JEFFREY DAHMER
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Early life of Jeffrey Dahmer

Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At age 4, he had surgery to correct a double hernia. His family soon moved to Bath, Ohio. He reportedly dissected already dead animals as a child. He struggled with alcoholism 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 at the age of 18, 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 United States Army, where he was to serve for a six year enlistment; but he was released after two, due to his excessive drinking. In 1982, he moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, 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. This time he was sentenced to a year in prison, of which he served 10 months.

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.

Later murders of Jeffrey Dahmer

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 Milwaukee Laotian Konerak Sinthasomphone was discovered on the street, wandering nude. Reports of the boy's injuries varied. 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. Sinthasomphone was the younger brother of the boy Dahmer had been convicted of molesting.

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, the two police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were terminated from the Milwaukee Police Department 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 their termination 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. Matt Turner was killed on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19, just three days before Dahmer was finally arrested.

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another black man, 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, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers, only to turn on them when he realized that the officers suspected something was wrong. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other searched the house and was horrified to uncover multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains including three severed heads. A further search of the house revealed more grisly evidence, including photographs of victims and human remains in his refrigerator.

The story of Dahmer's arrest and the gruesome inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: 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 and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that 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, Ernest Miller, whose skeleton he also kept, noting that human flesh "tasted like beef" to him.

Trial, imprisonment and death of Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffery Dahmer was officially indicted on 17 murder charges, which were reduced to 15. The murder cases were already so notorious that the authorities never bothered to charge him in the attempted murder of Edwards. His trial began in July 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, 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 943 years in prison, one of the harshest prison sentences ever imposed in Wisconsin's legal history.

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin, where he became more and more religious over time and ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer and another inmate named Jesse Anderson were brutally beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver while on work detail in the prison. Dahmer's death was especially gruesome compared to Anderson's. Scarver caught Dahmer as he tried to run and proceeded to break a broom-stick and inserted it almost three feet into Dahmer's anus and smashed 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 of Dahmer with Scarver, a man with a history of brutality 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.

After Dahmer's death and subsequent legal proceedings, Dahmer's remains were cremated and divided in half between his birth mother Joyce, and his father and stepmother. His brain was donated to scientific study. (Lionel and Shari).

Aftermath of the Dahmer Murders

After the murders, the Oxford Apartments were demolished and the site is now a vacant lot. At the time the apartments were demolished there were plans to turn the site into a memorial garden, but no garden exists on the site as of 2007. The site is mostly overgrown with grass and a tall chain link fence surrounding the perimeter of the property and is generally considered to be in a poor neighborhood on the north central side of Milwaukee.

Lionel Dahmer published a book, A Father's Story, and donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims and their families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel and his wife, Shari. He has retired from his career as an analytical chemist and resides with his wife today in Medina, Ohio. He consults on the evolution versus creationism topic occasionally, and his wife is a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman's Council. Both continue to carry the name Dahmer and say they love their son despite his crimes. Lionel Dahmer's first wife, Joyce, died of cancer some years after the trial.

Dahmer's younger brother David changed his last name and lives in anonymity.

Below are links to other killer bios that you might be interested in.

ALBERT FISH Albert Hamilton Fish (May 19, 1870 – January 16, 1936) was an American serial killer, child molester, and cannibal. He was also known as the Gray Man, the Werewolf of Wysteria and possibly the Brooklyn Vampire. (Detailed Bio) (Brief Bio)

ANDREI CHIKATILO Andrei Romanovich Chikatilo (October 16, 1936 – February 14, 1994) was a Russian serial killer, nicknamed the Rostov Ripper. He was convicted of the murder of 52 women and children between 1978 and 1990. (Detailed Bio) (Brief Bio)

ED GEIN Edward Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), was an American serial killer. Though only two murders on his part were proved, he gained great infamy due to necrophiliac behavior (which involved the skinning of his murder victims and exhumed corpses, the decoration of his home with parts of corpses, and the creation of articles of clothing and furniture from the skin of corpses) and cannibalism. (Detailed Bio) (Brief Bio)

JOHN WAYNE GACY John Wayne Gacy, (March 17, 1942 – May 10, 1994) was an American serial killer. He was convicted and later executed for the rape and murder of 33 boys and young men, 28 of whom he buried in the crawl space under his house, between 1972 and his arrest in December 1978. He became notorious as the "Killer Clown" because of the many block parties he attended, entertaining children in a clown suit and makeup. (Detailed Bio)

RICHARD CHASE Richard Trenton Chase (May 23, 1950 – December 26, 1980) was an American serial killer who killed six people in the span of a month in California. He earned the nickname The Vampire of Sacramento because he drank the blood of his victims and ate their internal organs. He did this as part of a delusion that he needed to prevent Nazis from turning his blood into powder via poison they had planted beneath his soap dish. (Detailed Bio)

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