Case File: Jeffrey Dahmer

Born in 1960, Jeffrey Dahmer had a somewhat difficult childhood. His father was absent for lengthy periods, and his mother was a mentally unstable woman who reportedly attempted suicide at least once. At age 4, following a hernia operation, Dahmer became more withdrawn and isolated.

The Dahmer family moved frequently during the 1960s and 1970s, including several years spent in Ohio. During his youth, Dahmer developed an unusual interest in animal remains and their bone structures. In one episode, Dahmer nailed the carcass of a dog to a tree in the woods behind his house.

With few friends in high school, Dahmer began drinking heavily. He also came to the realization that he was gay. Shortly after graduating high school in 1978, Dahmer acted upon his sexual impulses in a way that would have deadly consequences.

Near Bath, Ohio, Dahmer picked up a handsome 18-year-old hitchhiker named Steven Hicks in June of 1978 and brought him to Dahmer’s house since his divorced parents were both out of town at the time. When Hicks wanted to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned him with a dumbbell, dissected the corpse, dissolved the body parts in acid, crushed the bones with a sledgehammer and disposed of all evidence in the woods nearby.

Hicks's death was the first of what would be several murders that often included sexual activities with the victims, either before or after their deaths. Following a brief stint in college and two years in the U.S. Army—both of which were marred by heavy use of alcohol—Dahmer returned to Wisconsin in 1981 to live with his grandmother near Milwaukee.

Unable to keep a job for very long, Dahmer frequented Milwaukee’s gay bars and bathhouses, where he began giving his sex partners drinks laced with sedatives. In 1987, Dahmer killed a young man in a motel room, transported the corpse to his grandmother’s house, dismembered the remains and disposed of the body parts, saving the skull as a sexual totem. 

Dahmer later admitted that this killing sparked a period of his life during which he no longer attempted to curtail his dark impulses. From 1987 to 1991, Dahmer lured at least 15 more young males to their deaths, using similar tactics to kill them, dispose of their remains and occasionally save their skulls or other body parts as trophies.

Typically, Dahmer met his victims at bus stations, gay bars or other public places. He would lure the men to his place with an offer of cash (usually about $50) for taking photos of them. The victims were then drugged with sedatives, after which Dahmer would strangle them to death. He’d proceed to pose, photograph and engage in sexual acts with their bodies, then use knives and acids to dismember and dissolve body parts.

During these years, Dahmer was repeatedly in trouble. His grandmother kicked him out of her house—partly due to the foul odors coming from the basement and garage, where his victims’ bodies were decomposing—forcing him to move into a cheap apartment in a low-income neighborhood. Additionally, Dahmer was arrested multiple times, including for indecent exposure, disorderly conduct and again in 1988 for drugging and sexually assaulting a 13-year-old boy, Somsack Sinthasomphone.

On one occasion in May 1991, a victim of Dahmer escaped and drew the attention of Milwaukee police officers. Even though the victim—14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, Somack’s brother—was found by three women sitting naked and bleeding in public, the police officers who accompanied Sinthasomphone back to Dahmer’s squalid apartment dismissed the event as a “domestic dispute” because Dahmer referred to him as his lover.

All the while, the decomposing body of an earlier victim lay rotting in plain view inside Dahmer’s bedroom. After the officers left, Dahmer killed Sinthasomphone, dismembered his body and preserved his skull.

In July 1991, one of Dahmer’s intended victims managed to escape, bringing an end to the murder spree. Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old Black man, distracted Dahmer, then punched him and ran out of Dahmer’s apartment, whereupon he flagged down two police officers.

The police again went to Dahmer’s apartment, where Edwards told them that Dahmer had also threatened him with a knife. After finding the knife—and Dahmer’s photographs of dismembered bodies, plus a severed head in the refrigerator—Dahmer was arrested. He told the arresting officers, “For what I did, I should be dead.”

The forensics team investigating Dahmer’s apartment discovered a gruesome array of evidence: four human heads, several internal organs including two hearts, chemicals such as chloroform and formaldehyde, severed hands and male genitalia, a box containing two skulls, dozens of photos of victims’ bodies, numerous saws and drills, a complete skeleton and a 57-gallon drum containing acid with three decomposing human torsos inside.

For days following his arrest, Dahmer was interrogated several times, during which he confessed to committing a shocking number of gruesome acts—murder was perhaps the least alarming of these.

Dahmer admitted to murdering 16 victims in Wisconsin and one in Ohio over the span of about 13 years. He also confessed to necrophilic sex acts, and he told investigators that he would sometimes use a meat tenderizer and spices to prepare human hearts, livers, thighs and biceps for his consumption.

Dahmer was indicted on 15 counts of murder in Wisconsin. After investigators found human remains in the woods behind Dahmer’s Ohio house, he was charged with an additional count of murder.

Dahmer pleaded guilty but insane, which prosecutors criticized as an effort to evade responsibility for his many crimes. Mental health specialists testifying for the prosecution described Dahmer as a sane man who was able to control his premeditated actions. Defense experts countered that Dahmer was insane due to his necrophilic impulses and diagnosed him with borderline personality disorder and other psychiatric problems.

On February 15, 1992, after just five hours of deliberation, the jury found Dahmer guilty of 15 counts of murder. His initial punishment was 15 life sentences without any chance of parole—Wisconsin had banned capital punishment in 1853—and a 16th life sentence was later added for his 1978 murder of Steven Hicks in Ohio. 

In his final statement in court, Dahmer said, “I knew I was sick or evil or both. Now I believe I was sick. The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace. I know how much harm I have caused … Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do.”

Dahmer was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisc., where he was initially kept in protective custody for his own safety. During his stay in prison, he reportedly converted to Christianity and was baptized in the prison whirlpool.

On November 28, 1994, while working on a cleaning detail in the prison with two other inmates, Dahmer was attacked by one of them, Christopher Scarver. After beating Dahmer with an iron bar, Scarver then attacked the third inmate. Both men died from the assault, and upon returning his cell, Scarver simply told a guard: “God told me to do it.”

The Dahmer case exposed a rift between Milwaukee law enforcement and the Black community, since most of Dahmer’s victims were Black and their disappearances were not investigated thoroughly. One of Dahmer’s Black neighbors, Glenda Cleveland, repeatedly called police to complain about his activities, but her complaints were largely disregarded.

It also demonstrated the contempt that some officers had for women and gay men: Sinthasomphone, the 14-year-old youth who tried to escape from Dahmer in 1991, might have survived if police had investigated and found that Dahmer was on probation for his earlier sex offenses, instead of dismissing the incident as a “lover’s quarrel.”

Moreover, the three women who called police upon finding Sinthasomphone naked and bleeding in public were told by officers to "shut the hell up” and "butt out.”

The Dahmer case has inspired several media portrayals, including the books The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: An American Nightmare by Donald Davis and The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer by Brian Masters. The 2002 film Dahmer starred Jeremy Renner as the killer, and Ryan Murphy developed the 2022 series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story with Evan Peters as the titular killer. In 2023, the true crime series My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes included family tape recordings of Dahmer in conversation with his father and others.