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1960-1994
Who Was Jeffrey Dahmer?
Jeffrey Dahmer was an American serial killer who took the lives of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Over the course of more than 13 years, Dahmer sought out his victims, mostly Black men, at gay bars, malls, and bus stops, lured them home with promises of money or sex, and gave them alcohol laced with drugs before strangling them to death. He would then engage in sex acts with the corpses before dismembering them and disposing of them, often keeping their skulls or genitals as souvenirs. He frequently took photos of his victims at various stages of the murder process, so he could recollect each act afterward and relive the experience. Dahmer was captured in 1991 and sentenced to 16 life terms. He was killed by fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994.
Quick Facts
FULL NAME: Jeffrey Dahmer
BORN: May 21, 1960
DIED: November 28, 1994
BIRTHPLACE: Milwaukee, Wisconsin
ASTROLOGICAL SIGN: Gemini
HEIGHT: 6’0″ or 185 cm
Childhood and Family
Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was described as an energetic and happy child until the age of 4, when a traumatic and painful recovery following surgery to correct a double hernia seemed to effect a change in the boy. Noticeably subdued, he became increasingly withdrawn following the birth of his younger brother and the family’s frequent moves. By the time, Dahmer was of school age, the family had moved to Ohio.
From a young age, Dahmer developed a fascination with animal bones and studied how to be clean and preserve them. As a child, he collected large insects and the skulls of small animals, preserved in jars of formaldehyde, according to the Brian Masters book The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.
By his early teens, he was disengaged, tense, and largely friendless. Dahmer claims that his compulsions toward necrophilia and murder began around the age of 14, but it appears that the breakdown of his parents’ marriage and their acrimonious divorce a few years later might have been the catalyst for turning these thoughts into actions. His parents’ numerous arguments and the constant tension in the house made Dahmer question the solidity of his family and life, according to Masters.
Dahmer also started drinking at age 14, and by the time of his first killing at age 18, his alcohol consumption had spun out of control. He dropped out of Ohio State University after one quarter term, and his recently remarried father insisted that he join the Army. Dahmer enlisted in late December 1978 and was posted to Germany shortly thereafter.
His drinking problem persisted, and in early 1981, the Army discharged him. Although German authorities would later investigate possible connections between Dahmer and murders that took place in the area during that time, it is not believed that he took any victims while serving in the Armed Forces.
Following his discharge, Dahmer returned home to Ohio. An arrest later that year for disorderly conduct prompted his father to send Dahmer to live with his grandmother Catherine Dahmer in Wisconsin, but his alcohol problem continued, and he was arrested the following summer for indecent exposure. He was arrested once again in 1986 when two boys accused him of masturbating in front of them. He received a one-year probationary sentence.
First Four Victims
Dahmer murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991. 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. He lured them to his home with promises of money or sex, then strangled them to death. He engaged in sex acts with their bodies and kept body parts and photos as souvenirs. His most popular nicknames—the Milwaukee Cannibal and the Milwaukee Monster—reflect his heinous crimes.
Dahmer’s first murder occurred just after graduating from Revere High School, in June 1978, when he picked up an 18-year-old hitchhiker named Steven Hicks and took him home to his parents’ house. Dahmer proceeded to get the young man drunk, and when Hicks tried to go, Dahmer said “I didn’t want him to leave.” Dahmer killed him by striking him in the head and strangling him with a barbell. Dahmer dismembered Hicks’ corpse, packed the body parts in plastic bags, and buried them behind his parents’ home. He later exhumed the remains, crushed the bones with a sledgehammer, and scattered them across a wooded ravine.
It wasn’t until September 1987 that Dahmer took his second victim, Steven Tuomi. They checked into a hotel room and drank, and Dahmer eventually awoke to find Tuomi dead, with no memory of the previous night’s activities. He later told police he intended to drug Tuomi but not kill him, and he “could not believe this had happened.” Dahmer bought a large suitcase to transport Tuomi’s body to his grandmother’s basement, where he dismembered and masturbated on the corpse before disposing of the remains. He kept Tuomi’s head, which was wrapped in a blanket, for weeks after the murder.
Dahmer later said that after Tuomi’s killing, his “obsession [with killing] went into full swing” and he “didn’t even try to stop it after that.” He killed two more victims at his grandmother’s house before she forced him to move out in 1988. She had no knowledge of his crimes but was tired of his drinking, his tendency to bring young men to her house, and the foul smells occasionally coming from her basement, according to Masters.
Sexual Assault Charges and Sentence
In September 1989, about a year after moving into his new apartment, Dahmer lured a 13-year-old Laotian boy to his house, claiming he wanted to take nude photos of him. This 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. Dahmer found Sears particularly attractive and later said he did not want to “lose him,” and so Sears became the first victim from whom Dahmer kept preserved body parts for a long period of time, mummifying his head and genitals, according to Masters.
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, 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.
Last 13 Victims
Over the next two years, Dahmer would kill 12 more people, bringing his total victim count to 17. His first victim during this time was a prostitute named Raymond Smith, whom Dahmer lured to his apartment for sex, gave a drink laced with sleeping tablets, and then strangled. Dahmer took photos of his body in suggestive positions before dismembering him. With his next victim Edward Smith, Dahmer accidentally destroyed his skull while trying to dry it in the oven, making it explode. He later told police he felt “rotten” about Smith’s murder because was unable to keep anything from his body, making it feel like a true waste, according to Masters.
Dahmer started developing rituals as he progressed with his killings, experimenting with chemical means of disposal and often consuming the flesh of his victims. Dahmer also attempted crude lobotomies: He drilled into the skull of his 11th victim, Errol Lindsey, while he was still alive and injected him with muriatic acid. Dahmer hoped this would place Lindsey into a permanent submissive state, but Lindsey awoke during the procedure and said, “I have a headache; what time is it?” so Dahmer strangled him.
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 Black community—that the boy was his 19-year-old lover. In fact, the boy was 14 years old and was, unbeknownst to Dahmer, the younger brother of the Laotian teen Dahmer had molested three years earlier.
The police escorted Dahmer and the boy home. Clearly not wishing to become embroiled in a homosexual domestic disturbance, they took only a cursory look around before leaving. According to Dahmer, an officer “peeked his head around in the bedroom but didn’t really take a good look,” and then left after telling Dahmer to “take care” of the boy, according to Masters. Once they left the scene, Dahmer injected hydrochloric acid into the boy’s brain, killing him. Had the police conducted even a basic search, they would have found the body of Dahmer’s 12th victim, Tony Hughes.
Dahmer killed four more men before he was finally arrested. One of his last victims was Oliver Lacy, 24, whose body Dahmer had sex with before dismembering the corpse. He kept Lacy’s head and heart in his refrigerator, and his skeleton in a freezer.
Dahmer’s Arrest
Dahmer’s killing spree ended when he was arrested on July 22, 1991. The body parts found in Dahmer’s refrigerator and Polaroid photographs of his victims became inextricably associated with his notorious killing spree.
Two Milwaukee police officers were led to Dahmer when they picked up Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old Black man who was wandering the streets with handcuffs 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, after which he muttered the words, “For what I did, I should be dead,” according to Masters.
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 later said he had planned to built a private altar from his victims’ skulls, adorned with incense sticks and globe lights. He hoped the altar would be “A place where I could feel at home,” according to Masters.
Trial and Imprisonment
Dahmer’s trial began in January 1992. Given that the majority of Dahmer’s victims were Black, there were considerable racial tensions, 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 Black person 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. 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.
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.
Dahmer reportedly adjusted well to prison life at the Columbia Correctional Institution in south-central Wisconsin, though 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.
Death
Dahmer was killed on November 28, 1994, by his fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver.
In accordance with his inclusion in regular work details, Dahmer was assigned to work with two other convicted murderers, Scarver and Jesse Anderson. 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 died from his injuries days later.
A prison guard claimed that shortly after the murders, Scarver, who was believed to be schizophrenic, said “God told me to do it.” In 2015, 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 by leaving them alone. Catherine Lacy, the mother of Dahmer’s victim Oliver Lacy, said his death brought her no closure: “The hurt is worse now, because he’s not suffering like we are.”
Jeffrey Dahmer’s House
In 1996, following Dahmer’s death, a group of Milwaukee businessmen raised more than $400,000 to purchase the items he used for crimes, 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.
In August 2012, nearly two decades after his death, it was reported that Dahmer’s 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.” The house was removed from the market is believed to still be owned by Butler, as of 2022.
Pop Culture Depictions
Several well-known books have been written about Dahmer including, The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare (1991) by Donald A. Davis and The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer (1993) by Brian Masters. Dahmer was portrayed by Jeremy Renner in the film Dahmer (2002), which featured Bruce Davison as Dahmer’s father, Lionel. The film My Friend Dahmer (2017), starring Ross Lynch in the title role, was based upon a graphic novel by cartoonist John “Derf” Backderf, who had been friends with Dahmer in high school.
The documentary film The Jeffery Dahmer Files (2012) included fictionalized reenactments of Dahmer’s life (with Andrew Swant portraying him) along with real-life interviews with people involved with his cases. Several other documentaries have been produced about Dahmer as well. In September 2022, Netflix released a ten-part anthology series called Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Co-created by American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy, the series starred Evan Peters as Dahmer and highlighted incidents in which Dahmer was nearly apprehended before his arrest, with a particular focus on how police incompetence allowed him to extend his killing spree.
Quotes
- I know 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 each day to ask for their forgiveness when the hurt goes away, if ever. I have seen their tears, and if I could give my life right now to bring their loved ones back, I would do it.
- I should have stayed with God. I tried, and I failed and created a holocaust.
- This has never been a case of trying to get free. I didn’t ever want freedom. Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
- I feel so bad for what I did to those poor families, and I understand their rightful hate.
- I take all the blame for what I did.
- I wanted to find out just what it was that caused me to be so bad and evil.
- The subtleties of social life were beyond my grasp. When children liked me, I did not know why. Nor could I formulate a plan for winning their affection. I simply didn’t know how things worked with other people. … And try as I might, I couldn’t make other people seem less strange and unknowable. [from The New School Psychology Bulletin; Volume 5, No. 1, 2007]
- What I’ve done has cut both ways. It’s hurt the victim, and it’s hurt me. … I don’t know what I was thinking when I did it. [from The New School Psychology Bulletin; Volume 5, No. 1, 2007]
- Maybe I was born too late. Maybe I was an Aztec. [from Albany Times Union; published on February 5, 1992]
- [The] world already has enough misery in it without my adding more to it. [from Albany Times Union; published on August 7, 1991]
- It was not a case of hating them. It was just the only way I knew of to keep them there and keep them with me. [from The Scotsman; published on August 15, 2000]
- It gave me a sense of total control and increased the sexual thrill, I guess, knowing I had total control of them and that I could do with them as I wished. [from The Scotsman; published on August 15, 2000]
- It’s hard for me to believe a human being could do what I have done, but I know I did it. [from Albany Times Union; published on February 1, 1992]
- I do not blame the police, the courts, or the probation system. I failed the system, it did not fail me. [from Sunday Times; published on July 28, 1991]
- I guess I’ve really done it this time, I’m sorry. [from Sunday Times; published on April 17, 1994]
- God told me to do it. [from Albany Times Union; published on December 16, 1994]
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Colin McEvoy joined the Biography.com staff in 2023, and before that had spent 16 years as a journalist, writer, and communications professional. He is the author of two true crime books: Love Me or Else and Fatal Jealousy. He is also an avid film buff, reader, and lover of great stories.
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