The Milwaukee Cannibal - "My Friend Dahmer" | DW Documentary

[00:00:07][music] [music] I'm trying so hard [music] to let you in on the This is my hometown, Bath Richfield, Ohio.

[00:00:35]Small town, very typical, boring place.

[00:00:38]Nothing ever happens here.

[00:00:41][music] >> And then one day, July 23rd, 1991, [music] Jeffrey Dmer was caught in Milwaukee and everything changed.

[00:00:55]>> [music] >> Milwaukee police found body parts in a north side apartment and now they wonder [music] if they've uncovered some kind of death factory. 31-year-old man was arrested at that apartment. [music] The Milwaukee County Medical Examiner will release more details on this case this morning at 10:00.

[00:01:16]>> So, what commenced from that point on was a 20-year struggle to come to terms with this story.

[00:01:25]about my old high school friend. How did he become this monster? And the result of that was my friend Dmer.

[00:01:37]And that was the start of me becoming a graphic novelist.

[00:01:52][whistles] >> [music] [music] >> Woo!

[00:02:16][music] When I was a kid, I drew all the time. I drew what was happening in my life. I drew what I was thinking about and was just constantly making images. I was heavily immersed in comic strip and having a great time with it.

[00:02:41]So that's what I was doing in the '9s when this the Dmer story broke.

[00:02:50]>> [music] [music] >> Do you remember the day that you found out about Domin? [clears throat] >> The phone call. Yeah, I remember it. And we were all trying to find out who this Jeff Dmer guy was and and we knew he graduated from Bat High School in 78.

[00:03:27]And so I called you and said, "There's this huge story. This guy who graduated with you, killed a bunch of people. It's a horrible story."

[00:03:39]And you said, "Who?" And I said, "Guess."

[00:03:45]And you guessed a name that wasn't his.

[00:03:49]>> And I just thought, how how many deranged people did you go to high school with?

[00:03:56]>> Two at least, cuz Dmer was my second guess.

[00:03:59]>> No, that's true. So, and then you guessed Dmer.

[00:04:05]>> Oh, it's like getting punched in the head.

[00:04:08]>> Yeah. Um cuz I remember you had to go you had to rush off cuz you were covering the story and so I was just kind of left there in the in the kitchen by myself going, "Oh my god."

[00:04:32]Once I got the news, I drove down to my hometown to my parents house just to see what I had in terms of artifacts. You know, all my high school stuff was boxed up and put in the basement. And I took out those boxes and started looking through this stuff.

[00:04:51]It was a very uh spooky experience because I'd forgotten about this stuff completely and I was like, "Oh man."

[00:05:05]So, this is the drawing of Jeff. He was probably standing right there as I drew these things, but you know, it's on a piece of note paper, so I was probably in class or in the cafeteria or something.

[00:05:17]And oh, this is the uh this is a we ran this fake candidate and screwed up the election and he's doing his uh you know his dmerstick.

[00:05:30]He kind of invented this character, the way of talking and kind of ticks and spazzes, you know, various herkykyjerky movements. And so we started picking up on that too and we started doing that as well, you know, just talking to each other just to make fun of each other.

[00:05:53]And you know, when I found them, uh, yeah, that was a that was that was a very anxious discovery. You know, it it was very unsettling.

[00:06:04][music] >> [music] [music] >> To a certain extent, Dmer hijacked [music] my personal history. Yeah. Um because now it was rewritten and [music] all of these goofy antics that we had done as teenagers which seemed completely harmless now had a very dark definition [music] as we realized holy that's what he was thinking when we were doing this Enough.

[00:06:59][music] >> You often work outside.

[00:07:07]>> I do.

[00:07:08]>> Yeah.

[00:07:10]>> On away.

[00:07:11]>> Yeah.

[00:07:11]>> Oh, yeah. Let away for a minute.

[00:07:15]Do you want black or do you want uh >> Do you have anything?

[00:07:18]>> Steam milk?

[00:07:19]>> Yes. We've known each other since preschool. Since uh >> we sat next to each other in art class.

[00:07:26]>> Yeah. In high school. We were in art class together.

[00:07:29]>> She was privy to all the nonsense.

[00:07:36]>> I remember this drawing firstand >> I do. I do remember that drawing firsthand.

[00:07:50]That's exactly him. [clears throat] >> Oh, it's exactly him.

[00:08:11]Perhaps two [music] weeks after he was caught and you know it was this huge story and everybody we were being phone was ringing off the hook. Everyone wanted to talk to us. I got together with Neil and Mike who were in the area at the time just to discuss what was happening to us and we shared stories. [music] [music] [music] when the news broke that Jeff Dmer was arrested and I felt like I was shrinking, like I was falling down through the seat, like I was just melting.

[00:09:04]And it was just like a dream, like this is not real.

[00:09:15][music] We talked about other incidents or stories um about Jeff Dmer and sometimes we laughed about him but at that time it was still a struggle to comprehend all of this to comprehend the murders. I remember one thing he did specifically and I was standing by my locker in the hallway between classes and and he just comes right up to me and he looks at me for a second and then he puts his head right on my chest and then he stands up and he goes, "I just wanted to listen to your heart. I want to make sure you're still alive."

[00:09:52][bell] And then he just kept going.

[00:10:01]>> [music] [music] >> In 1991, police converged on a Bath Township home and for a week dug for answers in a 13-year-old mystery. They found the scattered bones of Steven Hicks, the first murder victim of serial killer Jeffrey Dmer. The victim killed in a bedroom, his body dismembered in a tight crawl space. It was Dmer who led police to the body after he was linked to killing 16 other men or boys in the Milwaukee area.

[00:10:33][music] [music] You know, I went onto the property to Dmer's house um when it was still a crime scene.

[00:10:52]It was still ringed with police tape.

[00:10:54]It's the first time I've been at the house since, you know, high school.

[00:10:58][music] [music] [music] Chris told me he was thinking about buying the house and uh I tried to talk him out of it actually. I mean it's it's a great house where something very bad happened but he he wanted it and you know he's made it a great home. I mean, uh, it's full of music and art, and I'm happy for the house because the house didn't deserve the fate that it had received.

[00:11:57]My first summer here, I got attacked by a hawk. I was sitting out on that.

[00:12:02]There's a big rock out there, and that's where he I think that's where he, >> you know, bashed up some of the bones.

[00:12:08]But I was just I was talking to a girlfriend in LA and >> yada yada >> boom.

[00:12:13]>> Wow. I go, Jesus, I just got hit by a bird and then he comes back and hit me again and knocked me off. So I called the Ohio Department of Wildlife Management and >> they just laughed. [laughter] >> Well Well, it's kind of but I I love this. I said, "Well, you know, well, there's a couple things. You can't move them. They're uh protected species. You can't, you know, move the nest anyway.

[00:12:36]So, here's what we tell people. Uh, go out and get a big uh, brightly colored umbrella and paint big eyes on it. And, uh, when you go out in the backyard, uh, it'll think it's a big animal and it and it won't attack you. I said, I live in Jeffrey Dmer's childhood [laughter] home. I'm going to walk around the backyard [laughter] with an umbrella with big eyes on it.

[00:13:05]I'm a congenal weirdo. I know that. But why would anybody want to buy a house like this >> other than it was it was [snorts] perfect for me?

[00:13:14]>> And that's should give me pause, right?

[00:13:18]Okay. I mean, you know, there's there's the whole joke about uh uh Jimmy Page, Led Zeppelin, uh Alistister Cwley's house.

[00:13:26]>> All right. All right. Uh Trent Resnner, 9 in nails, Manson Killing House in LA, >> Chris Butler, >> the waitresses, Jeffrey Dawnmer's childhood home.

[00:13:44]Strange, goofy, weird.

[00:13:51]I remember the first time I came back here. Oh god, yes. I remember the shapes of like the ceiling and the walls. I mean, and the other thing that really struck me cuz I grew up in a house very similar to this. It was a little bigger, >> but when you come in at night, just that this the windows are like a black obsidian.

[00:14:13]It always freaked me out when I was a kid. Who was out there looking at me?

[00:14:17]Nobody, of course. But you know, the mind boogeyman, right? Right. Right.

[00:14:21][music] >> [music] [music] >> I made some sketches.

[00:14:36]I made sketches of, you know, just some details [music] like this room here, living room. I made a sketch of the living room. I made a floor plan that showed where the different rooms were.

[00:14:48]Um, and I figured I would use it in time. [music] And that's, you know, a couple years later I did.

[00:14:59][music] [music] I was also really surprised how how close the bedrooms are to each other. I mean, Jeff's room is right there in the hall. His parents room is right across the hall, so maybe 3 ft apart and they're so close together and yet his parents had no idea that, you know, he was losing his grip on reality and on his sanity. How is that possible? How can you be so disconnected that you aren't aware of something that's happening literally right under your nose? when I went in the room and I noticed those the windows are just this slit across the the top which is uh which are not very functional windows but yeah that really struck me that it was kind of uh his view of the outside world was this slit of a window you know everything else was it kind of mirrored what was going on in his head right that you know he had such a narrow view of the outside world it was just all inside.

[00:16:15][music] [music] I started drawing stories, but uh those early stories, they're not great.

[00:16:34]I started with one story and then did a few more after that. And I did some that I penciled and then threw away. I didn't like them at all. So, I was really I was really struggling with it.

[00:16:49]I had to try to remember his characteristics. And that took a while because, you know, I hadn't seen him move in so long.

[00:16:59]You have to build a visual character.

[00:17:02]The first time he appeared in court, you know, this is the first time I had laid eyes on him since high school.

[00:17:12]And when I saw him walk in, I was like, "Oh my god, he had that very [music] strange gate where he, you know, his shoulders were kind of thrust forward and his arms were very straight."

[00:17:28][music] That's exactly how he was in high school. I remember that now.

[00:17:39]that brought it all back.

[00:17:41]Um, I didn't watch the trial. I mean, that was a huge thing in the in the US.

[00:17:47]Everybody was watching this trial. I didn't watch I didn't watch it, but um, I did see that his first appearance and that was enough to trigger the Wow. Yeah, that's that's DMER.

[00:18:05][music] [music] Dmer was killed in prison in November of 94. I think the fellow's name was Christopher Carver that killed him. I thought that he would always be alive as long as we were and we'd see him throughout our lives in prison. So I thought, well, that's not going to happen now.

[00:19:01]I have very vivid dreams with Dmer in them regularly. It was just him sitting in a room talking to me and I'd wake up and I'd be like, "Whoa, wow. That was uh that was some dream. I need to try to get that out of my mind." But it really doesn't happen. Jeff Dmer is always still there in a dark corner of your mind. You can't go throughout life and say, "Oh, I forgot about him." He's always there waiting to come out.

[00:19:31]Sometimes when you least expect it. When you're having a good day and then all of a sudden he's back and you say, "Ah, yeah, that's right. I knew this guy."

[00:19:46]I was surprisingly upset when Dmer was killed.

[00:19:52]And then I was upset that I was upset because like why would I care? This guy is this guy's a monster. He he's caused nothing but misery to, you know, the hundreds of people that are mourning his victims. Why why would I care?

[00:20:05]Um, what it did was, uh, mentally I think it it it freed me up a little bit and I'd just been collecting stories up till that point. And after he was killed, almost immediately, like maybe a month later, early '95, that was the start of really sitting down and and beginning to work on the book.

[00:20:35]In fact, when he started the book, he said, "Well, you're about to be a comics widow again." And um and that's true.

[00:20:41]Like he's he's consumed by it. He just disappears into the attic for long periods of time.

[00:20:54]>> [sighs and gasps] >> In some ways, he's always been, this is going to sound bad, he's always been kind of a cartoon character, but now I'm trying to add some humanity to that drawing [music] [music] and then show that humanity falling away bit by [music] bit.

[00:21:25]>> [music] [music] >> My friendship with Derf was kind of started through a a mutual friend. And then Derf kind of wandered in similar circles as I did because I was a musician, uh, a drummer playing in a sort of a punk rock new wave band in the late 1970s, early 1980s. I did not realize it at the time, but Derf came to see our band play quite a bit uh, here in Akran. [music] >> [music] >> mid 1990s is when I got to know him really well because at that time he was writing the city comic which was sort of his weekly comic that was in uh free newspapers all over the country.

[00:22:31]a derf strip uh the city was what he really was involved in for a large part of his career and it was a weekly comic strip. He's always looking for stories.

[00:22:42]So he actually used probably a half a dozen of my stories, just anecdotes from working at the library or things that happened to me. I would just be telling him this stuff in conversation and next thing I know it would be drawn out in a comic form in the in a city strip. And so he had a good uh you know career there really a good living.

[00:23:17]The title, my friend Dmer, is not in any way whatsoever an exaggeration. They were friends. Um, it was a strange friendship. And of course, anyone who's read the book knows that Derf really realized that he never really knew Jeffrey that well after all. But no one did.

[00:23:39]None of none of the people who thought that they were friends with Jeff really knew him. [music] I don't remember when the DMER fan club started, but it started sometime when we were probably about 16 years old, 15 years old, I don't know. But it was just a funny thing to do. It was just something very informal, I think. I mean, there were no meetings.

[00:24:13]>> [music] >> Dmer acted so goofy and he makes us laugh and does such [music] odd things mimicking people, imitating people, being going into a spaz on the floor, spinning around. I mean, it became like this running gag. You know, I would draw it and then I would show it to my friends and they would all laugh [music] and uh you know, I'd show it to Dmer and he would laugh. So, I mean, it just became kind of this silly thing that we kept doing over and over again.

[00:24:43][music] [music] This is the entire DMER fan club. So, this is all the guys. I mean, that's Mike there. That's me. Um, that's Kent and Neil. And that's Jeff himself. And then the other guys.

[00:25:15]>> We were not kings of the school. No, we were not the popular kids. We were the brainy weirdos who were doing these things in the shadows almost.

[00:25:26]>> As a female, I would not have done that.

[00:25:28]It was kind of a boy thing. Yeah. And those and those the guys that were in the fan club weren't guys that ran around with girls particularly outside of school. [laughter] Sorry to say, as much as they might have wanted to, but they were the smart kids and the funny kids and the artistic kids. The Dmer Club was made of more people who were more subversive than the popular kids. Definitely not really the [music] norm by by far.

[00:26:06]When I ruined the the uh student council election by, you know, putting [music] DMER in campaign posters and then when kids came into the school, we passed them out at the front entrance to all these kids. And so our fictional candidate got more more votes than any other candidate in the in the uh in the election.

[00:26:43]Well, a good example of of Dmer doing things that we thought were funny and he did too um was to appear in photographs, group photographs in the high school that he wasn't a member of these organizations.

[00:26:57]He was not in them. And if you look in our high school yearbook, you'll find the National Honor Society, which is supposed to be all the smartest kids.

[00:27:05]And of course, I'm not in it. Backdorf's not in it. And um either Jeff Dmer initiated this idea that he's going to get into some of the photos or some of us coerced him and said, "Why did you get in that picture? That'd be really funny." The teacher who was the adviser to the National Honor Society was looking at the photo saw him there and pulled out a magic marker and just blacked out his face. [music] >> [music] >> and everybody says, "Who's this? Who's the guy without the head? Who's the headless person right in the middle of the photo?"

[00:27:54]And it's easy to tell by the jacket. and and it's easy to figure out pretty quickly that's dmer [music] [music] here is gone now. Um that was important to me. A lot of the stores that I, you know, shopped at, the corner drugstore where I bought all my comics, all that stuff is [music] gone.

[00:28:33]You really going to pass me on this hill?

[00:28:37]Idiot.

[00:28:42][music] Some things never change.

[00:28:55]This is the only place left from my youth. It's permanent and I'm happy about that.

[00:29:04]This is where really I became a writer is in these woods. I used to wander around here as a teenager. My house, my first house is very near to these woods.

[00:29:14]just wander for hours on end just thinking about things, characters and stories and you know all of that that kind of thing.

[00:29:24]And and that's where that creative invention first started.

[00:29:35]I mean Jeff also grew up in these woods but he used them for a very different purpose. This was a hiding place for him. It's where he could go and and be alone with his horrible fantasies.

[00:29:51][music] [music] [music] >> [music] >> Heat. Heat.

[00:30:21][music] >> [music] >> There were trails through these [music] woods where all the kids would, you know, they would wander from house to house cuz they didn't want to walk on the road. And these kids were walking along one day and they came across this this doghead.

[00:30:52][music] >> [music] >> I think it was maybe a bit of a retaliation.

[00:31:08]You know, you're intruders into my world. Well, here's what my world looks like. Now, get out. And I think that that the kids uh didn't come back into those woods for a while after that. So, it worked.

[00:31:30]The important thing is is that you know I was thinking about the story as I was looking around and making note of different characteristics you know over a course of several years you know then it worked its way into the story the way it did and again that gets back to putting yourself in a space and thinking about [music] the story you're working on and how space affects the characters in that story, like the [music] opening scene of the book where Jeff is walking along the side of the road, walking up Bath Road [music] toward his house, I noticed that my feet were making a crunching sound on the gravel on the side of the Oh, [music] [music] [music] [music] and that's the crawl space there.

[00:32:35]That's where he carved up his first victim.

[00:32:40]So, and my friend Neil's house is right, you know, through there. We were having a party down there at his house. Jeff wasn't invited. Jeff had other things on his hands, obviously, and he was up here uh butchering that that poor kid.

[00:33:06]So, was that close? couple hundred yards.

[00:33:11]Yeah, that's the sort of thing why I stopped the story where I did, you know? I just don't I don't want to go on and deal with that stuff. That's not my story, boy.

[00:33:38]This is all that's left of it. This is Jeff's clubhouse, which he called the hut.

[00:33:45]It's the roof there.

[00:33:48]So, it was right here.

[00:33:53]So, this is what 15 pages of the book right here.

[00:33:58]Yeah.

[00:34:01]Kids out here, we all had a place like that. We all had clubouses. is it was very common. I had one in the woods that my grandfather built for me and yeah, it was a little bit of a refuge, you know, if you wanted to get out of the house and get away from the family and get away from your annoying little brother, you know, I would go there and, you know, read comic books or or um now Jeff went to his clubhouse. It was the complete opposite.

[00:34:30][music] He was just then indulging in his own sick fantasies [music] about death and rotting animals and and trails and all of these things that would, you know, drive him mad. [music] [music] >> [music] >> When I bought the house in 2005, the idea of the Tinhue band had reformed. Well, I I had a little uh pump organ and wrote the lyrics for instead of John Hardy, it's >> you're writing a murder ballad in the commer house. Yeah. Oh man.

[00:35:30]>> Jeffrey Dmer [singing] was a very broken child who grew into a monster [singing] of a man.

[00:35:40]His [music] mother and father had demons [singing] of their own. Jeff said, "Then I'll get love where I can. Lord, Lord, I'll get love where I can." [singing] Just [music] 18, Jeff was left on his own in a dark house, hungry and cold.

[00:36:04][singing] He picked [music] up a hitchhiker name of Steven Hicks.

[00:36:10]Dmer begged him, "Please don't go. Lord, Lord, I'll kill you so you will never go."

[00:36:20]Jeffrey Dmer's alcoholic rampage lasted roughly [music] from 1978 to 1991 [music] and he killed at least [singing] 17 young men.

[00:36:33]He didn't just murder his victims, [music] he tortured them first, then mutilated them, ate parts of them, [music] had sex with their corpses, and kept some of their body parts as souvenirs.

[00:36:53]I have been to the east and I've been to [singing] the west. There is evil everywhere I go. [singing] But when they asked Jeffrey Dmer why he did these awful things, Dmer [singing] [music] answered, "I don't know, Lord.

[00:37:12]Lord," Dmer answered, "I [singing and music] don't know.

[00:37:28]Okay.

[00:37:30]Did I get it? [clears throat] Yeah. Give me a minute. Okay.

[00:37:34]Yeah.

[00:37:37]No, it's Sorry.

[00:37:43][clears throat] That's something.

[00:37:46]>> [snorts] >> Mhm.

[00:37:47]>> That's something.

[00:37:49]>> Vanish.

[00:37:51]>> Well, it's just all of it.

[00:37:53]>> Yeah. It's all I recorded here.

[00:37:55]>> It's the whole story.

[00:37:56]>> Yeah. And recorded here.

[00:37:58]>> Yeah. Recorded here. Yeah.

[00:38:00]>> Yeah. That's overwhelming.

[00:38:03]Yeah, man. Jeez.

[00:38:09]Killing me.

[00:38:10]>> Sorry to ruin your day.

[00:38:11]>> No. No. It's Welcome to my life.

[00:38:14]Yeah.

[00:38:19]>> [music] >> There was a bigger learning curve with long form narrative than I thought there'd be. I mean, maybe it was a little bit arrogant. Maybe it was a little bit cocky. I thought I can just go into this and and it'll [music] be fine. But I couldn't. I mean, you know, telling a story in five panels is very different than telling a story [music] in 250 pages. So, I had to learn how to slow down. I had to learn [music] how to change the pace. Um, and especially with my friend Dmer, which is this very [music] kind of slow uh tense narrative. There's not a lot of action. There's not a lot of parts where [music] it, you know, just takes off and runs. I had to learn how to put the brakes on.

[00:39:10]>> [music] >> I was struggling also with you know my own feelings about this story and the feelings about Dmer and our time together and and you know it was the mid 2000s and I wasn't I wasn't making as much headway as I wanted. So I decided you know what I'm going to I'm going to go do a a graphic novel. I want to learn how to do graphic novels before I tackle my friend Dmer. So, I did Punk Rock and Trailer Parks and uh I just sat down and did this fun funny story that had some great characters that I've been had in my head for a while and it really came together well. And that's that's the book that really taught me to be how to do graphic novels.

[00:40:00]when he's drawing, he'll leave little little stick figures. And so they're like uh and you'll find them everywhere.

[00:40:08]Or sometimes he'll jot something down on a notebook, but it's not always his notebook. It's just some other notebook.

[00:40:14]So as I'm going into a notebook to find like a sheet of paper to write a grocery list on, I'll find some notes for a book and I always have to pull them out and put them aside and say, "Are these things that are important to you? Like do you have this some other place?" Like I'm not sure. It's just it's like it consumes our house. It like little bits of it wind up being everywhere and he was still working, you know, on on the book itself. And then uh he got cancer and um everything sort of stopped like our our whole worlds got smaller and became about that he needed to have a a bypass surgery.

[00:41:15]They were gonna have to take veins and I said his his right arm is his drawing arm. If he can't draw, I don't know who he is. You know what I mean? So I there was a Sharpie marker because of course he was inking cartoons. And I took the Sharpie and on his right arm just below here. I wrote a big a big no. And I wrote an exclamation mark after it because I thought he'll be unconscious.

[00:41:40]He can't tell them. So when they wheeled him in and they were going to look for a vein, this just arm said no.

[00:41:50][music] [music] [music] I came home and I was just a mess. And I um at that point I decided, all right, enough. You know, I didn't know if I was going to live another 5 years. It's like if I'm going to do this story, I better sit down and do it. So I sat right there on that couch and I could barely walk up and down the steps. Um but I sat on that couch, you know, with stitches still in my chest or they were staples and uh and drew pages. I just started drawing my friend.

[00:42:39][music] [music] [music] Heat. Heat. [music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] >> And you know, and it sounds strange for such a dark story, but that was a big part of my recovery. You know, just making comics brought me back from the abyss.

[00:44:04]I think the important thing when you write a memoir like this is you have absolutely brutal honesty. You can't be afraid to make yourself look like an And you know, at 17, 16, everybody's a jerk. I mean, you know, we picked Jeff at his house. And then Jeff came out and he got in the car and he he had a bag with him in the short drive to the mall. It only takes maybe 15 minutes to get here from his house.

[00:44:46]He downed an entire six-pack of beer and it my skin just crawled. It was really a spooky thing to watch cuz he was just chugging down the beers one after another.

[00:45:02]We took up a collection, my friends and I, and paid DMER, I don't know, 30, 35 bucks to come here and put on a performance on a Saturday afternoon for for fun of his uh crazy [music] sticktick that he had.

[00:45:29]He would do [music] his [ __ ] act in the, you know, in the in the main part of the mall and and we would follow him around and all have a good laugh.

[00:45:41][music] It was the peak of the Dmer fan club era and it was also the end of it because after that what we witnessed here, what I witnessed in the car, we all really lost interest in in hanging around with Dmer. I mean, my instinct was I just want to get kind of get away from this guy. um there's something seriously wrong here and it's not safe to be around him. And that's the first time I felt that way.

[00:46:15][music] [music] >> [music] >> What if I had talked to him more? What if I had said anything [music] to him in a different way? Or I I I have thought this forever [music] and Derf thought that too obviously because he knew him so much better. But what if on a particular day we just but he was he was so off-putting that you would be so unlikely to approach [music] him as you know especially in the very later time. You wouldn't it wouldn't have occurred to you what if I had just [music] been kinder or what if I had just made made more of an effort somehow to figure this out.

[00:47:18]That was a series of people leaving his life. Obviously, that had a big psychological effect on him.

[00:47:25]Yeah, absolutely. I've thought about that a lot. Um, that was one of the motivations for killing people and, you know, keeping their heads and all of that stuff was this fear of abandonment, fear of being left alone. And it's like, wow. That's again, I've had uh I had quite a few sleepless nights over that when I realized that's what was happening.

[00:47:54]From here on, we excluded Dmer from our group. Jeff was alone with only the voices in his head, [music] which would now grow louder and louder.

[00:48:13]>> [music] >> After the command performance, Jeff was alone. And then when school was finished, he had no more social life whatsoever. I Everything was done.

[00:48:34][music] >> [music] [music] >> Backd worked on his book and he was in touch with me while he was writing his book.

[00:49:01]He said, "I don't have an ending. I'm not sure how to end this book. do you have anything else?

[00:49:09][music] And I remember that event.

[00:49:12]So it was in June 1978 [music] and we had a party and it was a pretty good party. It was after midnight and I see somebody walking on the road.

[00:49:24][music] So I stop and I say, "Hey Jeff, you want to ride home?" He gets in the car [music] and uh I drive him to his house.

[00:49:36]He didn't say much. I could tell he had a lot to drink.

[00:49:40]And I remember talking to him a little bit [music and snorts] asking uh you know what are you going to do this summer? Do you have a job? He didn't say much.

[00:49:52][music] And that's the last time I ever saw Jeff Dmer. I never saw him again. [music] Now, what I didn't know that I learned years later that he would kill somebody in that house [music] and maybe that body was there in the house or the crawl space. [music] And now here we are almost 200 pages [music] in and that's what I wanted to represent. But I wanted the reader to turn the page because I wanted that surprise, [music] that visual surprise.

[00:50:29]So to do that, I had to add just kind of a page, which is Mike backing out of the driveway and driving off.

[00:50:37]It's purely there to move that splash page to the next spread. So when you turn the page, that was the last any of us saw of Dmer. [music] [music] It's amazing to me in 31 years, 31 short years, how I could create such hell for myself and everyone around me. Cuz I did it. It was my doing, my little hard creation, you know? I mean, people can say, "Well, it was family pressures or it was mental disease, but the fact is that I'm the one that did it. Very self-destructive life.

[00:51:35][music] [music] [music] You know, the strangest thing about it is is that it was such a success. I mean, it changed my career completely.

[00:51:57]Um, it elevated my reputation. It, you know, led to all this great stuff that happened to me. More books and, you know, world tours and all this stuff that comes from this very troubling, dark work. So, it it's again a very complicated relationship I have with this story. [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:52:35][music] [music] Heat. Heat.

[00:52:53][music] [music] >> [music] [music] [music] [music]