Entry #10 The Fierce Courage of Rita Isbell

In the courtroom, the sister of Errol Lindsey, Dahmer's ninth victim, was ready to jump the lawyer’s desk and rip Jeffrey’s head off.

“He knew I was going to get him. I was gonna get that neck. And I was gonna hold on to that neck.” —Rita Isbell.

COURTROOMS ARE PRESSURE COOKERS. A volatile form of alchemy is at work, where the statutes governing testimony and the presentation of evidence create a goulash of conflicting emotions—all held in check by the strict decorum of the proceedings.

But rare occasions of public catharsis do occur. Emotional eruptions, such as the one Rita Isbell—the sister of Errol Lindsey, Dahmer’s ninth victim—delivered on the closing day of Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial. And it’s one for the jurisprudence record book.

Some back story for the benighted:

Before Dahmer’s sentence was announced by the judge, the assembled gathering of his victims’ family members and friends was offered the chance to publically air their grief and anger before Dahmer, the attornies, the judge, and the jury.

This is a procedure that’s allowed in Wisconsin and encouraged. Although some legal experts claim it’s a medieval tradition. I consider it a bare-minimum gesture in a state with no death penalty.

Dahmer, who, with shrewd reptilian calculation, murdered 17 young men and boys, deserved whatever form of execution was available in other states. In interviews post his sentencing, Dahmer explained methodically that he deserved the death penalty. But always lazy and cowardly, he didn’t bother to take the time to take his own life once afforded the chance. They say even a fly rubs its hands in worry before the flyswatter.

Instead, once incarcerated, Dahmer had what’s called a ‘jailhouse Jesus’ moment and requested instruction in the Christian faith with its promise of redemption through baptism. Although, as a reader of omens, the date slated for his born-again event troubled him greatly—the ceremony was scheduled for the same date as a total eclipse of the Sun—and on the same day, John Wayne Gacy was executed. (As an astrologer, I could write a volume on this confluence).

With his head filled with nonsense about the afterlife, Dahmer felt he’d be in a worse predicament (eternally writhing in hell) should he be executed or commit suicide. And so millions of dollars of taxpayer’s money were allocated for his trial and to keep him caged for several years.

Most everyone familiar with Dahmer’s hearing as covered by the media during the winter of 1992 (or recently reenacted in the successful Network series) is familiar with Rita Isbell’s courtroom meltdown. And rightfully show, it was spectacular.

Isbell, while airing her grief to the room, involuntarily ignited into a pyrotechnical rage. Within her 45-second outburst, she directly confronted Dahmer, who sat bookended by his attorneys—staring into space like a forlorn statue.

Isbell’s catharsis was the only moment in the entire clusterfuck that spoke to the emotional truth of Dahmer’s crimes. Her explosion cut through the legal wrangling and psycho-babble that the victims’ families and friends endured throughout the hearing. In fact, she provided a release valve for the entire world, which, glued to their televisions, was too gobsmacked to know what to think about JD’s grotesqueries.

Typical of Dahmer’s avoidance-based temperament, he always removed his glasses prior to entering the courtroom. Given that Dahmer was nearly blind without his glasses, he sat cocooned in an affectless zombie state, staring into a void while the proceedings churned on around him. Behind him sat his victims’ family and friends, roiling with their grief and hatred.

Enter stage left: Isbell and her fury. Exhausted from hearing endless testimony from Dahmer’s lawyers about how ‘out of control’ Dahmer was while committing his murders, she decided to demonstrate for Dahmer what ‘out of control’ actually looked like.

Having enacted her point, she jumped away from the podium and beelined for Dahmer. Shaking and stomping before him, she demanded that he look her in the face. And although we can’t see Dahmer’s expression due to the video camera’s angle, I like to imagine that she achieved the eye-to-eye contact she desired, projecting her rage into the back of his skull.

But wait, there’s more!

In a flash, Isbell attempted to lunge toward Dahmer—aiming for his throat. Bailiffs and officers encircled her instantly, and like a trapped hurricane, they escorted her, thrashing and bellowing, from the room. This delivered the perfect coda. Dahmer had met his match. As she explained in this clip from the Rolanda Show:

Throughout the disruption, Dahmer remained stock still and only shifted when the attending officers put themselves between him and Isbell—preparing him to exit the room. His posture (an eerie combo of apathy and disinterested defenselessness) foreshadowed his murder three years later when his request that he be relocated into the general population of the prison was granted. He was murdered shortly thereafter. The coroner’s report showed no marks or bruises on Dahmer’s hands or arms. He’d made no effort to defend himself against Christopher Scarver, the inmate who smashed him in the head with a barbell.

Isbell’s burst of adrenaline had to feel gratifying to the family members gathered for the sentencing. And I feel a visceral release whenever I watch the footage. (Disclaimer: I’m of the revenge-based logic of capital punishment and felt Dahmer should have been guillotined as an eye-for-and-eye style of execution. I’ve forgotten the exact count of how many young men’s heads Dahmer severed while on his spree—if still available, a guillotine would be a reasonable instrument for punctuating the madness.)

While researching my novel, I’ve pondered Isbell’s court appearance many times. In doing so, I began to tap into the undercurrents of the emotion that Isbell set reeling through the courtroom. It occurred to me that it took Isbell’s fierce act of courage to put in high detail Dahmer’s core malfunction—his pathological cowardice.

I’ve often flashed on the philosopher Hannah Arendt’s term ‘the banality of evil’ from her book Eichmann in Jerusalem when considering Dahmer’s mechanical, conscience-free mode of committing his murders.

Although Arendt had coined this term to describe her impression of Adolf Eichmann, one of the major organizers of the Holocaust, the spirit of the term applies to Dahmer as well. Like Dahmer, Eichmann committed his crimes with the ho-hum-ness of a mindless bureaucrat.

Dahmer’s was a perfect storm born from lust, apathy, and timidity. After many years of trying to wrangle with the diminishing returns of his feeling life, his lack of conscience imploded and transformed him into an unperson—a killing machine. A black hole, the suck of which claimed anyone who wandered into its force field.

Biographer Brian Masters wrote in his book, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer:

“Dahmer’s victims may have unwittingly stumbled into a private drama in which they played a role foisted upon them by his interpretation of their attitude or indifference. They could not have intuited the deep, frustrated aggression which lay beneath that retiring façade.”

It’s often documented that Dahmer was so sensitive and ‘caring’—eager to not cause pain to his victims—that he drugged them into unconsciousness first so they wouldn’t suffer while he strangled the life out of them.

This has become a rote reflection—to mitigate the chilliness of Dahmer’s methods. But Isbell’s outburst was a bookend that echoed the impact of prosecuting attorney Michael McCann’s closing argument during the trial. He appealed not only to the jury’s rationality but also to their imagination when he recounted how Dahmer took the life of most of his victims. For god sake, he alluded, at least give the victim a weapon to defend himself—a knife, a gun—a chance.

Masters again:

“[McCann] countered the argument that Dahmer had been kind in putting victims to sleep before killing them. His voice broken with passion, and almost weeping, he said, ‘Please don’t drug me, please give me a chance to defend myself, let me fight for my life at least.’”

Fascination with Dahmer goes beyond the garden variety rubber necking that drives a lot of true-crime fascination. There is an unnameable ‘something’ about Dahmer that leaves us stranded at the threshold of claiming comprehension. Thirty-plus years on, we remain incredulous and clueless.

I contend this relates to a commonality of fair play, a universal ethic that binds us in our humanity. Namely, when faced with losing our lives, we’re granted a fighting chance to keep it. Dahmer offered his victims no such defense, and to me, this flips his cowardice into a grotesque form of cruelty—the exact opposite of his alleged wish to save others from suffering.

Oh, brother!

The cowardly banality of evil, indeed.

Until next time,

“I was gonna get that neck. And I was gonna hold on to that neck.”

Opening image via YouTube. Design by FW © 2023, Nightcharm, Inc.

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