September, 1991 GAY PEOPLE'S CHRONICLE

Page 11

Milwaukee gays say homophobia allowed killings to go on

by Jamakaya

Milwaukee-The gruesome mass killings uncovered July 22 in Milwaukee have sent shock waves through the gay community here. They have raised fears about the already alarming level of anti-gay violence, renewed charges of racism and homophobia against the Milwaukee Police Department, and have shaken the foundations of the social, political and criminal justice institutions in the city.

The crimes

Several of the 11 victims, whose dismembered bodies were discovered in the apartment of Jeffery L. Dahmer, 31, had met the alleged killer at gay bars or Gay Pride events.

Tony Hughes, 31, a deaf man who recently moved to Madison to escape the violence of Milwaukee, was last seen May 24, leaving Club 219 on Milwaukee's south side.

Jeremiah Weinberger, 23, of Chicago, was last seen July 6, leaving Carol's Speakeasy in Chicago in the company of a man fitting Dahmer's description.

In addition, Dahmer has acknowledged in an affidavit that after attending Chicago's Gay Pride Parade on June 30, he met Matt Turner, 20, at a bus station in Chicago and enticed him to come to Milwaukee by promising him money to watch videos and to pose nude for photos. Dahmer said he lured other victims with the same technique.

Dahmer admitted that once at his apartment, he drugged his victims, strangled them with a strap or his bare hands and them dismembered them. He admitted that after killing several victims, he performed sex acts on their bodies.

Along with several heads and limbs, and the vats of acid and formaldehyde recovered from the foul-smelling apartment, police confiscated dozens of Polaroid snapshots of the victims-photos taken while they were still alive, as well as of the dismembered bodies.

Dahmer has been charged with 12 counts of first-degree intentional homicide. He is also charged with habitual criminality. Cash bail is set at $5 million and more charges are pending. Dahmer has admitted to killing at least 17 men and boys.

Dahmer was previously convicted of disorderly conduct and fined in 1982 for indecent exposure at Wisconsin's State Fair Park. He received one year of probation for another incident in which he exposed himself to children while urinating in

public in 1986. Most recently, Dahmer

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served 10 months at the Milwaukee House of Correction for second-degree sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. That incident occurred in 1988, and involved the 13-year-old brother of Konerak Sinthasomphone, the 14-year-old who has been identified as another victim and whose remains were found in Dahmer's apartment. Sinthasomphone was a Laotian immigrant who came to the U.S. with his family when he was four years old.

Other victims, all from Milwaukee, include Ricky Beeks, 33; Errol Lindsey, 19; Curtis "Demetra" Straughter, 18; Ernest Miller, 24; Anthony Sears, 26; Joseph Bradehoft, 25; Steven Tuomi, 28; Oliver Lacy, 23; and Eddie "the Sheik" Smith, 28.

Smith was last seen at Milwaukee's Gay Pride Parade on June 16, 1990. David C. Thomas. 23, was last seen in September

1990. The remains of both Smith and Thomas were not recovered at Dahmer's apartment, but Dahmer has told police they were slain as well.

Dahmer admitted to police that he killed two Hispanic men he picked up in Milwaukee gay bars. One of those men has been identified as Richard Guerrero, 21, of Milwaukee, who disappeared in March 1988. Guerrero's remains have not been found.

Dahmer also confessed to killing Steven H. Hicks, 19, in Bath Township, near Akron, in 1978. A search has revealed hundreds of bone particles in the back yard of Dahmer's former home there.

Of the 16 victims positively identified so far, 11 were African-American, two were Hispanic, one was Asian, and two were white. Dahmer is white.

Is Dahmer gay?

Patrons at several Milwaukee and Chicago gay bars who recall seeing Dahmer describe him as a loner, distant and moody, who didn't seem comfortable in the geeky scene. Several men related stories of Dahmer trying to pick them up for the evening, often on nearby streets after the bars had closed.

Prior to being sentenced for the sexualassault charge in 1988, Dahmer told Milwaukee Circuit Court Judge William D. Gardner that he was an alcoholic and a homosexual with serious sexual problems.

Probation records leaked to the press indicate that Dahmer frequently discussed conflicts over his sexual identity with his probation agent.

Several people who met Dahmer or knew him over the years, including a woman who said she dated him, said that Dahmer had often expressed hatred to-

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Jean Paul Ranieri, a lay brother in the Episcopal Church who counsels gay men, said that after a long talk with Dahmer, he concluded that Dahmer was "extremely homophobic." He recalled Dahmer implying that AIDS was God's judgment on gays, and remembered that at a gay bar one time, Dahmer told him, "I'm not as gay as everyone else in here."

Bradley Babush, a former employee at Milwaukee's Club Baths (closed by health authorities in 1988), said that in the summer of 1986, "We had to kick Dahmer out because he was drugging people in his private room."

Babush related this chilling story. "One person from Madison was unconscious and we couldn't revive him. We called the

paramedics and they took him to the hospital. He was in the hospital for a week to ten days. The police also came and talked to Dahmer and to our staff. But, after questioning, the police didn't pursue it. None of the victims wanted to press charges."

Homophobic reaction

When the story broke July 23, police officers at the scene were quick to label the mass murders "homosexual overkill," a phrase widely reported throughout the print and broadcast media. Gay community leaders were appalled at what they termed misleading and dangerous rhetoric.

Scott Gunkel of Milwaukee's Lambda Rights Network deplored the use of "homosexual overkill," saying, "It tarnishes the entire gay community for the acts of one deranged man. It ignores the violence gays are subjected to all the time and contributes to greater homophobia and public fears about us."

The mainstream media backtracked a few days later, seeking the input of the gay community. But Gunkel noted, "It's too late to retract this. You can't put a knife in someone and then say, `Oh, I'm sorry,' and pull it out. It's too late. The damage is done."

Others questioned whether there was such a thing as "heterosexual overkill" and why that phrase was not applied to other criminal behavior.

Theodore Friedman, a psychologist who practices in Milwaukee and Chicago, expressed concern that "there's a lot of pent-up homophobia out there. It (the killings) has unraveled a lot of nerves everywhere."

Friedman said the term "homosexual overkill" had no basis in psychological theory. He described serial killers as "isolated, alienated individuals. It is not a homo-

sexual issue. It is a human issue with many human dimensions."

In a press conference July 24, Milwaukee County Medical Examiner Jeffery M. Jentzen stated unequivocally that "homosexual overkill" was not applicable in the Dahmer murder case. Just days before, however, Jentsen himself had used that phrase repeatedly in the Racine County trial of Joachim Dressler, who was subsequently convicted of killing and dismembering James Madden, 24.

Jentsen's denial did little to repair the damage already created. WISN radio host Mark Belling used his program to attack lesbians and gays. He suggested that Dahmer's alleged killing spree was the logical result of "the homosexual lifestyle," and implied that the victims had brought their fates down on themselves.

Since the killings were exposed, bar owners have reported numerous bomb threats against their gay establishments. The level of anti-gay slurs yelled from passing cars outside the bars has intensified and the lives of a number of local gay leaders and newspaper editors have been threatened.

Attomey Thomas E. Martin obtained a restraining order against an East Side couple who, since the killings were revealed, have verbally harassed a neighbor with anti-gay epithets and threatened his safety. The man had to flee from his home. Martin commented, "The entire city seems to be experiencing a collective nervous breakdown."

Attorney Kathleen Hume said that her "greatest concem" was that no one has focused on the hate crimes. Despite the fact that Dahmer was said by many to be strongly anti-black and anti-gay, and despite the fact that his victims were overwhelmingly black and some of them were gay, District Attorney E. Michael McCann did not charge Dahmer under Wisconsin's hate-crimes statute.

Charges of racism, homophobia

Representatives of the black and gay communities expressed outrage at the racism and homophobia they believed kept the police from investigating the disappearances more aggressively.

Rev. Le Havre Buck, director of the Harambee Ombudsman Project, declared: "People of color are always viewed as the criminal. If that had been a black man chasing a white boy down the alley, he wouldn't have killed anybody else. They would have investigated and done everything to Contined on page 12

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