Jeffrey Dahmer

"Dahmer" redirects here. For other uses, see Dahmer (disambiguation).

Jeffrey Dahmer
File:Jeffrey-dahmer.jpg Dahmer's mug shot, taken in 1982 by the Milwaukee County Sheriff's Department
Born	Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (1960-05-21)May 21, 1960 West Allis, Wisconsin, U.S.
Died	November 28, 1994(1994-11-28) (aged 34) Portage, Wisconsin, U.S.
Cause of death	Severe head trauma
Other names	The Milwaukee Cannibal, The Milwaukee Monster
Conviction(s)	Child molestation Disorderly conduct Indecent exposure Murder Public intoxication
Criminal penalty	Life imprisonment (15 life terms)
Details
Victims	17
Span of crimes	June 25, 1978 – July 19, 1991
Country	United States
State(s)	Ohio, Wisconsin
Date apprehended	July 22, 1991

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994) was an American serial killer and sex offender, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal who committed the rape, murder and dismemberment of 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991, with many of his later murders also involving necrophilia and cannibalism. Dahmer was convicted of 15 of these murders on February 15, 1992 and sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment.

On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution, where he had been incarcerated.

Early life

Jeffrey Dahmer was born in West Allis, Wisconsin, the first son of Joyce Annette (née Flint) and Lionel Herbert Dahmer. Dahmer's mother worked as a teletype machine instructor, whereas his father was a student at Marquette University, working towards a degree in chemistry.

Although Dahmer was doted upon as an infant and toddler by both parents, his mother was known to be tense, greedy for attention and argumentative with both her husband and her neighbors. As her son entered first grade, Joyce Dahmer began to spend an increasing amount of her time in bed recovering from weakness. Lionel's university studies kept him away from home much of the time; when he was home, Joyce demanded constant attention. She reportedly would work herself into a state of anxiety over trivial matters simply to achieve appeasement from her husband. On one occasion, Joyce Dahmer attempted suicide from an overdose of the Equanil pills to which she had become addicted. As a result, neither parent had much time to care for Jeffrey.

Dahmer himself recalled his early years of family life as being of "extreme tension" which he noted between his parents, whom he observed to be consistently arguing with each other. At school, he was observed to be both quiet and timid; one first grade teacher noted upon Dahmer's first grade report card that she observed him to be a reserved child whom she sensed to feel neglected. Nonetheless, he was regarded as a "quiet kid" by many of his peers. Although largely reserved and uncommunicative in grade school, Dahmer did have a small number of friends.

From an early age, Dahmer manifested an interest in animals. Friends later recalled Dahmer initially collected large insects, dragonflies and butterflies which he placed inside jars. Later, Dahmer—occasionally accompanied by one or more of his few friends—would collect animal carcasses from the roadside; these animals Dahmer would dismember either at home or in an expanse of woodland behind the family home. According to one friend, Dahmer would dismember these animals and store the parts in jars in the family's wooden toolshed, always explaining that he was curious as to how each animal "fitted together". In one instance, he is known to have impaled a dog's head upon a stake behind his house.

Dahmer's fascination with dead animals may have began when, at the age of four, he noted his father removing animal bones from beneath the family home. According to Lionel Dahmer, his son was "oddly thrilled" by the sound the bones made.

The Dahmer family relocated to Doylestown in October of 1966. At the time, Joyce Dahmer was pregnant with her second child. When she gave birth to a baby boy on December 18, 1966, Jeffrey was allowed to choose the name of the baby. He chose the name David for his younger brother. The same year, Lionel Dahmer achieved his degree and subsequently obtained employment as an analytical chemist in the city of Akron.

In 1968, the family relocated to Bath, Ohio. Two years later, over a family meal of chicken, Dahmer asked his father what would happen if the bones of the chicken were to be placed in bleach. Lionel Dahmer was by this stage concerned as to his elder son's placid and lethargic attitude and his solitary existence; he was delighted at the initiative displayed by his son towards what he believed to be scientific curiosity; therefore he willingly demonstrated how to bleach and, later, preserve animal bones. The knowledge regarding cleansing and preserving of these bones Dahmer would later utilize upon many of the animal remains with he continued to avidly collect and of which his father, being a chemist, taught his son safe usage.

Adolescence and high school

From his freshman year at Revere High School, Dahmer was seen by his peers as an outcast with few friends. Many of Dahmer's classmates later recollected being disturbed by the fact that he was known to drink both beer and spirits, which he smuggled into school inside his jacket. This alcohol abuse was known to occur both before, during and after school and was first noted when Dahmer was 14. On one occasion, a classmate observed Dahmer consuming a cup of gin and asked him why he was drinking liquor in class, to which Dahmer casually replied, "It's my medicine".

Nonetheless, in his freshman year at Revere High School, Dahmer, although largely uncommunicative, was observed by staff to be a polite student who was known to be highly intelligent. He initially achieved only average grades, which staff attributed to his apathy. He was also known to have been a keen tennis player and to have briefly played in the high school band.

Dahmer at age 17, photographed for the 1977 Revere High School yearbook.

When he reached puberty, Dahmer discovered he was a homosexual. He did not divulge his sexuality to his parents, although in his early teens, he did engage in a brief relationship with another youth although the pair never had intercourse. By his own later admission, as he began to fantasize sexually, issues of dominance and control over a completely subservient partner were prevalent in his thoughts. These thoughts gradually became intertwined with dissection. On one occasion when he was approximately 16 years old, Dahmer conceived a fantasy of rendering a particular male jogger he found attractive unconscious and then making sexual use of his unconscious body. To render the man unconscious, Dahmer concealed himself in bushes on the route he had noted the jogger took, baseball bat in hand, and lay in wait for the jogger. On this particular day, the jogger did not pass him and although Dahmer never attempted to implement this plan again, he later stated this was his first attempt to attack another individual.

Despite being regarded as a loner and an oddball amongst his peers at Revere High School, Dahmer nonetheless became something of a cult figure among some students due to the pranks he was known to regularly stage: some of which were done to amuse his classmates; others apparently to simply attract attention. These pranks became known as "Doing a Dahmer" and included bleating, faking epileptic seizures, mocking invalids, and knocking over items both at school and at local stores.

By 1977, Dahmer's academic performance had decreased, due to his alcohol abuse and his general apathy toward academic and social interactions. His grades plummeted. His parents hired a private tutor for their son, but the tutor only had limited success. The same year, Dahmer's parents attended counselling sessions to try and resolve personal differences and thus save their marriage. The counselling was ultimately unsuccessful, and Dahmer's parents decided to divorce. Although initially on amicable grounds, both of Dahmer's parents began to frequently quarrel in the presence of their sons and, in early 1978, Lionel Dahmer moved out of the house.

In May 1978, 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. Shortly after this incident, Joyce was awarded custody of her younger son and vacated the family residence, moving in with family members of hers; Dahmer, having just turned 18, was legally an adult and therefore not subject to court custodial considerations.

First murder and army service

Dahmer committed his first murder in the summer of 1978, at the age of 18, just three weeks after his graduation. At the time, he was living alone in the family home: due to his parents' recent divorce, Dahmer's father temporarily lived in a nearby motel and his mother had relocated to Chippewa Falls with his younger brother. On June 25, Dahmer picked up a 19-year-old hitchhiker named Stephen Hicks. Dahmer lured the youth to his house on the pretext of the pair drinking alcohol together. Hicks, who had been hitchhiking to a rock concert in Lockwood Corners, agreed to accompany Dahmer to his house. According to Dahmer, after several hours' drinking and listening to music, Hicks informed Dahmer he "wanted to leave and [I] didn't want him to." In response, Dahmer bludgeoned the youth with a 10 lb. dumbbell. Dahmer later stated he struck the youth twice from behind with the dumbbell as he (Hicks) sat upon either a chair or a bed. When Hicks fell unconscious, Dahmer strangled the youth to death with the bar of the dumbbell. He later dissected the body in his crawl space, then buried the remains in a shallow grave in his backyard before, several weeks later, unearthing the remains and paring the flesh from the bones. The flesh he dissolved in acid before flushing the solution down the toilet; the bones he crushed with a sledgehammer.

Six weeks after the murder of Hicks, Dahmer's father and his fiancée returned to his home where they discovered Jeffrey living alone at the house. That August, Dahmer enrolled at Ohio State University, but left after one term, largely because of persistent alcohol abuse throughout the majority of the term.

In January 1979, upon his father's urging, Dahmer enlisted in the U.S. Army, where he trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston before, on July 13, 1979, being deployed to Baumholder in West Germany where he served as a combat medic. According to published reports, in Dahmer's first year of service, he was an "average or slightly above average" soldier. However, due to his alcohol abuse, his performance deteriorated and in March 1981 he was deemed unsuitable for military service and later formally discharged from the Army, albeit honorably.

On March 24, 1981, Dahmer was sent to Fort Jackson for debriefing and provided with a plane ticket to travel anywhere in the country. Dahmer later told police he felt he could not return home to face his father, so he opted to travel to Miami Beach, Florida, both because he was "tired of the cold" and in an attempt to live by his own means. In Florida, Dahmer found employment at a sandwich shop and rented a room in a nearby motel. Almost all of Dahmer's earnings were spent on alcohol and after several months, he was evicted from the motel and initially spent his evenings on the beach as he continued to work at the sandwich shop before, in September 1981, phoning his father and asking to return to Ohio.

Return to Ohio and relocation to West Allis

Upon his return to Ohio, Dahmer initially resided with his father and stepmother and insisted on being delegated numerous chores to occupy his time as he looked for work. However, he continued to drink heavily and just two weeks after his return, Dahmer was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct, for which he was fined sixty dollars and given a suspended ten-day jail sentence.

Dahmer's father tried unsuccessfully to wean his son off alcohol. In December 1981, Dahmer's father and stepmother sent Jeffrey to live with his grandmother in West Allis. Dahmer's grandmother was the only family member to whom he displayed any affection; they hoped that her influence, plus the change of scenery, might inspire Dahmer to refrain from alcohol, find a job and live responsibly.

Initially, Dahmer's living arrangements with his grandmother were harmonious: he accompanied her to church; willingly undertook chores; actively sought work; and abided by most of her house rules (although he did continue to drink). This new influence in his life initially brought results and in early 1982, Dahmer found employment as a phlebotomist at the Milwaukee Blood Plasma Center. He held this job for a total of ten months before being made redundant. He was to remain unemployed for over two years, during which he lived upon whatever money his grandmother gave him.

Shortly before being made redundant, Dahmer was arrested for indecent exposure. On August 7, 1982, at Wisconsin State Fair Park, Dahmer was observed to expose himself to a crowd of 25 women and children. For this incident, he was convicted and fined fifty dollars plus court costs.

In January 1985, Dahmer was hired as a mixer at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, where he worked from 11 p.m.–7 a.m. six nights a week, with Saturday evenings off. Shortly after Dahmer found this employment, an incident occurred in which he was propositioned by another male while sitting reading in the West Allis Public Library. The stranger threw Dahmer a note offering to perform fellatio upon him. Although Dahmer did not respond to this proposition, the incident stirred in his mind the fantasies of control and dominance he had developed as a teenager and he began to familiarize himself with Milwaukee's gay bars, bookstores and bathhouses. He is also known to have stolen a male mannequin from a store, which he briefly used for sexual stimulation before his grandmother, having discovered the device stowed in a closet, demanded that he discard it.

By late 1985, he had begun to regularly frequent the bathhouses, which he later described as being "relaxing places," but during his sexual encounters, he became frustrated at his partners' moving during the sexual act. Following his arrest, he stated: "I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of people." For this reason, from June 1986, he began to administer sleeping pills to his partners, to whom he would give liquor laced with the sedatives, then make sexual use of their unconscious bodies. Following approximately 12 such instances, Dahmer's membership of the bathhouses was revoked and he began to use hotel rooms to continue this practice.

In August 1986, Dahmer was again arrested for masturbating in front of two 12-year-old boys as he stood close to the Kinnickinnic River. Dahmer initially admitted the offense and was again charged with indecent exposure, but quickly changed his story and claimed he had merely been urinating, unaware that there were witnesses. The charge was changed to disorderly conduct and on March 10, 1987, Dahmer was sentenced to one year's probation, with additional instructions he was to undergo counseling.

Subsequent murders

Gay bars

Nine years passed before Dahmer killed again; in November 1987, Dahmer—at the time residing with his grandmother in West Allis—encountered a 25-year-old Ontonagon native named Steven Tuomi at a bar and persuaded him to return to a hotel room Dahmer had rented for the evening. According to Dahmer, he had no intention of murdering this particular victim, but simply intended to drug him and have intercourse with him as he lay unconscious. The following morning, however, he awoke to find Tuomi lying beneath him on the bed, his chest "crushed in" and blood seeping from his mouth, with bruises on Dahmer's own fists and one forearm. Dahmer stated he had absolutely no memory of having killed Tuomi and later informed investigators that he simply "could not believe this had happened." To dispose of Tuomi's body, he purchased a large suitcase in which he transported the body to his grandmother's residence. There, the following morning, he severed the head, arms and legs from the body, then filleted the bones from the body, cut the flesh into pieces small enough to handle, which he then placed inside garbage bags. The bones he wrapped inside a sheet and pounded into splinters with a sledgehammer. The entire dismemberment process took Dahmer approximately two hours to complete and all of Tuomi's remains were disposed of in the trash.

Following the murder of Tuomi, Dahmer began to actively seek victims, most of whom he encountered in or close to gay bars and whom he would typically lure to his grandmother's home, where he would drug them before engaging in sexual activity before killing them by strangulation.

Two months after the murder of Steven Tuomi, Dahmer encountered a 15-year-old Native American male prostitute named James Doxtator; the youth was lured to Dahmer's home with an offer of $50 to pose for nude pictures. Doxtator was drugged, strangled and dismembered in much the same manner as Tuomi had been. On March 24, 1988, Dahmer met a 25-year-old bisexual named Richard Guerrero. Guerrero was also lured to Dahmer's grandmother's residence with the offer of alcohol and money for posing nude; he was drugged with sleeping pills and strangled with a leather strap, and his remains were disposed of in the trash.

On April 23, Dahmer lured another young man to his house; however, after giving the victim a drugged coffee, both he and the victim heard Dahmer's grandmother call, "Is that you, Jeff?" Although Dahmer replied in a manner that led his grandmother to believe he was alone, his grandmother did observe the fact Dahmer was not alone. Because of this, Dahmer opted not to kill this particular victim, whom he waited until he had become unconscious before taking to the County General Hospital.

In September of 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out of her house both because of his habit of bringing young men to her house late at night and because of the foul smells she had noted emanating from the basement and the garage. Dahmer found a one-bedroom apartment on North Twenty-fifth Street and moved into his new residence on September 25. The next day, Dahmer was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy whom he had lured to his home on the pretext of posing nude for photographs. In January 1989, Dahmer was sentenced to five years' probation and one year in a work release camp; he was also required to register as a sex offender. He was allowed to keep his job as he served his year in the work release camp.

Two months after his sentencing for the sexual assault, Dahmer killed for the fifth time. The victim was a mixed-race 24-year-old aspiring model named Anthony Sears, whom Dahmer met at a gay bar on March 25, 1989. According to Dahmer, on this particular occasion, he was not planning on looking for a victim; however, shortly before closing time that evening, Sears "just started talking to me." Dahmer lured Sears to his grandmother's home (where Dahmer was temporarily living) where the pair engaged in oral sex before Dahmer drugged and strangled Sears. The following morning, Dahmer placed the corpse in his grandmother's bathtub, where he decapitated the body before attempting to flay the corpse. He then stripped the flesh from the body and pulverized the bones, which were again disposed of in the trash. According to Dahmer, he found Sears "exceptionally attractive" and Sears was the first victim from whom he retained any body parts: he preserved the skull and genitalia of Sears in acetone and stored them in his work locker. When he moved to a new address the following year, he took the remains there.

Two months before his scheduled release from the work camp, Dahmer was paroled from this regime. He soon moved into a new apartment.

924 North 25th Street

In May 1990, Dahmer moved out of his grandmother's house for the last time and into an apartment that later became infamous: Apartment 213, 924 North 25th Street, Milwaukee. He picked up the pace of his killing: four more murders before the end of 1990, two more in February and April 1991, and another in May 1991.

In the early morning hours of May 27, 1991, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone (the younger brother of the boy whom Dahmer had molested in 1988) was discovered on the street, wandering naked, heavily under the influence of drugs and bleeding from his rectum. Two young women from the neighborhood found the dazed boy and called 911. Dahmer chased his victim down and tried to take him away, but the women stopped him. Dahmer told John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish, police officers dispatched to the scene, that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old boyfriend, and that they had an argument while drinking. Against the protests of the two women who had called 911, who recognized him from the neighborhood and insisted that he was a child and could not speak English, the officers turned him over to Dahmer. They later reported smelling a strange scent while inside Dahmer's apartment, but did not investigate it. The smell was the body of Tony Hughes, Dahmer's previous victim, decomposing in the bedroom. The officers did not make any attempt to verify Sinthasomphone's age or identity, nor to locate someone who could communicate with him, and failed to run a background check that would have revealed Dahmer being a convicted child molester still under probation. Later that night, Dahmer killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone, keeping his skull as a souvenir.

By summer 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 Bradehoft on July 19. Dahmer got the idea that he could turn his victims into "zombies"—completely submissive, eternally youthful sexual partners—and attempted to do so by drilling holes into their skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the frontal lobe area of their brains with a large syringe, usually while the victim was still alive. Other residents of the Oxford Apartments complex noticed terrible smells coming from Apartment 213, as well as the thumps of falling objects and the occasional buzzing of a power saw. Unlike many serial killers, Dahmer killed victims from a variety of racial backgrounds.

Arrest

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured another man, Tracy Edwards, into his home. According to the would-be victim, Dahmer struggled with Edwards in order to handcuff him, but ultimately failed to cuff his wrists together. Wielding a large butcher knife, Dahmer forced Edwards into the bedroom, where Edwards saw pictures of mangled bodies on the wall and noticed the terrible smell coming from a large blue barrel; the barrel was filled with potent acid which dissolved human bodies into a semi-liquid state for disposal via the apartment toilet. Edwards punched Dahmer in the face, kicked him in the stomach, ran for the door and escaped. Running through the streets with handcuffs still hanging from one hand, Edwards waved for help to a police car driven by Robert Rauth and Rolf Mueller of the Milwaukee police department. Edwards led police back to Dahmer's apartment, where Dahmer at first acted friendly to the officers. However, Edwards remembered that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom. When one of the officers checked the bedroom, he saw the photographs of mangled bodies and called for his partner to arrest Dahmer. As one officer subdued Dahmer, the other opened the refrigerator and found a human head. Further searching of the apartment revealed three more severed heads, multiple photographs of murdered victims and human remains, severed hands and penises, and photographs of dismembered victims and human remains in his refrigerator.

The story of Dahmer's arrest and the inventory in his apartment quickly gained notoriety: several corpses were stored in acid-filled vats, and implements for the construction of an altar of candles and human skulls were found in his closet. Accusations soon surfaced that Dahmer had practiced necrophilia and cannibalism. Seven skulls were found in the apartment. A human heart was found in the freezer.

Trial

File:JeffreyDahmer-StonePhillips.jpg

Dahmer during an interview for Dateline NBC with Stone Phillips, 1994.

Dahmer was indicted on 17 murder charges, later reduced to 15. Dahmer was not charged in the attempted murder of Edwards. His trial began on January 30, 1992. With evidence overwhelmingly against him, Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. The trial lasted two weeks. The court found Dahmer sane and guilty on 15 counts of murder and sentenced him to 15 life terms, totaling 957 years in prison, which was the maximum penalty available as Wisconsin abolished capital punishment in 1853. At his sentencing hearing, Dahmer expressed remorse for his actions, and said that he wished for his own death. In May of that year, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio, where he entered a plea of guilty for the murder of his first victim, Stephen Hicks.

Imprisonment and death

Dahmer served his time at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, where he ultimately declared himself a born-again Christian. Roy Ratcliff, a local preacher from the Churches of Christ, met with Dahmer and agreed to baptize him.

Dahmer was attacked twice in prison, the first time in July 1994. An inmate attempted to slash Dahmer's throat with a razor blade while Dahmer was returning to his cell from a church service in the prison chapel. Dahmer escaped the incident with superficial wounds. On November 28, 1994, while doing janitorial work in the prison gym, Dahmer and another inmate, Jesse Anderson, were severely beaten by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver with a 20-inch (51 cm) metal bar that Scarver had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room. Dahmer died of severe head trauma while on his way to the hospital in an ambulance. Anderson died two days later from his wounds.

Aftermath

Upon learning of his death, Dahmer's mother, Joyce Flint, responded angrily to the media, "Now is everybody happy? Now that he's bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?" The response of the families of Dahmer's victims was mixed, although it appears most were pleased with his death. The district attorney who prosecuted Dahmer cautioned against turning Scarver into a folk hero, noting that Dahmer's death was still murder.

The Oxford Apartments at 924 North 25th Street were demolished in 1992; 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' families. Most of the families showed support for Lionel Dahmer and his wife, Shari. He has retired from his career as an analytical chemist and resides with his wife in Medina County, Ohio. Lionel Dahmer is an advocate for creationism, and his wife was a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman's Council. Both continue to carry the name Dahmer and say they love Jeffrey despite his crimes. Joyce Flint, Jeffrey's mother and Lionel Dahmer's first wife, died of cancer in 2000. Jeffrey's younger brother, David, changed his last name and lives in anonymity.

Dahmer's estate was awarded to the families of 11 of his victims who had sued for damages. In 1996, Thomas Jacobson, a lawyer representing eight of the families, announced a planned auction of Dahmer's estate to raise up to $1 million, sparking controversy. A civic group, Milwaukee Civic Pride, was quickly established in an effort to raise the funds to purchase and destroy Dahmer's possessions. The group pledged $407,225, including a $100,000 gift by Milwaukee real estate developer Joseph Zilber, for purchase of Dahmer's estate; five of the eight families represented by Jacobson agreed to the terms, and Dahmer's possessions were destroyed and buried in an undisclosed Illinois landfill.

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, even stating; "I've told you everything – how I killed them, how I cooked them, who I ate. Why wouldn't I tell you if I did someone else?" In 2008, Florida police declared the Walsh case closed, naming Toole, who died in prison in 1996, as the killer.

Forensic psychiatrist Carl Wahlstrom diagnosed Dahmer with borderline personality disorder. Clinical psychologist Dr. Samuel Friedman who also evaluated Dahmer said at Dahmer's insanity trial "Mr. Dahmer is not psychotic". Dr. Friedman also diagnosed Dahmer with borderline personality disorder. Dahmer was again diagnosed with borderline personality disorder by at least one other mental health professional.

Although never officially diagnosed, Martens and Palermo (2005) have suggested that Dahmer may have suffered from antisocial personality disorder and have theorized that loneliness plays a significant role in the development and continuation of violent, antisocial attitudes and behavior.

Known murder victims

Name	Age	Date of death
Stephen Hicks	19	Jun 25, 1978
Steven Tuomi	25	Nov 20, 1987
James Doxtator	15	Jan 16, 1988
Richard Guerrero	25	Mar 24, 1988
Anthony Sears	26	Mar 25, 1989
Raymond Smith	32	May 29, 1990
Edward Smith	27	Jun 14, 1990
Ernest Miller	22	Sep 2, 1990
David Thomas	23	Sep 24, 1990
Curtis Straughter	19	Feb 18, 1991
Errol Lindsey	19	Apr 7, 1991
Tony Hughes	31	May 24, 1991
Konerak Sinthasomphone	14	May 27, 1991
Matt Turner	20	Jun 30, 1991
Jeremiah Weinberger	23	Jul 5, 1991
Oliver Lacy	23	Jul 12, 1991
Joseph Bradehoft	25	Jul 19, 1991

Media portrayals

• In 1992, Hart Fisher published a comic book titled Jeffery [sic] Dahmer: An Unauthorized Biography Of A Serial Killer. Collector's Item Issue, which the Milwaukee Sentinel described as "lurid and error-ridden." The publication sparked protests both in Milwaukee and in Fisher's home town of Champaign, Illinois. Dahmer's victims' relatives filed a lawsuit against Fisher (sometimes called "Fischer" in press reports) and his Boneyard Press for exploiting their loved ones' names and likenesses for profit without compensation, but a court eventually ruled that since the victims were dead at the time of publication, "name or likeness" laws were not applicable. In the wake of the lawsuit, Fisher eventually published sequels The Further Adventures of Young Jeffy Dahmer, Dahmer's Zombie Squad and Jeffrey Dahmer vs. Jesus Christ. Hart later discussed the controversy and confronted several family members of Dahmer's victims during two lively appearances on both The Jerry Springer Show and Sally Jesse Raphael.
• The film Jeffrey Dahmer: The Secret Life was released in 1993, starring Carl Crew as Dahmer.
• Joyce Carol Oates' novel Zombie (1995) was based on Dahmer's life.
• In 2000, Chicago-based death metal band Macabre released the album Dahmer, which comprises a biography of the life of Dahmer.
• In 2002, the biographical film Dahmer, starring Jeremy Renner in the title role and Bruce Davison as his father, premiered in Dahmer's hometown. The film quickly went to video.
• In 2002, cartoonist John Backderf (known as Derf), who attended middle school and high school with Dahmer, produced a comic book entitled My Friend Dahmer which presents his recollections about the killer's adolescence.
• In 2003, Raw Dog Screaming Press released Harold Jaffe's 15 Serial Killers: Docufiction, which included a section on Dahmer; racism is implied as a factor in Konerak Sinthasomphone's death.
• In 2006, another film, Raising Jeffrey Dahmer, was released; the film stars Rusty Sneary as Dahmer and Scott Cordes as Lionel; the film revolves around the reactions of Dahmer's parents after his arrest in 1991.
• In 2006, Dahmer was featured in the 150th episode of the television series South Park, Hell on Earth 2006. As part of Satan's birthday party, Dahmer is tasked, along with two other serial killers Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy, to organise the birthday cake.
• Dahmer was featured in the 6th episode of Discovery Channel's documentary series Most Evil.
• In 2012, a documentary called Jeff premiered, which featured interviews with Dahmer's next door neighbor, Dahmer's interrogator, and the city medical examiner, as well as fictionalized scenarios of Dahmer living in Milwaukee.
• In 2012, the NBC fantasy crime series Grimm presented Dahmer as a wendigo, a cannibalistic creature.

References

• Dahmer, Lionel (1994). A Father's Story. William Morrow and Co. ISBN 978-0-688-12156-3. Retrieved July 26, 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)
• Davis, Donald (1991). The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare (previously published as: The Milwaukee Murders, Nightmare in Apartment 213: The True Story). Macmillan. ISBN 978-0-312-92840-7. Retrieved July 26, 2010. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

Further reading

• Mann, Robert & Williamson, Miryam. Forensic Detective — How I Cracked The World's Toughest Cases. Ballantine Books (March 28, 2006). ISBN 978-0345479426
• Masters, Brian. The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Hodder and Stoughton Limited, London 1993 (Paperback Coronet 1993). ISBN 978-0340591949
• Pincus, Jonathan H. Base Instincts — What Makes Killers kill?. W.W. Norton & Company, New York 2001 (Paperback 2002). ISBN 978-0393323238
• Ratcliff, Roy with Lindy Adams. Dark Journey, Deep Grace: The Story Behind a Serial Killer's Journey to Faith. Abilene, Texas: Leafwood Publishers, 2006. ISBN 978-0-97677-902-5.

External links

• Crime Library article on Dahmer
• Jeffrey Dahmer at IMDb