David C. Thomas was a 23-year-old Black man from Milwaukee and a father who disappeared on or about September 24, 1990. He was last seen after an encounter in downtown Milwaukee near Second Street and Wisconsin Avenue with Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, who allegedly offered him money to accompany him to an apartment at 924 North 25th Street. According to Dahmer’s later confession, the two drank, Thomas was drugged and became incapacitated, and Dahmer then killed him. Thomas’s body was dismembered and photographed; no identifiable remains were ever recovered.

Thomas’s girlfriend, Chandra Beanland, reported him missing on September 24, 1990, and his family did not learn what had happened until the investigation that followed Dahmer’s July 1991 arrest. Photographs, Dahmer’s confession and identification by people who knew Thomas were used to establish his death and support a first-degree intentional homicide charge in the amended complaint. Thomas’s mother, Inez Thomas, spoke at sentencing about the loss and the effect on his young daughter, Courtia Beanland. Did anyone who knew David in Milwaukee in 1990 notice anything unusual about his movements in late September?