Jeffrey Dahmer’s killing spree took the lives of 17 boys between 1978 and 1991. Most of his murders were committed from 1989 to 1991. Was Jeffrey a monster or a sick result of his troubled childhood?

Jeffrey was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on the 21st of May 1960. His parent’s names were Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. At the age of 6 Jeffrey underwent a hernia operation and when he was 8 years old family moved to Bath, Ohio, near Akron. At this tender age he was sexually molested by an older boy in the neighborhood.

Already a painfully shy withdrawn child with extreme low self esteem, Jeffrey believed there was no safe haven for him when his parent’s marriage went down hill. The violent arguments between them only served to make Jeffrey even more withdrawn and after a bitter divorce he felt he was entirely abandoned.

First his father left home and after the divorce he was placed in his father’s care while his brother and mother went their way. He had no contact with either of them. This also added to this exceptionally troubled young mans distress making him feel loss and rejection was all he had to look forward too.

This young child had a morbid fascination with death. At the tender age of 10 he was already experimenting with dead animals. He would use acid to clean the meat off the bones and when asked about his bone collection he would reply, “I like the sound of them when I play with them”. His first dissection was that of a pig fetus in school. He also nailed a dog’s carcass to a tree and put its head on a stake.

By the time he turned 17 his interest in dead animals was not enough to satisfy his lust for killing and he became obsessed by fantasies of killing and mutilating men. He also developed a necrophilia desire and what better way than to kill the object of his desire. After Jeffrey graduated from high school at the age of 17 his father left him alone to tend for himself. He took to drinking becoming a loner alcoholic. His step mother stated that he was usually a quiet well behaved child until he was drunk. Then he would become violent and uncontrollable.

Jeffrey’s obsession to kill and necrophilia desire eventually overcame any reasonable thoughts he may have had. A perfect solution to finding his first victim occurred when he stumbled upon a hitchhiker in 1978. He picked up Stephen Hicks and took him to his home for a few social drinks. They were having a great time chatting, laughing and they had sex but when Stephen tried to leave he hit him over the head with a barbell, then to make sure he was dead he strangled him. To dispose of the body he dismembered it, smashing the bones with a hammer and buried it.

He felt Stephen was abandoning him and the only way to prevent this was to kill him. For 9 years Jeffrey did not kill again. He joined the military as an army medic as his father suggested but was soon discharged because of his drinking. After this he went to live with his grandmother and got a job as a factory worker. At night frequented gay bars.

On the day he met Steven Toumi in 1987 he had been drinking heavily all day and visited a gay bar that night. Steven followed him to his hotel room and when Jeffrey woke up the next morning he was covered in Steven’s blood. He had to dispose of the body without being caught, so he stuffed Steven’s body into a suitcase and took it home to the basement of his grandmother’s house.

In the basement he first had sex with the corpse, masturbated over it then he dismembered it and threw it into the garbage. His next victim was 14 year old Jamie Doxtator. He drugged the young boy, strangled him and treated his corpse the same way as he did with Steven Toumi’s body.

In September 1988 Jeffrey’s grandmother told him to leave. She could not handle the stench of his “experiments” any longer. He found an apartment on 25th Street Milwaukee and the very next day after moving in he enticed a young boy to his apartment where he fondled him and tried to bribe him with cash to take nude photographs. The young boy escaped and reported him to the police. Jeffrey was charged with sexual assault and was convicted on January 1989. While he waited for the penalty he was released and during this time he killed Anthony Sears. Eventually he was sent to jail for 12 months but was released after 10 months.

The power he had over his victims was addictive and his killing spree started in earnest. He targeted the gay bars where he would chat up his victim and invite them home. Most of the time he would drug them, then strangle them with his hands, or a strap. The next step in the process was the most stimulating of all to Jeffrey. He would have sex with the corpse until it rotted away. He took photographs of the whole murdering process and sometimes saved the head and genitals as trophies. At times he would masturbate over his trophies to show he was powerful and in charge.

After his release the killing spree continued. In June 1990 he murdered Edward Smith, in July it was Raymond Smith. In September he ended the lives of Earnest Miller and David Thomas. Curtis Slaughter followed suite in February 1991, Errol Lindsey became April’s victim and Anthony Hughes May’s victim. All this slaughtering was exciting to Jeffrey but he wanted more.

His desire for power over his victims brought a new and bazaar idea to mind. His idea was to create zombies out of his victims. To him a zombie would be the perfect solution. They would be sex toys, absolutely obedient and most of all they would not leave.

This would mean he would not be abandoned again. Jeffrey began his experiment immediately. He would drug his victim, drill a hole into his skull and pour caustic liquids into the wound. He believed that this would destroy the subconscious will of his victim.

Needless to say, all his new victims died at this strange experiment. Jeffrey had a close call with one of his future zombie victims. Konerak Sinthasomphone was seen by two 18 year old girls, dazed, naked, frightened and bleeding from wounds in the head. They called the police but when the police arrived Jeffrey told the police that the 19 year old man was his lover and they had a lovers quarrel, but all is fine.

Konerak could not speak English and could not explain what had happened so the police sent the boy back home with Jeffrey to die. The police treated it as a joke and never checked the Identification of the boy who was only 14 years old not 19. They did not notice the head wounds, or the stench coming from Jeffrey’s apartment.

The next victims on his list were Jun 1991 - Matt Turner; Jul 1991 - Jeremiah Weinberger, Jul 1991 - Oliver Lacy, and Jul 1991 - Joseph Bradeholt. It was during this time that Jeffrey decided to eat parts of the flesh of one of his victims. He denied this but the evidence was conclusive. 32 Year old Tracey Edwards was the last of Jeffrey’s potential victims.

Tracey fought back and escaped. He was spotted by two policemen doing their routine patrol. He was a black man, dazed and staggering along the road with a single handcuff on his wrist. After Tracey told the police about a movie clip he watched at Jeffrey’s apartment and about the strange stench and “trophies” the police decided to investigate. What greeted them was so horrific they were dumbfounded.

The first thing that hit them was the stench of death and rotten flesh. After handcuffing a fighting Jeffrey they continued with their gruesome investigation. Photographs of the dismembered corpses lay all around. The fridge was also covered with these photographs. When the one officer opened the fridge he screamed in shock. Inside the fridge were skulls and a human head. They found three more heads and human meat in the freezer. Hands from several victims and a penis were in a stockpot in a close. On a bedroom closet shelf stood two boiled skulls painted gray. Male genitalia were also found preserved in formaldehyde.

A bottle of chloroform was found that which had been used to drug the victims. He wanted to create a shrine using skulls, human trophies and a statue of a griffin he obtained to honor evil and he believed he had to honor this griffin in order to give him special powers. The police found an altar of candles and human skulls in his closet.

Jeffrey Dahmer admitted to all the murders and was charged with 15 counts of murder. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. On February 17, 1992, the court rejected his insanity plea and sentenced Dahmer to fifteen consecutive life sentences, a minimum of 936 years. May 16, 1992, a consecutive life sentence was added for a 1978 murder. Jeffrey only spent two years alive in prison when he himself was murdered by an inmate who beat him to death with a broom on the 28th November 1994.

Was Jeffrey a monster or a sick result of his troubled childhood? In 1996, the city of Milwaukee raised more than $400,000 to buy Dahmer’s tools, photographs, and refrigerator and incinerated it all. What would we call the buyers of these items?