While traveling on a train in Europe, an ex-classmate of Jeffrey Dahmer discovered the shocking news of Dahmer's heinous acts as a cannibal serial killer through a newspaper article.
"I was in an unusual situation," Dr. Mike Kukral said to FOX News. "Most classmates, from what I know, of course, learned of it on the television, on the front page of the newspaper, from their parents telling them who probably still lived back home if they had moved away, things like that."
"I was overseas, I was in Europe, and I'd been in Europe an entire year on a Fulbright scholarship, and I was just about ready to go home. It was, I guess, July or August of '91, and I picked up a newspaper. I had a long train trip to take, and I picked up a newspaper, and nothing on the front page, not too interesting, second, third page. And then…there's a photograph of his family home in Bath. And I knew that house pretty well; everybody knew that's where Jeff Dahmer lived, that house. And I saw a picture of the house, and then I read the article and I just couldn't fathom what I was reading."
Professor emeritus Dr. Kukral from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology shared that he was classmates with the notorious "Milwaukee Monster", Jeffrey Dahmer, during their junior and senior high school years in the 1970s. He expressed his profound shock upon discovering Dahmer's crimes.
"I first thought it was his father who had committed the murders. And then when I read the second paragraph, they used his first name, Jeffrey. I just sat there, stunned, I'd say, on this train for hours with no one to talk to about it and just read this one brief article," he said. "I just sat there on this train for the next four or five hours thinking about this and thinking about Jeff Dahmer and thinking about high school and wondered what in the world went on in his head, what caused him to do these things."
"There's no explanation for something so horrific, these crimes," he concluded.
In May 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer was taken into custody by the Milwaukee Police Department. At his residence, authorities discovered numerous severed heads and various dismembered bodies.
Dahmer, who had a history of sexual offenses, was responsible for the brutal rape, murder, and mutilation of 17 males from 1978 to 1991. A number of his later crimes included acts of necrophilia, cannibalism, and retaining body parts.
The depth of Dahmer's gruesome methods came to the forefront during his trial. He was found guilty of 15 murders in Wisconsin. However, due to insufficient evidence, prosecutors did not charge him for a potential 16th murder. Additionally, he confessed to the 1978 killing of a hitchhiker in Ohio.
"How can you comprehend anything like that?" Kukral asked. "How can you think about anybody that you might have known - I mean, think of all the people in the U.S. that didn't know Jeff Dahmer and how shocked they were and how repulsed they were in reading this news of this serial killer and the crimes he committed and the murders and everything. Imagine? Well, let's take it up a few levels, a few notches and say, ‘Oh, yeah, by the way, I went to school with this kid. I knew him when we were teenagers.’ That's a whole other level."
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