Download Subtitles for Jeffrey Dahmer Interview with Stone Philips

talking about a lot of different things hey you're lucky it came up on the day when there's no snow it's snowing like crazy all weekend is that right no how are things going here for you slow and steady nothing uh nothing out of the ordinary really you've read the book yes yes i read the book uh my dad sent it to me uh about last week and uh spent all night reading it was up all night reading is uh quite a surprise to me some parts of it very interesting in what sense uh just uh some of the things that were revealed uh caught me off guard and uh just some some very big surprises in it for me what was it that caught you off guard uh some of some of his insights into uh what he thought of me as i was growing up all set everybody ready okay let's take all take a deep breath your dad comes here to visit about once a month but i get the impression that that the two of you don't talk a lot about everything that happened about the crimes in particular no we we don't discuss that because it's been it's been gone over so thoroughly in the papers and in the media that there's just really no point in going in depth into any in-depth talks about it we we talk about our family home how things used to be what prison life is here is like here now and try to keep things as as light and upbeat as possible is it hard for you to go back and talk about those things uh no not not the good things in fact it gives me a sense of comfort to talk about the few good times there were in the past you say the few good times do you think of your childhood as having been profoundly unhappy no not profoundly my childhood wasn't wasn't filled with any any great tragedies or anything there were good times and there were bad times i think it was fairly normal jeff do you remember your earliest experience and earliest interest fascination with the inside of animals where that came from in ninth grade uh in biology class we had the usual dissection of fetal pigs i took the remains of that home and kept the skeleton of it and i just started branching out dogs cats i suppose it could have turned into a a normal hobby like taxidermy but it didn't veered off into into this why i don't know all i know is that i wanted to to see what the insides of these animals looked like was there some pleasure in in the cutting open of the animal yes there was no no sexual pleasure but just a it's hard to describe sense of power sense of control i suppose that's a good way of putting it yeah yeah i can sort of see a fascination for you know wanting to see or for looking at the insides of animals say for the first time after you did it one time what more is to be gained by looking at another dog's inside the second third i don't know that's it became a compulsion and it switched from animals to humans i i still don't understand it i don't know why what would you do with the with the dead animals jeff you would pick the carcasses up from the road and take them back into the woods take them back in the woods skinned them sometimes slit them slit them all the way open look at the organs feel them there was a sort of general excitement for me i don't know why it was it was exciting to see one of your dad's biggest questions is when you began to slip away when you crossed over into this world of obsession or dark fantasy from which you just couldn't return can you pinpoint that do you is there a sense for when that really began to happen with you jeff i think it was a around age 14 or 15. started have having obsessive uh thoughts of violence intermingled with sex and it just got worse and worse i didn't know how to tell anyone about it so i didn't i just kept it all inside do you have any sense for where that was coming from no no i've talked with a few psychologists about it they they have their theories but they don't have any concrete answers either do you have a theory no not really i i don't know where where it came from i probably will never know but i i never i never dreamed that it would uh become a reality apprehend what was it jeff that took you over the edge do you think and made you take this from the world of fantasy into reality from 15 on i had this recurring fantasy of of meeting a hitchhiker on the road and of taking him hostage and and doing what i wanted with him about three years later i was 18 years old driving home i saw this hitchhiker about a mile from my house thought to myself should i stop and pick him up or should i just keep on going i wish i just keep on kept on going but i didn't turned around picked him up and that's when that's when it the nightmare became a reality it just seemed so bizarre to me that this obsession that i had been thinking about and wanting just uh all the all the parts are there and they make it possible to make it happen what happened after you took him to the house the house was empty my mother was up in chippewa falls with her family and my dad was living in a in a uh rented motel about five miles away due to the divorce and i i pretty much had the place to myself i was drinking a lot during that time and just i don't know looking for something to some way to find some fulfillment some some pleasure and i acted on my fantasies and that's where everything went wrong this was the summer of 1978 when you took your first victim right once it happened the first time it just seemed like it had control of my life from there on in the second occurrence was 1988 roughly and i met this guy at one of the bars downtown milwaukee bars we went back to the hotel just planning on getting drunk i had put some sleeping pills in his drink to render him unconscious and was just going to spend the night with him when i woke up in the morning uh my forearms were bruised and his chest was was bruised and blood was coming out of his mouth he was hanging over the side of the bed and uh i have no memory of beating him to death but i must have and that's when it when it all started again and once it started again you found it impossible to stop right that that's when the the obsession went into full swing did you ever tell yourself i have to stop this i must stop doing this yes when it was going on after after the second time it seemed like the compulsion to do it was too strong and i i didn't even try to stop it after that but after before the second time things have been building up gradually going to bookstores going to uh the bars the gay bars bath clubs when that when that wasn't enough uh buying sleeping pills and using it on various guys in the bath clubs it just escalated slowly but surely and after the second time which was not planned it was out of control felt like it was out of control where did sex enter in to the killings jeff it was a big part of it my only objective was to find the best looking guy that i could their sexual preference didn't matter to me uh did their race matter to you no their race didn't matter to me the first the first two young men were white the third young man was american indian the fourth and fifth were hispanic so no race had nothing to do with it it was just their looks was there something sexual in the dismemberment of the bodies for you as time went on uh yes i i did get a there was a sexual part part to that uh i started saving the skeletons and preserving other parts and one thing led to another it took it took more and more uh deviant-type behaviors to satisfy my urges and so it just spiraled out of control why the cannibalism it made me feel like they were a permanent part of me besides besides the just mere curiosity of what it would be like it made them feel that they were a part of me and it gave me a sexual uh satisfaction to do that was it the killing that excited you or is it what happened after the killing no the the killing was just a means to an end that that was the least uh satisfactory part i didn't enjoy doing that that's why i tried to create living zombies with uh uric acid and the drill but it never worked now the killing wasn't wasn't the objective i just wanted to have the person under my complete control not having to to consider their wishes being able to keep them there as long as i wanted not easy to say that but that's that's what the motive was where did that need for control come from do you have any idea i don't know maybe i felt uh i had no control as a child or a young adult and that got mixed in with my sexuality and i ended up doing what i did was my way of feeling in in complete control at least for that situation creating my own little world where i had the final say uh finding the best looking guy that i could and uh having total mastery over him for as long as i wanted lust played a big part of it controlling lust that that was the motive right there a lot of this came out in the course of the trial obviously both of you sat through this have the two of you sat down and talked about these things before no not in depth this is the first time you're talking about these things i've talked to your dad here at great length with with uh psychiatrist court appointed psychiatrists psychologists but uh not with my family we learned we learned everything at the trial and in the confessions and that sort of thing after the fact the two of you never really communicated all that much did you father and son not only not at any deep deep level no we talked about superficial things uh never really had a real deep heart-to-heart talk about what was going on inside our own minds i was i was always a very private person i didn't like to open up and share anything with anyone i like to keep my thoughts to myself why do you think that was because from about 15 years on up a great deal of my thoughts were basically unshareable with anyone so i just closed myself off and put on a mask of normalcy you've read the book right he called it a father's story pretty simple title right not a simple story though no not a simple story not one that was easy for me to read but uh i'm glad he wrote it did it hurt was it painful to read yes it was painful some parts of it were uh for me were even fun to read there were there were good parts it wasn't all negative was it emotional for you reading the book yes it was tell me what kind of feelings did you have reading it uh deep regret um sorrow i guess those were the two main emotions is there anything in this book that you strongly disagree with uh yes i i disagree with the description of me as as being so uh incredibly shy and introverted because maybe that's that's the way my dad saw me because there was there was so much tension in the home that i really didn't feel like being up and uh happy a lot of the times uh but with my friends in school uh i had i had a good time we had good you know good social life and so i wasn't uh so so extremely reclusive and uh self-centered as it portrays me does it surprise you to hear jeff say that he doesn't think of himself and never did as innately shy it did surprise me maybe my perception was accentuated to the extreme but you do recall at age six that you became more aware of tensions in the home oh yeah that's that's the time i really really remember uh noticing that things weren't quite right so it wasn't so much in a chinese as it was wanting to withdraw from tension and arguments and problems in the house that's how i saw it yeah i uh sort of uh lived in my own little fantasy world when things got too heated in the household and uh i carried that over for for years i guess and was there violence in that fantasy world no not early on not not that uh not the type to show itself later no it was just uh just my own little world where i had control was was anger a part of it for you jeff i had some anger probably every kid has some anger you know about their childhood uh it really wasn't wasn't a terrible childhood though you know there were a lot of good times it wasn't uh it wasn't a really terrible time so pat theories about you as a serial killer striking out to get back at your dad no that has no truth in it the only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person a person that i found physically attractive and keep them with me as long as possible even if it meant just keeping a part of them did you know before you read this book that your dad had his own obsessions and fantasies that he had thought about that he had dreamed of committing murder that he had had an obsession with fire and with explosives no that's i don't think that's the type of thing one asks one's dad were you surprised to read that about your dad uh very surprised i didn't know what to think about it i suppose everyone has their their secret thoughts and so it was somewhat of a shock you feel grateful that your father wrote this book or do you feel put off by it i'm just curious about your your overall reaction to it do you feel is the book an invasion do you think or is it no i know i i feel uh nothing but pride for him for writing the book and having the courage to bear his soul when he didn't have to he he didn't have to get involved with uh trying to so you know help me out and support me and be an emotional support for me and i'll be grateful to him forever for it did you ever consider talking to your parents to your dad about homosexuality is that something that you felt you could ever raise early on i really didn't know that much about it myself all i knew was that it was something that was to be kept hush hush not talked about not even thought about so i just kept it all within me and never never talked about sexual issues at all really with anybody do you think if you had been able to talk about that in a more open way with your dad for instance that it would have helped might have broken this veil of secrecy and enabled you to keep yourself from going down that road well i don't know exactly what if anything would have ever kept me from going down that road talking about it i don't think would have made that much difference because like i said there were things going on in my head that i would have never opened up and talked about with anybody your dad says he never realized how deeply troubled you were because he just thought you were shy the way he had been shy as a boy do you think the signs were there and he just missed them no i don't think so because uh i had thoughts i had fantasies but there was there was no outward show of of anything that was wrong you were pretty good at keeping it all inside i kept it inside didn't share any of my thoughts or emotions with anybody so how would i ever know no you never saw any of it as far as i know i did not really hear from anyone about any of these activities and that that's what really strikes me now is if i would if i would have known what would i have done about it i think i would have done a lot about it i feel it's uh wrong for people who commit crimes to try to shift the blame onto somebody else on to their parents or onto their their upbringing or circle or living circumstances i i think that's just a cop-out and my parents my relatives had no knowledge of what i was doing they're absolutely not responsible for any of it in any way and i take full responsibility but you understand but you understand that what you did would lead your father to ask himself all kinds of questions where did i go wrong was there something i could have said or done to have prevented this right did i in some way create or contribute to the terrible acts my son committed i understand that i i just get angry with other people who who think that they have a right to to somehow try to blame my parents for what happened that's not right at all no one has the right to do that because they're totally innocent they had no knowledge of it and that angers me but parents just naturally i mean any parent that really cares they just first of all say i see i feel guilty you know like there's just feelings of guilt what happened what did i do what could i have done so that's a normal parental reaction your dad has wondered about all kinds of things from the medication that your mom was on during her pregnancy to the fact that you were exposed to violent arguments in the home from an early age and continuing to the possibility that he might have passed on some genetic propensity for obsession or violent behavior does any of that ring true to you i can see why he'd wonder about those things but as far as i'm concerned they're all excuses because i didn't feel accountable to anybody i didn't feel that i had to to face what i had done ever and so you have there comes a point where a person has to has to be accountable for what he's done can't go can't go around making excuses uh blaming other people or other things so i i alone am the one who's responsible for what's happened let me ask when did you first feel that that everyone is accountable for their actions well thanks to you for for sending uh that uh creation science uh material because i always i always believe the uh the lie that uh evolution is truth the theory of evolution is truth that we all just came from the slime and uh when we when we died you know that was it there was nothing so the whole theory cheapens life and started reading books about how that show how evolution is is just a complete lie there's there's no there's no basis in science to uphold it and i've come to since come to believe that the lord jesus christ is the true creator of the heavens and the earth it just didn't just happen and i have accepted him as my lord and savior and i believe that i as want as well as everyone else will be accountable to him growing up did you feel that you were accountable to your dad or to your mom as the authority yes you're in the house yes i did i mean they didn't let me uh run wild they were they disciplined me and uh so i felt accountable to them but afterwards after i left the home that's that's when i started wanting to sort of create my own little world where i could be the one who had the complete control where i didn't have to uh about anyone else's demands and i just took it way too far well at that period of time i had drifted away from a belief in a supreme being and i never as a result passed along the feeling that we are all accountable in the end he owns us and that basic concept is very fundamental to all of us you feel that the absence at least for a while of a strong religious faith and belief for some years may have prevented you from instilling some of that in jeff that's right is that how you feel yes i think i had a big a big part to do to do with it i mean uh if you don't if a person doesn't think that there there is a god to be accountable to then then what's what's the point of of trying to uh modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges that's how i thought anyway and uh i've since come to believe that the lord jesus christ is truly god the father the son and the holy spirit they're the only true god what do you remember about your parents arguing when you were growing up and what effect that had on you it was it was unnerving depressing made me angry sometimes i'd leave the house go out in the woods and sulk brooding you know wondering why they had to have such a rough relationship uh most of the time they didn't seem to get along too well together i never knew what the real real underlying problems were i didn't i didn't feel it was my place to ask did you blame one of the other mom and dad no no i didn't i was just frustrated that things couldn't be uh happier around the house you just wanted things to be more peaceful right right i never saw any any real violent arguments as far as physical uh hitting or anything like that but there was a lot of yelling a lot of tension in the house sometimes one of the one of the chilling stories that your dad tells is about the box he had found can you give me your your perspective on that i had a box in my uh bedroom closet and uh it it uh contained the mummified head and genitals of a young man i met in one of the bars down in milwaukee and it was a locked metal box my dad one week came to visit and happened to see it and uh we got into uh a bit of an argument because i wouldn't open it up he uh took the the locked box down to the basement and was about to smash it open what were you thinking as he was making his way downstairs to open the box well i was outside and i was thinking i've got to stop this from happening i didn't know what i'd do or say i didn't know what would happen i thought you know it's all going to come crashing down now and uh but the box was never opened uh not my dad's presence and so the uh the lies continued the whole scenario just continued for years after that were there times when your dad may have been closer to discovering what was going on than even he knew times where you got worried that maybe he would find something out the box incident was about as close as it came yeah that was just one incident there were there were others but that was a particularly nerve-wracking one are there others you can you can share other close calls uh when acidified dissolved human remains were found they weren't they didn't look like human remains anymore but they were in the trash bin outside in the garage um that was one incident and i a few others i'd rather not go into right now were you relieved to be arrested part of me part of me was and part of me wasn't explain uh i don't know it's it's like i don't believe i have a split personality but you you know the feeling where oh you're you're sort of glad about something but on the other hand you're not that's that's how it was i was it was a relief not to have to uh keep such a gigantic secret that i had kept for so many years and once i saw that i had no choice but to face it i decided to face it head-on and make a full confession so i i am glad that the secrets are gone your father told me that one of the reasons he wrote this book was in order to put down on paper what he has been unable to say to you in words kind of reaching out to you what do you want to say to him having read this i tell you dad i'm really sorry that this has happened and i love you a lot i love you too i'm sorry don't be sorry we uh we haven't always shown it a lot but i i do love him a great deal i love you and without the without the support of my folks uh i don't think i would have come through this we we've opened up with each other a lot more now since since the trial and everything there's no secrets to be to be hidden away you know i don't feel that i have to keep any secrets from him we've come to face what's real now instead of just glossing things over and talking about superficial things so there's there's a lot there's a lot more communication between us this book may serve as as a further bridge between jeff and and myself and just for that purpose i regard it as valuable for me do you feel closer to your dad having read this i feel that i feel closer in that i understand more how he was thinking what his thoughts were um what what some of his motivations were i'm glad he wrote it anything not in the book you want to say to him i i can't think too clearly right now i'm feeling pretty emotional i think that a lot of things have been brought out in this interview that has brought us to a little bit deeper just a little bit closer understanding as to how this all originated and well whenever i get emotional my analytical side is gets clouded and i can't express myself quite as much as well as i would like can you talk about the feelings you have you feeling close i feel very close to jeff and it's going to continue until our death and i feel good about it do you think you'll ever have the answers you've been looking for about why what happened and what role if any you played maybe not with my primary question is the origins of it and if something can be learned about that it may help other people avert problems is it still there jeff does it ever go away in part no never it never completely goes away i'll probably have to live with it for the rest of my life i wish it would go away i wish i there was some way to completely get rid of of the the compulsive thoughts the feelings it's not nearly so bad now that there is no avenues to to actually act on it but no it never seems to go completely away so the thoughts still come to you sometimes yeah are you different jeff in terms of how you think back on all of this i would hope i'm different uh i'm glad that i i'm glad that i'm in a position now where i don't feel the compulsion to do these things i'm glad that it's over any words i say to the to the victims families are just going to seem trite and empty i i don't know how to express the regret the sorrow that i feel for what i've done for their for their sons i can't find the right words after the interview at the prison dahmer casually showed us something a little unsettling just a point of interest that that's the type of box this is the type of box he wanted us to know that box looked strikingly like the one his father had found the one jeffrey had used to hide body parts thank you