JEFFREY LIONEL DAHMER

Article BY Chris Bartholomew - Art by Chuck Hodi

---

May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994

Jeffrey's childhood started like any other; he had two parents who loved and adored their son, giving him whatever his heart desired. Joyce Dahmer started a scrap book on her son recording events that happened in his life, his first step, his first accident, his first tooth, his first haircut and even his first scolding.

While Jeffrey was still very young his father worked long hours in his laboratory and his mother worked as a teletype machine instructor.

There were constant fights between Joyce and Lionel Dahmer and Jeffrey took each of these fights to heart.

Little did they realize that there constant fighting might be the one of the reasons for Jeffrey's downfall.

A short time before Jeffrey's fourth birthday, Jeffrey was diagnosed with a double hernia that needed to be operated on. This operation left Jeffrey feeling open and exposed and no one explained to Dahmer what was going on. He was scared by the operation, complete strangers coming up to him and exploring his body. This experience is said to have marked his subconscious forever.

But like every little boy of Jeffrey's age he was just like anybody else climbing apple trees, riding his bike and playing in coal dust and coming home dirty.

Though he was painfully shy while growing up, he overcame this in time.

By the time Jeffrey turned six his mother gave birth to a second son who she called David. Though this did not have a dramatic effect on Dahmer's life he stayed pretty much neutral to his brother's existence and they never became close.

By the time of his second son's birth Lionel Dahmer and his family moved into there own house at 4480 West Bath Road, surrounded by open forest where Jeffrey could lose himself in a world of make-believe.

As Jeffrey grew towards puberty, his sinking isolation and shyness was confirmed once again. An early sexual experiment with another boy proved to be disappointing and joyless.

Jeffery should have come to a time in his life where he wanted to experience the joys of life and the companionship of friends, but Jeffrey withdrew into himself and kept his life somewhat of a secret.

Jeffrey's Dahmer's life conditioned him for the hard struggle that lay ahead, little did he know that in just over 16 years he would become one of America's most famous serial killers having murdered 17 people, dismembering them and sleeping with there corpses and keeping parts of his victims for trophy's.

He had a normal childhood, or so he insisted.

He dissected animals that were already dead, and impaled the heads of animals he killed on stakes in his yard. He collected dead animals and had necrophilia desires. He liked to use acid to scrape the meat off dead animals. His father investigated and found bones and the residue in the containers in the basement.  Jeffery told him he stripped flesh from animals he had found.

As a teen, he had fantasies of killing and mutilating men.

By the time he was fifteen, he was an alcoholic loner.

At age 17 he was left alone at home without money or food and a broken refrigerator. It is believed by some that this experience, abandonment, and mental illness, gave him the justification he needed to commit crimes. However his own history shows that he had serious problems long before this event.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 to a fundamentalist family in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. At age eight, his family moved to Bath, Ohio, near Akron.

He was always painfully shy and suffered from low self-esteem. As a child he was molested by a neighbor.

First his father left the home. Then after a bitter divorce, his mother took his brother, and left Dahmer with his father. His parents weren’t speaking and Dahmer didn’t even know how to contact his mother and brother. Dahmer’s history of abandonment left him with feelings of loss and rejection.

He was a gentle person until he got drunk, then it took four policemen to hold him down.

Dahmer killed 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.

He poured acid into a hole drilled in his victim's skull; the victim lived and functioned in a zombie state for several days, according to Dahmer.

In 1978, he committed his first murder in Bath Township, Ohio, at age 18. He killed a young hitchhiker, Stephen Hicks. He invited him to his house, where he killed him with a barbell, then smashed his bones with a hammer because he "didn't want him to leave." He wouldn't kill again for another nine years.

He did not do well in college. Encouraged by his father, he joined the military where he became an army medic. He was discharged for drunkenness.

In 1982 Dahmer moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin, where he lived for six years. In August of that year he was arrested for exposing himself at a state fair. In September 1986 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.

He discovered gay bars and picked up Steven Toumi, 24, his second victim in 1987.

In the summer of 1988 Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out because of his late nights and the foul smells from the basement. He then found an apartment on Milwaukee's West side. On September 25, 1988 he was arrested for sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy in Milwaukee, for which he served 10 months of a one-year sentence in a work release camp. He was required to register as a sex offender. He convinced the judge that he needed therapy, and he was released with five-year probation on good behavior. Shortly thereafter he began a string of murders that would end with his arrest in 1991.

In 1988, he was arrested for sexually fondling a 13-year old boy. He served 10 months incarcerated and was required to register as a sex offender. His father would later write that when Jeffrey was convicted of child molestation, it hit him that he would "never be more than a liar, an alcoholic, a thief, an exhibitionist, a molester of children."

"I could not imagine how he had become such a ruined soul. For the first time I no longer believed that my efforts and resources alone would be enough to save my son. There was something missing in Jeff. We call it a 'conscience.' That had either died or had never been alive in the first place."

While Dahmer was on probation he checked in every month as required. His corrections officer never visited his home. A Wisconsin Department of Corrections spokesperson said the requirement was waived due to a work overload.

His fantasy was for a compliant sexual partner, and necrophilia. Most of Dahmer's all male victims were minorities, usually African Americans. Dahmer was not a racist, he chose predominantly black and other minority victims because he lived in a predominantly ethnic area.

In gay bars, he offered young homosexual and bisexual males money to pose for photos or to watch videos and drink beer at his place. He drugged victims into a deep sleep with spiked drinks before strangling or stabbing them to death, having anal sex with the cadaver, and then dismembering them with a hacksaw. Their heads and genitalia were kept as trophies, biceps and other muscles were frozen for future consumption. Dahmer said human flesh "tasted like beef." The remainder was boiled with chemicals and acids before being washed down the drains.

In the early morning hours of May 30, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Reports of the boy's injuries varied. Dahmer told police that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the teenager's protests, police turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent but did not investigate it. It was later found to be bodies in the back of his room. Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

The police didn't check the boy's ID. They didn't note the drill holes in his head. They didn't notice the stench of the decaying bodies at the apartment, and they made discriminatory jokes about "homosexual lovers" and about "getting deloused."

John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, the two police officers who returned Sinthasomphone to Dahmer, were fired from the Milwaukee Police Department after their actions were widely publicized, including an audiotape of the officers making homophobic statements to their dispatcher and cracking jokes 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. 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. He killed Matt Turner on June 30, Jeremiah Weinberger on July 5, Oliver Lacy on July 12, and finally Joseph Brandehoft on July 18.

On July 22, 1991 Dahmer lured another man, Tracy (Traci) 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 they suspected something was wrong. As one officer subdued Dahmer the other searched the house and uncovered multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, including three severed heads and penises. A further search of the apartment revealed more evidence, including photographs of victims and human remains in his refrigerator.

Edwards, 32, told them about watching a video with a "weird dude," and being drugged, handcuffed, and threatened with a knife. He had fought back and escaped from the apartment. The cops had him take them to the apartment.

Dahmer answered the door and explained that he lost his job at a chocolate factory, (true), got drunk and lost his temper. When he went to get the handcuff key from his bedroom, a cop followed him in. The stench of death and rotting flesh was overwhelming. He spotted Polaroid photos of dismembered bodies and skulls in a refrigerator. He went into the kitchen and saw the refrigerator covered with Polaroids of mutilated men. He screamed when he opened the door. A human head sat on a refrigerator shelf.

"There's a goddam head in here," he screamed to his partner.

Dahmer fought back hard as they handcuffed him. Edwards recalled Dahmer’s threats to "cut out your heart and eat it." Three more heads and human meat were in the freezer. Hands from several victims and a penis were in a stockpot in a closet. Two boiled skulls painted grey were on a bedroom closet shelf. Male genitalia were also found preserved in formaldehyde. A bottle of chloroform was found that had been used to drug the victims. There were hundreds of photos of victims before, during the murders, and after death.

There was an altar of candles and human skulls in his closet. He planned to create a shrine using skulls, human trophies and a statue of a griffin he owned to honor evil. He said it would give him special powers and energies to help him socially and financially.

Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. In trial he confessed to attempting a form of trepanation (is surgery in which a hole is drilled or scraped into the human skull, thus exposing the dura mater) in order to create so-called "zombies".

 Dahmer told Detective Patrick Kennedy during questioning:

"I have to question whether there is an evil force in the world and whether or not I have been influenced by it. Although I am not sure if there is a God or if there is a Devil, I know that as of lately I've been doing a lot of thinking about both."

He was held for trial on a $1 million bond.

Dahmer admitted to his crimes. He made no excuses and blamed no one but himself.

Jeffrey Dahmer was officially indicted on 17 murder charges, which were reduced to 15. Wisconsin does not have capital punishment. After being charged with fifteen counts of murder, he entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.

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 January 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison. At his sentencing hearing Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, also saying that he wished for his own death.

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. This conversion occurred after viewing evangelical material sent to him by his father. A local preacher met with Dahmer and agreed to baptize him.

After attending a church service in the prison chapel an inmate tried to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds.

Jeff met his end on November 28, 1994, when he was viciously attacked by Christopher Scarver, a convicted killer on antispychotic medication, Scarver -- who claimed to be Christ because he was a carpenter and his mother's name was Mary -- killed the lethargic cannibal and former chocolate factory worker, along with another inmate, convicted wife killer Jesse Anderson, with a bar from a piece of exercise equipment.

At his mother's request, Jeff's brain was preserved in formaldehyde for future study. His father, Lionel, took her to court in an attempt to honor his son's request of being cremated. On December 12, 1995, more than a year after his death, Columbia County Circuit Judge Daniel George sided with Jeff's father and ordered the brain destroyed.
Six months later Circuit Judge Daniel George ordered the city of Milwaukee to release Jeffrey Dahmer's personal belonging to Robert Steurer, a lawyer representing the families of some of his victims. Steurer planned to auction the cannibal's tools of the trade -- hammers, drill bits, hatchets, saws and his world-famous refrigerator -- to settle claims filed against the city by the victim's families.

On May 29, 1996, the matter was settled when Thomas Jacobson, another lawyer representing some of the families, said they decided to accept an offer from a Milwaukee civic group that pledged $407,225 to buy the Dahmer estate. The civic group, fearing bad publicity for their fair city, raised the money to buy and incinerate the goods themselves rather than see them put on the auction block. On June 28, 1996 a truckload of items from the cannibal killer's estate was finally destroyed thus marking the end of Jeff's necrophilic legacy.

The final indignity surrounding Dahmer came in June, 1997, when Vickie Hines, a former court clerk who sat through the trial of the cannibal killer sued the city of Milwaukee for $65,000 in workers compensation after suffering from a psychological disability resulting from the trial. According to a report by a psychologist who evaluated Hines, the clerk "freaked out" when she saw the families of Dahmer's victims in court, and was unable to read the jury's verdict. After the trial, Hines suffered panic attacks, began drinking before work, had nightmares and became withdrawn and depressed. In 1994 she had to quit working altogether. "In a way she's Jeffery Dahmer's last victim -- at least the last victim we know about," Hines' lawyer, Robert Blondis, said.

On March 24, 1999, the brother of one of Jeffrey Dahmer's victims was stabbed to death in his Milwaukee apartment in ritualistic fashion. According to a medical examiner's report, Ernest Smith body was "posed," with figurines placed around it and in his hand, sheets from pornographic magazines stuffed into his shoes and pants, and cigarette ashes put in an ear. The kitchen knife used to kill him was left in his body.

Smith's brother, 28-year-old Eddie, had been missing for more than a year before Dahmer admitted to killing him. Carolyn Smith, sister of the two men, said Eddie's death plunged Ernest, a Persian Gulf War veteran, into a depression that led him to drink, and he had some brushes with the law. Following Eddie's slaying, the 45-year-old Ms. Smith said she had a series of nervous breakdowns and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder.

After the murders the Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street were demolished; the site is now a vacant lot. Plans to convert the site into a memorial garden failed to materialize.

In 1994 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 Dahmer and his wife, Shari. Both continued to carry the name Dahmer and say they love Jeffrey despite his crimes. Lionel Dahmer's first wife, Joyce (Flint), died of cancer in 2000 at the age of 64. She was later buried in Atlanta, Georgia.

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

In January 2007 evidence surfaced potentially linking Dahmer to Adam Walsh's 1981 abduction and murder in Florida. However Adam's father, John Walsh, believed that another serial killer, Ottis Toole, committed the crime. When interviewed about Adam Walsh in the early 1990s Dahmer repeatedly denied involvement in the crime. In 2008 Florida police declared the Walsh case closed, naming Toole, who died in prison in 1996, as the killer.

Victims:

Stephen Hicks 19 June 6, 1978 Steven Tuomi 26 Sept. 15, 1987 James "Jamie" Doxtator 14 Jan. 1988 Richard Guerrero 25 March 24, 1988 Anthony Sears 24 March 25, 1989 Eddie Smith 36 June 1990 Ricky Beeks 27 July 1990 Ernest Miller 22 September 1990 David Thomas 23 September 1990 Curtis Straughter 19 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 Bradehoft 25 July 19, 1991

Dahmer in the media:

Dahmer's father Lionel wrote a book, A Father's Story

American heavy metal band Macabre wrote a concept album about Jeffrey Dahmer titled Dahmer.

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.

Joyce Carol Oates' novel, Zombie, was based on Dahmer's life.