Jeffrey Dahmer freed a teenager he had planned to kill when the encounter didn't live up to the serial killer's fantasy, a clinical psychologist testified Wednesday at Dahmer's insanity trial.
"It didn't work out the way Jeffrey envisioned it would work out in terms of what his fantasies were," said Judith Becker, a University of Arizona psychologist who studies sex offenders.Dahmer, who usually drugged his victims with sleeping pills before strangling them, hit the man on the head with a rubber mallet because he was out of pills. However, the young man got angry and the two struggled, the defense expert said during cross-examination by Assistant District Attorney Carol White.
"Jeffrey says he was not going to be able to win this struggle and at that point he stopped struggling," Becker said.
The defense contends Dahmer had an uncontrollable compulsion to kill and have sex with corpses. But the prosecution says Dahmer was a methodical murderer who was in control and chose when to kill.
On Tuesday, Becker testified that Dahmer claimed he drilled a hole in a boy's head and poured in acid before police found the dazed, naked youngster on the street and handed him back to Dahmer. The boy was later killed.
The boy, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, fled the apartment May 27, but police returned him when Dahmer convinced them that the boy was his adult lover and that the two had had a spat.
After Dahmer was arrested in July and his crimes became known, two police officers were fired over their handling of the incident.