Dahmer's Not Dead

who was bucking to run the state’s department of public safety come the next election. “All right,” she said, “so Dahmer had no visitors other than his mother. What about correspondents?”

“That’s where the criteria is even more unjust,” Alexander told her, “based on the Level Five tag. Jeffrey was not allowed to send or receive mail. Period.”

Helen squinted. “Why?”

The minister shrugged, made a denigrating turn of his mouth. “I haven’t a clue. It’s unconstitutional if you ask me.”

“So is murdering and cannibalizing seventeen people,” Helen couldn’t resist saying.

“For one thing, you’ve been listening to too much right-wing press. Jeffrey didn’t cannibalize all of his victims,” Alexander defended.

“All right. But even if he only cannibalized one of them, why are you so quick to defend him?”

“Because the defenseless need defenders.”

“Defenseless?” Helen wanted to laugh. “He premeditatedly drugged and murdered innocent young men to pursue a sexual dementia.”

A frown drew deep lines into Alexander’s face. “On the outside, true, Jeffrey fell sway to the relegations of evil. But God forgave him of all that. And it’s inexcusable for persons such as yourself to maintain this right-wing, Pat Buchanan, lynch mob mentality.”

Now it was all obvious; the boil had been popped. “I maintain no such thing,” Helen responded, “I’m merely —”

“You’re merely acting like everyone else. No pity at all for the pitiable. It wasn’t Jeffrey’s fault that he became what he became. It was society’s. It was our fault.”

Helen didn’t buy that at all, but she saw little point in debating it. The reverend’s liberal sentiments could not be assailed. “We’re getting off track, Father. I didn’t come here to argue with you.” Then she remembered her own track.

 Mail. Correspondence… Letters.

“I need to know why Dahmer wasn’t allowed to send and receive mail.”

““Ask Oc-Ther,” he said, “after, of course, you relieve yourself from my office. The door’s right over there.”

Helen rose from her seat, secured her purse. “You’re petulant and obnoxious, Father Alexander. But have a good day anyway.”

««—»»

“Groupies,” Wayne Edwards answered her question with the single word.

“Groupies?” Helen stretched the word. But Sallee had made a similar mention now that she thought of it.

Edwards was the Center’s Chief of Occupational Therapy, an attractive man with long dark hair and a beard, and a darker voice. He wore an open flannel shirt with a black t-shirt beneath. Oddly, behind him, hung a Doctorate in Economics. He smoked Marlboros, which caused a rare pang in Helen’s memory. Christ, that cigarette looks good, she thought. But what did he mean about groupies?

“Could you be more specific, please?”

Edwards tapped an ash in a stone tray. “There are a lot of whacks out there, Ms. Closs. Screwed up, obsessive, even pathological. They’re searching for some kind of identity but they’re too maladjusted to find it. It’s the same as rock stars, movie stars, writers, professional athletes—they all have groupies.”

“I still don’t get the significance of—”

“Serial killers have groupies too, lots of them. Pen pals, obsessive fans, like that. We call it ‘remote obsessional codependency,’ and it’s quite a bit more apparent than you would think. Those guidelines from the Bureau of Prisons recommend that any inmate labeled Five or above be barred from all out-of-house correspondence. That’s the only reason Dahmer got the tag: because he was so famous. Here at Columbus County Detent, we follow those guidelines, which I think is a good idea. A lot of prisons don’t. They don’t have to unless they’re a federal prison institution. Jolliette’s a great example, and so is Jessup and Fredricksburg and Lorton, and dozen’s of other local detention centers. They don’t like the federal government telling them what to do, so they’ll ignore any BOP recs. Gacy and Speck, for example, both Level Five convicts at Jolliette, were allowed to correspond with anyone they wanted to. Any letter mailed to them were delivered to them. And any letters outgoing were processed. Big mistake. A lot of these centers believe that the BOP mail restrictions are an infringement of a convict’s rights.”

Helen tried to figure. “In other words, the regs are a good idea because they prevent an inmate from influencing, and possibly inciting, these ‘killer groupies’ on the outside?”

“Well, sure, that’s part of the reason,” Edwards agreed. “Remote obsessional codependents are mentally unstable to begin with. A lot of these nuts will regard a particular killer as something like a god. But another reason is simple good taste. It doesn’t make a prison system look good when a killer’s letters wind up on the street. Look at what happened with Gacy. Now that he’s dead, his letters have a street value of over a hundred dollars each to collectors. Bundy’s letters go for three or four, and Manson… Anything with his signature on it can cop up to a thousand dollars. Can you imagine what a letter signed by Jeffrey Dahmer would be worth to some groupie or collector?”

“Now I get your point,” Helen admitted. It was something she hadn’t even considered.

“So that’s why Dipetro was smart to bar Dahmer from ingoing and outgoing mail. The whole thing’s just a bad move that makes everybody look bad. This center’s received literally tens of thousands of letters addressed to Dahmer. He was never allowed to see a single one.”

Helen agreed with the notion, but it was her bad luck, too. “That pops my balloon real fast,” she said, eyeing Edwards’ pack of Marlboro Box.

“Would you like one?” he offered.

“I’d love one but I can’t. I quit a year ago.”

“Good for you. And what do you mean it popped your balloon?”

“I’m sure you read about the ‘Dahmer’ letter found on P Street the other night.”

“Sure. And I think I just read today that handwriting experts verified it as Dahmer’s writing.”

“That’s right. But I don’t believe for a minute that Dahmer committed the murder. It’s a copycat, and the letter was written well before the murder.”

“Ah, I see,” Edwards said. “And you want to know how Dahmer’s handwriting got out of the prison. Well, I can tell you, we’ve already been all over that.”

“Enlighten me.”

“It had to have been written before he came here, either before he was caught, or during the short time he was in Milwaukee County pending trial.”

Helen had already tried to give that speculation some credence. “I don’t think so. The nature of the letter was religious.”

“But Dahmer had some minor religious fixations before he was even caught.”

“Right,” Helen agreed. “And the major biblical quote in the P Street letter was something Milwaukee PD overheard him say on the day he was arrested. All that was in the papers, sure. But whoever leaked the contents of the letter to the press didn’t quote it entirely. The letter also made a brief reference to Dahmer’s ‘baptism.’“

“Holy shit!” Edward exclaimed. “You’re kidding me? Dahmer wasn’t baptized until last May.”

Helen rubbed her chin in disgruntlement. “Right, and that can only mean that the letter was written sometime after last May, and how can this be, since Dahmer hasn’t been allowed to send any letters since the day he got here?”

Edwards leaned back in his gray, upholstered chair. He eyed her with something akin to amused sorrow. “Looks like you’ve got a hell of a problem on your hands, Captain.”

Helen sighed. “Tell me about it.”

««—»»