Murder Suspect's Stepmother Recalls Bones, Chemicals

Family members found bones in the trash and a vat of foul-smelling chemicals containing bones and a slimy residue in the basement of a suburban Milwaukee home where Jeffrey L. Dahmer was living in 1988, his stepmother said yesterday.

Shari Dahmer of Granger Township, Ohio, told The Plain Dealer of Cleveland that incident took on new meaning when Dahmer was arrested on suspicion of murder after 11 skulls and five complete skeletons were found in his Milwaukee apartment Tuesday.

Police identified the first victim as Oliver Lacy, 23, of Milwaukee, a former star high-school athlete in Oak Park, Ill. He was last seen July 12 at a downtown Milwaukee mall, said his mother, Catherine Lacy.

"Now I look at it, and I think that it's possible he was destroying human body parts (while living in his grandmother's home)," Shari Dahmer said.

"At the time, we really never thought too much about it; we feared he was involved with the occult. They were concerned because they would find bones in the garbage pails. He also would dump things into the sewer near the property."

She said several times over about a year his grandmother, Catherine Dahmer, 87, of West Allis, Wis., smelled a harsh chemical odor coming from the basement and the garage.

Catherine Dahmer asked her daughter, Eunice, to investigate. Eventually the boy's father, Lionel, and stepmother also got involved.

"Lionel went up there and looked at the bones and the residue in the containers, but he couldn't tell if they were human or animal bones," Shari Dahmer said. "Jeffrey said it was an animal he found. When he was young, he liked to use acid to scrape the meat off dead animals. He told Lionel that's what he was doing."

Because they couldn't be sure of what Jeffrey was doing, and because they suspected he was picking up men and taking them into the basement for sex, the family decided he had to leave his grandmother's home.

"We knew he wouldn't be able to handle it and that it would mean he would go down the tubes, but we had to do it for his grandmother," Shari Dahmer said. "We could not sacrifice her life for his."

Shari Dahmer said her stepson was always strange. "He couldn't embrace; he couldn't touch," she said. "His eyes are dead."

Shari said Jeffrey lived with her and her husband for about 18 months before joining the Army in 1980. After Dahmer got out of the Army, he moved to Miami and worked in a sandwich shop. But after several months he returned home. He lived with his father and stepmother for about six months before moving to his grandmother's home in 1982.

Dahmer said that when she visited Jeffrey's apartment in Milwaukee recently, she was shocked at its appearance. "It was very depressing. It was very, very small. He had black drapes, a black spread, black lights and two statues of griffins (mythological beasts) next to lava lamps."