THE minister who baptised Jeffrey Dahmer has told how the cannibal serial killer told him horrific details about his crimes but they still became friends.
Church leader Roy Ratcliff even revealed he felt “a sense of grief” when Dahmer was brutally murdered with an iron bar by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.
His savage death came just a few days after Roy has received a Thanksgiving card from him in which the killer spoke of their friendship.
The serial killer was serving a life sentence for the disturbing and gruesome murders of 17 boys and young men – but while he was behind bars in claimed to have found God.
In an exclusive interview, Roy told The Sun Online about his conversations with the man he calls "Jeff".
And he revealed the gruesome details the killer shared about eating part of one of his victim's.
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Roy, who’s now 75, was working at a church in Wisconsin, where Dahmer was committed his crimes and was jailed
He had been asked by another minister, from Oklahoma, who Dahmer had told about his wish to be baptised.
After several balked at the prospect of being in a room with the mass murderer nick named the 'Milwaukee Cannibal' , eventually Roy agreed carry out the baptism
“I said ‘ok sure what’s his name?’ and they guy who had called me said ‘you might want to sit down for this’ then he told me ‘it’s Jeffrey Dahmer’,” Roy told The Sun Online.
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Roy said that at the time he was “relatively ignorant” of the detail of Dahmer’s crimes and it was only when wife said “you ought to learn more about him” that he began reading about them.
“When I first him I didn’t know the grisly details and I think it was better not to know because it allowed me not to be prejudiced towards him.”
Roy made his first visit to prison to meet Dahmer in April 1994 and was led through doors whose banging was “a little disconcerting” to a room with a just table and chairs to wait for Dahmer.
He had been warned to take off his tie in case it was used as a weapon but began to notice he was sweating as the minutes ticked by while he waited.
“Then in a few minutes Jeff enters the room and closes the door and shakes my hand then sits across from me,” he said.
“I was impressed about how courteous he was and how willing he was to be co-operative.
“He was considerate, which I found surprising. Given that he had killed people I thought he would be a rougher person but he was gentle as far as I could see.
“For a moment there I’m thinking I’m in a room all by myself with a man who’s murdered so many people and I was a little apprehensive. I was thinking ‘what’s going on here’.
He confessed to me that he ate a bicep of one of his victims
“Then we started talking about how he wanted to be baptised and after that I forgot about being apprehensive.”
In fact Dahmer had been scared of meeting Roy and “heaved and unusual sigh” when he agreed to baptise him.
“I said ‘why did you make that sound’ and he said ‘I was afraid of meeting you because I thought you would say I can’t baptise you because you’ve been too evil’.
“But if a man is seeking repentance for his sins then I should help him. That’s all I was thinking about.”
As they started talking, Dahmer began to open up about the dark aspects of his crimes, in particular his cannibalism.
“He confessed to me that he ate a bicep of one of his victims. I knew there was cannibalism in his story.
“I didn’t think he was playing around and that it was a genuine confession. There was no question in my mind that he hadn’t done these things.
“In my mind I think there was no-one there to stop him and one thing led to another and to another.
“He’s like the quote from Shakespeare that about being so deep in the blood that you can’t get out.”
DEEP IN BLOOD
Roy says his “cannibal persona” was part of Dahmer’s self-image and something he used with chilling effect on those around him.
“I was told by of the prison guards that he would say to a guard standing outside his cell ‘I bite’. It was close enough only for a guard to hear and the guard would be shaken by that.
“He also had a poster in his cell that read Cannibals Anonymous Meeting Here Tonight.
“It was a means of attracting attention to himself yet at the same time communicating ‘don’t get too close to me I might hurt you’.”
Dahmer was baptised on May 10 in a whirlpool used to treat inmates when they hurt their back.
In an eerie co-incidence it was the day Dahmer’s fellow serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed in Illinois for the killing 33 young boys and men and there was also a solar eclipse.
The pair began to meet frequently to study the Bible and struck up a friendship Roy thought would last until they were old.
“Some people are surprised about that but we did. I anticipated us being friends until we were old and needed walkers to get about.
“At the last meeting we had at Thanksgiving and he gave me a card in which he said ‘thank you for being my friend’ and things of that nature.
“When I learned of his murder I felt a sense of grief because I had lost a friend. We could talk about how he felt about his mother and his father so developed a friendship.
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“We think of him as an insane maniac, monster but he was more human than we give him credit for.”
Dahmer's prison bible is currently on sale from Cult Collectibles, who previously the most chilling items he has that belonged to the cannibal.
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