At the heart of the horrors is, of course, Jeffrey Dahmer himself. When it came time for experts to determine if he was fit to stand trial, forensic psychiatrist Dr. George Palermo spent more than 12 hours interviewing him, and concluded (via the Chicago Tribune) he was "highly intelligent, emotionally tranquil, and his thinking processes were logical and rational." And somehow, that makes what they found in his apartment more terrifying.
When The Associated Press picked up the story of Dahmer's arrest from The Milwaukee Sentinel in July 1991, they reported law enforcement "found 11 skulls scattered in a file cabinet, a closet, a refrigerator, and a freezer, and three headless torsos in a vat in the man's bedroom." That vat, says History, was a 57-gallon drum filled with chemicals that were contributing to the slow decomposition of the bodies inside. There were three heads in the refrigerator, and "evidence" some of the victims had been cannibalized. When police started emptying the apartment, they took out "boxes filled with body parts," and as neighbors started to realize what was happening, the "sounds of sawing [that came] from the apartment at all hours" and the smells became clear. Dahmer's neighbor, Ella Vickers, said, "We've been smelling odors for weeks, but we thought it was a dead animal [...]. We had no idea it was humans."
Just how many humans it was... that was documented in a dresser drawer full of Polaroids.
