Somsack Sinthasomphone: The 1988 Assault and Dahmer Lawsuit

Somsack Sinthasomphone was the thirteen-year-old Laotian boy Jeffrey Dahmer lured to his Milwaukee apartment in 1988, drugged, and sexually assaulted. Somsack escaped and reported the attack, and Dahmer was convicted and placed on probation. Three years later, while Dahmer was still serving that probation, Milwaukee police officers returned Somsack’s fourteen-year-old brother Konerak, drugged and naked, to Dahmer’s apartment, where Dahmer strangled him within the hour. The linked fates of the two Sinthasomphone brothers became one of the most damning episodes in the history of American policing.¹

A Refugee Family in Milwaukee

The Sinthasomphones fled Laos in 1979 after the communist government threatened to seize the family’s rice farm outside Vientiane.² After time in the Nonkai refugee camp in Thailand, they arrived in Milwaukee in 1980 and joined a Laotian community of roughly 7,000 people.³ The household included parents Sounthone and Somdy, four brothers, and three sisters.

The 1988 Assault

In 1988, Dahmer approached Somsack with an offer of money to pose for photographs at his apartment. Once the boy was inside, Dahmer drugged him and sexually assaulted him. Somsack escaped, and his family reported the attack to police.¹

Dahmer was arrested on September 27, 1988, and charged with second-degree sexual assault and enticing a minor. He was convicted and sentenced to one year in prison with work release, followed by five years of probation, and spent about a week in jail before making bail.¹ One account states that Dahmer was initially sentenced to eight years and was granted early release after writing a letter of regret to the sentencing judge.⁴

Probation, and the Killings That Followed

Beginning in February 1989, Dahmer met twice a month with his probation officer, Donna Chester. Her logs recorded his depression, financial problems, conflicted feelings about his sexuality, and steady personal deterioration. The supervision did not stop him from returning to bars, drugging victims, and killing.⁵ Dahmer remained on probation for the crime against Somsack throughout the years in which he committed the rest of his murders.

The Night Police Returned Konerak to Dahmer

On May 27, 1991, fourteen-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone was seen naked, bleeding, and disoriented near 25th and State streets in Milwaukee. Seventeen-year-old Nicole Childress called 911. “There’s this young man. He’s buck-naked and he has been beaten up,” she told the dispatcher. “He is very bruised up. He can’t stand.”⁶

Officers Joseph T. Gabrish and John A. Balcerzak responded. Dahmer approached them and said the boy was his nineteen-year-old lover, drunk and wandering.⁷ Childress, her mother Sandra Smith, and neighbor Glenda Cleveland told the officers Konerak was a child who appeared to have been drugged and molested. The officers dismissed them and called it a “lovers’ spat.”⁸

The officers walked Dahmer and Konerak back to Dahmer’s apartment. A basic background check would have shown that Dahmer was on probation for sexually assaulting Konerak’s older brother. The officers did not run one.⁶ Dahmer later told investigators he strangled Konerak roughly thirty minutes after the officers left, and that a previous victim’s body had been in the bedroom the entire time they were inside.⁹

The 911 and Radio Tapes

The recordings released after Dahmer’s arrest showed how the officers treated the call. Over the police radio, one officer reported that “the intoxicated Asian naked male” had been “returned to his sober boyfriend,” followed by laughter. Another joked that his partner needed to “get deloused at the station,” again to laughter.¹⁰

Glenda Cleveland called police back after the officers left. She said her daughter and niece had seen what happened and asked whether the boy was a child. The officer refused to reopen the matter: “I can’t make it any more clear. It’s all taken care of. He is with his boyfriend, in his boyfriend’s apartment.” When she pressed, he added, “I can’t do anything about somebody’s sexual preference in life.”¹⁰ Cleveland kept calling after seeing Konerak’s photograph in a newspaper missing-persons report and also tried to reach the FBI. Her calls were not returned. Dahmer killed four more people before his arrest on July 22, 1991.⁶

What Happened to the Officers

After Dahmer’s arrest, Balcerzak and Gabrish were suspended and then fired by the Milwaukee Chief of Police for violating department rules.¹¹ The Milwaukee Board of Fire and Police Commissioners held fifteen days of hearings and voted 4-to-1 to uphold the discharges, with Chairman M. Nicol Padway calling the officers’ conduct “gross negligence” and a “disregard for basic police procedure” that “cannot and will not be excused as an error in judgment.”¹²

The officers appealed to circuit court, which found the discharges “unreasonable” and suggested a suspension of no more than sixty days. The commission complied, vacating the firings and imposing a sixty-day suspension without pay beginning November 27, 1992. Balcerzak’s later challenge over whether the sixty days should be working days or calendar days was rejected by the Wisconsin Court of Appeals in February 2000.¹¹ Both officers returned to the force. Balcerzak was reinstated in May 1994 and later became president of the Milwaukee Police Association.¹³

The Family’s Lawsuit and Settlement

In September 1991, the Sinthasomphone family sued the City of Milwaukee and the officers in Milwaukee County Circuit Court. The complaint alleged that police racism and a “history of discriminatory practices in the city” led the officers to leave Konerak with Dahmer, and that the officers had actively prevented bystanders from helping him.⁷

In federal court, the city moved to dismiss. Chief Judge Terence T. Evans denied the motion in March 1992, distinguishing the case from DeShaney v. Winnebago County, the Supreme Court decision generally holding that the government has no duty to protect citizens from private harm. Judge Evans found that the complaint alleged affirmative conduct rather than mere inaction: officers had “actively prevented private citizens from helping Sinthasomphone” and had “delivered Sinthasomphone into Dahmer’s custody,” which was enough to state a substantive due process claim.¹⁴

The case was settled before trial. Milwaukee tentatively agreed to pay $850,000 in March 1995, and the settlement was formally approved on April 24, 1995, covering the city and the two officers.¹⁵¹⁶

Konerak’s older brother Anouke Sinthasomphone described the family in the days after the remains were identified: “We don’t have energy to do anything. We can’t sleep. We can’t eat.”² Shoua Nao Xiong, executive director of Lao Family Community Inc. in Milwaukee, said families who had fled violence in Southeast Asia had run into “gaps in the system” that left them unprotected.³

1
AOL. Jeffrey Dahmer Killed One Brother
2
The New York Times. Family Sought New Life Only to Find New Pain
3
UPI. Laotian Family Upset After Hearing Tape
4
People. Jeffrey Dahmer Victim Konerak Sinthasomphone
5
Chicago Tribune. Probation Officer Duly Noted Dahmer’s Battle With Demons
6
People. Glenda Cleveland, Jeffrey Dahmer Neighbor, Called Police Multiple Times
7
Deseret News. Dahmer Victim’s Family Sues Milwaukee
8
Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. Glenda Cleveland and the Dahmer Case
9
The New York Times. Officer Defends Giving Boy Back to Dahmer
10
Seattle Times. Could Police Have Saved Young Victim
11
Wisconsin Court of Appeals. Balcerzak v. Board of Fire and Police Commissioners
12
The New York Times. Officers Dismissed in Dahmer Case Lose Bid to Get Back Jobs
13
Milwaukee Magazine. Troubles at the Police Union
14
UMKC School of Law. Estate of Konerak Sinthasomphone v. City of Milwaukee, Decision and Order
15
The Washington Post. Milwaukee to Pay $850,000 to Family of Dahmer Victim
16
Spokesman-Review. City Agrees to Settle in Dahmer Suit