"and a meeting with his counselor there. He spent Saturday at the Unicom Club in Chicago, and the following Friday, his next available free time, he met Luis Pinet. The encounter with this young man is certainly curious and potentially very instructive. Dahmer had often seen him before at Club 219, where he worked cleaning windows and sweeping floors, and had reasonably assumed he was of legal age; in fact, he was fifteen, and the job was part-time. They had never spoken before. On July 6, Dahmer saw him at the Phoenix late at night, undoubtedly after 219 had closed, and approached him with an offer of $200 if he would come home, pose for some nude photos, and have some sex. Why so much? “I figured it would take a lot to pique his interest,” he says. They went to the apartment in a taxi, had their photo shoot and some “light sex,” and fell asleep together in the bed.It was the first time since Tuomi that a colleague had voluntarily stayed overnight with Jeff Dahmer, though probably as a result of excessive drinking. The next morning, they agreed to repeat the experience, and Luis said he would meet Jeff at noon.Dahmer had decided he would kill the boy and keep him, but he had run out of sleeping pills and couldn't afford another prescription at the moment. He would have to knock him unconscious somehow. First, he went to the army surplus store and bought a rubber mallet, then at noon, he went to his rendezvous. "He didn't show up, so I figured he was just joking—he's not going to find me." This was Pinet's second escape. That night, Dahmer was back in the bars, where he happened to run into him again outside the Phoenix. Pinet explained the misunderstanding; he had assumed the arrangement was to meet at midnight, not noon, and he had no intention of backing down. So they went to Dahmer's apartment for a second.That night, while Pinet posed for photographs, lying face down on the bed, Dahmer struck him on the back of the head with a mallet."He was obviously upset about that," Dahmer says laconically. Not upset enough, it seems, because after an argument and an explanation to Pinet—indeed, Dahmer was afraid he would take the $200 and leave without giving the correct change, which Pinet accepted—he left without the money and slammed the door. That was his third escape. Ten minutes later, he was knocking on the door again. Dahmer invited him in. He said he needed some money for a bus ride home, and that Dahmer would give him a couple of dollars. Dahmer says he was feeling panicked at this stage, either because he would lose the boy again or because the boy might report the incident; maybe a little of both. Then he grabbed him from behind, and they wrestled on the floor for a few minutes, with Dahmer's hands around Pinet's neck. I suppose I intended to strangle him, but he was too strong. He was also fully conscious, an advantage not afforded to any of the victims who had died.'Let's talk,' Dahmer said, after which they stopped struggling and sat on the edge of the bed, calming down and discussing the attack.Remarkably, as they painstakingly reviewed the events of the night, Dahmer convinced Pinet that his hands had been tied behind his back. He quietly freed himself and made as if to leave again, at which point Dahmer showed him the knife he had used to cut the meat, without, of course, revealing its purpose. They continued talking until seven in the morning, when Pinet promised not to tell anyone what had happened. ThenThey walked together to the bus stop, and Dahmer paid for the taxi home. On his fourth escape from who-knows-what, he was finally free."I simply didn't have the capacity to do him any harm," Dahmer says. "Why, I don't know." The obvious answer was that he was sober and the victim was awake, but a more subtle explanation is suggested. The length of time the two knew each other is significant. After their first night together."
