Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer

Mr. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin (wikipedia.org). Eight years later, his family moved to Bath, Ohio. He was a very shy young boy who often collected dead animals and showed signs of necrophilia at an early age. No one could have predicted that Jeffrey Dahmer would commit 17 murders during his lifetime which, in trial, were proven to have been driven by necrophilia and his own homosexuality.

Most of Mr. Dahmer's victims were young, homosexual black men whom Dahmer subjected to sexual assaults (wikipedia.org). Jeffrey Dahmer had one goal in mind; finding a completely compliant sexual partner, essentially making his motivation for killing necrophilia. Dahmer was a closet alcoholic and also suffered from low self-esteem. He is one of the most notorious serial killers in American true crime history.

On July 24, 1991, the news broke. Thirty-one year old Jeffrey Dahmer had been taken into custody in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Shortly before, police had been alerted by a terrified man, Tracy Edwards, still in handcuffs, who just escaped from a nearby apartment where he had been lured in by a man offering him a beer (Lane 126). Had the man not escaped, he would have been slaughtered by a butcher knife.

Unfortunately for police, they had another opportunity to catch Dahmer in the act, but they failed miserably. In May of 1991, a Laotian teenager, Konerak Sinthasomphone, had escaped from Jeffrey Dahmer's apartment, naked, dazed and bleeding, but still alive. Sinthasomphone spoke no English, and Dahmer was able to convince police officers that the 15 year-old boy was his 19 year-old homosexual lover. After police released Sinthasomphone back into the clutches of Mr. Dahmer, Dahmer dismembered the boy and kept his skull as a memento. Coincidentally, this was the older brother of a boy Dahmer molested in 1988, a crime for which he served one year in a low-security work-release camp (wikipedia.org).

In 1991, police had yet to link the murder of 12 black men, as well as five others, to a serial killer possibly operating in the Milwaukee area. The break in the case finally came later that year. Two officers spotted a 32 year-old Tracy Edwards stumbling along with a single handcuff of his wrist. Naturally, the officers pulled alongside Edwards and began questioning him. He told them a fanatical story about being invited back to the home of a "weird dude," becoming sleepy after a couple of drinks, and then being handcuffed and threatened with a knife as they watched a video together (www.bbc.co.uk).

Edwards, who was still very light-headed, managed to punch Dahmer and escaped from the apartment, still wearing the handcuff. The curious officers were able to convince Edwards to escort them back to the apartment. Dahmer opened the door and tried to bluff his way out of the situation. He stated that he had just lost his job, and had lost his temper after getting drunk. He offered to get the keys to the handcuffs from his bedroom, but unfortunately for him, one of the officers followed him. What the officer found would ultimately aid them in convicting Dahmer (www.bbc.co.uk).

In the bedroom of Jeffrey Dahmer, the officer saw dozens of Polaroid pictures of dismembered bodies and human skulls in the refrigerator. Feeling worried about the pictures, the officer walked into the kitchen and discovered the same refrigerator that was in the photographs. He pulled the door opened, and although a very experienced police officer, he screamed loudly at what he saw. Lying on the top shelf of the refrigerator was a human head (www.bbc.co.uk).

"There's a god damm head in here," he shrieked to his partner (www.bbc.co.uk).

Tracy Edwards looked on in horror, realizing that had he not escaped, Dahmer's threat to "cut out your heart and eat it" would have most likely come true (www.bbc.co.uk). As Dahmer was escorted to the police station, police began a thorough investigation of Apartment 213 in the Oxford Apartments.

The following was found in Dahmer's apartment: one human skull in the refrigerator, three more human heads in the freezer, several pairs of hands and a penis in a stockpot at the back of the closet, a quantity of indeterminate human meat in the freezer, and two boiled and fleshless skulls- painted grey- on a closet shelf in the bedroom (www.bbc.co.uk.). Police also found several male genitalia that had been preserved in formaldehyde and a bottle of chloroform which was presumed to have aided Dahmer in drugging his victims. Hundreds of grotesque photos of the victims were also found. The photos were of both before death and at various stages after they had been murdered (www.bbc.co.uk).

Police discovered that Dahmer's first murder was committed over 13 years earlier near Akron, Ohio. Dahmer's first murder occurred at a stressful