3 COPS SUSPENDED; LEFT VICTIM WITH DAHMER

Three Milwaukee police officers were suspended Friday after it was revealed they once caught serial murder suspect Jeffrey L. Dahmer pursuing a fleeing victim but dismissed the incident as a spat between homosexual lovers. Witnesses said the victim, Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14, ran naked, bleeding and disoriented, with Dahmer in pursuit, into the street on the night of May 27. Two 18-year-old women who witnessed the incident said they confronted Dahmer and called police, but no arrest was made.

Sinthasomphone was one of 11 victims whose remains were found in Dahmer`s small efficiency apartment Monday. Four victims were killed in the weeks after the May 27 incident. Dahmer has told police he killed 17 people over more than 10 years.

Police Chief Philip Arreola, who said he was ”taken aback” by the account, confirmed that officers had contact with Dahmer on that date, and he promised a full investigation.

”This is a matter of grave concern to me and the entire department,”

Arreola said.

The chief explained that the officers were suspended with pay because they had failed to write a formal report on the encounter or to run Dahmer`s name through the police computer, which would have revealed a prior child-molestation conviction, The Associated Press reported.

Meanwhile, four more bodies were identified Friday, all of them Milwaukee men. They were Raymond Lamont Smith, also known as Ricky Beeks, 33, who was raised in Rockford; Errol Lindsey, 19; Curtis Straughter, 18, and Ernest Miller, 24.

Milwaukee police said they also had identified one other victim, a 26-year-old out-of-state man, but they were not releasing his name pending notification of his family.

Friday`s announcement concluded the identification process, with all 11 victim remains found in Dahmer`s apartment identified. Investigators have not discussed the six other people they say Dahmer has admitted killing.

Five of the 11 killings, however, might have been prevented had Dahmer been arrested on May 27.

Sandra Smith, 18, said it was after midnight when she saw Sinthasomphone fleeing from Dahmer, a neighborhood resident she recognized.

”I saw Jeff trying to lure him back to his (apartment). They were running north on State Street.”

Smith said she told Dahmer to leave the boy alone and that her cousin, Nicole Childress, 17, had gone to call police.

”Jeff told us, `There`s no need for the police. This is my friend Jim.`

”

When police arrived, Smith said the officers curtly told them not to interfere.

Smith`s mother, Glenda Cleveland, 37, later called the police to check on the disposition of the incident.

”They said they had taken care of the matter, that it was an argument between two lovers, and that he (Sinthasomphone) wasn`t a child,” Cleveland said.

Cleveland and other black residents of the 25th Street neighborhood where the incident took place attributed the apparent police inaction to racism.

”I think it was prejudice. Jeff and they were white, the boy was Asian and we were black,” she said.

The May 27 incident was the second time the criminal justice system in Milwaukee had a chance to stop Dahmer.

At a 1989 sentencing hearing on Dahmer`s conviction for sexually assaulting a minor, Milwaukee County Assistant District Atty. Gale Shelton argued for a long prison sentence for Dahmer before Circuit Court Judge William Gardner.

Shelton told Gardner she found psychological evaluations of Dahmer

”deeply disturbing,” and termed the prognosis for treatment of Dahmer beyond prison walls ”extremely bleak.”

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”The reality is that his track record exhibits that he is very likely to re-offend,” Shelton said.

Dahmer`s victim in the incident was a brother of Konerak Sinthasomphone. Dahmer was sentenced to 10 months of work release time in the county jail and 5 years` probation.

In the 1988 offense, the boy was served coffee laced with Lorazepam, a powerful anti-anxiety drug which in concentrated doses can act as a knockout potion.

Dahmer`s pattern later involved drugging his victims, strangulation, and dismemberment, with at least one acknowledged instance of necrophilia.

Other Dahmer victims were not so young or naive. Jerry Brown, of Rockford, Raymond Lamont Smith`s uncle, said Smith had ”been in and out of trouble all his life.” Brown said Smith had served prison time in Illinois on a burglary charge and more recently in Wisconsin on unknown charges.

Relatives of Tony Hughes, whose body was identified late Thursday as one of those found in Dahmer`s apartment, said the 31-year-old Madison man had known Dahmer since meeting him at a party in Milwaukee in October 1989.

Hughes` sister, Barbara Hughes-Holt of Milwaukee, said he was last seen the night of May 24 at Club 219, a Milwaukee gay bar. Friends of Hughes who were also there said Hughes left the bar with Dahmer, she said.

Hughes-Holt described her brother, who was deaf and who had recently begun work in a condom plant in Madison, as ”a party person” who loved to dance.

But, she said, ”Tony wasn`t one that you could fool. He wasn`t a naive person at all.”