Cultish: Dahmer - A Cultish True Crime Story Pt. 1

A gruesome story leads off our newscast. Milwaukee police found body parts in a

Northside apartment, and now they wonder if they've uncovered some kind of death factory. This was the scene earlier this morning.

Police hired a private contractor to haul a refrigerator and a tank of acid out of the apartment in the 900 block of North 25th

Street. Because of the acid, some neighbors were evacuated briefly. Police found parts of bodies, leading them to believe the man they arrested is a mass murderer.

From our investigation, we feel that this individual strongly is involved in other homicides.

We have taken evidence out of the building by the medical examiner to be examined.

What brought the police here in the first place? The officers were stopped by an individual who claimed he was in the apartment and became engaged in a dispute with the owner of the apartment and left the apartment and called the officers.

A 31 -year -old man was arrested at that apartment. The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner will release more details on this case this morning at 10 o 'clock, but a police lieutenant tells us he suspects this case could get national attention and could be the most gruesome case we have seen in Milwaukee in years.

Welcome out to Coltishlees, and gentlemen, my name's Jeremiah Roberts, one of the co -hosts here.

Andrew the Super Sleuth is not with me today. He is currently sleuthing on a couple different projects, given all that we do here at Coltish.

I am joined by two of my good and close friends. It's good to have you back.

It's been a full year since we did our last crossover. Has it really? Yeah. Wow.

It's been about a year. Oh my gosh. A little over. You guys, time is going so fast for me. I know.

I'm larger, too, as well. I'm disturbed by how fast it's going for me. I know. A lot of changes then.

I'm getting married. I know. I know, it's exciting. Oh my goodness. In our last crossover, did you have

Tobias? Oh yes. Okay. Yes, but he is gonna be two this coming January. He is turning into a little giant.

Oh my gosh, he's so much fun. I love that little dude. He loves you, too, so much. Uncle Nick. So, obviously, elephant in the room, we are gonna be talking about something that's been on everyone's minds, especially given the recent

Netflix television show and a couple other documentaries. It seems that everyone's talking about it. Jeffrey Dahmer, obviously, has taken somewhat of a resurgence.

He has been kind of a cultural icon in the history of true crime. This is gonna be our true crime couch -divided crossover.

We're gonna be talking about the crimes, but also trying to really kind of look at the psychology and some of the sociology, and also how do we even make sense of this horrific story.

Just real quickly, tell everyone just a little bit about yourself and your podcast. And so people kind of get an idea of where you're gonna be coming from, where we're all gonna be coming from together on this controversial subject.

Sure, you wanna start, Nick? Sure, I'm Nick, and I'm an alcoholic. No, my name is

Nick, Nick Thomas. If anybody listens to the show, they know I begin every show with that, with a glorious Dr.

Robin Hall. Glorious, yes. Yes, yes, yes, right across from me. My study is in counseling and behavior health.

That's where my degree is as well. I have an affinity towards new theta counseling, and I like long walks on the beach and everything like that as well.

And I'm very excited to do this episode. If there's anything more that you would like to know about me, you can email me personally if you'd like.

And you are co -host to our podcast, which is A Couch Divided, where we try and bring a

Christian worldview to secular psychology, or I guess analyze secular psychology through a

Christian worldview, really. Well, just do, like, I'm a fan of your podcast as well, too.

And it's so good because even to this day, as much as has come out just about the nature of mental health, and even as we're learning today, it's still, sometimes in the

Christian churches, it's still like a taboo subject. And I love so much the emphasis that you both put on it with all the subjects, you know, about PTSD, trauma.

Even, I think you even have explored some other true crime ideas on your podcast, talking about the nature of evil.

Psychopathy. Yeah, psychopathy. We've even done, you know, sort of a cultural topics of mass shootings and things like that.

Or even Roe v. Wade. Yes. And talking about the nature of our minds and how to acclimate. How COVID -19 is.

Oh, yeah. We should probably do like a revisit of that now that we're in 2022.

Yeah. Oh, yeah, I would love to. Now that we're, you know, two years out from zero day. What were they called?

Yeah. Ground zero. Ground zero. Ground zero. Guys, I'm a mom. I got what you're saying. I got what you're saying.

I'm glad that both of you know me well enough that you knew. It's interesting because we just did a podcast on impulsive behavior as well, which might tie into the nature of the topic that we were talking about today.

But it was a very good episode. It's getting a very good response. I would implore anybody to go check that out.

Yeah. Okay. Well, let's have a conversation. Let's jump into it. So I think maybe the first thing we can explore is that, look, why should we discuss this?

I mean, like I said, and again, we are going to be discussing it. So again, as I gave the warning disclaimer at the beginning, this content,

I mean, we're not gonna have make a huge emphasis on the intricate details of every single crime that Jeffrey Dahmer committed.

However, it is graphic and mature in nature. So if you are a mom at home, listen to podcasts along doing laundry with your kids,

I think you might be good to maybe listen with discretion, maybe put in the earbuds. If you're sensitive to aspects of true crime, this honestly, this may not be the best podcast for you.

We'll be back with some other episodes later on. I just wanna make sure you're wary of that. So just please be cautionary as you listen and listen with discretion.

But we do think this is the world that God created. This is a fallen sinful world. Right. And I think there are levels in which we should look at this tragic and horrific story.

So what are your thoughts on like, why should we discuss Jeffrey Dahmer? Sure. Well, I'm gonna plug myself really quick.

Because I didn't when I was like, don't forget you're a co -host. Oh yeah, we forgot about you.

My gosh, my ring, ADD moment. Guys, Jerry's planning a wedding. I have a son.

I think we get grace here. I'm the only one that's single here and I still forgot that, yeah. Yeah, real quickly too, when you're planning a wedding,

I was saying that beforehand, it's like when you're only, when you go from planning 15 things all at once down to maybe nine things all at once.

You suddenly feel like you can rest. You can rest. And I might have just barely gotten to nine things.

So I'm trying to adjust myself. So he's trying to stay awake. And I'm taking notes. So Dr. Mindhunter Hall. Yes, so.

Tell us a little about yourself. Well, I've been a guest on your show for a long time now, which is super awesome.

So I have my doctorate. My name is Dr. Robin Hall. I have my doctorate in clinical psychology and a specific interest, a personal interest in true crime, criminal psychopathology.

It's probably like the dessert of psychology for me if we're going to make a metaphor of it. Maybe I should be more careful considering we're talking about.

I hope you're not eating when you. No, not at all. No. But I do have some really cool experience in training, actually working with no one like Dahmer specifically, but individuals that we might categorize similarly or in categories that we would liken to, you know,

Dahmer's kind of unique unicorn self. So I'm really excited to speak to this.

I think it's really fascinating. But to answer your question, I think the first thing that comes to mind for me when we talk or we're talking about somebody like Dahmer, we almost can't help ourselves, but look toward it, right?

I mean, that's kind of a cliche thought, that we can't tear our eyes away from a train wreck, a car wreck, but there is some legitimate truth in that.

And when we start finding out things about Jeffrey Dahmer, who for all intents and purposes, looks like a normal fellow, right?

It's really incongruent, right? It doesn't make sense to us. How can this happen? We're not really safe, right?

Look at, I mean, all the times that he was able to evade capture when he really shouldn't have been able to evade capture.

We're, psychologically speaking, we're interested in things like that. When we were prepping for this episode, one of the thoughts

I kept having was Dahmer, he's a unicorn among unicorns, right? So even among serial killers, he is unique.

And we'll talk about that a little bit. But I think first and foremost, it's really like, when we see something this traumatic, tragic, it's hard to pull our eyes away from it.

And parts of us identify with the victims, the families, parts of us identify with Dahmer.

And I don't mean that most of us sit around wanting to cannibalize people, but he gives us an opportunity to vicariously explore a question we all ask ourselves, whether we admit it or not, but like, what's evil in me, right?

How do I explain or explore what's evil in me? As Christians, we have an answer to that whole question.

So that's what I think first and foremost, primarily, it's interesting because it's so, it's weird, it's bizarre.

We like that kind of thing as human beings. Hey, what's up, everyone?

Have you ever wanted to get behind the microphone and chat with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show here at Cultish?

Well, guess what? You get to do exactly that this October, October 27th through the 29th at ReformCon.

It's going to be a great and awesome live conference. There's going to be a lot of great speakers. So if you want to get behind a microphone with myself and Andrew, the super sleuth of the show, go to reformcon .org.

Get your tickets right now, October 27th through the 29th, and can't wait to meet you all there and have a great conversation.

Now back to the episode. Do you think like the uniqueness, the appeal to me, you think of all the true crime podcasts that are out there and there's been plenty of discussion on Domino's specifically, even before it became like a big thing, especially with the show on Netflix that had come out that got everyone talking.

Do you think maybe there's an aspect where people, we can almost, we can look at these crazy extreme examples because it's kind of safe to view them over there.

Like we all know there's something intrinsically wrong with us. Yes. Like in a weird way, is it kind of like a dim mirror or what's the psychology behind like that ill -conceived crime?

When I say vicarious, that's what I mean, right? When we look at something that we are disconnected from, like a crime, something serious, somebody committing a murder or like a kidnapping or a robbery, right, that goes wrong, we get to ask ourselves the questions that we assume the perpetrators are asking themselves in the commission of those crimes, right?

Is it worth it? Will I get caught? Do I care? We absolutely use it as a mechanism to explore that because as Christians understand, we are inherently bad.

And bad in that we are haters of God. We rebel against God. Children of wrath, children of Adam before God saves us.

So we don't have to go far at all to understand depravity as a

Christian. But it's, yeah, it's fascinating. That's one of the reasons

I'm interested in it. I'm so fascinated by what brought you there. Like how did these pieces come together to bring you to this place?

And I think another side of that is if we can understand someone like Dahmer, then we can protect ourselves from him.

Right, right. And that's actually the avenue where I was going to as well because a lot of this is, well, like we said before we started recording, this is the nature of case studies too, to find out why certain patterns of behavior happen.

And then can we prevent this in the future? And then so that we don't come upon this tragic thing ever again.

Right, so that this kind of calamity doesn't befall or that somehow we can intervene and prevent somebody like Dahmer from growing up and growing into his full -blown killing.

Right, and it's hard not to minority report this. You know what I mean?

Oh, I see the early signs and then all of a sudden you're taking steps that probably don't need to be there. There is very serious danger in that too.

Yeah, so it really does help to have a foundation and an objective reality such as the word of God to know how to handle these things ethically and morally.

But I think more so that we have an obligation as a Christian to find out the truth, to look upon that truth, to abominate it if it is sinful.

And to make it a proverb in everybody's mouths as something to repudiate. And I think that you see that element.

Lord, help us hate what you hate. Yeah, exactly, we see that element all throughout the scripture too.

Well, even too, a lot of the topics we cover are really topics surrounding the supernatural, specifically people in the

New Age. And the primary thing we try and emphasize is that the ultimate lens in which we should see the unseen realm of that world is scripture because we can't see it with our naked eye.

I think on some level there's a similarity to psychology. I mean, even like your doctorate, but not your doctoral thesis.

It's just trying to read that and understand it. I feel like my brain was hurting. And I'm saying the most complimentary way.

Oh, no, no, absolutely. But I think, I remember hearing a TED Talk with somebody who dealt with veterans of people with severe

PTSD. And he said the difference between somebody who's a surgeon, say they're a neurosurgeon, like they know the intricacies of the brain and how everything works.

You think of someone like Dr. Ben Carson, who's done like multiple brain surgeries, or someone like Dr. Rand Paul, who's done tons of cataract surgery.

They know regardless of the person, like this gland is right here, you don't cut right here because this is where an artery is, so forth and so on.

But when you're dealing with someone who has severe trauma, you're handling something you can't tangibly see.

And I think that's one of the complexities too, is that when you're looking at somebody who did this, it's not, this is different than a typical crime scene where the crime has already been committed, thinking about the

Manson murders. Like the bodies had already been there when they discovered this grisly crime scene.

And then they went into investigation to find the perpetrator. Sure. And this case is the exact opposite. They end with Dahmer.

They found the perpetrator first. Right, and had to piece together what happened. And then found the crime scene pretty much at the same time.

And then it's okay, well, how do we actually piece together why he did this?

So really the investigative point of the Dahmer case was really his mind versus anything else.

Oh yeah, yeah, definitely. I think that's accurate. I think another reason that we like looking at things like this, why is this trending?

Why was it the number one show on Netflix for as long as it was? It just got kicked down, I think, last week, or maybe a couple days ago to the number two spot.

It helps us minimize our own depravity. Not only does it help us explore that part, but it helps us minimize it.

Because we can look at somebody like Dahmer and say quickly, most of us can say, well,

I'm not as crazy as that guy. At least I'm not mummifying genitals and eating people's hearts, which are definitely both things

Dahmer did. So I think it is important to acknowledge what you're talking about,

Jerry, which is that there really isn't one organ system that's impacted by trauma.

I mean, you might have a broken arm or a broken leg if you suffered some kind of physical injury, right?

But if you were never physically injured, the systems that work are your nervous system, your endocrine system, hormones, adrenaline, cortisol.

So it is really difficult. You can't just treat, you can't treat an organ system in that way.

And what's also important to acknowledge is it's different for each person.

They might be manifesting similar symptoms, but how they navigate that, level of traumatizing it is, is specific and individual.

And we, I mean, we have guesses about why, but that's what it is. It's just informed hypotheses about why that might be.

But I think that that's why, and we do this with Dahmer. He is so unique, he's so weird.

What he did was so atrocious. I mean, disturbing. I was disturbed. I know you were saying,

Nick, that - I think if you're not disturbed by this, there is something inherently wrong with you. And there's a reason, right.

And I mean, but yeah, in seriousness, I mean that. I mean, I think one of the reasons why is that, I mean, we all inherently know what happened here in this story.

It's tragic and it's evil and it's deplorable. But the question is like, how do you give an ultimate accounting for like why that took place?

Why don't we do this as well too? Just because, how can we give just a, sort of like a brief kind of cliff notes version kind of of the story of just what took place.

Sure. In a way that's not, I mean, given the nature of the story, it is graphic, but we're not gonna be intrinsically detailed.

But we do wanna give people a general idea of what took place here. Anybody that's interested in this, it's everywhere.

Right now, True Crime Garage does, one of their very first episodes is on this. Morbid does, if you can handle lots of cursing,

Morbid does a three part on Dahmer. There's lots of information out there, documentaries, interviews.

So there's no lack of sources for this information. But overall, he killed 17 people.

He started at the age of 18 in 1978. And he stopped just a few days before his arrest in July of 1991.

He killed people primarily in, I think actually totally in Milwaukee, although he did some moving around.

Right. So anyway, we'll talk about that. His victims were mostly

African American men. His first two victims were Caucasian, actually.

Yeah, and so, do you wanna go through the progression, how the crimes progressed? Well, yeah, what's interesting too is that when normal time, when you look at serial killers, they're just doing it progressively.

It's usually a very short amount of time between the murders. Well, there was a substantial gap with Dahmer.

I think that's also maybe interesting to talk about briefly. Yeah, so that's true. But so we could actually see a really clear progression for him, which we would see similarly to other killers probably.

So he commits his first murder when he's 18. His first victim is a hitchhiker named

Stephen Hicks, who is 18 years old. And according to Dahmer, that murder wasn't planned at all.

He had been planning to abduct a jogger. Oh yeah, a jogger. But it just so happened that that day, the jogger didn't show up.

And apparently he had been showing up like every day for months.

And it was just that day that Dahmer was gonna nab him. Oh, talk about God's sovereignty.

Well, he was also, this guy was also hitchhiking to get to a concert. Stephen Hicks was, yeah. So he says he didn't plan on taking him, but he had had a fantasy.

He had been fantasizing about abducting a hitchhiker, taking them back to his parents' house and subduing them, having complete and total dominance over them.

But this is his first murder though. Yeah. And again, I mean, just from your point, given that you've talked with people that are on the other side of the law, getting convicted, getting prosecuted, and kind of seeing people who have these sort of predatorial intentions.

Like even with his very first murder, like what do you think even had him in that spot where that was his mindset?

Even though for even from his own confession, that first murder was very compulsive. Oh yeah. So you mean what brought him to that point?

Yeah. Are you aware? Like, what do you think? What brought him to be where he was in his mind to even do that?

So, okay. I mean, we can only, we can only. We can only postulate. Postulate, correct. So, okay.

So we'll rewind the story a little bit. Again, if you guys are interested in really hearing all of the details of this, there's lots of info out there, but he was born in May of 1960.

At four years old, he had a hernia surgery. And the only reason

I mentioned that at all is because his dad said that there was a remarkable difference before and after this surgery.

So he was described as a, like, happy -go -lucky normal child until four.

And following the surgery, his dad starts to say, like, he would withdraw and isolate and be hyper -focused on things and seem to be a little detached.

So who knows if that was an actual, I mean, we can't say that a hernia surgery caused a personality change, but if he felt, if he was traumatized by the surgery, which

I would have no way of knowing, then he absolutely could experience personality change like anybody who was traumatized following that.

So who knows? His mom was reportedly bipolar and did a lot of attention -seeking things.

Hypochondriasis would have been, like, the diagnosis, if there had been a diagnosis back then. So, like, attention -seeking behaviors.

And his dad was a research chemist, so a smart guy, a scientist.

And he had a little brother, like three or four years younger than him, I think,

David. So he started showing interest at a very young age in anatomy.

And that started, so for anybody that's watched the Netflix Stommer series, you'll see a little bit of this portrayed in it.

And we're not recommending that you watch it. It's really disturbing. I only got through two episodes of it.

I don't consume my true crime through mediums like that anyway. But he, from like a young age, he was very interested in dead animals and their anatomy.

And he, his dad, who researched, knew how to bleach bones and to preserve carcasses and was excited as a scientist, right, that his kid was interested in these things.

So, you know, I think we could speculate about it, you know, unbeknownst to Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey's dad.

He was nurturing an interest in the morbid that he couldn't have known, right?

Was gonna - Didn't know how to filter. Well, you know, so he - Well, a lot of his upbringing, he was very socially awkward and he was also very, very isolative, very introverted.

And maybe, I don't know, do you think maybe you can give your thoughts on this? Do you think there was maybe a part of him where just working on the anatomy of these animals, this is something he did understand or could control?

And so he took special interest in that because the whole world around him, like he couldn't figure out how to socialize. This is one thing

I do understand. So that's totally possible. I think it was more likely a way for him to connect with his dad, because what all of the information that I've come across says is that he was pretty neglected.

His mom was so consumed in her own internal, like, you know, environment and what was going on that when dad was home, she tried to monopolize dad's time with like fits.

And dad wasn't home very much. And when he was away, she was kind of, you know, non -present or not very nice.

So really, if you're looking at this from like a psychological personality development type of perspective, that neglect feeling.

So imagine what happens to you, right? When your mother doesn't find you interesting and she can't use you as a tool to manipulate your dad.

And she's not paying attention to you and she's not loving you and she is not doing the things that other mothers do.

And so you start to believe very quickly that you are not lovable, right?

That you are awful and rotten. And so one of the theories about why

Dahmer would go on to develop an interest in necrophilia could start here, right?

If I'm awful, I know I'm gonna do everything awful. If I have a dead partner, guess what they can't do?

Judge my performance in any way. So you were asking like, how do you get here?

Well, I think it starts with wanting a connection truly, having no idea at all how to gain that connection with another human being and wanting complete and total control over the connection.

He didn't want them to leave. And you'll see that like across his murders, he would get extra angry when they wanted to leave.

He wanted to be the one to decide when they could leave which is why he kept body parts. And I mean, it wasn't just a trophy thing.

It was not wanting his conquest, his friend so distorted, so like psychologically warped but to leave.

And there's one of his victims, I can't remember which one. He tried to freeze and he kept him around for a couple of months.

I mean, he was searching for a way to extend his control over.

The problem is, is that bodies rot, right? And they smell. So he couldn't do, he couldn't keep everyone, right?

Very interesting because even when he tried to stop doing that, the only control that he didn't have was over himself.

So there's an element in there where I get from the scriptures that it says, he's written eternity on man's heart, right?

He's made everything beautiful. It's time. And he's written eternity on man's heart. And there's some mechanism in all of us that faces our inevitable end.

And of course, death and morbidity, you see that face to face.

So he was out in the woods with his friend all the time and he would pick up dead animals and then go and bleach them just like his dad kind of thing.

And collect the bones. And collect the bones. And I don't know if his friend thought anything of that.

I mean, I remember being a kid and seeing dead birds and things like that and poking it and stuff like that.

But I never had an obsession with it. Did you eat the dead bird? No, I did not. No, I did not.

I would mourn actually when I would see those things. That's adorable. I was driving down the street the other day and it was raining and there was a frog and I think

I ran over it. And for some reason, I was a little kid again. I went, oh no, Mr. Frog. Who's Mr.

Frog? The frog that I almost ran over on the road. But it was funny to me. I mean, did you have a pet Mr. Frog? No, it was just funny to me that I said

Mr. Frog like a little kid that attaches Mr. and Mrs. Okay, I'm sorry. And so there was always a sense of mourning but that also has to do with mortality as well.

And you get to understand. I mean, it's a separation from you and the beast kind of thing. So Adam is alone in the garden.

He can't find any suitable partner until, you know, the woe I mean, until Eve kind of thing, right?

And so I think there's an element in there in the human mind that wants to separate yourself from the beast, separate yourself from creation.

And that is the God complex, dominance and control and everything. Narcissism. Yeah, narcissism, everything flows from there.

And then you have the abandonment. He didn't use the word abandonment, but the feeling of the shunning away from his mom and everything like that.

Yeah. The rejection. Yeah, it's a smooth cocktail for him. Hey everyone, if you are watching us right now on Apology of Studios YouTube channel, you need to know that Cultish would not be possible if it wasn't for this studio.

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One of the things that's also when you look at his upbringing and like the isolation that happens, there's also a similar,

I thought of Charles Manson's mother and his relationship with his mother and not being valued and cherished.

Especially now you're viewing a lot of you being now a mother and how important it is to know little

Tobias and know that he's loved, cherished and cared for. I probably go too far. Yeah. Every morning I'm like, okay, 30 kisses.

And then she, and then she. Oh my gosh. Imagine being on the receiving end of like 30

Robin Hoods. Like every single day is the best. He's so squishy too. I know, I know. But you think of the exact opposite of that.

Like I have a distinct memory from my childhood of going, I remember there's a friend of mine, just a kind of a neighborhood childhood friend.

And I would play with him on the street. And then I knew where he lived. One time I walked by where he lived and you know, everyone has those stories where you hear the couples shouting back and forth and how awful that is.

And someone who listening might've grown up in a household where you have that abuse, the domestic violence, or maybe just the very verbal places, the antithesis of what a true biblical patriarchal household should be.

Right. And like the, just the immediate fear. Like I remember going up a street and just hearing that from the outside.

The, like the parents. The parents yelling back and forth, but also he was going back and forth with the parents. So it was all the parents were back and forth against each other.

He's going back and forth with them. And I'm probably six, seven years old. And I immediately know this is not cool.

Like this is not okay. And I remember just being really mortified and going home and just being, oh my gosh, getting back to my house.

Like this is such a safe place. Right. Versus there. But for a lot of people, like that's their life and they can't escape it.

And so a lot of times there's, even as a child, you have to sort of disassociate from that.

So, I mean, that was very indicative of what Dahmer's upbringing household was like. He always had his mother and father really at each other's necks of sorts.

And I'm sure that had some for sure detrimental effects to his upbringing for sure.

Of course, yeah. Yeah, I think ultimately like it ended up in him being neglected, even if there was no,

I have no idea if there was a verbal abuse directed at him by either parent.

It doesn't seem so. It seems like he had at least a relatively okay relationship with his dad.

His dad and his mom did get divorced though and his dad remarried and his stepmom, I don't think was super fond of Jeffrey or, but I don't know that I would be either if he smelled the way that he did and was living in my house.

So yeah, I think the most important thing to remember about Dahmer and his crimes, his first victim was in 78, right?

18 year old Stephen Hicks. His next victim isn't until nine years later.

So in the biz, that's what we would call a very significant cooling off period, right?

Yeah, well, real quickly, one thing, I believe it's the first murder that he did, it was Steve Hicks, right?

Yes, Steve Hicks. With that, and again, this is graphic, but this is the nature of his crimes is that he had to get rid of the body.

He, after he cut it apart. Dismembered it. Dismembered it and put it in several trash bags.

He put it in the back of his car. Yes. And what's interesting is that he was pulled over by the police and you think about plenty of times that as a, in the mindset of any of you are listening in who is a police officer, a lot of times you make your assessment, typical traffic stop.

This guy seems normal, he's friendly. So here's the thing too, I know just in me, like I can have a police car go behind me, my heart starts racing.

Like the last, I mean, it was probably like two years ago, I was in Gilbert and that lane,

I forgot past Elliott, it became a 25 zone. And of course I got docked by, you know, an officer in a police car.

So again, the lights go on, but as soon as the lights go on, it's like adrenaline, like I'm gonna die.

Heart racing, oh no, what do I have? Yeah, so what happens though with Dahmer is that he has his first victim in the back of the car.

In the trash bags. In the trash bags and literally it's like he gets pulled over and he tells them something that's true, which was true about him, that his parents were getting divorced at the time, he was having a really rough time.

And he said he was doing a bunch of yard work and was going to throw away his garbage. But he did it in such a way that was authentic and convincing enough for them just to let him go.

So there's nothing in his behavior that - Is giving away that he has a body cut up in bags in the back, yeah.

Yeah. Yes, that's, I mean, so that would be like a, well,

I mean, how do you say anything as typical psychopath? That narcissism, that grandiosity, that sense of self -importance, the believing that you were like big

God essentially, that no one can stop, that's where that confidence comes from. All I need to do essentially is,

Jerry, we've got like fleas in here or something. That's the second one I killed. Well, you just expressed your dominance over that one.

On my Dahmer. Watch it, want to talk to the exterminator or something like that of Apologia Studios. I think it's the weather.

It's like making the gnats go crazy. It's just, weather's a changing. I completely lost.

Do you remember what I was saying? We were talking about the time when

Dahmer got pulled over and the fact that he was totally stone cold, really poker faced, but really telling the police officer something that was true, he probably was going through difficulty.

He says, I'm just, my parents were fighting, they're getting a divorce, I'm having a rough night,

I just needed to go, I wanted to get out and I thought, why not make a run to the dump? Believable, it gives the officer hearing him something to commiserate with him over, right, and he just killed, he just killed

Steven. So, I'm guessing that it doesn't smell, I mean, it might have smelled a little bit like blood, but I don't know how much decomposition would have been happening yet, in the actual dismembered body parts, but yeah, and the cop lets him go.

And then he goes and buries the different bags in the woods. Yeah. So, from that first crime, which is intense, right, like your first murder, you dismember, you cut the limbs, right, off of the torso, you cut legs at the knees, arms at the elbows, that is, the reason that we have trouble even talking about that, like really, he's not eating the victims yet, so really digesting it, forgive my poor choice of words, is because inherently, like we keep talking about eternity being written on our heart, we're image bearers of God, and when we see another image bearer's body, temple, being disrespected like that, it's like we rebel against that at an innate level, right, at a cellular level.

Yeah, it goes to show you that Romans one holds true, is that the wrath of God was revealed onto all mankind.

The reason why we can abominate such things or even look away is because we know that there's wrath upon that action right there, and it comes from the sinful, well, all sin starts from the heart, so it's innately,

I mean, there's gotta be some kind of speculation in every single human that is that, without God's common grace,

I could be that, I could get close to that, you know. A lot of people who do bank heists, there's a whole psychology behind that, if you look at other true crime podcasts, but a lot of people who do those heists don't even do it for the money.

There's almost an addiction of I can do it and get away with it. It's a thrill of doing the job, not necessarily the money, which is so many times it's so hard to walk away.

My question is, that's an element that took place in his first murder, like being pulled over and saying, not only do

I have a dead body in the back of my car, that's in a trash bag, I fooled this person, because as you see the progression of Dahmer, it's not just he's progressing and doing these horrific murders, but it's also him progressing in manipulating people, and so it seems to me that first interaction would have been like, oh,

I got away with this, I got him to believe what I wanted him to believe. Yeah, oh, and it probably would have been at least twofold, the relief, like he believed me and I'm leaving right now and he's not searching my vehicle, and also

I can do anything, like literally no one can stop me, look, look what

I did, this is my first time. He probably didn't think I'm a kid myself, but this is my first time doing this, and look, another piece too that I totally space mentioning,

Dahmer is already a legit alcoholic. He was bringing, are you ready for this,

Jerry? Whiskey flasks into school in seventh grade, just drinking in class,

I'm like, school must have been real different in the 60s. He had a very serious substance abuse problem, and I mean,

I can't even imagine being 12 years old and carrying a flask with me, but you guys both know, we've talked about it openly before,

I have a drug history and I cannot imagine bringing a flask to school with me at seven years old, or it being allowed, but like multiple people that went to school remember him doing it, they could smell it in the flask.

If I can do some, like a personal plug, is that how you put it in the beginning? Is that I remember in high school wanting to take advantage of the almost being caught thing as a thrill.

So when I would do various drugs in school, it was awesome to go to class and not get caught.

Or like, look how stupid this person is, they don't even know that I'm like this right now.

I'm tricking you. Yeah, it was a thrill of, I know something that you don't, and here

I am doing it, and you don't have any idea how good am I, how bad are you. Edmund Kemper, I think we might,

I might've talked about this on our Sheologians crossover that's coming up, but Edmund Kemper talks about an incident like this too.

So he was the co -ed killer. One night he has a severed head and a bowling bag.

It might've been a whole body, but at least a head. And he's just walking up his apartment stairs past this couple, this couple that's laughing and happy.

And that moment for him was one that stuck out in his mind for those exact reasons that you just identified.

So anyway, there is a pathology to that, right? If you are addicted or addicted to the rush of that.

So what you were talking about earlier, Jerry, the like, you see this jump, that's actually, it's not uncommon to see jumps happen.

I'm actually not sure how uncommon nine years is. That seems like a hefty period to not, but he did join the army.

Was it the army or the Navy? It was the army, but not only that, he became a combat medic.

So he was actually learning to become, so it wasn't just - He went to Germany. Yeah, so it wasn't just his high school and bringing in, studying animal anatomy.

Now he is actually understanding not only humans, but the different drugs that you can use to sedate them.

Now his alcoholism got in the way in that. And he was discharged because of his alcoholism, yeah.

Okay, so for all of you guys out there that are like current service members or former, like you guys are veterans, imagine what it would mean to be kicked out of the army in the 70s for being an alcoholic.

He had to have been such a severe alcoholic.

I can't - Yeah, he was probably not showing up to work. He was taking culture as part of the armed forces. So to even exceed what is expected in that regard.

Yeah, being a medic in the military, and I have family that has been field medics, medical readiness is what they call it, especially when you go off in the war, you do tours, medical readiness gets the people off on the choppers and takes them to the hospital and things like that.

I know, but the particulars of what he was doing, but alcoholism and medicine.

They don't mix. They don't mix when you're taking it and they don't mix when you're trying to help somebody. So I'm assuming that he couldn't do his job because of that alcoholism, which led to his discharge as well.

Which also, I mean, and a guy like Dahmer who wants control and dominance and let to do what he's going to do, he got a blow right there that he hasn't experienced in a while.

Remember, he would go to school with this stuff and not get caught or he was used to not getting caught. So him not getting caught right now is going to be a big important factor in his life.

Right. Yeah. Because this is the only time where he's really suffering consequences. Getting away with it too. It's not just not getting caught. It's like you, there are so many opportunities throughout his,

I mean, his lifetime of killing, like the season of his killing where he could have been caught and he was not.

It's so funny. I want to go with this because it keeps popping up in my mind, but it really is becoming a parallel to gambling addicts.

And I know that sounds weird. No, no, it doesn't. No, no, I think you're, go ahead. I think I know where you're going, but go ahead. Because I've talked to a lot of gambling addicts and it's not necessarily the thrill of winning, which gets them high.

Which, that is going to. Yeah, it's the risk of possibly losing everything. Yeah. That's the high.

Right. And I don't know if that's where you thought I was going to go, but for some reason, it really resonates within me.

And I was like, man, he's acting just like a guy that is possibly, I mean, going to be devastated with everything, but getting away with it is the high, which elicits a normal reaction when he finally does get caught at the end where he's kind of stoic in it.

And it's like, yeah. Well, I think. That was a good ride. You know, being flat emotionally is something he's accused of his whole life.

Yeah. Well, I think what's also, before you jump into your next statement, I think as we're going through this, it's that we're looking at a descent into true madness, because just that crime alone is horrific enough.

Oh, yeah. But eventually all these variables together almost created this head gasket, which alluded to a whole amount of horrific crimes that took place in Milwaukee that was, that shocked the whole, shocked the nation at that time.

But I think one of the descents into madness too, is if you try and understand what happened with Dahmer outside of the biblical worldview, because if you start from any other point, like if you're looking at it from the process of evolution, it's like, well, this is just people, different bags of protoplasm acting according to their logical conclusion.

What's, if it's survival of the fittest, where are we taking and accounting for the ethic of manipulating people?

Or you look at that and you look at all the trauma of what the family is all collectively experiencing.

If you know, if any of you are familiar with the story of Dahmer, when you look at the infamous tape of the one woman during the court when she's,

I mean, we'll talk about this later on, when she basically rushes Dahmer because of the fact that she had a loved one taken from her.

I mean, that's, when you're looking at that, you're looking at real, this is a real gravitas. You can't explain it anywhere else.

And I think this is one thing I just want to say real quick and we'll jump on here, is James chapter one, verse 14.

And he says, but each one is tempted when he is carried away and enticed by his own lust.

And then when lust has conceived, it gives birth to sin. And when sin is accomplished, it brings forth death.

That in a nutshell describes Dahmer. This is like God in his word has given us a basis where we can actually give an understanding and accounting for the gravitas to say, no, this is definitively evil.

Because everything that happened with these 17 people that were murdered by Dahmer, these people were image bearers of God with unique dignity, value, and worth.

I love the fact that that Bible verse uses the word lust at the end, or in some translations, it goes by their own lust.

And really we are a needy people. And because of the corruption of original sin, we seek to gain some kind of homeostatic, homeostasis sort of being to satisfy urges.

And there are healthy ways to do that. Like when you're hungry, you eat. And then there are evil ways to do this as well.

And that is the nature of the manifestation of sin, not just in a heart, but in an action as well.

And so I kind of love the way it puts it in lust because it is a gravitating towards of wanting to satisfy some kind of urge in a human condition for good or bad.

And so from there, when it started up again, let's jump into that.

What do we know about how it started up again? What was the kind of, it does feel kind of like a matchstick my perspective, it feels almost like without, so you think of like Looney Tunes.

You think of like Sylvester or someone like that or Wile E. Coyote. You see the little eyes go into a room. He wants to see what's going on, lights a match.

There's all this TNT and it explodes. There's all these variables, his alcoholism, this previous murder that he did, these really bizarre compulsive ideas that he had, this all sort of accumulated.

Where did it combust of sorts? So if you asked

Dahmer, because of course people did ask Dahmer, why the gap, right?

Why did you not kill again until September of 1987, right?

So 78 to 87. And he will say, opportunity.

He didn't have the opportunity until September of 87.

And during that time he tried and managed successfully anyway to control those urges, the urges to kill people anyway.

And he would actually argue, I mean you can see any of this in the interviews that he's, that killing was not at all his primary goal or motivation in what he was doing.

What he wanted to do was essentially create a zombie -like state for the people that he was victimizing so that he could control them utterly.

Death was just a side effect of what he was trying to do ultimately.

It was sort of like a prototype in him not being abandoned or not them leaving.

And that's primarily what he would say all the time, I don't want them to leave, I don't want them to leave. Well, if I can't control you in the mind, then death has gotta be the way to go, at least in his thought.

So death was the means to the end. So the end being his desire to engage in sexual activity with someone that didn't move at all, and necrophilia.

So it was what we would, having sex with a corpse is what his ultimate goal was.

Like he tried it on a mannequin at first, the mannequin didn't satisfy that even though he could control the mannequin.

So we see progression like this in sexual deviants all the time. It starts in one spot and then it ends up in a completely, and that's one of the reasons that pornography is so dangerous.

So you start with normal vanilla ice cream type pornography, and that is not at all where you stay.

So anyway, yeah, I don't know what exactly would have been leading up in terms of stress for him to start killing again.

I think it really was probably opportunity. So his next victim was a 24 year old.

His name was Steven Tuomi. And we're not gonna go through all of this, but I think it's interesting to know about this gentleman that was murdered.

This is the only victim that Dahmer says he doesn't remember killing.

So he recalls waking up in a hotel room. I think he was spending a few days away from his grandmother's house, which is where he was living at the time, because they were not getting along.

And he wakes up next to either a dead body in the bed with him, or the body was on the floor in the bathroom.

I read multiple accounts of that. I'm not sure exactly how it actually happened.

But per Dahmer, he woke up, Tuomi was dead, dead already in the hotel room, and his knuckles were battered, and blood and other things were caked, like other bodily things, skin were caked on them.

And he has no memory, according to him, of what happened. But he figured, of course, that he killed him because of the evidence there.

So he claims he was in the full blackout. And he, I mean, I'm sure he was drinking. It is possible that in an alcohol -induced blackout already that Tuomi, or Tuomi, sorry, excuse me.

I meant no disrespect in that mispronunciation, said something that enraged him, and he responded.

Maybe he attempted to leave. Maybe he made fun of Dahmer in some way.

Or Dahmer interpreted something that he said as. I'm leaving. Being made fun of, like ego -wounding individuals, like this is extremely dangerous.

They will react in rage and violence. Do you know, within his confessions about this specific murder, did he mention anything about, because a lot of people wonder this too, what role the demonic had with this?

I mean, he had no control over himself, according to his confession. Was there anything in his tape, at least from his part, where he thought maybe this was the devil who made me do it?

Because I know he did really assume, later on in his confessions, this is my responsibility. He didn't scapegoat on anything else?

So nothing that I read said that he tried to explain this as being taken over by some kind of demonic spirit.

To him, he explained it as being in a blackout, an alcoholic blackout, just being drunk.

But anyway, he did dismember him also, and he put him into a suitcase, and that's how he removed him from the hotel.

And then he brought him back to his grandmother's house where he kept the body in the basement there for a week before realizing that he needed to not do that anymore.

Well, just also context too is that he went, like I said, he went away from the hotel.

He actually paid and he extended another day so he could dispose of the body.

So he purchased another night at the hotel. He left the premises. He got an oversized travel bag.

That's where he put the body of this person. And then when he got into the cab, the cab person jokingly said, what, do you got a dead body in there?

I mean, you would think of like a weird irony, but in all seriousness,

I think when people are looking and hearing this element of the story, I mean, it's baffling to people.

How can somebody do something like this and be so methodical?

Like I remember one time I reached out to you and I had driven by a car accident and I had saw somebody who was alive less than 30 minutes before.

And I had PTSD for three or four weeks that I had to severely like process and understand that I saw something horrific.

Right. Like how do we even like explain what is even going on inside Dahmer's head when he's making these methodical decisions?

Let me go buy a bag. Okay. Like when the taxi person jokingly says, what, do you have a dead body in here?

Like what's going on in his mind? And then he goes back to his grandmother's basement. I mean, in that moment,

I'm assuming that he is feeling extremely high off the rush of, well, little do you know, cabbie, there is a body in this bag.

So back to the same kind of like grandiosity rush, that narcissistic thrill seeking that we were talking about.

But the detachment, which is what's necessary to commit the murder, right?

I think ultimately starts as a function of something called dissociation.

So it's a God -given mechanism that we all have. Nick and I talk about it all the time on A Couch Divided.

I'm doing it right now. But it's basically a biological mechanism that God gifted us with that allows us to check out when we are in a circumstance that is particularly overwhelming, traumatic, emotionally distressing, physically distressing.

And it can feel like you're kind of floating out of body. It can feel like you're watching the movie of somebody else's life.

There's lots of different ways that it manifests. Depersonalization and derealization.

But some of the theories in criminal psychopathology, specifically with psychopathy and sociopathy, is the more you dissociate and the more you do it from a very, very young age, the more it becomes just easy to turn off empathy.

You can just disconnect from everything. And maybe even ultimately, depending on how bad the abuse, neglect was, just totally shut down that part of yourself entirely.

Because it doesn't hurt as bad if I don't care about it. So that leads to objectification, which is you're not a person, you are a thing for me to dominate.

If you are no more important to me than this table, I can do whatever I want to you. That's what makes people like Dahmer, sociopaths like Dahmer so terrifying because they don't look at you and see somebody with value.

Which even non -Christian people, they get really disturbed by this. Most of us look at this and think, how could anyone do this?

Well, if I don't think that, if you're no more to me than the gnat that I just swatted, however many minutes ago,

I can do whatever I want to you and I will. It's expressed all over organized crime too as well.

Somebody, a human being is just in the way of the business that I need to get done. Or if I don't take care of them, like whack them, that's what they would say, right?

Then them being alive is one step closer to me being caught or me not completing this business deal, whatever, whatever it is.

And when you look at human beings as just in the way kind of thing, obviously that's a narcissistic mentality and a disassociation from Normandy of how we're supposed to love our neighbor.

Did either one of you see the Irishman, the Martin Scorsese film? Did you see it? Like eight times.

It's three hours too as well, so that's a lot of hours that I spent watching it. Is that the one with Joe Pesci in it? Joe Pesci, Al Pacino, Robert De Niro.

Yeah, no, I have not seen it. It's like their last hurrah. It's great. Well, in it, what made me think about this is -

I can see you all over your face, it's so great. I just wanna talk about this movie. I love Scorsese. Can we just talk about this movie now?

Right. But in this, like Rob De Niro's character, he's this hitman and like part of just what he does is he just does the dirty work for the mob.

And you see him, he'll, you know, just off a guy, throw him into the river, but they would also would just historically, this is a true, like in New York, I think it was in New York where they placed it.

They would just chuck their murder weapon over into the river and all of a sudden, and you would just see just all of these guns just resting at the bottom of this river, but like he's doing it like nonchalant.

Like this is his nine to five. Like me, when I worked at Costco, right? I would work as a janitor driving that giant, what do you call it?

Machine. Machine, the cleaner. The floor. Yeah, Zamboni, I think it's called. I would drive the Zamboni around, do my thing and I'd clock out.

And no, that's just methodical. Like this guy's doing, he's offing these people like it's nine to five. It's no more him than cleaning the floor at a

Costco. Frank Irish, let's go back to the Irishman, Frank Irish. I love that scene when he throws the gun into the ocean.

He goes, if anybody went diving down there, they can arm a small country. That's how many guns were there.

But he was also in the war as well. And there was a time in the war, cause he would pray, you know, please

God get me out of this and things like that, where he realized that he wasn't going to die or that was his mentality.

And he made it through the war. And he thought in life after that, that if I just do what

I'm told and be a good soldier, that's it. And that became a stoic kind of thing on him too as well, because it didn't seem to bug him anytime that he had to do something until his best, well, he had to shoot his, you know, his best friend.

Yeah. So, but again, you see the psychology behind somebody who's completely disassociated in a bad way.

Like I said, there's a good way, there's a way that God made the world even to protect us from things that are traumatic.

Like there's probably things that happened in my own brain and my own wiring. I wasn't even aware of when I saw this car accident and I was doing things that actually were good for me.

I didn't know how to actually do it in a way, which is why I initially like had reached out to you all those years ago, which is interesting.

But I think what's just so interesting about the whole true crime aspect of it is that even now today, like we are in this sort of postmodern, you know, everyone gets to define truth for themselves.

You can be who you want to be. But it's challenging, a story like Dahmer is so challenging because we look at this horrific story and these people who were victimized and murdered by him.

It's like all these things are absolutes, no ifs, ands, or buts, but no one knows how to, no one knows, or maybe they're even a little afraid to try and explain it.

I think that's just very, very interesting. Hey, what's up everyone? We love that you are enjoying our content on a weekly basis, but this program cannot continue and wouldn't be possible without your support.

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and check out all the awesome merch. Back to the show. Yeah, and sometimes explaining it,

I mean, we cross a boundary where we think we're giving it validity, where we're making it acceptable in some cases.

And I get that feeling. I think that we all have that in there. We don't want to give it more light than it already has.

Well, it's really important that we make a distinction between an explanation and an excuse. Because those aren't the same thing.

And I do understand very much wanting to know how certain things come together to produce this result.

But as Christians, we actually have all the answers to these questions before we take any deep dive in.

Total depravity. The fact that we all aren't Dahmer, that we all aren't cannibalizing each other is grace from God.

And if you have a problem hearing that, just go to your Bible.

Read it until you see that what I'm saying is true to the word of God. And we as Christians have an obligation towards the truth.

Absolutely. And so we do need to see things like this, or at least the investigative part.

And we need to speak to it. Yeah, we need to have a response to things in the culture. And I start thinking about this because a lot of times they will say, the longer you put it on the news, the more popular and famous you're gonna make this event.

The one way to make it go away is to not talk about it. And I remember the words of Dr. White talking about this about book burning.

And he said, if you wanna make a book eternal, then burn it. Because everybody's going to wonder what you're hiding.

But if you want to stop a book in its tracks, refute it. If that's the case, that means that you need to read it and you need to knock it down, kind of thing like that.

And of course, when crimes like this happen, I think that mentality suffices for this situation as well, is because you need to understand the truth, what it is and abominate it and refute it so that it does not become this beast in glory later on.

And I think another thing to point out that we haven't yet, but that nobody would have had to point out back in 91,

Dahmer is arrested in July of 91, which is like two months after the release of Silence of the

Lambs in theaters. Wow. So that's like all over the newspaper, all over newspapers you get -

I did not know that, wow. Real life, you know, Hannibal. Like life imitating art. Yes, well, no, no,

I mean, Dahmer was eating people long before. Well, yeah, yeah, but the idea was already kind of in people's minds. When in reality,

Hannibal's, actually it wasn't Hannibal's character that was necessarily mirrored off of Ed Gein.

If you guys are interested in serial killers that like to use body parts, Ed Gein is definitely your guy.

And that is who Buffalo Bill - Yeah, it's based off of, yeah. Right, is based off of in Silence of the Lambs. So yeah, this all coincided.

So you've got what is a naturally interesting and disturbing and morbid thing in the news.

And then you have everybody's mind, because that movie won five

Oscars, I think. Maybe it was six Oscars. And it's weird for a horror film to get that much attention. Well, I know,

I don't know, do we call that a horror film? It's a thriller. Yeah, suspense thriller. It's excellent, excellent. Oh, wait.

Yeah. Was she a great big frat? I'm sorry. What's also, I mean, there's layers. We're kind of getting towards the time of part one.

I mean, there's so many layers to this. And maybe we'll kind of maybe explain some things about the complexities of the trial when he got arrested.

But this is something just when it comes to manipulation, this is something that was probably one of the most horrific accounts of one of the murders that took place is that there was a boy who was 14 years old.

He was manipulated by Dahmer. And I believe at that time there was a 911 call where I think he had already started to do some of his experiments on him.

And he tried to escape. And there was a 911 call that we saw this man who was outside naked.

And he seemed to be really incapacitated. The police came and the woman, both who the 911 call and the two girls who are witnesses who saw the situation were saying, no, this is wrong.

Like, this is, don't let him in. So that when the cops came to assess the situation, they had a prejudice towards the witnesses in the 911 call because they were black.

That's just the reality of the situation in Milwaukee at that time. And also prejudice, you would call prejudice against like homosexuality right here, because in this whole instance, and they do a good job,

I think, of getting it really right detail -wise in the Netflix show, this particular scene.

In reality, so what the victim you're talking about, his name was Conorac and he was actually the brother of one of Dahmer's earlier victims, but not a murder victim, a molestation, a sexual assault victim.

So can you even handle that? But so this is after Dahmer has started drilling holes into the heads of his victims and pouring acid, very, you know, acid in there to try and essentially perform what is a lobotomy.

Again, his goal being to create a zombie -like state for his victim so that he could do whatever he wanted to him.

So this 14 -year -old boy gets his skull drilled with a hole and acid put in, and then he's laid next to a body that's already in the apartment.

This is the body of 31 -year -old Anthony Hughes. And then Dahmer leaves and takes a stroll, three hours is gone.

And when he comes back, the boy, the 14 -year -old, is sitting outside on the steps with these women, and the women have already called the police.

So I think they do a pretty good job of indicating that. The horrible part that you're getting to is that ultimately the police return the 14 -year -old to Dahmer.

Dahmer comes and says what, Jerry? He says that he wasn't, it's my boyfriend.

We are intoxicated. He's intoxicated. I'm just trying to get him back to his home.

And even at that time, when you look at the era, I mean, you think about all the discussion about the LGBTQ plus and that whole thing going on, that's not, that's, this is a very different area during the time of like, don't ask, don't tell.

And so a lot of people look. And now - This is May of 91. Yeah, so people are looking at that situation.

A lot of people would say that the police at that time were saying, well, we don't really want to get involved or have the reputation that we're kind of like getting in the way of whatever these people are doing.

That was just the time, during that time. And so that's, in their minds, why they're doing it.

But then there's a 911 call that's horrific that she's basically saying, like, did you, like, what did you do?

And like, no, we returned him back to his apartment. And she's like, are you kidding me? And he's just saying, no, and it's weird.

It's like, he's saying that it's been taken, that guy on the 911 call is saying it's been taken care of. The officer.

Yeah. And that's one of those things when there's injustice like on so many layers and levels.

And I think, and I just want to say this as we wrap up here, like, this is disturbing. It should, this should disturb you because all of these things presuppose human dignity, human worth, and every single human being who's an image bearer of God.

And the very fact that you're being turned by what we're saying or being bothered by it - Is evidence of that.

Is evidence of that. The reality of that. What were you gonna say, Nick? Well, I remember, you know,

Jeffrey sitting down with his lawyer, his defense lawyer, in a plea for sanity, or excuse me, insanity.

And, you know, she asked him a profound question. You know, why are you confessing? And, you know, why are you being, you know, so open about this?

And he goes, well, I need help. I want to know why I am the way I am. And I can get misty -eyed talking about that because there's a lot of hurt and suffering that goes on with identity, you know, and trying to find out, you know, why you're here, purpose, all that stuff, the dissociation from God because if sin brings us down, a crushed spirit who can bear, you know?

And I talk about this proverb a lot, you know, in our podcast, but he who gains sense loves his own soul.

And he who is quick with his feet sins. That word sense is labe in Hebrew. It means to know yourself.

It means to know your inner will. It means to know your heart. And so there's a proverb that says that, you know, that the love of your own soul is actually knowing your intentions.

When you're dissociated, incognitively dissociated because of whatever trauma that you received, sadness or whatever is going on is very hard to understand the intentions of your heart.

And I think that Jeffrey Dahmer just expressed that when he said, I want to know why I am the way I am.

See, I'm going to go ahead and disagree with you a little. I love your explanation. And I think that that would apply to most of us.

But I think that Dahmer is interested in understanding himself to feed his narcissism.

Not because he cares so much about why he's so awful. I think he's curious about it because he clearly knows, he can observe that he is quite different.

That most people aren't drugging dates, right?

And killing them, strangling them and performing sex acts with their body, dismembering them, mummifying, genitals.

It's, he knows that he is unusual. But I doubt very seriously that there's any kind of existential pull in the way that you described.

Because there is no connection to his victims like that. They're just objects. If you killed somebody, oh my gosh, like the angst because you're not a sociopath.

Yeah, very, very interesting. Yeah, I would agree on that in Dahmer's situation.

Yeah, right. But I think for most of us, that what you described would absolutely apply.

It's these individuals, he totally, totally disconnects. So. There you go.

All right, well then we're gonna continue this conversation in part two. I feel like we've only scratched the surface.

And it's true, there's multiple layers to this. And I think there's other things we can explore too, why this is on everyone's mind.

Really the Imago Dei, the fact that we are made in the image of God, all these things presuppose violations of people who are image bearers of God.

And also the real sense of injustice. Right. The fact that the one lady,

I forget her name, but she's in the apartment, she had called the police multiple times over a month. The neighbor who had talked about the smell coming from the apartment.

And even hearing things that I really don't feel like I need the necessity to describe. You can just put two and two together, given the nature of this trance.

Like unless your neighbor was a lumberjack, you wouldn't expect to be hearing next door at all hours of the day and night, right?

Now I'm not telling anyone to assume that if they hear whirling of saws or anything that their neighbor is dismembering anyone.

But this lady, it wasn't just that, it was this kid, it was the smell, it was how intimidating

Dahmer was to her, right? All of that together that caused her to call in multiple times.

And again, this is another example of missed opportunity here. There's so many opportunities along the way.

There was a, right after his first or second victim, his dad picked up the box that Dahmer was storing the mummified genitals in.

And if you had just have opened the spot, he didn't. He thought it was pornography and didn't.

And it's just like, oh my gosh, think about all the people that wouldn't have died or you hope wouldn't have died if his dad had found this early on.

We catch all these little moments, you know what I mean? Of like, if it just went this way, it would have been totally destroyed before.

And I think that's, as Christians, it's really important to acknowledge God's sovereignty. Like in those details that we catch and the ones that we miss, he's still sovereign.

So, oh yeah, I can't wait to keep talking about this. All right, so if you guys enjoyed this episode, as given the nature of this, or at least were appreciative of it, whether, just let us know what you thought.

Please go ahead and comment on our social media, give us some insight. As always, a program like this, bringing in really the truth of the gospel into a very dark conversation like this is incredibly important.

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