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Two Of Jeffrey Dahmer’s Victims Were Brothers Konerak & Somsack Sinthasomphone
The family’s tragic connection to Dahmer started in 1988.
In the new Netflix Jeffrey Dahmer documentary, Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, the serial killer’s life and crimes are discussed through the lens of his own defense team interviews. In one such tape, Dahmer claims to be surprised that two of his victims were brothers — one who survived his assault in 1988, and another who would ultimately be killed by him three years later. “It’s incredible,” he says in one moment. “I can’t believe it.”
Indeed, two of Dahmer’s victims were brothers from the Sinthasomphone family — who, according to The New York Times, had immigrated to Milwaukee from Laos a decade earlier. Konerak Sinthasomphone was killed by Dahmer in 1991, a tragedy that’s become especially well-known due to how close it came to being prevented. As depicted on Netflix’s Dahmer — Monster, police were called to investigate when 14-year-old Konerak was found naked, in a drugged state, outside Dahmer’s apartment. However, the responding officers didn’t take action and Dahmer killed Konerak soon after.
As it turns out, Konerak’s brother was a victim of Dahmer, too. According to the documentary, Dahmer was charged with sexually assaulting the then-13-year-old in 1988 — a crime for which he was still on probation by the time of Konerak’s death. Unlike Dahmer’s long list of deceased victims, the boy made it out of the assault alive — albeit in a “drugged condition,” Milwaukee’s then-district attorney E. Michael McCann says in the new documentary.
“I had no knife,” Dahmer says in one tape. “I had no intention of injuring him.”
Konerak’s brother is not named in the documentary recording of his testimony “to protect the victim’s privacy.” Nor does it appear in the news coverage immediately surrounding the 1991 murder. There were a total of eight children in the family — and in 1991, the Times only reported that “an older brother ... was sexually molested” by Dahmer. “We don’t have energy to do anything,” older brother Anouke Sinthasomphone told the paper at the time. “We can’t sleep. We can’t eat.”
However, Monster identifies Konerak’s brother as Somsack Sinthasomphone, whose name does appear among those of his family members in a 1992 lawsuit against the city of Milwaukee. The U.S. Sun and several other outlets also name Somsack as the brother who had previously been assaulted by Dahmer.
