he feel enough in control to open up sexually. Through more than forty victims, this was Ted Bundy’s raison d’être. His souvenir was the head. In the privacy of his home, he masturbated on the young woman’s head, then burned it in a fireplace.
When taking souvenirs doesn’t gratify anymore, the sadistic killer knows three final, descending options: necrophilia, or sex with the dead, historic vampirism—the ancient practice of blood draining, driven by sexual sadism—and finally cannibalism. Eating human flesh is the sadist’s ultimate sexual union, the ultimate intimacy without vulnerability: “I own you entirely.”
This was Jeffrey Dahmer’s final stop, the subfloor of the house of sadism. The centuries of fables about an angry man who must open his heart to love, to the vulnerability of life, or face psychological death—the tale of beauty and the beast—are not without meaning. Dahmer was simultaneously gratified and mocked by the insatiable hollowness and evil of his choice—a literal feast of death. For him, cannibalism was only the beginning. He literally could eat all he wanted, but he’d never be satisfied. “The desire is insatiable.”
The eight steps led to the abyss, the root of the myth of Dracula and the reality of Hitler, the grotesque killing forms Walter called the “ultimate nightmare.” Walter was an atheist, but despite his Christian metaphors Dante had done a fine job of portraying evil, Walter said.
The thin man went to the shelf and pulled down a beaten old copy of The Inferno, which he hadn’t read since college. He was intrigued to see the fourteenth-century poet had done similar work, apportioning hell into nine concentric circles, the last of which had four zones.
“The Ninth Circle of Hell is impressive,” he said. It was the lake of ice known as Cocytus, where betrayers of humanity were frozen for eternity, each encased to a different depth, from the waist down to total immersion. Walter admired the many excellent forms of vengeance portrayed, such as Count Ugolino beating the head of Archbishop Ruggieri, who had imprisoned and starved him and his children. At the center of the lake is Satan, waist-deep in ice, a huge, terrifying, winged beast with three heads. The three mouths each chew on traitors such as Brutus and Judas Iscariot. The six eyes weep tears that mix with the traitors’ blood. The six wings beat to escape but send an icy wind that further imprisons all. Judas suffers the most, his head in the mouth of Lucifer, his back forever skinned by Lucifer’s claws.
“I quite like it,” Walter said. “A little overdramatic, perhaps. But perps haven’t changed much, nor their just deserts.”
Stoud saw the photographs of the boy covering the trestle table. His studied the old police photos from 1957. Walter pointed to the cuts and bruises all over the body. He saw evidence of burning, cutting, spanking, and ligature marks. There were signs of starvation and dehydration. The anus had been sodomized, evidently with all manner of instruments. One hand and one foot were severely withered, a process caused by overexposure to water.
The burn scars on the torso showed perhaps where cigarettes had been put out. There was evidence needles had been inserted here and there. The narrow head squeezed in on the sides by some terrible pressure, probably a vise.
As soon as he saw the photographs, Walter realized that the police, led by the late Remington Bristow, had built much of four decades of investigation on the wrong premise. Bristow’s sentimental attachment to the idea the boy had been accidentally killed by loving parents was absurd.
“It’s sadism,” Walter said. “Now we see that what Mary told Kelly and McGillen in Cincinnati makes perfect sense.” Mary’s mother had an ideal setup to enjoy her exploitation of the boy, he said. The irony of being a respected librarian, working with schoolchildren on the prestigious Main Line of Philadelphia, would have excited her. It was the 1950s, when the world of suburban mothers and children was portrayed by June Cleaver standing in the kitchen in her apron saying with a frown, “I’m worried about the Beave.” And the Beaver saying, “Gee, Wally, that’s swell!”
The boy’s secluded basement prison was a perfect cover for her. Emotionally drained after her attacks, she could clean herself of blood or hair, lock the boy back down in his box, and reassume her roles in society. Neighbor. Friend. Librarian. Wife. Mother. She’d become more rigid, sadism would change her personality, but she’d handle it far below the radar, a few more Bloody Marys