Dahmer Charged With 8 More Murders; Bail Now $5 Million

MILWAUKEE - Admitted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer yesterday was charged with eight more murders, bringing the total of formal homicide charges he faces to 12.

Dahmer appeared in court clean-shaven and wearing an orange jail jumpsuit and blue shirt. He blinked slowly, giving polite "Yes, your honor" answers to Circuit Court Judge Jeffrey Wagner.

Nearly 50 relatives of the victims attended the hearing, straining to see the face that may have been the last their loved ones saw before being drugged, strangled and dismembered.

"He wasn't what I expected," Therese Smith, brother of Eddie Smith of Milwaukee, told reporters. Smith's death was among the eight homicide counts filed yesterday.

Wagner granted Milwaukee County District Attorney Michael McCann's motion to increase Dahmer's bail to $5 million cash. McCann, who said he planned to file additional homicide counts in coming weeks, did not elaborate in court on the circumstances of the eight murders. However, ample details were in a court document made available to family members.

"I urged them not to scrutinize it until they get home," said McCann, who met with the families before the session.

The Milwaukee County medical examiner yesterday released the remains of victims to relatives, now able to have burials after two weeks of waiting.

Meanwhile, police named a 16th victim: Steven W. Tuomi, 28, of Ontonagon, Mich. Tuomi, who lived in Milwaukee, was last heard from by his family in September 1987. But they did not report him missing until January 1989.

Tuomi may have been one of three victims Dahmer killed while living in his grandmother's home in West Allis, a suburb of Milwaukee. No remains have been found.

The court document given families of the victims yesterday contain more of the kind of grisly details the case is rife with: Dahmer is described as having had sex with five of his victims after drugging them or strangling them.

He cut out the biceps muscles of one victim, Ernest Miller, 24, and stored them in his freezer, according to the complaint. Miller, who was living in Chicago where he hoped to study dance, was visiting his family in Milwaukee when he disappeared Sept. 3, 1990.

Dahmer also apparently attempted to disguise the skulls of nine of his victims by spray-painting them to look like medical lab models, the document said.

Sex also took place with several victims before they were drugged, according to the complaint.

The complaint sheds further light on the May 27 incident involving Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14, whom Dahmer said he met at a downtown shopping mall and invited to his apartment to pose for pictures.

Dahmer told police he drugged the boy, had sex with him, then went out for beer. When he was returning, he saw the boy stumbling naked in the street. Dahmer said he told police officers called to the scene that Konerak was a friend who sometimes wandered off when he had too much to drink.

Dahmer told detectives he strangled the boy after police escorted the two back to Dahmer's apartment.

Dahmer has confessed to 17 murders.