Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was a notorious American serial killer, necrophiliac and cannibal, who murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 (with the majority of the murders occurring between 1989 and 1991).

Early life

Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His family soon moved to Bath, Ohio. 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. In fact, 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. Then, after drinks Dahmer killed him, because Dahmer "didn't want him to leave".

Dahmer attended Ohio State University, but dropped out after one term. Dahmer's father then made him sign up with the Army. He signed up for a six-year stint in the Army, but was released after only two years because of 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 only needed 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

Most of Dahmer's victims were homosexual black men.

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 around nude and asking guys for their numbers. Reports of the boy's injuries varied. Some sources claimed he had a hole drilled in the back of his head, while others claimed he was bleeding from the anus[1]. 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. Bizarrely, Sinthasomphone was the younger brother of the boy Dahmer had been convicted of molesting in 1988. Dahmer claimed (and the majority of available evidence suggests) that this disturbing coincidence was merely chance.

John Balcerzak (who was elected president of the Milwaukee Police Association in May 2005) 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. The two officers appealed this termination and were reinstated with back pay. They were named officers of the year by the police union for fighting to regain their jobs.

By the summer of 1991, Dahmer was murdering around one person every week. Matt Turner was killed on June 30th, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5th, Oliver Lacy on July 12th, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 19th, just three days before Dahmer was finally arrested.

Capture

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 the handcuff was still hanging from one hand when Tracy managed to escape and alert a police car.

Edwards led the officers 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 and cannibalism. 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 and imprisonment

Jeffrey 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 not guilty by reason of insanity.

The judge found Dahmer guilty and sane on 15 counts of murder and sentenced 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 28th, 1994, Dahmer (who himself had murdered 10 African American males) and another inmate named Jesse Anderson were brutally beaten with an iron bar from the prison gym, and killed by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.

After Dahmer's death and subsequent legal proceedings regarding the study of his brain were over, his remains were cremated and divided in half between his birth mother Joyce and his father Lionel and stepmother Shari.

Aftermath

After the murders, the Oxford Apartments were razed 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 2006. 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.

The families of Dahmer's victims are continuing to struggle with their grief, but after Lionel Dahmer published his book A Father's Story, the majority of the family members reached out to him and his wife Shari. He donated a portion of the proceeds from his book to the victims and their families. 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 of them continue to carry the name Dahmer and still 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.

In a 1990 interview with a British reporter, he answered the now infamous question, with the response, "A lot like chicken".

Pop culture references

• Joyce Carol Oates's novel Zombie was inspired at least in part by Dahmer's crimes.
• The movie Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life was released in 1993, starring Carl Crew as Dahmer.
• There was a Law and Order episode with a criminal who commited quite similar crimes, and even looked the same.
• In 2002, the biopic Dahmer, starring Jeremy Renner in the title role, premiered in Dahmer's hometown. The film, which portrayed Dahmer in a somewhat sympathetic light, met with protest from the victims' families, and quickly went to video.
• Dahmer was one of the serial killers emulated by the villain in the movie Copycat. Like Dahmer, the villain went to gay bars and drugged his victims' drinks and he also cuts off one victim's head with a surgical saw.
• In the movie The Ringer, they refer to Dahmer when Johnny Knoxville is playing a man named Steve, and he enters the Special Olympics. He uses the name Jeffy, and when he needs a last name his friend says his last name is 'Dahmor' (pronounced like Dahmer).
• In the movie Demolition Man, one character discovers Dahmer's name in a list of cryogenically frozen people and decides to release him, declaring, "Jeffrey Dahmer? I love that guy!" This scene is frequently deleted in modern broadcasts of the film due to Dahmer's subsequent murder in prison in 1994, thus making the scene anachronistic.
• The series South Park has an episode (Mr. Hankey's Christmas Classics) that features Jeffrey Dahmer. The song Christmas Time In Hell sung by Satan, has the line "There goes Jeffrey Dahmer with a festive christmas ham, after he has sex with it he'll eat up all he can." On the TV show In Living Color, Snuff and Roam (Shawn and Marlon Wayans) say they will go Jeffrey Dahmer on an inmate, which they say means they'll "cut his big ass up, put him in a freezer, and kick his ass later."
• In a 2004 article in 3DShroom Magazine, Dahmer was described as the "most pitied serial killer in American history." The article described Dahmer's life as pathetic in comparison to less repentant killers like Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.
• The Canadian sketch show/troupe the Kids in the Hall once aired a sketch where KITH member Scott Thompson compared photos of himself to famous people, of which there were striking resemblances. The final photo showed a picture of Jeffrey Dahmer next to Scott Thompson in a side profile.

References in Music

• The Canadian grindcore band Dahmer is named after Jeffrey Dahmer.
• The song "213" from Slayer's "Divine Intervention" CD is dedicated to Dahmer.
• American heavy metal band Macabre have written a concept album about Jeffrey Dahmer titled Dahmer.
• The song "Arc Arsenal" by At the Drive-In is also believed to be about Jeffrey Dahmer.
• The song "Dahmer is Dead" by the Violent Femmes clearly references the killer.
• There is a track on Venetian Snares' album Meathole titled Sinthasomphone, a reference to Dahmer's thirteenth victim.
• The song "Trigger Inside" by the Irish rock band Therapy? features the lyric "I know how Jeffrey Dahmer feels, lonely, lonely".
• Rappers Dr. Dre and Ice Cube include the lyric "so I'm a pull a fuckin' Jeffrey Dahmer..." in the song "Natural Born Killaz."
• The lyric "I feel like Jeffrey Dahmer, chopping bodies in the kitchen" is present in the song "Tear Da Club Up Thugs Hypnotize Minds-Profit Posse" by Juicy-J.
• The song "Fan Club" from the album Shine Box by the Irish pop group Picturehouse contains the lyric "'cos he loves Jeffrey Dahmer..."
• The song "Way Cool" by Freestyle Fellowship is a song about Jeffrey Dahmer.
• Deathrock band Christian Death has written a song titled "Still Born/Still Life" and dedicated it to Dahmer.
• Punk singer Tesco Vee sold aprons with a photoshopped image of Dahmer as Chef Boyardee with the tagline 'Chef Jeff'.
• The band Bloody Tea vs. Human Raise has a song about Jeffrey Dahmer named "Jeffrey Dahmer's Cook Book."
• Black metal band Cradle of Filth mention Dahmer and also Gilles de Rais in the song "Lord Abortion" on their "Midian" album.
• Dahmer is also mentioned in the song 'Archives of Pain' by Manic Street Preachers.
• The song "Straight Boys" by singer Jeffree Star contains the lyric "I want a boy like me but hotter, to eat me out like Jeffrey Dahmer."
• The Insane Clown Posse makes a reference to Jeffrey Dahmer in the song "Jokers Wild" off their Riddle Box album, as well as "Fearless", from their Bizzar album.
• The industrial band GGFH has a song about Dahmer titled "Room 213".
• There is a mock t.v commercial for Playstation 2 depicting Dahmer in an interview describing his childhood www.myspace.com/mercuryboyinc
• The Notorious B.I.G. refers to him with the line "Cannibalistic like that nigga Jeffery Dahmer" on the song "Who's on the Mic"
• The Cleveland power-violence band Apartment 213 is named after Dahmer's address.

Literature

• Pincus, Jonathan H.: "Base Instincts - What Makes Killers kill?"; W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2001 (Paperback 2002)
• Dahmer, Lionel.: "A Father's Story"; William Morrow & Company, New York 1994 (Paperback 1994)
• Mann, Robert & Williamson, Miryam.: "Forensic Detective - How I Cracked The World's Toughest Cases"; Ballantine Books (March 28 2006)

External links

• BBC's Infamous Criminals
• Crime Library article on Dahmer
• Jeffrey Dahmer at IMDb
• Find A Grave Entry
• Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee Wisconsin - This is an aerial view of the now demolished Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee Wisconsin. They are located on the corner of North 25th Street and Kilbourn.
• Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee photo taken 1998
• Young Jeffrey Dahmer - comic book by Derf about his school acquaintanceship with Dahmer
• http://www.crimelibrary.com/serial_killers/notorious/dahmer/index.html
• http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=63&grp=13
• http://www.alice-miller.com/articles_en.php?lang=en&nid=68&grp=12
• Profile of Dahmer at Carpe Noctem (Seize The Night)