The Story of the "Milwaukee Cannibal" Jeffrey Dahmer
The desire to leave a mark in history is natural for a person. Some achieve fame in art, some in science or sports. Many do not aim so high and simply live with dignity for the sake of their children, remaining the most dear and respected people for them. Unfortunately, there are those who choose the terrible path of violence and death, becoming famous as murderers and sadists. This is how Jeffrey Dahmer, known as the "Milwaukee Cannibal", went down in history.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA. Maniacs are usually considered to come from dysfunctional families, but Dahmer breaks this stereotype. His father was a famous chemist and doctor of science, and his mother was a theater actress. Jeffrey was the eldest child in the family; he had a younger brother, David, who was born in 1966.
When Jeffrey was little, the family moved frequently due to his parents' changing jobs. His father's career flourished, and he was invited to teach at renowned universities. But the boy's mother was having a harder time. She constantly felt undervalued because of secondary roles. One day, after a nervous breakdown, she ended up in a psychiatric clinic. There she became addicted to tranquilizers and continued to take them even during her pregnancy.
Despite his mother's problems, Jeffrey was born a completely healthy child. At school, he proved himself to be a quiet and friendly boy. He studied well and, according to some sources, his IQ was 145 units. However, this was only the external side of young Dahmer. There was another, dark side that gradually began to break through.
From preschool age, the boy had a fascination with dead animals. He collected dead mice, rabbits, cats and dogs, dismembered them and preserved the body parts in jars with formaldehyde, which he took from his father's laboratory. In the backyard of the house, Jeffrey made a small cemetery, which he carefully looked after.
The parents, busy with their work, did not pay attention to the alarming hobbies of their offspring. Meanwhile, Jeffrey's condition worsened. By the age of 14, there was no trace left of the quiet, excellent student. Dahmer became addicted to alcohol, which he consumed both in the company of his peers and alone. Eyewitnesses recalled that alcohol affected him differently than it did others. After drinking, Jeffrey did not become cheerful and relaxed. He fell into a stupor and could sit in one place for hours, staring at one point.
Around the same age, the teenager realized his homosexuality, having his first sexual experience with a peer. At 16, Jeffrey fell in love with a man who lived on his street and was a runner. The young man fantasized that the object of his passion would be helpless in his power. Once, Dahmer even lay in wait for him with a baseball bat in the park while he was jogging. The athlete was lucky - that day he chose a different route. This was the first alarm bell.
After finishing school, Dahmer entered Ohio University. But his addiction to alcohol prevented him from becoming a good student, and the guy was expelled. Jeffrey joined the army, but he was kicked out of there because of his drunkenness. Without an education, the guy got by with odd jobs. He worked as an orderly, a cleaner, and a loader at a candy factory.
For a time, his parents supported him financially and morally. But then they divorced, and each took up his own personal life. Dahmer was left alone with his problems. Jeffrey's mental state worsened. He was visited by unbridled homosexual fantasies, in which submission and violence played a significant role.
Dahmer lived with his grandmother, in whose basement he met men. He drugged random acquaintances with drugs and photographed them naked. The old woman did not even suspect what was happening right under her feet. But the elderly woman felt that something was wrong with her grandson and soon demanded that he leave her home. Jeffrey rented an apartment, where he continued to fulfill his perverted fantasies.
One day, he brought home a 13-year-old teenager, gave him alcohol and sleeping pills, and started taking pictures of him in explicit poses. Fortunately, it didn't come to murder that time - the victim woke up in time and ran away. The police found out about Dahmer's actions and soon arrested him. The police didn't take his crime seriously. The horny photographer was given only 5 years probation. He was arrested another time for masturbating in front of two teenagers. That time, Dahmer even received a fine.
Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 people in total. He killed 16 of them in his home state of Wisconsin and 1 in Ohio. He committed his first murder in 1978, almost immediately after his high school graduation. The maniac took his last life 13 years later, in 1991. The bloody count was opened by 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks. Dahmer gave him a ride and offered him a beer and some marijuana.
Some sources say that the guys had sex, others deny it. After several hours spent visiting Dahmer, Hicks wanted to leave. Jeffrey did not let him leave the house, and then hit him on the head with a dumbbell. The maniac strangled the unconscious guest, and then chopped his body into pieces. Dahmer wrapped his head in plastic and put it in the refrigerator.
The young man took the body parts, packed into bags, to the forest in his trunk and scattered them over a large area. On the way, a police officer stopped the killer and even looked into the trunk. But the officer did not check the bags of garbage and let the maniac go. The murdered Steven Hicks was a vagrant, and no one missed him. This fact gave Dahmer confidence in impunity.
Jeffrey committed his second murder 9 years later, on September 15, 1987. His victim was 25-year-old homosexual Steven Tuomi. Dahmer met him at a bar, after which the men went to a room at the Ambassador Hotel. Dahmer claimed that he did not remember the details of that murder. He told investigators that he simply found his lover's body next to him in bed in the morning.
The maniac stuffed the dead Tuomi into a suitcase and took it to his grandmother's house. There he raped the corpse and performed a number of obscure manipulations on it. The victim's body lay in the basement for a week, after which Dahmer dismembered it and threw it away in several dumps. Not a single fragment of Stephen Tuomi's corpse was ever found.
Dahmer always used the same tactics. He would meet his victim in a gay bar and invite them over. At home, he would drug the unfortunate person with a mixture of alcohol and drugs, and then kill them. The maniac usually strangled his victims or hit them on the head with heavy objects. But that was only the beginning.
After the murder, the necrophile raped the dead bodies, dismembered them and performed senseless actions with them. The maniac cut off hands, feet or genitals, dissolved them in acids and alkalis or stored them in jars with formaldehyde. In several cases, Dahmer, having brought the guest to an unconscious state, drilled a hole in the skull and poured acid into the hole. In this way, he wanted to turn the victim into a zombie.
Sometimes Jeffrey Dahmer ate body parts and also removed skin from faces to make a mask. The maniac photographed all manipulations on Polaroid, collecting a horrific archive over the years of murders. Dahmer was on the verge of exposure more than once, but he was lucky. One day, in the basement of his grandmother's house, his father found a basin with dissolved human remains. Jeffrey managed to convince him that he was experimenting on animals.
The maniac was on the police radar many times, but avoided trial or got off with minor sentences for minor offenses. Once, while under investigation for sexual harassment, Jeffrey killed another victim. Fearing to keep another trophy at home, Dahmer took the man's severed head to the candy factory where he worked at the time.
Over time, the maniac's activity only increased. Shortly before his arrest, Dahmer killed one person a week. It all ended on July 22, 1991. On that day, Dahmer invited Tracy Edwards to his place. After giving his guest a cocktail of alcohol and sleeping pills, the maniac began to handcuff him. But Edwards suddenly woke up, pushed the maniac away and ran out into the street.
A naked man running down the street with a handcuff cuffed to one wrist attracted the attention of police. Two officers entered Jeffrey's apartment, where they discovered a hoard of gruesome trophies. The refrigerator contained human entrails and three heads. In the toilet, they found a large pot of hands and penises, as well as several skulls and jars of organs soaked in formaldehyde.
In the bedroom closet, Dahmer kept a complete human skeleton and a collection of dried penises. In the pantry stood a 260-liter container in which three torsos of the last victims were dissolved in acid. All over the apartment were hung photos of the maniac's victims and his abuse of their bodies. Interestingly, the terrible stench in the room did not bother Dahmer, and his drugged guests did not notice it. The stench of decomposed flesh also did not bother another monster - Russian Alexander Spesivtsev.
On January 22, 1992, the trial of Jeffrey Dahmer began. The defense insisted that the defendant was sick and should go to treatment. But on February 15, 1992, the court found the maniac guilty on all charges. Since the death penalty is prohibited in the state of Wisconsin, Dahmer received 15 life sentences, which is equal to 957 years in a maximum-security prison.
In prison, Jeffrey Dahmer behaved well and feigned remorse. He even underwent treatment for his obsessive suicidal thoughts. On November 28, 1994, Dahmer and another inmate, Jess Anderson, were found beaten in the shower where they were cleaning. They were beaten with a metal rod and a mop by black repeat offender Christopher Scarver.
Dahmer died en route to the hospital, his skull crushed. Anderson lived another day, but also died in intensive care without regaining consciousness. When asked by a guard why a prisoner serving time for murder would commit two more, Scarver replied that God had asked him to do so.
Jeffrey Dahmer's body lay in the prison morgue refrigerator for almost a year. The maniac's father refused to allow his organs to be used for scientific purposes and insisted on cremation. The body was burned, and the ashes were divided into two parts. One went to the killer's mother, and the other to his father and stepmother.