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Undoubtedly one of modern history’s most notorious and abhorrent killers — his crimes are the stuff of nightmares. Over the course of 13 years, he prowled for men and lured them back to his house before drugging and strangling them.
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Transcript Provided by YouTube:
00:00
Undoubtedly one of modern history’s most notorious and abhorrent killers — his crimes
00:05
are the stuff of nightmares.
00:06
Over the course of 13 years, he prowled for men and lured them back to his house before
00:11
drugging and strangling them.
00:13
In all he took the lives of 17 men between 1978 and 1991.
00:19
But simply killing his victims wasn’t enough for Jeffrey Dahmer.
00:23
He never wanted them to leave him so he saved “trophies” — including severed heads.
00:28
Eventually, he ate parts of his victims.
00:32
Dahmer was captured in 1991 and sentenced to 16 life terms.
00:37
He was killed by fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994.
00:41
Today let’s take a look back on the serial killer’s life.
00:45
Early Life
01:02
Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer.
01:08
He was described by his mother as a beautiful baby, and both parents considered him to be
01:12
a normal child.
01:14
His teachers saw him differently.
01:17
At least one — his first grade teacher — wondered if Jeffrey was neglected at home and noted
01:22
he was a reserved child on his report card.
01:24
It’s true, both of Jeffrey’s parents didn’t spend a lot of time with him.
01:28
When Jeffrey was young, his father was in college earning his chemistry degree and Jeffrey’s
01:32
mother was often bedridden recovering from illnesses.
01:35
Jeffrey’s parents had a tumultuous marriage that he later described as “extreme tension”
01:40
from the constant arguing at home.
01:42
Yet, there was no doubt Lionel and Joyce Dahmer loved their son and tried to do the best for
01:47
him.
01:48
When he was six years old, worried Jeffrey might not take well to a new baby brother,
01:51
they let him pick out his name.
01:53
Jeffrey named his younger brother David.
01:56
The Dahmer family moved a few times before eventually settling in Bath, Ohio in 1968.
02:02
If there were any red flags that indicated future violence in the young Jeffrey, it was
02:06
his fascination with animal bones and how they “fit together.”
02:10
The interest in carcasses began when he was four years old.
02:13
One day, Jeffrey was helping his father clear animal remains from under the house and Jeffrey
02:17
was “oddly thrilled” by the sound of the bones dropping into the metal bucket.
02:21
He later started collecting them; searching in ditches and along streets for roadkill.
02:26
He began dismembering the bodies behind the house in a patch of wooded area and stored
02:30
the various body parts in jars in the family’s woodshed.
02:33
On one occasion, Jeffrey decapitated the corpse of a dog before nailing the body to a tree.
02:39
When he was ten years old, over dinner, Jeffrey asked his father what would happen if chicken
02:43
bones were placed in bleach.
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Lionel, a chemist, interpreted his son’s question as mere scientific curiosity and
02:50
he took the opportunity to teach his son about the proper way to clean and preserve his collections.
02:56
Jeffrey later admitted at the age of 14 he began experiencing sexual “compulsions.”
03:02
He desired boys, not girls, and the sexual fantasies involved submission, violence, and
03:07
death.
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He began drinking as a teenager to suppress his urges and didn’t talk to anyone about
03:12
the disturbing thoughts he was having.
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At the age of 16, he fantasized about raping a jogger he saw regularly and planned to attack
03:20
the man.
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One day Jeffrey lay in wait with a baseball bat in the bushes along the man’s regular
03:25
route.
03:26
The man didn’t come by that day, and Jeffrey never attempted to carry it out again.
03:29
At Revere High School, most of his classmates thought of Dahmer as an outcast with a few
03:34
friends; some were troubled by his heavy drinking.
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He drank both beer and liquor while at school by smuggling it inside the lining of his army
03:41
fatigue jacket.
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His grades were average and then took a dive as his drinking spun out of control in 1977.
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He played clarinet briefly in band, and was a decent tennis player.
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Overall, his teachers observed Jeffrey as polite and quiet.
03:55
Although he was awkward, he regularly amused his classmates by staging pranks such as acting
03:59
out seizures, knocking over items, and making loud, obnoxious noises.
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The pranks were so popular, similar behavior was referred to as “doing a Dahmer.”
04:07
By the end of his high school, Dahmer’s parents’ troubled marriage finally came
04:10
to an end after an unsuccessful attempt at counseling.
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In early 1978, Lionel moved out of the house.
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Dahmer graduated in May the same year.
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A few weeks after graduation, Dahmer committed his first murder when he picked up a hitchhiker.
04:23
Eighteen-year-old Steven Mark Hicks was on his way to a rock concert when Dahmer lured
04:27
him back to his house to hang out and drink a few beers before the show.
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By now, Dahmer lived alone at his parents’ house — his mother had moved out with younger
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brother David while his father took up residence at a local motel.
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Hicks and Dahmer spent a few hours together listening to music and drinking.
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When Hicks was ready to leave, Dahmer didn’t want him too, so he struck him in the head
04:45
with a 10 lb. dumbbell and strangled him to death while Hicks was unconscious.
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He then masturbated over his body, moved him to the crawl space under the house and dissected
04:55
his body before burying it in a shallow grave.
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Several weeks later, Dahmer unearthed Hicks’ body, pared the flesh from the bones and dissolved
05:03
it in acid.
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He crushed Hicks’ bones with a sledgehammer and scattered them all in the woodlot behind
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the house.
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A short time later, Dahmer’s father visited his son and learned he was living alone.
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He moved back in the house and convinced Dahmer to enroll in college.
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Dahmer spent three months at Ohio State University before dropping out.
05:21
In early 1979, at the urging of his father, he joined the U.S. Army.
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Dahmer served as a combat medic in Germany but his performance deteriorated due to his
05:30
drinking.
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He was honorably discharged in March of 1981.
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At least two soldiers later attested Dahmer raped them while in the service — one repeatedly
05:39
over the course of 17 months and the other once after Dahmer drugged him.
05:42
Killing Spree
05:43
“The only motive that there ever was was to completely control a person; a person I
05:50
found physically attractive.
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And keep them with me as long as possible, even if it meant just keeping a part of them.”
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Following his discharge, Dahmer returned home to Ohio but stayed only a brief time.
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He was arrested for disorderly conduct which prompted his father to arrange for Dahmer
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to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin.
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His alcoholism continued and he was arrested for indecent exposure.
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He was arrested again in 1986 when two boys accused him of masturbating in front of them.
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In September of 1987, Dahmer took his second victim, Steven Tuomi.
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According to Dahmer, he has no memory of killing Tuomi — they had checked into a hotel room
06:32
together and drank heavily…when Dahmer woke in the morning he discovered Tuomi’s dead
06:37
body, with blood on his hands.
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Dahmer bought a large suitcase to transport Tuomi’s remains to his grandmother’s basement,
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where he dismembered and masturbated on the corpse before disposing of the remains.
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Only after Dahmer killed another two victims at his grandmother’s home did she tire of
06:50
her grandson’s late nights and drunkenness — although she had no knowledge of his other
06:53
activities — and she forced him to move out of the premises in 1988.
06:57
That September 1989, Dahmer had an extremely lucky escape: An encounter with a 13-year-old
07:03
Laotian boy resulted in charges of sexual exploitation and second-degree sexual assault
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for Dahmer.
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He pleaded guilty, claiming that the boy had appeared much older.
07:12
While awaiting sentencing for his sexual assault case, Dahmer again put his grandmother’s basement
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to gruesome use: In March 1989, he lured, drugged, strangled, sodomized, photographed,
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dismembered and disposed of Anthony Sears, an aspiring model.
07:26
At his trial for child molestation in May 1989, Dahmer was the model of contrition,
07:32
arguing eloquently, in his own defense, about how he had seen the error of his ways, and
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that his arrest marked a turning point in his life.
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His defense counsel argued that he needed treatment, not incarceration, and the judge
07:43
agreed, handing down a one-year prison sentence on “day release” — allowing Dahmer to work
07:48
at his job during the day and return to the prison at night — as well as a five-year
07:52
probationary sentence.
07:54
Years later, in an interview with CNN, Lionel Dahmer stated that he wrote a letter to the
07:58
court that issued the sentence, requesting psychological help before his son’s parole.
08:04
However, Jeffrey Dahmer was granted an early release by the judge, after serving only 10
08:08
months of his sentence.
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He briefly lived with his grandmother following his release, during which time he does not
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appear to have added to his body count, before moving back into his own apartment.
08:16
Over the following two years, Dahmer’s victim count accelerated, bringing his total from
08:21
four to 17.
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He developed rituals as he progressed, experimenting with chemical means of disposal and often
08:28
consuming the flesh of his victims.
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Dahmer also attempted crude lobotomies, drilling into victims’ skulls while they were still
08:34
alive and injecting them with muriatic acid.
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He was careful to select victims on the fringes of society, who were often itinerant or borderline
08:43
criminal, making their disappearances less noticeable and reducing the likelihood of
08:47
his capture.
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As the murders piled up, Dahmer was still unsatisfied, he said later:
08:52
“I was completely swept along with my own compulsion.
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I don’t know how else to put it.
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It didn’t satisfy me completely, so maybe I was thinking, ‘Maybe another one will.
09:01
Maybe this one will.’
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And the numbers started growing and growing and just got out of control, as you can see.”
09:07
On May 27, 1991, Dahmer’s neighbor Sandra Smith called the police to report that an
09:12
Asian boy was running naked in the street.
09:14
When the police arrived, the boy was incoherent, and they accepted the word of Dahmer — a
09:18
white man in a largely poor African-American community — that the boy was his 19-year-old
09:23
lover.
09:24
In fact, the boy was 14 years old and a brother of the Laotian teen Dahmer had molested three
09:30
years earlier.
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The police escorted Dahmer and the boy home and, clearly not wishing to become embroiled
09:34
in a homosexual domestic disturbance, took only a cursory look around before leaving.
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Once the police left the scene, Dahmer killed the boy and proceeded with his usual rituals.
09:43
Had they conducted even a basic search, police officers would have found the body of Dahmer’s
09:48
12th victim, Tony Hughes.
09:50
Before he was finally arrested, on July 22, 1991, he killed four more men.
10:00
The Crime Scene
10:06
Dahmer’s killing spree ended when he was arrested on July 22, 1991.
10:10
That day, two Milwaukee police officers picked up Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old African American
10:15
man who was wandering the streets with a handcuff dangling from his wrist.
10:19
They decided to investigate the man’s claims that a “weird dude” had drugged and restrained
10:23
him.
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They arrived at Dahmer’s apartment, where he calmly offered to get the keys for the
10:27
handcuffs.
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Edwards claimed that the knife Dahmer had threatened him with was in the bedroom.
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When the officer went in to corroborate the story, he noticed Polaroid photographs of
10:36
dismembered bodies lying around.
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Dahmer was subdued by the officers.
10:41
Subsequent searches revealed a head in the refrigerator, three more in the freezer and
10:45
a catalog of other horrors, including preserved skulls, jars containing genitalia and an extensive
10:50
gallery of macabre Polaroid photographs of his victims.
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Dahmer’s refrigerator and Polaroid photographs became inextricably associated with his notorious
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killing spree.
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In 1996, following Dahmer’s death, a group of Milwaukee businessmen raised more than
11:05
$400,000 to purchase the items he used for his victims — including blades, saws, handcuffs
11:11
and a refrigerator to store body parts.
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They promptly destroyed them in an effort to distance the city from the horrors of Dahmer’s
11:17
actions and the ensuing media circus surrounding his trial.
11:21
Trial and Imprisonment
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Jeffrey Dahmer’s trial began in January 1992.
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Given that the majority of Dahmer’s victims were African American, there were considerable
11:39
racial tensions and so strict security precautions were taken, including an eight-foot barrier
11:44
of bulletproof glass that separated him from the gallery.
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The inclusion of only one African American on the jury provoked further unrest, but was
11:52
ultimately contained and short lived.
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Lionel Dahmer and his second wife attended the trial throughout.
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Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings
12:02
during police interrogation, but he eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity.
12:07
His defense then offered the gruesome details of his behavior, as proof that only someone
12:13
insane could commit such terrible acts.
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Dahmer later said in an interview, “It’s hard for me to believe that a human being
12:19
could have done what I’ve done, but I know that I did it.”
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The jury chose to believe the prosecution’s assertion that Dahmer was fully aware that
12:28
his acts were evil and chose to commit them anyway.
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On February 15, 1992, they returned after approximately 10 hours’ deliberation to find
12:36
him guilty, but sane, on all counts.
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He was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison, with a 16th term tacked on in May.
12:44
“It is now over.
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This has never been a case of trying to get free.
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I didn’t ever want freedom.
12:50
Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
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This was a case to tell the world that I did what I did, but not for reasons of hate.
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I hated no one.
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I knew I was sick or evil or both.
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Now I believe I was sick.
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The doctors have told me about my sickness, and now I have some peace.
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I know how much harm I have caused…
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Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do.
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I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins…
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I ask for no consideration.”
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Dahmer reportedly adjusted well to prison life, although he was initially kept apart
13:19
from the general population.
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He eventually convinced authorities to allow him to integrate more fully with other inmates.
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He found religion in the form of books and photos sent to him by his father, and he was
13:28
granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local pastor.
13:39
Final Days
13:44
On November 28, 1994, in accordance with his inclusion in regular work details, Dahmer
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was assigned to work with two other convicted murderers, Jesse Anderson and Christopher
13:53
Scarver.
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After they had been left alone to complete their tasks, guards returned to find that
13:58
Scarver had brutally beaten both men with a metal bar from the prison weight room.
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Dahmer was pronounced dead after approximately one hour.
14:04
Anderson succumbed to his injuries days later.
14:08
In 2015, Christopher Scarver spoke to the New York Post about his reasons for killing
14:12
Dahmer.
14:13
Scarver alleged that he was disturbed not only by Dahmer’s crimes, but by a habit Dahmer
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had developed of fashioning severed limbs from prison food to antagonize other inmates.
14:22
After being taunted by Dahmer and Anderson during their work detail, Scarver said that
14:26
he confronted Dahmer about his crimes before beating the two men to death.
14:30
He also claimed that prison guards allowed the murders to happen by
14:33
In Dahmer’s will, he had requested upon his death that his body be cremated as soon as
14:37
possible, but some medical researchers wanted his brain preserved so it could be studied.
14:41
Lionel Dahmer wanted to respect his son’s wishes and cremate all remains of his son.
14:46
His mother felt his brain should go to research.
14:48
The two parents went to court and a judge sided with Lionel.
14:51
After over a year Dahmer’s body was released from being held as evidence and the remains
14:54
were cremated as he had requested.
14:56
In August 2012, nearly two decades after his death, it was reported his childhood home
15:01
in Bath, Ohio — where he committed his first murder in 1978, and buried his victim’s remains
15:05
— was on the market.
15:07
Its owner, musician Chris Butler, stated that the property would make a great home, as long
15:11
as the buyer could “get past the horror factor.”
15:14
In March 2016, Butler put the house up for rent for $8,000 for the week of the Republican
15:20
National Convention.
15:21
As of July 2017, the house was no longer listed on the market, according
15:42
to Zillow.com.
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This post was previously published on YouTube.
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Photo credit: Screenshot from video.