Backyard Killer

Horrific crimes always happen somewhere else and affect other people. We hear about them on the news, read about them in the paper, it's a story. It never seems real until the crime is committed in your own backyard. I chose to read "The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough" by Anne E. Schwartz for my nonfiction book. Schwartz was a journalist with the Milwaukee Journal when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and charged with the murders of 17 young men. Her book follows the events from when she first received the tip from a police officer to when she sat in the courtroom as the verdict was read.

It may seem strange for me to say that I enjoyed reading this book, but because it was so personal to the author, it didn't read like your typical nonfiction book. Schwartz writes with such an intense emotion throughout that although the details are so gruesome you just have to know what happens next. Before reading "The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough", I had heard of Dahmer, but I never knew more than that he had killed several people. This book has facts and substance; it shared the emotions of the author, the victims' families, the community, and the country which really made the story real for me.

Reading about the lives of Dahmer's victims was most difficult. Schwartz conducted extensive and personal interviews with the victims' families and gave a story to the life that was taken. Families told her about their son or brother's past, present, and future and it was relayed in words that spilled sorrow from their pages. The most emotional time in the book for me was at the end of the trial when the families of the victims read their letters to Dahmer in court. The sister of one of the victims told him of the grief and pain Dahmer had caused her mother, and suddenly, between sobs, she starts to scream obscenities at him. This single moment illustrated the high emotions that ran from the beginning to end of the Dahmer case.

I would highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn more about the murders Jeffrey Dahmer committed. At 225 pages, with an additional seven pages of pictures, it makes for a quick read that will have you on the edge of your seat until the very end.