» Famed psychiatrist:
Forensic psychiatrist George Palermo, who provided key testimony in the trial of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, dies at age 91.
George Palermo spent a lifetime immersing himself in some of the darkest depths of human nature, yet displayed a buoyancy and joyfulness that made people smile.
He could still engross himself in the beauty of art, culture and song — even after spending hours wandering through the minds of serial killers, sexual predators and common criminals. “He exudes joyfulness and an innocence that belies his 68 years of age,” Richard L. Kenyon wrote in a 1994 profile of Palermo for The Milwaukee Journal.
“He not only has a lightness of spirit, but also the energy of a man 20 years younger.” A funeral will be held Tuesday in Italy for Palermo — the renowned forensic psychiatrist who provided key testimony in the trial of serial killer Jeffery Dahmer. Palermo died Feb. 23 in Henderson, Nev., at age 91.
“If we know what is missing in the lives of these violent people, we can do something about it,” Palermo told Kenyon.
“If we understand, we can correct it.”
Georgio Benito Palermo was born June 19, 1925, in Tarquinia, Italy, to parents Gaetano and Felicia, and grew up in Rome.
As a teen, he endured the psychological horrors of war, including the bombing of Rome.
“Somehow his jovial attitude and positive outlook survived,” said his brother, Anthony Palermo.
After graduating from the University of Bologna School of Medicine, he came to Milwaukee in 1952, completing an internship at St. Michael Hospital and a practice residency at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital.
He returned to Italy to practice psychiatry in 1969, came back to Milwaukee in 1988 and became a forensic psychiatrist at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Complex, determining the competency of people accused of crimes to stand trial, and advising on the mental health and psychological needs of those convicted who were being sentenced.
He was also called upon by the courts or defense attorneys for his opinion on whether a defendant was not guilty by reason of insanity.
“I burned out on psychotherapy,” Palermo told Kenyon. “I wanted to do more public service.” Palermo served as the court-appointed psychiatrist at the trial of Dahmer, who admitted to killing 17 men and boys in Ohio and Wisconsin between 1978 and 1991, and who was charged with 15 of the deaths in Milwaukee County.
Dahmer pleaded guilty to the murders but claimed he was insane, a claim that was shot down by Palermo at trial.
“Jeffrey Dahmer suffers from a serious personality disorder which needs to be treated, but he’s not psychotic,” Palermo testified. “... And he’s not legally insane.”
A jury determined that Dahmer was sane, and in 1992 he was sentenced to 957 years in prison.
Dahmer was bludgeoned to death by another inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution near Portage in 1994.
Palermo served on the faculties of schools around the world — from the Medical College of Wisconsin to the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome — wrote books and scholarly articles, and lectured in places such as Russia, China and Japan on a subject many might find revolting.
Yet despite the ugliness of the criminal minds he dissected on a daily basis, Palermo could easily get lost in the paintings of Canevari, or the lyrics of Puccini’s “La Boheme” — “Siamo ra
l’ultima scena (we’re at the last scene).” “He loved to visit the galleries in Rome with his wife,” Anthony Palermo remembered.
“He saw the purpose of images. To him they had meaning.”