THE STORY OF JEFFREY DAHMER

His full name is Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, and he is considered the most gruesome and cruel serial killer in history, known as the Milwaukee Cannibal. With a clear sexual deviance, he tricked his victims by offering them $100 in exchange for a photo shoot at his apartment. His media presence grew thanks to the Netflix miniseries; for more information on this, you can read the CrimiPhobia post where we discuss it.

Most of the time, in these types of cases involving a serial killer, there are often parts of their life and social connections, such as a dysfunctional family, that help us understand or partially explain the deviant behavior that led them to commit those crimes. This is where we encounter one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s first major distinguishing characteristics compared to other serial killers. He was the perpetrator of the most bizarre, vile, and disgusting acts that can be carried out with a human body.

His father, Lionel Herbert Dahmer, was a research chemist and was therefore often absent, which led him to become a father who couldn’t provide the emotional needs that children typically require from their parents.

His mother, Joyce Anette Dahmer, was a woman with an often complicated personality; she was a severe hypochondriac and often demanded a lot of attention—meaning, instead of giving attention to her son, she demanded it for herself. She was never an abusive mother to Jeffrey, but she also failed to provide the affection and attention her son needed. The relationship between his parents wasn’t good, which made the atmosphere uncomfortable for Jeffrey, as he himself explained.

Lionel was a great support for Jeffrey and always tried to “help” his son, often forcing him to socialize because he thought his son was very introverted. Jeffrey himself explained that this wasn’t true; he simply didn’t talk much at home because, as mentioned earlier, the atmosphere created by his parents was uncomfortable.

For unknown reasons, Jeffrey began to develop an obsession with animal entrails from a very young age, especially those of dead animals. Some people link this to his father, suggesting that Jeffrey might have overheard his father dissecting an animal, and the sound of the entrails caused him to develop that obsession. Others say that Dahmer himself developed the obsession in high school, possibly during biology classes when they performed dissections to view the internal organs of small animals, like frogs. Jeffrey often left the house and walked along the highway; whenever he found a dead animal, he would take it, keep it, and dissect it to see and touch its internal organs.

Jeffrey grew up, and with him grew his fascination with blood, organs, and entrails, which eventually combined with his sexual awakening. He quickly realized he was homosexual and had a great fascination with total domination, subjugation, the idea of dominating another man, killing him, dissecting him, and having relations with those human parts.

As he got older, he developed a very specific erotic fantasy. He wanted to subjugate, kill, and satisfy his sexual needs with the remaining human parts of a hitchhiker, but he didn’t truly believe it would ever happen, as in reality, outside of his mind, he was a normal guy leading a normal life.

Until one day, while driving, he encountered a guy hitchhiking. At that moment, Jeffrey stopped to think: Do I do it and fulfill my fantasy, or do I leave it and continue with my normal life? Dahmer himself explained that his impulse to destroy him was so great that he turned around and went toward his first victim.

Steven Mark Hicks was a hitchhiker coming from a rock concert. Jeffrey invited him to his house, and he accepted. In the car, Hicks talked about girls, which made Jeffrey understand that there would be no sexual opportunities between them. But ideas crowded his mind; in a moment of alienation, Dahmer grabbed a dumbbell and struck Hicks, making him fall to the floor, and then continued hitting him until he killed him.

In that moment, two things can happen in the killer’s mind: he can be frightened by what he’s just done, or he can enjoy the moment. In Jeffrey’s case, it was the latter. He tried to open Steven’s chest with his bare hands, and after succeeding, he masturbated over the corpse. It was his first necrophiliac sexual experience.

Jeffrey was aware that what he was doing wasn’t right and wanted to forget and make his gruesome thoughts disappear, so after this, he sought refuge in alcohol, leading to a severe form of alcoholism.

Seeing this situation, and very worried about his son, his father urged him to go to college. Jeffrey ended up enrolling at Ohio State University with the intention of leaving everything behind, but he didn’t succeed. He kept drinking and failed all his courses, so his father visited him, trying to give him advice, but he dropped out of college. Dahmer enlisted in the army but did poorly because of his alcoholism and was discharged.

He moved in with his grandmother, the only person he ever felt affection for. He began to rebuild his life by going to church with her, started working, and reduced his alcohol consumption.

In 1982, he was arrested for public indecency but only received a fine; this shows a break in his self-control.

In 1985, Jeffrey was in the library when a man approached him, gave him a piece of paper, and offered to go to the bathroom for a sexual experience. This awakened a compulsion in Jeffrey that he hadn’t felt since he killed Steven. He controlled himself, but it became his key turning point.

He began frequenting homosexual saunas, seeking to appease his sexual desire and look for victims—men to subjugate, although at first, he didn’t want to kill them. He drugged them and had sex with them. He wanted the people he slept with to not move, to have no life of their own, no ideas or desires, to be something inert that he could use for his own desires.

One day, Dahmer saw in the newspaper that an 18-year-old boy had died. He bought a shovel and tried to open the grave to have sex with the corpse, but the ground was too hard, and he failed. This shows just how unstable Jeffrey’s mind was.

In 1987, Dahmer killed again. On September 15th of that year, Steven Tuomi was at a bar when Jeffrey approached him and convinced him to come back to his hotel room. Tuomi accepted, but according to Dahmer, his intention wasn’t to kill—he just wanted to drug him, have sex with him, and fall asleep next to him. The next morning, Jeffrey woke up next to Steven’s corpse, remembering nothing. He realized he had unintentionally and unknowingly killed this guy. This was his second victim and the one that made Jeffrey lose control of his urge to kill.

After this, Jeffrey actively sought victims with the intention of killing them and committing necrophilic acts. During this time, there were two victims with whom he committed such acts violently. Jeffrey was still living with his grandmother, but because she disliked seeing him bring men to the house so often, he moved out on his own.

In 1989, Jeffrey was arrested and accused of sexual assault on a 13-year-old boy. Lionel hired a good lawyer to play the schizophrenia card, and they managed to get him sentenced to one year in a correctional facility and five years of probation.

During this time, he killed his next victim. His obsession with this man was so intense that he cut off his head and genitals and stored them in acetone; wherever Jeffrey went to live, he always took those members with him.

Jeffrey no longer had self-control, and even though he knew that what he was doing wasn’t right, he didn’t want to stop killing.

1990 is when his true killing spree began, the period when he killed the most and when his acts were the cruellest.

His modus operandi was to frequent gay bars. He would find a guy, offer him money for erotic photos, drug them, and strangle them to death. After that, he engaged in necrophilic relations and took photographs of the entire process. He began keeping parts of the corpses in his homes and practicing cannibalism. According to Jeffrey, he did this to feel that these men were a part of himself.

His madness couldn’t be stopped. Jeffrey became increasingly violent and came up with the idea of creating an army of slave zombies—people who would do everything he said without speaking. He would drill a hole in the skull (trepanation) while they were still alive and inject hydrochloric acid, hoping his experiment would be successful. This never worked, and he had to end up killing them. He disposed of the bodies or piled them up, which caused his neighbors to complain about the foul odors.

On May 26, 1991, he met a 14-year-old boy and convinced him to come to his apartment for an erotic photo shoot. He drugged him and injected the acid. He left his house, thinking the boy wouldn’t move, but when he returned, he found him in the street talking to three women. He approached them and told the women that the boy was his friend and was drunk, and that he was taking him home. The women didn’t believe him and called the police, who arrived minutes later. Jeffrey managed to convince the police that the boy was his 19-year-old boyfriend, that he had drunk too much, and that he was taking him back. The officers escorted Jeffrey to the apartment, and he showed them the erotic photos to prove he was telling the truth. Jeffrey walked away victorious despite the bad smells in his apartment, and the boy died minutes later.

Dahmer continued killing, and on July 22nd, he met three men, offering them a photo shoot. Only one of them accepted: Tracy Edwards. When the guy realized he was in danger, he tried to buy time to avoid his own death. He managed to hit Jeffrey and escaped. He found some police officers and told them everything he had experienced. When the police arrived at the apartment and examined it, they found the photographs, corpses, and various human members.