Latest / History Dark / He scattered his victim all over the countryside - and lived just 30 miles away from Dahmer

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He scattered his victim all over the countryside - and lived just 30 miles away from Dahmer · History Dark

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: There were rumors running amok through the community about devil worshipers.
• 0:09
  Speaker 2: You have to have a certain amount of rage in
• 0:10
  Speaker 2: your system in order to take a body apart piece
• 0:14
  Speaker 2: by piece by piece.
• 0:16
  Speaker 3: There are monsters who live among us capable of doing
• 0:20
  Speaker 3: this kind of thing.
• 0:22
  Speaker 4: James lit up the room, never in a bad mood.
• 0:26
  Speaker 4: Can't even picture him yelling at someone.
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: We had concern that this wasn't the first one.
• 0:38
  Speaker 5: The motivation wasn't money, it wasn't drugs, it wasn't sex.
• 0:42
  Speaker 5: It was far deeper than that.
• 0:44
  Speaker 6: It was just not done to kill the person, but
• 0:47
  Speaker 6: destroy this person's image.
• 0:53
  Speaker 7: A shocking murder becomes a dark mystery. The victim's body
• 0:59
  Speaker 7: holds the key to convicting the killer. Every fiber is
• 1:05
  Speaker 7: a clue. Every wound is a piece of the puzzle.
• 1:10
  Speaker 7: In these cases, it's up to the medical examiner to
• 1:13
  Speaker 7: find the crucial evidence and catch the murderer. This is
• 1:18
  Speaker 7: Secrets of the Morgue.
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: We're seeing counties relatively rural. There's farms, there's horse farms.
• 1:35
  Speaker 1: There are plenty of churches. Religion is a very strong
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: part of the community here.
• 1:43
  Speaker 2: We're 20 minutes from Milwaukee and 60 minutes from Chicago.
• 1:50
  Speaker 2: This is really a quiet community.
• 1:55
  Speaker 7: Late one summer morning, a farmer notices something strange at
• 1:59
  Speaker 7: the end of his field.
• 2:02
  Speaker 2: An individual thought something was funny because the cows were
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: all sniffing the air and gathering on the other side
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: of the fence and they didn't know what was going on.
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: In the ditch were two large yellow plastic trash bags.
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: I remember the bags as being yellow and industrial, almost
• 2:28
  Speaker 1: like what today we would call contractor bags.
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: When he was trying to pick up the plastic bags,
• 2:37
  Speaker 2: he discovered it was a human being.
• 2:43
  Speaker 7: Lieutenant Ivanovsky responds to the scene.
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: Inside one of the bags was an upper torso. And
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: inside the second bag was a lower torso. And somebody
• 2:58
  Speaker 2: had cut the head and arms off. I had never
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: experienced anything like that. Nothing sensed like that either. Very gruesome.
• 3:11
  Speaker 5: When all you have is body parts and you don't
• 3:13
  Speaker 5: have a cause of death and you don't have a
• 3:15
  Speaker 5: mechanism of death, a homicide investigator is left with a
• 3:18
  Speaker 5: lot of questions that don't have answers. And the first
• 3:22
  Speaker 5: thing you have to do is to identify that person
• 3:25
  Speaker 5: because that will start to give you some answers.
• 3:28
  Speaker 7: The remains are sent to Milwaukee County Medical Examiner, Dr.
• 3:32
  Speaker 7: Jeffrey Jensen for autopsy.
• 3:34
  Speaker 6: I think the most important part of it is closure.
• 3:38
  Speaker 6: Closure for that person's life and closure for the person's
• 3:43
  Speaker 6: family and to know what happened. At this point in
• 3:47
  Speaker 6: my career, this was the first body dismemberment that I
• 3:51
  Speaker 6: had examined.
• 3:55
  Speaker 7: The first step for Dr. Jensen is to determine whether
• 3:58
  Speaker 7: he's dealing with one or two victims.
• 4:02
  Speaker 6: We have The lower portion of the body in one piece.
• 4:07
  Speaker 6: Then we have a torso that has had the head
• 4:11
  Speaker 6: and upper extremities removed. We can match body parts up
• 4:17
  Speaker 6: based on the known number of lumbar vertebrae. Those two
• 4:24
  Speaker 6: pieces were comparable and compatible in every way. It was
• 4:29
  Speaker 6: a younger male body.
• 4:34
  Speaker 7: The matching lumbar vertebrae prove the remains are from a
• 4:38
  Speaker 7: single victim. The body also reveals a deeply disturbing fact.
• 4:44
  Speaker 6: The individual had been emasculated. Then the external genitals removed,
• 4:52
  Speaker 6: and I was not able to identify any hemorrhage related
• 4:55
  Speaker 6: to that. So it would be my opinion that it
• 4:57
  Speaker 6: was most likely a post-mortem emasculation.
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 5:03
  Speaker 7: Jensen looks for a way to identify the young male victim.
• 5:09
  Speaker 6: We were still relying on old technology, fingerprints, and dental
• 5:16
  Speaker 6: examinations to make identification. Back in 1990, DNA was expensive
• 5:26
  Speaker 6: and not available to most medical examiners. We had no fingerprints,
• 5:31
  Speaker 6: no hands or upper extremities in this case.
• 5:35
  Speaker 7: Lieutenant Ivanovsky and his team are determined to discover the
• 5:39
  Speaker 7: identity of their victim and catch the perpetrator capable of
• 5:44
  Speaker 7: such evil.
• 5:45
  Speaker 1: The level of hurt or damage done to both this
• 5:49
  Speaker 1: individual and his family and the community called for action
• 5:52
  Speaker 1: by police. Obviously, it's protection of the public.
• 5:57
  Speaker 7: Police start by canvassing the area around the crime scene.
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: I have to conduct what they call a neighborhood check
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: or a near area check to see if there's possibly
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: anybody else in the area that might have seen somebody
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: put the bags there, might have seen a suspicious vehicle
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: in the vicinity, might have known anybody that's missing. The
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: houses were very distant and very far apart. When we
• 6:23
  Speaker 2: were going two or three miles away from our crime scene,
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: We check all of the missing person reports, checking with
• 6:31
  Speaker 2: all of the farms nearby, all of the subdivisions nearby,
• 6:34
  Speaker 2: all of the cars that we could find and the
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: people in the area, and nobody could identify or knew anything.
• 6:42
  Speaker 5: All you have is a scene where the body is found.
• 6:44
  Speaker 5: That may be a secondary scene, it may be a
• 6:45
  Speaker 5: tertiary scene, but it isn't the murder scene. So you
• 6:48
  Speaker 5: don't have the information and evidence that would flow from that.
• 6:51
  Speaker 5: You don't have an identification of the victim, so you
• 6:55
  Speaker 5: don't know whether they're from 10 miles away or from
• 6:58
  Speaker 5: 25 feet away. All of that are first steps that
• 7:00
  Speaker 5: are very difficult for an investigator.
• 7:03
  Speaker 7: While investigators speak to local residents, a strangely unnerving tale
• 7:07
  Speaker 7: begins to emerge.
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: Someone complained that he had like five dogs disappear in
• 7:14
  Speaker 2: like a 10-year period, and none of the dogs were
• 7:17
  Speaker 2: old enough to just die on their own.
• 7:20
  Speaker 7: Several residents report disturbing events happening within the county.
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: And there were several people that pointed out that their
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: other neighbors on one side or the other of them
• 7:32
  Speaker 2: possibly were having Satan rituals in their barns late at
• 7:36
  Speaker 2: night or early in the morning.
• 7:40
  Speaker 1: The people that lived outside the city were seen certainly
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: aren't used to violent crime generally. And this kind of
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: violent crime was incredibly scary, and there were rumors running
• 7:49
  Speaker 1: amok through the community about devil worshipers. People that do
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: believe in God and belong to traditional religions, they can
• 7:58
  Speaker 1: be terrified by people they believe worship the devil.
• 8:04
  Speaker 2: That's possibly the reason that this individual was cut up
• 8:08
  Speaker 2: into body parts. They were doing a Satanistic ritual of
• 8:11
  Speaker 2: some type.
• 8:12
  Speaker 7: Police are wary of rumors. But then, Dr. Jensen finds
• 8:17
  Speaker 7: sinister cuts on the victim's skin.
• 8:20
  Speaker 6: There was a peculiar pattern of stab wounds that was
• 8:24
  Speaker 6: present over the midline portion of the back. The stab
• 8:29
  Speaker 6: wounds were vertical up and down and also horizontal. There
• 8:34
  Speaker 6: may be a pattern there. This was some kind of
• 8:38
  Speaker 6: a message or some kind of a symbol.
• 8:43
  Speaker 2: We had to investigate and talk to all of these
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: people and see if in fact some of this stuff
• 8:48
  Speaker 2: might have really been going on.
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: In a small town, a case like this can send
• 8:56
  Speaker 3: people into a frenzy. And oftentimes people will assume that
• 9:02
  Speaker 3: the only people capable of this are members of a
• 9:05
  Speaker 3: satanic cult or some kind of deviant group. And that's
• 9:09
  Speaker 3: often an attempt to try and make sense of something
• 9:12
  Speaker 3: that seems so far beyond the realm of human possibility.
• 9:19
  Speaker 3: But in reality, there are monsters who live among us.
• 9:26
  Speaker 2: All of the neighbors who had been pointed at as
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: being Satanistic told us freely that, yes, they had parties
• 9:32
  Speaker 2: in their barn until early hours of the morning, but
• 9:35
  Speaker 2: it also included beer and whiskey and wine, and nobody
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: did anything illegal. We had no information on the identity
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: of the individual, nor were we getting anywhere to begin
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: with as far as identifying him and finding out what
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: actually happened to him.
• 9:52
  Speaker 7: Investigators continue to speak to residents, hoping for a lead.
• 9:57
  Speaker 2: Racine County Sheriff's Department had several of the investigators several
• 10:00
  Speaker 2: deputies literally going from door to door, and we had
• 10:03
  Speaker 2: expanded our search from probably 2-mile circumference to about a
• 10:06
  Speaker 2: 5- or 6-mile circumference. One of the deputies was actually
• 10:14
  Speaker 2: parked on the side of the road making notes in
• 10:16
  Speaker 2: his notebook, about whom he had contacted already and whom
• 10:20
  Speaker 2: he had interviewed and what type of information he had gathered.
• 10:24
  Speaker 2: And all of a sudden the dog came running down
• 10:26
  Speaker 2: the middle of the street with a human arm in
• 10:31
  Speaker 2: its jaws. It was in a totally different area from
• 10:35
  Speaker 2: where the other two body parts had been found. We
• 10:40
  Speaker 2: thought perhaps we now had a better idea of where
• 10:44
  Speaker 2: the crime occurred because now we had two locations and
• 10:48
  Speaker 2: it might have occurred in the middle of these two locations.
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: So now we moved our circumference of search into a
• 10:54
  Speaker 2: different area. We brought in the city of Racine, cadaver dogs.
• 11:01
  Speaker 7: As the canine unit combs through farmland, police confront an
• 11:05
  Speaker 7: ominous possibility.
• 11:07
  Speaker 1: One police dog found several other body parts.
• 11:12
  Speaker 2: Unbelievable. Just horrific.
• 11:16
  Speaker 7: Investigators fear there could be more dismembered victims scattered throughout
• 11:20
  Speaker 7: the county. Detectives are investigating the murder of a young
• 11:27
  Speaker 7: man when the discovery of more body parts leads them
• 11:30
  Speaker 7: to believe there could be multiple victims.
• 11:34
  Speaker 2: The deputy that was there to this day has nightmares
• 11:37
  Speaker 2: about seeing that dog running with a human arm in
• 11:40
  Speaker 2: his mouth.
• 11:42
  Speaker 7: Soon after, local residents make another shocking discovery.
• 11:47
  Speaker 2: A man and his son were walking down another county road,
• 11:50
  Speaker 2: and they came across a head lying in the drainage ditch.
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: To find a dismembered head anywhere, which is just horrific.
• 12:04
  Speaker 2: They called up the sheriff's department, and of course, we
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: had another crime scene at that time. Shoot up the
• 12:08
  Speaker 2: cordon off the area, You have to search and see
• 12:11
  Speaker 2: if there's any other body parts in the vicinity. You
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: have to pick up the evidence and ship it up
• 12:16
  Speaker 2: to Dr. Jeffrey Jensen.
• 12:18
  Speaker 7: It's up to the medical examiner to determine if these
• 12:21
  Speaker 7: body parts belong to the dismembered man or if there
• 12:25
  Speaker 7: are multiple victims.
• 12:27
  Speaker 6: When we're investigating a case like this, we're trying to
• 12:30
  Speaker 6: ascertain whether we're dealing with one victim or possibly multiple victims,
• 12:35
  Speaker 6: what we call co-mingling of skeletal remains. And so as
• 12:40
  Speaker 6: body parts are coming in, we're able to lay out
• 12:43
  Speaker 6: the body pieces on an autopsy table. We approximate them
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: into a reconstruction of the individual. We're looking for matching
• 12:54
  Speaker 6: parts that are consistent in sex, age, and race. This
• 12:59
  Speaker 6: articulation was consistent with the torso, on the neck structure,
• 13:05
  Speaker 6: and on the lower pelvic area. We were confident that
• 13:10
  Speaker 6: the body parts were from the same individual.
• 13:16
  Speaker 7: News of the discoveries quickly spreads through Racine County.
• 13:21
  Speaker 2: We had phone calls from everybody in the community saying,
• 13:25
  Speaker 2: could it possibly be my son? Could it possibly be
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: my cousin? Everybody was telling us that it could possibly
• 13:31
  Speaker 2: be somebody that they haven't seen for a long while.
• 13:35
  Speaker 7: At the morgue, Dr. Jensen uncovers a potential clue on
• 13:38
  Speaker 7: the victim's skin.
• 13:40
  Speaker 6: On the right upper shoulder, there was an intact tattoo
• 13:49
  Speaker 6: that indicated the Grateful Dead tour from 1988. So we'd
• 13:57
  Speaker 6: take a Polaroid photograph and release that to the law
• 14:00
  Speaker 6: enforcement who could then look for that individual.
• 14:04
  Speaker 7: It's not long before a concerned parent contacts police.
• 14:09
  Speaker 1: The victim had known tattoos on his shoulder and that
• 14:13
  Speaker 1: his father was able to look at that.
• 14:18
  Speaker 6: Once you have a suspected person, you can inquire about
• 14:23
  Speaker 6: dental records to help identify the individual.
• 14:28
  Speaker 7: Dental records confirm the dismembered body is that of 24-year-old
• 14:32
  Speaker 7: James Michael Madden, When.
• 14:36
  Speaker 2: We finally identified the victim as James Michael Madden, it
• 14:41
  Speaker 2: opened up a world of information to us. His friends
• 14:45
  Speaker 2: now we knew, his coworkers, his family, and we could
• 14:49
  Speaker 2: interview and talk to all of these resources in order
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: to find out if they had any information that would
• 14:55
  Speaker 2: help us prove what happened in the homicide.
• 14:58
  Speaker 7: Investigators look into the life of James Michael Madden.
• 15:02
  Speaker 2: He was from Milwaukee. And he seemed to be a
• 15:06
  Speaker 2: nice young man, going door to door, trying to sell
• 15:09
  Speaker 2: magazines and make some money.
• 15:12
  Speaker 7: They tracked down his girlfriend, Allie Winkler.
• 15:16
  Speaker 4: James, he lit up the room. He was very friendly, trusting,
• 15:22
  Speaker 4: never in a bad mood. Can't even picture him yelling
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: at someone. Just someone that was very nice to get
• 15:33
  Speaker 4: to know.
• 15:35
  Speaker 7: Lieutenant Ivanovsky questions Allie about the last time she saw James.
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: The day that ultimately was his last day, one of
• 15:45
  Speaker 4: my cats had had a birthday, and when he was leaving,
• 15:49
  Speaker 4: at the landing on the steps, he looked up and said,
• 15:53
  Speaker 4: don't forget, I still have Bogie's birthday present. And so
• 15:59
  Speaker 4: that is the image that I picture. The last time
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: I verbally spoke.
• 16:04
  Speaker 7: To him, Investigators learn that James then left for work
• 16:08
  Speaker 7: that morning. They speak with his fellow employees.
• 16:12
  Speaker 2: There was an organization called Citizens for a Better Environment
• 16:15
  Speaker 2: that James Michael Madden worked for, and they were brought
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: down to Racine County in a van and dropped off.
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: And each one of them had an area or a
• 16:24
  Speaker 2: path marked on a map that they were supposed to
• 16:27
  Speaker 2: go door to door and try to sell magazines.
• 16:31
  Speaker 7: By nightfall, James hadn't returned to the van for the
• 16:34
  Speaker 7: ride back to Milwaukee.
• 16:37
  Speaker 4: Jim never came home that night. So I went out
• 16:45
  Speaker 4: looking for him and I was keeping close contact with
• 16:49
  Speaker 4: his parents and for like three days it was just
• 16:55
  Speaker 4: not knowing anything. And then That Friday night, I was
• 17:03
  Speaker 4: watching the news, and they said, coming up, body parts
• 17:07
  Speaker 4: found in Racine, and I was holding a TV guide,
• 17:11
  Speaker 4: and I just dropped it, and it's like I just knew.
• 17:15
  Speaker 7: Detectives turned to the medical examiner to see if the
• 17:18
  Speaker 7: pattern of violence done to James' body might offer clues
• 17:22
  Speaker 7: about who did this to him.
• 17:24
  Speaker 6: Part of what a forensic pathologist does is to interpret
• 17:27
  Speaker 6: injury patterns and injuries. The presence of hemorrhage or blood
• 17:33
  Speaker 6: into the surrounding tissues would imply that the person is
• 17:36
  Speaker 6: alive at the time that the injury occurred. In this case,
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: we found an abrasion around the ankles. I made an
• 17:45
  Speaker 6: incision into the skin of the abrasion and was able
• 17:49
  Speaker 6: to see a hemorrhage, so that confirmed that it had
• 17:52
  Speaker 6: occurred prior to death.
• 17:55
  Speaker 7: The injury points to another disturbing clue about the circumstances
• 17:59
  Speaker 7: of James Madden's death.
• 18:01
  Speaker 6: There was upward angulation that might suggest some suspension, but
• 18:06
  Speaker 6: that's all I could ascertain from my examination.
• 18:12
  Speaker 2: The anger involved in dismemberment homicide is just beyond comprehension.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: Somebody was really in a rage in order to do
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: this because you have to have a certain amount of
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: rage in your system in order to take a body
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: apart piece by piece by piece.
• 18:26
  Speaker 3: In cases where there is overkill, where the victim's body
• 18:31
  Speaker 3: is mutilated and it makes them almost unrecognizable, investigators will
• 18:36
  Speaker 3: see that as a clue that this person had extreme
• 18:40
  Speaker 3: rage in a way that is above and beyond what
• 18:43
  Speaker 3: we typically see in many homicide cases.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: The thought that came to our mind is that he
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: knew the person who killed him.
• 18:56
  Speaker 7: James Michael Madden lived just outside of Milwaukee. Lieutenant Ivanovsky
• 19:02
  Speaker 7: widens the search into the city.
• 19:04
  Speaker 2: They were doing a canvas of the friends and people
• 19:07
  Speaker 2: that might have known James Michael Madden.
• 19:09
  Speaker 7: As they knock on doors, local police learn of something
• 19:12
  Speaker 7: strange close to where James lived.
• 19:15
  Speaker 2: They received information that an individual living in the city
• 19:19
  Speaker 2: of Milwaukee had what they call a diorama. And inside
• 19:26
  Speaker 2: this diorama with these walls and rooms and furniture were
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: little miniature people. And these figures were dismembered.
• 19:40
  Speaker 7: The level of anger behind the mutilations instantly raises investigators' eyebrows.
• 19:46
  Speaker 2: Some of them had no arms, some of them had
• 19:48
  Speaker 2: no legs, and they were bleeding.
• 19:52
  Speaker 7: Detectives question the motive behind the diorama's design.
• 19:56
  Speaker 2: It made it look like this had been an extreme
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: homicide case. And it triggered somebody to say, Who could
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: think up something like this?
• 20:17
  Speaker 7: Detectives are searching for James Madden's killer. A strange diorama
• 20:22
  Speaker 7: found near his home is their newest lead.
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: One of the very thoughts that we had when the
• 20:28
  Speaker 2: diorama was discovered was that the killer, he was memorializing
• 20:33
  Speaker 2: an actual crime or maybe more than one crime.
• 20:37
  Speaker 7: Investigators wonder if the disturbing creation is somehow linked to
• 20:42
  Speaker 7: Madden's brutal murder.
• 20:45
  Speaker 5: When you get an emotional kill or an overkill or
• 20:48
  Speaker 5: a frenzy kill, it's someone that you could have killed
• 20:51
  Speaker 5: with two or three stab wounds, yet you choose to
• 20:53
  Speaker 5: kill them with 45 or 50 stab wounds. You've gone
• 20:56
  Speaker 5: far further than is necessary.
• 21:02
  Speaker 2: It was awful, very baffling. We looked for any similarities
• 21:10
  Speaker 2: to the cuts and dismemberment that we had in Racine County.
• 21:14
  Speaker 2: And there were similarities.
• 21:16
  Speaker 7: Investigators now look for any connection between the creator of
• 21:20
  Speaker 7: the diorama and the victim.
• 21:23
  Speaker 2: We did a thorough investigation of the person that prepared
• 21:26
  Speaker 2: this diorama. And there was absolutely no evidence that he
• 21:31
  Speaker 2: could have possibly been involved. It actually turned out that
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: he was an artist and that he had done this
• 21:39
  Speaker 2: as an art project.
• 21:43
  Speaker 7: Dr. Jensen continues the autopsy and finds a wound that
• 21:46
  Speaker 7: sheds new light on the case.
• 21:50
  Speaker 6: The left hand has a sharply incised defect through the
• 21:54
  Speaker 6: palm of the hand. It looked like it was what
• 21:57
  Speaker 6: we would typically see as a defensive-type wound where an
• 22:01
  Speaker 6: individual would have attempted to grab a knife, for example,
• 22:05
  Speaker 6: under attack.
• 22:08
  Speaker 7: It's clear that James Madden was fighting for his life.
• 22:13
  Speaker 7: Then Dr. Jensen discovers what ultimately killed him.
• 22:18
  Speaker 6: We x-rayed the skull, and there were fragments of a bullet.
• 22:26
  Speaker 6: It was the only real tangible evidence we had into
• 22:30
  Speaker 6: what may have caused the death. More importantly, this evidence
• 22:35
  Speaker 6: could be recovered and examined in the laboratory to find
• 22:39
  Speaker 6: out the identity of the bullet.
• 22:44
  Speaker 7: As the fragments are sent for analysis, Dr. Jensen looks
• 22:49
  Speaker 7: for any other clues to help identify the killer.
• 22:54
  Speaker 6: There was a patterned injury over the palm of the
• 22:57
  Speaker 6: right hand, which to me looked like charring or some
• 23:01
  Speaker 6: kind of attempt to burn off the identifying fingerprints off
• 23:06
  Speaker 6: the right hand. The external genitalia was removed. The heart,
• 23:13
  Speaker 6: the liver, the right adrenal gland, the right kidney are gone.
• 23:18
  Speaker 6: The skull had been fragmented. That would have allowed for
• 23:24
  Speaker 6: the brain to be removed.
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: When you have a killer who has gone to these lengths,
• 23:32
  Speaker 5: you're dealing with emotional and mental health issues as well,
• 23:35
  Speaker 5: which makes them very, very unpredictable. And it is a
• 23:41
  Speaker 5: much larger challenge because now you can't find what the
• 23:44
  Speaker 5: motivation was. It wasn't money, it wasn't drugs, it wasn't sex.
• 23:47
  Speaker 5: It was far deeper than that. It changes the entire
• 23:53
  Speaker 5: direction of a homicide investigation.
• 23:59
  Speaker 7: Dr. Jensen's discoveries lead investigators to consider a chilling new possibility.
• 24:07
  Speaker 2: Everybody was fearful, of course, that there could be a
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: serial killer in the area.
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: One of the biggest shared characteristics of serial killers is psychopathy.
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: They lack empathy. Serial killers often get a thrill out
• 24:26
  Speaker 3: of controlling another person. And that can mean sexually, it
• 24:31
  Speaker 3: can mean socially, and it can be done also through violence.
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: This was for sort of a hate after death thing.
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: With removing vital organs such as the heart and the kidneys,
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: these were things that didn't need to be done in
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: order to conceal a body. This was of great concern
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: to the police because serial killers, they keep killing unless
• 24:56
  Speaker 1: they're caught.
• 24:58
  Speaker 7: To establish if they're chasing a serial killer, investigators search
• 25:03
  Speaker 7: for crimes with identical MOs.
• 25:06
  Speaker 2: There were about two or three other dismemberment homicides in
• 25:09
  Speaker 2: the country at the time. We did conduct a thorough
• 25:14
  Speaker 2: investigation to see if there possibly could be any kind
• 25:16
  Speaker 2: of a connection. The cuts on our homicide victim were
• 25:23
  Speaker 2: extremely clean. They were done by somebody with a lot
• 25:27
  Speaker 2: of knowledge about dismembering deer or a cow. A butcher,
• 25:31
  Speaker 2: for instance, would leave very clean cuts at the joints.
• 25:39
  Speaker 2: All of the other homicides that could have possibly been
• 25:42
  Speaker 2: similar had horribly terrible torn cuts used like with a saw.
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: There was no connection whatsoever.
• 25:54
  Speaker 6: The similarities were rather weak because of the different methods
• 25:59
  Speaker 6: of dismemberment.
• 26:03
  Speaker 7: Unable to connect James Madden's murder to a larger pattern,
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: investigators take a closer look at his final day.
• 26:12
  Speaker 2: Citizens for a Better Environment actually provided us with the
• 26:15
  Speaker 2: route that he was supposed to follow from house to house,
• 26:18
  Speaker 2: and we talked to individuals who had actually talked to him.
• 26:21
  Speaker 2: And they all said he was a very nice young man.
• 26:23
  Speaker 2: He was very polite. He came up to their house
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: and tried to sell them magazines.
• 26:28
  Speaker 7: Detective Ivanovsky determines the last house that James visited.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: We knew that the next house that he would go
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: to was Mr.
• 26:38
  Speaker 2: Dressler's house.
• 26:41
  Speaker 7: Investigators knock at the door of the sprawling 17-acre farm
• 26:45
  Speaker 7: belonging to Joachim Dressler.
• 26:49
  Speaker 2: When the sheriff arrived, Roehner and myself were talking to him.
• 26:52
  Speaker 2: He was telling us that he had no contact with
• 26:54
  Speaker 2: anybody from anywhere and that he had not seen anybody
• 26:58
  Speaker 2: soliciting any money or doing anything like that.
• 27:02
  Speaker 7: As Dressler talks with law enforcement, Lieutenant Ivanovsky studies his
• 27:07
  Speaker 7: body language.
• 27:09
  Speaker 2: It was his eye movements. It was his voice inflection.
• 27:15
  Speaker 2: It was the look on his face. It was the
• 27:18
  Speaker 2: hand movements that he used. And when we drove out
• 27:22
  Speaker 2: of the driveway, Sheriff Roehner and myself, we both had
• 27:27
  Speaker 2: the same feeling. We felt in our hearts that there
• 27:31
  Speaker 2: was something wrong. There's more to this than what he
• 27:35
  Speaker 2: was telling us.
• 27:37
  Speaker 7: Investigators have a hunch one county resident is hiding something
• 27:42
  Speaker 7: about James Michael Madden's murder. Mr.
• 27:45
  Speaker 1: Dressler, he was married and had two children. I don't
• 27:51
  Speaker 1: think he was on the police radar.
• 27:55
  Speaker 2: I used the word hinky. He did not look like
• 27:58
  Speaker 2: he was telling us the truth. We knew that Mr.
• 28:03
  Speaker 1: Dressler had admitted to being home alone. His wife and
• 28:06
  Speaker 1: two children were not there, so there was opportunity.
• 28:11
  Speaker 7: Police need more to tie Joakim Dressler to the murder.
• 28:16
  Speaker 7: They take a hard look at his life.
• 28:21
  Speaker 2: The neighbor right next to Joachim Dressler said that many
• 28:24
  Speaker 2: of his dogs had been killed by Joachim Dressler, and
• 28:27
  Speaker 2: he knew this for a fact. Another neighbor stated that
• 28:33
  Speaker 2: they saw Joachim Dressler late at night wandering on his property, naked,
• 28:40
  Speaker 2: going from tree to tree and dancing through the woods.
• 28:44
  Speaker 2: You have to be extremely careful with every one of
• 28:46
  Speaker 2: these stories, and then you have to prove it or
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: disprove it.
• 28:50
  Speaker 7: Detectives also examine his personal life.
• 28:54
  Speaker 2: Joachim Dressler, he worked as an elevator repairman in the
• 28:57
  Speaker 2: city of Milwaukee. Every elevator has a closet where they
• 29:01
  Speaker 2: have all the mechanics for an elevator. And in every
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: one of the closets which he was responsible for were
• 29:08
  Speaker 2: bottles of vodka, and he would drink between one or
• 29:12
  Speaker 2: two bottles of vodka during an eight-hour shift. So Joachim
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: Dressler was an extreme alcoholic.
• 29:19
  Speaker 7: As Lieutenant Ivanovsky continues to gather information, Dr. Jensen receives
• 29:26
  Speaker 7: a surprise visit.
• 29:29
  Speaker 6: Very early one morning, there was an individual who came
• 29:34
  Speaker 6: to the morgue doors and asked to see me. He
• 29:38
  Speaker 6: informed me that he was... an expert in plastic bags
• 29:43
  Speaker 6: and that he could help me. The case by that
• 29:46
  Speaker 6: time was in the newspapers, and the yellow plastic bags
• 29:50
  Speaker 6: were well described in the newspaper. There's a lot of
• 29:53
  Speaker 6: crazy people that think they're experts in things and certainly
• 29:58
  Speaker 6: are attracted to cases like this. So that was my
• 30:02
  Speaker 6: major concern. And so I actually interviewed him for some time.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: He had been a bag manufacturer for 40 years. He
• 30:12
  Speaker 1: had a chemical engineering background.
• 30:15
  Speaker 6: I showed him the plastic bags. He immediately kind of
• 30:19
  Speaker 6: dropped to his knees. and cradled the plastic bag. He
• 30:24
  Speaker 6: examined the edges and felt the texture of the bags.
• 30:32
  Speaker 6: And he finally stood up and looked at me and
• 30:34
  Speaker 6: he said, these bags are manufactured in only two places
• 30:39
  Speaker 6: in the world and that they are typically used for
• 30:44
  Speaker 6: charity fundraising events.
• 30:49
  Speaker 7: Lieutenant Ivanovsky chases down the lead.
• 30:54
  Speaker 2: There was a school on the north side of Milwaukee
• 30:57
  Speaker 2: that actually was selling these yellow plastic bags and as
• 31:01
  Speaker 2: a fundraiser. A relative of Mrs. Dressler worked at this school,
• 31:09
  Speaker 2: and she had actually sold yellow plastic bags to Mrs. Dressler.
• 31:14
  Speaker 2: So now we had a direct connection of these plastic
• 31:17
  Speaker 2: bags to Joachim Dressler.
• 31:22
  Speaker 7: Armed with new evidence, police obtain a search warrant for
• 31:26
  Speaker 7: the Dressler's property.
• 31:27
  Speaker 2: This house was in the middle of 17 acres of property,
• 31:38
  Speaker 2: some of which was plowed land and some of which
• 31:40
  Speaker 2: was wooded land and some of which was grassland.
• 31:47
  Speaker 7: So.
• 31:48
  Speaker 2: This was quite an extensive search. We're looking for any
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: trace evidence. We're looking for anything that might link Joachim
• 32:09
  Speaker 2: Dressler to the homicide of James Michael Madden. I went
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: down the basement. We discovered extreme amounts of pornography. All
• 32:32
  Speaker 2: of it, for the most part, was homosexual pornography. And
• 32:37
  Speaker 2: it was just remarkable that all of this existed in
• 32:39
  Speaker 2: a family man's house with two little children. There was
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: a possibility that he was living a lie.
• 32:51
  Speaker 7: As investigators move through the home, police uncover much more
• 32:55
  Speaker 7: alarming material.
• 32:59
  Speaker 1: Some of the things that he had were snuff films,
• 33:02
  Speaker 1: sexual films of people being murdered. And he was obviously
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: very fascinated by this.
• 33:09
  Speaker 2: We discovered a hoist inside the garage. And he told
• 33:16
  Speaker 2: us that he used it to lift motors out of cars.
• 33:23
  Speaker 2: but it could very easily have been used to hang
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: a body from and dismember the body in his garage.
• 33:31
  Speaker 7: The search continues to turn up highly suspicious items.
• 33:38
  Speaker 6: When police arrived at the scene, the suspect's child was
• 33:44
  Speaker 6: out in the backyard flying a kite. and the kite
• 33:54
  Speaker 6: was made of yellow plastic bags.
• 34:02
  Speaker 2: So we took the kite, we had it analyzed, and
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: it was discovered to be the same plastic material that
• 34:08
  Speaker 2: James Michael Madden had been found in.
• 34:12
  Speaker 7: Police combed through the house, looking for a murder weapon.
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: We did find a pistol... as well as some bullets.
• 34:24
  Speaker 1: There were bullet fragments found in the skull remains of
• 34:30
  Speaker 1: our victim, but those were unable to be matched up conclusively.
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: However, the gun that we found was very similar in
• 34:40
  Speaker 2: caliber to the bullet hole in James Michael Madden's head.
• 34:44
  Speaker 7: As detectives wrap up their search of the home, they
• 34:47
  Speaker 7: make another shocking discovery.
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: One of the investigators came to me and he says,
• 34:53
  Speaker 2: you have to see this, of course. And so I
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: went down the basement with him and Joachim Dressler had
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: a tanning booth in the basement. And if you stepped
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: inside this aluminum shell, up above the door on the
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: inside was written in black permanent ink, J. Madden. And
• 35:14
  Speaker 2: of course that's the victim.
• 35:19
  Speaker 7: As detectives gather evidence from Joachim Dressler's home, one of
• 35:24
  Speaker 7: his neighbors shares stunning new information with police.
• 35:28
  Speaker 1: While he was being investigated, he talked to a neighbor,
• 35:31
  Speaker 1: and for some reason, he told the neighbor that he
• 35:34
  Speaker 1: had killed our victim.
• 35:40
  Speaker 2: That is how we ended up making an arrest of
• 35:42
  Speaker 2: Joachim Dressler.
• 35:45
  Speaker 7: Police charge their suspect with first-degree intentional homicide. Only now,
• 35:51
  Speaker 7: Joakim Dressler is trying to pass off the vicious murder
• 35:54
  Speaker 7: as an accident.
• 35:56
  Speaker 1: He said that they were in the backyard shooting and
• 35:58
  Speaker 1: that he had accidentally discharged a pistol and it shot
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: the victim in the.
• 36:04
  Speaker 2: Back of the head.
• 36:04
  Speaker 1: And then he then just panicked, so to speak, and
• 36:07
  Speaker 1: dismembered the body and disposed of it. That wasn't our
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: theory of what happened, of course. We thought that he
• 36:16
  Speaker 1: killed him deliberately. Exactly why? Was it just an opportunity
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: that he could finally relive his fantasies, his fascination with death,
• 36:24
  Speaker 1: and recreate it? His family was gone, and he had
• 36:30
  Speaker 1: a number of tools that we recovered which could have
• 36:32
  Speaker 1: been used to sever the body and cut it into pieces.
• 36:36
  Speaker 7: The prosecution looks to the medical examiner to show what
• 36:39
  Speaker 7: really happened to James Madden.
• 36:44
  Speaker 6: He's got a defensive injury that he confronted his attacker.
• 36:48
  Speaker 6: Then you have ligature marks, abnormal stab wounds and mutilations, emasculations, dismemberments,
• 36:57
  Speaker 6: and attempts to hide and sequester a body. And so
• 37:03
  Speaker 6: it becomes an unbelievable story to connect an accidental firearm
• 37:09
  Speaker 6: injury with the type of death that this victim experienced.
• 37:19
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 37:19
  Speaker 7: Jensen's findings clearly point to a cruel and deliberate murder.
• 37:25
  Speaker 7: The prosecution lays out its own theory of what happened
• 37:28
  Speaker 7: once James Madden arrived at the remote farmhouse.
• 37:33
  Speaker 2: Mr.
• 37:33
  Speaker 1: Dressler propositioned our victim for a homosexual relationship and he
• 37:40
  Speaker 1: may have turned Mr. Dressler down and then that may
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: have set him off in some way.
• 37:45
  Speaker 7: Joakim Dressler then attacked James with a knife as the
• 37:49
  Speaker 7: young man tried to leave.
• 37:51
  Speaker 2: And I think that Joakim Dressler was very drunk and
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: became angry and shot James Madden in the head. He
• 38:01
  Speaker 2: pulled the body into the garage, hung him from that hook,
• 38:05
  Speaker 2: from the hoist, dismembered the body, and hid it in
• 38:09
  Speaker 2: Racine County and several different places.
• 38:13
  Speaker 7: To bolster their theory, the prosecution calls on a man
• 38:17
  Speaker 7: with a haunting tale.
• 38:19
  Speaker 1: We had another witness at the trial, a man named
• 38:21
  Speaker 1: Keith Erickson, who had a very similar episode to our victim,
• 38:26
  Speaker 1: and we offered him as what's called other acts evidence
• 38:29
  Speaker 1: for motive for Mr.
• 38:31
  Speaker 2: Dressler.
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: Mr. Erickson came over to the house to look at
• 38:37
  Speaker 1: buying a car. They both had an interest in guns,
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: and they were shooting guns in the backyard.
• 38:46
  Speaker 7: Mr.
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: Dressler and Mr.
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: Erickson engaged in consensual sex. He was taken into the
• 38:55
  Speaker 1: garage and shown the hoist, which we believe was used
• 39:00
  Speaker 1: to hold our victim upside down when he was attached
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: at his ankles. Mr. Erickson said that Mr. Dressler had
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: made reference to this device and shown it to.
• 39:12
  Speaker 7: Him. Mr.
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: Erickson was able to walk away unscathed But when he
• 39:16
  Speaker 1: found out what had happened to our victim, I remember
• 39:19
  Speaker 1: sitting in the interview with him. It was a very
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: scary interview for him, and he was, from his viewpoint,
• 39:25
  Speaker 1: lucky to be alive to be able to get out
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: of there.
• 39:30
  Speaker 7: With all the evidence and the testimony of Mr. Erickson,
• 39:33
  Speaker 7: the jury appears convinced of Joe Akeem Dressler's guilt. Then,
• 39:39
  Speaker 7: a major curveball.
• 39:42
  Speaker 2: When we were at trial, the Milwaukee Police Department arrested
• 39:45
  Speaker 2: an individual named Jeffrey Dahmer.
• 39:48
  Speaker 7: Jeffrey Dahmer was a psychotic serial killer. He sexually assaulted
• 39:52
  Speaker 7: and dismembered 17 young men and was operating just 30
• 39:57
  Speaker 7: miles away.
• 39:58
  Speaker 2: Of course, the defense attorney was screaming that there is
• 40:01
  Speaker 2: definitely a connection and that Jeffrey Dahmer probably killed James
• 40:04
  Speaker 2: Michael Madden.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: You never want to underestimate what can go wrong.
• 40:11
  Speaker 2: In a trial.
• 40:13
  Speaker 7: In one of the most defining cases of his career, Dr.
• 40:17
  Speaker 7: Jensen becomes the lead medical examiner in the Dahmer case.
• 40:23
  Speaker 1: If the Dahmer evidence had been allowed to be introduced
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: to our jury, it would have been, I think, a disaster.
• 40:30
  Speaker 1: It certainly would have confused our jury. We'd have to
• 40:33
  Speaker 1: combat that the entire time.
• 40:37
  Speaker 7: It's up to Dr. Jensen to untangle the disturbing parallels
• 40:40
  Speaker 7: between Dressler and Dahmer.
• 40:43
  Speaker 6: They were attempting to connect the two cases by what
• 40:47
  Speaker 6: they interpreted as similarities. Forensic pathologists are advocates for their
• 40:55
  Speaker 6: scientific opinions. You're not to be manipulated by one theory
• 40:59
  Speaker 6: over another theory, and you use your evidence to corroborate
• 41:03
  Speaker 6: and validate. I did not think that the two cases
• 41:07
  Speaker 6: were involved because of the different methods of dismemberment and
• 41:14
  Speaker 6: the different modalities of injury. And so it was my
• 41:18
  Speaker 6: opinion that they were not related.
• 41:24
  Speaker 2: Dr.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Jensen provided us with the overwhelming evidence to seal, I think, Mr.
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: Dressler's fate. In the end, we did a three-week trial.
• 41:33
  Speaker 1: It only took the jury two hours to return a
• 41:35
  Speaker 1: guilty verdict. He was found guilty of first-degree intentional homicide
• 41:42
  Speaker 1: while armed with a dangerous weapon.
• 41:46
  Speaker 7: Joe Akeem Dressler is sentenced to life in prison.
• 41:51
  Speaker 1: At the sentencing, the judge made the statements what a
• 41:53
  Speaker 1: horrific crime it was and that he'd never seen anything
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: like this in his 20 years on the bench. James
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: Madden was a completely innocent victim doing his job. And
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: he went to somebody's house, and it was the wrong house, unfortunately,
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: for him.
• 42:13
  Speaker 4: Still miss him. And think about what would have happened
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: with us. What would he be like in now, his 50s?
• 42:28
  Speaker 1: Dr.
• 42:28
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Jensen did a phenomenal job. It's a tremendous sense
• 42:31
  Speaker 2: of relief to know that all of the work and
• 42:33
  Speaker 2: effort of all of the individuals that were involved in
• 42:36
  Speaker 2: the investigation did a good enough job to put Joachim
• 42:39
  Speaker 2: Dressler in jail for the rest of his life so
• 42:42
  Speaker 2: that there won't be any more innocent victims.
• 42:48
  Speaker 6: I'm relieved and happy that we got it right, that
• 42:53
  Speaker 6: the detailed examination to capture the evidence that was helpful
• 42:58
  Speaker 6: and useful bringing, you know, an individual to justice.