Echoes
of Laughing Policemen |
"Intoxicated, Asian, naked male, was returned to his sober boyfriend." When these words crackled over the police radio, laughter broke out. The reporting officer added, "my partner is going to get deloused at the station." As they drove away, oblivious to macabre symphony in which they had become players, flashes of light, in harmony with the echoes of their laughter, danced through a camera lens to etch on film a memory, an image of fresh kill, a drugged, Asian, naked child. Earlier that balmy May evening in 1991, the youth had appeared on a Milwaukee street. Dazed and incoherent, the unclad boy's staggering caught the attention of Nicole Childress and Sandra Smith who came to his aid. While Nicole called 911, Sandra attended to the boy, noticing that he was bruised and bleeding from the anus. A tall, lanky, blond man approached and, grabbing for the boy's arm, snapped "he's my lover." Sandra wouldn't let go. Police and fire department units arrived. The man again grabbed for boy's arm and the police intervened. "We'll handle this," they asserted as they told Sandra to back off. "I don't need an amateur telling me what to do," he said, rebuffing her request that she and Nicole be listed as witnesses. The blond man explained that the youth was his lover and had run out into the street after a drunken squabble between the two. He offered to take the officers back to his apartment where he could produce identification. The officers complied. At the apartment the man showed the officers Polaroid's of the boy posing, smiling, in his underwear. There were other photos lying about, including photos of naked men, some dead. But none of the officers noticed. A foul stench permeated the air. The officers were aware of it, but failed to investigate. If they had, they would have found it came from a body sprawled across a bed in the next room. Indeed, had they inquired, they would have learned the man they were talking to was Jeffery Dahmer, on parole for second-degree sexual assault committed upon a teenage boy. Dahmer persuaded the officers that they had been called in on a spat between two homosexual lovers, something in which they were loathe to become further involved. All they wanted was to calm things down and get away from that stinking place. The boy was unworthy of a closer look or even a second thought. No one can know what terror may have gripped the dazed boy's mind when the apartment door closed behind the departing officers for, when that happened, he was left alone to meet his fate. But one thing is certain. He was being strangled to death while those who should have rescued him drove away laughing. As the grisly scenario was being played out in Dahmer's apartment, Nicole and Sandra hurried to the home Sandra's mother, Glenda Cleveland, who, after listening to the bizarre tale spill from the girls' lips, decided to call 911 herself. She knew the boy and that he was just a child. And she knew something awful was happening to him. "I'm wondering if this situation is being handled. Because what it indicated was that this was a male child being raped and molested by an adult," she explained to the 911 operator. She was eventually put in contact with one of the officers who had handled the call to whom she repeated her concerns. She asked, "was anything done about this situation?" He replied, "it's all taken care of, ma'am." |