Jeffrey Dahmer used me as his ‘guinea pig’ for rapes and killing spree – I’m haunted by the night I vowed to murder him

CHATTING about music to his new roommate Jeffrey Dahmer, 17 year-old Billy Capshaw felt sure the pair would get along.

Little did he know the blond-haired, spectacled man standing before him would go on to become one of the world’s most notorious serial killers – and had already murdered once the year before. 

The monster would go on to kill 16 more men, revelling in their torture, dismemberment and in some cases, eating their body parts.

Right now, though, his attention had turned to youthful young army medic Billy.

It was February 1980 and Billy had just been deployed to a US Army base in Baumholder, West Germany. 

Speaking from his home in Hot Springs, Arkansas, Billy tells The Sun: “I liked him at first. 

“I didn’t know what I know now – that he was like Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde because he could change in a millisecond.

“He was the devil’s best friend.”

Hours into Billy’s first day on base, Dahmer invited him for some evening wine in a local park. Not long after they started drinking, Dahmer turned on Billy and lunged at him. 

Billy says: “I was in fight or flight. I didn’t know what to do. I was 17 and like, ‘what the hell?’.”

“My heart started beating real fast. I ran from him and he chased me in the woods. I ran like hell.”

Rushing back to the barracks he barricaded himself in a toilet as Dahmer continued to hound him and pound the door.

Eventually, the beating stopped and Billy was able to go back to his room where he found Dahmer asleep.

Yet, the next day, after duties on base, was far worse. 

Billy says: “He was sitting on the bunk, drinking more vodka. He’s getting drunker and drunker and all of a sudden he attacks me again. He threw me around like a wet rag. He’s trying to take my clothes off and then he raped me and I couldn’t stop it.”

Traumatised by the ordeal, Billy jumped out of their third-floor window to escape. He was found by officers on the ground with a fractured pelvis.

At the military hospital he described his attack. He was asked to use a rape kit to provide evidence, but says no investigation was conducted. 

Worse still, after Dahmer himself showed up at the hospital to quash Billy’s story, he was returned to their room to face yet more torment that day.

From there on in, the sexual assaults escalated. Billy was frequently beaten with a piece of iron piping. He was tied up with rope and drugged with a sedative for days on end. 

As soon as Jeffrey started drinking his usuals – gin, martinis and orange vodka he’d sip from a Fanta bottle – Billy knew what was in store.

Detailing the horrors he went through in the documentary I Escaped A Murderer, he recalls: “I  begged him and screamed to leave me alone.”

Billy was relieved from duties to recover from his injuries but it just enabled Dahmer to control him even more. He kept him drugged and imprisoned in his army room. Dahmer intercepted mail from his family and controlled his food intake. 

He’d been at a festival and he came into our room covered in blood and there was a lot of it. You cannot get that kind of blood on you by a cut. It reeked of murder

As a fellow army medic, Jeffrey knew just the right doses of drug to give, to knock Billy out without killing him.

He agrees he was, perhaps, the test run for Dahmer’s later killings. 

He says: “I was absolutely his guinea pig for him to do what he liked with. I couldn’t over-power him but I would scream. 

“I told my sergeant. He lived just across the hall from me and he didn’t do nothing.

“Everyone needs to understand how the military works. There are some things you just don’t say. Rape is one of them, back in 1980.

“No one did a thing. I found out from a nurse later on that they just discarded the rape kits.” 

Another chilling memory, about seven months into Billy’s ordeal, sticks in his mind.

Billy says: “He’d been at a festival and he came into our room covered in blood and there was a lot of it. You cannot get that kind of blood on you by a cut. It reeked of murder.”

Deadly plot

Seven months in, Billy decided to kill Dahmer with a metal bar bunk bed adaptor from their room.

As Dahmer lay in a drunken slumber, Billy pounded his bed post, but couldn’t carry through.

Today, he admits: “I just couldn’t stop thinking about my mum and how wrong that was but I carry so much guilt that I didn’t kill Dahmer. A lot of people died and even after he left I found out where he was living and I was thinking I’d go there and kill him but again I couldn’t.” 

Despite pleas to his superiors, his ordeal lasted 18 months until Dahmer was honourably discharged in 1981 – not for his abuse of Billy but for his alcoholism. 

Billy says: “I love God. I prayed so hard when I was in that room, it’s unbelievable. God saved my life as far as I’m concerned because he got Jeffrey out of that base.”

Mutilated victims

It took Billy – who was also discharged from the army on medical grounds because of his ordeal – nearly two more decades to go public with his story. 

Dahmer – otherwise known as the Milwaukee Monster or the Milwaukee Cannibal – had killed 17 young men and boys in Wisconsin and Ohio between 1978 and 1991, raping and cannibalizing his victims. 

When he was arrested, in 1991,  skulls and frozen genitals were found in his apartment. 

He was convicted of 16 of the murders in 1992. Billy believes there are many more victims than the ones we know of.

He says: “Sixteen is conservative. I think it is much higher than what he was convicted of. 

“He only admitted to what they found. I think he was killing all the time.

“There were five women who went missing near the base, all mutilated.

“There was a young child.

“I’ve had messages from a lady looking for her son. He was a Dutch soldier who went missing in Germany at the same time Dahmer was there.”

Scarred for life

In 1994, Dahmer was murdered in prison. He was 34. 

It will be 30 years this November since his death. Yet the physical and mental scars have endured a lifetime for Billy.  

He had severe PTSD for over two decades with regular flashbacks and night terrors. 

His body is covered with 31 scars. His legs and torso still leave him in agony so he goes to a pain clinic.

He’s been having therapy for decades and is due another session straight after our interview. 

He says therapy “saved me” – after he attempted to take his own life three times. 

Billy admits: “I have to live with what he did to me and other people, you’ve kind of got to move on, but I can never forgive him.

“He still plays on my mind. It could be a smell, it could be the way somebody moves.” 

“I was in Walmart and this guy looked just like him,” he adds. “I had this bad panic attack and I had to get the hell out of there.”

“I had a bad panic attack. but I have this whole toolbox I use now to stop myself from reacting. I just got in my car and went to another Walmart.”

It’s an almost inconceivable amount of trauma Billy has carried. Yet he insists there is light at the end of the tunnel. 

His seven grandsons keep him on his toes and his full-time vocation is as an unpaid support for other victims of trauma and sexual assault.

He explains: “Retelling the story of course I get emotional and it is hard but it is also very cathartic. I wouldn’t know what to do unless I could help someone. 

“I’ve taken it on as a career; not a paying career, but as something I need to do. I have to give back the wisdom from all this treatment that I’ve had.

“The road to recovery is not a joyful thing. People can do it but they have rough times. But, as strange as it sounds, helping people with their trauma is what makes me smile now. 

“My mantra is: ‘Never give up’.” 

I Escaped A Murderer airs Wednesday October 2 at 10pm on 5Star. All episodes are available to stream on My5.