Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. Jeffrey was the first born child of two, his brother David was born seven years later. In 1966, the Dahmer family moved to Akron, Ohio because Jeff’s father Lionel obtained a job as a chemist. Jeffrey had a relatively normal childhood except for the fact that he was unusually shy. And when he had a surgery for a double hernia, his isolation grew. He also had a fascination for dead animals which was unknown until his trial in 1992 (www.crimelibrary.com). Between the ages of 12 and 14 he actually collected dead animals and would cut them open to see the insides.
During high school Jeffrey had a few friends, received average grades, played tennis and even worked on the school newspaper. When he was eighteen his parents divorced and Jeff stayed with his father while his mother moved away. During that period he took his first victim. After he graduated high school in 1978, Jeffrey took his first victim. Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker named Stephen Hicks in Ohio and killed him later that night by bludgeoning him to death with a barbell. Later that year Dahmer attended one semester at The Ohio State University where he flunked out. By the end of 1978 he enlisted in the Army and was stationed in Germany (www.crimelibrary.com).
After several years in the Army Dahmer was discharged for habitual drunkenness. A few years after returning to Ohio he was arrested for disorderly conduct. After the arrest he went to live in Wisconsin with his grandmother. Then in 1986 he was convicted of masturbating in front of two boys and received one year of probation. Almost a year later Dahmer would take his second victim, Steven Toumi in September of 1987. This victim (as well as the others) was picked up in a gay bar. Dahmer lured the victims by offering them some money to pose for pictures or just to go and have a few beers.
Once back at Dahmer’s, he would drug the victims by putting sedatives in their drinks. He would then strangle them, masturbate on the body and/or have sex with the corpse. He would then dismember the body and dispose of it. Dahmer would take pictures of the corpses and usually kept body parts. Yes, Dahmer was a cannibal and did eat some of his victims flesh and organs. But the extent is unknown because the media supposedly hyped up the information. Although flesh and human heads were found in his freezer, so we do know it did occur. As a matter of fact, he stated he ate the victims in order to bring them back to life through him. Yet he never tortured a single victim. It was about being dead and in complete control that turned him on sexually. Of the seventeen murder victims twelve occurred between 1990 and 1991.
Dahmer was caught when one of the “would be victims” ran out of the apartment with handcuffs on. The police went to Dahmer’s apartment and found pictures of deceased naked men and then some human heads in the refrigerator. Of the seventeen victims only one was Caucasian, one was Laotian, one was Hispanic and the rest were black. However, according to Dahmer he did not kill out of hate or racism. It was the sexual aspect of complete control. Dahmer admitted that he had an overwhelming desire for passive mates. In 1992 Dahmer plead guilty but mentally insane. Well that did not sit well with the jury. The jury reached a verdict within five hours. Dahmer was guilty of fifteen murders and was found to not be insane. He was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms. That equals to 957 years in prison. He was sent to The Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin to carry out his sentence. However, on November 28, 1994 Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer would be killed by another inmate while on work detail. Christopher Scarver a black male in prison for first degree murder had bludgeoned Dahmer to death; he was pronounced death at 9:11 a.m.
Throughout his life Jeffrey Dahmer was a shy but very manipulative, good-looking, and cunning man. He fit a portion of the usual serial killer profile, but not a big portion by any measure. Some people say he was sexually abused when he was ten years old although I only found one article that stated anything about sexual abuse. He did not have an extremely controlling and domineering mother. And the majority of his victims were black when he is white. Serial killers usually stay within their own race. Any way you look at it Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer and although he knew what he did was wrong, he must have had some form of mental illness.
