Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (1960 – 1994) murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. His murders were particularly gruesome, involving acts of necrophilia, dismemberment and cannibalism.

LIFE:

He reportedly dissected already dead animals as a child. He struggled with substance abuse and suffered from extremely low self-esteem. After years of constant fighting, his parents underwent a divorce when Jeffrey was 18. Dahmer committed his first murder then, killing Steven Hicks. After picking up the 19 year old hitchhiker, Dahmer invited Hicks to his house. After drinks, Dahmer killed him, because he "didn't want him to leave."

Dahmer attended Ohio State University, but he dropped out after one term. Dahmer's father then forced him to enroll in the Army, but he was released due to his excessive drinking. In 1982, he moved in with his grandmother in Wisconsin, where he would live for six years.

There were many signs of Dahmer's increasingly unhinged frame of mind. In August 1982, he was arrested for exposing himself at a state fair. Four years later, he was charged again with public exposure after two boys accused him of masturbating in public.

In 1988 he was arrested for sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy, for which he served one year in a work release camp and was required to register as a sex offender. He convinced the judge that he needed only psychological help, and he was released with a 5 year probation on good behavior. Shortly thereafter, he began the string of murders that would end with his arrest in 1991.

MURDERS:

One of Dahmer's victims escaped, only to be returned to him by police. When it was later publicized, there was widespread condemnation of the officers. In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year old Konerak Sinthasomphone was discovered on the street, wandering nude. Dahmer told police that they had had an argument while drinking, and that Sinthasomphone was his 19 year-old lover. Against the teenager's protests, police turned him over to Dahmer. Later that night Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, the two police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were terminated after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making anti-gay statements to their dispatcher and laughing about having reunited the "lovers." The two officers appealed and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union for fighting to regain their jobs. Balcerzak would go on to be elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005.

By the summer of 1991, Dahmer was murdering approximately one person each week. On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured Tracy Edwards into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him. Edwards escaped and alerted a police car, with the handcuffs still hanging from one hand.

Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other searched the house and was horrified to uncover multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains in his refrigerator. several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, severed heads were found in his refrigerator, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles. Dahmer had practiced necrophilia, cannibalism and possibly a perverse form of trepanation in order to create so called "zombies". Dahmer admitted to eating the biceps of his eighth victim, noting that human flesh "tasted like beef" to him.

TRIAL:

Jeffrey Dahmer was officially indicted on 17 murder charges. Dahmer chose to plead guilty but insane, arguing that his necrophiliac urges were so strong that he couldn't control them. The judge found Dahmer guilty and sane on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 943993888 years in prison, one of the harshest prison sentences ever imposed.

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institute where he declared himself a born-again Christian. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was brutally beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver while on work detail in the prison. Scarver caught Dahmer as he tried to run and proceeded to break a broom-stick and inserted it almost three feet into Jeffery Dahmer's anus and smashing his skull with an iron bar, killing him within minutes. Much controversy surrounded both the decision to allow Dahmer such a privilege as work detail, as well as the pairing with Scarver, a man who was in for murder. The fact that Scarver was black (and that most of Dahmer's victims were black) did not escape note by critics.

FILMS / TV:

JEFFREY DAHMER: THE SECRET LIFE
DAHMER
COPYCAT
SOUTH PARK