Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested at his Milwaukee apartment in 1991, and when the full extent
of his crimes came to light, everyone was shocked, even the FBI. He remains one of the most notorious
serial killers in US history. This is the truth about Jeffrey Dahmer.
At the heart of the horrors is, of course, Jeffrey Dahmer himself. When it came time
for experts to determine if he was fit to stand trial, forensic psychiatrist
Dr. George Palermo spent more than 12 hours interviewing him. Per the Chicago Tribune,
"[H]e found Dahmer to be highly intelligent,
emotionally tranquil, and his thinking processes were logical and rational."
And somehow, that makes what they found in his apartment more terrifying. When the Associated
Press picked up the story of Dahmer's arrest from The Milwaukee Sentinel in July 1991, they reported
"Police found 11 skulls scattered in a file cabinet,
a closet, a refrigerator and a freezer and three headless torsos in a vat in the man’s bedroom."
"He said, 'We found 11 skulls.' That was horrible."
Per History, that vat was a 57-gallon drum filled with chemicals that were contributing to the slow
decomposition of the bodies inside. There were three heads in the refrigerator,
as well as evidence some of the victims had been cannibalized.
When police began emptying the apartment,
and as neighbors started to realize what was happening, the smells reportedly became clear.
Jeffrey Dahmer's arrest wouldn't have happened, if it weren't for a few Polaroid pictures carelessly
left in plain sight. It wasn't until officers got a glimpse of those that they realized something
was deeply wrong, as they doubted the man who fled to them for help. This was depicted in the
2002 movie Dahmer, in which Jeremy Renner played the infamous serial killer. As reported by Time,
"Jeffrey Dahmer spent 10 months in prison for fondling a 13-year-old [...] boy in 1988
and offering him $50 to pose nude for pictures."
After 10 months in jail, he regularly met with his probation officer who, in turn, never checked
Dahmer's home. That freedom, History says, coincided with the first of Dahmer's victims,
who had vanished in March 1989. Just two months after that disappearance,
Dahmer was before a judge, promising his child-molesting ways were behind him.
Fast forward to July 22, 1992. That's when Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer's apartment.
He later testified, per the Los Angeles Times,
"He put his head on my chest, was listening to my heart, and said he was going to eat my heart."
After watching The Exorcist III, Edwards was able to hit, and flee from, a distracted Dahmer.
"So as I was walking by, I hit him, right?"
Heading out into the city, Edwards found a police car and told officers what had happened,
and showed them the handcuffs still around his wrist. When he took the doubting officers back
to the apartment, Dahmer originally tried to explain the incident away as a domestic dispute,
but that's when officers spotted the pictures. Dahmer was arrested without incident.
"No-one had a clue as to what was happening for over a decade."
A 2005 study published in the Journal of Police and Criminal Psychology found childhood abuse,
including physical, sexual, and psychological abuse, was present in the history of a high
percentage of people who grew up to become serial killers. When it comes to Jeffrey Dahmer,
his case is a little unique in that his father wrote a book about raising his son,
and the problems he saw from a young age. In interviews his parents gave after his arrest,
they described Dahmer as a toddler, saying,
"[He was] a happy young boy who loved animals and nature."
But things started changing when Dahmer was just 4-years-old and had surgery to repair
a double hernia. Afterwards, he became convinced his genitals had been removed.
His father has suggested that was connected to his later habit of castrating his victims,
and he's also pointed the finger at other elements of his son's
childhood that may have had some severely negative impacts on him.
That includes being witness to the side effects his mother experienced after starting anti-anxiety
medication, along with abandonment issues stemming from parents that largely left him,
and later, his little brother, to fend for themselves.
Research done by Regis University suggests
Jeffrey Dahmer's fascination with death started at about the same time as his hernia surgery,
and an incident recounted by his father. Lionel Dahmer says 4-year-old Jeffrey was fascinated with
a pile of bones under their home, and Jeffrey's interest in the dead and dying only increased.
When Jeffrey Dahmer was in the ninth grade, he was given a biology assignment that involved
dissecting a fetal pig. He not only happily completed the assignment but kept the skeleton,
which kicked off an obsession with collecting others. At first,
those came from along the roadside, and Dahmer spent
his formative years collecting dead animals and mutilating them further.
The Miami Herald says Dahmer also killed the pets of his neighbors, mounting their heads on
sticks. Today, animal cruelty is considered one of the warning signs a child might escalate in
adulthood. The FBI started maintaining a database to track instances of animal cruelty in 2016,
and stresses that instances of abuse need to be reported.
John Backderf says he occasionally wondered what happened to his old school chum Jeffrey Dahmer,
but it wasn't until 1991 headlines that he learned what his buddy had been up to.
Backderf told The Independent,
"There was always a darkness about him that was really kind of repellent. [...] I
was OK with hanging out with him, if there was other people around.
I was never going to be alone with him. And I'm pretty happy I had that instinct,
because that could have well been me chopped up in the trunk of his car."
Backderf was already an established artist when he decided to tell his story in the
form of the graphic novel My Friend Dahmer. The 2012 work, which was turned into a movie,
tried to shine some light on what it was like going to school with him.
Dahmer, he says, started acting out in high school, when he would fake seizures and mock
locals with disabilities. Backderf and his friends jokingly formed the Dahmer Fan Club.
"The Jeff Dahmer fan club was a group of us who thought Jeff Dahmer was just a funny kid."
Backderf wrote,
"All those things he perfected when he was very young through our goofball antics,
he used them when he was a monster. That's a little hard to live with."
Backderf also wondered where all the adults were at the time. He explained,
"They didn't care. [...] They just [...] figured, 'Well, next year
he'll be somebody else's problem.' And of course he was somebody else's problem."
Jeffrey Dahmer's parents finalized their divorce on July 24, 1978. About a month prior to that,
he killed his first victim. Steven Hicks had been hitchhiking to a concert,
and when he didn't come home, his parents didn't think anything of it.
They reported him missing six days later, but he was already dead.
It wasn't until 1991 that law enforcement connected Hicks' disappearance with Dahmer,
and it was also then they started taking a close look at Dahmer's
1978 home in Ohio. The New York Times reported,
"After hours of combing through woods and underbrush,
local officials today found more than 50 bone fragments, [...] a
'substantial quantity of blood' and a bloody handprint in the crawl space."
That would quickly escalate to 500 bone fragments, and Dahmer would eventually confess to picking up
Hicks, inviting him home for a drink, and smashing him first with a barbell, then destroying his
remains with a sledgehammer. And he was nearly caught. Dahmer was pulled over by police when
he was disposing of Hicks' body, and officers asked him why he had plastic bags in his car. He
convinced them he was just getting some air and, distraught over his parents' impending divorce,
he was taking the garbage to the dump while he was out. Officers let him go.
Jeffrey Dahmer enlisted in the military and was sent to Germany in 1979,
where he was attached to a medic unit. One of the other men in the unit, Preston Davis,
says he was drugged then sexually assaulted by Dahmer, telling The Independent in 2013,
"I am just thankful to be alive to tell the story."
After Davis left, he was replaced by a soldier named Billy Joe Capshaw. After being sexually
assaulted multiple times, Capshaw jumped from a third-story window, survived, and reported the
assaults. Superior officers returned him to the barracks where the abuse continued, and
after he left the military, he spent five years locked in his own room. After years of therapy,
and a friendship with Dahmer's other victim, he was finally able to talk about what happened.
Konerak Sinthasomphone was among the 11 victims
whose remains were discovered at Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment,
and his story starts years prior. The 13-year-old boy Dahmer had been convicted of molesting in 1988
was Konerak's older brother. The family was told Dahmer had been incarcerated for his crimes,
but in 1991, he lured Konerak to his apartment with promises he'd pay him for posing for a few
photos. Dahmer drugged him, drilled a hole in his skull, and injected him with hydrochloric acid.
He was still unconscious when Dahmer left for the store, and Dahmer was still gone when he
woke. Konerak was running down the street when he came across Nicole Childress and Sandra Smith.
They called police, but by that time, Dahmer was on the street again to reclaim his victim.
Dahmer claimed the boy was his houseguest, and was ultimately released by police,
who escorted them both back to Dahmer's apartment, then threatened to arrest Smith for her continued
insistence that something was deeply wrong. Konerak was dead half-an-hour later.
In spite of the fact that Dahmer already had another body in his apartment,
the officers testified, per The New York Times,
that they believed the two had, quote, "a caring relationship." Officer Joseph Gabrish said,
"We're trained to be observant. [...] I've been doing this for a while,
and usually if something stands out, you'll spot it. There just wasn't anything there."
Jeffrey Dahmer's parents have spoken out about their son, and his father,
Lionel, even wrote a book, "A Father's Story," in an attempt
to make sense out of what had happened. Discussing the book, Oxygen reported,
"The dad often blamed himself for Jeffrey’s (severe) flaws.
Lionel said he was negligent and probably didn’t give enough to Jeffrey, emotionally."
Jeffrey's mother, Joyce Flint, told The Seattle Times in 1993,
"I wake up every morning and for a split second,
I don't know I'm Jeffrey Dahmer's mother, and then it all floods in."
She later told Hard Copy,
"I still love my son. I've never stopped loving my son."
Flint died of breast cancer in 2000, having spent much of her life working as a case manager for
the Central Valley AIDS team. She also founded an HIV community center called The Living Room.
After Jeffrey Dahmer's confession and conviction came jail, and while he was there,
he started receiving a ton of fan mail. In 1994, the Associated Press reported that Dahmer had
already received a shocking $12,000 in letters that were sent to him from across the globe.
Some sent him money to spend on creature comforts, while others sent donations as gifts, with at
least one woman hoping that the $350 she sent him would encourage him to learn about Christ.
The New Statesman took a look at some of the so-called serial killer fandoms
and found a secret Facebook group filled with Dahmer fans. The publication spoke
with one member who revealed that she felt connected to Dahmer, and explained,
"It's not that I agreed with what he did,
but I understood the triggers. Society has a lot to answer for in terms of how people turn out."
Jeffrey Dahmer was ultimately sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms, and at first,
he spent some time in protective custody. After a year in jail,
he asked to be returned to a more communal area, and he started to spend time, sometimes
unsupervised, with other prisoners. That's where things went sideways.
There was an attempt on his life in 1994, at a chapel service the newly-baptized Dahmer was
attending. Then, on November 28, 1994, Dahmer was bludgeoned to death by another inmate named
Christopher Scarver. Scarver later talked to the NY Post and explained why he'd done it, saying,
"He crossed the line with some people — prisoners,
prison staff. Some people who are in prison are repentant — but he was not one of them."
If you or anyone you know has been a victim of sexual assault, help is available.
Visit the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network
website or contact RAINN's National Helpline at 1-800-656-HOPE, 1-800-656-4673.