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Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer who killed 17 men between 1978 and 1991 (with the majority of the murders occurring in 1991). His name has almost become synonymous with serial killer.
Dahmer was born to a fundamentalist father in Milwaukee. At age eight, his family moved to Bath, Ohio. From his earliest youth he was extremely shy. He collected dead animals and showed signs of necrophilia, but this was revealed only at his trial. He was also a closet alcoholic, and suffered from extremely low self-esteem. His parents divorced when he was in his teens. He committed his first murder aged 18 when his boyfriend opted to leave him. Later on he went to college, but performed poorly. His father sent him to a boot camp, and he appeared to recover some vitality, but shortly after he began the murder spree that led to his arrest.
Most of his victims were young, homosexual black men whom Dahmer subjected to sexual assaults before murdering them. He achieved notoriety after his arrest following the discovery of his victims' decaying bodies in acid vats in his apartment, including severed heads in his refrigerator, an altar of candles, and human skulls. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had also practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Dahmer admitted to eating the biceps of his eighth victim.
The explanation offered by Dahmer himself for his behaviour was that he was attempting to remove the free will from his victims so that they would stay with him. Dahmer had experimented with removing sections of skull and pouring various chemicals into the brain cavity to create lobotomized "automata", compliant to his wishes and acquiescent to his sexual desires.
Dahmer had a history of abandonment and feared loss and further social upheaval. It is thought that these feelings, filtered through his mental illness, created an "internal logic" that justified his actions to himself. Parallels with the British serial killer Dennis Nilsen are often drawn.
Many people were later outraged to find out that Milwaukee, Wisconsin police returned one of Dahmer's naked, dazed, bleeding, yet still alive victims, Laotian teenager Konerak Sinthasomphone, to Dahmer after he had managed to escape from his captor. Sinthasomphone did not speak English, and Dahmer convinced officers that he was his adult homosexual lover. Later that night, Dahmer dismembered Sinthasomphone and kept his skull as a souvenir. Coincidentally this was the older brother of the boy Dahmer molested in 1988. The two police officers were later terminated from the Milwaukee Police Department.
On July 22, 1991, with handcuffs still attached to one wrist, another man, Tracy Edwards, was able to successfully escape from Dahmer's apartment and flag down a police squad car. Police were led back to Dahmer's apartment, where the remains of eleven victims were found. Dahmer reportedly scuffled with police trying to arrest him as the remains were being discovered. After being charged with fifteen counts of murder he entered a plea of guilty but insane. On February 17, 1992, a court rejected his plea of insanity and sentenced Dahmer to fifteen consecutive life sentences, which required a minimum of 936 years imprisonment (Wisconsin does not have capital punishment).
Dahmer served his time in Portage, Wisconsin at the Columbia Correctional Institute. While there, fellow inmate Christopher Scarver, a double murderer, beat to death Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, in the prison gymnasium. Scarver beat the two men to death using a lead pipe. (While it is widely believed Dahmer was found dead with a mop handle in his eye socket, this rumor is false.) Scarver stated that he was the "son of God", and was acting out his "father's" commands to kill Dahmer and the other inmate during cleaning duties. Some believe, however, that race played a role: most of Dahmer's victims were black and Anderson killed his wife and blamed it on a black man, while Scarver had killed two white men. Shortly before his death, Dahmer had been rebaptised into Christianity.
His father refused to grant permission for his son's brain to be studied for scientific purposes; though willing to help the case study, he declined on religious grounds.
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