MILWAUKEE -- Tape recordings of police radio communications during an investigation of an incident involving admitted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and a 14-year-old boy are damaging to the department, the Milwaukee Journal reported Wednesday.
Sources told the newspaper the tapes reflected some 'unprofessional conduct' among officers.
'It didn't sound too favorable,' the source told the newspaper. 'It may be a bad few months for the police department.'
Three Milwaukee police officers have been suspended with pay pending an internal investigation into allegations they dismissed as a homosexual spat a May 27 report the 14-year-old had fled naked and bleeding from Dahmer's apartment building with Dahmer in pursuit.
Police Chief Philip Arreola played the police tapes for investigators and said he would issue a statement when the internal investigation was completed.
The 14-year-old was identified as Komerak Sinthasomphone, a Laotian boy whose remains were found in Dahmer's apartment. He is one of 17 male victims Dahmer has claimed. Fifteen victims have been identified.
A source who heard the tapes told the newspaper the officers, who were called to the scene by a woman who had seen Dahmer and the boy, referred to the incident as 'boy-boy' trouble and said they wanted to return to the station house for 'delousing.' That term is an inside joke used by officers when talking about people they consider unsavory, the newspaper said.
The Milwaukee Sentinel also reported Wednesday Dahmer was shocked when investigators told him the 14-year-old Laotian boy was the brother of a youth Dahmer sexually assaulted in 1988. Dahmer was on probation for the assault conviction.
The newspaper said Dahmer told investigators he did not know the 14- year-old was related to the boy he was convicted of molesting. Dahmer said he met the 14-year-old at a shopping mall and offered him money if he would pose for photographs -- the same ploy Dahmer told police he used on the other victims he killed.
Probation records show Dahmer was sexually abused by a neighbor boy when he was 8. Records in the state Division of Probation and Parole showed Dahmer's probation agent, Donna Chester, and Dahmer's father, Lionel, had discussed briefly the assault on Dahmer.
The notes show Dahmer's father wondered whether the reasons for his son's sexual problems could be linked to the abuse by a neighbor boy when Dahmer was 8. The details of the assault were not mentioned in the report.
In Ohio, investigators following up on Dahmer's statements that he killed a man at his boyhood home in Bath Township in 1978 found more bone fragments Wednesday while digging up the yard.
Summit County Coroner William Cox said he believed enough bones had been recovered to identify a 19-year-old hitchhiker as Dahmer's first victim.
The search of a crawl space under the Dahmer's former house revealed a bloody handprint on the cinder block wall. The evidence was turned over for DNA testing with results expected in about three weeks.
Dahmer told police he killed Steven M. Hicks, dismembered the body in the crawl space, and later smashed the bones with a sledgehammer and scattered the fragments.
The probation notes from months of meetings between Dahmer and Chester show repeated concern by Dahmer about his homosexuality and his concern about accepting it. A January note indicated Dahmer 'admitted to himself that he is gay.'
Probation records also indicate Dahmer's mother called him from California in March and told him she knew he was gay and 'has no problems accepting that.' Dahmer told his probation agent he planned to maintain contact with his mother.
Dr. Ashok Bedi, clinical director of Milwaukee Psychiatric Hospital, said eight people may have been killed by Dahmer after he talked to his mother after not having had any contact with her for five years.
'Most of his frenzy took place after his mother called. Something was provoked here,' said Bedi, who did not examine Dahmer. 'Obviously, there was something going on there that was not resolved.'
Bedi also said it appeared to him Dahmer was a 'defensive homosexual and not truly homosexual.' He said Dahmer did not know how to deal with heterosexuality and retreated defensively into homosexuality.
Wednesday members of the Milwaukee black community marched from Dahmer's Near North Side apartment to the police department's Safety Building, where Dahmer is being held, in protest of how the police are handling the case.
Queen Hyler, leader of the 'Stop the Violence' movement, said the black community will continue to demonstrate until the white community in Milwaukee takes action to correct racism in the police department. Blacks have accused the deparment of not following up reports of missing black men.
Arreola said the evidence gathered by investigators now indicates Dahmer acted alone. The chief had earlier said the possibility of an accomplice was under investigation.
He also said early reports of cannabalism, including a statement by Dahmer to police that he saved the heart of one victim to eat later, have not been substantiated by the evidence.
