In September, I received an official list of all the things that had been collected from Jeff’s apartment. Sixty-nine separate sheets, all of them headed POLICE INVENTORY, listed the residue of my son’s life.
There were the videos he had watched, some innocuous, like Blade Runner and Star Wars, some darkly suggestive, like Hellbound and Exorcist III, and still others that were grimly pornographic, Hardmen II, Rock Hard, and Tropical Heat Wave.
There were the things he had read, all of it pornographic, with the exception of four books on the care of fish.
There was the music he had listened to, Motley Crue and Def Leppard’s “Hysteria.”
There were the food supplements that had strengthened him: Yerba Prima, Vita, and Anabolic Fuel, incongruously assembled with the junk food of a careless life, Doritos and Ruffles chips.
There were the things that had helped destroy him: bottles of rum and cans of beer, an alcoholic’s indiscriminate collection, Budweiser, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Miller High Life.
There were chemicals he had used to clean: Clorox bleach, Woolworth Pine Cleaner, and Lysol. There were chemicals he used to preserve: formaldehyde and acetone. And there were chemicals he had used to kill: chloroform and ether and halcion, as well as to break down the flesh of the newly dead, Soilex, six boxes. There were even chemicals he had used to conceal the things that he had done: Odor-sorb, also six boxes.
There were utterly neutral things, suddenly made sinister: three black-handled forks, two butcher knives, a pair of chemical-resistant gloves, a handsaw with five detachable blades, and a three-quarter-inch drill.
There were ordinary things, suddenly made unspeakably perverse: barbecue sauce and meat tenderizer.
There were the few things he used to beautify his life: an ornamental driftwood, artificial peacock feathers, and a lighted fish tank.
There were symbols of the modern world: a computer and a software manual, a guide to learning DOS, a blue-and-white laptop box cover. And there were artifacts from an ancient world: two plastic griffins and an incense burner.
There were the things he used to sustain life: a box of fish food. And the things he’d used to take it: a pair of nickel-plated handcuffs.
There were, at last, the inescapable remnants of the awesome damage he had done, each item grimly listed in the same terrible inventory:
- 1 Pillow White w/ Light Blue Flowers w/ Blood Stain
- 1 Pillow Black Case & Pillow w/ Blood Stain
- 1 Bed Sheet Black Fitted w/ Blood Stain
- 1 White Mattress Cover White w/ Blood Stain
- 1 Pillow Case Black w/ Blood Stain
- 1 Mattress w/ Blue Flower Pattern w/ Blood Stains Both Sides
-Lionel Dahmer, A Father’s Story
(via dahmersfishisnamedalbert)
(Source: effyeahjeffreydahmer)
The back of the Oxford Apartments where the human remains were carried out from Apartment 213.
(Source: effyeahjeffreydahmer)
