5 chilling details about American serial killer Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer
Infamous serial killer Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer is getting another feature, this time on Netflix. The streaming platform is all set to bring to viewers the life and crimes of Dahmer in a limited series, starring Evan Peters in the lead role of the serial killer who took 17 lives before being apprehended in 1991.
Born in a dysfunctional family in Wisconsin, Dahmer had an unhappy and neglected childhood which played a pivotal role in shaping his dangerous personality.
Growing up, Dahmer's mental disturbances escalated to a point where he submitted to his disturbing urges, becoming a menace to society by brutally murdering his victims.
Before the Netflix docu-series releases this month, here are some intriguing details about the Wisconsin killer.
1) Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was intrigued by corpses since his childhood
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was the eldest child of parents Lionel and Joyce Damher. As a child, he was a loner and enjoyed collecting dead animals from the roadsides. He performed experiments on them by dissecting them and destroying them with chemicals in a hut in the backyard of their house. His father was a chemist who showed him how to preserve bodies to appease his curiosity and bond with him.
Young Dahmer was also interested in collecting bones and would go as far as killing animals to get the bones. These were disturbing symptoms which unfortunately went untreated, leading to Dahmer's distorted menacing personality.
2) He committed his first murder at 18
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer’s parents were in a tumultuous relationship before they finally divorced on grounds of extreme cruelty and gross neglect of duty. Following the divorce, Jeffery's mother moved out with his younger brother, and his father also left him all alone. To compensate for his loneliness, Dahmer began drinking heavily and at the age of 18, committed his first murder.
One day, he brought home a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks whom he choked and bludgeoned to death with a sledgehammer. After killing him, Damher scattered the bones in his backyard, which was discovered more than a decade later by the police. The incident took place on June 18, 1978.
3) 17 victims
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer did not stop at his first victim. He killed a total of 17 men before he was finally caught. Dahmer chose victims who were vulnerable, like runaways, hitchhikers, or drug dealers, people whose disappearances were less likely to be noticed right away. He would strangle the men, keep their body parts as souvenirs and also take pictures of the dismembered corpses.
Dahmer conducted his first few murders in the basement of his grandmother’s house before he was kicked out of there. He moved to an apartment in Milwaukee, where he would lure in his victims and kill them brutally.
4) Dahmer kept the bodies of his victims
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer would kill his victims in the most brutal way possible, and then go on to dismember and cannibalize the remains of his victims. The killer would wrap body parts of his corpses in plastic bags, placing them in the fridge for later consumption. He would even take polaroids of the bodies.
Despite storing so many rotting bodies, Dahmer managed to evade capture for a long time before the police finally got to investigating his apartment. They eventually found the pictures and then his fridge full of dead victims' body parts.
5) Beaten to death in prison
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was convicted in February 1992 by a jury who found him guilty of first-degree murder and sentenced him to 15 consecutive life terms. But Dahmner did not last long in prison.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was bludgeoned to death with a steel bar by another inmate, Christopher Scarver. He died on the spot from the wounds he sustained.
Scarver claimed that Dahmer would taunt inmates, play with his food by shaping them like body parts, and make everyone uncomfortable. He also said he was left unsupervised with the cannibalistic killer by the prison staff.
This is why he killed Dahmer and had to spend 16 years in solitary confinement. Damher was 34 when he died.
Catch the upcoming Netflix documentary for more insight into the life of the Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer.
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Prem Deshpande