Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer. He murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 (with the majority of the murders occurring between 1989 and 1991). His murders were particularly gruesome, involving acts of necrophilia, dismemberment and cannibalism.

Early life

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 ten months of a one year sentence 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 continued the string of murders that would end with his arrest in 1991.

Later 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 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 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

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 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 937 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. According to popular but apocryphal reports of the incident, Dahmer was killed by having his skull smashed, and did not die immediately, but rather in the ambulance in route to the hospital. A report from a purported former fellow inmate of Dahmer's contradicts certain points in the popular story, such as that Dahmer was dead before the ambulance arrived.

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 incarcerated for murder. The fact that Scarver was black (and that most of Dahmer's victims were black) did not escape note by critics. Before his murder, Dahmer escaped a previous attempted murder. After attending a church service in the prison chapel, an inmate took a razorblade and attempted to slash Dahmer's throat. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds.

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.

Aftermath

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.

Victims

Name	Age	Date of Death
Stephen Hicks	20	June, 1978
Steven Toumi	26	September, 1987
Jamie Doxtator	14	October, 1987
Richard Guerrero	25	March, 1988
Anthony Sears	24	February, 1989
Eddie Smith	36	May, 1990
Ricky Beeks	27	June, 1990
Ernest Miller	22	September, 1990
David Thomas	23	September, 1990
Conor Murphy	16	February, 1991
Errol Lindsey	19	April, 1991
Tony Hughes	31	May 24, 1991
Konerak Sinthasomphone	14	May 27, 1991
Matt Turner	20	June 30, 1991
Jeremiah Weinberger	23	July 5, 1991
Oliver Lacy	23	July 12, 1991
Joseph Bradeholt	25	July 19, 1991

Attempted victim

Name	Age	Date of Abduction
Tracey Edwards	32	July 22, 1991

Pop culture references

References in film

• Johnny Knoxville, star of The Ringer (2006), plays the mentally-challenged character by the name of Jeffy Dahmor.
• The movie Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life was released in 1993, starring Carl Crew as Dahmer.
• 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.
• In the movie Exit Wounds (2001), a jailed character complains of the many "Jeffrey Dahmer look-alikes" in the jail.
• In the 1997 movie Con Air, actor Steve Buscemi's character, Garland 'The Marietta Mangler' Greene, referes to serial killers, Dahmer (Jeffrey) and Gacy (John Wayne).
• Dahmer was one of the serial killers emulated by the villain in the movie Copycat (1995). Like Dahmer, the villain went to gay bars and drugged his victims' drinks; he also cuts off one victim's head with a surgical saw.
• In the movie Demolition Man (1993), the criminal Simon Phoenix (played by Wesley Snipes) 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 because of Dahmer's murder in prison in 1994.
• In the movie Final Destination (2000), Alex Browning (played by Devon Sawa) argues with 2 agents about how he is normal and that he sees visions saying: "I'm not going Dahmer on you guys."
• In the film Phone Booth (2002), a reference is made to Jeffrey Dahmer and the fact that he is well known for being a serial killer.
• In the 8 Ball & MJG song, Relax and Take Notes, MJG makes a reference to having the ghost of Jeffrey Dahmer ridin' with him.
• In Rob Zombies 'The Devils Rejects' there is a reference to Dahmer with the body parts in the freezers, and the log books of their victims.

References in literature

• Horror writer Poppy Z. Brite has written several works with protagonists inspired by Dahmer, including the short story "Self-Made Man" and the novel Exquisite Corpse, in which a pair of homosexual necrophiliac-cannibalistic lovers plot the murder of a young Vietnamese man.
• Joyce Carol Oates's novel Zombie was based on Dahmer.
• In Chuck Palahniuk's novel 'Lullaby', a paramedic named John Nash references Dahmer. “You remember Jeffrey Dahmer.” Nash licks and says, “He didn’t set out to kill so many people. He just thought you could drill a hole in somebody’s skull, pour in some drain cleaner, and make them your sex zombie. Dahmer just wanted to be getting more.”

References in music

• He is mentioned in the song "Turn The Heat Up" by Bobaflex.
• The Canadian grindcore band Dahmer is named after Jeffrey Dahmer.
• The American Power violence band Apartment 213 is a reference Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment number.
• The American death metal band Macabre has written a concept album about Jeffrey Dahmer titled 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 "Way Cool" by Freestyle Fellowship is a song about Jeffrey Dahmer.
• Punk singer Tesco Vee sold aprons with a photoshopped image of Dahmer as Chef Boyardee with the tagline "Chef Jeff".
• The song "Dirty Frank" by Pearl Jam is a song about "Dirty Frank Dahmer" who keeps cupboards full of human corpses to use as ingredients.
• The song "Room 213" by GGFH is about Jeffrey Dahmer.
• The song Lord Abortion by popular British based Black Metal band Cradle of Filth chronicles the actions and life of a modern day Jack the Ripper, and references Dahmer with the line "I know I'm sick, as Dahmer did,"
• The song "Jeffrey Dahmer's Cookbook" by death/grind band Fuck...I'm Dead is a reference to Jeffrey Dahmer.
• In Dr. Dre and Ice Cube's song Natural Born Killaz, there is a reference to Dahmer
• The song "213" by the thrash metal band Slayer is about Jeffrey Dahmer.
• The song "Siccmade" by gangster rapper Brotha Lynch Hung makes a reference to "J. Dahmer".
• The song "God Bless" by Combichrist mentions Dahmer's name, as well as a very long list of other serial killers.
• The song "Trigger Inside" by Therapy? contains the lyric "I know how Jeffrey Dahmer feels, lonely, lonely".
• The song "Fearless" by Insane Clown Posse contains the lyric "I'll meet Jeffrey Dahmer at some kinda of bar let him take me home and eat me"
• The song "Joker's Wild" by Insane Clown Posse contains mention of Dahmer, where the announcer (Shaggy 2 Dope) asks the question "Who killed 17 people, then later ate there bodies?", to which the person being asked replies "J...Jeffrey Dahmer?" where Shaggy then says"NO, the correct answer is your mother!", after which a gun shot is heard.
• The song "Hazy Shade Of Criminal" by Public Enemy contains the lyric "Jeffrey Dahmer enter the room without cuffs"
• In the song "Who's on The Microphone?" Biggie Smalls mentions Dahmers cannibilism
• Swedish metal band Terror 2000's song "Satan's Barbeque" is about a a Barbeque at Satan's house with Jeffrey Dahmer, Ted Bundy, and George Foreman
• In the song "Do The Charles Manson" by underground rapper Necro the lyrics contain the words " Do the Charles Manson, Do the Jeffrey Dahmer"
• In the song "Straight Boys" by internet celebrity Jeffree Star, lyrics include "I want a boy like me but hotter/to eat me out like Jeffrey Dahmer."
• Ras Kass´s song "The Nature of the Threat" contains the lyrics "Whites claim they had to civilize these pagan animals, but up until 1848 there's documented cases of whites being the savage cannibals, eatin Indians, In 1992, it's Jeffery Dahmer"
• The band The Calm Before have a song called "Jeffrey Dahmer Eat Your Heart Out"
• Eminem's "Fubba U Cubba Cubba" contains the lyrics "Jeffrey Dahmer left me with his legacy to carry on". He also references Dahmer in one of his old freestyle verses with the line "Storing dead bodies in Grandma's little basement"
• "Jeffery Dahmer Went to Heaven" by Room full of Walters. Took statements from one of Dahmer's last interviews in which he stated he had found Jesus.
• There is a Long Island metal band named "The Dahmer Project".
• The band Desecration wrote a song "No More Room In The Freezer" which in the beginning features a news report about the discoveries in his home.

References in television

• Featured in a South Park episode in which he, Ted Bundy, and John Wayne Gacy work together to pick up a Ferrari cake for Satan. The trio parody the Three Stooges. Dahmer represents Larry. He was also mentioned in the episode "Mr Hankey's Christmas Classics".
• On a Comedy Inc. fake commercial for spin-offs of the sitcom Dharma and Greg, one of the proposed spin-offs was "Jeffrey Dahmer and Greg" with a shot of Jenna Elfman's (Nicole Sullivan) severed head in a freezer.
• On an episode of Robot Chicken, a woman discovers heads in the freezer and then informally shouts "Jeffrey, we're out of ice cream!".
• On an episode of the FOX legal drama, Justice, attorney Ron Trott states "Mrs. Dahmer probably thought Jeffrey was innocent even after they found a head in his freezer" in an effort to explain how mothers are naturally trusting.
• On the Showtime crime drama Dexter, when Dexter Morgan walks towards a serial killer's crime scene and talks about how the killings are staged, with everyone circling around the killzone, he refers to it as a twisted amusement park: "Dahmerland."
• On an episode of the NBC crime drama, Law & Order: Criminal Intent entitled Want, Neil Patrick Harris guest stars as a shy young man suspected of being a serial killer. The signature of the character is similar to Jeffrey Dahmer's. This signature included drilling holes in the heads of victims and cannabalism. Additionally, the escape of a potential victim led to the capture of both the character and Dahmer.
• In an episode of Pimp My Ride Xzibit is commenting on the guys freezer saying "Wow, is that a Jeffrey Dahmer freezer?".
• In an episode of Black Books Bill Bailey is seen playing with a cooked chicken, to which he gets told 'This is how Jeffrey Dahmer and that lot get started."

References in video games

• In the video game Shadow Man, In one of the early cutscenes, Jaunty asks Shadow Man to say howya to Jeffrey Dahmer if he goes into the Asylum
• In the video game Clock Tower 3 there is a "boss" called acid man who is supposed to be based off of Dahmer.

Miscellaneous

• Dahmer often said that Anthony Sears was his favorite.
• The sisters of Edward Smith attended his memorial service and forgave him publicly.

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)
• Masters, Brian: "The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer"; Hodder and Stroughton Limited, London 1993 (Paperback Coronet 1993)

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.
• Young Jeffrey Dahmer - comic book by Derf about his school acquaintanceship with Dahmer
• Profile of Dahmer at Carpe Noctem (Seize The Night)