THE minister who baptised Jeffrey Dahmer has revealed he was personally handed a Thanksgiving Card just days before the mass murderer was beaten to death.

In what became his haunting final message to him, cannibal killer Dahmer thanked Roy Ratcliff for his friendship after they had spent hours together studying the Bible.

Roy met mass murderer in prison on November 23, 1994, the day before the Thanksgiving, when Dahmer handed him the card.

Roy became friends with Dahmer after baptising him and has said he felt “a sense of grief” when the killer was brutally murdered with an iron bar by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.

The serial killer was serving a life sentence for the disturbing and gruesome murders of 17 boys and young men – but while he was behind bars in claimed to have found God.

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“Thank you for your friendship and taking the time and effort to help me understand God’s words,” he said in the card.

“God bless you and your family, sincerely Jeff Dahmer.”

Roy told The Sun Online said he wanted to share the card to show Dahmer “was not simply a monster, but a human being”.

“The Thanksgiving Day card was something Jeff gave me the last time I saw him,” he said.

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“It is significant to me because it reminds me of the last time we were together. It speaks of our friendship.

“This is important because I perceive that Jeff didn't have any close friends, and I am honoured to have been one to him.”

Roy spent many hours talking to Dahmer and studying the Bible with him and despite gaining an insight into his behaviour, including cannibalism, believes he the killer was changing.

“It is easy to judge someone when you don't know them, but when you get to know someone better, you tend to see them differently. 

“Jeff had changed from the murderer he had been into a better person.”

Dahmer was murdered on November 28 and where he heard the news Roy said “I felt a sense of grief because I had lost a friend”.

Thank you for your friendship and taking the time and effort to help me understand God’s words

Roy, who’s now 75, was working at a church in Wisconsin, where Dahmer was committed his crimes and was jailed

He had been asked by another minister, from Oklahoma, who Dahmer had told about his wish to be baptised.

After several balked at the prospect of being in a room with the mass murderer nick named the ‘Milwaukee Cannibal’ , eventually Roy agreed carry out the baptism

“I said ‘ok sure what’s his name?’ and they guy who had called me said ‘you might want to sit down for this’ then he told me ‘it’s Jeffrey Dahmer’.”

Roy said that at the time he was “relatively ignorant” of the detail of Dahmer’s crimes and it was only when wife said “you ought to learn more about him” that he began reading about them.

“When I first him I didn’t know the grisly details and I think it was better not to know because it allowed me not to be prejudiced towards him.”

ALONE WITH KILLER

Roy made his first visit to prison to meet Dahmer in April 1994 and was led through doors whose banging was “a little disconcerting” to a room with a just table and chairs to wait for Dahmer.

He had been warned to take off his tie in case it was used as a weapon but began to notice he was sweating as the minutes ticked by while he waited.

“Then in a few minutes Jeff enters the room and closes the door and shakes my hand then sits across from me,” he said.

“I was impressed about how courteous he was and how willing he was to be co-operative.

“For a moment there I’m thinking I’m in a room all by myself with a man who’s murdered so many people and I was a little apprehensive. I was thinking ‘what’s going on here’.

“Then we started talking about how he wanted to be baptised and after that I forgot about being apprehensive.”

In fact Dahmer had been scared of meeting Roy and “heaved and unusual sigh” when he agreed to baptise him.

“I said ‘why did you make that sound’ and he said ‘I was afraid of meeting you because I thought you would say I can’t baptise you because you’ve been too evil’.

“But if a man is seeking repentance for his sins then I should help him. That’s all I was thinking about.”

CANNIBAL'S CONFESSION

As they started talking, Dahmer began to open up about the dark aspects of his crimes, in particular his cannibalism.

“He confessed to me that he ate a bicep of one of his victims,” he said.

“I didn’t think he was playing around and that it was a genuine confession. There was no question in my mind that he hadn’t done these things.

“In my mind I think there was no-one there to stop him and one thing led to another and to another.

“He’s like the quote from Shakespeare that about being so deep in the blood that you can’t get out.”

Roy says his “cannibal persona” was part of Dahmer’s self-image and something he used with chilling effect on those around him.

“I was told by of the prison guards that he would say to a guard standing outside his cell ‘I bite’. It was close enough only for a guard to hear and the guard would be shaken by that.

“He also had a poster in his cell that read Cannibals Anonymous Meeting Here Tonight.

“It was a means of attracting attention to himself yet at the same time communicating ‘don’t get too close to me I might hurt you’.”

Dahmer was baptised on May 10 in a whirlpool used to treat inmates when they hurt their back.

In an eerie co-incidence it was the day Dahmer’s fellow serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed in Illinois for the killing 33 young boys and men and there was also a solar eclipse.

The pair began to meet frequently to study the Bible and struck up a friendship Roy thought would last until they were old.

“Some people are surprised about that but we did.

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“We think of him as an insane maniac, monster but he was more human than we give him credit for.”

Dahmer’s prison bible is currently on sale from Cult Collectibles, who previously the most chilling items he has that belonged to the cannibal.

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