Body Parts, Vat of Acid Found in Apartment

Milwaukee police arrested a 31-year-old paroled sex offender Tuesday after finding a gruesome collection of mutilated human body parts, severed human heads and a vat of acid in his north side apartment.

“It was like Charles Manson,” said John Batchelor, a neighbor of the arrested man. “ . . . It is really wild. This is worse than ‘Friday the 13th.’ ”

Police identified the suspect as Jeffrey L. Dahmer. He was booked on suspicion of homicide but was not charged Tuesday, Lt. Thomas Breitlow said.

Police Chief Phillip Arreola said the case involved “a number of homicides,” with most or all of the victims adult males. Some reports quoted anonymous police sources as saying as many as 15 deaths could be involved.

Several neighbors said a stench had come from the apartment off and on for months. “It smelled like something dead in there,” said Eli Vickers, who lives in the building next to the three-story apartment complex where the suspect lived.

Police said the suspect, whom neighbors described as a quiet loner, had recently been fired from his job at a candy company and had served a year in jail on sexual assault charges for offering $50 to a teen-age boy to pose nude.

Arreola said it had not yet been determined whether the murders were the work of one man or several or where they were carried out. The identities of the victims are unknown, he added.

At a news conference, the police chief said that authorities were tipped to the crime scene when a police car was flagged down by a handcuffed man who claimed to have escaped the suspect’s apartment after being threatened with a knife.

Authorities at the scene, some wearing protective rubber suits and breathing bottled air, hauled away several boxes containing body parts as well as a vat of acid and other furniture, including a dresser that contained pictures of mutilated bodies. Police said at least two heads were found in a refrigerator in the apartment.

Some neighbors told reporters that they complained both to the landlord and the suspect himself about the bad smell and had been told that it was caused by rotten meat. “He told me his freezer had gone off and that his meat in there had rotted and he was going to get rid of it,” Pamela Bass, a neighbor, told one television interviewer.

Batchelor, who lived next door to the suspect, said he, too, had complained about the smell. But Batchelor said he had been advised by his attorney not to elaborate further.