biography.com jeffrey dahmer

Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, the son of Joyce Annette (née Flint) and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, an analytical chemist. Seven years later, his brother David was born. Joyce Dahmer reportedly had a difficult pregnancy with her elder son. When Jeffrey was eight years old, he moved with his family to Bath, Ohio. Dahmer grew increasingly withdrawn and uncommunicative between the ages of 10 and 15, showing little interest in any hobbies or social interactions. He biked around his neighborhood looking for dead animals, which he dissected at home (or in the woods near his home). In one instance, he put a dog's head on a stake. Though fundamentally an outcast at Revere High School, Dahmer nonetheless became something of a cult figure among some students due to his impressions of his mother's interior decorator, who suffered from cerebral palsy. Dahmer began drinking in his teens and was an alcoholic by the time of his high school graduation.

In 1977, Lionel and Joyce Dahmer divorced. Dahmer attended The Ohio State University, but dropped out after one quarter, having failed to attend most of his classes. He was drunk for the majority of the term. Dahmer's father then forced him to enlist in the Army. Dahmer did well at first, but he was discharged after two years because of his alcoholism. When the Army discharged Dahmer in 1981, he was provided with a plane ticket to anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he could not go home to face his father, so he headed to Miami Beach, Florida, because he was "tired of the cold." He spent most of his time there at a hospital, but was soon kicked out for drinking. After coming home, he continued to drink heavily, and he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct later in 1981.

In 1982, Dahmer moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, where he lived for six years. During this time, his behavior grew increasingly strange. His grandmother once found a fully dressed male mannequin in his closet; Dahmer had stolen it from a store. On another occasion, she found a .357 Magnum under his bed. Terrible smells came from the basement; Dahmer told his father that he had brought home a dead squirrel and dissolved it with chemicals. He was arrested twice for indecent exposure, in 1982 and 1986; in his second offense, he masturbated in front of two boys.

In summer 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out because of his late nights, his strange behavior, and the foul smells from the basement. He then found an apartment on Milwaukee's West side, closer to his job at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory.

On September 26, 1988, one day after moving into his apartment, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee. He was sentenced to five years' probation and one year in a work release camp. He was required to register as a sex offender. Dahmer was paroled from the work release camp two months early, and he soon moved into a new apartment. Shortly thereafter, he began a string of murders that ended with his arrest in 1991.

Dahmer committed his first murder in the summer of 1978, at the age of 18. His father was away on business and his mother had moved out, taking his brother with her; Dahmer was left behind, alone. That June, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Stephen Hicks and offered to drink beer with him back at his father's house, planning to eventually have sex with him. When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks to death with a 10 lb. dumbbell, striking the back of his head, later saying he had committed the crime because "the guy wanted to leave and [he] didn't want him to." Dahmer buried the body in the backyard. Nine years passed before he killed again; in September 1987, Dahmer picked up 26-year-old Steven Tuomi at a bar and killed him on impulse; he later said he had no memory of committing the crime.

After the Tuomi murder, Dahmer continued to kill sporadically: two more murders in 1988, and another in early 1989, usually picking up his victims in gay bars and having sex with them before killing them. He kept the skull of one of his victims, Anthony Sears, until he was caught.

In May 1990, he moved out of his grandmother's house for the last time and into an apartment that later became infamous: Apartment 213, 924 North 25th Street, Milwaukee. Dahmer picked up the pace of his killing: four more murders before the end of 1990, two more in February and April 1991, and another in May 1991.

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him. Dahmer told John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, police officers dispatched to the scene, that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, who recognized him from the neighborhood and insisted that he was a child and couldn't speak English, the officers turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The officers did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age or identity, nor locate someone who could communicate with him, and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer being a convicted child molester still under probation. Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

By summer 1991, Dahmer was murdering approximately one person each week. He killed Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19. Dahmer got the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies" — completely submissive, eternally youthful sexual partners – and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, usually while the victim was still alive. Other residents of the Oxford Apartments complex noticed terrible smells coming from Apartment 213, as well as the thumps of falling objects and the occasional buzzing of a power saw. Unlike many serial killers, Dahmer killed victims from a variety of racial backgrounds.

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another man, Tracy Edwards, into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him, but ultimately failed to cuff his wrists together. Wielding a large butcher knife, Dahmer forced Edwards into the bedroom, where Edwards saw pictures of mangled bodies on the wall and noticed the terrible smell coming from a large blue barrel; the barrel was filled with potent acid which dissolved human bodies to sludge for disposal via the apartment toilet. Edwards punched Dahmer in the face, kicked him in the stomach, ran for the door and escaped. Running through the streets with handcuffs still hanging from one hand, Edwards waved for help to a police car driven by Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller of the Milwaukee police department. Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers. However, Edwards remembered that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When one of the officers checked the bedroom, he saw the photographs of mangled bodies and called for his partner to arrest Dahmer. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head. Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, severed hands and penises, and photographs of dismembered victims and human remains in his refrigerator.

The story of Dahmer's arrest and the inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Seven skulls were found in the apartment. A human heart was found in the freezer.

Dahmer was indicted on 17 murder charges, later reduced to 15. Dahmer was not charged in the attempted murder of Edwards. His trial began on January 30, 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial lasted two weeks.

The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty available as Wisconsin abolished capital punishment in 1853. At his sentencing hearing, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, and said that he wished for his own death. In May of that year, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio, where he entered a plea of guilty for the murder of his first victim, Stephen Hicks.

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. Roy Ratcliff, a local preacher from the Churches of Christ, met with Dahmer and agreed to baptize him.

Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. An inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while Dahmer was returning to his cell from a church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds. While doing janitorial work in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a broomstick handle on November 28, 1994. Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds.

Upon learning of his death, Dahmer's mother, Joyce Flint, responded angrily to the media, "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" The response of the families of Dahmer's victims was mixed, although it appears most were pleased with his death. The district attorney who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned against turning Scarver into a folk hero, noting that Dahmer's death was still murder.

The Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street were demolished in 1992; the site is now a vacant lot. Plans to convert the site into a memorial garden failed to materialize.

In 1994, Lionel Dahmer published a book, and donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims' families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel Dahmer and his wife, Shari. He has retired from his career as an analytical chemist and resides with his wife in Medina County, Ohio. Lionel Dahmer is an advocate for creationism, and his wife was a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman's Council. Both continue to carry the name Dahmer and say they love Jeffrey despite his crimes. Jeffrey's mother and Lionel Dahmer's first wife, Joyce (Flint), died of cancer in 2000. Jeffrey's younger brother, David, changed his last name and lives in anonymity.

Dahmer's estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer representing eight of the families, announced a planned auction of Dahmer's estate to raise up to $1 million, sparking controversy. A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride, was quickly established in an effort to raise the funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's possessions. The group pledged $407,225, including a $100,000 gift by Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber, for purchase of Dahmer's estate; five of the eight families represented by Jacobson agreed to the terms, and Dahmer's possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

In January 2007, evidence surfaced potentially linking Dahmer to Adam Walsh's 1981 abduction and murder in Florida. However, Adam's father, John Walsh, believed that another serial killer, Ottis Toole, committed the crime. When interviewed about Adam Walsh in the early 1990s, Dahmer repeatedly denied involvement in the crime. In 2008, Florida police declared the Walsh case closed, naming Toole, who died in prison in 1996, as the killer.

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Jeffrey Dahmer

Date of birth: May 21, 1960, at 4.34pm, at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital (Milwaukee)

Date of dead: November 28, 1994 (murderd by a fellow inmate)

Jeffrey Dahmer was a bit of a weird kid (to say the least). His mother was a loon. and his dad was a workaholic, so Jeff did not get a great deal of attention. He played games with his imaginary friends, and scared off his real friends with his strange antics.

He also had a strange fetish with dead animals. he loved to see their insides, and it's been claimed on numerous occasions that he once put a dogs severed head on a stick behind his house. Since his father was a doctor Jeff also got reading material, and sometimes a bit of help when it came to boiling road-kill down to bones for his personal collection.

Eventually Jeff's parents separated. If this wasn't hard enough on Jeff, then the fact that neither parent wanted him must have been. They argued fiercely over his little brother David, but never once bothered to mention Jeffrey's living arrangements. Eventually he went with his mother. Around this time Jeff discovered drugs and alcohol as a means to forget his problems.

Jeff was also known to run through the local mall acting like a retard, (which probably explains why he had few friends).

One night Jeff was driving back to his mothers when he picked up a hitchhiker, Steven Hicks, 19. The two of them went back to Jeffery's to drink some beer and smoke some pot. It seems that Jeff must have really liked Steve because when Hicks said that it was time he headed home, Dahmer decided that he did not want his new friend going anywhere. Jeff picked up a weight lifting dumbbell and struck Hick's in the back of the head. He then strangled him. Jeff then dragged the body into the crawlspace, under the house where it stayed for a few days. Eventually the smell became quite strong so Dahmer went down and cut the remains into pieces placing them into small plastic bags. He then put the bags in the bushes behind the house, eventually burying them. After a while Dahmer began to worry about the neighborhood kids digging up the remains so he dug them up and smashed the bones into pieces, which he scattered around the woods.

Over the next nine years Dahmer was able to control the urges to kill again.

Eventually Jeff joined the United States Army, where ended up stationed in Germany, this lasted a couple years until Jeff was finally discharged because of his erratic drinking problems.

After his military career ended Jeff accepted his homosexuality and became a regular at Milwaukee's gay bars. He was also arrested for flashing his penis at two 12 year old boys in a park and then masturbating. He was placed on probation until September 9, 1987 for the incident.

Just six days after the probation ended he started killing again.

On September 15, 1987 Dahmer spent the day drinking at a gay bar named Club 219 and met up with a gay man named Steven Toumi. They chatted with each other for a few hours and eventually left together. They went to a hotel and rented a room. Dahmer claims he can't remember what happened once they got to the hotel, only that he drank alot. He wasn't even sure if they had any form of sexual relations, but when he woke up Toumi was dead. It seems Jeff beat him very badly and strangled him. After this Jeff went out and bought a large suitcase. Which he then stuffed the body inside, and caught a taxi back to his grandmothers house, (where he lived in the basement). Once there he cut up the body, placed the pieces into garbage bags and put it out by the curb with the rest of the days trash.

On January 16, 1988 Dahmer approached a young male prostitute, James Doxtator (age: 14), and offered James money to make a video with him. Doxtator agreed so Jeff took him home to his basement room. Dahmer then gave James a sleeping drug concoction, and once he passed out Jeff strangled him. He then stripped the body of all flesh by using acid, then smashed the bones up with a sledgehammer. After he was satisfied with his work he scattered the bone fragments.

On March 24, 1988 Jeff met Richard Guerrero at a bar called the Phoenix. Guerrero was broke so Jeff offered him some money if he would come back to his place and make a video. Guerrero agreed, once back at Dahmer's they had oral sex, then Jeff offered him a drink and Richard accepted. Shortly after passing out Richard was strangled dismembered and disposed of.

It was around this time that Jeff's Grandmother began to worry about the foul smell coming from the basement. When Jeff’s father Lionel Dahmer inspected the room he found a black sticky residue, similar to what acid does to flesh, upon questioning his son about this Jeff told his father he had been experimenting with animals. Since Lionel never really gave a shit what Jeff did he accepted this and didn't bother to worry about it any further. But his grandmother did and he was asked to move out.

Dahmer soon got his own place at 808 North 24th Street. Just 24 hours after moving into his new apartment Dahmer was in trouble with police. He had conned a Laotian boy, Keison Sinthasomphone, 13, into coming up to his apartment. Once there Dahmer drugged and molested him, but the boy escaped. He reported the incident to the police and Dahmer was charged with sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. He spent one week in jail before getting released on bail. On January 30, 1990 Dahmer was found guilty, but sentencing wouldn’t take place for another four months.

On March 25, 1990 Dahmer met Anthony Sears at La Cage, (a gay bar). Dahmer took him back to his grandmothers house because he assumed the police were watching his apartment. Once there they had sexual intercourse, afterwards Dalmer made him a drink. Murdered him and decided to keep the skull as a trophy.

At Dahmer's sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes sentencing on May 23 Dahmer pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying "I am an alcoholic and a homosexual with sexual problems." The Judge, William Gardner, decided to sentence him to 5 years probation and 1 year in a half way house so he could continue to work.

After serving his time in the half way house Dahmer rented a place at the oxford apartments. Apartment #213. Just two weeks after moving into the now infamous apartment building (has since been demolished), Dahmer met Ray Smith at Club 219. Ray was a newcomer to Milwaukee and seemed to run into the wrong guy at the wrong time. Jeff asked Ray back to his place to pose for some photo's, Ray accepted this invitation and once Jeff offered him a drink. Once Ray passed out He strangled, then stripped the body and had necrophelic sex with it. This was the first corpse that Dahmer admitted to having sexual intercourse with, but definitely not the last. Once he'd had his fun with Ray he dismembered the body and threw it out with the trash. All except for the skull he kept that and painted it to preserve it, this marks the beginning of his macabre collection of human souvenirs.

On June 14, 1990 Dahmer met Eddie Smith, Eddie readily accepted Dahmer's advances and went back to Jeff's apartment where they had oral sex. Afterwards Jeff offered Eddie a drink, soon after Eddie passed out, Jeff strangled him, dismembered the body, then threw the remains out with the trash.

On July 8, 1990 Jeff decided to vary his MO, deciding not to bother drugging his victim. He had a 15 year old Hispanic kid posing for photos when he picked up a mallet and tried to hit the boy in the head. The kid fought back and eventually escaped, the kid went to the police, but when he begged police not to tell his foster parents that he was gay, the police decided to leave it alone.

On September 3, 1990 Dahmer picked up Ernest Miller, took him home had intercourse with him, drugged him, then changed his game plan a little plan, He didn't strangle Miller he cut his throat instead. He then sliced off the biceps and put them in the freezer, and then upon taking all the flesh from the bone, decided to keep the entire skeleton.

It was around this time that Jeff's neighbors started to complain about the putrid smell coming from his apartment. Dahmer explained to the landlord that his fridge was broken and he would get it fixed as soon as possible.

September/October, 1990 Jeff met David Thomas. Dahmer and Thomas were drinking in Dahmer's apartment when Jeff gave him his "special drink" Jeff didn't want to kill Thomas, but he was worried he might be upset when he woke up that Jeff drugged him. So Jeff decided the best thing to do was to kill him anyway. This time he filmed the whole dismemberment. He also took photo's of David's severed head in various positions in the apartment. (these photo's were later viewed by Thomas's sister for identification purposes).

On February 18, 1991 Jeff met Curtis Straughter. Curtis wanted to be a model, so when Jeff mentioned he pose for photo's, he gladly agreed. He was strangled while giving Jeff oral sex. Jeff kept the skull and painted it to preserve it, he also decided to keep the hands and penis as well.

On April 7, 1991 Jeff met Errol Lindsey (AKA Earl Lindsey) age: 19, at a local bus stop. Errol was paid by Dahmer to come back to the apartment. Jeff offered him a drink and he accepted, and soon Jeffrey was performing oral sex on his corpse. Jeff kept the skull.

On May 24, 1991 Jeff met Tony Hughes at club 219, Hughes was a deaf mute so Dahmer wrote his offer on paper and handed it to Tony, $50 to pose for some photos and watch some videos. Well as I am sure you have probably already guessed, Dahmer drugged and strangled Hughes. Then Jeff left the corpse laying around his bedroom for a few days before dismembering it.

On May 27, 1991 Dahmer met Konerak Sinthasomphone (age: 14) at a local bus stop. (Konerak was the younger brother of the guy who charged Jeff with sexual assault, although Jeff never knew it at the time.). Dahmer got the kid into his apartment, drugged him, had sexual intercourse with him, drilled a hole in his head, injected acid, then left to go get himself some beer. Somehow the kid woke up and was able to make it out of the building into the street where the police found him wandering around dazed and nude. To them he was just a drunk homosexual, and when they spoke to Dahmer their thoughts were confirmed. they went back to the apartment, noticed nothing out of the ordinary, and left Konerak with Dahmer. The police even made a joke about it on the CB. Well needless to say, Jeff added another skull to the collection which he also painted to preserve.

On June 30, 1991 Dahmer traveled to Chicago for Gay Pride Day. (his wallet was stolen at the events) While at a bus depot he met Matt Turner another guy that wanted to be a model. Dahmer talked him into coming back to Milwaukee with him. Dahmer paid for Greyhound bus tickets for them both and they were soon off on there 90 mile ride. Once safely back in the confides of his apartment, Dahmer drugged and strangled Turner. He then cut off Turners head, wrapped it in a plastic bag and placed it in the freezer, He then placed the torso in a blue 57 gallon barrel.

On July 4, 1991 Dahmer decided to pay another visit to Chicago. While there he met Jeremiah Weinberger age 23 at a local gay watering hole. Jermiah even asked his roommate what he thought of Jeff, "He seems all right". So Jeremiah decide to go back to Milwaukee with Jeff. Jeff again paid for Greyhound bus tickets for the 90 mile ride back to his place. Once they arrived back at Jeff's they had mutual sex and Jeremiah spent the night. But when Jeremiah got sick of having sex with Jeff he said he was going home. Jeff said fine, then offered him a farewell drink. Jeff then strangled him. Jeremiah's head was found in Jeff's freezer.

On July 12, 1991 Jeff met Oliver Lacy Age:23 They went back to Jeff's place, had a drink, fooled around, then Jeff strangled him. Then for the first time Jeff decided to get into some necrophelic sex and sodomized the corpse. He then sliced the right bicep off and ate it. He placed Lacy's head in the fridge next to an open box of Arm & hammer baking soda, and his heart in the freezer to eat later. He also put other body parts in the freezer. he put the rest of the flesh into the trash and he kept the entire skeleton.

It was at this time that Dahmer was suspended from his job at the Ambrosia chocolate factory. It seems that he spent a few too many days at home with his "friends". This really upset Jeff. And then on July 19 he was fired from the job.

On July 19, 1991 Jeff met Joeseph Bradehoft at a local bus stop. It was poring down rain and Joseph had a six pack of beer on him, so he decided to go back to Jeff's to party a bit. Once there they had oral sex, then Dahmer drugged and strangled him. slept with the body for the next few days until the head became infested with maggots. Jeff cleaned it and put it in the freezer along with the heads of Turner and Weinberger. He placed the torso in the 57 gallon barrol in the bed room.

Dahmer seemed to have very little control at this point, he seemed to care very little, he was becoming extremely sloppy, and it was only a matter of time before his world would completely collapse.

On July 22, 1991 Dahmer met Tracy Edwards age:32. Jeff picked him up, got him back to his place. Dahmer claims he remembers little of this evening, but you can bet your ass Edwards will never forget it. According to Edwards Jeff pulled out a knife and went from being Mr. nice to being a cold hearted son-of-a-bitch. Jeff managed to get a handcuff onto one of Edwards hands, but Edwards fought back and got away. Police officers Mueller & Rauth were doing their nightly patrol down Kilbourn Avenue, Milwaukee.

When they reached the corner of 25th Street, they were flagged down by a black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. hysterically explained to the officers that he had been drinking with a man who handcuffed him & tried to kill him. The officers tried to remove the handcuff from Edwards' wrist but their keys would not fit, so Mueller & Rauth escorted Edwards back to the man's apartment located at 924 North 25th Street. The door to apartment 213 was opened by Jeffery Dahmer a 31 year old, white, male. The inside of the apartment was neat & clean and Dahmer acknowledged that he was responsible for the handcuff & pointed the officers in the direction of the bedroom, which is where he thought the keys would be.

He also said: "I just lost my job, and I want to drink some fucking beer!". After looking around inside one of the officers opened up the fridge and exclaimed "OH MY GOD! THERE'S A GOD DAM HEAD IN HERE! HE"S ON SICK SO OF A BITCH!" Dahmer suddenly turned on them and fought as the other cop tried to cuff him, after subduing Jeff they took him in.

Upon searching the apartment, the box of baking soda in the refrigerator hardly absorbed the odors of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties. There was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath which had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who was first on the scene, described what she saw in her book The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: "...in the back of the closet was a metal stockpot that contained decomposed hands and a penis.

On the shelf above the kettle were 2 skulls. Also in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde...Polaroid photos taken by Dahmer at various stages of his victims deaths. One showed a man's head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean I could see the pelvic bone clearly." Some of the photos were his victims before he murdered them in various erotic and bondage poses. The case became the biggest serial murder case of the decade.

Dahmer's bail was originally set at $1 million cash. On Aug. 6, it was raised to $5 million when eight more murder charges were added to his charges. In the end Dahmer had fifteen murder charges against him. The longest sentence Dahmer muttered at any of the preliminary hearings was "I understand, your honor" when the judge asked if he understood the charges against him.

On July 13, 1992, Dahmer ignored his lawyer's advice and changed his plea to guilty, but that he was insane. According to Don Davis in The Milwaukee Murders, " the declaration turned the case on its head. Now, instead of having to prove his man did not commit the murders, defense attorney Gerald Boyle would unroll one of the goriest tapestries ever seen in an American courtroom. His task was to convince the jury that Dahmer was crazy, because only an insane person would do the things he did."

Two detectives took turns reading the 160-page confession. It was a catalog of sexual perversion. Detective Dennis Murphy stated that Dahmer "felt a tremendous amount of guilt because of his actions. He felt thoroughly evil." Then he quoted from Dahmer's own confession: "It's hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I've done, but I know that I did it." He claimed that his fear of being caught was overwhelmed by his excitement of being completely in control.

The battle of psychiatrists over whether Dahmer was legally responsible and able to control his actions seemed to confuse the jury. Finally Boyle drew a chart for the jury which He read them off quickly: "Skulls in locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbating.....This is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness..."

Prosecutor McCann rebutted, "He wasn't a runaway train, he was the engineer!" He was satisfying his extraordinary sexual cravings. "Ladies and gentlemen, he's fooled a lot of people. Please don't let this murderous killer fool you."

The jury deliberated for five hours and decided that Jeff Dahmer did not deserve to spend the rest of his life in a hospital, but in a prison cell. On all fifteen counts, Dahmer was found guilty and sane.

Dahmer wrote an apology to the judge covering a thirteen-year bloodbath. "Your Honor: It is now over. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace.. I know how much harm I have caused...Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins...I ask for no consideration."

He was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms or a total of 957 years in prison.

Dahmer adjusted very well to prison life at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. Initially, he was not part of the general population of the prison, which would have jeopardized his safety. As it was, he was attacked on July 3, 1994, while attending a chapel service by a Cuban who he had never seen before.

While in prison Dahmer was sued twice for 3 billion dollars. (even though he had not one red cent to his name) Dahmer, the model prisoner, convinced the prison authorities to allow him more contact with other inmates. He was able to eat in communal areas and he was given some janitorial work to do with other teams of inmates.

The morning of November 28, 1994. Dahmer was working bathroom clean-up detail paired up with two highly dangerous men: Jesse Anderson, a white man who had murdered his wife and blamed it on a black man, and Christopher Scarver, a black delusional schizophrenic who though the was the son of God, who was in prison for first degree murder. It's not difficult to imagine how Scarver viewed Dahmer, who had butchered so many black men, and Anderson. It was a disastrous combination. 20 minutes after they started, a prison guard came by to check on them and found Dahmer lying face down in a pool of blood with his head bashed in (the other white inmate was lying in a pool of blood in one of the showers).

Upon arriving at the hospital Dahmer was pronounced dead at 9:11 A.M. Jesse Anderson died shortly after. from having his head bashed against the floor and walls repeatedly. They compared his injuries to those of a car accident. Scarver claimed "God told me to do it!" At any rate he received another life sentence for his actions.

Jeff was cremated and his parents, who are divorced, each received half of his remains after a court battle over his ashes.

By John Boston

A Victim Almost Escapes

Konerak was only fourteen and he was running for his life. This was his only chance to escape from the horrible smelling apartment where the creepy blond guy had slipped him some kind of powerful drug. It seemed that luck was with him that he started to come around just as the blond man had left the apartment.

It took all the strength he had to get up and get to the door. He was so disoriented and panicked that it made no difference that he was naked. This was his only chance to survive. He was working strictly on instinct. Just get out of there and run away.

It was just before 2 A.M. and Sandra Smith called 911 to report the boy running around "butt naked.". She didn't know who he was, but she knew he was injured and terrified.

The paramedics got there first and put a blanket around the naked, dazed boy. Two police officers arrived soon after and tried to understand what was going on with this young man of Asian descent.

Sandra Smith, eighteen years old and her cousin Nicole Childress, also eighteen, were standing near the boy when the Milwaukee city police arrived. The tall blond man was also standing near the boy. The conversation became heated between the girls, the blond man and the police.

The tall blond man told the police the Konerak was his nineteen-year-old lover who had been drinking too much. Konerak who was drugged and incoherent wasn't able to contradict the smooth-talking blond man. Dahmer gave the police a picture ID.

The two young women tried to intervene. They had seen the terrified boy trying to resist the blond man before the police arrived. They were angry and upset. The police were ignoring them and listening to the white man instead.

Just to be on the safe side, the two officers went with the boy and the tall blond man to his apartment. The apartment smelled bad, but it was very neat. Konerak's clothing was folded and placed on the sofa. There were a couple of photographs of Konerak in black bikini briefs.

Konerak sat quietly on the sofa unable to talk intelligently. It's not even clear that he understood the calm explanation the blond man was giving the police. The blond man was apologizing that his lover had caused a disturbance and promised it wouldn't happen again. The police believed the blond man. They had no reason not to -- he was well-spoken, intelligent and very calm. The Asian was apparently drunk and incoherent. The officers, not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic argument between homosexual lovers, left the apartment with Konerak still sitting quietly on the sofa. In that neighborhood, the officers felt that there were more pressing things for them to do.

The Body in the Bedroom

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 up of his skull to be kept as a trophy.

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, a 36-year-old 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.

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.

A couple of months later on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers were driving around in the very high crime area around Marquette University. The heat was oppressive and the humidity almost unbearable. The smell of the neighborhood was all the more pungent in the heat: the garbage on the streets, the urine and feces left by the homeless, the rancid stink of cooked grease.

Around midnight, as the two officers sat in their car, they saw a short, wiry black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. Assuming that this man had escaped from another policeman, they asked him what he was doing. The man started to pour out a tale about this "weird dude" who put the cuffs on him in his apartment. The man was thirty-two year old Tracy Edwards.

Edward's story smacked of some homosexual encounter that normally the police would avoid, but the two policemen thought they ought to check out this man that had cuffed Edwards who lived at the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street. The door to Apartment 213 was opened by a nice looking thirty-one-year-old blond man.

Dahmer was very calm and rationale. He offered to get the key to the handcuffs in the bedroom. Edwards remembered that the knife that Dahmer had threatened him with was also in the bedroom.

Once of the officers decided to go into the bedroom himself and take a look. He noticed photographs lying around that shocked him: dismembered human bodies, skulls in the refrigerator. When he collected his wits, he yelled to his partner to cuff Dahmer and place him under arrest.

The Head in the Fridge

The placid, rational blond man suddenly turned on them and fought as the other cop tried to cuff him. While the one officer subdued Dahmer, the other one went to the refrigerator and opened it. He shrieked loudly at the face that stared out at him and slammed the door. "There's a fucking head in the refrigerator!"

A closer examination of the apartment revealed an intimate juxtaposition of the tidy and the unspeakable. While the small one-bedroom flat was neat and clean, especially for a bachelor, and his pet fish well cared for, the smell of decomposition was overwhelming.

The box of baking soda in the refrigerator hardly absorbed the odors of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties.

There was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath which had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who was first on the scene describes what she saw in her book The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough: "...in the back of the closet was a metal stockpot that contained decomposed hands and a penis. On the shelf above the kettle were 2 skulls.

Also in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde...Polaroid photos taken by Dahmer at various stages of his victims' deaths. One showed a man's head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean I could see the pelvic bone clearly." Some of the photos were his victims before he murdered them in various erotic and bondage poses.

The police, the county medical examiner, the media, families of missing young men, Jeff Dahmer's family, the entire city of Milwaukee and the whole world tried to understand what had really happened in Apartment 213. Eventually the story began to tumble out.

First Blood

The first person to plumb the depths of Jeffrey Dahmer's depravity was Detective Patrick Kennedy. A huge bear of a man with dramatic handlebar mustache, he engaged Dahmer's confidence and was the person to whom he confessed the details of his thirteen-year killing spree.

While Dahmer had fantasies about killing men and having sex with their corpses as early as age fourteen, he didn't do anything about it until just after he graduated high school in June of 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks when he was living with his parents in the upscale community of Bath, Ohio. They had sex and drank beer, but then Hicks wanted to leave. Dahmer couldn't stand the idea of Hicks leaving, so he struck him in the head with a barbell and killed him.

He needed to get rid of the body so he cut it up, packaged it up in plastic garbage bags and buried the bags in the woods behind his house. That fall, he attended Ohio State University for a semester but flunked out. At the end of 1978, he left to join the Army and was stationed in Germany. Apparently he didn't kill anyone when he was in the Army which was corroborated by an exhaustive investigation by the German police. After a couple of years, the Army discharged him for alcoholism and he went to live in Florida before returning to Ohio. Once back home, he dug up Hick's body, pounded the decomposing corpse with a sledgehammer and scattered the remains in the woods.

Lust, Booze & Murder

A few months after his arrest in October of 1981 for drunken and disorderly conduct, his father thought it best that Jeffrey go live with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin. Things were calm for a few months until he dropped his trousers in the company of a group of people. He had apparently had a bit to drink. He kept things under control for another four years until he was again arrested in September of 1986 for masturbating in front of two boys. He was put on probation for a year.

He killed his second victim Steven Toumi a hotel room in September of 1987. The two of them had been drinking heavily in one of the popular gay bars. Dahmer didn't know how he killed him, but when he awoke, Toumi was dead and blood was on his mouth. He bought a large suitcase and stuffed the body inside. After he took Toumi's corpse to his grandmother's basement, he had sex with it, masturbated on it, dismembered it and threw it in the garbage.

Several months later, he selected his third victim, a fourteen-year-old Native American boy named Jamie Doxtator who hung around outside the gay bars, looking for relationships. Dahmer's methods became established by that time. Normally, he would meet and select his prey at gay bars or bathhouses. He would lure his victims by offering them money for posing for photographs or simply to enjoy some beer and videos. Then he would drug them, strangle them, masturbate on the body or have sex with the corpse, dismember the body and dispose of it. Sometimes he would keep the skull or other body parts as souvenirs.

More Murders, More Arrests

He practiced this ritual on Richard Guerrero, a handsome young man of Mexican origin in late March of 1988. Dahmer said he met him a gay bar in Milwaukee, but the young man's family disputed that their son was anything but heterosexual. By the summer of that year, Dahmer had killed four men. While Dahmer's grandmother was completely ignorant of the awful things that were happening in her basement, she was fully aware of the noise and drunkenness of Jeff and his male friends. Something had to be done.

So, on September 25, 1988, Jeffrey moved into an apartment on North 24th Street in Milwaukee. The very next day, he got into serious trouble. He offered a thirteen-year-old Laotian boy $50 to pose for some pictures. He drugged the boy and fondled him, but did not get violent or have intercourse with him. By incredible coincidence, the boy's name was Sinthasomphone, the older brother of the boy that Dahmer would kill in May of 1991.

The boy's parents realized there was something wrong with their child and took him to the hospital where it was confirmed that he had been drugged. The police picked up Dahmer at his job at the mixer of Ambrosia Chocolate. He was arrested for sexual exploitation of a child and second-degree sexual assault. On January 30, 1989, he pleaded guilty, although he claimed that he thought that the boy was much older than he was.

While Dahmer awaited sentencing and was living again at his grandmother's house, he met a black homosexual named Anthony Sears at a gay bar. Like the others, he offered the twenty-four-year-old aspiring black model some money to pose for photos. When they reached Dahmer's grandmother's house, Sears was drugged and strangled. Dahmer had sex with his corpse and then dismembered it.

Anne Schwartz describes what happened next: "...he kept the head and boiled it to remove the skin, later painting it gray, so that in case of discovery, the skull would look like a plastic model used by medical students. Dahmer saved the trophy for two years, until it was recovered from Apartment 213 on July 23, 1991. Later he explained that he masturbated in front of the skulls for gratification."

A True Psychopath

On May 23, 1989, Dahmer's lawyer Gerald Boyle and Assistant D.A. Gale Shelton presented their arguments to Judge William Gardner. Shelton wanted a prison sentence of at least five years. "In my judgment it is absolutely crystal clear that the prognosis for treatment of Mr. Dahmer within the community is extremely bleak... His perception that what he did wrong here was choosing too young a victim, -- and that that's all he did wrong, -- is a part of the problem... He appeared to be cooperative and receptive, but anything that goes below the surface indicates that the deep-seated anger and deep-seated psychological problems that he is unwilling or incapable of dealing with."

Three psychologists examined him and concurred that Dahmer was manipulative, resistant and evasive. Hospitalization and intensive treatment was recommended.

Boyle, the defense attorney argued that Dahmer was sick and needed treatment, not prison. He praised the fact that he had held a job. "We don't have a multiple offender here. I believe that he was caught before it got to the point where it would have gotten worse, which means that it is a blessing in disguise."

Dahmer himself spoke in his own defense, blaming his behavior on alcoholism. He was articulate and convincing, for someone who had secretly murdered several men by that time. "What I have done is very serious. I've never been in this position before. Nothing this awful. This is a nightmare come true for me. If anything would shock me out of my past behavior patterns, it's this.

"The one thing I have in my mind that is stable and that gives me some source of pride is my job. I've come very close to losing it because of my actions, which I take full responsibility for... All I can do is beg you, please spare my job. Please give me a chance to show that I can, that I can tread the straight and narrow and not get involved in any situation like this ever again... This enticing a child was the climax of my idiocy... I do want help. I do want to turn my life around."

A marvelous performance by a true psychopath! The judge fell for it, stayed his sentence, and put Dahmer on probation for five years. He was ordered to spend one year in the House of Correction under "work release," which allowed him to go to work during the day and return to the jail at night.

The Killing Binge

After ten months, the judge granted him early release despite a letter from Dahmer's father urging him not to release him until he received treatment. He went to stay with his grandmother in early March of 1990, but his stay there was conditional upon him finding his own place to live.

On May 14, 1990, Dahmer moved to 924 North 25th Street, Apartment 213 and the killing began in earnest.

During the following fifteen months, Dahmer went on a killing binge that cost twelve men their lives. The pace of Dahmer's murders accelerated to a frenzy in May-July of 1991 when he was killing almost at a rate of one man a week. All but three were black; one was white, one was Laotian and one was Hispanic. Most, but not all, were homosexual or bisexual. The youngest was Konerak, age fourteen, and the oldest was thirty-one. Many of the victims lived what police call "high-risk" lifestyles. Most of the men had arrest records, often for very serious crimes, like arson, sexual assault, rape, battery, etc.

The listing below appears in Anne Schwartz's The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough:

Edward Smith June, 1990

Ricky Lee Beeks July, 1990

Ernest Miller Sept., 1990

David Thomas Sept., 1990

Curtis Straughter Feb., 1991

Errol Lindsey April, 1991

Anthony Hughes May 24, 1991

Konerak Sinthasomphone May 27, 1991

Matt Turner June 30, 1991

Jeremiah Weinberger July 5, 1991

Oliver Lacey July 12, 1991

Joseph Bradehoft July 19, 1991

Deadly Ritual

His ritual for luring, murdering and disposing of his victims was usually the same. He invited the men to his apartment to watch sexually-explicit videos or to pose for photos.  He crushed up his prescribed sedatives and served them in a drink. Once drugged, Dahmer strangled them with his bare hands or with a leather strap. He frequently had sex with the corpse and later masturbated on it.

Before any clean up began, Dahmer reached for his Polaroid to capture the entire experience so that he could remember each and every murder. Then he cut open their torsos. He was fascinated by the color of the viscera and sexually aroused by the heat that the freshly-killed body would give off. Finally, he would dismember the man, photographing each stage of the process for future viewing pleasure.

He disposed of most of the bodies, experimenting with various chemicals and acids that would reduce the flesh and bone to a black, evil-smelling sludge, which could be poured down a drain or toilet.

Some parts of the bodies he chose to keep as trophies, frequently the genitals and head. The genitals were preserved in formaldehyde. The heads were boiled until the flesh came off. Once the skull was bare, he painted it with gray paint to look like plastic.

Not unusual with necrophiliacs is cannibalism. Dahmer claimed that he ate the flesh of his victims because he believed that the people would come alive again in him. He tried various seasonings and meat tenderizers to make the human flesh more tasty. Eating human flesh gave him an erection. His famous freezer contained strips of frozen human flesh. He had tried human blood too, but it did not appeal to his taste buds.

Like Eddie Gein, he tried to perfect the art of preservation and taxidermy so that he could practice the state-of-the-art on his victims.

Control was an all important issue for Dahmer. He could not tolerate rejection or abandonment. Even in his homosexual relationships, he did not want to please his sexual partner, he just wanted to have his own pleasures. Pleasure to Dahmer meant performing oral or anal sex on his partner, whether alive or dead.

This absolute need for control led him down some pretty weird roads. One of them was a kind of lobotomy that he performed on several of his victims. Once they were drugged, he drilled a hole in their skulls and injected some muriatic acid into their brains. Needless to say, it caused death right away in a few victims, but one supposedly functioned minimally for a few days before dying.

Not surprisingly, his need for control led him to dabble with Satanism. In fact, just having the bodies of his victims around him made him feel "thoroughly evil." "I have to question whether or not there is an evil force in the world and whether or not I have been influenced by it. Although I am not sure if there is a God," Dahmer said," or if there is a devil, I know that as of lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about both." He had plans to create a shrine in his apartment, featuring all of his trophies, his statue of a griffin, and incense burned in the skulls of his victims, so that he could receive "special powers and energies to help him socially and financially."

Why does a Jeffrey Dahmer happen? How does a man become a serial killer, necrophiliac, cannibal and psychopath? Very few convincing answers are forthcoming, despite a spate of books that propose to the understand the problem.

Many of the theories would have you believe that the answers can always be found in childhood abuse, bad parenting, head trauma, fetal alcoholism and drug addiction. Perhaps in some cases, these are contributing factors, but not for Jeffrey Dahmer.

His father, Lionel Dahmer, wrote a very sad and poignant book called A Father's Story which explores the very common phenomenon of a parents trying desperately to give their child a good upbringing and discovering to their horror that their child has built a high wall around himself from which their influence is progressively shut out. While fortunately, most parents do not have a Jeffrey Dahmer to raise, too many have seen their children succumb to drugs, alcohol, crime despite their very best and often frantic efforts to intervene.

"It is a portrayal of parental dread... the terrible sense that your child has slipped beyond your grasp, that your little boy is spinning in the void, swirling in the maelstrom, lost, lost, lost."

Lionel seems to be fairly straightforward in recognizing the negative influences in Jeff's life. No family is perfect. Jeff's mother had various physical ailments and appeared to be high strung, coming from a background in which her father's alcoholism deeply affected her life.

Lionel, a chemist who went on to get his Ph.D., stayed at work more often than he should to avoid turmoil on the home front. Eventually, the marriage dissolved in divorce when Jeff was eighteen. However, none of this commonplace domestic discord accounts for serial murder, necrophilia, or Jeff's other bizarre behaviors.

A Happy Little Boy

Jeff Dahmer was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was a child who was wanted and adored, in spite of the difficulties of Joyce's pregnancy. He was a normal, healthy child whose birth was the occasion of great joy. As a tot, he was a happy bubbly youngster who loved stuffed bunnies, wooden blocks, etc. He also had a dog named Frisky, his much loved childhood pet.

Despite a greater number than usual of ear and throat infections, Jeff developed into a happy little boy. His father recalled the day that they released back into the wild a bird that the three of them had nursed back to health from an injury: "I cradled the bird in my cupped hand, lifted it into the air, then opened my hand and let it go. All of us felt a wonderful delight. Jeff's eyes were wide and gleaming. It may have been the single, happiest moment of his life." The family had moved to Iowa where Lionel was working on his Ph.D. at Iowa State University.

When Jeff was four, his father swept out from under their house the remains of some small animals that had been killed by civets. As his father gathered the tiny animal bones, Jeff seemed "oddly thrilled by the sound they made. His small hands dug deep into the pile of bones. I can no longer view it simply as a childish episode, a passing fascination. This same sense of something dark and shadowy, of a malicious force growing in my son, now colors almost every memory."

At the age of six, he was found to be suffering from a double hernia and needed surgery to correct the problem. He never seemed to recover his ebullience and buoyancy. "He seemed smaller, somehow more vulnerable... he grew more inward, sitting quietly for long periods, hardly stirring, his face oddly motionless."

In 1966, Lionel had completed his graduate work in Iowa and got a job as a research chemist in Akron, Ohio. Joyce was pregnant with their second son David By that time Jeff was in the first grade and "a strange fear had begun to creep into his personality, a dread of others that was combined with a general lack of self-confidence. He was developing a reluctance to change, a need to feel the assurance of familiar places. The prospect of going to school frightened him. The little boy who'd once seemed so happy and self-assured had been replaced by a different person, now deeply shy, distant, nearly uncommunicative."

Metamorphosis

Lionel suspected that the move from Iowa to Ohio was the causative factor and Jeff's behavior was a normal reaction to being uprooted from familiar settings and placed into entirely new ones. Lionel, too, had suffered from shyness, introversion and insecurity as a child and had learned to overcome these problems. He figured his son would learn to overcome them too. What he didn't realize was that Jeff's boyhood condition was far graver than his and that "Jeff had begun to suffer from a near isolation."

In April of 1967, they bought a new house. Jeff seemed to adjust better to this move and developed a close friendship with a boy named Lee. He was also very fond of one of his teachers and took her a bowl of tadpoles he had caught. Later, Jeff found out that the teacher had given the tadpole to his friend Lee. Jeff sneaked into Lee's garage and killed all the tadpoles will motor oil.

Things did not get better with time. "His posture, and the general way in which he carried himself, changed radically between his tenth and fifteenth years. The loose-limbed boy disappeared, and was replaced by a strangely rigid and inflexible figure.

He looked tense, his body very straight. He grew increasingly shy during this time and when approached by other people, he would become very tense. More and more, he remained at home, alone in his room or staring at television. His face was often blank, and he gave the more or less permanent impression of someone who could do nothing but mope around, purposeless and disengaged.

He had one friend, who drifted apart from him at age fifteen. Lionel found out at Jeff's trial that during this period, Jeff would ride around with plastic garbage bags and collect the remains of animals for his own private cemetery. "He would strip the flesh from the bodies of these putrescent road kills and even mount a dog's head on a stake." There has been the suggestion that Jeff tortured animals, but that is unlikely. He enjoyed a dog and cat as pets in his childhood and kept pet fish as an adult. His fascination was with dead creatures.

Isolated by Sexual Fantasy

Jeff grew more passive and isolated. " His conversation narrowing to the practice of answering questions with barely audible one-word responses. He was drifting into a nightmare world of unimaginable fantasies. In coming years those fantasies would begin to overwhelm him. The dead in their stillness would become the primary objects of his growing sexual desire. His inability to speak about such strange and unsetting notions would sever his connections to the world outside himself."

While other boys pursued careers, education, the creation of homes and families, Jeff was completely unmotivated. "He must have come to view himself as utterly outside the human community, outside all that was normal and acceptable, outside all that could be admitted to another human being." One would expect that a person harboring the fantasies of death and dismemberment that swirled around in Jeffrey Dahmer's head as a teenager would show some outer signs of mental illness. But Jeff just became more isolated and uncommunicative. Far from rebelling, he never argued with his parents because nothing seemed to matter to him.

In high school, Jeff had average grades and participated in a few activities: he played tennis and worked on the school newspaper. However, his classmates considered him a loner and an alcoholic, who brought liquor into the classroom. He actually had a prom date, who he later invited to his parents' house for a seance.

His classmates remember a stunt he pulled when he got himself included in the yearbook photo of the members of the National Honor Society. The yearbook staff caught the prank in time and blacked out Jeff's picture.

As Jeff became more passive, the passions between Lionel and Joyce increased. It culminated in divorce when Jeff was almost eighteen. A custody battle began over David. Some months later, Lionel remarried. Whatever Lionel missed about Jeff's alcoholism, his new wife Shari did not.

Lionel and Shari convinced him to try the idea of college. In the fall of 1978, they drove him to Ohio State University, but he stayed drunk the whole semester and flunked out. By this time, his drinking problem was well understood, but he would not seek help for it. Lionel read him the rules: either Jeff had to get a job or join the Army. When Jeff refused to get a job and stayed drunk most of the time, his father drove him down to the recruiting office to join the armed forces in January of 1979.

Drunk and Deadly

From that time until Jeff's final arrest in 1991, life was a rollercoaster for Lionel and his wife. Jeff would appear to be doing well and then it was clear that he wasn't. He seemed to enjoy the Army, but then he was discharged early for habitual drunkenness. He then moved in with his grandmother and got a job, but then he was arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. The offenses got worse as his alcoholism and emotional problems intensified. Indecent exposure, then child molesting and finally, the most horrible discovery of all when the police arrested him for multiple murders. Each time, Lionel stood by him, paid for the lawyer, urged him to seek treatment and crossed his fingers that Jeff would improve. Each time, his hopes were dashed by some fresh and more serious difficulty. Lionel began to understand that his son was completely beyond his reach.

As early as 1989 when Jeff was facing sentencing for child molestation, Lionel felt that the his "son would never be more than he seemed to be -- a liar, an alcoholic, a thief, an exhibitionist, a molester of children. I could not imagine how he had become such a ruined soul... For the first time, I no longer believed that my efforts and resources alone would be enough to save my son. There was something missing in Jeff.... We call it a "conscience"... that had either died or had never been alive in the first place."

Dr. James Fox, dean of the College of Criminal Justice at Northeastern University in Boston and recognized expert on serial killer claims that "There was nothing we could do to predict this [tragedy] ahead of time, no matter how bizarre the behavior. He also noted that while Jeffrey was devastated when his mother left him, it would be wrong to blame his parents for what he had become. "Ever since Sigmund Freud, we blame everything bad that kids do on their parents... The culprit is Dahmer. Not his father, not his family, not the police."

Fox believes that Dahmer is an unusual serial killer. "He fits the stereotype of someone who really is out of control and being controlled by his fantasies. The difference is that most serial killers stop once the victim dies. Everything is leading up to that. They tie them up; they like to her them scream and beg for their lives. It makes the killer feel great, superior, powerful, dominant... In Dahmer's case, everything is post-mortem... all of his 'fun' began after the victims died... He led a rich fantasy life that focused on having complete control over people... That fantasy life, mixed with hatred, perhaps hatred of himself which is being projected into his victims. If he at all felt uncomfortable about his own sexual orientation, it is very easy to see it projected into these victims and punishing them indirectly to punish himself."

Serial murder, psychopathology, necrophilia, cannibalism -- none of these phenomena is unique to modern times. The answers to explain these phenomena go in and out of fashion. Today, genetics is gaining ground over behaviorism in explaining why people become criminals. In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer it may be the only explanation.

Trial Begins with Heavy Security

The security surrounding the trial of Jeff Dahmer was unique in Milwaukee's history: "The courtroom was swept for bombs by a dog trained to sniff for explosives, and everyone allowed into the courtroom was searched and checked with a metal detector... In the courtroom, an eight-foot-high barrier was constructed from bullet-resistant glass and steel, designed to isolate Dahmer from the gallery." (Schwartz)

Of the 100 seats that were available, 23 were for reporters, 34 for the families of Dahmer's victims and the remaining 43 for public spectators.

The key players in this legal drama, besides Jeff Dahmer himself, were Judge Laurence C. Gram, Jr., District Attorney Michael McCann, and defense lawyer Gerald Boyle, who had defended Dahmer in the past. Lionel and Shari Dahmer attended every day.

The Insanity Defense

Mike McCann, on the other hand, needed to prove that Dahmer was not legally insane -- that he knew what he was doing was wrong, but did it anyway. In others words, Dahmer was an evil psychopath who lured his victims and murdered them in cold blood.

The pool of prospective jurors were warned "You're going to hear about things you probably didn't know existed in the real world. In this case," Boyle told them, " you're going to hear about sexual conduct before death, during death, and after death. Will you be so disgusted by that you won't be able to listen?" Together, Boyle and McCann discarded potential jurors who were prejudiced against homosexuals or who didn't have any use for psychiatrists.

Anne Schwartz remembers the second day of jury selection before the prospective jurors were called into the room. Boyle held up a tabloid newspaper that read "Milwaukee Cannibal Killer Eats His Cellmate. "We all laughed," Schwartz recalled, "especially Jeffrey Dahmer... He was an attractive man when he laughed...I could see how so many were taken in by him."

On January 29, 1992, the jury and two alternates were selected. Only one black person was selected, which caused a protest among the family members. The entire case had seriously polarized the community along racial lines from the moment the public heard Glenda Cleveland's story through the discovery that most of his victims were black. Now, it seemed as though this jury of six white men and seven white women was just another example of racial injustice.

Evil or Sick

Boyle's defense consisted of some forty-five witnesses that would attest to various aspects of Dahmer's bizarre behavior and to try to show that Dahmer's sexual and mental disorders preventing him from understanding the nature of his crime. Every hideous detail of what Dahmer allegedly did with his victims and every nightmarish thing that ever entered his head was fair game. The goal was to convince the jury that such alleged actions and such alleged thoughts did not happen with a man that was sane.

Boyle threw the question out to the jury? "Was he evil or was he sick?" Had the jury at that point in time taken a vote, it's very possible that they would have agreed with Boyle.

However, it was McCann's turn to present his case. Dahmer, he told them, was a "master manipulator and deceiver who knew exactly what he was doing every step of the way, able to turn his urges on and off as easily as flipping a light switch. Did he attack other soldiers while he was in the army? Other students while at Ohio State University? The deaths, he said were not the acts of a madman, but the result of meticulous planning." (Davis)

The battle of psychiatrists over whether Dahmer was legally responsible and able to control his actions seemed to confuse the jury.

Finally, in his summation, Boyle drew a chart for the jury that took the form of a wheel. The hub of the wheel was Jeff Dahmer and all of the spokes coming out from the wheel were the elements of his deviance. He read them off quickly:

"Skulls in locker, cannibalism, sexual urges, drilling, making zombies, necrophilia, drinking alcohol all the time, trying to create a shrine, lobotomies, defleshing, calling taxidermists, going to grave yards, masturbating.....This is Jeffrey Dahmer, a runaway train on a track of madness..."

McCann rebutted, "He wasn't a runaway train, he was the engineer!" He was satisfying his extraordinary sexual cravings. "Ladies and gentlemen, he's fooled a lot of people. Please don't let this murderous killer fool you."

Anne Schwartz, who covered the Dahmer story for the Milwaukee Journal from its discovery through the trial, was "astonished at how normal this man looked and sounded...The day Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced, I heard him read his statement to the court calmly and eloquently, and I wondered how easily I could have been conned.

End of the Road

"His apology, covering a thirteen-year bloodbath, ran fourty pewritten pages:

"'Your Honor:

"'It is now over. this has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace.. I know how much harm I have caused... Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins... I ask for no consideration."

Dahmer, the model prisoner, convinced the prison authorities to allow him more contact with other inmates. He was able to eat in communal areas and he was given some janitorial work to do with other teams of inmates.

For some incredible reason, he was paired up with two highly dangerous men on a work detail: Jesse Anderson, a white man who had murdered his wife and blamed it on a black man, and Christopher Scarver, a black delusional schizophrenic who thought he was the son of God, who was in for first-degree murder. It's not difficult to imagine how Scarver viewed Jeff Dahmer, who had butchered so many black men, and Anderson. It was a disastrous combination.

The morning of November 28, 1994, the guard left these three men alone to do their work. Twenty minutes later, the guards came back to find Dahmer's head crushed and Anderson's fatally injured body nearby. A bloody broom handle seemed to represent Scarver's statement on the subject. Jeffrey Dahmer was pronounced dead at 9:11 A.M.

and in his final statement before the court . . .

"Your Honor, it is over now. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn't ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, not for reasons of hate -- I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe that I was sick. The doctors have told told me about my sickness and now I have some peace. I know how much harm I have caused, and I tried to do the best that I could after the arrest to make ammends, but no matter what I did, I could not undo the terrible harm I have caused. My attempt to identify the remains was the best that I could do and that was hardly anything. I feel so bad for what I did to those poor families, and I understand their rightful hate."

"I know I will be in prison for the rest of my life. I know that I will have to turn to God to help me get through each day. I should have stayed with God. I tried and failed and created a holocaust. Thank God that there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins."

"I have instructed Mr. Boyle to end this matter. I do not want to contest the civil case. I have told Mr. Boyle to finalize them if he can. If there is ever any money, I want it to go to the victim's families. I have talked to Mr. Boyle about other things that might help me ease my conscience in some way of coming up with ideas on how to make some ammends with these families and I will work with him on that. I want to return to Ohio and quickly end that matter so I can put all this behind me and then come right back here and do my sentence."

"I decided to go through this trial for a number of reasons. One of the reasons was to let the world know that these were not hate crimes. I wanted the world of Milwaukee, who I deeply hurt, to know the truth of what I did. I didn't want unanswered questions. All of the questions have now been answered. I wanted to find out just what it was that caused me to be so bad and evil. But most of all, Mr. Boyle and I decided that maybe there was a way for us to tell the world that if there are people out there with these disorders maybe they can get some help before they end up being hurt or hurting someone. I think the trial did that."

"I take all the blame for what I did. I hurt many people. The judge in my earlier case tried to help me and I refused his help and he got hurt by what I did. I hurt those policemen in that Konerack matter and I shall forever regret causing them to lose their jobs. I hope and pray that they can get their jobs back because I know that they did their best and I just plain fooled them. For that I am so sorry. I know I hurt my probation officer who was really trying to help me. I am so sorry for that and for everyone else that I have hurt."

"I hurt my mother and father and stepmother. I love them all so very much. I hope they will find the same peace that I am looking for."

"Mr. Boyle's associates Wendy and Ellen have been wonderful to me, helping me through this worst of all times. I want to publicly thank Mr. Boyle. He didn't have to take this case, but when I asked him to help me find answers and to help others if I could, he stayed with me and went way overboard in trying to help me."

"Mr. Boyle and I agreed that it was never a matter of trying to get off, only a matter of which place I would be housed for the rest of my life. Not for my comfort, but for trying to study me in hopes of helping me in learning to help others who might have problems. I know I will be in prison. I pledge to talk to doctors who might be able to find some answers."

"In closing, I just want to say that I hope God has forgiven me. I know that society will never be able to forgive me. I know the families of the victims will never be able to forgive me for what I have done. I promise I will pray ever wach day to ask for their forgivness when the hurt goes away, if ever. I have seen their tears and if I could give my life to bring their loved ones back I would do it. I am so very sorry."

"Your Honor, I know that you are about to sentence me. I ask for no consideration. I want you to know that I have been treated prefectly by the deputies who have been in your court and the deputies that work the jail. The deputies have treated me very professionally and I want everyone to know that. They have not given me special treatment."

"Here is a trust worthy saying that deserves full acceptance: Christ Jesus came into the world to save sinners, of whom I am the worst. But for that very reason, I was shown mercy so that in me, the worst of sinners, Christ Jesus might display his unlimited patience as an example for those who would believe in him and receive eternal life. Now to the King, Immortal, Invisible, the only God, be honor and glory forever and ever."

"I know my time in prison will be terrible, but I deserve whatever I get because of what I have done."

"Thank you, your Honor, and I am prepared for your sentence which I know will be the maximum. I ask for no consideration."

The Possessions of a Madman

The doors of apartment 213, both inner and outer, were heavily secured with multiple locks and an alarm system. On the walls in the bedroom and the hall were framed photographs and posters of male nudes taken in "artistic" poses and clearly intended to be attractive to a homosexual man.

There were some empty beer cans and dirty dishes, and a number of pornographic videos lying around, mostly of the explicit kind commercially made in California. Among the titles which Dahmer possessed were, Cocktales, Chippendale's Tall Dark and Handsome, Rock Hard, Hard Men II, Hard Men III, Peep Show, and Tropical Heat Wave. Other non-sexual videos included two that would be referred to several times at the trial, Excorcist II and The Return of the Jedi. Somewhat incongruously, a lecture on evolution was also found on videotape, and an episode from The Bill Cosby Show.

On the kitchen floor were four boxes of muriatic acid. The refrigerator contained, in addition to the man's head already noted [The first of the human remains discovered. The head was facing upward in a cardboard box on the bottom shelf.], some blood drippings on the bottom, and, in the freezer compartment, three plastic bags. Two of them each contained a heart, and the third some portion of muscle. Against another wall was a floor-standing freezer in which were found three more human heads and a plastic bag containing a human torso. Stuck to the bottom of this freezer was another plastic bag the contents of which appeared to include flesh and various human internal organs; Dahmer subsequently revealed that it had been there for several weeks because he had been unable to wrench it away from the ice.

The Medical Examiner decided that this entire freezer should be sealed and removed, with its load, for detailed examination later.

In the hallway stood a closet in which were found, together with bedding, some chemicals (formaldehyde, ether, chloroform), and two bleached skulls on a shelf. On the floor at the back of the closet was a large aluminium kettle containing two human hands, obviously from the same person because they matched, and human genitals including penis, testicles and the pubic hair region.

The bedroom was seen to have a single bed with a mattress stained with blood, as well as some blood on the walls and pillow-case. The large knife to which Tracy Edwards had alerted the police officers [Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer's apartment after spending several hours handcuffed to a chair. He approached a squad car on a nearby street and informed the officers of the incident, which led to his eventual arrest] was still lying beneath the bed, while on top was the a polaroid camera. Next to the bed was a metal filing-cabinet. When this was opened it revealed, in the top drawer, three human skulls lying on a black towel.

The police officers noted they had been painted green with black flecks, but the Medical Examiner reported that they were painted and glazed to 'a dark gray marble-like texture', and that the towel upon which they rested was a dark blue. The bottom drawer of this cabinet contained a complete human skeleton, and in front of it were two paper bags: one held the dried remains of a human scalp, and the other a second set of genitals, also dried and mummified.

On the floor next to the chest of drawers was a box with a styrofoam lid, in which were two more skulls, and in the far corner was the 57-gallon blue plastic drum with a tight-fitting black lid, removed by a private contractor hired by the Fire Department's Hazardous Materials Unit.

This was later discovered to contain three human torsos in various stages of dismemberment and decomposition. In the chest of drawers which [Police Officer] Rolf Mueller had found open when he first went into the bedroom were original photographs of a particularly repellent nature. When they were counted, it was found that there were seventy-four of them.

The decor of Jeffrey Dahmer's life was labelled, catalogued and carted away with the most painstaking care. A photo album, a black ceramic coffee cup, an empty can of Budweiser beer, an empty bottle of Paramount rum, an empty paper lunch-bag lying on the occasional table by the couch in the living-room -- the fragile, dumb debris of ordinary life jostled with the curious and the sinister.

A one-gallon jug of Chlorax bleach was no longer as innocent as it might have been, and a bottle of 'Odorsorb' suggested long battles with unnaturally polluted air. Incense sticks had probably served a similar purpose. There were fifty envelopes from Woolworth's, a tube of acne lotion, a shaving kit, an Oral-B toothbrush, the lease form for the rental of apartment 213, a library card bearing the name of Jeff Dahmer, a pair of black men's nylon shorts.

The business card of Lionel Dahmer, Ph.D., was the first indication that the suspect had a family, while various identity cards littered on the kitchen floor, the bedroom floor, and in the drawers, poignantly gave names to some of the heads and limbs that had once been people.

An identity card in the name of Oliver Lacy, a Wisconsin driver's license in the name of Tony Hughes, and an Illinois driver's license in the name of Joseph Bradehoft supplied the initial clues in the investigation, and since Oliver Lacy's I.D. bore a photograph and was the first positive identification, the entire homicide file would be listed under his name. It was Lacy's head which lay in the box in the refrigerator, his heart which was in the bag, his skeleton which was in the freezer.

A few items held significance which would not be revealed until much later. One large hypodermic needle appeared mysterious, and a contact lens cleaning kit quite innocuous, but they had both played a role in the wild distracted turmoil of Dahmer's life. So had two plastic gargoyle figurines recovered from the living-room, and chemical-resistant gloves next to gallons of muriatic acid and six boxes of Soilex cleaner.

The purpose of the three-eighth inch drill and one-sixteenth inch drill bits was yet unclear, although the claw hammer and handsaw gave rise to no such doubts. And still, in crazy juxtaposition to the grim inventory were items suggestive of decency and goodness.

A King James Version Bible, for example, audio cassettes on Creation Science and the Bible, and other tapes entitled The Genesis Flood and The Bible, Science, and the Age of the Earth. There were further audio tapes explaining Numerology and the Divine Triangle, and a learning kit, in tapes and books, in Latin. Finally, there were four books on the care of fish and aquariums, and a beautifully kept aquarium itself, clean and wholesome, full of living plants and daintily exotic fish.

Pre-crime psychiatric history

Jeff Dahmer's first encounter with the psychiatric profession was the result of the events which occurred on September 8, 1986. Richard Kohn and John Ostland, both aged twelve, reported to police that, while standing near the bridge on the Kinnickinnic River Parkway in Milwaukee, they noticed a man standing near the edge of the lake, masturbating. The boys provided officers with a description of the man, and later identified him as Jeff Dahmer.

Dahmer denied the accusations, stating that he had been urinating, rather than masturbating, and was unaware of the boys' presence at the time. The charge was eventually reduced from Lewd and Lascivious Behavior to Disorderly Conduct and he was convicted on March 10, 1987. He was sentenced to one year's probation and required to undergo psychological counseling for sexual deviance and impulse control.

Dahmer was referred to clinical psychologist Dr. Evelyn Rosen and was immediately asked to take two written exams. The Millon Clinical Multiaxial Inventory and Forer Structured Sentence Completion Test are both frequently examinations used to identify any underlying abnormalities of the personality.

The Millon exam lists various self-descriptive statements and the patient is asked to identify, by circling, which statements he or she finds applicable. Though Jeff found few that pertained (which, in itself, might be considered odd), those that he did should have, it seems, caused some of concern.

'Lately, I've begun to feel lonely and empty.'

'Ideas keep turning over and over in my mind and they won't go away.'

'I've become quite discouraged and sad about life recently.'

'Looking back on my life, I know I have made others suffer as much as I have suffered.'

'I keep having strange thoughts I wish I could get rid of.'

Now, it is true that some of these statements, if compared to the thoughts of an ordinary individual, appear innocent enough. However, the fact that this individual has been referred by the court as a possible 'sexual deviant' who lacks adequate 'impulse control' excludes him from such a classification.

Also lacking was any cooperation whatsoever from Dahmer, who was bitter and resentful of the charges. Dr. Rosen's approach was one of blatant and habitual nagging, and was far from effective. As time passed, Jeff became more and more reluctant to share his feelings with the therapist, eventually refusing to speak to her at all, sitting silent instead, with his back to her throughout the entire fifty minute session.

In addition to counseling, Dahmer was sent, on order from the court, to the Clinical Psychology Department at the University of Wisconsin for psychological evaluation. This session went remarkably well. Jeff got along well with the clinician, Kathy Boese, and discussed some of his troubles with her.

The results of one of these tests revealed Dahmer's 'exceptional performance in the use of language and abstractions' (which, after hearing his expressionless voice speak such colorless words, regardless of the topic, is almost, but not entirely, impossible to accept). Another test, designed to identify underlying emotion derived 'exceptionally slow' responses that were 'extraordinarily few in number and abnormally restricted in regard to affect.'

In regard to his attitude toward his conviction and subsequent referral to the clinic 'He resents being told what to do by others and is easily disappointed and hurt.' A final, more significant, conclusion drawn from the tests was that 'his own goals for himself in this world, for what he hopes to achieve, are not congruous with reality.

Jeff Dahmer would again undergo psychological evaluation and therapy following his arrest in September, 1988. Dahmer met Somsack Sinthasomphone on a street near to the boys school. Jeff offered Somsack $50 if he would accompany him to his apartment and allow him to take pictures. The offer was accepted.

At the apartment, Dahmer served Somsack a combination of Irish Cream and crushed sleeping pills, and then began taking photos. After snapping a few shots of Somsack with his chest exposed, Jeff instructed Somsack to unzip his fly. This eventually led to an attempt, by Dahmer, to fondle his guest. Somsack responded by leaving the apartment.

The medication did not take full effect until after Somsack had gotten home. Unresponsive to questions and unable to walk, Somsack was taken to the emergency room by his father where testing revealed that he was suffering from a drug overdose.

He was released three hours later, and immediately led officers to Dahmer's apartment. Jeff was arrested later than evening while on duty at Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. It was not until this time that Jeff learned that Somsack was a juvenile, just fourteen years of age.

Dahmer was evaluated prior to sentencing by Dr. Charles Lodl. In speaking to Dr. Lodl, Jeff was uncharacteristically straightforward, explaining that he was experiencing 'significant psychological distress', that he was 'anxious, tense and depressed' and that he was tormented by 'deep feelings of alienation'.

Dr. Lodl, in his report to the judge, stated that the patient was a 'very psychologically problemed man ... There is no question that Mr. Dahmer is in need of psychological treatment.'

Two months after the interviews with Dr. Lodl, Jeff was examined by Dr. Norman Goldfarb. Apparently Dahmer had spent the interim brooding, as he was anything but cooperative. Dr. Goldfarb described him as being 'distant and evasive', and noted that he was 'suspicious of the motives of others'. Dr. Goldfarb felt that Jeff was impulsive, unable to tolerate frustration, and dismayed by his lack of accomplishment or success.

In his report to the judge, Dr. Goldfarb stated that Dahmer 'would not show others the depth, severity, or extent of pathology' and that because of this, 'others may not take his behaviors as seriously as they should'. He concluded that Jeff was 'a seriously disturbed young man... The pressure he perceives seems to be increasing...he must be considered impulsive and dangerous.'

Once released, Jeff Dahmer was required to meet regularly with his probation officer, Donna Chester, as well as participate in monthly group therapy sessions. He was once again evaluated, this time by a Dr. Krembs. The doctor observed that Jeff was 'very isolated, no friends, no hobbies, no interests, whole life is dull, sterile, monomaniacally directed, which is excellent breeding ground for depression.' Dr. Krembs felt that a 'major relapse is just a matter of time.'

Postcrime Psychiatric Information

Psychiatric Testimony

'A person is not responsible for criminal conduct if at the time of such conduct as a result of mental disease or defect he lacked substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of his conduct or conform his conduct to the requirements of the law.'

DEFENSE WITNESSES

Dr. Fred Berlin - Director of the Sexual Disorders Clinic at John Hopkins University; Maudsley Hospital in London; DSM-III-R subcommitee for the definition of sexual disorders

Dr. Berlin testified that Jeff Dahmer was unable to conform his conduct at the time that he committed the crimes because he was suffering from Paraphilia, or more specifically, Necrophilia, a mental disease.

He described Dahmer's affliction as being a 'cancer of the mind', a 'broken mind', and thought it facile to insinuate that the man could simply resolve to stop thinking of sex with dead bodies and the thoughts would go away. 'We cannot always choose what to have on our minds,' he said. Necrophilia, he explained, is not a matter of freewill. Prosecutor McCann, in his cross examination, after attacking both the comptetence and integrity of the witness, focused on what he saw as errors in the way Dr. Berlin conducted his evaluation of Dahmer.

'How long did you talk about family history?'

'Fifteen minutes.'

'From zero to age eighteen?'

'I'm not writing a biography of him.'

'What did you then talk about after family history?'

'Personal history.'

'How long did that take?'

'Half an hour. My examination covered five hours in all, maybe six. I'm not trying to be evasive.'

'The record indicates four hours and forty-five minutes. If you spent forty-five minutes talking about family and personal history, that leaves four hours, so you spent fifteen minutes on each homicide.'

The cross examination of Dr. Berlin continued in this manner, Mr. McCann eventually getting the doctor to admit that Dahmer was a liar, which, in this instance, was quite beneficial for the prosecution, as most of his conclusions were drawn from conversations with Jeff. During cross examination, Dr. Berlin was given the opportunity to clarify, explaining to the court that one does not have to be 'dumb or stupid' in order to be mentally disturbed. Dahmer could be cunning, deceptive, and a liar as well, and still have a mental illness.

Dr. Judith Becker - Professor of Psychiatry and Psychology at the University of Arizona, specializing in the evaluation and treatment of paraphiliacs.

Dr. Becker, in her testimony, discussed for the most part Dahmer's childhood, citing numerous instances that she felt were of severe, and devastating, consequence to him, both physically and emotionally. What resulted, according to the doctor, was a deeply disturbed individual, whose perceptions of the world were distorted, and interactions with the world minimal. Though very insightful, Dr. Becker had little of scientific value to offer.

Dr. Carl Wahlstrom

Dr. Wahlstrom testified that 'Mr. Dahmer is a thirty-one year old white male with a long history of serious mental illness which was essentially untreated... His personality structure is extremely primitive,' and 'he has bizarre and delusional ideas.' Dr. Wahlstrom illustrated this last point using Dahmer's own words, ' If they had their own thought processes they might remember that they had to leave, or lived somewhere else.' The desire to turn a human being into a zombie, who would remain a personal, and life long companion, together with the intention of creating what Brian Master's termed a 'power-bestowing' temple from human remains, clearly indicated that Dahmer was severely delusional, and therefore psychotic. He felt that the mental disease from which Dahmer suffered was severe, and 'requires continuous treatment.'

PSYCHIATRISTS APPOINTED BY THE STATE

The following two psychiatrists, Dr. Palermo and Dr. Freedman, were appointed by the judge for the purpose of providing the jury with an 'objective' assessment of Jeff Dahmer's mental state at the time he committed the crimes.

Dr. George Palermo - Forensic psychiatrist, with experience working in both the United States and Italy.

Dr. Palermo concluded that, because Dahmer had been teased by his peers as a child, and had chosen never to defend himself, he had internalized feelings of hostility. It was his opinion that, because of his 'chronic' inability to form relationships, and his frustrated homosexual desires, Jeff Dahmer had developed into a Sexual Sadist. He stated that 'Aggressive, hostile tendencies led to his murderous behavior. His sexual drives functioned as a channel through which destructive power was expressed.' Dr. Palermo denied that there was any evidence to support a diagnosis of Necrophilia, and that Dahmer displayed none of the symptoms of a Necrophile. Dr. Palermo, in conclusion, told the court that the murders were the result of 'pent up aggression within himself. He killed those men because he wanted to kill the source of his homosexual attraction to them. In killing them, he killed what he hated in himself.' Dr. Palermo did not believe that Dahmer murdered for friendship, but in order to keep a potential victim silent. 'He killed because when they woke up they would be angry with him.'

Dr. Palermo also added, however, 'Strange to say, he's not such a bad person.'

Dr. Samuel Friedman

Dr. Friedman testified that it was a longing for companionship that caused Dahmer to kill. He spoke kindly of Jeff, describing him as 'Amiable, pleasant to be with, curtious, with a sense of humor, conventionally handsome and charming in manner, he was, and still is, a bright young man.' He described how Dahmer had gone to great lengths to provide insight as to why he had committed such terrible deeds, but all to no avail. Dahmer, he said, almost 'pleaded' with him to provide an explanation. 'I hope,' he said, 'that something can be done to reconstruct this individual, who certainly has the assests of youth and intelligence.' Despite all of this, however, Dr. Friedman concluded that Dahmer was sane because he had the opportunity to behave differently, and instead, he chose to kill, strategically planning the murders, in order to commit them successfully. On cross examination, Dr. Friedman was asked if it would be possible for a person 'to make elaborate and logical plans and choices towards the achievement of an ultimately insane purpose.' Dr. Friedman was not required to answer the question after an objection by Mr. McCann was sustained. However, after a series of similar questions, and questions rephrased, Dr. Friedman did admit that the exercise of free choice did not invalidate a diagnosis of mental illness, and that Dahmer's personality disorder did, in fact, amount to a mental disease.

PROSECUTION WITNESSES

Dr. Fred Fosdel

Dr. Fosdel testified to his belief that Dahmer was without mental disease or defect at the time he committed the murders. He described Jeff as a cruel, calculating, and cunning killer who prayed on weak and lonely men at the time that they were most vulnerable and in need of anonymous sexual release. Dr. Fosdel portrayed Dahmer as being utterly unconcerned and unaffected by the heinousness of his acts. On cross examination, Mr. Boyle asked the doctor if he believed that Jeff was a Necrophile, to which he responded, 'Yes, but that is not his primary sexual preference.' Boyle then asked Fosdel what term would be used to describe someone that 'preferred people in a comatose state, knocked out,' and was told that 'There's no name for it.' Boyle, using a copy of the DSM-III-R, read through the various catagories, getting Dr. Fosdel to admit to all of the disorders that Dahmer did not have and, by elimination, leaving his disorder unidentified. After a long pause, Dr. Fosdel responded by saying, 'I concede that he has a mental disease.' He would not, however, concede that Dahmer was insane. According to Dr. Fosdel, the disease did not interfere with Dahmer's ability to conform. Mr. Boyle then moved on to the following line of questioning.

'What about his desire to create a zombie? Do you consider that delusional thinking?'

'No, it was a very practical and reasonable attempt to achieve his aim.'

'Have you ever met a case of home-made labotomy before?'

'No, I think this is the first time internationally. Mr. Dahmer is setting some precendents here.'

'It couldn't have worked, could it? You're a doctor, you must know.'

'It's possible.'

'Did you ask him how long he was going to keep the zombie? Do you believe he would have created a zombie, and never have killed again?

'Absolutely. That would have been the solution to his problem. Absolutely.'

Dr. Park Dietz - Professor of Psychology and Psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles.

Dr. Dietz testified that he did not believe Dahmer to be suffering from any mental disease or defect at the time that he committed the crimes. 'Dahmer went to great lengths to be alone with his victim and to have no witnesses.' He explained that there was ample evidence that Dahmer was well prepared for each murder, therefore his crimes were not impulsive. He felt that Jeff's habit of becoming intoxicated prior to committing each of the murders was significant, stating, 'If he had a compulsion to kill, he would not have to drink alcohol. He had to drink alcohol to overcome his inhibition, to do the crime which he would rather not do.'

Dr. Dietz agreed with earlier testimony that Paraphilia is not something that one chooses, stating, 'We cannot choose what we find sexy.' He did not, however, believe that a man afflicted with such a disorder was unable to choose whether or not he would act upon his desires. 'The Paraphile is as free as any other human being to choose whether to commit a crime to gratify his wishes. Paraphilia provides no more than a motive for what a person would like to do. If you say Paraphiles are compelled, then you have to say that we are all compelled to do what we want.'

Dr. Dietz did not believe that Dahmer could be classified as a Sadist. 'He did no t torture and took steps to prevent suffering.' He also offered an explanation for why Jeff would masterbate while holding the severed head of a victim in one hand, 'It facilitated the fantasy of the entire person, the fantasy of the living person to whom the head belonged, which cut out awareness that the rest of the body was missing and that the head was severed.' Dietz denied that this was delusional thinking. In regard to the last two murders, Dr. Dietz admitted that Dahmer was not in a state to conform his conduct to the requirements of the law, however. This was ascribed to alcohol intoxication, not a mental disease, and therefore does not qualify, under Wisconsin Statute, as insanity.

Dr. Dietz concluded that Jeff's abnormality of mind did not substantially affect his mental or emotional processes.

Mr. Boyle asked on question during cross examination, to which Dietz was unable to adequately respond. If what the doctor had said was true, that it was alcoholism alone that was responsible for his inability to control his behavior in the month prior to his arrest, and there was no disease which contributed to it, would Jeff have continued to kill had he quit drinking alcohol before he met Tracy Edwards? (Jeff and Tracy met for the first time at a mall. This was approximately one month prior to the night that Tracy escaped from Dahmer's apartment.)

Disorders as Defined By the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fourth Edition

Paraphilia - The essential features of a Paraphilia are recurrent, intense, sexually arousing fantasies, sexual urges, or behaviors generally involving 1) nonhuman objects, 2) the suffering or humiliation of one's self or one's partner, 3) children or other nonconsenting persons, that occur over a period of at least six months (Criterion A). For some individuals, paraphiliac fantasies or stimuli are obligatory for erotic arousal and are always included in sexual activity. In other cases, the paraphiliac preferences occur only episodically (e.g., perhaps during periods of stress), whereas at other times the person is able to function sexually without paraphiliac fantasies or stimuli. The behavior, sexual urges, or fantasies cause clinically significant distress or impairment in social, occupational, or other areas of functioning (Criterion B).

Sexual Sadism - The paraphiliac focus of Sexual Sadism involves acts (real, not imaginary) in which the individual derives sexual excitement from the psychological or physical suffering (including humiliation) of the victim. Some individuals with this Paraphilia are bothered by their sadistic fantasies, which may be invoked during sexual activity but not otherwise acted on; in such cases the sadistic fantasies usually involve having complete control over the victim, who is terrified by anticipation of the impending sadistic act. Others act on the sadistic sexual urges with a consenting partner (who may have Sexual Masochism) who willingly suffers pain or humiliation. Still others with Sexual Sadism act on their sadistic sexual urges with nonconsenting victims. In all of these cases, it is the suffering of the victim that is sexually arousing. Sadistic fantasies or acts may involve activities that indicate domina nce of the person over t he victim (e.g., forcing the victim to crawl or keeping the victim in a cage). They may also involve restraint, blindfolding, paddling, spanking, whipping, pinching, beating, burning, electrical shocks, rape, cutting, stabbing, strangulation, torture, mutilation, or killing. Sadistic sexual fantasies are likely to have been present in childhood. The age at onset of sadistic activities is variable, but is commonly by early adulthood. Sexual Sadism is usually chronic. When Sexual Sadism is practiced with nonconsenting partners, the activity is likely to be reoeated until the person with Sexual Sadism is apprehended. Some individuals with Sexual Sadism may engage in sadistic acts for many years without a need to increase the potential for inflicting serious physical damage. Usually, however, the severity of the sadistic acts increases over time. When Sexual Sadism is severe, and especially when it is associated with Antisocial Personality Disorder, individuals with Sexual Sadism may seriously injure or kill their victims. Necrophilia - Necrophilia is not defined in the DSM-IV, nor in any other diagnostic publication that I have found.

Delusion - A false belief based on incorrect inference about external reality that is firmly sustained despite what almost everyone else believes and despite what constitutes incontrovertible and obvious proof or evidence to the contrary. The belief is not one ordinarily accepted by other members of the person's culture or subculture (e.g., it is not an article of religious faith). When a false belief involves a value judgment, it is regarded as a delusion only when the judgment is so extreme as to defy credibility. Delusional conviction occurs on a continuum and can sometimes be inferred from an individual's behavior. It is often difficult to distinguish between a delusion and an overvalued idea (in which case the individual has an unreasonable belief or idea but does not hold it as firmly as is the case with a delusion).

Bizarre Delusion - A delusion that involves a phenomenon that the person's culture would regard as totally implausible.

The Crimes of A Madman

Late on the night of January 17, 1988, Jeff Dahmer met a young man named James Doxtator and murdered him at his grandmother's house in West Allis. Doxtator's mother reported him missing on January 18, 1988. Approximately two months later, on March 27, 1988, Jeff Dahmer encountered Richard Guerrero, aged twenty-three, and killed him at his grandmother's house. Pablo Guerrero reported his son missing to the Milwaukee Police Department on March 29th, and placed announcements in the local press, which included a recent photo. He received no response.

One year later, at closing time on March 25, 1989, Jeff Dahmer met two men outside La Cage ( a local gay bar, which Jeff often frequented ); a white man by the name of Jeffrey Connor, and a twenty-four-year-old black man named Anthony Sears. It was Sears who made the approach. Conner drove them both to the corner of 56th Street and Lincoln, in West Allis, and from there Sears and Dahmer walked to Catherine Dahmer's house, where he eventually murdered him. His skull, scalp, and genitals were discovered in Dahmer's apartment at the time of his arrest, which would not take place more than two years.

On May 20, 1990, Dahmer met a thirty-three-year-old black man named Raymond Smith ( a.k.a. Ricky Beeks ) who accompanied him to his apartment where he was drugged and strangled. One of the painted skulls found in upon Dahmer's arrest was identified as Smith's.

On June 24, 1990, Dahmer met a twenty-seven-year-old black man, Edward Smith, at the Pheonix Bar. They went to Dahmer's apartment by taxi, and engaged in oral sex. Smith was later drugged and strangled. No remains of Edward Smith were ever found.

Outside a homosexual bookshop on North 27th Street in the early part of September, 1990, Dahmer fell into conversation with a twenty-three-year-old black man from Chicago: Ernest Miller. He agreed to accompany Dahmer to his apartment, where he too, was killed. His skull was painted and his entire skeleton kept for future use. Both were discovered on the day of Dahmer's arrest.

Three weeks later, Dahmer met David Thomas, a twenty-two-year-old black man, and murdered him at his apartment. The following day David Thomas was taken to pieces and photographed throughout the process. No remains were ever found. He was reported missing by his girlfriend on the 24th of September, and was identified by his sister from photographs Dahmer had taken during dismemberment.

At 4:00 p.m. on February 17, 1991, Dahmer met a seventeen-year-old black man, Curtis Straughter, and murdered him by strangulation with a leather strap. He was then dismembered. Dahmer kept his skull, hands, and genitals, all of which he had photographed. All these items were found in Jeff's apartment when he was arrested. Straughter had been reported missing by his grandmother, and his skull was identified from dental records.

On April 7, 1991, a black man, not long past his nineteenth birthday, Errol Lindsey, spoke to Jeff Dahmer at 27th Street near the homosexual bookstore, and went with him to his apartment. Lindsey was drugged and strangled. Dahmer flayed the body and kept the skin for some weeks. The skull was discovered at the time of his arrest, enabling identification through dental records.

Tony Hughes was one year older than Dahmer. He was black, and he was deaf and dumb. They met at the 219 Club on May 24, 1991, and communicated by writing, although Hughes could lip read. The mute was drugged, strangled, and left to lie on the bedroom floor for three days. His identity was established by one of the skulls and dental records.

Dahmer met Konerack Sinthasomphone, the fourteen-year-old son of Laotian immigrants, outside a shopping center known as the Grand Avenue Mall on May 27, 1991, and offered him money to return with him to his home. Konerack accepted, and posed for two photographs in his underwear, before being drugged and murdered.

A month went by before Dahmer killed again. On June 30, 1991, he went to the Gay Pride Parade in Chicago and met a twenty-year-old black man, Matt Turner, in the bus station afterwards. He invited Turner to come to Milwaukee. They traveled by Greyhound bus, then took a taxi to the apartment, where Dahmer strangled him. Turner's head was found in the freezer, his internal organs were stuck to the freezer floor, and his torso was inside the blue drum in the bedroom.

One week later, again in Chicago, Dahmer met Jeremiah Weinberger, a twenty-three-year-old Puerto Rican with Jewish blood, at Carols Gay Bar. They went by bus to Milwaukee, and then by taxi to the apartment. Weinberger was reported missing the following day, July 6th, but he was still alive and staying with Dahmer. It was not until the third day that Dahmer slew him. The improbable details of these two days together were not revealed until the trial. Weinberger's head was in the freezer, his torso in the big blue drum with Turner's.

On July 15, 1991, Dahmer met Oliver Lacy, under whose name the murder investigation was filed, on 27th Street. Lacy was black and twenty-four-year's old. Dahmer drugged and strangled him. He took various photographs of his victim before and after decapitation. His head and skeleton were found the freezer, his heart in the refrigerator.

It was four days later, on July 19, 1991, that Dahmer encountered a white man called Joseph Bradehoft, from Greenville, Illinois. Bradehoft was drugged and strangled. He was left on the bed, covered in a sheet, for two days. When Dahmer was arrested three days later, Bradehoft's head was sitting in the freezer, his torso was lying in the 57-gallon blue drum, along with Turner and Wienberger's.

Selected Quotes from Jeff Dahmer

"I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if it meant my own destruction."

ON THE CONFESSION

" ... To relieve the minds of the parents... I mean, it's a small, very small thing, but I don't know what else I could do. At least I can do that... because I created this horror and it only makes sense that I do everything to put an end to it, a complete end to it."

"It's just a nightmare, let's put it that way. It's been a nightmare for a long time, even before I was caught ... for years now, obviously my mind has been filled with gruesome, horrible thoughts and ideas ... a nightmare."

"I couldn't find any meaning in my life when I was out there. I'm sure as hell not going to find it in here. This is the grand finale of a life poorly spent and the end result is just overwhelmingly depressing ... it's just a sick, pathetic, wretched, miserable life story, that's all it is. How it can help anyone, I've no idea."

"I don't even know if I have the capacity for normal emotions or not because I haven't cried for a long time. You just stifle them for so long that maybe you lose them, partially at least. I don't know."

"I don't know why it started. I don't have any definite answers on that myself. If I knew the true, real reasons why all this started, before it ever did , I wouldn't probably have done any of it."

ON FANTASIES

" ... Like arrows, shooting through my mind from out of the blue."

ON THE MURDER OF STEVEN HICKS

"That night in Ohio, that one impulsive night. Nothing's been normal since then. It taints your whole life. After it happened I thought that I'd just try to live as normally as possible and bury it, but things like that don't stay buried. I didn't think it would, but it does, it taints your whole life."

"I was in college that day, thinking about Hicks. I was drinking and in a weepy sort of mood, and I cried about that."

IN RESPONSE TO QUESTIONS REGARDING THE MURDER OF STEVEN HICKS

"I'd rather be talking about anything else in the world right now."

IN RESPONSE TO THE QUESTION: "DO YOU LOVE YOUR GRANDMOTHER?"

"Yup, she's lived in that house a long time."

"At about eleven o'clock at night, when everyone was gone and the store was locked up from the outside, I went out and undressed the mannequin and I had a big sleeping bag cover. I put it in that, zipped it up and carried it out of the store, which was a pretty dangerous thing to do. I never thought of them maybe having security cameras or being locked in the store, but I walked out with it and took it back home. I ended up getting a taxi and brought it back and kept it with me a couple of weeks. I just went through various sexual fantasies with it, pretending it was a real person, pretending that I was having sex with it, masturbating, and undressing it."

ON THE MURDER OF STEVEN TUOMI

"I felt in complete shock. I just couldn't believe it happened again after all those years when I'd done nothing like this... I don't know what was going through my mind. I have no memory of it. I tried to dredge it up, but I have no memory whatsoever."

"One thing I know for sure. It was a definite compulsion because I couldn't quit. I tried, but after the Ambassador, I couldn't quit. It would be nice if someone could give the answer on a silver platter as to why I did all this and what caused it, because I can't come up with an answer."

"Am I just an extremely evil person or is it some kind of satanic influence, or what? I have no idea. I have no idea at all. Do you? Is it possible to be influenced by spirit beings? I know that sounds like an easy way to cop out and say that I couldn't help myself, but from all that the Bible says, there are forces that have a direct or indirect influence on people's behavior. The Bible calls him Satan. I suppose it's possible because it sure seems like some of the thoughts aren't my own, they just come blasting into my head... These thoughts are very powerful, very destructive, and they do not leave. They're not the kind of thoughts that you can just shake your head and they're gone. They do not leave."

"After the fear and terror of what I'd done had left, which took about a month or two, I started it all over again. From then on it was a craving, a hunger, I don't know how to describe it, a compulsion, and I just kept doing it, doing it and doing it, whenever the opportunity presented itself."

"I knew my grandma would be waking up and I still wanted him to stay with me so I strangled him... I brought him up to the bedroom and pretended he was still alive."

ON THE MURDER OF ANTHONY SEARS

"I took the knife and the scalp part off and peeled the flesh off the bone and kept the skull and the scalp... If I could have kept him longer, all of him, I would have"

ON GERALDO RIVERA (WOOHOO! GO JEFF!)

"He just wants to make people feel as guilty and lousy as possible. The guy is such a prick."

"It was nice, with African cichlids and tiger barbs in it and live plants, it was a beautifully kept fish tank, very clean ... I used to like to just sit there and watch them swim around, basically. I used to enjoy the planning and the set-up, the filtration, read about how to keep the nitrate and ammonia down to safe levels and just the whole spectrum of fish-keeping interested me ... I once saw some puffer fish in the store. It's a round fish, and the only ones I ever saw with both eyes in front, like a person's eyes, and they would come right up to the front of the glass and their eyes would be crystal blue, like a person's, real cute... It's a fun hobby. I really enjoyed that fish tank. It's something I really miss."

ON THE MURDER OF ERNEST MILLER

"I separated the joints, the arm joints, the leg joints, and had to do two boilings. I think I used four boxes of Soilex for each one, put in the upper portion of the body and boiled that for about two hours and then the lower portion for another two hours. The Soilex removes all the flesh, turns it into a jelly like-like substance and it just rinses off. Then I laid the clean bones in a light bleach solution, left them there for a day and spread them out on either newspaper or cloth and let them dry for about a week in the bedroom."

"I didn't want to keep killing people and have nothing left except the skull... This is going to sound bad, but ... should I say it? ... I took the drill while he was asleep..."

"Yes, I do have remorse, but I'm not even sure myself whether it is as profound as it should be. I've always wondered myself why I don't feel more remorse."

THE FOLLOWING THREE QUOTES CONCERN THE THREE MURDERS WHICH, ACCORDING TO DAHMER, WEIGHED MOST HEAVILY ON HIS MIND

"I wish I hadn't done it." ...Steven Hicks

"I had no intention of doing it in the first place." ...Steven Tuomi

"He was exceptionally affectionate. He was nice to be with." ...Jeremiah Weinberger

"If I'd been thinking rationally I would have stopped. I wasn't thinking rationally because it just increased and increased. It was almost like I wanted to get to a point where it was out of my control and there was no return. I mean, I was very careful for years and years, you know. Very careful, very careful about making sure that nothing incriminating remained, but these last few months, they just went nuts... It just seemed like it went into a frenzy this last month. Everything really came crashing down. The whole thing started falling down around my head... That was the last week I was going to be in that apartment building. I was going to have to move out and find somewhere to put all my possessions. Should I get a chest and put what I wanted to keep in that, and get rid of the rest? Or should I put an end to this, try to stop this and find a better direction for my life? That's what was going through my mind that last week." "Something stronger than my conscious will made it happen. I think some higher power got good and fed-up with my activity and decided to put an end to it. I don't really think there were any coincidences. The way it ended and whether the close calls were warning to me or what, I don't know. If they were, I sure didn't heed them... If I hadn't been caught or lost my job, I'd still be doing it, I'm quite sure of that. I went on doing it and doing it and doing it, in spite of my anxiety and the lack of lasting satisfaction... How arrogant and stupid of me to think that I could do something like this and just go about my life normally as if nothing ever happened. They say you reap what you sow, well, it's true, you do, eventually ... I've always wondered, from the time that I committed that first horrid mistake, sin, with Hicks, whether this was sort of predestined and there was no way I could have changed it. I wonder just how much predestination controls a person's life and just how much control they have over themselves."

"I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don't know how else to put it. It didn't satisfy me completely so maybe I was thinking another one will. Maybe this one will, and the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see. "

"It's just like a big chunk of me has been ripped out and I'm not quite whole. I don't think I'm over dramatizing it, and I'm certainly deserving of it, but the way I feel now, it's just like you're talking to someone who is terminally ill and facing death. Death would be preferable to what I am facing. I just feel like imploding upon myself, you know? I just want to go somewhere and disappear."

"When you've done the types of things I've done, it's easier not to reflect on yourself. When I start thinking about how it's affecting the families of the people, and my family and everything, it doesn't do me any good. It just gets me very upset. "

" ... If I was killed in prison. That would be a blessing right now."

"I should have gone to college and gone into real estate and got myself an aquarium, that's what I should have done."

"I still have guilt. I will probably never get rid of that, but yes, I'm free of the compulsion and the driving need to do it... I don't think I'm capable of creating anything. I think the only thing I'm capable of is destroying ... I'm sick and tired of being destructive. What worth is life if you can't be helpful to someone?"

Bibliography

There are several good books readily available on Jeff Dahmer in bookstores and libraries. The Crime Library particularly recommends Anne E. Schwartz's Man Who Could Not Kill Enough; The Secret Murders of Milwaukee's Jeffrey Dahmer. As a newspaper reporter who followed the story from its very beginning to its completion, she brings an intimacy and immediacy that other books do not have. Another book that is recommended, but not easy to find, is Lionel's Dahmer's A Father's Story, which gives an intimate account of what it is like trying to raise a boy with so many serious, hidden problems.

A&E Biography Video: Jeffrey Dahmer

Baumann, Edward, Step into My Parlor: The Chilling Story of Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer. 1991.

Dahmer, Lionel, A Father's Story. William Morrow and Company, 1994.

Davis, Don, Milwaukee Murders, Nightmare in Apartment 213: The True Story. St Martin's Paperbacks, 1995.

Martingale, Moira, Cannibal Killers. St. Martin's Paperbacks, 1993.

Tithecott, Richard and James Kincaid, Of Men & Monsters: Jeffrey Dahmer & the Construction of the Serial Killer.

CrimeLibrary.com

Lionel Dahmer Stood by His Son Jeffrey, Even After the Serial Killer’s Death

Lionel, who died Tuesday at age 87, tried to love and support Jeffrey after his son was sentenced to life in prison.

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Lionel, who died Tuesday at age 87 in Medina County, Ohio, didn’t shy away from speaking about his son’s heinous acts or the potential circumstances that might have compelled them. Although it’s clear he held compassion for Jeffrey up until his death, Lionel’s reflections suggest he also felt some degree of responsibility for his son’s crimes.

Lionel believed he might have missed warning signs

Lionel, a chemist, and his first wife, Joyce Flint, had no indication something might be wrong with their son Jeffrey, born May 21, 1960, until he underwent a double hernia operation at age 4. After that, the boy became increasingly withdrawn, particularly after the birth of his younger brother David.

A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer

In his 1994 book, A Father’s Story , Lionel questioned if his son’s shyness was an initial precursor to his future criminal behavior. Years later, he told television host Larry King , “One of the things I’d like to tell parents is don’t disregard shyness. Things can be fomenting in that young mind... talk deeply and intensely. It’ll come out, I think, eventually.”

Lionel also wondered if Jeffrey’s behavior was possibly hereditary. “As a scientist, [I] wonder if [the] potential for great evil... resides deep in the blood that some of us... may pass on to our children at birth,” he wrote in his book. Additionally, he worried prescription drugs Joyce had taken during her pregnancy might have affected Jeffrey’s brain development. According to March of Dimes , some medications can cause problems, including birth defects, low birthweight, preterm birth, and learning and behavior problems later in life.

In addition to his growing solitude, Jeffrey showed an unusual interest in the macabre. According to Brian Masters’ book The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer , he collected large insects and animal skulls and preserved them in jars of formaldehyde. Lionel later recalled in a 2022 interview that Jeffrey, then around 12 to 14 years old, began to exhibit unhealthy sexual fetishes around this time.

However, any immediate concern was overshadowed by Lionel and Joyce’s deteriorating relationship. According to Women’s Health , they underwent a tumultuous divorce in 1978, with neighbors sometimes calling police to break up their fights. While they feuded for custody of David, 18-year-old Jeffrey—who also had a drinking problem by this point—was eventually left to live by himself with no money, no food, and a broken refrigerator. It was around this time, shortly after he graduated high school, that Dahmer bludgeoned and strangled his first victim to death.

By the time he was arrested for good in July 1991, Jeffrey had committed at least 16 other murders. He was sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms in prison the following year.

Looking back, Lionel eventually concluded that he operated on “a level of obliviousness, or perhaps denial, that was scarcely imaginable.”

Lionel felt Jeffrey “was just like me”

Jeffrey reportedly adjusted well to prison life at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin. He was initially kept away from the general inmate population but eventually integrated more fully. According to Oxygen True Crime , Lionel and his second wife, Shari, were the only regular visitors Jeffrey had in prison.

In a video interview while Jeffrey was incarcerated, Lionel revealed he originally hoped his son would be placed in a psychiatric institution for treatment but changed his mind as he learned more about the facilities. He said their prison visits always started with a hug. “It seems like in the last year, he’s looked even more forward, he seems visibly pleased that we’re going to visit him,” Lionel said in the interview.

While this suggests their conversations were cordial, at various times Lionel also tried to gain a better understanding of his son’s motives and secrecy. “What’s been really puzzling me is how come I just didn’t know anything about this?” he once asked Jeffrey, according to audio tapes from the 2023 Fox Nation miniseries My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes . “I pretty much was doing things in my own little world,” the killer responded.

Lionel also admitted to having “weird thoughts” in his childhood and asked his son if he experienced something similar. “You’re just like me, Jeff,” he concluded.

Lionel feared for his son’s safety in prison, and those concerns proved justified. On November 28, 1994, inmate Christopher Scarver killed Jeffrey and another prisoner with a metal bar, later claiming that “God told me to do it.”

Lionel went to court to honor Jeffrey’s final wishes

After Jeffrey’s death, Lionel fought to provide some degree of closure for himself and his son. Jeffrey’s body was placed in state custody pending the outcome of charges against Scarver. The latter pleaded no contest in May 1995 and was sentenced to a life term.

Per Jeffrey’s wishes, most of his remains were cremated that September, and the ashes were split between his parents. But according to The New York Times , the Dane County, Wisconsin, medical examiner’s office preserved the killer’s brain at his mother Joyce’s request. She wished to have the organ examined to determine if biological factors actually influenced Jeffrey’s crimes. “I want something useful to come from the nightmare,” she told the Associated Press . “This is the last and only thing I can do.”

Lionel, conversely, wanted to cremate the brain to honor his son’s wishes and put “the whole thing behind him.” The dispute went to court and was finally resolved in December 1995, as a Columbia County circuit judge ruled that Dahmer’s brain should also be cremated during an hour-long hearing.

Lionel reportedly stayed “very angry” about Jeffrey’s death

Lionel tried to live as much of a normal life as he could but even within the last two years couldn’t escape the enduring spotlight surrounding Jeffrey. In September 2022, Netflix released Dahmer— Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story , a dramatized retelling of Jeffrey’s life starring Evan Peters as the killer. The series was an immediate hit for the streaming service, surpassing 1 billion hours viewed in less than two months and garnering 13 Emmy nominations .

Following the show’s release, “hostile and aggressive” fans showed up at Lionel’s Ohio home, according to the New York Post . As a result, Lionel considered suing Netflix over the series as well as Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes , for which he claimed the streaming giant never requested permission to use tape recordings of his son. He also felt the two programs glamorized elements of his son’s life and strayed away from the facts.

Lionel also continued to mourn his son’s death. In an October 2022 interview, Lionel’s caretaker told The U.S. Sun that he became “very angry” every time he heard Scarver’s name. “As far as I know, and the last I talked to Lionel, he believes the guards looked the other way and and let [Jeffrey’s death] happen,” the caretaker, identified as Jeb, said.

Lionel’s frustrations were just one of the final examples of how he tried to keep his word from a 1994 interview with Oprah Winfrey . “I still love my son. I’ll always stick by him—I always have,” he said .

Tyler Piccotti first joined the Biography.com staff as an Associate News Editor in February 2023, and before that worked almost eight years as a newspaper reporter and copy editor. He is a graduate of Syracuse University. When he's not writing and researching his next story, you can find him at the nearest amusement park, catching the latest movie, or cheering on his favorite sports teams.

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Glenda Cleveland alerted police about Dahmer. Read her 2011 obituary

Glenda Cleveland, whose role in the Jeffrey Dahmer saga was given new attention in the Netflix 10-part miniseries "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," stayed in her apartment on 25th Street until 2009, then moved just a couple of blocks away before dying in 2011. She did not live in the same building as Dahmer, as the miniseries portrays, but lived in an adjacent building. This obituary was written by Jim Stingl in 2011.

Glenda Cleveland was Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbor , and the serial killer could have been stopped two months earlier if the police had only listened to her.

God knows she tried. "Are you sure?" she kept asking police on the phone when they insisted that a dazed and naked boy trying to escape from Dahmer was actually an adult involved in a lovers' spat with him.

We know now, of course, that he was 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, and that he was about to become Dahmer's next homicide victim. Cleveland's daughter, Sandra Smith, and niece, Nicole Childress, had spotted the boy fleeing from Dahmer in the alley on May 27, 1991. They were rebuffed by police at the scene, but they told Cleveland who then called police numerous times.

She became a symbol of good at a time of so much bad in our city. She got involved. She tried to help. She spoke a life-or-death truth and was ignored. Then she handled the crush of media attention with patience and dignity.

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"I just want to get back to normal," she told one of the many reporters who called and showed up at her home next door to the Oxford Apartments where Dahmer lived.

Her privacy returned eventually. Two decades later, Glenda Cleveland's death on Dec. 24 passed with little notice. She was 56. There was no funeral, though a memorial service is planned for spring when family and friends can more easily travel here from Cleveland's birth state of Mississippi and other places.

In a touch of irony, it was Milwaukee police officers acting on a citizen tip who entered Cleveland's apartment and discovered her body on the floor. Neighbors had become concerned after not seeing her for a few days. The medical examiner's office ruled it was a natural death caused by heart disease and high blood pressure. Smith blames the cigarette habit her mother could not kick.

You might think Cleveland would have quickly moved away from the neighborhood of 25th and Kilbourn after Dahmer's horrors were uncovered after his arrest in July of 1991. "Why don't you move away from that house on haunted hill?" one of her brothers sometimes teased. "I'm not going anywhere," she would fire back.

She stayed on 25th Street until 2009, her daughter said, and had lived alone since then in an apartment less than a mile away at 32nd and Wisconsin.

Cleveland described countless times how she called the police that fateful night, how she finally reached an officer connected with the incident, and how she asked him repeatedly if the male with Dahmer was a child in peril. She called back a few days later after seeing Konerak's photo in a newspaper article about his disappearance. No one got back to her. She tried again. Same result. She even tried calling the FBI but got nowhere. Five of Dahmer's 17 murders, including Konerak, came after Cleveland tried to alert police.

One of nine children, Cleveland was raised on a farm by parents who stressed the importance of telling the truth and stepping up when someone needs help. "I don't see any excuse for people not caring for other people," she told a reporter in 1991.

Her brother, Thomas Smith, a retired brewery worker living in Milwaukee, remembers watching a TV news report about Cleveland with his co-workers. "I would tell them, 'That's my baby sister,' " he said.

After Dahmer was finally arrested, the Rev. Jesse Jackson came to town and met with Cleveland. "Police chose the word of a killer over an innocent woman," he said then. The fact that Dahmer was white and Cleveland was Black was not lost on outraged African Americans here.

Cleveland was honored formally by the Common Council and the County Board. Mayor John Norquist called her a model citizen. She received awards from local women's groups and even the Milwaukee Police Department. Some of the plaques were still hanging on the wall of her immaculate apartment two decades later, her daughter said.

Cleveland's data entry job was eliminated several years ago, and she had not worked since then. She helped care for Smith's nine children. Smith, who was Cleveland's only child, is now a nurse living on Milwaukee's south side.

At least for a while, Cleveland also stayed in touch with the Sinthasomphone family and attended one of their son's weddings.

Occasionally, people on the street still recognized Cleveland from her days in the news. Smith said she and her mother didn't talk much anymore about their encounter with Dahmer.

"I try not to think about it because it should have been different," Smith said. "A lot of things could have been prevented. I try not to dwell on that."

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Jeffrey Dahmer Biography: The Cannibal Killer

Undoubtedly one of modern history’s most notorious and abhorrent killers — his crimes are the stuff of nightmares. Over the course of 13 years, he prowled for men and lured them back to his house before drugging and strangling them. In all he took the lives of 17 men between 1978 and 1991. But simply killing his victims wasn’t enough for Jeffrey Dahmer. He never wanted them to leave him so he saved “trophies” — including severed heads. Eventually, he ate parts of his victims.

Dahmer was captured in 1991 and sentenced to 16 life terms. He was killed by fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994. Today let’s take a look back on the serial killer’s life.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was described by his mother as a beautiful baby, and both parents considered him to be a normal child. His teachers saw him differently. At least one — his first grade teacher — wondered if Jeffrey was neglected at home and noted he was a reserved child on his report card. It’s true, both of Jeffrey’s parents didn’t spend a lot of time with him. When Jeffrey was young, his father was in college earning his chemistry degree and Jeffrey’s mother was often bedridden recovering from illnesses. Jeffrey’s parents had a tumultuous marriage that he later described as “extreme tension” from the constant arguing at home. Yet, there was no doubt Lionel and Joyce Dahmer loved their son and tried to do the best for him. When he was six years old, worried Jeffrey might not take well to a new baby brother, they let him pick out his name. Jeffrey named his younger brother David. The Dahmer family moved a few times before eventually settling in Bath, Ohio in 1968.

If there were any red flags that indicated future violence in the young Jeffrey, it was his fascination with animal bones and how they “fit together.” The interest in carcasses began when he was four years old. One day, Jeffrey was helping his father clear animal remains from under the house and Jeffrey was “oddly thrilled” by the sound of the bones dropping into the metal bucket. He later started collecting them; searching in ditches and along streets for roadkill. He began dismembering the bodies behind the house in a patch of wooded area and stored the various body parts in jars in the family’s woodshed. On one occasion, Jeffrey decapitated the corpse of a dog before nailing the body to a tree. When he was ten years old, over dinner, Jeffrey asked his father what would happen if chicken bones were placed in bleach. Lionel, a chemist, interpreted his son’s question as mere scientific curiosity and he took the opportunity to teach his son about the proper way to clean and preserve his collections.

Jeffrey later admitted at the age of 14 he began experiencing sexual “compulsions.” He desired boys, not girls, and the sexual fantasies involved submission, violence, and death.

He began drinking as a teenager to suppress his urges and didn’t talk to anyone about the disturbing thoughts he was having. At the age of 16, he fantasized about raping a jogger he saw regularly and planned to attack the man. One day Jeffrey lay in wait with a baseball bat in the bushes along the man’s regular route. The man didn’t come by that day, and Jeffrey never attempted to carry it out again.

At Revere High School, most of his classmates thought of Dahmer as an outcast with a few friends; some were troubled by his heavy drinking. He drank both beer and liquor while at school by smuggling it inside the lining of his army fatigue jacket. His grades were average and then took a dive as his drinking spun out of control in 1977. He played clarinet briefly in band, and was a decent tennis player. Overall, his teachers observed Jeffrey as polite and quiet. Although he was awkward, he regularly amused his classmates by staging pranks such as acting out seizures, knocking over items, and making loud, obnoxious noises. The pranks were so popular, similar behavior was referred to as “doing a Dahmer.”

By the end of his high school, Dahmer’s parents’ troubled marriage finally came to an end after an unsuccessful attempt at counseling. In early 1978, Lionel moved out of the house. Dahmer graduated in May the same year.

A few weeks after graduation, Dahmer committed his first murder when he picked up a hitchhiker. Eighteen-year-old Steven Mark Hicks was on his way to a rock concert when Dahmer lured him back to his house to hang out and drink a few beers before the show. By now, Dahmer lived alone at his parents’ house — his mother had moved out with younger brother David while his father took up residence at a local motel. Hicks and Dahmer spent a few hours together listening to music and drinking. When Hicks was ready to leave, Dahmer didn’t want him too, so he struck him in the head with a 10 lb. dumbbell and strangled him to death while Hicks was unconscious. He then masturbated over his body, moved him to the crawl space under the house and dissected his body before burying it in a shallow grave. Several weeks later, Dahmer unearthed Hicks’ body, pared the flesh from the bones and dissolved it in acid. He crushed Hicks’ bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them all in the woodlot behind the house.

A short time later, Dahmer’s father visited his son and learned he was living alone. He moved back in the house and convinced Dahmer to enroll in college. Dahmer spent three months at Ohio State University before dropping out. In early 1979, at the urging of his father, he joined the U.S. Army. Dahmer served as a combat medic in Germany but his performance deteriorated due to his drinking. He was honorably discharged in March of 1981. At least two soldiers later attested Dahmer raped them while in the service — one repeatedly over the course of 17 months and the other once after Dahmer drugged him.

Killing Spree

“The only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person; a person I found physically attractive. And keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.”

Following his discharge, Dahmer returned home to Ohio but stayed only a brief time. He was arrested for disorderly conduct which prompted his father to arrange for Dahmer to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin. His alcoholism continued and he was arrested for indecent exposure. He was arrested again in 1986 when two boys accused him of masturbating in front of them.

In September of 1987, Dahmer took his second victim, Steven Tuomi. According to Dahmer, he has no memory of killing Tuomi — they had checked into a hotel room together and drank heavily…when Dahmer woke in the morning he discovered Tuomi’s dead body, with blood on his hands. Dahmer bought a large suitcase to transport Tuomi’s remains to his grandmother’s basement, where he dismembered and masturbated on the corpse before disposing of the remains. Only after Dahmer killed another two victims at his grandmother’s home did she tire of her grandson’s late nights and drunkenness — although she had no knowledge of his other activities — and she forced him to move out of the premises in 1988.

“It’s hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I’ve done, but I know that I did it.”

That September 1989, Dahmer had an extremely lucky escape: An encounter with a 13-year-old Laotian boy resulted in charges of sexual exploitation and second-degree sexual assault for Dahmer. He pleaded guilty, claiming that the boy had appeared much older. While awaiting sentencing for his sexual assault case, Dahmer again put his grandmother’s basement to gruesome use: In March 1989, he lured, drugged, strangled, sodomized, photographed, dismembered and disposed of Anthony Sears, an aspiring model.

At his trial for child molestation in May 1989, Dahmer was the model of contrition, arguing eloquently, in his own defense, about how he had seen the error of his ways, and that his arrest marked a turning point in his life. His defense counsel argued that he needed treatment, not incarceration, and the judge agreed, handing down a one-year prison sentence on “day release” — allowing Dahmer to work at his job during the day and return to the prison at night — as well as a five-year probationary sentence.

Years later, in an interview with CNN, Lionel Dahmer stated that he wrote a letter to the court that issued the sentence, requesting psychological help before his son’s parole. However, Jeffrey Dahmer was granted an early release by the judge, after serving only 10 months of his sentence. He briefly lived with his grandmother following his release, during which time he does not appear to have added to his body count, before moving back into his own apartment.

Over the following two years, Dahmer’s victim count accelerated, bringing his total from four to 17. He developed rituals as he progressed, experimenting with chemical means of disposal and often consuming the flesh of his victims. Dahmer also attempted crude lobotomies, drilling into victims’ skulls while they were still alive and injecting them with muriatic acid. He was careful to select victims on the fringes of society, who were often itinerant or borderline criminal, making their disappearances less noticeable and reducing the likelihood of his capture. As the murders piled up, Dahmer was still unsatisfied, he said later:

“I was completely swept along with my own compulsion. I don’t know how else to put it. It didn’t satisfy me completely, so maybe I was thinking, ‘Maybe another one will. Maybe this one will.’ And the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see.”

On May 27, 1991, Dahmer’s neighbor Sandra Smith called the police to report that an Asian boy was running naked in the street. When the police arrived, the boy was incoherent, and they accepted the word of Dahmer — a white man in a largely poor African-American community — that the boy was his 19-year-old lover. In fact, the boy was 14 years old and a brother of the Laotian teen Dahmer had molested three years earlier.

The police escorted Dahmer and the boy home and, clearly not wishing to become embroiled in a homosexual domestic disturbance, took only a cursory look around before leaving. Once the police left the scene, Dahmer killed the boy and proceeded with his usual rituals. Had they conducted even a basic search, police officers would have found the body of Dahmer’s 12th victim, Tony Hughes. Before he was finally arrested, on July 22, 1991, he killed four more men.

The Crime Scene

Dahmer’s killing spree ended when he was arrested on July 22, 1991. That day, two Milwaukee police officers picked up Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old African American man who was wandering the streets with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. They decided to investigate the man’s claims that a “weird dude” had drugged and restrained him. They arrived at Dahmer’s apartment, where he calmly offered to get the keys for the handcuffs.

Edwards claimed that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When the officer went in to corroborate the story, he noticed Polaroid photographs of dismembered bodies lying around. Dahmer was subdued by the officers. Subsequent searches revealed a head in the refrigerator, three more in the freezer and a catalog of other horrors, including preserved skulls, jars containing genitalia and an extensive gallery of macabre Polaroid photographs of his victims.

Dahmer’s refrigerator and Polaroid photographs became inextricably associated with his notorious killing spree.

In 1996, following Dahmer’s death, a group of Milwaukee businessmen raised more than $400,000 to purchase the items he used for his victims — including blades, saws, handcuffs and a refrigerator to store body parts. They promptly destroyed them in an effort to distance the city from the horrors of Dahmer’s actions and the ensuing media circus surrounding his trial.

Trial and Imprisonment

Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial began in January 1992. Given that the majority of Dahmer’s victims were African American, there were considerable racial tensions and so strict security precautions were taken, including an eight-foot barrier of bulletproof glass that separated him from the gallery. The inclusion of only one African American on the jury provoked further unrest, but was ultimately contained and short lived. Lionel Dahmer and his second wife attended the trial throughout.

Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation, but he eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity. His defense then offered the gruesome details of his behavior, as proof that only someone insane could commit such terrible acts. Dahmer later said in an interview, “It’s hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I’ve done, but I know that I did it.”

The jury chose to believe the prosecution’s assertion that Dahmer was fully aware that his acts were evil and chose to commit them anyway. On February 15, 1992, they returned after approximately 10 hours’ deliberation to find him guilty, but sane, on all counts. He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison, with a 16th term tacked on in May.

“It is now over. This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn’t ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself. This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate. I hated no one. I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace. I know how much harm I have caused… Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins… I ask for no consideration.”

Dahmer reportedly adjusted well to prison life, although he was initially kept apart from the general population. He eventually convinced authorities to allow him to integrate more fully with other inmates. He found religion in the form of books and photos sent to him by his father, and he was granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local pastor.

On November 28, 1994, in accordance with his inclusion in regular work details, Dahmer was assigned to work with two other convicted murderers, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. After they had been left alone to complete their tasks, guards returned to find that Scarver had brutally beaten both men with a metal bar from the prison weight room. Dahmer was pronounced dead after approximately one hour. Anderson succumbed to his injuries days later.

In 2015, Christopher Scarver spoke to the New York Post about his reasons for killing Dahmer. Scarver alleged that he was disturbed not only by Dahmer’s crimes, but by a habit Dahmer had developed of fashioning severed limbs from prison food to antagonize other inmates. After being taunted by Dahmer and Anderson during their work detail, Scarver said that he confronted Dahmer about his crimes before beating the two men to death. He also claimed that prison guards allowed the murders to happen.

In Dahmer’s will, he had requested upon his death that his body be cremated as soon as possible, but some medical researchers wanted his brain preserved so it could be studied. Lionel Dahmer wanted to respect his son’s wishes and cremate all remains of his son. His mother felt his brain should go to research. The two parents went to court and a judge sided with Lionel. After over a year Dahmer’s body was released from being held as evidence and the remains were cremated as he had requested.

In August 2012, nearly two decades after his death, it was reported his childhood home in Bath, Ohio — where he committed his first murder in 1978, and buried his victim’s remains — was on the market. Its owner, musician Chris Butler, stated that the property would make a great home, as long as the buyer could “get past the horror factor.”

In March 2016, Butler put the house up for rent for $8,000 for the week of the Republican National Convention. As of July 2017, the house was no longer listed on the market, according to Zillow.com.

Jeffrey Dahmer Video Biography

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Jeffrey Dahmer (Serial Killer Biography)

Even if you are not into true crime, you probably know the names of a few serial killers like Ted Bundy and Jeffrey Dahmer. These serial killers, particularly Jeffrey Dahmer, have been the center of television shows, documentaries, and even the lyrics in pop songs. 

Why does his name and story pop up everywhere? It’s not because he killed the most people out of any serial killer or is the “first” serial killer.

Who Was Jeffrey Dahmer? 

Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 people between 1978 and 1991. But he didn’t just kill them. After they were dead, Dahmer dismembered and even ate the bodies. What’s more, Dahmer was a timid man who didn’t endure the abuse or trauma that other serial killers may use as an “excuse” for their crimes. 

In interviews, Jeffrey Dahmer gave clear, straightforward answers about his horrific crimes, in some cases admitting his wrongdoing. The story of Jeffrey Dahmer is a wild ride, and it’s more squeamish than many stories of serial killers. Get ready to hear the real story of one of the most infamous serial killers and cannibals of all time. 

When Was Jeffrey Dahmer Born?

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Wisconsin. His parents lived comfortably. While most serial killers have a record of surviving abuse or other traumatic experiences, there’s not much to say about Dahmer’s childhood that could point to his later crimes. Dahmer claimed that he was never abused or molested throughout his lifetime. Although his mother suffered from mental illness and likely took prescription medication that affected Dahmer’s development, all appeared normal throughout his early life. 

Jeffrey Dahmer Childhood

Jeffrey Dahmer was a shy child, but his interest in taxidermy and dead animals may have pointed to his later crimes. Violence against animals, setting fires, and persistent bed-wetting are all common signs among serial killers. Other strange behaviors in his teenage years, including drinking alcohol in class, pointed to issues, but they were largely ignored by friends, classmates, and family. At age 17, his parents divorced and his mother left his father and Jeffrey while taking his younger brother with him. 

Jeffrey Dahmer's First Kill 

Inside, Dahmer started to have fantasies that involved sexual control and dominance. Not knowing how to act on these desires, he began to use violence. At age 18, Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker who was on his way to a rock concert. The two spent some time at Dahmer’s house - when the hitchhiker wanted to leave, Dahmer killed him. 

After Dahmer dismembered the body, he put the hitchhiker into a garbage bag and drove to take him to a dumpster. Along the way, he was stopped by police - but he was let go. He scattered the bones of his first victim in the woods near his home. 

By this time, Dahmer’s father and stepmother noticed that he was acting out. They unsuccessfully tried to enroll him in college, took him to psychiatrists, and eventually encouraged him to join the military. During this time, Dahmer didn’t commit any homicides, although multiple roommates claimed that he drugged, sexually assaulted, and tortured them. He was discharged from the army due to excessive drinking, and ended up moving in with his grandmother. 

Jeffrey Dahmer's Victims

During this time, Dahmer tried various methods to suppress his urges and bizarre fantasies. He kept a mannequin in his bed, exposed himself to women and children, and started drugging men at bath houses throughout the Chicago and Milwaukee area. After giving one of the men too much of the drugs that he used, he was banned from the bath houses. 

Around this time, Dahmer got a job at a chocolate factory. 

Shortly after, he brought a man to a hotel and drugged him. The next morning, the man was dead, beaten to death by Dahmer. He claimed he had no recollection of killing the man, and hadn’t planned on killing him when the man was brought home. From then on, he started going on a wild killing spree that would later label him a “serial killer.”

He took two victims in 1988. During this year, he also moved out of his grandmother’s house. His family members were disturbed by some of the smells coming from the basement, but assumed it had to do with Jeffrey’s old habit of experimenting with roadkill. They didn’t suspect that he was actually disposing of multiple bodies. 

After sexually assaulting a 13-year old boy in 1989, Dahmer was arrested and convicted of second-degree sexual assault. Due to delays in his sentencing, Dahmer was sent to live at his grandmother’s home for a period of months. During that time, he took another victim. The victim’s head and genitals were preserved after Dahmer disposed of the body. Shortly after, he was sentenced to five years’ probation. His sentencing included work release and mandatory time in counseling due to his remorse in front of the judge.

In 1990, Dahmer moved into an apartment and killed an additional four men. All of these men had come to Dahmer’s home voluntarily, and didn’t anticipate the violence that would take place when they arrived. He had already developed a ritual where he would watch “The Exorcist” before killing his victims.” During this year, he started to change the way he treated his victims after he killed them. He photographed their bodies, storing their bones in a filing cabinet and other parts of the body in a freezer. If not stored, the body parts were placed in vats of acid. 

Dahmer planned to build a “memorial” to these victims in the form of an altar. Sketches of this altar showed his desire to paint their skeletons and lay out their skulls on the altar. This bizarre “connection” to his victims grew into even more sickening rituals as he began to cook and eat the remains of his victims. Dahmer would go so far as to look at pictures of his victims while he ate their bodies. 

Dahmer killed one more person in 1991 before he tried something new with his victims. With his next two victims, he attempted to make them “zombies,” somewhere between life and death. He did this to try and fulfill a sexual fantasy about having sex with a zombie. Both times, he failed and the victims died.  

When Was Jeffrey Dahmer Caught? 

In May 1991, he tried again. He attempted to drill a hole into the head of a 14-year-old boy. Dahmer didn’t know that this boy was actually the younger brother of a boy Dahmer had molested a few years earlier. But when Dahmer left his apartment to go buy beer, the boy escaped. An eyewitness called the police, who came to Dahmer’s home. Dahmer wasn’t fazed by the close encounter and told the police that the two were engaging in consensual, sexual activities. 

The police left the 14-year-old child with Dahmer in his apartment. They failed to look around and see that Dahmer’s previous victim was in the next room where they discussed Dahmer’s supposed relationship with the teenager. When neighbors inquired as to the age of the child and whether or not he was actually safe with Dahmer, police assured them that everything was “taken care of.” The day after this encounter, Dahmer killed the 14-year-old boy. Over the next two months, he killed another three victims. 

At this point, neighbors contacted their landlord to report on a foul smell coming from Dahmer’s apartment. Three times, he made excuses for the smell, including telling his manager that his fish had recently died. Eventually, these excuses stopped working for the manager, and Dahmer was told that he was going to be evicted. 

During this time before his eviction, Dahmer kills one more victim - his 17th. On July 22, 1991, three days after the man was killed, Dahmer would be arrested. 

The Arrest 

Dahmer took a man back to his home on July 22, 1991. Early in the encounter, he told the man that he was going to eat his heart. But Dahmer had run out of drugs to render the man unconscious, and only managed to get one handcuff on the man’s hand. The man was able to escape and ask the police about how to get the handcuff off.

The police were not able to get the handcuffs off, so they went to Dahmer’s apartment to look for the key. In plain sight, the officers saw the photographs that Dahmer had taken of his victims. These photos included evidence that Dahmer had killed and dismembered multiple victims. At this point, Dahmer was finally put in handcuffs and taken into custody for the murders. 

When investigators searched the house, they found all of the remains and evidence of Dahmer’s recent killings. 

Life In Milwaukee After Dahmer's Arrest

A Redditor on the Milwaukee subreddit asked users to share their close encounters with Jeffrey Dahmer. The stories are crazy, tragic, and haunting: 

• "When my husband was 16, he was taking the bus out to Mayfair with his best friend, John. During the 40-minute journey, a young blond man sitting nearby struck up a conversation with them. He introduced himself as Jeff. He was quite chatty, and made homophobic comments about how gay men made him sick. Two weeks later, my husband got a call from John. 'Turn on the news,' he said. 'It's that guy Jeff from the bus.'"
• "It was very surreal. I was about 23 years old and I remember the news breaking on the radio while I was driving over the high-rise bridge, and I got sick to my stomach when I heard about the severed heads in the fridge. My uncle owned a pizza joint near Dahmer's apartment, and his delivery driver was so distraught when he realized he had delivered many pizzas to him over the past couple of years."
• "My husband is a retired Milwaukee firefighter and worked with the firefighter who was on the scene. Apparently in one of the rooms in Dahmer's apartment was an altar with painted skulls, and the firefighter saw the severed heads in the fridge, one of which was propped up in a pair of hands. He also saw a couple of the blue barrels filled with sludgy acid. The cops and firefighters who saw that horror that day will never unsee it - first responder PTSD is very real."

Dahmer's Confession

The next day, Dahmer decided to give a complete confession to the police about everything he had done: murders, dismemberment, cannibalism, and all. 

Before the case went to trial, Dahmer gave a confession that lasted for over 160 pages. In this confession, he was willing to confess to every single detail of the killings and dismemberment that he could remember. He recalled it all with frightening accuracy - although he couldn’t remember the names of the men that he killed. Dahmer claimed to also not remember the night that he killed his second victim. 

When his trial started, Dahmer had been charged with 15 counts of murder. (One count of murder was charged in another state. Dahmer could not remember killing his second victim, and since there was no physical evidence of the killing at the time, he was not charged for the crime.) His parents attended the trial. Dahmer pleaded guilty but on the grounds of insanity, but he told the jury that he did not wish for any sort of freedom. He believed that he deserved the death penalty. 

The state of Wisconsin had abolished capital punishment over 60 years earlier, so Dahmer was not able to get the death penalty. He was, however, sentenced to 15 life sentences plus another 70 years. (He was sentenced to a 16th life imprisonment when he was convicted for his first murder in the state of Ohio.) 

While in prison, Jeffrey Dahmer spent his first year in prison in solitary confinement for the safety of his fellow inmates, but was eventually released to a less secure area. He became a born-again Christian, reading the Bible and visiting with a pastor frequently. He was even baptized. But even with the possibility of a new life ahead of him, Dahmer felt that he was ready to die for his crimes. 

How Did Jeffrey Dahmer Die? 

In 1994, Dahmer was working a shift in the Columbia Correctional Institution when he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate. The inmate took the lives of Jeffrey Dahmer and another prisoner, and received two consecutive life sentences for his crimes in addition to the sentence that he was already serving. This was not the first time that someone attempted to take Dahmer’s life in prison, but he did not seem resistant to these acts of violence against him. Dahmer’s body was cremated and his parents received his ashes. 

Infamy 

In the short years between his conviction and his death, Dahmer gave multiple TV interviews that have been broadcast on various news channels throughout the years. He’s been the subject of multiple documentaries, movies, and TV shows. 

There were plenty of times that correctional officers and the criminal justice system could have saved the lives of many by keeping Jeffrey Dahmer in jail. Red flags were everywhere. Police and authorities visited his apartment multiple times, even leaving a minor child with him. But his parents and those close to him were easy to deny that this timid, mild-mannered boy could be such a horrific criminal. Today, he remains one of the most notorious serial killers in modern history; not just for the crimes that he committed, but also for the timid manner and matter-of-fact confessions surrounding those crimes.

Related posts:

• Albert Fish (Serial Killer Biography)
• Samuel Little (Serial Killer Biography)
• The Boston Strangler (Serial Killer Biography)
• Gary Ridgeway (Serial Killer Biography)
• Luis Garavito (Serial Killer Biography)

Reference this article:

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Serial Killers:

List of Serial Killers

David Berkowitz

Gary Ridgeway

H. H. Holmes

Harold Fred Shipman

Jeffrey Dahmer

John Wayne Gacy

Luis Garavito

Samuel Little

The Zodiac Killer

Albert Fish

The Boston Strangler

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What Jeffrey Dahmer's Childhood Was Actually Like

Jeffrey Dahmer has become one of the most notorious serial killers in modern American history. Besides killing his victims, Dahmer dismembered their corpses, preserved body parts, engaged in necrophilia, cannibalized organs, and even attempted lobotomies on some who were still alive (per Biography ). During his active years, several brushes with the law failed to uncover Dahmer's crimes, and his family had no idea what he was doing.

In February of 1992 (per History ), Dahmer received his sentence. Seven months after his arrest, a jury rejected Dahmer's insanity plea. He was found sane and guilty of 15 murders — out of 17 accused — from 1978 to 1991, and sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences. Two years later, at 34 years old, Dahmer was dead — killed by a fellow inmate while on work detail.

Upbringing doesn't necessarily correlate to criminality, let alone something as extreme as Dahmer's actions. Dahmer himself dismissed any connection between his home environment and his later acts (via A&E ). His childhood had its typical ups and downs, and was well within the ordinary. While his family noted certain things in hindsight, no one thought at the time, or had reason to think, that Dahmer would become what he became.

The following article contains references to addiction, abuse, and mental health struggles. If you or anyone you know is experiencing these issues, help is available. Contact SAMHSA's National Helpline at 1-800-662-HELP (4357), RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE (4673), or the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline by calling 1-800-273-TALK (8255)​.

The Dahmer family moved around a lot

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer at the Evangelical Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The family home at the time was in West Allis, but Jeffrey wouldn't be there for long. His father, Lionel Dahmer, was a devoted chemistry student and future research chemist. According to Brian Masters' "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer,"  when Lionel had an opportunity to pursue a master's degree in analytical chemistry at Marquette University, the family moved to Milwaukee for his convenience.

Deference to Lionel's education and career — or for Joyce's nerves — would move the Dahmers around several more times during Jeffrey's youth, as noted by Masters. In 1962, the family moved to Ames, Iowa, as Lionel began postgraduate work. In 1966, before the birth of another son, they moved to Doylestown, Ohio, but relocated to Barberton within a few months after Joyce complained about the neighbors. In 1968, almost on a whim after seeing a house for sale, the Dahmers moved once more, this time to Bath, Ohio. There Jeffrey would live until after high school, though his parents and brother all left the area before him, in the wake of an ugly divorce in 1978.

As a young adult, Dahmer joined the army and was briefly stationed in Baumholder, West Germany, but was discharged in 1981 (per the Los Angeles Times ). From there, he hopped around for a few months, living in Florida and Ohio before settling in West Allis with his grandmother.

Jeffrey Dahmer and his father bleached animal bones together

Lionel Dahmer was often an absentee figure in the Dahmer household. Even before Jeffrey Dahmer's birth, Lionel was so devoted to his chemistry work (per Brian Masters' "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer" ) that he was often neglectful of his emotionally vulnerable wife. He was often distant from his children for the same reason. But Lionel and Jeffrey could connect, at times, over a mutual interest in nature and animals. 

In his book "A Father's Story,"  Lionel recalled an incident when Jeffrey was four. Civets had taken to using the space under the Dahmer house for eating their prey, and the growing smell alerted Lionel to the growing pile of bones they'd left behind. Lionel pulled them out from under the house, and as he and his wife talked, Jeffrey became fascinated with dropping and clanking the bones together. "Like fiddlesticks," he told his father, a nickname for bones that would stick.

A few years later, when Jeffrey was 10 (per Masters), he casually asked during a family chicken dinner what would happen to the leftover chicken bones if they were bleached. At the time, Lionel took this as a scientific curiosity, and he demonstrated to his son just what bleach did to the chicken bones. Jeffrey, according to Masters, watched without a word or a blink.

His mother was depressed and suicidal

Jeffrey Dahmer's mother, Joyce Dahmer — known as Rocky, according to her Milwaukee Journal Sentinel obituary — was not a happy or healthy woman. Her upbringing was marked by a neglectful and alcoholic father, according to Brain Masters' "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer,"  and she developed into a hypersensitive hypochondriac who demanded attention. She also suffered bouts of depression and postpartum depression: After the birth of her second son David, Lionel Dahmer remembered her being left bedridden by the latter in "A Father's Story."

To cope with her physical and mental pain, Joyce turned to medication. Per Masters, she took up to eight Equanil a day by 1970, leading to a month's stay in a mental ward, and another month of psychotherapy for anxiety — which did not result in sustained improvement. Joyce's depression and anxiety persisted after her divorce and the uncovering of her son's crimes. She kept in regular contact with Jeffrey until his death, and agonized with remorse for his victims and over her son. 

In 1994 (per UPI ), Joyce attempted suicide with her gas oven in Fresno, California, and remained in a haunted state over her son until her death in 2000.

His parents had a toxic relationship

Brian Masters wrote of Lionel and Joyce Dahmer's marriage in his book "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer" : "One could hardly imagine a finer recipe for incompatibility." Lionel was emotionally reserved and concentrated on his career, while Joyce was highly emotional and anxious. 

Both their children reported that the atmosphere in the family home was tinged by the obvious tensions between the parents: Jeffrey Dahmer and his younger brother David Dahmer witnessed shouting matches, thrown objects, and hitting. However, Masters contends that the children were never harmed and that the family was not in a constant state of misery.

In 1977, after attending her father's funeral, Joyce Dahmer began an affair, and soon told her husband that their marriage was over. Lionel Dahmer described their divorce proceedings briefly in "A Father's Story,"  saying only that they engaged in a custody battle for their younger son, which ended with Joyce having custody. But neighbors told the Los Angeles Times that, during and after the divorce proceedings, police had to be called to the Dahmer house to break up shouting and shoving matches. Masters elaborates that Joyce alleged neglect of duty and cruelty in her suit, and that the concern for David's future so consumed both parents that Jeffrey – by then 18 and about to attend college – was often overlooked.

A double hernia surgery may have greatly affected him

Jeffrey Dahmer's family remembered him as an ordinary little boy in his earliest years. In "A Father's Story,"  his father recalled that he suffered ill health as a baby but seemed to grow out of it. He enjoyed playing non-competitive games, running about the house, and hiding. But shortly before his fourth birthday, while being checked for an ear infection and pneumonia, according to  "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer,"  doctors said that a hernia condition might need surgery. Just after Christmas, it was determined that Dahmer needed a double hernia operation.

Dahmer would later claim to remember watching "Bewitched" with other kids in the hospital right before his operation, performed in March 1964, and of the intense pain after coming to from the anesthetic. So much did the pain affect him that Dahmer asked the nurse if they had cut off his genitalia, and later asked his mother the same question. The pain endured for a week, and Dahmer's mother noted in her diary at the time how much her son didn't like his doctor after the surgery.

In the months and years after the surgery, his father noted something else. As could be expected during recovery from a traumatic surgery, Dahmer had little energy or enthusiasm. But well after his body had healed, he seemed a sadder, more apathetic, and unresponsive child, a condition that became more marked and permanent with time.

How did Jeffrey Dahmer get along with his younger brother?

Jeffrey Dahmer was an only child for six years. When his parents told him that he would be getting a sibling in 1966, he was delighted. According to Brian Masters' "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer,"  he was so excited that his characteristic withdrawal into self-absorption vanished. He thanked his mother again and again for getting pregnant, insisted that he wanted a brother to play with, and was allowed to pick out the name of the baby when it arrived.

The Dahmers welcomed their second child — another son — on December 18, 1966. As promised, Jeffrey got to choose his brother's name: David. Their mother worried that jealousy might cause trouble, but Jeffrey doted on David and loved having a playmate — even if the family dog, Frisky, came first in affection. The older Dahmer boy also confided in the younger at times: Well before their parents, David knew about the graveyard of animal remains that Jeffrey maintained outside an old hut near their home. David thought his brother was performing a good deed by burying the animals.

With time, the brothers began to drift apart. David, according to Masters, would remember his older brother as unresponsive, often speaking in a monotone voice, and unable to handle frustration. The two would eventually be separated by their parent's divorce: David went with their mother, and Jeffrey — then an adult — lived on his own.

Jeffrey Dahmer hurt animals

Professor of psychology Louis Schlesinger told A&E that childhood animal cruelty often correlates with development into a serial killer. Carl Wahlstrom, a forensic psychiatrist who evaluated Jeffrey Dahmer, was told by Dahmer about an incident in grade school. Dahmer had given his teacher a tadpole as a gift, and the teacher regifted it to another student. When Dahmer found out, he was so upset that he poured gasoline into the tadpole's aquarium and set it on fire. "If you want to call that torturing animals," Dahmer told Wahlstrom, "I tortured animals."

After the tadpole incident, however, Dahmer caused no harm to live animals, according to Brian Masters' "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer."  Instead, he showed a fascination with animals that were already dead. He would collect and dissect road kills to examine their insides, impale skulls on sticks, string up corpses, and maintain an animal graveyard in a hut near his house. 

Dahmer's father, Lionel, recalled a fishing trip in his book "A Father's Story,"  where his son was enthralled by the gutted fish. After Dahmer's crimes were known, Lionel struggled not to see shades of the future in such incidents, though many children are naturally curious about death and the workings of the body. In the meantime, Dahmer remained devoted to his own pet dog, Frisky, and never considered killing any animal he knew from around the neighborhood.

He was the class clown in high school

For the documentary "Dahmer on Dahmer: A Serial Killer Speaks" (via NBC ), interviews were collected from those who knew Jeffrey Dahmer as a teenager. One of his high school classmates, Mike Kukral, volunteered his memories. He didn't remember any unsettling or dangerous qualities: Instead, he remembered Dahmer as a gifted mimic, who enjoyed pulling pranks at the mall for his friends' entertainment.

Dahmer was a tennis player and a clarinetist as a teenager, but it's as a class clown that many of Dahmer's teenage peers remembered him best. According to  "Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders,"  he was such a notorious prankster that to do a wild stunt at Revere High School (pictured) was to "do a Dahmer." Among his performances was a race up the escalator while running the wrong way, faking an allergy to free health food samples, sneaking into the honor society photo (he was blacked out of the yearbook), and talking his way into a tour of the U.S. vice president's office during a field trip to Washington, D.C.

Some found Dahmer's antics more concerning than amusing. As early as the first grade (per  The New York Times ), a teacher noted that Dahmer seemed isolated. Classmate Martha Schmidt told The New York Times that he never talked about what was going on at home but that, in hindsight, his pranks were an obvious demand for attention.

Jeffrey Dahmer started drinking at a young age

Jeffrey Dahmer's maternal grandfather had been an alcoholic, and he was hitting the bottle by age 14, according to his brother (via  "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer" ). He had been sliding into a state of apathy as he approached adolescence, and he considered alcohol the only way out. Per  The New York Times , when a high school classmate caught him drinking scotch in class, Dahmer told her that it was medicine, and another schoolmate once saw him with gin.

Other classmates knew him as a beer man: According to  "Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders,"  some of Dahmer's notorious high school pranks were done to get beer money or a six-pack. Between his acting out and his consumption of alcohol, Dahmer's grades fell, and he noticeably put on weight. 

As his parents' marriage collapsed, his drinking increased: By the time he enlisted in the army, he was a full-fledged alcoholic. His fellow soldiers stationed in Germany remembered him (via the Los Angeles Times ) as drinking until he passed out, and then drinking again once he was up.

He had an off the charts libido

Carl Wahlstrom, a forensic psychiatrist tasked with evaluating Jeffrey Dahmer ahead of his trial at the Milwaukee County Courthouse, came to one specific conclusion about him: his libido was "off the charts" from the time he was a young teenager (per A&E ). However, this could be said about many boys going through adolescents: Brian Masters noted in " The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer " that Dahmer's teenage habits of self-pleasure and ogling attractive bodies in pornography, without a thought for the person in the body, weren't anything unusual for his age group.

On the other hand, what was unusual was how much of Dahmer's time was taken up with sexual fantasies, and how intense they were. In an interview with the Chicago Reader , Wahlstrom said that at least half of Dahmer's adolescent days were spent fantasizing, a portion that grew to three-quarters by the time he reached adulthood, keeping him from managing day-to-day life. 

His fantasies also went beyond having sex. As early as 13, Dahmer daydreamed about murdering other young men and having his way with their corpses. He also fantasized about the inner workings of the human body, of opening it up and understanding it. In time, the two began to blend together.

Jeffrey Dahmer planned his first murder at age 13

Jeffrey Dahmer's early sexual fantasies, according to " The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer ," centered around the chests and abdomens of naked men. Rather than imagine intimacy with a person, Dahmer visualized coveting and holding the bodies themselves. Over time, these thoughts began to mingle with his other fantasies of dissecting bodies to examine their inner workings. 

When Dahmer was 13, both scenarios became attached to an attractive jogger who ran by the family home on a regular basis. Unsure of how to meet the jogger, convinced he wouldn't let Dahmer touch him, — and uninterested in gaining consent — Dahmer came up with a sinister plan.

One day, Dahmer waited by the side of the road, a baseball bat in hand: He was going to bludgeon the jogger, drag him into the woods, and have his way with the body. Whether he meant to kill the man is unclear: psychiatrist Carl Wahlstrom told the Chicago Reader that Dahmer may have been unsure of actually killing his victims. Either way, Dahmer never got the chance: On the day he was waiting for the jogger, he never came by, and Dahmer didn't make a second attempt to get him. His violent impulses would remain in his fantasy life for another few years yet .

Jeffrey Dahmer's depravities took hold during his teen years

Lionel Dahmer was probably right about the harbinger of horrors, because his son Jeffrey Dahmer told Stone Phillips in an interview (via The Shrine Of Criminology ) that as a kid he would ride his bike around looking for road kill. He said he took pleasure in cutting open the animals, adding that it started as a curiosity, then "something went wrong." 

By the time Dahmer was 14, he began having violent fantasies that intermingled with sexual fantasies. It was also during his teen years that his parents' marriage started falling apart, with Lionel and Joyce Dahmer often having explosive fights that would send Dahmer into the woods to hide out. 

He told Phillips, "I sort of lived in my own little fantasy world when things got too heated in the household. It was just my little world where I had control. Maybe I felt I had no control as a child or young adult, and that got mixed up with my sexuality and I ended up doing what I did. It was my way of feeling in complete control ... I had the final say ... I could completely control a person ... and keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them."

Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America's most notorious serial killers, murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991. Not until his capture was his taste for cannibalism and necrophilia discovered. Early life Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin . Jeffrey's father, Lionel, was a hard-working lab technician who held ultraconservative views. Joyce Dahmer assembled a scrapbook about her son that contained everything about his early life. Jeffrey's parents were ordinary, loving parents who wanted the best for their child. When Jeffrey was six years old, his mother gave birth to another son and named him David. The brothers were not close. Jeffrey played alone in a world of make believe. Shortly after Jeffrey turned eight, the family moved to Bath, Ohio . He was an extremely withdrawn boy, whose apparent vulnerability eventually attracted molestation by a neighbor. Signs of disturbance quickly developed, such as the impaled heads of small animals standing on tall sticks in the Dahmers' yard. As an adolescent, Jeffrey began to have thoughts of killing his first victim. Following an ugly divorce, Jeffrey's mother took David and moved away, leaving Jeffrey with his father. Unknown to her, he had moved away as well. At 17, Jeffrey suddenly had to fend for himself. First victim Dahmer committed the first murder at the age of 18. The victim was a young hitchhiker named Steven Hicks, whom Dahmer had taken home for "a drink and some laughs." Dahmer's post-arrest testimony revealed that he "didn't want him to leave." When Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer caved in his skull with a dumbbell, strangled him, and later cut his limbs into pieces and burned the torso. Dahmer gave college a try shortly after high school, but performed poorly. Acting on an earlier suggestion by his father, he enlisted in the U.S. Army for a six-year stint. He became a medic and was stationed in Germany. After only two years of service, Army officials were fed up with his abusive drinking habits and issued Dahmer a dishonorable discharge. In 1982, he moved to West Allis, Wisconsin, to live with his grandmother. Later, speculation arose about numerous young German men reported missing at the time that Dahmer had been stationed there. However, there was never any hard evidence to support the supposed connection. In the military, Dahmer seemed to rise above his appetite for butchery. However, military life had no effect on the disturbance that lived deep inside of him. Soon after leaving the military, Dahmer opted for a life of homosexual liaisons. Meanwhile, young males were reported missing throughout Wisconsin. Sickness takes over Nearly all of Dahmer's 17 victims were homosexual African-American men, whom he subjected to torture and various sexual assaults. His main objective for a victim was to gain his total submission, which led to Dahmer's proclivity for necrophilia. On September 15, 1987, Dahmer murdered Steven Tuomi in Milwaukee. While the case went unsolved, he butchered James Doxtator in 1988, followed by Richard Guerrero in March of the same year. By the time September 1988 rolled around, Jeffrey's grandmother had had enough of his odd hours and the persistently wretched odor from Dahmer's "experiments." He quickly located an apartment near the prime location of North 25th Street in Milwaukee. After serving 10 months of a 12-month sentence for sexual assault, Dahmer wasted no time in murdering Raymond Smith in July 1990, Ernest Miller, and David Thomas in September, Curtis Straughter in February 1991, Erro Lindsey in April, and Anthony Hughes in May. Dahmer's next victim was the brother of the boy he had molested in 1988. Konerak Sinthasomphone was tricked into entering Dahmer's apartment on May 16, 1991, and would not be seen until the following day. Sinthasomphone escaped after being heavily drugged. The 14-year-old boy ran naked and bleeding into the street in front of the apartment complex. Dahmer immediately ran outside and acted as if he were trying to comfort Sinthasomphone as the police arrived. A calm and collected Dahmer explained to the officers that he and his 19-year-old lover had been drinking a little too much. Sinthasomphone, not knowing English and in a semi-comatose state, was unable to tip off the officers. The two police officers escorted Kahmer and Sinthasomphone back inside. After glancing at Dahmer's immaculate apartment, the two officers left — despite a bad odor and wounds that had been inflicted on Sinthasomphone's head. That night, Dahmer murdered and dismembered Sinthasomphone, then kept his skull as a memento. The officers were later suspended, but reinstated after threatening civil suits to regain their positions. The murder, rape, and dismemberment continued: Matt Turner was murdered on June 30, 1991; Jeremiah Wenberger on July 7, Oliver Lacy on July 15, and Joseph Brandehoff on July 19. Arrest and prison The one who got away was Tracy Edwards. He had escaped from Dahmer's murder lair in the Oxford Apartments on July 22, with handcuffs attached to one wrist. He waved down a police car and directed the officers to Dahmer's apartment. Dahmer's arrest received national attention following discovery of the remains of 11 corpses, which included several decaying bodies in acid vats in his apartment. Severed heads were found in his refrigerator and an altar of candles and human skulls was found in his closet. On August 22, 1991, Dahmer was charged with 15 counts of murder. At his trial, which began on January 30, 1992, his attorney entered a plea of insanity. The jury rejected the plea, and two weeks later, found Dahmer guilty on all counts. He began to serve 15 consecutive life sentences at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. The Hicks murder, which occurred in Ohio, was appended after his imprisonment. The baptism While Dahmer was serving his 936-year sentence, Mary Mott of Arlington, Virginia, sent him a Bible correspondence course. When Dahmer completed his studies, he requested baptism. After some security issues were attended to, Dahmer was baptized by minister Roy Ratcliff of Madison . The sickness ends While in prison, Dahmer refused various offers of protective custody. On July 3, 1994, an inmate attempted to cut Dahmer's throat in the prison chapel, but the attack resulted in minor scratches. On November 28 of that year, Dahmer's life suddenly ended. While cleaning a bathroom across the hall from the prison gym, 25-year-old inmate Christopher Scarver detached an iron bar from an exercise machine and cracked Dahmer's skull with it, instantly killing him. (Directly after bludgeoning Dahmer, Scarver beat 37-year-old inmate Jesse Anderson to death.) Scarver's murderous attack on Dahmer was first thought to have been racially motivated because Scarver was a black man. Most of Dahmer's victims had been African American; however, after further investigation, Scarver was diagnosed as insane. He believed that he was "the son of God" and was acting on his "Father's" commands to kill Dahmer and the other inmate during cleaning duties. A memorial service was held for Dahmer, which was attended by his family, several Christians, and two sisters of one of his victims who had grown close to the Dahmer family since their brother's death.

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How did Jeffrey Dahmer die? What happened to the killer convicted of 17 gruesome murders.

Jeffrey Dahmer killed for more than a decade, a saga that ended in the early 1990s. So why do we still care so much about the serial killer today?

Netflix’s "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," is the sixth Dahmer project and came under fire for its graphic nature. It also spent a significant amount of time in Netflix’s top spot for most-watched content. Experts previously told USA TODAY a love of true crime has made us “so intrigued by horror and crime that we forget that not all of it is fictional.”

Who was Jeffrey Dahmer?

Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer who killed 17 boys and men from 1978 to 1991. His murders, which involved necrophilia and cannibalism, are immortalized because of their gruesome nature.

Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin but later moved to Bath Township, Ohio, where he would commit his first murder. Growing up in Ohio, Dahmer attended Bath Elementary, Eastview Junior High and Revere High School, according to the Cincinnati Enquirer. A former classmate described him as a “class clown, but not in a wholesome sense,” and that he would do “bizarre”  things “just for the shock value.”

Dahmer was fascinated with animal bones as a child and used to use acid to scrape the meat off dead animals , his stepmother told the Cleveland Plain Dealer in 1991. He also said he became obsessed with a jogger in the area and thought about attacking him with a baseball bat.

He killed his first victim, 18-year-old Steven Hicks, at his childhood home in 1978 days after graduating high school . Just after the murder, he was pulled over by officers for swerving. He had garbage bags with Hicks’ remains in his backseat, though Dahmer convinced the officers to let him go. He stored the body and disposed of it two years later. Police found remains buried at the property in their 1991 search . 

He was enrolled in Ohio State University but eventually dropped out, moved away from home and joined the military. He was discharged from the Army in 1981 because of alcoholism.

He moved in with his grandmother in 1982 and said he killed two men at her house between 1985 and 1988. 

Dahmer was arrested and convicted of second-degree sexual assault in 1988 for assaulting the brother of one of his future victims, which has been “regarded as a horrifying coincidence.” Judge William Gardner received significant criticism for his leniency in sentencing Dahmer to a year in a Milwaukee correctional facility. Dahmer’s father, Lionel, petitioned Gardner to keep Dahmer there longer so he could receive treatment for alcohol abuse and other urges, which he didn’t receive during his one-year stay. 

Dahmer was on parole for those charges when police found parts of 11 bodies in his apartment in 1991 after 32-year-old Tracy Edwards escaped Dahmer’s apartment and led police back to the scene. 

Fact vs. fiction: What's real, what's not in 'Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story'

How many people did Dahmer kill?

Dahmer killed 17 people, targeting mostly gay men and boys of color. His two youngest victims were 14 years old. 

Some family members of Dahmer’s victims spoke out after the release of Ryan Murphy’s “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” criticizing the Netflix series for centering Dahmer and not his victims.

“If you’re actually curious about the victims, my family (the Isbell’s) are pissed about this show,” Eric Perry, the cousin of Errol Lindsey tweeted in September 2022 . “It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what? How many movies/shows/documentaries do we need?”

These are the names of Dahmer’s victims:

• Steven Hicks, 18
• Steven Tuomi, 28
• Jamie Doxtator, 14
• Richard Guerrero, 25
• Anthony Sears, 24
• Ricky Beeks, 33
• Eddie Smith, 28
• Ernest Miller, 24
• David Thomas, 23
• Curtis Straughter, 18
• Errol Lindsey, 19
• Anthony Hughes, 31
• Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14
• Matt Turner, 20
• Jeremiah Weinberger, 23
• Oliver Lacy, 23
• Joseph Bradehoft, 25

Read our full story about the lives and legacies of the 17 victims here . 

What happened to Jeffrey Dahmer?

Dahmer confessed to 15 killings and drew a map for police as they searched his childhood home for the remains of his first victim. He was sentenced to 15 life sentences (936 years) in February 1992 and then a 16th after he pled guilty to his first murder. 

The only murder he was not charged with was Steven Tuomi's. Dahmer said he believed he killed Tuomi at the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee, but couldn’t remember the details. There wasn’t enough evidence to charge.

He was beaten to death in prison on Nov. 28, 1994, by fellow prisoner Christopher Scarver.

How old was Jeffrey Dahmer when he died?

Dahmer was 34 years old when he was killed. He died just two years after beginning his time at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Wisconsin. If he was alive today, Dahmer would be 63 years old and still serving his 16 life sentences. 

Who was the Zodiac killer?: It's still a mystery, but here's what experts think

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Jeffrey Dahmer

• Born May 21 , 1960 · Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA
• Died November 28 , 1994 · Portage, Wisconsin, USA (homicide)
• Birth name Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer
• The Milwaukee Monster
• Height 6′ 0½″ (1.84 m)
• One of the USA's most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was born and raised in Bath Township, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Akron. Much has been made of his childhood tendencies -including cases of cruelty to animals- but to outward appearances, at least, he seemed to be a normal child. As an adult he was always gainfully employed and was perceived as quiet and polite by co-workers. At the time of his arrest he had been working at a chocolate factory in Milwaukee and living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Dahmer's home was searched on July 22, 1991, after a young man fled his apartment and flagged down a police car. An investigation revealed that the apartment contained the remains of 11 young men, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. The bodies had been dismembered, and Dahmer confessed that he had cooked and eaten some of the remains. Asked why he committed such heinous acts, Dahmer told police that he killed because he was "lonely" and did not want his victims to leave him. He explained that he would meet potential victims in bars, shopping malls, or adult bookstores, and invite them back to his apartment where, in exchange for money or beer, he would photograph them naked. He would then drug the beer and, once the victim was unconscious, strangle and dismember the body. Dahmer's victims ranged in age from 14 to 33. On February 15, 1992, Dahmer was found guilty on 15 murder counts in Wisconsin. He was subsequently convicted of another killing in his Ohio hometown. Charges linking him to other murders were dropped for lack of evidence. He was sent to prison in Wisconsin with 15 mandatory life sentences to serve. The first year of his sentence, Dahmer was isolated from the general prison population for his own protection. In 1994 he was sent to a maximum security facility in Portage and was allowed some contact with the other inmates. He died after a brutal beating to death late night November 28, 1994, by Christopher Scarver , a fellow inmate who claimed God had instructed him to murder Jeffrey Dahmer. Even after Dahmer's death, legal battles continue over his estate. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars in restitution. Those families have since been trying to gain control of the contents of Dahmer's apartment, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose bodies and the refrigerator where he stored his victims' hearts. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Sujit R. Varma
• Parents Lionel Dahmer Joyce Dahmer Shari Dahmer
• Relatives David Dahmer (Sibling) Catherine Dahmer (Grandparent)
• Long blond hair
• Menacing pale blue eyes
• Calm demeanor and every-man appearance
• Tall and slender frame
• Several sources claim that psychiatrists and legal experts estimated Dahmer's IQ to be around 145, which places him in the range of borderline genius. However, in the book "The Quest for the Nazi Personality" Dahmer's IQ is said to have been 121 (superior range).
• On the morning of 11/28/94 he was attacked and killed by a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, Portage, WI.
• His favorite movies were The Exorcist (1973) , Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977) and The Exorcist III (1990) . One of his surviving victims recounts seeing him watch one of the films repeatedly, in a trance-like state.
• A resident in Dahmer's hometown was happy that he was killed. When she was interviewed, she said, "I'm gonna send him a thank- you card" (referring to the man who killed Dahmer, Christopher Scarver ).
• Tracy Edwards would have been his 18th victim but escaped on 7/22/91. His escape led to police arresting Dahmer and uncovering the murders he committed.
• When I was a little kid I was just like anybody else.
• I don't care if I live or die. Go ahead and kill me.
• If a person doesn't think there is a God to be accountable to, then-then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges? That's how I thought anyway. I always believed the theory of evolution as truth, that we all just came from the slime. When we, when we died, you know, that was it, there is nothing ...

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Some Lesser Known Facts About Jeffrey Dahmer

• Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer and sex offender who murdered seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of various body parts of the victims. Dahmer was arrested in 1991 and sentenced to life imprisonment. On 28 November 1994, while Dahmer was imprisoned in Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate named Christopher Scarver.

Jeffrey Dahmer as an infant with his father, Lionel Dahmer, in 1960

• Jeffrey was diagnosed with a double hernia shortly before his fourth birthday. According to Lionel, Jeffrey became strangely subdued after his double hernia surgery.
• One day, when Jeffrey was four, Lionel noticed a foul smell coming from beneath their house at Pammel Court. When Lionel searched for the source of the unbearable odour he discovered a large pile of bones accumulated under the house. This was the first instance where Lionel noticed Dahmer was “oddly thrilled” by the dead animals and the sound of the bones. Jeffrey became preoccupied with playing with the bones, which he referred to as “like fiddlesticks.” Thereafter, Jeffrey occasionally started searching for bones beneath and around the family home. He would also explore the bodies of live animals to discover where their bones were located.
• Soon, he entered first grade, and Lionel became busy with his university studies. Meanwhile, Jeffrey’s hypochondriac mother, Joyce, started suffering from depression. She demanded constant attention from Lionel and spent an increasing amount of time in bed. Once, Joyce attempted suicide using Equanil, a medication to reduce anxiety. Therefore, neither Lionel nor Joyce devoted much time to their son. Years later, in his confession, Jeffrey recalled the feeling of being “unsure of the solidity of the family” when he was young. He witnessed extreme tension and countless arguments between his parents.
• The family moved to Doylestown, Ohio in October 1966.  In December 1966, Joyce gave birth to her second son. In May 1968, the family moved to Bath Township, Summit County, Ohio. The home stood in one and a half acres of woodland, with a small hut only a short walk from the house. Dahmer, who had become low-spirited after his double hernia surgery, became withdrawn after the birth of his younger brother and the family’s frequent relocations.
• Growing up in his Bath Township home, Jeffrey spent his leisure time collecting large insects such as dragonflies and moths and the skeletons of small animals like chipmunks and squirrels. He would preserve animal remains in jars of formaldehyde. Lionel believed that Dahmer’s strange activities were attributed to scientific curiosity, and he taught his son how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones. Soon he also started collecting dead animals—including roadkill, which he would dissect and bury beside the hut, with the skulls occasionally placed atop makeshift crosses.
• Dahmer realized that he was gay when he reached puberty
• By the age of 14, he had not only begun drinking beer but hard alcohol in broad daylight. He would conceal his liquor inside the jacket he wore to school.
• He began fantasizing about domination and controlling a completely submissive male partner during his mid-teens. These fantasies slowly developed and became intertwined with his leisure for dissection.

Jeffrey Dahmer (left) and an unknown classmate in Revere High School, Ohio in 1978

• 1978 was an eventful year for Dahmer, with his high school graduation in May, his first murder in June, and his parents’ divorce in July.

A picture of Steven Hicks, the first victim of Jeffrey Dahmer

• Lionel discovered that Joyce had engaged in a brief affair in September 1977 following which they decided to file for a divorce. Lionel moved out of the house in early 1978. In the spring of 1978, Joyce and David moved out of the family home to live with relatives in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, meanwhile, Dahmer, who had just turned 18, remained in the family home.
• The divorce was finalized on 24 July 1978  and Joyce was given custody of Jeffrey’s younger brother, David. In the same year, Lionel got married to Shari.
• Six weeks after the murder of Hicks, Dahmer’s father and his fiancée returned home and enrolled Dahmer at Ohio State University (OSU), hoping that he would major in business. However, his persistent alcohol abuse and failing grades led him to drop out of OSU.
• In January 1979, on his father’s urging, Dahmer joined the United States Army. After receiving his basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama he was trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. He was deployed to Baumholder in West Germany on 13 July 1979, where he served as a combat medic in the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division. Throughout his service, he was frequently found to be intoxicated. One day, an instance of insubordination resulted in his entire platoon being punished for which Dahmer was severely beaten by his fellow recruits. Finally, in March 1981, he was deemed unsuitable for military service and was discharged from it receiving an honourable discharge. His debriefing took place at Fort Jackson, South Carolina and he was provided with a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country.
• After his debriefing, he went to Miami Beach, Florida as he felt he could not return home to face his father. There, he rented a room in a motel and started working at a deli. After a while, he was kicked out of the motel for non-payment of rent. Apparently, he used of spend all of his income on alcohol.

From left to right, David Dahmer (blurred face), Jeffrey Dahmer’s grandmother, Lionel Dahmer, and Jeffrey Dahmer

• On 8 August 1982, shortly before losing his job, Dahmer was arrested for indecent exposure before a crowd on the south side of the Coliseum at Wisconsin State Fair Park.
• After his termination from Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center, he lived on whatever money his grandmother gave him. In January 1985, Dahmer secured a job as a mixer at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory’s night shift.
• One day, Dahmer was propositioned by a man while sitting in the West Allis Public Library. Dahmer did not respond to the suggestive gestures, but the incident reminded him of the fantasies of control and dominance he had as a teenager.

I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of [as] people.”

• Then, he began to use hotel rooms for the same. He maintained an adequate supply of sleeping pills by swaying doctors into believing that he required the tablets to adjust to his night shift at the chocolate factory.
• On 8 September 1986, Dahmer was arrested for lewd and lascivious behaviour as he masturbated in the presence of two 12-year-old boys near Kinnickinnic River. On 10 March 1987, he was sentenced to one year of probation with instructions to undergo counselling.
• Dahmer was residing with his grandmother in West Allis when he killed his second victim. He met a 25-year-old man named Steven Tuomi at a bar and persuaded him to return to the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee, where the two spent the night. The following morning Dahmer awoke to find that Tuomi was dead. Tuomi’s chest was “crushed in” and “black and blue” with bruises. In his confession, Dahmer revealed that He had no intention of killing Tuomi. He simply intended to drug Tuomi and lie beside him to explore his body. Dahmer purchased a large suitcase to transport the body to his grandmother’s residence. There, he dismembered Tuomi’s body to easily dispose it of while keeping his severed head. Dahmer boiled the head in a mixture of Soilax to retain the skull. For a while, he used it as a stimulus for masturbation. However, when the skull was rendered too brittle by the bleaching process, he disposed of it.
• After Tuomi’s killing, Dahmer stopped controlling his murderous compulsions. Two months after the Tuomi killing, Dahmer picked his next victim, a 14-year-old Native American male prostitute named James Doxtator. Dahmer lured him to his home with an offer of $50 to pose for nude pictures.
• After Doxtator, Dahmer killed a 22-year-old bisexual man named Richard Guerrero outside a gay bar called The Phoenix.
• In September 1988, he moved out of his grandmother’s home into a one-bedroom apartment at 808 North 24th Street.
• Two days later, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy whom he had lured to his home on the pretext of posing nude for photographs.
• Dahmer’s fifth victim, Anthony Sears, was a mixed-race 24-year-old model. Dahmer met him at a gay bar on 25 March 1989. Sears was the first victim whose body parts Jeffrey permanently retained; he preserved Sears’ head and genitalia in acetone.
• On 23 May 1989, Dahmer was sentenced to probation for five years and one year in the House of Correction, with permissible work release. He was also required to register as a sex offender.
• On 14 May 1990, Dahmer moved into Apartment 213, 924 North 25th Street. He took Sears’ mummified head and genitals with him.
• One week after moving into his new apartment, Dahmer targeted his next victim, a 32-year-old male prostitute named Raymond Smith. In the same year, he also murdered Edward Smith, Ernest Miller, and David Thomas.
• After Thomas’ killing, Dahmer did not murder anyone for almost five months. Although between October 1990 and February 1991, he had almost five unsuccessful attempts to lure men to his apartment.
• Dahmer met his next victim, a 17-year-old named Curtis Straughter, at a bus stop near Marquette University in February 1991.
• On 7 April 1991, he killed a 19-year-old heterosexual boy named Errol Lindsey.
• With Lindsey, Dahmer started a new experiment on his victims. Dahmer would drill a hole in his victim’s skulls and inject hydrochloric acid through it hoping to induce a permanent, unresistant, submissive state in them. Although it proved fatal, he continued to practice it.
• Fellow residents of the Oxford Apartments repeatedly began to complain to the building’s manager, Sopa Princewill, about the unbearable odours originating from Dahmer’s apartment. The residents also highlighted the frequent sounds of falling objects and chainsaws. At first, he said that the foul smells originated from his broken freezer, as the contents became spoiled. Later, he said that the odour was coming from his dead tropical fish and that he would take care of the matter.
• He almost got caught for killing a 14-year-old teenager named Konerak Sinthasomphone, who he picked up on 26 May 1991 from Wisconsin Avenue. The youth belonged to the Lao community. After luring him into the apartment for money and nude polaroid pictures, Dahmer drugged him into unconsciousness. Dahmer drilled a hole into his skull and injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe. Then, he drank several beers lying alongside Sinthasomphone and fell asleep. Then, he left his apartment to drink at a bar and purchase more alcohol. While returning to his apartment in the early morning hours on 27 May, Dahmer found Sinthasomphone sitting naked on the corner of 25th and State with three distressed young women standing near him. He was babbling in Lao. Dahmer unsuccessfully attempted to walk Sinthasomphone to his apartment. He tried to convince the women that he was Sinthasomphone’s friend, but they refused to believe Dahmer. The women called 9-1-1 and accompanied Sinthasomphone until the police arrived. Dahmer tricked the police into believing that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend and that he had drunk too much following a dispute. The women tried to show the police that Sinthasomphone had blood on his testicles and that he was also bleeding from his rectum. They highlighted that previously Sinthasomphone seemingly struggled against Dahmer’s attempts to walk him to his apartment. Regardless, the police told the women to “butt out” and dropped Sinthasomphone at Dahmer’s apartment. There, Dahmer proved that Sinthasomphone was his boyfriend by showing them two semi-nude Polaroid pictures he had taken of Sinthasomphone the previous evening. When the police left, Dahmer again injected hydrochloric acid into Sinthasomphone’s brain, which proved fatal.
• Apart from the above-mentioned victims, the list also includes Tony Anthony Hughes, Jeremiah Benjamin Weinberger, Matt Turner, Oliver Lacy, and Joseph Bradehoft.

A collage of pictures of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims

Tracy Edwards, a survivor of Jeffrey Dahmer

After a brief conversation, Dahmer requested Edwards to turn his head and view his tropical fish, whereupon Dahmer placed a handcuff upon his wrist. Then, he took Edwards into the bedroom to pose for nude pictures. In the bedroom, Dahmer brandished a knife to intimidate Edwards, while The Exorcist III played on TV. In an attempt to appease Dahmer, Edwards unbuttoned his shirt meanwhile convincing him to remove the handcuffs and put the knife away. Dahmer flirtingly placed his head on Edwards’ chest, listened to his heartbeat while pressing the knife against him, and said that he wanted to eat his heart. For the following few hours, Edwards continuously prevented Dahmer from attacking. Edwards comforted Dahmer saying that he was his friend and that he was not going to escape. Simultaneously, Edwards made up his mind to escape the apartment by either jumping off the window or running through the unlocked front door upon the next available opportunity. He persuaded Dahmer to hang out in the living room as there was air conditioning there. After spending five hours in the apartment, Edwards stumbled upon the opportunity to escape when he observed that Dahmer had a momentary lapse of concentration. When Edwards rose from the couch to use the bathroom, he noted that Dahmer was not holding his handcuffs, whereupon he punched Dahmer in the face, knocking him off balance, and ran out the front door. Edwards flagged down two Milwaukee police officers, Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller, at the corner of North 25th Street at 11:30 pm. He narrated the incident to them and requested them to remove the handcuff. However, the officers’ keys failed to unlock the handcuffs, hence, Edwards had to go back to Dahmer’s apartment along with the police. Dahmer invited the police and Edwards inside and gave them the key to the handcuffs, retrieving it from a dresser in his bedroom. There, officer Mueller discovered Polaroid pictures of human bodies in various stages of dismemberment in a drawer. When Dahmer noticed that Mueller was holding several of his Polaroids, he fought the officers trying to resist the arrest, but the officers quickly overpowered him.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s mugshot photos

Officials carrying down Dahmer’s 57-gallon drum from his apartment in July 1991

I suppose, in an odd way, it made me feel they were even more a permanent part of me.”

Myself … It was a place where I could feel at home.”

An illustration by Jeffrey Dahmer depicting the private altar he had been planning to create using the preserved seven skulls at the time of his July 1991 arrest

• Dahmer was charged with 15 counts of first-degree murders of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin. Although Dahmer was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and psychotic disorder, he was considered to be legally sane during his trial. He pleaded guilty but insane and was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment on 17 February 1992; Wisconsin abolished the death penalty in 1853. Later, he was sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for his first homicide, which he committed in Ohio in 1978. He was imprisoned in the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage.
• Dahmer was placed in solitary confinement for the first year of his imprisonment. This was due to concerns for his physical safety should he come into contact with fellow inmates. After a year, he was transferred to a less secure unit, where he was assigned a two-hour daily work of cleaning the toilet block. Later he was also assigned to clean the prison gymnasium. Dahmer earned 24 cents an hour as a prison gymnasium janitor.
• Once he lost his job as a gymnasium janitor because he imitated a prison employee on the telephone after which he was again sent to solitary confinement for more than a month.
• Interestingly, the serial killer received ample correspondence from individuals across the world during his imprisonment. The prison records disclosed that he received more than $12,000 from his letter writers. One woman said she wanted to teach Jeffrey about Jesus, and sent him $350, along with some Bible literature. Another sent $50 to enable Dahmer to buy cigarettes, stamps, and envelopes.

Not because I was angry with them, not because I hated them, but because I wanted to keep them with me.”

In another interview, he said,

I just wanted to have the person under my complete control, not having to consider their wishes, being able to keep them there as long as I wanted.”

• On 3 July 1994, a fellow inmate, Osvaldo Durruthy, attempted to cut Dahmer’s throat with a razor when Dahmer was sitting in the prison chapel after the weekly church service was concluded. The razor was concealed in a toothbrush. Dahmer received superficial wounds but wasn’t seriously injured.

God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead.”

Christopher Scarver, the murderer of Jeffrey Dahmer

• Numerous literary works have been published on Dahmer’s life including the books Milwaukee Massacre: Jeffrey Dahmer and the Milwaukee Murders (1992), A Father’s Story by Lionel Dahmer (1994), Dark Journey, Deep Grace: Jeffrey Dahmer’s Story of Faith by Lindy Adams and Roy Ratcliff (2006), Jeffrey Dahmer: A Terrifying True Story of Rape, Murder and Cannibalism by Jack Rosewood (2017), and Inside the Mind of Jeffrey Dahmer: The Cannibal Killer by Christopher Berry-Dee (2022). Netflix released Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (2022) and Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (2022) which chronicled the serial killer’s life. His life also inspired the theatrical productions The Law of Remains (1992) by Reza Abdoh and Jeffrey Dahmer: Guilty but Insane (2013) written by Joshua Hitchens and directed by Ryan Walter.

Demolition continued on the Oxford Apartments, 924 N. 25th Street, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, US, where Jeffrey Dahmer lived and committed many of his murders

Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer’s Ohio Home

• A civic group called Milwaukee Civic Pride raised funds in 1996 to purchase and destroy possessions of Dahmer. The group pledged $407,225 for the purchase of Dahmer’s estate. The amount included a $100,000 gift from Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber. Thereupon, Dahmer’s possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

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