Jeffrey Dahmer, the Milwaukee Cannibal

Who was Jeffrey Dahmer?

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, father Lionel and mother Joyce Dahmer. He spent his childhood in his place of birth Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

At the age of 4, he suffered a hernia surgery. Shortly after, following also, following also the birth of his younger brother, Jeffrey became more disengaged and his behavior changed.

According to his confessions, Jeffrey said that his interest in necrophilia and killing people appeared around his teenage years, when he was 14. However, it looks like the trigger for his murders was after his parents divorced.

How did the killings start?

Around 1978, Jeffrey was reported having problems with alcohol. That’s when his killings started. In June 1978, he picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks, taking him at his parents’ house, got him drunk and when Steven tried to leave, Jeffrey killed him by hitting him in the head and strangling him with a barbel. After he was done, he dismembered the body and buried the remains in the back of the house. Later, he went back and exhumed the remains, crushed the bones and then scattered them on a wooded ravine.

Around that time, because of his problems with alcohol and also dropping out of college, his father, who was remarried, insisted that Jeffrey should enroll into the military. In late December of the same year of his first killing, he did and was stationed in Germany.

In the early 1981, because of his alcohol problems, Jeffrey was discharged from the military leading to his return in Ohio. He was troubled and having problems with authorities. After an arrest, his father sent him to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin. However his problems followed him there as well. Alcohol usage was a constant. He was arrested again for indecent exposure twice. Once in ’82 and again in ’86.

In September 1987, Dahmer took the life of his second victim, named Steven Tuomi. They went into a hotel room and drank. Dahmer supposedly woke up to find Tuomi dead, with no memory of the previous night’s happenings. He bought a large suitcase to transport Tuomi’s body to his grandmother’s basement, where he dismembered and masturbated on the corpse before getting rid of the remains.

The Killing Spree

Over a period of 13 years, Jeffrey Dahmer took the life of many young African-American men. He used to pick them up in gay bars, bus stops, malls and trick them with promises of sex, money, drugs to follow him at his house, where he took their lives.

His pattern was to lure the men at his home, give them alcohol mixed with drugs, then strangle them to death. He used to engage in sex activities with the corpses and then dismember them and then dispose of them.

He used to take photos of his killings at various stages and used them to re-live the moments of his killings. He kept souvenirs as well, like skulls of the genitals of his victims. Evolving in his rituals, Jeffrey started to do experiments like injecting acid in the brains of his victims trying to keep them alive. According to him, his “zombie” experiments failed. Trying to find other solutions to prolong his contact with his victims, he started eating them.

He took the life of 2 more victims and in 1988, his grandmother, tired of his countless late nights told him to move out of her house. She was unaware, of course of his other “activities”.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s first arrest

That same year, in September, he had a close encounter with the police. He was arrested for sexual assault of a 12 year old boy. He argued that the boy looked older and that he was unaware of his true age. He pleaded guilty and was awaiting for his sentence. However, this close encounter did not “calm” him down. In March 1989, he lured Anthony Sears in his grandmother’s basement, where following the same pattern, he drugged him, strangled him and sodomized him. He took photos as well. That same year in May, his sentence was given.

He argued in front of the judge that he admits he was wrong and he sees his own mistakes. The judge considers that he needs correction and not imprisonment. So Jeffrey get a 1 year sentence with “day’release”, which means he was able to go to his work during the day and return at the prison at night.

Jeffrey Dahmer gets released

He served 10 months of his sentence and moves back to his grandmother’s for a short time, before he finds his own place.

Between 1990 and 1991 his body count went up and accelerated. Her killed 12 more young men. Feeling confident and away from any spot light because of his victims which were young men on the fringes of society, no one was looking for, Jeffrey started experimenting as well. Drilling holes in his victim’s heads while they were alive, different methods of disposing the bodies, including chemical practices, his sodomizing ways escalated as well.

Jeffrey  Dahmer gets questioned again

He did have another very close encounter with the police. On May 27, 1991 one of his neighbors called the police because of a young Asian boy was running naked on the streets. Police came and Jeffrey said that the young 19 year old boy (he was in fact 14 yo and was the brother of the young boy he was accused of sexually assaulting few years earlier) is his lover.

The women reporting this to the police did not believe Jeffrey and insisted that the young boy was in Jeffrey’s flat against his will. Police however did not follow up with their sayings and giving the nature of his sexual activities, they considered it is a domestic case.

They took Jeffrey and his “lover” back to his home, looked briefly around, were showed the pictures Jeffrey took of the young boy, to prove they are lovers and left.

If only they would have investigated a bit more and they would have found inside Jeffrey’s home, the body of his 12 victim, Tony Hughes, of who’s body was decomposing. After the police left, he injected acid in his young victim and continued with his rituals.

His Killing Spree Continues

He continued his spree of killing taking the lives of four more men: Matt Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy and Joseph Bradehoft.

The details of each murder are gruesome. He killed Joseph Bradehoft the same day he got fired for missing from work. He left Bradehoft’s body on his floor, covered with some sheets for 2 days. When removing the sheets he saw the skull covered in maggots. He took the head, cleaned it and placed it in the refrigerator.

Here is a list of all his victims:

Date	Name	Age
June 18, 1978	Steven Hicks	18
November 20, 1987	Steven Tuomi	25
January 16, 1988	James Doxtator	14
March 24, 1988	Richard Guerrero	22
March 25, 1989	Anthony Sears	24
May 20, 1990	Raymond Smith	32
June 14, 1990	Edward Smith	27
September 2, 1990	Ernest Miller	22
September 24, 1990	David Thomas	22
February 18, 1991	Curtis Straughter	17
April 7, 1991	Errol Lindsey	19
May 24, 1991	Tony Hughes	31
May 27, 1991	Konerak Sinthasomphone	14
June 30, 1991	Matt Turner	20
July 5, 1991	Jeremiah Weinberger	23
July 15, 1991	Oliver Lacy	24
July 19, 1991	Joseph Bradehoft	25

His Arrest

On July 22, 1991 two police officers picked up Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old African American man who was wandering the streets with a handcuffhis his wrist. The police decided to investigate the man’s claims that a “weird dude” had drugged and restrained him. They all arrived at Dahmer’s apartment, where Jeffrey very calmly even offered to get the keys for the handcuffs Tracy was having.

The police starting to look for the knife Tracy was describing and that’s when they noticed pictures of dismembered bodies just lying around. At a further look, they also discovered the horror show that was going on in his house. A head in the refrigerator, more bodies in the freezer, pictures, skulls, genitalia parts of his victims.

His Trial

His trial started  in January 1992 under strict security precautions because of racial tensions. He initially pleaded not guilty, though he did confess to his murders. He changed his plea later to guilty. His defense team explained with every gruesome detail possible everything that he did, trying to highlight that only an insane person can commit such acts. However, the jury did not buy in and after 10 hours of deliberation, on February 15, 1992 he was found sane and guilty on all counts. Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 life terms in prison.

His Death

Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in prison by 2 other inmates. During his time in prison it was reported that he adjusted well to life there. He even found religion and asked to be involved in more activities with other inmates. This eventually led to his death when Christopher Scarver, another convicted murderer, decided to kill him.

Video:

Documents

 

Freedom Of Information And Privacy Acts: Subject: Jeffrey Dahmer  File Number: 7-HQ-21976

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 1

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 2

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 3

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 4

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 5

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 6

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 7

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 8

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 9

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 10

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 11

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 12

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 13

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 14

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 15

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 16

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 17

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 18

Jeffrey Dahmer FBI File Part 19