Jeffrey Dahmer | American Serial Killer
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer
Born: 05-21-1960
Cannibal of Milwaukee
American Serial Killer
Crime Spree: 1978 – 1991
Murdered in prison on 1-28-1994
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the first of two sons to Joyce Annette, a teletype machine instructor, and Lionel Herbert Dahmer, a Marquette University chemistry student.
As Jeffrey entered first grade, Lionel’s university studies kept him away from home much of the time. When he was home however, his wife, a hypochondriac who also suffered with depression, demanded his constant attention. By this time, neither parent devoted much time to their son, who later recollected that, from an early age, he felt “unsure of the solidity of the family”.
Happy Child
Jeffrey Dahmer had been an “energetic and happy child” but became notably subdued after double hernia surgery shortly before his fourth birthday. At elementary school, Jeff was regarded as quiet and timid. One teacher later recalled that he did have a few friends but likewise detected early signs of abandonment in the boy due to his mother’s illnesses, the symptoms of which increased when she became pregnant with her second child.
In October of 1966, the Dahmer family moved to Doylestown, Ohio. When Joyce gave birth in December, Jeffrey was allowed to choose the name of his new baby brother. Jeffrey chose the name David. That same year, Lionel earned his degree and started work as an analytical chemist in nearby Akron, Ohio.
The Sound of Bones
From an early age, Jeffrey Dahmer manifested an eerie interest in dead animals. His fascination with dead animals may have begun when, at the age of four, he saw his father removing animal bones from beneath the family home. According to Lionel, Jeffrey was “oddly thrilled” by the sound the bones made, and became preoccupied with animal bones, which he initially called his “fiddlesticks”. He occasionally searched beneath and around the family home for additional bones, and explored the bodies of live animals to discover where their bones were located.
Another Move
In 1968, the family moved to Bath Township, Summit County, Ohio. This address was their third in two years. The home stood on one and a half acres of woodland, with a small hut being only a short walk from the house where Dahmer began collecting large insects such as dragonflies and moths and the skeletons of small animals such as chipmunks and squirrels.
Two years later, during a chicken dinner, Dahmer asked Lionel what would happen if the chicken bones were placed in bleach. Lionel, pleased by what he believed to be his son’s scientific curiosity, demonstrated how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones. Jeffrey began collecting more dead animals, including roadkill, which he would dissect and bury beside the hut, with the skulls occasionally placed atop makeshift crosses.
According to one friend, Dahmer explained to him that he was curious as to how animals “fitted together”. In one instance in 1975, Dahmer decapitated the carcass of a dog before nailing the body to a tree and impaling the skull upon a stick in the woodland behind his house. As “a prank”, he later invited a friend to view the display, claiming he had discovered the remains by chance.
Adolescence
From his freshman year at Revere High School, Jeffrey Dahmer was seen as an outcast. By the age of 14, he had begun drinking beer and hard alcohol in daylight hours; frequently concealing his liquor inside the jacket he wore to school. He referred to the alcohol as his medicine.
Although largely uncommunicative, Jeff was seen by staff as polite and highly intelligent but with average grades. He was a keen tennis player and played briefly in the high school band.
When he reached puberty, Jeffrey discovered he was gay. Although he had come to realize this about himself, he did not tell his parents. In his early teens, he had a brief relationship with another teenage boy, although they never had intercourse. By Dahmer’s later admission, he began fantasizing about dominating and controlling a completely submissive male partner in his early to mid-teens, and his masturbatory fantasies gradually evolved to his focusing upon the chests and torsos of the focus of his fantasies. These fantasies gradually became intertwined with dissection.
When he was about 16, Dahmer conceived a fantasy of rendering unconscious a particular male jogger he found attractive, and then making sexual use of his body. On one occasion Dahmer concealed himself in bushes with a baseball bat to lie in wait for this man; however, he did not pass by on that particular day. Dahmer later said this was his first attempt to attack someone.
Despite being regarded as a loner and an oddball among his peers at school, Jeffrey became something of a class clown who often staged pranks, which became known as “Doing a Dahmer”. These pranks included bleating and simulating epileptic seizures or cerebral palsy, at school and at local stores.
Jeffrey Dahmer
By 1977, Dahmer’s grades had declined enough that his parents hired a private tutor, with limited success. That same year, in an attempt to save their marriage, his parents attended counseling sessions, but with little progress made. They argued without cease.
When Lionel discovered Joyce had engaged in a brief affair in September of 1977, they both decided to divorce, telling their sons they wished to do so amicably. Lionel moved out of the house in early 1978, temporarily residing in a motel on North Cleveland Massillon Road.
In May 1978, Jeffrey Dahmer graduated from high school. A few weeks before his graduation, one of his teachers observed Dahmer sitting close to the school parking lot, drinking several cans of beer. When the teacher threatened to report the matter, Dahmer informed him he was experiencing “a lot of problems” at home and that the school’s guidance counselor was aware of them. That spring, Joyce and David moved out of the family home to live with relatives in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. Dahmer had just turned 18 and remained in the family home. Dahmer’s parents’ divorce was finalized on July 24, 1978. Joyce was awarded custody of her younger son and alimony payments. It would appear that her other son, Jeffrey, was on his own.
Steven Hicks
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer committed his first murder in 1978, just three weeks after his graduation.
On June 18, Dahmer, returning home from his mothers, came upon a hitchhiker, 19 year old Steven Mark Hicks. Steven had been hitchhiking to a rock concert at Chippewa Lake Park, Ohio. Jeffery stopped and lured the young man to his house on the pretext of drinking. Hicks agreed to accompany Dahmer to his house upon the promise of “a few beers” before resuming his adventure.
According to Jeffrey, the sight of the bare-chested Hicks standing at the roadside stirred his sexual feelings, although when Hicks began talking about girls, he knew any sexual passes he made would be rebuffed. None the less, onward Jeffrey drove.
After several hours of talking, drinking and listening to music, Hicks, according to Jeffrey, “wanted to leave and I didn’t want him to.”
Dahmer bludgeoned Hicks with a 10-pound dumbbell. He later stated he struck Hicks twice from behind with the dumbbell as Hicks sat up on a chair. When Hicks fell unconscious, Dahmer strangled him to death with the bar of the dumbbell. When the young man was dead, Jeffrey then stripped the clothes from Hicks’ body before exploring his chest with his hands. He then masturbated as he stood above the corpse. Jeffrey then dragged the body into the crawlspace under the house, where it stayed for a few days.
Eventually the smell became quite strong so Dahmer went down and cut the remains into pieces placing them into small plastic bags. He then put the bags in the bushes behind the house, eventually burying them. After a while Jeff began to worry about the neighborhood kids digging up the remains so he dug them up again and smashed the bones into pieces, which he scattered around the woods.
Over the next nine years Jeffrey Dahmer was able to control the urge to kill again.
The Army
Eventually Jeffrey Dahmer joined the United States Army, where he ended up stationed in Germany. This lasted a couple years until Jeff was finally discharged because of his erratic drinking problems. In reality, he was a bonified drunk!
After his military career ended, and Jeff finally accepted his homosexuality, he became a regular at Milwaukee’s gay bars. He was next arrested for flashing his penis at two 12 year old boys in a park and then masturbating. He was placed on probation until September 9, 1987 for the incident.
Just six days after the probation ended he started killing again.
On September 15, 1987 Jeffrey Dahmer spent the day drinking at a gay bar named Club 219 and met up with a gay man named Steven Toumi. They chatted with each other for a few hours and eventually left together. They went to a hotel and rented a room. Jeffrey Dahmer claims he can’t remember what happened once they got to the hotel, only that he drank a lot. He wasn’t even sure if they had any form of sexual relations, but when he woke up Toumi was dead. It seems Jeffrey beat him very badly and strangled him. realizing the man was dead, Jeff went out and bought a large suitcase. He then stuffed the body inside, and caught a taxi back to his grandmothers house, (where he actually lived, in the basement). Once there he cut up the body, placed the pieces into garbage bags and put it out by the curb with the rest of the days trash.
Jeffrey Dahmer
On January 16, 1988 Jeffrey Dahmer approached a young male prostitute, James Doxtator, 14, and offered James money to make a video with him. Doxtator agreed and Jeff took him home to his basement room. Dahmer then gave James a sleeping drug concoction. Once he passed out, Jeff strangled him. He then stripped the body of all flesh by using acid, then smashed the bones up with a sledgehammer. After he was satisfied with his work, he scattered the bone fragments.
On March 24, 1988 Jeffrey Dahmer met Richard Guerrero at a bar called the Phoenix. Guerrero was broke so Jeff offered him some money if he would come back to his place and make a video. Guerrero agreed. Once back at Dahmer’s, they had oral sex, then Jeff offered him a drink and Richard accepted. Shortly after passing out Richard was strangled, dismembered and disposed of.
It was around this time that Jeff’s grandmother began to worry about the foul smell coming from the basement. When Jeff’s father, Lionel Dahmer, inspected the room, he found a black sticky residue, similar to what acid does to flesh. Upon questioning his son, Jeff told his father he had been experimenting with animals. Since Lionel never really gave a shit about Jeff, or about what Jeff did, he accepted this and didn’t bother to worry about it any further. But his grandmother did and Jeffrey was soon after asked to move out.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer got his own place at 808 North 24th Street. Just 24 hours after moving into his new apartment Dahmer was in trouble with police. He had conned a Laotian boy, Keison Sinthasomphone, 13, into coming up to his apartment. Once there, Dahmer drugged and molested him, but the boy escaped. He reported the incident to the police and Jeff was charged with sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes. He spent one week in jail before getting released on bail. On January 30, 1990 Dahmer was found guilty, but sentencing wouldn’t take place for another four months.
On March 25, 1990 Jeffrey Dahmer met Anthony Sears at La Cage, (a gay bar). Dahmer took him back to his grandmothers house because he assumed the police were watching his apartment. Once there they had sexual intercourse. Afterwards Dalmer made him a drink, murdered him and decided to keep the skull as a trophy.
At Dahmer’s sexual assault and enticing a child for immoral purposes sentencing on May 23rd, Jeffrey pleaded with the judge for leniency, saying “I am an alcoholic and a homosexual with sexual problems.” The Judge, William Gardner, decided to sentence him to 5 years probation and 1 year in a half way house so he could continue to work.
Jeffrey Dahmer
After serving his time in the half way house, Jeffrey Dahmer rented a place at the oxford apartments. Apartment #213. Just two weeks after moving into the now infamous apartment building (that has since been demolished), Dahmer met Ray Smith at Club 219.
Ray was a newcomer to Milwaukee and seemed to run into the wrong guy at the wrong time. Jeff asked Ray back to his place to pose for some photo’s. Ray accepted this invitation. Upon arriving at the apartment, Jeff offered Ray a drink. Once Ray had passed out, Jeffrey Dahmer strangled him to death, then stripped the body and had necrophelic sex with it. This was the first corpse that Jeffrey admitted to having sexual intercourse with, but definitely not the last. Once he’d had his fun with Ray he dismembered the body and threw it out with the trash. All except for the skull. That he kept and painted it to preserve it. This marks the beginning of his macabre collection of human souvenirs.
On June 14th in 1990 Jeffrey Dahmer met Eddie Smith. Eddie readily accepted Dahmer’s advances and went back to Jeff’s apartment where they had oral sex. Afterwards Jeff offered Eddie a drink and, like the others, was soon passed out cold and the easy prey of Jeffrey Dahmer. Jeff strangled Eddie, dismembered the body, then threw the remains out with the trash.
Jeffrey Dahmer
On July 8, 1990 Jeff decided to vary his MO, deciding not to bother drugging his victim. He had a 15 year old Hispanic kid posing for photos when he picked up a mallet and tried to hit the boy in the head. The kid fought back and eventually escaped, the kid went to the police, but when he begged police not to tell his foster parents that he was gay, the police decided to leave it alone.
On September 3, 1990 Dahmer picked up Ernest Miller. He took him home, had intercourse with him, drugged him, then changed his game plan slightly. Jeffrey didn’t strangle Miller. He cut his throat instead. He then sliced off the biceps and put them in the freezer. He then skinned the corpse, as he had decided to keep the entire skeleton.
It was around this time that Jeff’s neighbors started to complain about the putrid smell coming from his apartment. Jeffrey Dahmer explained to the landlord that his fridge was broken and he would get it fixed as soon as possible.
Sometime in September/October, 1990 Jeff met David Thomas. Dahmer and Thomas were drinking in Dahmer’s apartment when Jeff gave him his “special drink”. Jeff didn’t want to kill Thomas, but he was worried he might be upset when he woke up and realized that Jeffrey had drugged him. So Jeff decided the best thing to do was to kill him anyway. This time he filmed the whole dismemberment. He also took photo’s of David’s severed head in various positions in the apartment. (these photo’s were later viewed by Thomas’s sister for identification purposes).
Jeffrey Dahmer
On February 18, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer met Curtis Straughter. Curtis wanted to be a model, so when Jeff mentioned he wanted to take pictures of him posing for the camera, Curtis gladly agreed. He was strangled while giving Jeffrey oral sex. Jeff kept the skull and painted it to preserve it. This time he also decided to keep the hands and penis as well.
On April 7, 1991 Jeff met Errol Lindsey, 19, at a local bus stop. Errol was paid by Dahmer to come back to the apartment. Jeff offered him a drink and he accepted, and soon Jeffrey was performing oral sex on his corpse. Again, Jeff kept the skull.
On May 24, 1991 Jeff met Tony Hughes at club 219, Hughes was a deaf mute so Dahmer wrote his offer on paper and handed it to Tony. $50 to pose for some photos and watch some videos. Well, as I am sure you have probably already guessed, Jeffrey Dahmer drugged and strangled Hughes. Then Jeff left the corpse laying around his bedroom for a few days before dismembering it.
Jeffrey Dahmer
On May 27th, just 4 days later, Jeffrey Dahmer met Konerak Sinthasomphone, age 14, at a local bus stop. (Konerak was the younger brother of the kid who charged Jeff with sexual assault, although Jeffrey didn’t know it at the time.) Dahmer got Konerak into his apartment, drugged him, had sexual intercourse with him, then, of all things, drilled a hole in his head, injected acid, then left to go get himself some beer. (He was trying to create a zombie that would be completely sexually submissive to him!)Somehow the kid woke up and was able to make it out of the building into the street where the police found him wandering around dazed and nude. To them he was just a drunk homosexual, and when they spoke to Dahmer, who showed up as they were talking to the kid, their thoughts were confirmed. Jeffrey said they were lovers. The law, who could have cared less, helped drag the drugged boy back up to the apartment, noticed nothing out of the ordinary, (from the doorway) and left Konerak with Dahmer. The police even made a joke about it on the CB. Well, needless to say, Jeff added another skull to his collection that evening which he also painted to preserve and save.
On June 30, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer traveled to Chicago for Gay Pride Day. While at a bus depot he met Matt Turner, another guy that wanted to be a model. Dahmer talked him into going back to Milwaukee with him. Jeffrey Dahmer paid for Greyhound bus tickets for them both and they were soon off on their 90 mile ride. Once safely back in the confides of his apartment, Dahmer drugged and strangled Turner. He then cut off Turners head, wrapped it in a plastic bag and placed it in the freezer. He then placed the torso in a blue 57 gallon barrel.
Jeffrey Dahmer
On July 4, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer decided to pay another visit to Chicago. While there he met Jeremiah Weinberger, 23, at a local gay watering hole. Jeremiah asked his roommate what he thought of Jeffrey. “He seems all right,” was the answer. So Jeremiah decide to go back to Milwaukee with Jeff. Jeff again paid for Greyhound bus tickets for the 90 mile ride back to his place. Once they arrived back at Jeff’s they had mutual sex and Jeremiah spent the night. But when Jeremiah got sick of having sex with Jeff he said he was going home. Jeff said fine, then offered him a farewell drink. Jeff then strangled him. Jeremiah’s head was found in Jeff’s freezer.
On July 12th, 1991 Jeffrey Dahmer met Oliver Lacy, 23. They went back to Jeff’s place, had a drink, fooled around, then Jeffrey strangled him. Then, for the first time, Jeff decided to sodomized the corpse. He then sliced the right bicep off and ate it. He placed Lacy’s head in the fridge next to an open box of Arm & hammer baking soda. He also placed his heart in the freezer to eat later. He likewise put other body parts in the freezer for a later date. And, like so many others before him, the remainder of his flesh went in the kitchen trash, to be tossed out like yesterday’s garbage. Jeffrey kept the entire skeleton, however.
Jeffrey Dahmer
It was at this time that Jeffrey Dahmer was suspended from his job at the Ambrosia chocolate factory. It seems that he spent a few too many days at home with his “friends”. This really upset Jeff. But, evidently, not enough to straighten out his attendance record. He was fired on July 19th.
Oddly enough, it was on that same day, July 19th, 1991, that Jeffrey Dahmer met Joeseph Bradehoft at a local bus stop. It was poring down rain and Joseph had a six pack of beer on him. They decided to go back to Jeff’s place to party a bit. Once there they had oral sex, then Dahmer drugged and strangled him. Jeff slept with the body for the next few days until the head became infested with maggots. Jeffrey cleaned it and put it in the freezer along with the heads of Turner and Weinberger. He placed the torso in the 57 gallon barrel in the bed room.
On July 22, 1991 Dahmer met Tracy Edwards age 32. Jeff picked him up and got him back to his place. Dahmer claims he remembers little of this evening, but you can bet your ass Edwards will never forget it. According to Edwards, Jeffrey Dahmer pulled out a knife and went from being Mr. Nice to being a cold- hearted son-of-a-bitch. Jeff managed to get a handcuff onto one of Edwards hands, but Edwards fought back and got away.
Jeffrey Dahmer
Police officers Mueller & Rauth were doing their nightly patrol down Kilbourn Avenue, Milwaukee. When they reached the corner of 25th Street, they were flagged down by a black man with a handcuff dangling from his wrist. In near hysteria, the man explained to the officers that he had been drinking with a man who handcuffed him & tried to kill him. The officers tried to remove the handcuff from Edwards’ wrist but their keys would not fit. So Mueller & Rauth escorted Edwards back to the man’s apartment located at 924 North 25th Street.
The door to apartment 213 was opened by Jeffery Dahmer, a 31 year old, white, male. The inside of the apartment was neat & clean and Dahmer acknowledged that he was responsible for the handcuff & pointed the officers in the direction of the bedroom, which is where he thought the keys would be. He also added, “I just lost my job, and I want to drink some fucking beer!”
After glancing around the place, one of the officers, for one reason or another, opened up the fridge and immediately exclaimed “OH MY GOD! THERE’S A GOD DAM HEAD IN HERE! HE’S ONE SICK SON OF A BITCH!”
Jeffery Dahmer suddenly turned on them and fought as the other cop tried to cuff him. At last they subdued Jeff and hauled him away downtown!
Jeffery Dahmer
Upon searching the apartment, the box of baking soda in the refrigerator hardly absorbed the odors of a decomposing severed head. The freezer had three more heads, stored neatly in plastic bags and tied with plastic tie twists. There was a door that led to the bedroom, bedroom closet and bath which had been outfitted with a dead-bolt lock. Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who was first on the scene, described what she saw in her book The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough,
“…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. Also in the closet were containers of ethyl alcohol, chloroform, and formaldehyde, along with some glass jars holding male genitalia preserved in formaldehyde. There were Polaroid photos, taken by Jeffery Dahmer, revealing various stages of his victims deaths. One showed a man’s head, with the flesh still intact, lying in a sink. Another displayed a victim cut open from the neck to the groin, like a deer gutted after the kill, the cuts so clean I could see the pelvic bone clearly.” Some of the photos were his victims before he murdered them in various erotic and bondage poses. The case became the biggest serial murder case of the decade.
Jeffery Dahmer
Dahmer’s bail was originally set at $1 million cash. On August 6th, it was raised to $5 million when eight more murder charges were added to him. In the end Jeffery Dahmer had fifteen murder charges against him.
The longest sentence Dahmer muttered at any of the preliminary hearings was “I understand, your honor” when the judge asked if he understood the charges against him.
On July 13, 1992, Jeffery Dahmer ignored his lawyer’s advice and changed his plea to guilty, but that he was insane. According to Don Davis in The Milwaukee Murders, “the declaration turned the case on its head. Now, instead of having to prove this 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 Jeffery Dahmer was crazy, because only an insane person would do the things he did.”
Two detectives took turns reading the 160-page confession. It was a catalog of sexual perversion. Detective Dennis Murphy stated that Jeffery 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 overridden by his excitement of being completely in control.
Jeffery Dahmer
The battle of psychiatrists over whether Jeffery Dahmer was legally responsible and able to control his actions seemed to confuse the jury. Finally Boyle drew a chart for the jury which He read off quickly: “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…”
Prosecutor McCann rebutted, “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.”
The jury deliberated for five hours and decided that Jeffrey Dahmer did not deserve to spend the rest of his life in a hospital, but in a prison cell. On all fifteen counts, Dahmer was found guilty and sane.
Jeffrey Dahmer wrote an apology to the judge covering a thirteen-year bloodbath. “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.”
And none was offered. Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms or a total of 957 years in prison.
He was murdered while incarcerated.
source: murderpedia| wikipedia
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