Autorentext

Anne E. Schwartz is a veteran print and broadcast journalist, author, and a nationally recognized trainer of strategic communication and public relations for emergency management professionals as an adjunct professor of the National Criminal Justice Training Center. She served as communications director for the Milwaukee Police Department for eight years. In 1991, as a reporter for the Milwaukee Journal, she broke the story of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and would go on to write one of the first Jeffrey Dahmer books, The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: The Secret Murders of Milwaukee’s Jeffrey Dahmer. In 2022, Schwartz appeared in the Netflix docuseries Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes as a leading expert on the case. She lives in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

Klappentext

The shocking true story of the Jeffrey Dahmer’s murders, as told by the Milwaukee Journal reporter who broke the story, Anne E. Schwartz—from the dramatic scene when police first entered Dahmer’s apartment to the lasting, present-day repercussions of the case. This updated edition of the book includes a new preface and final chapter, including how the case continues to affect the principals involved more than three decades later.

One night in July 1991, two policemen saw a man running handcuffed from the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer. Investigating, they made a gruesome discovery: three human skulls in Dahmer’s refrigerator and the body parts of at least 11 more people scattered throughout the apartment. Shortly thereafter, Milwaukee Journal reporter Anne E. Schwartz received a tip that would change her life. Schwartz, who broke the story and had exclusive access to the principals involved, details the complete, inside story of Dahmer’s dark life, the case, and its aftermath: the horrific crime scene and the shocking story that unfolded; Dahmer’s confessions; the forensics; the riveting trial; and Dahmer’s murder in prison. The book also features 32 black-and-white photographs throughout.

Author Anne Schwartz’s access to exclusive and confidential information makes Monster the most thorough accounting of the Jeffrey Dahmer case, and a comprehensive narrative on one of the most notorious serial killers of the twentieth century. It is essential reading for viewers or Ryan Murphy's Neflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and other true crime docudramas.
 

Zusammenfassung
The real story of the shocking Jeffrey Dahmer murders, as told by the reporter who broke the story.

Leseprobe
Chapter 1: The Discovery (July 22, 1991, 11:25 p.m.)
The late-night call from a source is every reporter’s dream, which occasionally turns into a nightmare. Awakened by the ring of the telephone a little before midnight on Monday, July 22, I reached for the pad and pen I always keep at my bedside so I can jot down what the caller tells me.
     Without giving a name, the excited voice of one of my police sources said, “Rauth and Mueller found a human head in a refrigerator at 924 North 25th Street, apartment 213. There are other body parts in the place, too. You aren’t gonna believe what-all’s in this goof ’s apartment. . . . You’d better get over here before all the brass shows up and all you get is a bullshit press release.” Cops! What kidders. But what if it was not a joke? Bob Woodward from the Washington Post got whispered tips on the Watergate story from Deep Throat in parking garages. That was national news involving the president of the United States.
But this is Milwaukee. Nothing ever happens here.
     I dialed the lieutenant in the Criminal Investigation Bureau at the Milwaukee Police Department, who chides reporters for wasting his time with what he considers stupid tips and worthless stories that editors demand their reporters pursue. When on duty, he sits at a desk for his entire shift and dispatches detectives to crime scenes, keeps tabs on the progress of all investigations, and handles calls from the media, the latter being the least favorite, hands down, of any of his duties.
     “Lieutenant, what can you tell me about something in a refrigerator on North 25th Street?” I asked in a just-awakened voice and waited for the inevitable response.
     “How in the hell do you know about that?” he barked. “Jesus Christ, you reporters! Do you guys mind if we ever get there first and find out what’s happening before you tell the whole world?”
     The average person takes about an hour to get ready for work. But a reporter eager to be first on the scene will grab whatever articles of clothing are closest to the bed. I didn’t know what I’d thrown on until much later, when television camera lights set up at the scene revealed that I had chosen two mismatched sneakers and black underwear beneath white shorts.
     I hopped into my brown 1979 Chevy Caprice and, pushing the accelerator to its limit, drove from my neighborhood several miles into the bowels of the city.
I was familiar with the area surrounding the Oxford Apartments. There I had reported on scores of stories about shootings, stabbings, armed robberies, and arson. I knew the drug houses by sight after spending hours waiting for narcotics officers to hit the doors and then spill out, preening with their arrests.
     When I pulled up to Dahmer’s building, there was no crowd of onlookers and television cameras and no other reporters. Maybe it was all over. Out in front, a fire engine’s red strobe lights pierced the darkness, not an unusual sight, because firefighters are the first responders to any emergency.
     I noticed a woman sitting on the front stoop of 924 North 25th Street, probably seeking some respite from the heat in the building. Pamela Bass, a large black woman in her thirties with her hair pulled severely back from her face, looked up and opened the locked glass door that led to the lobby.
     “I don’t think you want to go up there,” she said, obviously shaken and struggling to pull her maroon nylon robe tight around her body. “The man was my neighbor, you know. I had no idea, no idea at all. They found a head in the refrigerator, you know.”