The lone surviving victim of Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer has spoken of the moments before his escape from the serial killer’s apartment, where he was told, “I’ll cut your heart out.”
In an account shared by Radar OnlineTracy Edwards described being handcuffed to the floor when the serial killer rested his head to his chest and listened to his heart pounding during the July 1991 encounter.
Edwards, then 31 years old, said: “I was lying face up on the floor of his bedroom. He had handcuffed my left wrist, pulled my arm under my back, and pressed a 12-inch knife to the crotch of my pants.’
In the report, Edwards mentions how, while locked in Dahmer’s apartment, he could see a human head in the bedroom, hands hanging in the closet and body parts in the refrigerator.
Tracy Edwards photographed in July 1991 (left) and took the stand to testify in 1992 (right)
Dahmer murdered and mutilated 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Edwards would have been the 18th, and his escape eventually led to Dahmer’s arrest.
In Edward’s account of his escape, he mentions how “several pictures of young men without shirts hung on the walls of the apartment.”
It was Edwards’ successful escape from Dahmer and the elimination of the police that finally ended the killer’s horrific procession.
A few hours earlier, Edwards claims he met Dahmer at a mall in Milwaukee, where the killer introduced himself and invited Edwards back to his flat for a beer.
“I went with him – and it was the biggest mistake of my life,” Edwards said in the report.
Edwards described that despite ‘the stench of rotting flesh’ in the apartment, it was reasonably clean and tidy.
“His three-room apartment was clean and tidy, with a beige carpet and a sofa in the living room,” Edwards said.
When he tried to leave the apartment, he was drugged and handcuffed with a knife to his chest.
He was then taken to a bedroom and forced to watch The Exorcist. Dahmer pulled out a human and started petting him for Edwards.
“I persuaded him to take me back to the living room, but on the way we stopped in the kitchen, where he opened the fridge to reveal a gory mass of meat,” he said.
Finally, Edwards walked to the front door, punched Dahmer in the jaw, and opened both locks at once. Once he was free, he was able to stop a police car with handcuffs on his wrists and have Dahmer arrested once they found the human remains in his house.
A mugshot of Dahmer captured by Milwaukee Police in July 1991
Dahmer rose to fame for targeting gay men, especially in bars, and committed his first murder when he was just 18 years old when he picked up a hitchhiker.
He then enrolled in college, but dropped out due to alcoholism.
His father then forced him to enlist in the military, where he served as an army medic from 1979 to 1981.
He then started visiting gay bars and where he would stun and rape them. After a second murder in September 1987, his murders became more frequent.
Dahmer became known for the particularly disturbing things he would do to corpses. He would keep them for intercourse, cut them up and even photograph the process.
The infamous serial killer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer as portrayed by Evan Peters in the new Netflix series ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’
The front door of Dahmer’s apartment, 213 of the Oxford Apartments, 924 North 25th Street in Milwaukee, Wisconsin
The Oxford apartments where Dahmer murdered and dismembered some of his victims. The building was knocked down shortly after he was caught
“I spent five hours in hell,” Edwards said.
After escaping from Dahmer, Edwards had future clashes with the law and was arrested for drug possession and theft. In 2011, he was arrested for manslaughter and himself charged with murder.
Edward’s escape from Dahmer’s apartment and the killer’s eventual arrest has been dramatized in a recent Netflix television series, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”
The series covers Dahmer’s various murders through his confession, examining various aspects and stages of his life.
Dahmer was beaten to death in 1994 by another inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin.