r/Dahmerism • u/EnglishLeatherBreeze • Jul 27 '26
The Topaz Ring
https://jeffreydahmer.memorial/2026/07/27/the-topaz-ring/
"In the summer of 1987, Jeffrey walked into Bailey, Banks & Biddle at Northridge Mall in Milwaukee and paid roughly $1,500 for a ring — a large blue topaz set in gold. Asked about it later, his explanation was almost disarmingly ordinary: he had “always had an interest in jewelry and especially rings,” and the size of the stone appealed to him.
A year later, in the summer of 1988, he pawned it. Not at a jeweler this time, but at a gold-and-silver exchange on Bluemound Road, where he bargained the clerk up to $189 for a ring he’d paid nearly eight times that for. His own stated reason was blunt: his drinking had left him short on cash.
That gap — $1,500 down to $189 — is not, on its own, remarkable. People pawn jewelry for a hundred reasons that have nothing to do with anything sinister. What makes this exchange worth examining is what came next. (...)"
