Dahmer Verdict: Jury Took Killer at His Word

In the end, the jurors who decided Jeffrey Dahmer was sane when he killed and dismembered 15 young men and boys cast aside the opinions of medical experts and heeded the words of the serial killer himself.

Dahmer told police he killed “for my own warped, selfish desires for self-gratification,” and the jury concurred.

His confession, as recited by two police detectives, came through more clearly in the three-week sanity trial than descriptions of his mental state--such as “paraphiliac disorder not otherwise specified,” some jurors said.

“The . . . words were confusing,” juror Karl Stahle said after the verdict was read Saturday.

“(But) his whole conduct showed he was a con artist. . . . He had just one thing on his mind--to satisfy his ego and to satisfy himself,” Stahle said.

The jury’s decision that Dahmer was not insane means he will face mandatory life prison sentences. A hearing was scheduled today.

Dahmer told police he drugged and strangled his captives, then had sex with the corpses. He mutilated bodies and ate parts of them.

Wisconsin law required that a jury determine whether Dahmer had a mental disease or defect. If he did, jurors had to decide if he knew right from wrong and whether he could control himself.

“We never got past the first question,” said Russell Fenstermaker, one of two dissenting jurors who said Dahmer was mentally ill. The rules of the unusual trial required that 10 of the 12 agree.

“We all agreed there was a problem,” Fenstermaker said. “Whether we interpreted it as a disorder or a disease is what separated us.”

Throughout the trial, it seemed the factor that would determine whether Dahmer would be sent to prison or to a mental institution was that of control, of his ability to “conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.”

Seven psychiatrists and psychologists testified. Five of them said that Dahmer suffered from a mental disease.