Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of raping, killing and dismembering 17 boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his murders included necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts.
But why did he do it?
Jeffrey Dahmer was the first of two sons born to Joyce and Lionel Dahmer on May 21, 1960. While doted upon as an infant and toddler, Jeffrey began to experience neglect as his mother began demanding more and more attention. She became argumentative with both her husband and neighbors, and as Jeffrey entered the first grade, she began to spend an increasing amount of time in bed, recovering from weakness. Jeffrey’s father spent much of his time away from home, as he studied at the local university.
He wanted to know how each animal “fitted together.”
Jeffrey was often described as an “energetic and happy child” until he underwent surgery for a double hernia, just before his fourth birthday. His family life was filled with extreme tension, and at school he was regarded as being quiet and timid. His first grade teacher even sensed that he was being neglected.
From a young age, Jeffrey was interested in animals. He collected large insects, dragonflies and butterflies and kept them in jars, just like most boys his age. Later on though, he began to collect animal carcasses from the roadside. He would take his time and dismember them at home, or in the woods behind his home. He even went so far as to store some of the animal parts in jars in the family’s toolshed, explaining that he wanted to know how each animal “fitted together.”
His fascination grew from there. At one point, he even impaled a dog’s head upon a stake behind his family home. He had a fascination with bones, thrilled by the sound they made. He made it a habit of playing with and collecting animal bones. He would search beneath the house for bones, and with live animals, he would explore their bodies to discover where their bones were located.
On December 18, 1966, Jeffrey’s younger brother was born, and he was allowed to name him. He chose the name David. Two years later, the family relocated to Bath, Ohio. There, it was noted that over a family meal of chicken, Jeffrey asked his father what would happen if the bones of the chicken were placed in a bleach solution. His father was delighted at the initiative displayed by his son, in what he believed to be scientific curiosity. He happily demonstrated how to safely bleach and preserve animal bones.
By his freshman year at Revere High School, Jeffrey was seen as an outcast with very few friends. He already drank beer and spirits, even smuggled them inside the school in the lining of his army fatigue jacket. Staff noted that although he was largely uncommunicative, he was polite and intelligent, although he only received average grades.
When Jeffrey hit puberty, he discovered that he was homosexual. He did not share this discovery with anyone, although he did have a brief relationship with another youth. He frequently fantasized about his sexuality, yearning for a dominant role over a completely submissive partner. As time went on, these thoughts became intertwined with his fascination with dissection. When he was 16, he recalled having a rape fantasy of rendering a male jogger, whom he found attractive, unconscious and then making sexual use of his unconscious body. One day he hid in the bushes on the route the jogger took, with a baseball bat in hand and waited. Fortunately for the jogger, he did not pass him on this particular day, and Jeffrey never tried again.
By 1977 troubles at home and increased alcohol use led to declining grades and an increased apathy toward academics and other social interactions. His parents divorced and while they tried to remain amicable, Lionel Dahmer moved out in early 1978.
Jeffrey graduated High School in May 1978, and just three weeks later, he committed his first murder. He lived alone in the family home, his father staying in a nearby motel, and his mother had taken his younger brother to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. On June 18, 1978, Jeffrey picked up an 18 year old hitchhiker named Steven Mark Hicks. He lured the man to his home on the premise of having a few drinks. After several hours of drinking and listening to music, Hicks wanted to leave, but Jeffrey didn’t want him to. He bludgeoned him with a 10 pound dumbbell, striking him twice from behind.
Once Hicks was unconscious, Jeffrey strangled him to death with the bar from the dumbbell then stripped the clothes from his body. Jeffrey stood above the corpse and masterbated.
The following day, Jeffrey dissected Hicks’ body in the crawl space. Later, he buried the remains in a shallow grave in his backyard, then, several weeks later, he unearthed the remains and pared the flesh from the bones. He dissolved the flesh in acid before flushing the solution down the toilet, then crushed the bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them in the woods behind the family home.
After an unsuccessful foray into college life, Jeffrey dropped out. In January 1979, on his father’s urging, he enlisted in the U.S. Army. Jeffrey trained as a medical specialist and later served in Baumholder, West Germany as a combat medic.
Two soldiers reported being raped by Jeffrey while in the army. One, while stationed in Baumholder, claims he was raped repeatedly over a 17 month period. The other soldier believes he was drugged then raped inside an armoured personnel carrier in 1979. Due to his excessive alcohol abuse, Jeffrey was deemed unsuitable for military service and was discharged from the army in 1981.
Jeffrey spent a brief amount of time in Florida after he was discharged, but soon returned to Ohio to live with his father and stepmother. Two weeks after his return, he was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. His father tried to wean him off alcohol, but was unsuccessful, so in December, 1981, he sent his son to live with his grandmother in West Allis, Ohio.
Jeffrey’s grandmother was the only member of his family for whom he displayed any affection. His family hoped her influence might inspire Jeffrey to straighten up, stop drinking and live responsibly.
While living with his grandmother, he attended church, undertook chores and actively looked for work. Although he continued to drink, he made progress, and in early 1982, he obtained a job as a phlebotomist at the milwaukee Blood Plasma Center. He held that job for a total of 10 months before he was laid off. On August 7, 1982, Jeffrey exposed himself to 25 women and children at the Wisconsin State Fair Park. He was convicted, and fined $50.
Jeffrey chose to remain unemployed for the next two years, living off the money his grandmother gave him.
In January 1985, Jeffrey got a job at the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory, where he worked from 11 pm–7 am six nights a week, with Saturday evenings off. While he worked there his fantasies of control and dominance began to take hold in his mind again, and he started to familiarize himself with the area’s gay scene. He began to frequent gay bars, bookstores and gay bathhouses. He even stole a male mannequin from a store, which he used for sexual stimulation until his grandmother found it and forced him to get rid of it.
By late 1985 he grew exceedingly frustrated with his sexual partners. He didn’t like them to move. Following his arrest, he stated, “I trained myself to view people as objects of pleasure instead of people”.
Starting in June 1986, he began giving his partners liquor, laced with sedatives, or sleeping pills, then rape their unconscious bodies. After 12 incidents, the bathhouse revoked his membership and he was forced to use hotel rooms going forward.
Shortly afterward, Jeffrey read a report in the newspaper about the upcoming funeral of an 18 year old young man. Jeffrey wanted to steal the boys corpse and take it home, but digging the coffin from the ground proved to be too difficult.
August that same year, Jeffrey was again arrested, this time for masturbating in front of two 12 year old boys. Although he initially confessed to the crime, he later stated he was merely urinating and the boys happened to see. He was charged with disorderly conduct, one year’s probation, and orders to undergo counseling.
In November 1987, Jeffrey met a 25 year old man from Ontonagon, Michigan, by the name of Steven Tuomi. The two left the bar and went back to the Ambassador Hotel. Jeffrey had no intention of killing Tuomi, he just wanted to drug and rape him. However the following morning, Jeffrey awoke to find Tuomi lying beneath him on the bed, his chest “crushed in” and “ black and blue” with bruises. Blood was seeping from the corner of his mouth and Jeffrey found that his fists and one of his forearms were extensively bruised. He couldn’t believe what had happened, he had no memory of any of it.
Jeffrey purchased a large suitcase which he used to transport Tuomi’s body to his grandmother’s home. A week later, he severed the head, arms and legs from the torso and filleted the bones from the body before cutting the flesh into pieces small enough to handle. He placed the flesh into plastic garbage bags and wrapped the bones in a sheet and smashed them into tiny splinters with a sledgehammer. He disposed of Tuomi in the trash, all but his severed head.
Jeffrey kept Tuomi’s head, wrapped in a blanket. After two weeks, he boiled the head in a mixture of Soilex (an alkali-based industrial detergent) and bleach in an effort to keep the skull. Jeffrey then used the skull as a stimulus for masterbation. Unfortunately for Jeffrey, the skull was made brittle by the bleaching process, so he ultimately had to destroy it and throw it out.
After the murder of Steven Tuomi, Jeffrey began to actively seek out victims. Most he found at, or near gay bars, and he would take them to his grandmother’s home where he would drug them and rape them. Shortly afterward, he would kill them by means of strangulation. When he met 14 year old, James Doxtator, a Native American male prostitute, Jeffrey lured him to his grandmother’s home with an offer of $50 to pose for nude photos. The two engaged in sexual activity before Jeffrey ultimately drugged him and strangled him. He left the boy’s body on the cellar floor for a week before dismembering it and disposing of it the same way he had Tuomi’s.
On March 24, 1988, Jeffrey met 22 year old Richard Guerrero outside a gay bar called The Phoenix. He lured Guerrero to his grandmother’s home with an incentive of $50 to spend the night. As he did with his previous victims, he drugged him and strangled him with a leather strap. This time was a little different though – this time Jeffrey chose to perform oral sex on Guerrero’s corpse. He later dismembered and disposed of the body within 24 hours, keeping the skull for several months.
On April 23, Jeffrey lured another young man to his grandmother’s home, however this time, he was interrupted when he, and his victim, heard Jeffrey’s grandmother call, “Is that you, Jeff?” Jeffrey replied in a manner that led his grandmother to believe he was alone, but he chose not to take any chances, and waited for his victim to become unconscious before dropping him at the County General Hospital.
In September, Jeffrey’s grandmother asked him to leave. She did not approve of him bringing young men to the house late at night, and also did not like the foul smells that emanated from the basement and the garage. Jeffrey agreed and found an apartment on North Twenty-fifth Street on September 25. The following day he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13 year old boy he had lured to his home. He was convicted the following January, but sentencing was suspended until May, 1989. On March 20, he took a 10-day Easter absence from work, and moved back into his grandmother’s home.
Later that month, Jeffrey found his fifth victim, a mixed-race, 24 year old named Anthony Sears, and an aspiring model. They met in a gay bar on March 25, and although Jeffrey was not looking to commit a crime, the cards just fell into place. The two went back to Jeffrey’s grandmother’s home where they engaged in oral sex before Jeffrey drugged and strangled Sears. The following morning, he placed the corpse in his grandmother’s bathtub where he decapitated the body before attempting to flay the corpse. He stripped the flesh from the body and pulverised the bones, and again, threw them out with the trash. Jeffrey found Sears exceptionally attractive, and so he kept his head and genitalia, storing them in acetone in his work locker.
In May, Jeffrey was sentenced, and received 5 years probation, and one year in jail, with work release as long as he kept his job. At this time he was also required to register as a sex offender. He was paroled after serving 10 months, and he moved back to his grandmother’s home where he remained until May, 1990, when he moved into the Oxford Apartments in Milwaukee.
A week after moving, Jeffrey found and killed his sixth victim, Raymond Smith. He gave Smith a drink laced with seven sleeping pills and manually strangled him. The following day, he purchased a Polaroid camera, and used it to take several pictures of Smith’s body in various suggestive positions, before dismembering him in the bathroom. He kept Smith’s skull, and spray painted it with acid. He kept it alongside the skull of Anthony Sears.
A week later, he lured another man to his apartment. Unfortunately, this time Jeffrey consumed the drink laden with sedatives and when he awoke the following day, his intended victim was gone, and had stolen several items of clothing, a watch and approximately $300.
In June, he lured 27 year old Edward Smith to his apartment. He drugged and strangled him, then placed his body in the freezer for several months, with the hope that it would not retain moisture. Unfortunately, freezing the skeleton did not remove the moisture, and when Jeffrey placed the skull in the oven to dry, the skull exploded. Less than three months later, he invited 22 year old Ernest Miller to his apartment. He gave him a drink laced with sleeping pills, but he only had two, and therefore he had to kill Miller by slashing his carotid artery, and Miller bled to death.
Jeffrey posed the nude body for various suggestive Polaroid photos before placing the body in his bathtub for dismemberment. He kissed and talked to Miller’s severed head, and also wrapped his heart, biceps and portions of flesh from his legs in plastic, placing them in the fridge for later consumption. He later stripped the head of it’s flesh, then painted it and coated it with enamel.
Another three weeks passed, and the urge to kill came over him again. This time, Jeffrey found David Thomas, a 22 year old father. He lured him to his apartment for a few drinks and then, after giving him a drink laden with sedatives, Jeffrey no longer felt any attraction to him. He strangled the man to preserve his identity before dismembering him, retaining no parts of him. He did, however, photograph the dismemberment process.
Between October 1990 and February 1991, Jeffrey did not kill, despite trying to lure men to his apartment. He was suffering with anxiety and depression, having trouble with a solitary lifestyle, his sexuality and financial difficulties. He even harbored suicidal thoughts. He resumed killing though, in February, when he picked up 17 year old Curtis Straughter at a bus stop. He drugged and strangled him, then dismembered him. He kept the skull, hands and genitals, and again photographed each stage of the dismemberment process.
Less than 2 months later, on April 7, Jeffrey ran into 19 year old Error Lindsey. Lindsey was heterosexual, but Jeffrey was able to lure him to his apartment, where he drugged him and drilled a hole in his skull. Jeffrey then poured hydrochloric acid into the hole. Lindsey awoke later that day, saying, “I have a headache. What time is it?”
It was then that Jeffrey conceived the idea of inducing a permanent, unresistant, submissive state in his victims. This time though, he drugged Lindsey again and then strangled him. He decapitated him, kept his skull, then flayed his body, retaining his skin in a solution of cold water and salt. Unfortunately, Lindsey’s skin became frayed and brittle and Jeffrey disposed of it.
Residents of the Oxford Apartments began to complain of the smells emanating from apartment 213, as well as the sounds of falling objects and the occasional sound of a chainsaw. When Jeffrey was contacted regarding these complaints, he brushed them off, explaining it was because of his freezer breaking, and the contents had become spoiled. Then he explained the resurgence of the odor was the death of several of his tropical fish.
On May 26, 1991, Jeffrey met 14 year old Konerak Sinthasomphone. He offered the boy money to accompany him to his apartment and pose for pictures. The boy was initially reluctant, but then changed his mind. He posed for two pictures in his underwear before Jeffrey drugged him and performed oral sex on him. Then Jeffrey drilled a single hole into the boys skull and injected hydrochloric acid into the frontal lobe.
Before he fell unconscious, Jeffrey led the boy into his bedroom where a previous victim, 31 year old Tony Hughes, lay naked on the floor. The boy did not react to seeing the bloated corpse.
Jeffrey lay with him in his room and drank several beers. Eventually he left to go to the bar and to purchase more alcohol. In the early hours of the following morning, Jeffrey returned toward his apartment only to find Sinthasomphone sitting naked on the corner of 25th and State, talking in Laotian with three young women standing near him. Jeffrey tried to explain to the girls that the boy was his lover, and took his arm to lead him away, but the girls had already called the police.
“It was an incessant and never-ending desire to be with someone at whatever cost.”
Two officers arrived, at which time Jeffrey tried to explain to them that the boy had drank too much after a fight and often behaved in this manner when intoxicated. One of the girls stepped in and tried to show the police that the boy was bleeding from his buttocks, and she believed he was struggling against Jeffrey’s attempts to walk him home. The officer told her to “butt out,” “shut the hell up,” and to not interfere, the incident was “domestic.”
The officers covered Sinthasomphone with a towel and walked him back to Jeffrey’s apartment. Jeffrey showed the police the Polaroid photos he had taken the night before, in a hope to prove his relationship with the young man. The police noticed an acrid scent, something similar to excrement, but didn’t investigate too much. They left then, telling him to “take good care” of Sinthasomphone.
Once the police had gone, Jeffrey again injected hydrochloric acid into the boy’s brain. This time it proved fatal. He took the next day off work to clean up the bodies of Sinthasomphone and Hughes. He kept both victims skulls.
On June 30, Jeffrey met 20 year old Matt Turner at a bus station in Chicago. He traveled back to Milwaukee for a professional photo shoot with Jeffrey, where he was drugged, strangled and dismembered. His head and internal organs were retained in separate plastic bags in the freezer. 5 days later, Jeffrey met 23 year old Jeremiah Weinberger at a Chicago bar and lured him back to his apartment. He drugged him and injected boiling water into his skull twice, which sent him into a coma. Weinberger died 2 days later.
On July 15, Jeffrey met 24 year old Oliver Lacy. Oliver accompanied him to his apartment with the plan of posing for nude photos. He was drugged, but Jeffrey didn’t want to kill him – not yet. He tried using chloroform to subdue him, but was unsuccessful. He called his work to take the day off, and was suspended the following day. Jeffrey ended up strangling Lacy, then having sex with the corpse before dismembering him. He saved Lacy’s head and heart in the refrigerator, and stored his skeleton in the freezer. Four days later, Jeffrey had been fired from his job.
Clearly upset, Jeffrey left home and came upon 25 year old Joseph Bradehoft. He lured the man back to his apartment where he strangled the man and left him lying in the bed, covered with a sheet for 2 days. On July 21, Jeffrey removed the sheets to find Bradehoft’s head covered in maggots. He immediately decapitated the body, cleaned the head, and placed it in the refrigerator. He later disposed of Bradehofts torso, along with those of previous victims, in acid.
“For what I did I should be dead.”
On July 22, he approached three men with an offer of $100 to go back to his apartment to pose for nude photos, have a beer, and keep him company. Only one of the three took him up on the offer – 32 year old Tracy Edwards.
Upon entering the apartment, Edwards became wary, noting a foul odor in the air, and several boxes of hydrochloric acid on the floor. When he questioned Jeffrey about the acid, he excused it, saying he used the acid to clean bricks. Jeffrey tried to distract him, by bringing his attention to his tropical fish, and that’s when Jeffrey placed a handcuff on his wrist.
“What’s happening?” Edwards asked. Jeffrey tried cuffing his wrists together, but was unsuccessful. He asked Edwards to go with him to the bedroom to pose for nude pictures. Edwards followed, but noticed nude male posters on the wall, and a blue 57-gallon drum in the corner of the room, from which the foul smell was emanating.
Jeffrey brought out his knife and told Edwards he wanted nude pictures of him. Edwards began to unbutton him shirt, but would only allow the pictures to be taken if the handcuffs were removed and the knife was put away. Jeffrey looked toward his TV where he began to rock back and forth and chant. He placed his head on Edwards’ chest and listened quietly at his heartbeat. He then pressed the knife against him and told Edwards he was going to eat his heart.
Edwards, in an attempt to placate Jeffrey, repeated that they were friends, and he wasn’t going to run away. He asked if he could use the bathroom, and if they could sit with a beer in the living room. Jeffrey agreed. Edwards waited until he saw Jeffrey have a lapse in focus, and he asked to use the bathroom again. When he rose from the couch, Jeffrey had let go of the handcuffs. He punched Jeffrey in the face and ran out the front door.
At 11:30pm, Edwards was able to flag down two Milwaukee police officers at the corner of North 25th Street. He explained to officers that a “freak” had placed the handcuffs on him a nd asked if they [the police] could remove them. The officer’s handcuff keys did not work though, so Edwards agreed to accompany the officers to apartment 213.
When officers arrived, Jeffrey invited the three of them inside, and admitted to placing the handcuffs on Edwards. Edwards took this opportunity to tell the police that Jeffrey had also held a large knife to him in the bedroom. He told the officers that the key to the handcuffs were in his bedside dresser. One officer, Rolf Mueller, entered the bedroom, but Jeffrey tried to push past him. The second officer told him to “back off.”
Officer Mueller found the large knife beneath the bed, and also saw an open drawer, in which he observed a large quantity of Polaroid pictures, many of which were of human bodies in various stages of dismemberment. Worse, he could tell that the pictures had been taken in the very apartment in which they were standing. He took the pictures back to the living room and showed his partner, uttering the words, “These are for real.”
Jeffrey saw that the officer was holding several of his Polaroids, and he fought with them to resist arrest. He was quickly overpowered though.
When Mueller opened the refrigerator, he found a freshly severed head of a black male on the bottom shelf. Jeffrey lay pinned on the floor beneath officer Rauth, but managed to utter the words, “For what I did I should be dead.”
An in-depth search of the apartment, carried out by the Criminal Investigation Bureau, revealed the following:
- Four severed heads in the kitchen
- Seven skulls, some painted, some bleached
- Two human hearts
- A portion of arm muscle
- An entire torso in the freezer
- Human organs in a bag
- Flesh stuck to the ice at the bottom
- Two entire skeletons
- A pair of severed hands
- Two severed and preserved penises
- A mummified scalp
- Three dismembered torsos dissolving in the acid solution in the 57 gallon drum
- 74 Polaroid pictures detailing the dismemberment of the victims.
The interrogation of Jeffrey Dahmer lasted over 60 hours in total. Jeffrey wished to confess all as he had “created this horror and it only makes sense I do everything to put an end to it.”
He admitted to having murdered 16 young men in Wisconsin since 1987, with one additional victim, Steven Hicks, killed in Ohio in 1978.
He described his intense rate of killing in the months prior to his arrest as he had been, “completely swept along” with his compulsion to kill. “It was an incessant and never-ending desire to be with someone at whatever cost. Someone good looking, really nice looking. It just filled my thoughts all day long.”
Jeffrey stated he had been in the process of constructing a private altar of victims’ skulls which he had intended to adorn upon the black table located in his living room and upon which he had photographed the bodies of many of his victims. This display of skulls was to be adorned at each side with the complete skeletons of Ernest Miller and Oliver Lacy. The four severed heads found in his kitchen were to be removed of all flesh and used in this altar, as was the skull of at least one future victim. Incense sticks were to be placed at each end of the black table, above which Dahmer intended to place a large blue lamp with extending blue globe lights. The entire construction was to be placed before a window covered with a black, opaque shower curtain, in front of which Dahmer intended to sit in a black leather chair. The altar was to be dedicated to “Myself… It was a place where I could feel at home.” He further described his intended altar as a “place for meditation.” from where he could draw a sense of power. He believed he would have completed it in just 6 more months, if he hadn’t been caught.
On January 13, 1992 Jeffrey Dahmer plead guilty but insane to 15 counts of murder
The trial lasted two weeks. On February 15, the court reconvened to hear the verdict: Jeffrey Dahmer was ruled to be sane and not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each of the 15 murders for which he was tried, although in each count, two of the 12 jurors signified their dissent. On the first two counts, he was sentenced to life imprisonment plus ten years, with the remaining 13 counts carrying a mandatory sentence of life imprisonment plus 70 years. The death penalty was not an option for Judge Gram to consider at the penalty phase as the State of Wisconsin had abolished capital punishment in 1853
Three months after his conviction for 15 murders in Milwaukee, Jeffrey Dahmer was extradited to Ohio to be tried for the murder of his first victim, Steven Hicks. In a court hearing lasting just 45 minutes. He again pled guilty to the charges and was sentenced to a 16th term of life imprisonment on May 1, 1992
“Now is everybody happy? Now that he’s bludgeoned to death, is that good enough for everyone?”
In July 1994, a fellow inmate, Osvaldo Durruthy, attempted to slash Jeffrey’s throat with a razor embedded in a toothbrush as he returned to his cell from Roy Ratcliff’s weekly church service conducted in the prison chapel. Jeffrey received superficial wounds and was not seriously hurt in this incident. He didn’t care though, he was ready to die, and accepted any punishment which he may endure in prison. In addition to his father and stepmother retaining regular contact, Dahmer’s mother, Joyce, retained regular contact with her son (although prior to his arrest, the two had not seen each other since Christmas 1983). Joyce Dahmer related that in her weekly phone calls, whenever she expressed concerns for her son’s physical well-being, Dahmer would respond with comments to the effect of: “It doesn’t matter, Mom. I don’t care if something happens to me.”
On the morning of November 28, 1994, Jeffrey left his cell to conduct his assigned work detail. Accompanying him were two fellow inmates: Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. The trio was left unsupervised in the showers of the prison gym for approximately 20 minutes. At approximately 8:10 am, Jeffrey was discovered on the floor of the bathrooms of the gym suffering from extreme head and facial wounds; he had been severely bludgeoned about the head and face with a 20-inch metal bar. His head had also been repeatedly struck against the wall in the assault. Although he was still alive and was rushed to a nearby hospital, he was pronounced dead one hour later. Anderson had also been beaten with the same instrument, and died two days later from his wounds.
Scarver, who was serving a life sentence for a murder committed in 1990, informed authorities he had first attacked Jeffrey Dahmer with the metal bar as he (Dahmer) was cleaning a staff locker room, before attacking Anderson as he (Anderson) cleaned an inmate locker room. According to Scarver, Jeffrey did not yell or make any noise as he was attacked. Immediately after attacking both men, Scarver returned to his cell and informed a prison guard: “God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead.” Scarver was adamant he had not planned the attacks in advance, although he would later divulge to investigators he had concealed the 20-inch iron bar used to kill both men in his clothing shortly before the killings
Upon learning of his death, Jeffrey’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.
Lionel Dahmer retired from his career as an analytical chemist and now lives with his new wife, Shari, in Medina County, Ohio. Lionel is an advocate for creationism, and his wife was a member of the board of the Medina County Ohio Horseman’s Council. Both have refused to change their surname and have professed their love of Jeffrey in spite of his crimes. In 1994, Lionel 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 and Shari, although three families subsequently sued Lionel Dahmer: two for using their names in the book without obtaining prior consent; and a third family—that of Steven Hicks—filing a wrongful death suit against Lionel Dahmer, Shari, and former wife Joyce, citing parental negligence as the cause for the claim
Joyce Flint died of cancer in November 2000. Prior to her death, she had attempted suicide on at least one occasion.
Jeffrey’s younger brother, David, changed his surname and lives in anonymity
No one ever accused Jeffrey Dahmer of being too charming. But you can’t say the same for serial killer, Ted Bundy.
