17 total victims, but a 10-year gap between the first and the second. What
caused Jeffrey Dahmer to begin a killing spree so long after his first murder?
Jeffrey Dahmer, who dismembered and cannibalized some of his victims,
is one of the most notorious serial killers of all time. He was withdrawn as a child and had a
fascination with animal carcasses. Dahmer started having a compulsion to murder in
his early teen years. He also realized that he was sexually attracted to boys,
and that was when he started fantasizing about sexually dominating them, as reported by ATI.
It was just after his high school graduation when Dahmer killed his first
victim — 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks, per Biography. In 1978, Dahmer picked up Hicks,
who was a complete stranger to him. He came from the mall and was on his way home when he spotted
the young man. At that time, Dahmer had the family home to himself, as his parents had just divorced.
His father and brother moved out, while his mother sometimes had to go out of town, leaving Dahmer
alone. It was during one of those times when Dahmer brought Hicks back to his home. Hicks was
hitchhiking to a concert when Dahmer persuaded him to have drinks with him first. Dahmer then
attacked the young man and strangled him to death before dismembering him and getting rid of the
evidence. He had just killed his first victim, but it wasn't until 1987 when he would kill again.
In 1987, Jeffrey Dahmer met 25-year-old Steven Tuomi at a bar, and they went home together.
Tuomi was Dahmer's second murder victim, and that was the start of his murder spree. Per Newsweek,
Dahmer told MSNBC that he did not intend to kill Tuomi. Upon waking to find his victim's dead body,
he claimed that it "all started again." While this might sound like a bloodlust,
Dahmer insisted that his motives for his actions were more complex. He told MSNBC,
"Killing wasn't the objective [...] I just wanted to have the person
under my complete control to do with as I wanted."
"It was, uh, it was… almost addictive."
At that time, it had almost been 10 years after he murdered Steven Hicks, but that doesn't mean
that Dahmer didn't commit any crimes in between. According to ATI, in the years after his first
murder, Dahmer had other offenses, including drugging and raping men and pleasuring himself
in front of boys. After killing for a second time, he went on to murder 15 more boys and
men between 1988 and 1991. He pleaded guilty to his crimes and was sentenced to 16 life terms,
but he died in 1994 at the hands of a fellow inmate, who attacked him with a metal bar.
Although it's difficult to say why exactly Jeffrey Dahmer waited so long to kill again
after his first murder, there are a few theories that attempt to make sense of his decision.
According to A&E, experts say that the average age of serial killers is 29 years old,
but Jeffrey Dahmer was only 18 when he committed his first murder. Criminal psychologist Eric
Hickey told the outlet that Dahmer was likely still exploring at that time. He stated,
"You don't see too many serial killers become serial killers as teenagers.
Most of them are still exploring their sexuality, their paraphilia,
and then they really start to act out more in their 20s and 30s."
Elsewhere, serial killer expert Peter Vronsky said Dahmer's break between
his first and second murder victims was a characteristic of serial killers. Vronsky said,
"Serial killers sometimes commit their first murder by accident or spontaneously
on an impulse, without much planning or fantasizing about it beforehand."
Dahmer's first murder was definitely still on his
mind. While in the U.S. military during the break between his first and second murders,
he spoke about his first killing. Preston Davis, who Dahmer raped during this time,
told The Wrap that Dahmer bragged about killing his first victim, Steven Hicks. Davis said,
"Jeffrey had killed his first victim a year before joining the military, and he would get
drunk in the barracks and say, 'I killed the guy in Ohio,' and we'd say, 'you didn't kill nobody!'"
Interestingly, Davis believes that Dahmer would
have killed him if he had a proper escape route. Davis told The Wrap,
"The reason he couldn't kill me:
We were out in the middle of Belgium and he had no idea how to get back to Germany."
Dahmer was discharged from the military in 1981 due to his alcohol abuse — Davis said
the killer "became a monster once he started drinking" — and resumed killing in 1987.