Jeffrey Dahmer

What they missed in the apartment bedroom was the body of Tony Hughes, whose decomposing corpse had lain for three days on the bed.

What they missed was the blond man immediately strangling the Asian boy and having sex with his corpse.

What they missed were the photos that the blond man took of the dead boy, the subsequent dismemberment of his body, and the cleaning of his skull to be kept as a trophy.

Jeff Dahmer, mugshot

What they missed was the opportunity to take the name of Jeffrey Dahmer off the ID that the man gave them and run a background check, which would have told them than the calm, well-spoken man was a convicted child molester who was still on probation.

The story didn't stop there. The two girls who the police ignored went back home to Sandra Smith's mother, Glenda Cleveland, 36, the woman who lived next to the Oxford Apartments which Jeffrey Dahmer called home. Later, Cleveland called up the officers to find out what happened to the Asian boy. She asked how old the child was. "It wasn't a child. It was an adult," the officer said.

Glenda Cleveland

When she continued to ask questions, he told her: "Ma'am, I can't make it any more clear. It's all taken care of. He's with his boyfriend and in his boyfriend's apartment... It's as positive as I can be... I can't do anything about somebody's sexual preferences in life."

A couple of days later, Cleveland called the officers back after she read a newspaper article about the disappearance of a Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone, who looked like the boy that had seen trying to escape from Jeff Dahmer. They never sent anybody to talk with her.

Cleveland even tried contacting the Milwaukee office of the FBI, but nothing came of it.

That is, until a couple of months later on Monday, July 22, 1991, when all hell broke loose.