Lieutenant Michael Dubis says the memories still give him 'uneasy nights'
The police officer who helped bring Jeffrey Dahmer to justice says he still finds it hard to fully process the horrors he witnessed inside the serial killer’s apartment.
Dahmer, often called the 'Milwaukee Cannibal,' was a notorious serial killer and sex offender who murdered and dismembered 17 young men and boys between 1978 and 1991.
His crimes involved deeply disturbing acts like necrophilia, cannibalism, and attempts to preserve parts of his victims’ bodies. These gruesome details have made him one of the most infamous and terrifying serial killers in modern U.S. history.
Over the years, countless documentaries, films, and TV shows have explored Dahmer’s story, feeding the curiosity of true crime fans. The most famous retelling came in Netflix’s 2022 series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, with Evan Peters playing the chilling role.
But while most viewers can simply turn off their TVs when the show ends, one man who can’t escape the real-life nightmare is the cop who helped investigate Dahmer’s crimes.
Retired Milwaukee police Lieutenant Michael Dubis spoke with FOX & Friends about what happened on the night Dahmer was arrested. He described the search of the apartment as feeling less like a crime scene and more like “dismantling someone’s museum.”
Dubis said that when he arrived at the scene, other detectives told him there were disturbing photographs in the apartment. They also warned him that there “might be a human head in a box.”
"That's pretty way out there as far as even a homicide detective, and when we arrived that's what we had," Dubis recalled.
As many documentaries have shown, Dahmer’s capture began when one of his intended victims managed to escape and flagged down two officers on the street.
The officers, Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller, soon went to Dahmer’s apartment. There, they uncovered a horrifying collection of Polaroid photos showing dismembered bodies — and even found a severed head inside the refrigerator.
When the homicide team arrived, Dubis said they found body parts scattered throughout the apartment.
"There were human heads and bones and things all over, every drawer we opened, every cabinet we opened, there was body parts," he said.
When asked whether he still has nightmares about that night, Dubis admitted: "Uneasy nights, not nightmares," However, he added that the apartment itself triggers unsettling memories — especially its strange smell.
The officer said that many details in documentaries about the case are fairly accurate. This includes the fact that neighbors had previously complained about odd smells and noises coming from Dahmer’s apartment.
Dubis explained: "They're very close," though it turns out the actual odor was quite different from what people usually imagine.
"I know that the smell in his apartment was not that of death," the detective said. "It was a very sweet smell, it was a very chemically smell, ironically enough the smell is still in the room where all of his property went that morning."
"I walk in there and it's still - I walk back into it."
Dubis also revealed that during the investigation, he spoke briefly with Dahmer’s father, Lionel Dahmer. Lionel later became a controversial figure for standing by his son and even writing a book about his experiences, titled A Father's Story, published in 1994.
Dubis recalled that while the team was gathering evidence in the apartment, Lionel called several times. Eventually, Dubis picked up the phone.
"We spoke for a few minutes," he revealed. "I told him that Jeffrey was okay, that we were investigating a homicide but he was downtown, he was talking to some other detectives, he wasn't hurt. That was pretty much the end of that conversation."
In 1994, only two years into serving his fifteen life sentences, Dahmer was killed by another inmate while in prison. He was 34 years old.