Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer Biography

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World of Criminal Justice on Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960. His family moved to Iowa while his father, Lionel, worked on his Ph.D. in chemistry. When Jeffrey was six, his family moved again to Bath, Ohio, near Akron. After the move, his parents noticed a change in young Jeffrey's personality. He lost his outgoing demeanor and developed a strange fear of others and of unfamiliar situations. Over his teenage years, Dahmer became increasingly withdrawn and isolated. He began to drink heavily in high school. Although intelligent, he did not perform well at academics, and his grades were inconsistent. He spent more and more time alone in his room or in solitary pursuits.

After high school, Jeffrey's parents went through a bitter divorce and custody battle over his 11-year-old brother. Jeffrey was left on his own in his parents' home for a time. It was at this time that Dahmer's first victim, 19-year-old Steven Hicks vanished.

Dahmer attended Ohio State University for a semester but flunked out. His father convinced him to join the Army, and in 1978 he entered the U.S. Army medical corps as a medic. He was stationed in Baumholder, West Germany. His alcoholism continued, and he was discharged in 1981. He spent a brief time in Miami Beach, Florida, but was unable to keep a job. He stayed with his father and stepmother for a brief time in Bath, Ohio, but finally moved in with his grandmother, a retired schoolteacher in Milwaukee, Minnesota, in 1985.

In Milwaukee, Dahmer worked as a stock clerk at the Ambrosia Chocolate factory. He was eventually terminated from this position due to his absenteeism from work. His grandmother called his father to complain about Jeffrey's drunken behavior and the offensive stench in her basement. She asked Dahmer to move out of her home.

Dahmer moved into an apartment on North 24th Street on September 25, 1988. Shortly afterward, Dahmer was arrested and pleaded guilty to sexual exploitation of a child and second-degree sexual assault. He had offered a 13-year-old Laotian boy, named Sinthasomphone, money to pose nude for some pictures. Dahmer drugged the boy and fondled him. When the child returned home, his parents took him to the hospital where testing confirmed that he had been drugged. On May 23, 1989, Dahmer was sentenced to five years of probation with a suspended sentence of eight years in prison. He was never sent to prison but served one year of work release in the House of Correction; Dahmer went to work during the day but spent each night in jail.

The judge granted Dahmer early release after serving only ten months. After Dahmer's release, his probation terms required that his probation officer meet with him two times a month in his home. The probation officer never did. She didn't like the neighborhood and had a heavy caseload, so her supervisor allowed her to pass on the home visits. In addition, in spite of his father's requests and the recommendations of three psychologists for hospitalization and intensive treatment, Dahmer never received any treatment for his alcoholism or his psychological problems.

Following Dahmer's release from jail, he moved into apartment 213 of the Oxford Apartments on 924 North 25th Street. Thereafter, Dahmer's neighbors also complained about the offensive smell from his apartment. Dahmer told them his refrigerator was out of order, and he would take care of the problem. The stench diminished but did not disappear.

Dahmer's neighbors were even more concerned when on May 27, 1991, a young Laotian boy was found wandering dazed and naked in the streets near Dahmer's apartment. By a bizarre coincidence, he was the younger brother of the boy Dahmer was convicted of sexually abusing in 1989. But young Konerak Sinthasomphone was not as lucky as his brother. The police responded to a 911 call from Sandra Smith. When the police arrived, Smith and a friend, Nicole Childress, were standing next to the boy and Dahmer. The mild-mannered Dahmer told police that the boy was his drunken 19-year-old lover and apologized for his behavior. Smith and Childress argued with the police. They had seen the young man's obvious terror and his efforts to escape from Dahmer. The police believed Dahmer's story and walked Dahmer and the boy back to Dahmer's apartment.

Finally, on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers saw a man running down the street with handcuffs attached to one hand. Suspecting that he was fleeing the law, the officers stopped him. The man frantically told the officers that he just escaped from a "weird dude" who threatened to cut his heart out with a butcher knife. To investigate the story, the officers entered Dahmer's apartment. Jeffrey Dahmer met them at the door and gave them permission to look around the apartment. An unpleasant aroma filled the air. In his bedroom were Polaroid pictures of dismembered corpses in various stages and a 57 gallon drum full of a thick, foul-smelling liquid. In the refrigerator, the officers discovered a severed human head next to a box of baking soda.

The fate of Konerak Sinthasomphone is representative of all Dahmer's victims. Prior to being drugged, most of the victims engaged in consensual sex with Dahmer or agreed to be photographed nude. Once in his apartment, Dahmer gave his victims a drink spiked with drugs. When the unsuspecting visitor passed out, Dahmer strangled him. Dahmer photographed them in various poses, engaged in sex with their corpses and then dismembered them. Dahmer kept Polaroid photographs of each stage of the dismemberment process. Dahmer put some of the body parts in his refrigerator, the rest were dumped into the drum, which was full of formaldehyde. He admitted to eating the flesh of at least two victims. Dahmer preserved the skulls of several of his victims by boiling or chemically dissolving the flesh and painting them.

After his arrest, Dahmer freely confessed to his crimes, describing them in detail. He admitted to the murder of nineteen-year-old Steven M. Hicks in Ohio as early as 1978, shortly after high school. Dahmer admitted to a total of seventeen murders of young men and boys. Most of his victims were black. Over time, the murders increased in frequency and at the end of his rampage was killing on a weekly basis.

At trial, Dahmer's plea was guilty by reason of insanity, which meant his attorney had to prove that Dahmer was so mentally ill that he did not understand the nature of his crimes. The prosecution argued that he knew his actions were wrong but did them anyway, that he was a psychopath who planned and committed the murders in cold blood with full knowledge. The jury agreed with the prosecution. Dahmer was found guilty and sane on all fifteen counts of murder committed in the state of Wisconsin. He was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms, a total of 957 years in prison.

Dahmer was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was assigned to a work detail with two other murderers, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The guards left the three inmates alone. On their return, they found Dahmer and Anderson had been brutally beaten by Scarver, a delusional schizophrenic. Dahmer was pronounced dead upon his arrival at the hospital. Anderson died a few days later.