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Milwaukee blacks are incensed because the cops believed Dahmer, who is white, instead of the black women. "This is a very racist city," said community activist Queen Hyler. "You have a white guy killing people weekly, with bodies stacking up in a building occupied mostly by blacks, but the cops are too busy riding shotgun on the black community to pay any attention." Black and gay leaders have called for an independent investigation of the department, claiming that it is still philosophically under the sway of Harold Breier, who retired as police chief in 1984 after a rigid 20-year reign. Meanwhile, Chief Arreola was facing sharp criticism from within his ranks after suspending the three officers involved in the May 27 incident and ordering an internal investigation.
As the investigation continued, a profile of Dahmer emerged that seems to suggest he fits classic patterns of a serial killer. Says Robert Ressler, a former FBI agent and a pre-eminent expert on mass murderers: "Dahmer falls into the subcategory of the sadistic, sexually oriented serial killer who is inevitably a white male loner and usually intelligent." This type of killer, says Ressler, generally comes from a broken home, has had poor parenting and/ or was abused early in his life, usually doesn't marry, is often an alcoholic or drug addict and can be suicidal. Dahmer -- who according to his father was molested by a neighbor boy at the age of eight, though Dahmer himself denies it -- seems to fit most of these criteria.
Last week police searched the grounds of the former Dahmer house in Bath, Ohio, for the remains of Steven Hicks, who may have been the murderer's first victim. In 1978 Hicks, 18, was hitchhiking when Dahmer, also 18 at the time, took him home, killed him with a barbell and smashed his bones with a hammer. So far, about 100 bone and three tooth fragments have been recovered from the grounds. Investigators plan to test them against a lock of hair and dental records that Hicks' parents provided in the hope of proving a match. In a statement issued last week, the Hicks family said, "We have spent a great deal of time trying to understand the motivation for such a heinous crime and concluded that some acts are so evil they simply cannot be explained."