May 27, 1991: Police Returned Konerak Sinthasomphone to Jeffrey Dahmer
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May 27, 1991: Police Returned Konerak Sinthasomphone to Jeffrey Dahmer
The call came in the early hours of May 27, 1991: a naked teenager was wandering the streets of Milwaukee, disoriented and bleeding. It was shortly after 5 a.m. when three women spotted the boy near 25th and State. He was frightened, visibly injured, and speaking in Lao and English — Konerak Sinthasomphone, just 14 years old.
Milwaukee police officers John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish responded. They escorted the boy back to Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment building, where Dahmer claimed he was a 19-year-old lover who had too much to drink. The officers accepted the explanation and left.
They had handed Konerak Sinthasomphone directly back to the man who had drugged him, sexually assaulted him, and was in the process of killing him.
The events of the previous day laid the groundwork for what happened next. On the afternoon of May 26, 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer lured Konerak Sinthasomphone to his apartment at 924 North 25th Street with an offer of money to pose for photographs. Once inside, Dahmer gave the boy sleeping pills. When Konerak lost consciousness, Dahmer laid him on the bed next to something already there: the decomposing remains of Tony Hughes, a 31-year-old man Dahmer had killed days earlier.
Before police arrived, Dahmer had already drilled a hole into the boy's head and injected hydrochloric acid. But Konerak was still alive during the police encounter. Dahmer later said he killed him about 30 minutes after the officers left, strangling him after they returned the boy to the apartment.
Dahmer then decapitated the body, retained the skull as a trophy, and disposed of the remains over the following days.
Dahmer was eventually arrested and confessed to 17 murders spanning 1987 to 1991. He was convicted in 1992 and sentenced to life in prison. He died in 1994, beaten to death by a fellow inmate.
The Sinthasomphone murder and the circumstances surrounding it became one of the most infamous cases in American true crime history — not just for Dahmer's crimes, but for what it revealed about police indifference, bias, and procedural failure.
Also on this day
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Wayne Williams Birthday (May 27, 1958) · WikipediaWayne Williams, convicted in the Atlanta Child Murders cases, was born on May 27, 1958. Williams was convicted in 1981 of murdering two adult victims and remains a suspect in the deaths of at least 22 additional children in the Atlanta area during the late 1970s.
Sources used/checked for this issue
- Jeffrey Dahmer, Wikipedia — Wikipedia. 'Jeffrey Dahmer.' Accessed May 27, 2026.
Today in True Crime by Case Bound — 2026-05-27
