Jeffrey had a lot of fantasies.
05:19He didn't share those fantasies.
05:21Over time, fantasies become behavior.
05:26So nobody wakes up in the morning as a necrophile.
05:29It's a process of becoming.
05:31People get into these fantasies, and the fantasies develop.
05:34We're all sexual beings.
05:36We all have to find ways to be sexual.
05:38But there are groups of people in our society who are not comfortable in their own skin.
05:42They're not comfortable talking to other people.
05:46Now, there's a reason why he was more comfortable with dead people,
05:51because he lacked the skill set to be intimate.
05:55In such low self-esteem, he was so insecure in his own life
05:59that eventually he became more comfortable with people who would not reject him.
06:06They were dead.
06:08It was only a matter of time before Dahmer enacted one of his fantasies.
06:12In June 1978, three weeks after high school graduation,
06:16Dahmer picked up hitchhiker Stephen Hicks and brought him back to his father's house.
06:21The two shared a few drinks, but when Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned him with a barbell.
06:26Dahmer proceeded to have sex with the body before dismembering and disposing of it.
06:31When Jeffrey killed Stephen Hicks, it was, I'm sure, a great relief for him.
06:36He finally got to act out his fantasies.
06:38He already knew how he was going to do it.
06:40I mean, he had planned it out in fantasy first,
06:43and so he knew that this was the right time and moment to grab him, lure him in, and kill him.
06:50And now he gets to be with the body, and finally, that was his level of intimacy.
06:55He gets to be intimate with the body, which most of us take for granted in normal relationships.
07:00But now this person is dead.
07:02They're not going to reject him.
07:03They're not going to laugh at him.
07:04They're not going to make him feel insecure.
07:06He gets to do what he wants to do.
07:08I think that really set the stage for later on in his life as he fantasized.
07:15After high school, Dahmer joined the Army but was discharged in 1981.
07:20Then, Dahmer moved in with his grandmother and worked the graveyard shift at a local chocolate company.
07:25Dahmer wouldn't kill again for almost 10 years.
07:29How is it possible that someone like him is able to control his urges?
07:33Did he find other ways to satisfy himself?
07:37So that's when I went to meet Jeffrey Dahmer's mother.
07:40That was a really interesting interview that we had.
07:43So I know that Dahmer had been doing something bad during all those years when he hadn't been killing.
07:49And she said, well, he did tell me.
07:51Because at the trial, at his trial, it didn't come out.
07:54But I'll tell you now, in confidence, what he told me.
07:59And I'm going to quote her.
08:00She said, you know, he would go to...
08:03He would look at young men who had been killed in a car accident.
08:05They died of illnesses.
08:06He would go to the viewings.
08:09Then he would go to the funerals.
08:12Then he would go to the cemeteries where they were buried.
08:15And at night, he would dig them up to have sex with them.
08:19That was his...
08:20Those were his words to me.
08:22That kept him occupied for several years.
08:25So he kept the fantasies going and actually acting out how many he had sex with.
08:31I don't know.
08:32She doesn't know.
08:33She didn't know.
08:34But certainly, the whole fantasy development about being with someone who had been buried was really, really important to him.
08:41But grave robbing couldn't satisfy his urges for long.
08:44He even owned a mannequin at one point, but it wasn't the same thing.
08:48In 1987, Dahmer's killing career would resume, and he would take the lives of 16 additional men and boys.
08:55Often, he'd pick them up at gay bars, bathhouses, and porn shops, and take them back to his apartment for a drink.
09:01He was very low-profile.
09:03He'd just meet people.
09:04He was very friendly.
09:06Invite them to his home.
09:08Sure, tomorrow, have a drink.
09:09Then he would spike the drink, and they'd become unconscious.
09:13In the beginning, it wasn't that way.
09:16The men went to his home.
09:18They stayed with him for a few days.
09:20He didn't kill them immediately.
09:22It's when they said they had to leave, that's when he knew he had to kill them,
09:28because he couldn't allow them to abandon him, to reject him.
09:33Many of Dahmer's victims shared a similar profile.
09:36They were mostly men of color who were in peak physical condition,
09:40or in Dahmer's words, had a Chippendale body type.
09:43I think he deliberately selected men in places that he thought these men would not be missed.
09:50And there may have been this piece, I'm speculating on this,
09:54they chose men of color because he wasn't a man of color.
09:58And that way, he wouldn't be a suspect.
10:03Because if these men of color were disappearing,
10:06they'd be looking for someone else of a man of color who might be doing it.
10:09And he certainly didn't fit that description.
10:11Once his victim was unconscious, Dahmer would strangle them,
10:15then proceed to have sex with the body.
10:17But because Dahmer engaged in these activities within the confines of his apartment,
10:22he had the freedom to explore other sexual desires as well.
10:26He would dismember the bodies, sleep next to the corpses,
10:31and cut holes in the torso to use it for sex.
10:34He decapitated and castrated his victims,
10:37would clean the flesh off their bones and collect the skulls.
10:41He drilled holes into his victims' heads in an attempt to turn them into zombies.
10:46So a great question is, how does a person desensitize themselves
10:51to the point where they can actually kill people and have sex with them after they're dead?
10:55Why would somebody want to do this?
10:57Well, their need is so great to be with somebody.
11:00Even if they're dead, at least it is a form of intimacy.
11:03Yeah, think about that. It's a pretty dark place to be in your life.
11:07But people are there. There are people who do this, and I've interviewed them.
11:12In a huge escalation of his behavior,
11:15he also began to eat the flesh of his victims.
11:19So there's different forms of cannibalism.
11:22And some is not sexual.
11:24We know there have been Indian tribes and so forth, they have eaten their victims,
11:28but it wasn't sexualized.
11:29We know in some cases, as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, there was a sexual component to it.
11:34Now, there is the blood part, where he sampled the blood.
11:40So blood itself is a type of paraphilia.
11:44I'm sure he tasted it.
11:46And from there, it was very easy to then taste the flesh.
11:51And of course, you know, terrible thing to say, but it tastes like chicken.
11:55I mean, it was something that they explored.
11:58And so when he realized it didn't taste bad,
12:01then he kept advancing in that and doing more of that.
12:05So Jeffrey ate penises.
12:08I mean, he ate internal organs, and he was, in some ways, I guess, socializing, if you will.
12:13He was exploring their bodies.
12:15And he had some favorite victims, people he preferred.
12:18Physically, they were becoming part of him.
12:21He drank their blood.
12:22They were part of him, and now he eats their flesh.
12:25It was all part of this, I need to feel powerful.
12:29I need to feel I'm normal.
12:32All of this was working towards one grandiose plan that Jeffrey Dahmer had in his mind.
12:37A fantasy that would eclipse everything before it.
12:40So this drawing by Jeffrey Dahmer details his fantasies.
12:44On this end of the table, he had one fully articulated skeleton.
12:48On the other end, another one was in the bathroom.
12:50That he was still taking the flesh off the bones.
12:53And then all these heads on this table behind him.
12:57He says, I could sit in this black chair,
13:00surrounded by my friends, my best friends.
13:03And they could never leave me because they were physically part of me.
13:07And emotionally, they were part of me.
13:10He said, when I could sit in that chair, he said, I would finally feel powerful.
13:15Those are his words.
13:17I would feel powerful.
13:20But the truth is, you never feel comfortable in your own skin.
13:24Jeffrey Dahmer was almost caught several times.
13:28One of his victims, Conorak Synthesymphone,
13:31even escaped at first and was found by police in the middle of the night.
13:35However, Dahmer managed to convince officers that they were lovers,
13:39and the police let Dahmer go.
13:42He had practice, and the more practice he did,
13:44the easier it became, and there was no turning back.
13:47There was escalation, absolutely.
13:50Which would eventually, he knew, he knew intellectually,
13:53that an end was coming.
13:56Absolutely, he knew.
13:59Just before midnight on July 22, 1991,
14:02a would-be victim of Dahmer's, Tracy Edwards,
14:05escaped from Dahmer's apartment where he had been captive,
14:08with handcuffs dangling from one arm.
14:10He alerted police, who accompanied him back to Dahmer's apartment.
14:14When they went to his house, we had body parts cooking on the stove.
14:18I mean, all kinds of, we had them, body parts in drawers.
14:21I mean, you can imagine the stench going to that apartment.
14:25You can imagine the two police officers
14:28who walked into that apartment
14:31and realized that Jeffrey was standing behind them.
14:34And they were looking at these body parts.
14:37I would love to have interviewed them.
14:40What they must have thought,
14:43wait a minute, look at all these heads and the guys behind us.
14:47But Jeffrey knew it was over.
14:50He could have killed them.
14:52But he wasn't, he had, he knew the end was coming.
14:55When the police arrived, he knew he was going to just give it up.
14:58There was no struggle from him at all.
15:00Yeah, he got me.
15:02Dr. Hickey recalls the first thing
15:05Jeffrey Dahmer's mother told him when they met.
15:07And the first thing she said, she said,
15:10my son never tried to hurt anybody.
15:13He killed them, but he never tried to hurt them.
15:16Which was absolutely true.
15:18Every necrophile I've ever interviewed or researched,
15:21none of them ever tried to hurt the victims.
15:23They just killed them.
15:25I'd say 95% of them are not sadistic
15:27because they want the corpse to be with the corpse.
15:29I interviewed a guy, Larry Hall.
15:32Larry Hall was a convicted serial killer
15:34who confessed to the murders of 35 women and young girls.
15:38Larry was a necrophilic killer.
15:40I said, so Larry, when you had the victims down on the ground
15:44and you strangled them from behind,
15:46did you ever look to see their faces?
15:48Or when you had them up against a tree in the woods
15:50and you were strangling them, did you ever look at their faces?
15:52He says, no, why would I do that?
15:54Because he wasn't interested in their suffering.
15:56He just needed them to be dead.
15:58So Jeffrey Dahmer never intended to hurt his victims.
16:02Ever.
16:04Look at some of his interviews.
16:06He talked about how pathetic his life was,
16:08what a waste his life was.
16:10There was no sadism.
16:12What he wanted was to be with somebody.
16:14And so killing them was the process of getting to be with somebody.
16:20Soon after his arrest,
16:22Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to the murders.
16:24The case went to trial in early 1992,
16:27where a parade of psychiatrists took the stand in Dahmer's case,
16:31diagnosing him with paraphilia,
16:32borderline personality,
16:34schizotypal disorder,
16:36and sexual sadism.
16:38But was Jeffrey Dahmer a psychopath?
16:40Jeffrey Dahmer was definitely not a psychopath.
16:43Not even close.
16:45Because every necrophile I've interviewed or researched,
16:49none of them are true psychopaths.
16:52So Jeffrey was a sociopath.
16:55And the difference, there's quite a big distinction,
16:58and I train law enforcement to understand these distinctions.
17:00A true psychopath is someone usually who's very sadistic.
17:05They have no empathy.
17:07They manipulate, they control people.
17:10And certainly we see some of that with sociopaths.
17:13Sociopaths are very emotional.
17:15They still love their moms.
17:17They still have emotional attachments.
17:19So is it possible, then,
17:21that Jeffrey Dahmer felt guilty for the crimes he had committed?
17:24Jeffrey never felt badly specifically for the victims.
17:28I think he recognized that there was a dead zone within himself.
17:33I think most men, I can't speak for women,
17:36have a place where we can go where we don't feel badly about anything.
17:40We can go there, but most of us don't go there
17:43because it's pretty scary to know you can look at someone suffering
17:46and you don't feel badly about it.
17:48Jeffrey had this dark spot in him which grew and grew and grew,
17:52and that's where he lived his life,
17:54was in this dark, dark zone.
17:55On a personal note, I mean, I call that evil.
17:58I think Jeffrey became a very evil person.
18:01Was he a bad person?
18:04It's complex.
18:08On November 28, 1994,
18:11Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by another inmate at the Wisconsin prison
18:15where he was serving his life sentences.
18:17When I met with his mom,
18:19eventually she told me that he finally said to her on a phone call,
18:22he said, I don't want to be in prison anymore,
18:25but I also know I'm too dangerous to be on the streets.
18:28Because he knew if he was back on the streets,
18:30he'd probably do it again.
18:32And what, maybe three weeks later, he was dead.
18:35And I think that when he was attacked,
18:38it was probably a relief for him.
18:41Dahmer was a big guy.
18:43He could have handled himself.
18:45The man who attacked him actually killed Dahmer
18:47and another man at the same time.
18:49I think he had a lead knife.
18:50Dahmer could have fought back.
18:52But he didn't.
18:54I'm sure he did not fight back.
18:56He wanted to die.
18:58And this was his way out.
19:00I think had he not been killed,
19:02that he would have eventually taken his own life.
19:04Absolutely, he would have killed himself.
19:06As he said in his own words,
19:08my life was pathetic.
19:10I think he wanted to end that pathetic life,
19:13recognizing all the harm he had done to his family,
19:16to the community, to our nation.
19:19I mean, it was just so overwhelming for him,
19:22I think that he just knew
19:24what's the point of being alive.
19:26I think he'd gotten past fantasizing
19:28about killing people.
19:30So, when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer,
19:33was he born a killer or made one?
19:36So when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer,
19:38we have to talk about nature versus nurture.
19:40Actually, nature and nurture.
19:42I think that in his case,
19:44there was some chemical depression in the family.
19:46I think he probably inherited some of that.
19:49His father was depressed, his mom was depressed.
19:51And I think that helped set the stage
19:53for the lack of attachment.
19:55Now, keep in mind, we're all different.
19:57So we don't all cope with stressors the same way.
20:01Some people handle stress better than others.
20:03And when we talk about biology and genetics,
20:05we have to realize that
20:07you inherit things genetically.
20:09You inherit temperament, schizophrenia perhaps,
20:11passed on to families.
20:13You have to have the nurturing part.
20:14Nature kind of loads the gun
20:16and nurturing pulls the trigger.
20:18So I think as we go down that pathway,
20:21we have to understand
20:23it's not just one quick, simple answer.
20:25It is complex.
20:27And all the psychiatrists who studied his case
20:30would agree that there was multiple things
20:32that were involved.
20:34So, was there anything that could have been done
20:37to prevent this?
20:39He was a very needy person
20:41and he didn't know how to express himself very well.
20:44He was very sad in some ways
20:46because a lot of this could have been avoided
20:48had there been early intervention.
20:51But he didn't have people to turn to
20:54and he didn't know how to do it.
20:56And by the time he should have, could have,
20:58he was already deep into his fantasy world.
21:01Parenting is so important.
21:04Most people who have troubles like that
21:08don't become murderers.
21:10He really made some choices.
21:12It wasn't like he was mentally ill.
21:14What he was doing,
21:16he just allowed himself to go down that pathway
21:18because his need to be with people was so great.
21:23There was a lot of things along the way,
21:25but he made his own decisions.
21:27And as he crossed those lines,
21:29he got to a point where there was no return.
21:31He could never go back.
21:33And he became much more comfortable
21:35with the idea of being people who are dead.
21:38And that, of course, was a game changer for him
21:41and for our nation.
21:43It is over now.
21:45This has never been a case of trying to get free.
21:48I didn't ever want freedom.
21:51Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
22:12For more UN videos visit www.un.org