Jeffrey Dahmer Biography

Notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960, into the household of Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He was a happy child until the age of 6, when a minor surgery to correct a double hernia seemed to effect a change in the boy. Following Dahmer's surgery, he became increasingly insular and lacking in self confidence.
Around that time, a career opportunity for his father, resulted in the family moving to Ohio, and the boy's insecurities deepened. By his early teens, he was disengaged, tense and largely friendless. Dahmer claims that his compulsions toward necrophilia and murder began at the age of 14, but it appears that the breakdown of his parents' marriage, their divorce and the psychological stresses associated …show more content…
There have been claims that he was racially motivated, as most of his victims were African American. However, it is equally likely that his victims were simply part of the demographic of the poor neighborhood in which Dahmer lived and not carefully selected.
On May 27, 1991, Dahmer's African American neighbor, Sandra Smith, called the police to report that a young Asian boy was running naked in the street. When the police arrived, the boy was incoherent, and they accepted the word of Dahmer—a white man in a largely poor African American community—that the boy was his 19-year-old lover who had had too much to drink, over the protestations of Smith and her daughter, who could clearly see that the boy was terrified of Dahmer. Smith's subsequent enquiries, through the local authorities, were also not taken …show more content…
Once the police left the scene, Dahmer strangled the boy and proceeded with his usual rituals. Had they conducted even a basic search, police officers would have found the body of Dahmer's 12th victim decomposing in the bedroom and enough photographic evidence to immediately arrest the serial killer.
After killing four more men, Dahmer's luck finally ran out on July 22, 1991, two Milwaukee police officers he noticed photographs of dismembered bodies lying around in his apartment, which included one of a head in the fridge. A subsequent search revealed the head in the fridge, as well as three more in the freezer, and a catalog of other horrors, including preserved skulls, jars containing genitalia, and an extensive gallery of macabre photographs.
Given that the majority of Dahmer's victims were African American, there were considerable racial tensions, and his trial began on January 13, 1992, under the strictest of security.
On February 17, 1992, the court found him guilty, but sane, on all counts.
Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms, or 957 years, in prison.
On November 28, 1994, Christopher Scarver, an African American prisoner who was a diagnosed schizophrenic serving a life sentence for murder, crushed Dahmer's skull with a metal bar from the prison weight

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