Top 10 Serial Killers: Jeffrey Dahmer

9th in the series

Jeffrey Dahmer

“The Milwaukee Cannibal”

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin in 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. His family moved to Bath, Ohio, where at age 8, another boy molested him. Jeffrey began killing and cutting up animals, and by his teens had developed the lifestyle of an alcoholic loner. While he was attending high school,  his parents separated and left him on his own. Only days after graduation, Jeffrey committed murder for the first time, his victim a hitchiker whom he picked up and invited to his home for a drink. When the stranger attempted to leave, Jeffrey hit him with a barbell, strangled him, then dismembered and buried the body in secret.

Dahmer attended college for two terms, dropping out to join the army, where he was discharged after 2 years for excessive drinking. In 1982, he moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, and was soon repeatedly arrested for indecent exposure and masturbating in public, for which Dahmer served 2 short prison terms. In 1988, he took an apartment in Milwaukee, evicted by his grandmother because of his odd hours and the stench of his “experiments in her the basement.

Now Dahmer was free to indulge his sexual fantasies, during the course of which he embarked upon  a veritable murder spree. Another 10 month prison sentence worked only as a brief interruption to his  gruesome habits. Attempting to create “sex zombies”, he began performing “brain surgery” upon his victims. Dahmer’s activities were nearly discovered when one of his victims, a Laotian boy, nearly escaped. Finding him naked and bleeding on the street, neighbors contacted police, who questioned Dahmer. They accepted his story that the boy was his adult homosexual lover, and since the “lover” spoke no English, they released him, incredibly, to Dahmer’s custody.

In little more than 2  years, Jeffrey Dahmer claimed the lives of at least 16 young men, most of whom were poor, African-American, Asian, or Latino. In addition to rape, murder, and dismemberment, he also tried cannibalism, and erected an altar in his home decorated with candles and human skulls. His final victim was Tracy Edwards, who got away and fled to the police on July 22, 1991. When Dahmer’s rooms were searched, evidence included photos of victims and remains, severed heads and penises, corpses in acid vats, and body parts in the refrigerator.

Dahmer was found competent to stand trial on 15 murder indictments. Sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences, he was remanded to Wisconsin’s Columbia Correctional Institution, where he refused an offer of protective custody and became a born-again Christian. Subjected to many death threats, Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death by another inmate in 1994.

Dahmer’s apartment building was demolished, the site now an empty lot. His father Lionel wrote a book and donated part of the proceeds to the families of the victims. His brother changed his last name. Dahmer’s mother died in 2004.

“It would have been better if I’d just stuck to the mannequins.”

Serial killer characterstics: Excessive daydreaming, isolation, animal abuse, cruelty to children, age 25-35, absent father, compulsive masturbation.