“I couldn’t understand what I was reading”

A former classmate of Jeffrey Dahmer has revealed he discovered the cannibalistic serial killer’s crimes after reading a newspaper while taking a train in Europe.

“I was in an unusual situation,” Dr. Mike Kukral told FOX News Digital. “Most of the classmates, as far as I know, of course, found out on television, from the headlines, from their parents telling them that they were probably still living at home if they had moved, things like that.”

“I was overseas, I was in Europe, and I had spent a whole year in Europe on a Fulbright scholarship, and I was about to come home. It was, I guess, July or August 1991, and I picked up a newspaper. I had a long train journey to take, and I picked up a newspaper, and nothing on the first page, not very interesting, second, third page. And then… there’s a photo of his family home in Bath. And I knew this house quite well; everyone knew that’s where Jeff Dahmer lived, this house. And I saw a picture of the house and then I read the article and I just couldn’t understand what I was reading.

Dr. Kukral, professor emeritus at Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology, was classmates with the “Milwaukee Monster” in middle and high school in the 1970s. He explained how he was “stunned” after learning about them. Dahmer’s crimes.

“At first I 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 sat there stunned, I would say, on that train for hours with no one to talk to about it and I just read this brief article,” he said. “I sat there on that train for the next four or five hours, thinking about that, about Jeff Dahmer and high school, and wondering what was going through his head, what made him do these things .”

“There is no explanation for something so horrible, these crimes,” he added.

Dahmer was arrested in May 1991 by Milwaukee police.

At the crime scene, authorities found several decapitated human heads and numerous dismembered bodies.

Dahmer, a sex offender, committed the rape, murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.

Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the preservation of body parts.

The serial killer’s truly horrific modus operandi was brought to light during his trial in which he was convicted of 15 murders in Wisconsin.

According to prosecutors, there was not enough evidence to charge him with the 16th murder.

He also pleaded guilty to the murder of a hitchhiker in Ohio in 1978.

“How can you understand such a thing? » asked Kukral. “How can you think of anyone that you might have known – I mean, think of all the people in the United States who didn’t know Jeff Dahmer and how shocked and repulsed they were when they read this news about 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. It’s a whole other level.

Dahmer was serving 15 consecutive life sentences in 1994 when he was bludgeoned to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.

Dr. Kukral told Fox News Digital how unaware he was, having known Dahmer very early in life.

“I wouldn’t say I was a friend of his. I don’t think he had any close friends,” he said. “We saw him a lot because my friends and I thought he was a funny guy. He did things to make us laugh and make us laugh. And he took a lot of classes with me. So he was there all the time, my group of friends, but I don’t think he really had any close friends, during those years- there.

“That’s how I knew him, just someone in my class who was a little different, a little funny.”

Given Dahmer’s quirks, Dr. Kukral explained that nothing in his behavior would “tell us that there is anything dark or bad about him.”

“I think this interest in biology and in life is maybe the only thing I can think of,” Dr. Kukral said. “But we didn’t consider it anything really serious at that point. It’s just, you know, some kids are interested in that kind of thing. The other children are not.

The professor emeritus also shared a story about Dahmer’s “zany” and “spontaneous” antics that he mentions in FOX Nation’s four-part documentary series, “My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes.”

“I was at my locker and he just stopped and he laid his head on my chest for a second and he said, ‘I just want to listen to your heart, make sure you’re still alive,’ then he went right. down the hall, like usual. And that lasted five seconds, and it’s like a goofy thing for a 14 or 15 year old to do,” he said. declared.

“We’re trying to do something with it now and make it something darker than it was. But at the time, from the outside, not from Jeff Dahmer’s mind… I mean, I don’t know what his mind was thinking… but from the outside, we didn’t think anything bad about what he does things like that. It was just a little different and a little funny and didn’t really seem to spark the usual interest a lot of other kids had.

In FOX Nation’s four-part documentary series, “My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes,” Dr. Kukral also revealed more about his childhood interactions with Dahmer.

The show, now streaming, takes a closer look at Dahmer’s crime spree and explores the killer’s life, from his early years to his own disappearance.

The series includes chilling recordings of conversations between serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer and his father, Lionel.

These never-before-seen audio tapes reveal, in Dahmer’s own words, new details about his crimes and his relationship with his father.

Although Dahmer’s actions may not have had the impact on Dr. Kukral that they had on the victims and their families, the former classmate said that “he will always be there somewhere in the back of my mind.”

“The people whose lives it impacted, of course, are all the families of the victims. And that’s something you should never forget. All the tragedy of their lives that will never end,” he said. “For the rest of us, it’s part of our past, part of our growing up years.”

Dr. Kukral, along with others connected to Dahmer, reveal more chilling details about the killer’s past and previously unreleased audio tapes reveal his descent into depravity through his own words. For more, subscribe to FOX Nation and stream “My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes.”