Biography[]
Konerak was born in 1976, just one year after the communist takeover of Laos, and was the youngest of ten children born to Sounthone and Somdy Sinthasomphone.
In 1979, the ruling Laotian communist government threatened to take away the family’s rice farm near the capital city of Vientiane. As a result, the family decided to flee the country. Sounthone Sinthasomphone built a canoe for his wife and children, which they used to cross the Mekong River and reach Thailand, which was then a haven for refugees fleeing communist regimes in Indochina. Konerak and the other youngest children in the family were drugged with sleeping pills so they would not cry and alert the soldiers guarding the Thai-Lao border near the river. A few days later, Sounthone swam the river himself and was reunited with the rest of his family at the Nong Khai refugee camp in Thailand.
After a spending a year living in the camp, the family immigrated to Wisconsin, United States, with the help of the Catholic archdiocese in Milwaukee. Following their settlement in the United States, Konerak's older siblings worked as welders, machinists and assembly line workers, as the the Sinthasomphone family struggled with financial challenges.
On September 1988, Konerak's older brother Somsack was approached by Jeffrey Dahmer, who offered him money in exchange for nude pictures. Somsack was at the age 13 when the incident occurred. Dahmer took him into his apartment, where he drugged and sexually abused him. Somsack managed to escape from him, which led to Dahmer’s arrest on September 27, 1988. Dahmer pleaded guilty to second-degree sexual assault in January 1989. He was initially sentenced to eight years in prison, but his sentence was cut short by the state judge, after he wrote a letter apologizing for his crime. He was released in early 1990 and put on five-year probation after serving one year in prison.
On the afternoon of May 26, 1991, Dahmer encountered Konerak on Wisconsin Avenue. Dahmer did not know that he was Somsack's brother and approached him with an offer of money to accompany him to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. Konerak was initially reluctant to the proposal, before changing his mind. He accompanied Dahmer to his apartment, where he posed for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer drugged him into unconsciousness and performed oral sex on him. Before Konerak fell unconscious, Dahmer led him into his bedroom, where the body of Tony Hughes, whom Dahmer had killed three days earlier, lay naked on the floor. According to Dahmer, he believed Konerak saw Hughes' body, but was unable to react because of him being in a drugged state. Dahmer drilled a single narrow hole into Konerak's skull, through which he injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe. He then drank several beers while lying alongside Konerak, before briefly falling asleep.
Konerak managed to regain consciousness after Dahmer left the apartment to buy beer. After fleeing the apartment, he was spotted by neighbors Sandra Smith, Tina Spivey and Nicole Childress, who immediately notified the police. Although Konerak was fluent in English, the side effects of lobotomy caused him to speak broken Laotian and struggled to communicate with them. The women refused to hand Konerak back to Dahmer, after he arrived. When responding officers John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish arrived at the scene, Dahmer reacted calmly, insisting that Konerak was his 19-year-old boyfriend who was drunk after an altercation. He insisted that Konerak — whom Dahmer referred to as the alias 'John Hmong' — frequently behaved in this manner when intoxicated.
Despite the witnesses informing authorities of Konerak’s various injuries, including blood seeping from his testicles and rectum, Balcerzak and Gabrish — escorted Konerak back to Dahmer’s apartment, where they insisted that all was well, despite a pungent odor emanating from the apartment. They advised Dahmer to “take good care” of Konerak. The incident was filed by officers as a “domestic dispute” and they left. Thirty minutes after the officers left, Dahmer again injected hydrochloric acid into Konerak's brain. This second injection proved fatal. He then dismembered his body and preserved his head in the freezer.
After Jeffrey Dahmer was finally caught for his murders on July 22, 1991, the remains of Konerak and other victims of Dahmer were recovered from his apartment by the law enforcement. Konerak's remains are interred at the Holy Cross Cemetery and Mausoleum in Milwaukee.
The news of Konerak’s death reverberated among the community, igniting a protest and triggering an investigation into how the police officers handled the case. Balcerzak and Gabrish were fired in December 1992 following a four-week hearing that involved interviewing 27 witnesses, listening to 90 hours of testimony and reviewing 1,000 pages of evidence. Moreover, Balcerzak and Gabrish were reprimanded for their homophobic comments made during the incident. Both officers appealed their termination and were subsequently reinstated with back pay of $55,000 each by Judge Robert J. Parins, despite protests from the Sinthasomphone family and the community. The family filed a lawsuit against the city of Milwakuee in response to the carelessness shown by Balcerzak and Gabrish in handling the case
After a long legal battle, the city of Milwaukee paid the Sinthasomphone family a sum of $850,000 to settle the lawsuit.
Recommended Reading[]
Related Articles[]
See also[]
Links[]
- Konerak Sinthasomphone at Find a Grave
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