Scissor Sisters
July 28, 2026
In March 2005, body parts were found in an Irish canal that would lead to the arrest and conviction of the infamous Scissor Sisters.
Jeffrey Dahmer
"A nightmare world of unimaginable fantasies."
On July 22, 1991, a young man approached police and told them he had been attacked by another man inside the strangers apartment. When police arrived at the address, the occupant, Jeffrey Dahmer, allowed the officers inside. Upon searching the bedroom, they made a shocking discovery, one that led to the arrest of a man later described as the Milwaukee Cannibal.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Capture of a Serial Killer
On a humid summer evening, two Milwaukee police officers were on a routine patrol through an area located around Marquette University. The high-crime region of North 25th Street was pungent that night, with garbage in the streets, urine and faeces from the homeless, and the leftovers of the many restaurants, meaning the stink of the neighborhood in that oppressive heat was almost unbearable.
That night, July 22, 1991, at around midnight, the officers were sat in their car when they suddenly saw a short, skinny black man running fast in their direction. What stood out immediately was the handcuff that dangled from his wrist. At first they thought he might have escaped custody from another officer, and asked him what he was doing.
The man, 32-year-old Tracy Edwards, told them a strange story about someone he referred as a “weird dude” and “freak,” who had put the cuffs on him at an apartment. The officers at first suspected some sort of homosexual argument had taken place, an incident they would normally avoid, however as the young man seemed panicked and genuine, they decided to check it out.
The officers, Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller, drove Edwards to the man’s apartment, which was not far at the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street. They hoped to retrieve the keys to the handcuffs, as their own did not unlocked them, and settle what they thought was a lovers dispute. Arriving at the door to apartment 213, the officers were greeted by a pleasant looking blond man.
The man appeared calm and rational, and when asked about the handcuffs, he offered no explanation about why he placed them on Edwards. It was at this point that Edwards told the officers the man had brandished a knife when they went to the bedroom. When officer Mueller entered the bedroom, the blond man attempted to pushed past to retrieve the key.
At this point, Rauth told the man to “back off,” and Mueller continued to look under the bed. There, he found a large knife hidden beneath the bed. Reaching over to where a chest of drawers stood next to the bed, he opened the top drawer. Inside, he saw something he couldn’t quite comprehend at first.
It contained Polaroids, dozens of them, scattered inside. When he looked closer, he saw they depicted human bodies, many of which were in different stages of dismemberment. Some showed skulls in the refrigerator, and all appeared to have been taken within the apartment they were standing. Mueller grabbed a handful and walked out of the bedroom, and showed them to his partner, telling him, “These are for real.”
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Head in the Fridge
When the placid blond man saw one of the officers holding the Polaroids, his demeanour suddenly changed. He became angry and started fighting the police, but was quickly overpowered by the two officers and cuffed with his hands behind his back. They called for back-up, and then Mueller recalled the Polaroid showing the skull in the refrigerator.
He walked over to where it was and pulled open the door. He recoiled when he saw a face staring back out at him, from a freshly severed head of black male propped up on the bottom shelf. Mueller slammed the door and turned around. “There’s a fucking head in the refrigerator!,” he screamed to his partner.
As the blond man lay pinned beneath Rauth, he turned his head towards the officers and muttered to them, “For what I did I should be dead.” As they looked around, the officers noticed how unusually clean and tidy the one bedroom bachelor apartment had been kept. But they soon became aware of the almost overwhelming smell of decomposition.
The blond man, identified as 31-year-old recently unemployed chocolate factory worker Jeffrey Dahmer appeared to live alone at the apartment. The officers placed him under arrest, and read him his Miranda Rights. They didn’t know it, but officers Mueller and Rauth had just apprehended one of the most terrifying serial killers in American history.
Jeffrey Dahmer: A Normal Childhood
Born on May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee to Lionel and Joyce, Jeffrey Dahmer was very much wanted and adored by his parents. Despite the difficulties of his mother’s pregnancy, Jeffrey grew into a normal, healthy and happy child who always loved to play with his wooden blocks and stuffed bunnies. Little Jeffrey gave his parents no cause for concern.
He soon developed into a happy boy, although he did suffer an unusual number of ear and throat infections during his childhood. He loved animals, especially the family dog Frisky, his much loved pet. Lionel recalled how they once released back into the wild a bird the three had nursed back to health after it suffered 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,” Lionel remembered. “Jeff’s eyes were wide and gleaming. It may have been the single, happiest moment of his life.” During his childhood, the family moved to Iowa, where Lionel worked on his Ph.D. at Iowa State University.
Lionel, who was of German and Welsh ancestry, was a Marquette University chemistry student and later a research chemist, while Joyce, who had Norwegian and Irish ancestry, worked as a teletype machine instructor. Although his parents were generally happy, Joyce was known to be argumentative with both her husband and neighbors.
Lionel shared an incident from Jeffrey’s childhood, something that happened when he was four, which had a profound effect on the young boy. His father was sweeping out from under their house one day the remains of some animals that had been killed by civets. As Lionel gathered the tiny animal bones, he remembers how 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, Jeffrey suffered from a double hernia and required an operation to correct the problem.
His parents saw a change in him after this, and he never seemed to recover the same energy he had before. “He seemed smaller, somehow more vulnerable… he grew more inward, sitting quietly for long periods, hardly stirring, his face oddly motionless,” said his father. Around this same time, their son entered first grade.
Because Lionel’s studies kept him away from home for most of the day, the young Dahmer was left to the care of his mother, who had been described as a hypochondriac who suffered from depression. When Lionel was home, Joyce would demand his constant attention, spending most of the day in bed. This meant young Jeffrey was often left to his own devices.
During one of their many arguments, she one day attempted suicide with Equanil. Jeffrey would later comment upon his childhood, about how lonely he was because neither parent spent much time with him. He described feeling “unsure of the solidity of the family,” and recalled there being much tension and arguments between his parents during his early years.
In 1966, his father had completed his graduate work in Iowa, and secured a job as a research chemist in Akron, Ohio. By that time Joyce was pregnant with their second son, David, and Jeffrey was undergoing a change that his parents noticed. It was like “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.” At school he was known as quiet and timid, and appeared to show all the signs of abandonment.
Lionel Dahmer suspected the move from Iowa had had a greater effect on his son that he had realized, and considered it a normal reaction to being uprooted from his familiar settings and faced with entirely new ones. Considering Lionel too had suffered from shyness, insecurity and grew introverted when he was a child before overcoming it, gave him an understanding of what his son was experiencing.
Jeffrey Dahmer: A Strange Metamorphosis
He believed Jeffrey would overcome these hurdles in much the same way he had done. But Lionel failed to realize that Jeffrey’s childhood peculiarities were far more serious, and that, he recalled, “Jeff had begun to suffer from a near isolation.” In April 1967, the family bought a new house, and their son appeared to adjust better to this new move.
He soon developed a friendship with a boy named Lee, and became fond of one of his teachers. One day young Jeffrey took her a bowl of tadpoles he had caught. When he later discovered the teacher had given them to his friend Lee, Jeffrey sneaked into Lee’s garage and killed the tadpoles with motor oil.
His father too saw a change in his appearance over 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 only seemed to have one friend, but the two drifted apart when Jeffrey turned eighteen. It was around this time that Lionel discovered an unsettling aspect to his sons nocturnal habits. He found out that Jeffrey would ride around with plastic bags and collect the carcasses of small animals, squirrels and chipmunks, which he used 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,” Lionel said. There was the worry that Jeffrey might be torturing and killing animals, but his father considered this unlikely given he adored the family dog and cat they had at home. But it was clear, Jeffrey Dahmer held some sort of fascination was with dead creatures.
Even when Jeffrey asked his father innocuously over dinner one evening what would happen if chicken bones were placed in bleach, Lionel Dahmer considered it merely the harmless scientific curiosity of a young boy. He went on to demonstrate to his son how to safely bleach and preserve animals bones, which Jeffrey began doing to his own collection of remains.
One of his friends later recalled how Jeffrey explained that he was curious how animals “fit together.” One friend was shown the carcass of a dog that had been impaled by its skull to a stick. Dahmer said he found it, but later it was learned he had decapitated the dead animal and placed it in the woodland behind his house as a prank.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Descent into Fantasy
In exploring his strange obsession with the dead, Jeffrey Dahmer grew increasingly isolated and his personality more passive. “His conversation narrowing to the practice of answering questions with barely audible one-word response,” His father recalled. “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 unsettling notions would sever his connections to the world outside himself.” His father grew increasingly concerned about his sons reluctance to abide by societal norms.
While other young boys his age were looking to pursue further education, careers or start families of their own, Jeffrey appeared more or less 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.”
For Lionel Dahmer, there was little indication of the fantasies emerging in his teenaged sons mind about death and dismemberment. With no outer signs of this mental illness, it appeared to his family that he was just becoming more and more isolated and uncommunicative. Jeffrey never rebelled against his parents, because it seemed that nothing ever seemed to mean anything to him.
Jeffrey Dahmer: High School Outcast
As a freshman at Revere High School, Jeffrey Dahmer was considered an outcast by his peers. With his mother taking increasing amounts of drugs and isolating herself from her husband and son, Jeffrey began coping with his own increasing isolation by drinking beer and spirits during the daytime, often concealing his alcohol inside his jacket at school.
When one of his classmates saw him drinking Scotch during a morning history class, Dahmer simply shrugged his shoulders and said it was “my medicine.” His grades at school were average and he did participate in a few activities, such as tennis, and also worked on the school newspaper. However, he was considered a loner and alcoholic by his classmates.
Although he was mostly uncommunicative in his freshman year, Dahmer was considered polite by teachers who saw him as a highly intelligent young man who never aspired to apply himself to his studies. He did have a partner for his school prom, something that surprised Lionel and Joyce, and later invited her over to his parents’ house for a seance.
His classmates remember a stunt Jeffrey pulled that got him included in the yearbook photo of the members of the National Honor Society, of which he was not a member. When the school staff caught the prank in time, his photo was blacked out. He was known as a class clown to his peers, and his pranks, which became known as “Doing a Dahmer,” included simulating an epileptic seizure at school and local stores.
Upon reaching puberty, Dahmer discovered that he was gay, but did not reveal this to his parents. He even had a brief relationship with another teenaged boy, but the two did not engage in sexual intercourse. By his mid-teens, his fear of abandonment and neglect by loved ones manifested itself into a prominent sexual fantasy.
This became one of his masturbatory fantasies, that involved dominating and controlling a partner who was completely sexually submissive to his desires. This also developed into a fetish for the torso and chests of young men, something that gradually became intertwined with his interest in dissection and death.
By the age of sixteen, Dahmer had taken notice of a particular male jogger who passed by his house, and in turn developed a fantasy whereby he would render the man unconscious, then explore his body. He even went to so far as to lie in wait for the man, concealing himself in bushes with a baseball bat, however the jogger did not pass on that particular day.
By 1977, Dahmer’s drinking had reached such an extent that his grades began to decline. His parents hired a private tutor, but this had limited success. As he became more passive, his parents went through a crisis. In an attempt to save their marriage, the Dahmer’s attended couseling sessions, but the arguments persisted.
The end came when Lionel learned that Joyce had had a brief affair in September 1977. They decided to divorce, telling their sons that the decision had been amicable. The divorce soon became increasingly bitter and Lionel moved out of the family house in early 1978. A custody battle ensued over their younger son David.
In May 1978, Jeffrey graduated from high school. Several weeks earlier, he had been caught by a teacher drinking in the school parking lot. When the staff member threatened to report him, Jeffrey replied that he had “a lot of problems” at home, and that he was attending sessions with the school’s guidance counsellor.
Around the same time, Joyce Dahmer had, against a court order, moved out of the family home and took their son David to live with relatives in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Jeffrey, who at eighteen, was left alone in the family home. His parents divorce was complete by July 1978, with Joyce retaining custody of David. Lionel Dahmer soon met his future wife Shuri, and the two became engaged.
Milwaukee Cannibal: The Murder of Steven Hicks
After his first attempt to attack and render the male jogger submissive to him had failed, Dahmer continued to have these dangerous fantasies. This eventually culminated in him committing his first murder. Three weeks after his graduation, on June 18, 1978, he picked up a hitchhiker on his way to a rock concert at Chippewa Lake Park.
Steven Hick, who was almost nineteen, agreed to accompany Dahmer to his house, with the promise of “a few beers”. Dahmer later confessed that the sight of the bare-chested young man at the roadside had ignited his sexual fantasy, and with the house to himself, he decided to act upon his fantasy.
However, during the journey to his house, Hicks began talking about girls and Dahmer knew that any attempt at sexual advances would be rebuffed. After the two shared beers for several hours, talked and listened to music, Hicks told Dahmer he had to go. Jeffrey Dahmer later explained that Hicks “wanted to leave and I didn’t want him to leave.”
When his back was turned, Dahmer struck him twice on the back of the head with a 10-pound dumbbell. The bludgeoned Hicks fell unconscious, and Dahmer strangled him with the bar of the dumbbell. Stripping the clothing off Hicks, he explored his body, running his hands over his chest before masturbating as he stood over the corpse.
After several hours, Dahmer dragged the body to the basement, where it remained until the following day when it was dissected and packaged up in plastic garbage bags. The remains were then buried in a shallow grave in the woods behind his house. Several weeks later, he unearthed the remains and pared the flesh from the bones.
Much as he had done many times before with the corpses of small animals, Dahmer used the anatomical knowledge he had learned to remove every part of Hicks flesh before dissolving it in acid, then flushing the solution down the toilet. Finally, he used a sledgehammer to crush the bones before scattering them in the woodland.
All that remained was Hicks’ necklace and the knife he had used to dismember the body, which were thrown from the West Bath Road bridge into the Cuyahoga River. His father and his new wife had no knowledge that a horrific murder had taken place inside their own home, or that the heinous crime had been covered up so meticulously.
Upon their return, Lionel and Shari convinced Jeffrey to attend college, and in the fall of 1978, they drove him to Ohio State University where he hoped to major in business. Dahmer only stayed for one semester, during which he did nothing but drink, before flunking out. Despite his severe drinking problem, Jeffrey refused to seek help.
With increasing urging from his new wife, Lionel Dahmer set his son an ultimatum. He either found gainful employment or joined the military. When the feckless Jeffrey refused to get a job, his father drove him down to the recruiting office to join the United States Armed Forces in January of 1979.
Jeffrey Dahmer: US Army Service
After undergoing basic training at Fort McClellan in Anniston, Alabama, Dahmer trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas, where he was occasionally reprimanded for intoxication. During one particular incident, his entire platoon was punished for his insubordination, resulting in Dahmer being severely beaten by his fellow recruits.
On July 13, 1979, he was deployed to Baumholder, West Germany, where he served as a combat medic in the 2nd Battalion, 68th Armored Regiment, 8th Infantry Division. A report on his first year of service described him as an “average or slightly above average” soldier. He did not kill anyone during his army service, something that was corroborated by an exhaustive investigation by the German police.
When asked after his arrest if he had engaged in willing homosexual relations or commit sexual assault while station in Germany, Dahmer told both police and psychiatrists that he did not. However, two soldiers later came forward and claimed to have been raped by Dahmer while in the army.
One claimed to have suffered repeated abuse over a 17-month period while stationed with Dahmer at Baumholder. Another solider said Dahmer had drugged and raped him, an act that occurred inside an armored personnel carrier in 1979. With his alcohol abuse only getting worse, his performance deteriorated.
In March 1981, he was assessed and deemed unsuitable for military service and discharged from the Army. Despite his less than exemplary service, he received an honorable discharge, and it was the opinion of his superiors that any problems he had in the Army would not apply in his civilian life.
On March 24, 1981, Dahmer was sent to Fort Jackson, South Carolina, for debriefing and given a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country, he chose to go to Miami Beach, Florida, rather than return to his father. He wanted to live by his own means, and was also tired of the cold weather.
While in Florida, Dahmer got a job at a sandwich shop and rented a room in a nearby motel. Spending most of his money on alcohol, he was soon evicted from the motel after he failed to pay the rent. He then spent most of his evenings on the beach, but continued to work in the shop, before contacting his father in September 1981 and asked to return to Ohio.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Emerging Serial Killer
After returning to Ohio, Dahmer lived with his father and stepmother, and began to take responsibility as an adult, which included numerous chores and looking for work. However, he continued to drink heavily and two weeks after his return, he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, for which he was fined $60 and given a suspended 10-day jail sentence.
Lionel Dahmer tried unsuccessfully to get his son to give up alcohol, however the friction in the household caused him to send his son to live with Jeffrey’s paternal grandmother in December 1981. Catherine Dahmer lived in West Allis, Wisconsin, and was the only family member to whom Jeffrey showed any type of affection.
It was hoped her influence, coupled with the change in location, might prove a positive influence in helping him quit drinking and find a job. At first, the living arrangement with his grandmother proved positive, and Jeffrey often accompanied her to church, looked for work and actively helped with chores around the house.
Although he abided by his grandmothers rules, he still continued to drink and smoke. In early 1982, Dahmer found work as a phlebotomist at the Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center, which he did for ten months before he was laid off. He remained unemployed for the next two years, living off money his grandmother gave him.
He was arrested shortly before he lost his job, after being caught indecently exposing himself at the Wisconsin State Fair Park on August 8, 1982. He was reportedly observed dropping his trouser “on the south side of the Coliseum in which 25 people were present including women and children.”
He was subsequently convicted and find $50 plus court costs. By January 1985, he found work at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, where he was employed as a mixer, from 11:00pm to 07:00am during six nights per week. He had every Saturday evening off, and spent his days at his grandmothers house drinking.
During a visit to the West Allis Public Library, while Dahmer was reading he was propositioned by another man, who threw a note offering to perform fellatio upon him. Although he didn’t respond, this incident served to reignite his extreme fantasies of control and dominance which he had suppressed since the late 1970’s.
He soon became a familiar and regular patron at many of Milwaukee’s gay bars and gay bathhouses, which he described as relaxing places. However, he soon became frustrated with his sexual partners moving during the act. He went on to steal a male shop mannequin, which he briefly used for his sexual fantasies, but was forced to discard it when his grandmother found it in his closet.
What he really wanted was a submissive sexual partner. “I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of [as] people,” he said after his arrest. Beginning in June 1986, he began to slip his partners sleeping pills, administering it in liquor laced with sedatives. After these men fell asleep, he performed various sexual acts.
In order to receive a continuous supply, Dahmer told his doctor that he required the tablets due to working nights. However, after the bathhouse was alerted to as many as twelve instances of men being drugged, his membership was revoked, and he started to use hotel rooms to continue his fantasies.
He briefly considered, after reading a report in a local newspaper about the upcoming funeral of an 18-year-old man, stealing the recently interred corpse and taking it home. He later confessed that he attempted to dig up the coffin, but found the soil was too hard and so abandoned the idea.
Despite his drinking, Dahmer managed to keep control of his urges and stay out of trouble, until September 8, 1986, when he was arrested again on a charge of lewd and lascivious behaviour. He was accused of masturbating in the presence of two 12-year-old boys as he stood close to the Kinnickinnic River.
His initial claim that he was merely urinating was found to be false when witnesses came forward, and he had to admit to the offence. The charge was eventually changed to disorderly conduct and, on March 10, 1987, Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to one year of probation, with additional instructions to undergo counseling.
Up to this point, his life had been a rollercoaster for both Jeffrey and his father. He seemed to enjoy the Army before he was discharged, and then settled in at his grandmothers. Then he was arrested for being drunk, and the offences seemed to get worse as his alcoholism and emotional problems intensified.
Milwaukee Cannibal: The Murder of Steven Tuomi
On November 20, 1987, Jeffrey Dahmer was at a popular gay bar when he met Steven Tuomi, a 25-year-old man from Ontonagon, Michigan. The two men drank heavily, and Dahmer asked Tuomi to accompany him to the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee, where he had rented a room for the evening. By the morning, Dahmer found his guest was dead.
Dahmer stated years later that he didn’t know how he killed him, and that he had no intention of hurting Steven Tuomi, but simply wanted to drug him and then lay beside and explore his body. With blood coming from his mouth, Dahmer saw that Tuomi’s chest was “crushed in” and “black and blue.”
With his own forearm and fists heavily bruised, Dahmer said that he “could not believe this had happened”. He bought a large suitcase, stuffed the body inside and took the corpse to his grandmother’s basement, where he had sex with it and masturbated over it. During the course of the next week, he dismembered the body before throwing it in the garbage.
In much the same way he had disposed of Steven Hicks’ remains, Dahmer pounded the bones with a sledgehammer. The whole process of dismemberment and disposal took Dahmer roughly two hours. The only part he kept was the head, which he wrapped in a blanket. After two weeks, he boiled the head in a mixture of Soilax and bleach to try and retain the skull.
This process caused the skull to become to brittle and so Dahmer smashed it into piece and disposed of it. The murder of Steven Tuomi was a pivotal moment in Dahmer’s life, and instead of trying to suppress his urges and control his compulsions, he decided to actively seek out victims to satisfy his extreme lust for control and ghoulish desires.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The 1988 Murders
In his search for more victims and several months after his last murder, Dahmer met Jamie Doxtator, a fourteen-year-old Native American boy who hung around outside the gay bars, looking for relationships. After being lured to Dahmer’s grandmother’s house with an offer of $50 to pose for nude picture, Doxtator went willingly.
Jeffrey Dahmer had, by this time, perfected his method for selecting and enticing his victims, who were unaware of his intentions. Once they were at his home, they engaged in normal behaviour together, watching videos and drinking beer. Some, like Doxtator, engaged in sexual activity with Dahmer, before he slipped a sleeping tablet into his drink.
James Doxtator was then strangled, and his body used by Dahmer, who either masturbated on it or had sex with the corpse. He left the body on the floor of the basement for a week before dismembering it, in much the same way he did with Steven Tuomi. All these remains were placed in the trash, except for Doxtator’s skull, which had been kept as a souvenir.
This was later bleached by Dahmer, who hoped to preserve it, but again it turned brittle and he had to pulverize it with a hammer some two weeks later. Three months after his third murder, Dahmer met Richard Guerrero, a handsome 22-year-old bisexual man of Mexican origin on March 24, 1988, outside a gay bar called the Phoenix.
Lured to his grandmother’s house by offering him $50 to spend the night with him, Dahmer drugged the unsuspecting Guerrero and then strangled him with a leather strap. After he performed oral sex on the corpse, he dismembered the body within a 24 hour period, and disposed of the remains in the trash.
Once again he retained the skull, but had to dispose of that too within several months. On April 23, 1988, Dahmer lured a 13-year-old boy, Ronald Flowers Jr. to his grandmothers house. The two talked and after drugging Flowers drink and watching him as he drank, Dahmer heard his grandmother call-out from upstairs. “Is that you, Jeff?,” she asked.
Although Dahmer replied that it was, his grandmother knew that he had company. Because of this, he was unable to murder Flowers, and so once he fell unconscious, he took him to the County General Hospital. By the summer of 1988, Jeffrey Dahmer had murdered and discarded four young men, all within the unassuming house owned by his grandmother.
Although completely ignorant of what was transpiring in her basement, Catherine Dahmer was aware of the noise and drunken rowdiness of her grandson and the male friends he invited over, something she was not happy to entertain any longer. Because of his drinking and habit of bringing strange men over to her house, coupled with the odd smells emanating from the basement and garage, Dahmer’s grandmother asked him to move out.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Paedophile
On September 25, 1988, Jeffrey Dahmer moved into his own apartment at 808 North 24th Street in Milwaukee. Two days later, Dahmer got into serious trouble. He approached and offered a 13-year-old Laotian boy $50 to pose for some nude pictures. After drugging the boy, he sexually fondled him but did not go any further. In a strange, almost twisted coincidence, the young victims name was Somsack Sinthasomphone, the older brother of one of Dahmer’s later victims.
When the boy returned home his parents realized something was wrong and took him to the hospital, where it was confirmed he had been drugged. Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested at his place of work at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, on charges of sexual exploitation of a child and second-degree sexual assault.
Dahmer’s father hired attorney Gerald Boyle to defend his son, who requested he undergo a series of psychological evaluations prior to his court hearings. The evaluations found that Dahmer harbored deep feelings of alienation, while a second evaluation, two months later, revealed Dahmer to be an impulsive individual, suspicious of others, and dismayed by his lack of accomplishments in life.
His probation officer also referenced a 1987 diagnosis of Dahmer suffering from a schizoid personality disorder for presentation to the court. On January 30, 1989, Jeffrey Dahmer pleaded guilty to the charges of second-degree sexual assault and of enticing a child for immoral purposes, but claimed that he thought the boy was much older than he was.
The sentencing was suspended until May, and while he awaited his next court date, Dahmer began a ten-day Easter absence from work on March 20, during which he moved back into his grandmother’s home. Once again he was under her rules, however, while he awaited sentencing, Dahmer met another victim.
Milkaukee Cannibal: The Murder of Anthony Sears
On March 25, 1989, Dahmer went to one of his usual haunts at a local gay bar and there met 24-year-old Anthony Sears. According to Dahmer, he did not go with the intention of looking to commit another murder, however, shortly before closing time, Sears “just started talking to me”. He persuaded the Black homosexual and aspiring model to accompany him home.
Like the others, he offered Sears money to pose for nude photographs, and the two engaged in oral sex before Dahmer drugged and strangled his unwitting victim. After having sex with the corpse, Dahmer went to bed. The next morning, he placed the corpse in his grandmother’s bathtub where he decapitated the body and attempted to flay the skin.
He undertook the same method of disposal, stripping the flesh from the body before pulverizing the bones, which were disposed of in the trash. Anthony Sears was the first victim from which Dahmer successfully retained body parts. Having removed all flesh from Sears’ head, Dahmer also retained Sears’ scalp.
He preserved the head, and genitalia in acetone, storing them in a wooden box. During one of his father’s visits to Dahmer’s grandmothers house, he asked his son to open the box. Dahmer became angry and defensive, claiming the box held his pornography collection. “Can’t I have just one square foot of privacy?,” he told his father, who accepted his sons response.
In her book on Dahmer, 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.”
Jeffrey Dahmer: 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. Prosecutor Shelton wanted a sentence of five years, declaring; “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.”
Boyle, Dahmer’s defense attorney argued that his client was sick and needed treatment, not prison. After an examination by three psychologists, all concurred that Dahmer was manipulative, resistant and evasive. Hospitalization and intensive treatment was recommended. Dahmer himself spoke in his own defense, blaming his behavior on alcoholism.
He was praised by Boyle for the fact that he had held down 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.” Before the judge, Dahmer appeared articulate and convincing.
What he did not look like, was someone who had, up to that point, committed the brutal murders of five young men, cutting their bodies up like cattle and disposing of the remains to ensure his freedom. Instead, Jeffrey Dahmer appeared contrite in his guilt of the crime for which he now stood before the judge.
“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,” said Dahmer.
“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.”
The judge fell for Jeffrey Dahmer’s lies, and stayed his sentence, putting him on probation for five years. He was ordered to spend one year in the House of Correction under a “work release,” program, which allowed him to go to work during the day and return to the jail at night. After ten months the judge granted him early release.
This was despite a letter sent to the judge by Dahmer’s father Lionel, who urged him to not release his son until after he had received treatment. In the meantime, Dahmer went back to live with his grandmother in West Allis in early March 1990, an arrangement which was conditional upon him finding his own place to live.
Jeffrey Dahmer: A Killer’s Playground
On May 14, 1990, Dahmer moved to 924 North 25th Street, Apartment 213. He now had his own space, where he could do as he pleased, live by his own rules and not have to worry about any interference or fear of getting caught by someone. He was alone at last, alone to indulge in his macabre fantasies and further descent into isolation.
As a fully fledged serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer developed and refined his ritual for luring, killing and disposing of his victims, which remained largely the same throughout his murder spree. He always carried out the same modus operandi, by invited young, usually back men back to his apartment, where they would either pose for photos or watch sexually-explicit videos together.
As they were distracted, Dahmer crushed up his prescribed sedatives and served them in drinks that caused his guests to fall unconscious. It is unknown if in those last moments of consciousness any of them knew what was about to happen. Once drugged, he strangled them with either his bare hands or a leather strap.
He frequently had sex with the bodies, and also masturbated on them. Once the sexual fantasy phase was over, Dahmer was faced with the dilemma of having to dispose of the corpses. However, before he began the clean-up, he used a Polaroid camera to take photos of his victims, capturing the entire experience so he could later remember and relive his fantasy.
Then he cut open the torsos, aroused by the visceral sight of the blood and exposed flesh, and watched as the knife and saw cut into the arms and legs, severing them from the rest of the body, before finally removing the head and sometimes the genitals, and photographing the whole process to indulge later for his repeated viewing pleasure.
Most of the bodies were disposed of in a similar way, but sometimes he experimented with various chemicals and acids, in an attempt to remove the flesh and bones that produced a black, foul-smelling sludge, which he could better pour down the drain. From some of the bodies he chose to keep trophies.
When he moved into his apartment, Dahmer took with him Anthony Sears’ mummified head and genitals, which he had also kept in his locker at work, that was situated close to his new place. The furnished Oxford apartment, at $300 per month inclusive of all bills excluding electricity, was an economical bargain for the alcoholic Dahmer.
There, he could keep the souvenirs of his crimes. In some cases he kept the hands and preserved the genitals in formaldehyde. But mostly he kept the heads, in much the same way serial killer Ted Bundy had done with his own female victims, but Dahmer boiled the skull until it was devoid of flesh.
Shortly after moving into 924 North 25th Street, Dahmer visited a local arts store and purchased granite spray-paint. He used this substance to spray-paint the skull of Anthony Sears, as well as Sears’ genitals, which he kept in his box. Dahmer wanted to disguise the skull, so anyone who visited him would think it was made of plastic.
Milwaukee Cannibal: The 1990 Murders
Within a week of moving into his new address, Dahmer claimed his sixth victim. Raymond Smith, also known as Ricky Beeks, was a 32-year-old prostitute who was lured to apartment 213 with the promise of $50 for sex. Given a drink laced with sleeping tablets, Smith fell unconscious and was manually strangled.
The next day, Dahmer purchased his Polaroid camera, and took several pictures of Smith’s body in sexually suggestive positions before beginning the dismemberment process in his bathroom. This time he boiled the arms, legs and pelvis in a steel kettle with Soilax, which allowed him to rinse the bones in his sink.
The remainder of the skeleton, excluding the skull, was dissolved in a container filled with acid. The skull, was spray-painted and placed alongside the skull of Sears, which sat upon a black towel inside a filing cabinet. These trophies were the beginning of a collection of skulls which Dahmer intended to use for a shocking purpose that only became known after his capture.
Roughly a week after the murder of Raymond Smith, on or about May 27th, Dahmer invited another young man to his apartment with the intention to murder him as he had done his previous victims. However, on this occasion, Dahmer accidentally consumed the drink laden with sedatives intended for his guest.
Upon waking the following day, Dahmer discovered that his intended victim had proceeded to steal several items of clothing, along with a watch and $300 in cash. This incident was never reported to police, but he did tell his probation officer on May 29th that he had been robbed. Naturally, Dahmer didn’t want police to visit his apartment, which was rapidly filling up with human remains.
On June 14, 1990, a 27-year-old acquaintance, Edward Smith, was lured to Dahmer’s apartment where he was drugged and strangled. Rather than immediately acidifying the skeleton or repeating previous processes of bleaching, which had failed to preserve victims’ skulls, Dahmer chose to place Smith’s skeleton in his freezer for several months. Smith was last seen in the company of Dahmer at a party.
Hoping it would remove the moisture from the skeleton, Dahmer resorted to acidifying it several months later when his experiment failed. When he placed the skull in the oven to try and dry it, the process caused it to explode, completely destroying the skull. Dahmer would later confess he felt “rotten” about his acquaintances murder, but only as he could not retain body parts.
Dahmer waited three months before seeking out his next victim, which occurred outside a bookstore on the corner of North 27th Street. There, he encountered Ernest Miller, a 22-year-old Chicago native who agreed to accompany Dahmer back to his apartment for $50. Miller allowed Dahmer’s request to listen to his heart and stomach.
When Dahmer attempted to perform oral sex, Miller told him, “That’ll cost you extra”. He was then offered a drink laced with sleeping pills. Because he only had two pills this time, Dahmer decided to kill Miller by slashing his carotid artery, using the knife he normally used to dissect his victims, and then watched for the next ten minutes as Miller bled out.
The body was posed by Dahmer who took Polaroid photographs before placing it in his bathtub, where it was dismembered. After severing the head, Dahmer talked to it and repeatedly kissed it while he cut up the rest of the body and wrapped portions of Miller’s body in plastic bags for easier disposal.
The heart, liver, biceps and sections of flesh cut from the legs were preserved and stored in the freezer for later consumption. What was left of the body, including organs he did not keep, were boiled down using Soilax into a “gooey-like substance,” which helped to rinse the remaining flesh off the bones.
Intending to keep the skeleton, Dahmer placed the bones in a light bleach solution for twenty-four hours, before letting them dry upon a cloth for the next week in an effort to preserve them. Dahmer intended to use Miller’s skeleton for his growing collection. The severed head was placed in the refrigerator before it too was stripped of flesh and then painted and coated with enamel.
Dahmer encountered his next victim three weeks after Miller’s murder, when he came across 22-year-old David Thomas on September 24, 1990. The father of two was outside the Grand Avenue Mall, and Dahmer persuaded him to go back to his apartment and drink some alcohol. He also offered his usual incentive, money in exchange for posing for naked photographs.
When they arrived at apartment 213, Dahmer slipped Thomas some sedatives in his drink. He later said in his statement to police that he came to realize he was not attracted to Thomas, but was worried if he allowed him to leave, he would become angry that Dahmer had drugged him.
So he strangled Thomas and dismembered the body, photographing the process, but retained none of the remains, disposing of the whole body. Dahmer kept the photographs, adding them to his collection which he kept in the top drawer of his chest of drawers. These were used by Dahmer for sexual gratification.
A period of five months passed, during which no further victims were claimed. He did, however, attempt unsuccessfully to lure five men to his apartment between October 1990 and February 1991. During this time Dahmer complained to his probation officer of feeling anxious and depressed, and made frequent references to his sexuality.
He also complained about financial difficulties, and spoke about the approaching Thanksgiving holiday, and how he was apprehensive about meeting his father and younger brother. His depression was such that he confessed to having suicidal thoughts on several occasions.
Milwaukee Cannibal: The 1991 Murders
In February 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer found his next victim when he saw Curtis Straughter standing at a bus stop near Marquette University. He lured the 17-year-old back to his apartment with an offer of posing for nude photographs, while also offering the incentive of sexual intercourse. While Straughter sat of his sofa, Dahmer drugged his drink.
Once Straughter was unconscious, his hands were handcuffed behind his back by Dahmer, who took photos of his victim before strangling him with a leather strap. The body was dismembered, with Dahmer keeping the head, hands and genitals, which were photographed and placed into his refrigerator, while he disposed of the rest of the body.
Around this time, the other residents of the Oxford Apartments made repeated complaints to Sopa Princewill, the building’s manager, about the disgusting smells that seemed to come from Apartment 213. Those closest to Dahmer’s apartment also complained of hearing the sound of falling objects and the occasional buzz of a chainsaw.
Dahmer was contacted by Princewill about these complaints on several occasions, and at first he gave the excuse that the foul odors that came from his apartment were from his freezer breaking down, causing the food inside to spoil. On a later occasion, when the smell returned, he claimed it came from his tropical fish, some of which had recently died. Dahmer promised he would take care of the issue.
His next murder was less than two months later, when a 19-year-old named Errol Lindsey was encountered by Dahmer on April 7, 1991. The youth was on his way to get a key cut when Dahmer invited him back to his apartment. There, he drugged Lindsay and then drilled a hole in his head, through which he injected hydrochloric acid with a baster.
Dahmer wanted to experiment with different methods for inducing his victim into becoming an unresistant and submissive subject, something he hoped to perfect into a permanent state. However, Lindsay woke telling Dahmer, “I have a headache. What time is it?”. He was then drugged again before Dahmer strangled him.
Lindsay was decapitated and the skull retained for Dahmer’s collection. The body was then flayed before the skin was placed in a cold water and salt solution for several weeks, in an effort to retain it. After it became too frayed and brittle, Dahmer was forced, reluctantly, to dispose of it.
At a nightclub on May 24, 1991, Dahmer met Tony Hughes, a 31-year-old aspiring model who was lured to his apartment with an offer to pose for photographs. Once Hughes was drugged unconscious, Dahmer drilled into his skull and injected hydrochloric acid, hoping to render him submissive, however, this proved fatal. His body was dismembered and parts were kept for consumption, with the rest disposed of by Dahmer.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Milwaukee Cannibal
One of the most shocking aspects of the case of Jeffrey Dahmer and his crimes were the revelations of cannibalism that came out after his arrest. It is not unusual for a killer who indulges in necrophilia, to also commit the mortal sin that is eating the flesh of their victims. This taboo, long carried out by humans throughout history, is considered one of the most abhorrent of crimes.
He would go on to claim that if he ate the flesh of his victims, that they would come alive again within him. He said he had tried blood, but it did not appeal to him, but eating flesh gave him an erection. In an effort to make it more tasty, he added seasoning and meat tenderizers and kept strips of frozen human flesh in his freezer.
For Jeffrey Dahmer, control was the overriding factor, the all-important motive in his crimes. He could not handle rejection or abandonment in any aspect of his life, and the pursuit of his own interests was paramount. Especially in his homosexual relationships, it was not his intention to pleasure his willing or unwilling partners, but rather take his own pleasure, from performing either oral or anal sex, whether they were alive or dead.
But it was this absolute need for control and dominance over his victims that led Dahmer to perpetrate some very bizarre experiments with his victims. One he carried out was a kind of lobotomy that he performed on several of his unconscious victims, drilling holes into their skulls before injecting some muriatic acid into their brains.
This always caused death, sometimes right away, but at least one victim functioned at a minimal capacity for several days before dying. Almost all of his victims were trapped inside Dahmer’s apartment, unable to escape once they had been drugged. However, at least one victim did manage to escape, but his story is perhaps one of the most tragic.
Jeffrey Dahmer and Konerak Sinthasomphone
On the afternoon of May 26, 1991, while Dahmer was walking down Wisconsin Avenue, he encountered a 14-year-old Lao teenager, Konerak Sinthasomphone. Unbeknown to Dahmer at the time, Konerak was the younger brother of the boy he had molested back on September 27, 1988, and for which he had received five years probation.
Dahmer made his usual offer to Sinthasomphone, money in exchange for accompanying him to his apartment to pose for Polaroid pictures. Initially reluctant, Konerak seemingly changed his mind and went with Dahmer to Apartment 213, where he posed for two pictures in his underwear before Dahmer slipped him some sleeping pills.
Before he fell unconscious, Dahmer led the boy into his bedroom. There, laid out naked on the floor was the body of Tony Hughes, whom Dahmer had killed three days earlier. Dahmer later claimed he “believed [that Sinthasomphone] saw this body” yet the boy did not react to seeing the bloated corpse, most likely because the sleeping pill had already started to take effect.
After drugging him, Dahmer performed oral sex as he lay unconscious. As part of his desire to ensure a completely submissive partner, Dahmer drilled a single narrow hole into the crown of Konerak’s skull, through which he injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe. Dahmer then drank several beers as he lay alongside the comatose boy.
At some point he fell asleep, then woke and left the apartment where he drank at a bar and then purchased more alcohol at a local store. Unknown to Dahmer, shortly after he left his apartment, Konerak Sinthasomphone began to regain consciousness, and managed to rise to his feet and, naked and disorientated, opened the door and walked outside.
At just before 2:00am, a young woman, Sandra Smith, call 911 to report that a boy was running around “butt naked,” and she didn’t know who he was but that he was injured and terrified. Not long after, a tall blond man arrived and walked over to where Sinthasomphone was sitting naked on the corner of 25th and State, talking in Lao, with three distressed young women standing near him.
The man told the women, Smith, her friend and her cousin Nicole Childress, that the boy, whom he referred to by his alias, Johnny Hmong, was his friend. The man then attempted to lead the boy away in the direction of his apartment. The three women tried to dissuade Dahmer, telling him they had already called 911.
Paramedics were first on the scene, and placed a blanket around the dazed and confused boy, before two police officers, John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish arrived. Soon the conversation became heated between the three girls, Dahmer and the police. As the officers tried to understand what was going on with the young man of Asian descent, Dahmer told them Konerak was his 19-year-old lover who had drank too much.
In order to prove it, Dahmer, his demeanor calm and appearing relaxed and convincing, showed his photo ID, telling the police the boy was his partner and that they had had a drunken quarrel. Three women attempted to intervene, telling the police that the boy had been terrified and tried to resist the tall blond man when he arrived.
When the police ignored the women they became exasperated, pointing out that the boy had blood on his testicles, was bleeding from his rectum, and seemed to be suffering from more than just alcohol. The officers observed no injuries apart from a graze to Konerak’s knee, and told one of the women to “shut the hell up.” When she tried to interfere again she was told to “butt out.”
Shortly after the arrival of the Milwaukee police officers, three members of the Milwaukee Fire Department arrived and examined the boy for injuries at the insistence of the women. One of them believed Konerak required treatment, but the police officers directed the three firemen to leave. Soon after, a third police officer, Richard Porubcan arrived at the scene.
The three policemen escorted Dahmer and Sinthasomphone back to Dahmer’s apartment, during which Dahmer commented on the high-crime in the neighbourhood, while simultaneously praising the Milwaukee police department. When they arrived, they found that although the apartment smelled bad, it was kept neat and tidy.
They could see that Konerak’s clothing was there, folded and placed on the sofa, along with a couple of Polaroid photographs of him in black bikini briefs. While they looked around, Konerak sat quietly on the sofa, seemingly unable to talk intelligently, or even able to understand what was happening. Dahmer apologized for the trouble his lover had caused.
He promised the police it wouldn’t happen again, and they believed his assurances. For all intents and purposed, they had no reason to disbelieve him, he appeared intelligent, calm, polite, well-spoken and courteous. His partner however, seemed drunk and incoherent. Not wanting to get in the middle of a domestic dispute between homosexual lovers, they left the apartment with Konerak Sinthasomphone sitting quietly on the sofa.
Later, officer Balcerzak said he smelled nothing unusual, Gabrish claimed he noted a strange scent, reminiscent of excrement inside the apartment. This odor was emanating from Dahmer’s bedroom, where the decomposing body of Tony Hughes was still lying naked on the floor. The only time the police made any effort to investigate the smell, was when one officer “peeked his head around the bedroom, but really didn’t take a good look.”
As they walked outside of the apartment, Dahmer told them he would “take good care” of his “partner”. The officers left, believing they had more pressing matters to attend to, and later listed the incident as a “domestic dispute.” Once he was alone with Sinthasomphone, Dahmer again injected hydrochloric acid into his brain.
This time it proved fatal, and Dahmer proceeded to have sex with the corpse. The next day he took a day’s leave from work so he could devote that time to the dismemberment and disposal of the bodies of Tony Hughes and Konerak Sinthasomphone. As with some of his previous victims, he retained the skulls of both for his growing collection.
When officers Balcerzak and Gabrish radioed their dispatch unit, a recording of which reveals evident laughter from one or more of their colleagues after one of the officers informed them, “Intoxicated, Asian, naked male was returned to his sober boyfriend… My partner [is] going to get deloused at the station.”
When the three girls went home, they told Smith’s mother, 36-year-old Glenda Cleveland, who lived next to the Oxford Apartments where Dahmer resided. Cleveland later called police to find out what happened to the Asian boy. “It wasn’t a child. It was an adult,” the officer said. Cleveland continued to ask questions.
The officer then 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 read a newspaper article about the disappearance of a Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone.
He looked like the boy that had been seen trying to escape from Jeffrey Dahmer, and so she called the officers back. They never sent anybody to talk with her. Cleveland even tried contacting the Milwaukee office of the FBI, but nothing came of it. This missed opportunity by law enforcement resulted in a cannibalistic serial killer continuing with his crimes of seeking out victims.
It meant he could continue drugging, sexually abusing their corpses before dismembering and disposing of them like trash. If the officers had noted Dahmer’s name on his ID, and run a background check, they would have been aware of his past charges. They would have realized Jeffrey Dahmer, the calm, well-spoke and unassuming tall blond man, was a convicted child molester who was still serving probation.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Last Murders
On June 30, 1991, Dahmer took a journey to Chicago and there encountered a prospective victim standing at a bus station. 20-year-old Matt Turner agreed to accompany Dahmer back to Milwaukee to take part in what he was told would be a professional photo shoot. Back at Apartment 213, Turner was drugged and strangled.
Dismembered in Dahmer’s bathtub, the head and internal organs were kept and placed into plastic bags and stored in the freezer. By this point, Jeffrey Dahmer had been eating the body parts of his victims. The skull was later stripped of flesh and kept by Dahmer and added to the others he had collected.
Just five days later, Dahmer lured Jeremiah Weinberger, who he had met at a Chicago bar on July 5th, back to his apartment. Dahmer and Weinberger had agreed to spend the weekend together, and once back at his apartment, Dahmer drugged his victim then drilled a hole into his head and injected boiling water through and into his skull.
After the second attempt at this, Weinberger fell into a coma and died two days later. Dahmer later recalled that Weinberger’s death was “exceptional”, because he was the only victim who died with his eyes open. With a growing number of bodies and no way of disposing of them, Dahmer purchased a 57-gallon drum on July 12.
Into this drum he placed the torso of Matt Turner, and then what remained of Jeremiah Weinberger. He then poured an acid solution inside and closed the lid. The bodies of his victims then slowly disintegrated into a black sludge. His murders were becoming more frequent, and ten days after luring Weinberger to his apartment, he went looking for another victim.
At the corner of 27th and Kilbourn, Dahmer came across Oliver Lacy, who agreed to go with him back to the Oxford Apartments. There, Dahmer took some nude photos of the 24-year-old and they engaged in some form of sexual activity. Dahmer then offered Lacy a drink, and watched as his victim fell into unconsciousness.
During this encounter, Dahmer wanted to prolong the time spent with his latest victim, hoping to keep Lacy alive for as along as he could. After an unsuccessful attempt to render Lacy unconscious with chloroform, Dahmer called into work to request a day’s absence. This was granted, however the next day he was suspended.
After failing to keep Lacy alive but subdued, he strangled him and had sex with the corpse before dismembering the body. The head was removed and placed in the refrigerator, along with Lacy’s heart. The skeleton was kept, in much the same way he had kept Ernest Miller’s, hoping to use both as part of his elaborate fantasy.
On July 19, 1991, four days after Dahmer was suspended from work, he received word that he had been dismissed. He then left in search of another victim and soon came across Joseph Bradehoft, luring him to his apartment where they drank and talked. Once the 25-year-old was drugged and strangled, Dahmer left the body on his bed and covered it with a sheet.
When he removed the sheet on July 21, it was infested with maggots and was in a state of decomposition. Dahmer decapitated the body, cleaned the head and placed it in the refrigerator. The torso was placed within the 57-gallon drum, along with the bodies of his previous victims, where it was acidified.
The Survivor of Jeffrey Dahmer
On the evening of July 22, 1991, three young men were approached by a tall blond man who made an offer of $100 to accompany him to his apartment and pose for nude photographs. He also said there would be beer and they could talk or watch television. Looking like the man just wanted some company, one of the young men, Tracey Edwards, agreed to go with him.
Arriving at the apartment, 32-year-old Edwards immediately noticed a foul odor that permeated the rooms, as well as several boxes of hydrochloric acid stacked up on the floor. Dahmer told him they were for cleaning bricks, and after some conversation, Edwards looked over to a tank where Dahmer asked him to look at his tropical fish.
As he did this, Dahmer placed a handcuff on his wrist. Edwards asked “What’s happening?,” as he tried to unsuccessfully to cuff his other wrist. Dahmer then requested Edwards accompany him to the bedroom so he could pose for nude pictures. When they entered the bedroom, Edwards saw posters of nude men on the walls.
A television set was turned on and playing a videotape of the horror film, The Exorcist III. Edwards also noticed a large blue 57-gallon drum in the corner of the room, from where the bad smells seemed to be emanating. Suddenly, Dahmer took out a knife and told Edwards that he was going to take nude photographs of him.
Hoping to appease Dahmer, Edwards began to unbutton his shirt, telling him he would let him take pictures, so long as he removed the handcuffs and put away the knife. Dahmer didn’t respond to this, but merely turned his attention away towards the television. Edwards watched as Dahmer rocked back and forth, chanting as he did.
Dahmer then turned his attention to Edwards, and placed his head on his chest, seemingly listening to his heart. The knife in his hand was pressed against Edwards body, and Dahmer told him, coldly, that he intended to eat his heart. A panicked Edwards kept telling Dahmer that he was his friend, and that he wouldn’t try to run away.
Meanwhile, Edwards planned to either jump from the window, or run towards and through the unlocked front door once he got the opportunity. He asked to use the bathroom, and requested to sit and drink a beer in the living room, where it was cooler due to the air conditioning. Dahmer consented, and the pair walked to the living room once Edwards used the bathroom.
When they were in the living room, Edwards waited until he saw that Dahmer had a momentary lapse of concentration, and requested to use the bathroom again. As he rose from his seat on the sofa, he saw Dahmer was no longer holding the handcuffs. Edwards suddenly punched Dahmer in the face, knocking him off balance before he run for the front door.
The Horrors of Apartment 213
When forensic officers arrived at the Oxford Apartments on July 22, 1991, none could have guessed the depraved and ghastly discoveries they would make. Inside the refrigerator, they saw the decapitated head of a young black man. Within the freezer, there were three more heads, all neatly stored in plastic bags and tied with plastic twisties.
A door led to the bedroom, where there was a bedroom closet and bath, which had be fitted with a dead-bolt lock. One of the first reporters on the scene, Anne E. Schwartz, later described in her book “The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough” what she saw. “…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.”
Inside the closet they found containers of chloroform, formaldehyde and ethyl alcohol, along with some glass jars that held severed male genitalia, preserved in formaldehyde. The drawer into which Milwaukee police officer Rolf Mueller looked into contained a total of 74 Polaroid photographs, depicting Dahmer’s victims in various stages of their deaths.
One showed the head of a man, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim who had been cut open from the neck to the groin, much like how a deer is gutted after a kill. The cuts appeared so clean, the pelvic bone could clearly be seen. Some of the photos showed the victims in various erotic poses, and some in bondage.
In a tray inside the refrigerator, investigators found collected blood drippings, along with two human hearts, and a portion of muscle from a male’s arm, each of which had been wrapped in plastic bags upon the shelf. Along with the three heads in the freezer, was a complete torso, along with a bag of human organs.
When looking at the bottom of the freezer, they saw that flesh had stuck to the ice. As well as the four severed heads in the kitchen, another seven skulls were found, some painted, some bleached, were found in Dahmer’s bedroom inside a closet. Elsewhere, they came across two entire skeletons, a pair of severed hands, two severed and preserved penises, and a mummified scalp.
Apartment 213 was a house of horrors, containing the remains of many different people, each slaughtered and dismembered. For the forensic officers who search the apartment, it must have been reminiscent of the discovery of necrophile Ed Gein‘s crimes at his Wisconsin farmstead, which contained an assortment of human remains.
The 57-gallon drum in Jeffrey Dahmer’s bedroom was found to contain three further dismembered torsos dissolving in an acid solution. It was removed by private contractors from the Fire Department’s Hazardous Materials Unit on July 23, 1991. The sheer number of body parts found in Dahmer’s apartment caused the chief medical examiner to state: “It was more like dismantling someone’s museum than an actual crime scene.”
When news of the gruesome discoveries at the home of Jeffrey Dahmer began to filter out through the press, members of the public, the Milwaukee authorities, families of the missing victims, and even Jeffrey Dahmer’s own family attempted to understand what exactly had transpired within Apartment 213 at the Oxford Apartments.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Confessions of a Killer
Shortly after his arrest, during the early hours of July 23, 1991, Dahmer was questioned by police about the discoveries in his apartment. Detective Patrick Kennedy, and later Detective Dennis Murphy, conducted the interviews with Dahmer which totalled over sixty hours, during which Dahmer waived his right to have a lawyer present for these interrogations.
He insisted he wanted to confess to his crimes telling detectives he had, “created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it.” He went on to explain how he had murdered sixteen young men in Wisconsin from 1987 until his arrest, along with a further murder, that of his first murder of Steven Hicks, committed in Ohio in 1978.
He went into great detail, explaining the process he had developed and refined in taking the lives of the young men he had lured home. Once his victims were rendered unconscious, he told of strangling them with either a leather strap of his bare hands. Some died from the injecting of acid or boiling water directly into their brains. Once dead, he always engaged in sex with the body, fully satisfying his necrophiliac desires.
The dismemberment that followed had taken place in the bathroom of Dahmer’s apartment, where he drained their blood into his bathtub, before removing any organs he wished to keep, then paring the flesh from the body. The organs he wish to retain were bagged and stored in his freezer, he told the officers, for later consumption.
Dahmer confessed to eating the various organs and body parts of some his victims. He would eat the hearts, liver, biceps and portions of thigh. These body parts were from victims Raymond Smith, Ernest Miller and Oliver Lacy, whose dissected remains Dahmer tenderized before consuming.
Dahmer said he purchased this meat tenderizer after attempting to consume the thigh muscle of one victim and discovering the flesh was “so tough he could hardly chew it.” In preparing the organs and flesh of his victims, Dahmer added various condiments to bring out the flavour, in much the same way a chef would prepare an ordinary meal.
When asked by his interrogators why he decided to consume the bodies of his victims, Dahmer told them he had initially only wanted to taste a portion of his victims, out of curiosity, however as he committed more and more killings, it became part of his ritual. He added, “I suppose, in an odd way, it made me feel they were even more a permanent part of me.”
The bones he wanted to dispose of were often pulverized with a sledgehammer, while those he wish to keep were preserved and acidified with Soilax and bleach solutions. It was usually the heads of his victims that Dahmer kept, and once the flesh was removed, he painted some grey and kept them as ghoulish souvenirs.
When asked why he kept the skulls of seven of his victims, along with the entire skeletons of two, Dahmer explained a fantasy he wished to realize. As the shocked detectives listened in disbelief, he told how he intended to create a shrine to his victims, a private altar, upon which he would display the trophies of his crimes.
Atop a black table, Dahmer said he would place incense sticks at each end, a large blue lamp with extending blue globe lights above, and the skulls of his victims placed in a row. Either end, would stand the complete skeletons of two victims. Before this spectacle, Dahmer would sit in a black leather chair.
This entire construction was something Dahmer fully intended on creating, however his subsequent arrest prevented these plans. He revealed his altar only required the skull of one more victim, telling detectives “If this [his arrest] had happened six months later, that’s what they would have found.”
From the Polaroid photographs found in his apartment, detectives could see that most of the victims were black. Out of a total of seventeen young men, fourteen of Dahmer’s victims were from various ethnic minority backgrounds, with nine victims being black. Dahmer was adamant that the race of his victims was incidental to him and that it was the body form of a potential victim that attracted his attention.
As news of the discoveries began to emerge, the press ran with sensationalist headlines that captured both the imagination and horror of the public. Jeffrey Dahmer was, like many other high profile serial killers, given a nickname. He was called the Milwaukee Cannibal and the Milwaukee Monster, names seem appropriate considering the severity and bizarre nature of his crimes.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Trial of a Cannibal Killer
The trial of Jeffrey Dahmer began on January 30, 1992 in Milwaukee, where he was charged with 15 counts of first degree murder. The security for the trial was unique in Milwaukee’s criminal history, as described by journalist Anne Schwartz. “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 had one of the 23 seats for reporters, while 34 were reserved for the families of Dahmer’s victims.
The remaining 43 out of 100 were for public spectators, many of whom wanted to experience the trial of the Milwaukee Cannibal, and see him sat in the court in his makeshift glass prison, much in the same way Hannibal Lecter had done in Silence of the Lambs. His father and stepmother, Lionel and Shari Dahmer, attended every day.
Representing Dahmer was defense lawyer Gerald Boyle, who had defended Dahmer in the past, while District Attorney Michael McCann was prosecuting. Overseeing the trial was Judge Laurence C. Gram, Jr. For those who wanted answers about why such horrific crimes were committed, the trial promised who reveal all of the bizarre revelations.
When jury selection began, the pool of prospective jurors had been 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?”
Potential jurors were discarded by Boyle and McCann, especially those who were prejudiced against homosexuals or who didn’t have any use for psychiatrists. On the second day of jury selection before the prospective jurors were called into the room, Anne Schwartz recalled how 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.” The jury and two alternates were selected on January 29, 1992, with only one black person selected. This caused a protest among the victim’s family members.
Through the discovery that most of Dahmer’s victims had been black, the entire case had polarized the community along racial lines. Along with Glenda Cleveland’s story about the Milwaukee police department’s failure to adequately protect Konerak Sinthasomphone, the mostly white jury only served as another example of what many perceived as racial injustice.
In a shocking twist, Dahmer changed his plea to guilty before the trial began, on January 13, 1992. This was against the advice of his lawyer, and Dahmer insisted that he was insane. He had waived his rights to a trial, intended to establish his guilt, and now the focus of the proceedings were shifted to establishing Dahmer’s sanity.
Don Davis in his book ‘The Milwaukee Murders’ said, “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.”
Boyle needed to show that during the time he carried out the murders, Dahmer was suffering from some sort of mental disorder or disease, and was ultimately driven by his bizarre obsessions and impulses that he was unable to control. Impulses that contributed to him luring, slaying and disposing of seventeen young men in the most horrific ways.
In contrast, prosecutor Michael McCann had the task of proving that Jeffrey Dahmer, the man the American press were calling the “Milwaukee Cannibal,” was not legally insane, and that he knew exactly what he was doing was wrong, but did so anyway. McCann knew he had to convince the jury that Dahmer was an evil psychopath who lured his victims and killed them in cold blood.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Defense of a Madman
Dahmer’s defense counsel intended to call on some forty-five witnesses who would attest that he suffered from a variety of sexual and mental disorders that contributed to his bizarre behaviour. Boyle hoped to prove that these psychological aberrations prevented his client from understanding the nature of his crimes.
His compulsion to have necrophilic sexual encounters with the corpses of his victims was proof enough that Jeffrey Dahmer suffered from a paraphilia he was unable to control. One witness, Judith Becker, a professor of psychiatry and psychology, diagnosed Dahmer as a necrophiliac. However, she revealed Dahmer told her he mostly preferred comatose partners to the deceased.
Forensic psychiatrist Carl Wahlstrom, testified before the court that he had diagnosed Dahmer with necrophilia, borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, alcohol dependence, and a psychotic disorder. For Boyle, the question he put to the jury centred around the discussion of whether Dahmer was “evil or sick?”
For the court, every ghastly detail of what Dahmer did to his victims, and the nightmarish details of the dismemberment, the cannibalism, the attempted lobotomy, were, as far as Boyle was concerned, fair game. His goal as Dahmer’s defense attorney was to convince the jury that such acts, and even thoughts pertaining to such crimes, did not occur within a sane person.
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Prosecution of a Serial Killer
If the jury had adjourned at that time and taken Boyle’s words into consideration, they might have agreed with Jeffrey Dahmer’s insanity defense. However, it was now the turn of the prosecution and District Attorney Michael McCann to present his case. He began by telling the jury that Dahmer was a “master manipulator”.
He was a “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.”
Dahmer’s 160-page confession was read out to the court by two detectives taking turns. It contained the catalogue of sexual perversions he had committed. 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 prosecution in turn called their own experts.
Testimony from Fred Fosdal attempted to prove that Dahmer suffered from no mental disease at the time of the murders, but rather painted him as a cunning and calculating killer, who knew the difference between right and wrong. Fosdal contended that he possessed the ability to control his actions, but was dictated by his overpowering lust.
Forensic psychiatrist Park Dietz offered an assessment that in his opinion, Dahmer did not suffer from any form of mental disease of defect at the time of the murders, stating “Dahmer went to great lengths to be alone with his victim and to have no witnesses.” He believed there was sufficient evidence that Dahmer prepared for the murder beforehand.
Dietz believed Dahmer’s need to consume alcohol prior to committing the murders was a significant factor. His need to become intoxicated meant “If he had an impulse to kill or a compulsion to kill”, Dietz testified, “he wouldn’t have to drink alcohol to overcome it. He only has to drink alcohol to overcome it because he is inhibited against killing.”
It was noted by Dietz that Dahmer’s favorite film was The Exorcist III, and he closely identified with Darth Vader, the villain in the science fiction movie Return of the Jedi. It was noted that he enjoyed the level of power this character and others like him held. He said Dahmer would often watch these films before venturing out in search of victims.
The courtroom had become a battleground for psychiatrists and psychologists over whether Jeffrey Dahmer was legally responsible and in control of his actions. The testimonies and cross-examination of these experts seemed to confuse the jury. Psychologist Samuel Friedman gave independent testimony, diagnosing Dahmer with a personality disorder not otherwise specified featuring borderline, obsessive-compulsive, and sadistic traits.
Friedman described Dahmer as “amiable, pleasant to be with, courteous, with a sense of humor, conventionally handsome, and charming in manner. He was, and still is, a bright young man.” He characterized his need to kill as a longing for companionship, but did not accept an assessment that Dahmer was psychotic.
The Trial of Jeffrey Dahmer: Closing Arguments
On February 14, 1992, after two weeks of testimony, the defense and prosecution delivered their closing arguments to the court. In his summation, Boyle drew a chart for the jury in the form of a wheel, the hub of which was Jeffrey Dahmer and all of the spokes coming out from the wheel were the elements of his deviance.
He read them for the jury: “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…”
Boyle made reference to the defense experts and their arguments in favour of Dahmer’s mental health afflictions. He said Dahmer’s compulsion to kill was the result of “a sickness he discovered, not chose.” He described his client as a desperately lonely individual, “so out of control he could not conform his conduct anymore.”
Prosecutor McCann countered Boyle’s chart, arguing; “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.” He argued that Jeffrey Dahmer was a sane man, fully in control of his actions.
He said that evidence of this was his ability to avoid detection, and described Dahmer as a cold and calculating individual, who killed his victims to gain power and control over their bodies, so he could enjoy the prologued periods of sexual pleasure that he so desperately craved. It was McCann’s opinion that Dahmer’s attempt to plead guilty but insane to the charges showed that he was looking to escape responsibility for his heinous crimes.
Milwaukee Cannibal Trial: Conviction and Sentencing
The jury deliberated for five hours before giving their verdict. On February 15, 1992, they declared that Jeffrey Dahmer was sane and did not suffer from any mental disorder at the time of each of the fifteen murders for which he was tried. They decided that he did not deserve to spend the rest of his life in a hospital, but rather a prison cell.
Journalist Anne Schwartz, who covered the Dahmer story for the Milwaukee Journal from the discovery of his murder through to the trial, said she 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.”
“‘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.”
Standing at the lectern, Dahmer ended his apology which covered four typewritten pages with, “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.”
After he finished his statement, Dahmer awaited his sentence. He was given life imprisonment plus ten years upon the first two counts. The remaining thirteen counts carried a mandatory sentence of life plus seventy years. Because capital punishment had been abolished in Wisconsin in 1853, the death penalty was not an option.
Before Dahmer was escorted away from court, his father Lionel and stepmother Shuri requested to be allowed a ten-minute private meeting with him. This was granted and the three exchanged hugs and well-wishes before Jeffrey Dahmer taken away to be transferred to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage to begin his sentence.
Dahmer was extradited to Ohio three months after his conviction in Milwaukee to face charges for the murder of his first victim, Steven Hicks. In court, his hearing lasted just 45 minutes, and once again Dahmer pleaded guilty to the charges. On May 1, 1992, he was sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment.
Jeffrey Dahmer: Incarceration
Dahmer seemed to adjust well to life in prison at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. Initially, he was kept apart from the general population for the first year, with prison authorities concerned his safety would be in danger. During his time in solitary confinement, Dahmer received many letters from people all across the world.
He was often donated money which he was able to spend on personal items such as cigarettes, magazines, stationary and cassette tapes. Dahmer was a model prisoner and was eventually able to convince the prison authorities to allow him more contact with other inmates, and he was transferred to a less secure unit. This saw him eat in the communal areas, as well as him being given some janitorial duties that allowed work with other inmates.
Assigned to a two-hour work detail, Dahmer was put to cleaning the toilet block daily. This was eventually expanded to include cleaning the prison gymnasium. During his time in solitary, Dahmer had begun reading a copy of the bible, that had been given to him by Detective Murphy shortly after his confessions in 1991.
Dahmer soon made the decision to devote himself to Christianity, becoming a born-again Christian. On April 20, 1994, Dahmer met Roy Ratcliff, a minister in the Church of Christ who was accommodating to his newfound faith. In May 1944, he was baptized by Ratcliff, who spent seven months as Jeffrey Dahmer’s spiritual mentor.
Confessing to his remorse and a desire to follow the path of righteousness, Ratcliff referred to Dahmer as his “friend and brother in faith,” and the two met every week, and would often discuss bible verses and Ratcliff’s religious teachings. The minster later revealed that Dahmer questioned whether he was sinning against God by continuing to live.
On July 3, 1994, while attending a chapel service, Dahmer was attacked by a Cuban inmate, Osvaldo Durruthy, who attempted to slash Dahmer’s throat with a makeshift razor embedded in a toothbrush. His wounds were only superficial, and Dahmer claimed to have never seen his attacker before that day.
Dahmer had confessed to his family a desire to die, admitting that he was ready to accept whatever punishment he might suffer in prison. Joyce Dahmer held weekly phone calls with her son, after not seeing him prior to his arrest since Christmas 1983. When Joyce expressed concern for his safety, Dahmer told her “It doesn’t matter, Mom. I don’t care if something happens to me.”
The Death of Jeffrey Dahmer
On the morning of November 28, 1994, Dahmer left his cell after being assigned to a work detail with two other inmates, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The three were left alone and unsupervised by guards in the showers of the prison gymnasium. After twenty minutes, at approximately 08:10am, Jeffrey Dahmer was discovered lying on the floor of the gym bathrooms.
He was unresponsive, having suffered gruesome wounds to his head. A 20-inch metal bar was nearby, used to bludgeon him about the head and face. Blood on the wall indicated that Dahmer’s head had been repeatedly struck against it during the assault. Although still breathing, he was declared dead an hour later at 9:11am.
One of the other prisoners, Jesse Anderson, was found nearby having also been bludgeoned. Although he was still alive, he died two days later after doctors at the University of Wisconsin Hospital in Madison removed him from life support. The third inmate, Christopher Scarver, returned to his cell.
There, he informed a guard; “God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead.” Scarver, a black messianic delusional schizophrenic who thought he was the son of God after hearing voices calling him the “chosen one”, was serving a sentence for first-degree murder after he shot and killed Steve Lohman on June 1, 1990.
It is not difficult to understand how Scarver, a black man, viewed both Jesse Anderson, who murdered his wife and blamed it on a black man, and Jeffrey Dahmer, who had butchered his victims, most of whom were African Americans. The decision to place the three men together on a work detail had proven disastrous.
From Scarver, the prison authorities learned what had happened that morning. After a confrontation with Dahmer and Anderson, Scarver went and retrieved a steel bar from the weight room, then following Dahmer to the locker room where he was cleaning, and there fatally struck him on the head. Scarver said that Dahmer did not yell or make any noise as he was attacked. He then went on to attack Anderson, bludgeoning him with the same weapon.
Christopher Scarver admitted to the murders, but claimed he had not planned the attacks in advance, despite concealing the murder weapon his clothing. When Dahmer’s mother Joyce learned of his death, she said angrily “Now is everybody happy? Now that he’s bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?”
Jeffrey Dahmer: Aftermath
When the victim’s families heard news of Dahmer’s death, there were mixed reactions. Some were glad that such a devious and depraved serial killer was dead, and openly celebrated the news. Others however, believed that the Milwaukee Cannibal had escaped his punishment, and that he deserved to spend the rest of his natural life behind bars.
Catherine Lacy, the mother of victim Oliver Lacy, remarked: “The hurt is worse now, because he’s not suffering like we are.” There were those who believed Christopher Scarver had delivered his own form of justice against Dahmer. Mike McCann, who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned the public against turning Scarver into a folk hero, reiterating that Dahmer’s death was still a murder.
For the murders of Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson, Christopher Scarver was sentenced on May 15, 1995, to two additional terms of life imprisonment. Dahmer’s remains were cremated, as per his wishes stated in his will. This occurred in September 1995, and his ashes were divided between his parents.
Shortly after his death, there was much scientific interest in retaining Jeffrey Dahmer’s brain for study. Because of a disagreement between his parents as to whether Dahmer’s brain should be retained for medical research, it was initially kept in storage, but once this became know, the organ was cremated in December 1995.
The Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street, the site of where the majority of Jeffrey Dahmer’s crime had taken place, was demolished in November 1992, and is now a vacant lot after several plans to repurpose the area were never realized. The empty site now stands as a stark reminder, of the evil that had once occurred by a serial killer who was addicted to murder.
Written by Nucleus
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