Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer: Serial Killer

Born Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer on May 21, 1960. He was the first of two sons to Joyce Dahmer and Lionel Dahmer. His mother worked as a teletype machine instructor while his father was a student at Marquette University. He was studying to achieve his degree in Chemistry. As Jeffrey entered into first grade his mother spent more and more time recovering from weakness. His father was still studying at the university which took up most of his time but when his father was home, it was his mother who demanded Lionel's attention the most. She wanted his attention so bad that she went as far as to attempted suicide with some pills which she had become addicted to before she was pregnant. It has been said that she had been taking the pills while she was

pregnant with Jeffrey. Thus, the attention a young child needs, Jeffrey did not get.
At school, he was viewed as quiet and timid by his peers and teachers. One teacher noting that she sensed that Jeffrey felt neglected. Though he was quiet, he did have a few friends. Those friends later on recall him having a fascination with insects and then would later ask those friends to accompany him while he went to find animal carcasses. He would dismember these animals and sometimes store some of the parts in jars. His explanation for doing so was that he was curious as to how animals fit together. This fascination is believed to have started as early as four years old when he watched Lionel remove the remains of a dead animal from underneath their house. Lionel has stated that his son was oddly thrilled with this.
When Jeffrey was six years old, his mother gave birth to his younger whom he got to choose the name of. He chose David. That same year his father achieved his chemistry degree and landed a job as a analytical chemist. As early as the age of eight, Jeffrey inquired from his dad how to cleanse the bones of animals. Lionel showed his son how to properly clean and sometimes preserve animal bones.
Once he got to high school, his peers viewed him as an outcast. He was often seen sneaking beer and spirits into school inside one of his jackets. He was known to start drinking as early as before school and it would continue throughout the course of the day. When one peer confronted him about why he drank, his response was that it was his medicine. Even so, his teachers saw him as highly intelligent even though he only achieved average grades. Many noted that this was due to apathy. He was apart of the tennis team for a short time as well as the band.
As he reached puberty age, he discovered that he was in fact homosexual.

He did have one short lived relationship but nothing ever come of it. He began to have fantasies that involved dominance and control. Those began to become intertwined with his dissection obsessed. He devised a plan to take a jogger that always ran past his house and use his body sexually while he was unconscious. Fortunately, the jogger did not run his usual route on the day Jeffrey wanted to act upon his plan. Though he never tried to attack him again, this was later said by Dahmer that this was his first plan to attack another human

being.
Despite Dahmer being known as a loner, he also became known to his peers as a class clown. Acting out pranks to amuse other classmates to make them laugh and other times it was just to get attention. By 1977, his grades had declined drastically mostly do to his drinking and his lack of desire for school. To help, his parents hired a private tutor in the same year that they decided to start counseling to try and save their marriage. Neither were successful and by 1978 they had decided on divorce. This pushed Jeffrey even further away. As his parents fought he decided he was going to move out just a few weeks before he was set to graduate high school.
After being caught in the school parking lot drinking a few cans of beer by a teacher, he explains that he's experiencing a lot of problems at home, and that the school counselor was aware of them. Soon after, his mother moved off to Wisconsin with Jeffrey's younger brother. With his dad at the motel down the street, and his mother out of the house, he had the family home to himself again. So he moved back there and graduated high school. Him being alone for basically the first time in his life, I believe, is where it all changed for him.
Crimes
Three short weeks after graduating high school, Dahmer commits his first murder. June 18, 1978 he picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks. He told him that they could go back to his house and drink. After a while of drinking, Steven said he was going to leave and Jeffrey had other plans. He hit him with a 10 pound dumbbell. That rendered him unconscious so Jeffrey strangled him to death then proceeded to masturbate over the naked, dead body. The next day, he dissected the body and buried the remains in a shallow grave to only come back several weeks later, unearth the remains and removing the flesh from the bones in acid. He then crushed the bones and scattered them behind the family home.
Shortly after his first murder his father came home with his new fiancé and Jeffrey enrolled in college at Ohio State University. He went there for one semester due to his drinking taking precedent over his studies. When he returned home his father insisted he enlist in the army and he did so. He was sworn in on December on 1978 and was posted to Germany. He served as a combat medic while there. Though his drinking persisted. Because of the drinking he was later deemed unsuitable and in 1981 was discharged. It is noted that while he was in the army that he wasn’t associated with any of the murders that happened in Germany.
He returned to the family home where his father and new wife were living.

Upon his return, he exhumed Steven's remains to pulverize the bones and scatter the pieces even more widely behind the home. Shortly after his return he continued his drinking and was arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct. His father then decided a change of scenery he figured it would do him some good so he sent Jeffrey to live with his grandmother in Wisconsin. At first, this arrangement worked out well for him. He was attending church and even found a job as a phlebotomist. While employed here, he was arrested for indecent exposure for showing himself to 25 women and children. He was convicted in 1982, and ordered to pay a fine plus court cost. He was then laid off from his job and remained jobless for a couple years. Living off of whatever money his grandmother provided him. Finally, in 1985 he was hired by the Milwaukee Ambrosia Chocolate Factory as a mixer. Shortly after he was a the library for a reading and had another guy throw himself at him and offer him sexual favors. Dahmer denied him but this is believed to be what stirred up the thoughts of control over guys again in his mind. He then started frequenting the guy bars of Milwaukee. While he was enjoying himself going to the bars and bathhouses, he would get frustrated with his partners because they were moving while they preformed the sex acts on

him.
It was after this he started using sleeping pills in 1986 on his partners so they would be unconscious while he made sexual uses of their bodies. He did this to about 12 or so victims until the bathhouses began to catch on to him. Rather that he was doing something wrong so his memberships were revoked. That is when he started using hotel rooms to take his victims too. Not too long after this, he started to get bored with the victims just being unconscious so he read in the newspaper that an 18-year-old was to be laid to rest. He devised a plan to exhume the coffin to take the fresh corpse. Once he began to dig the dirt up he realized this was too hard and decided against the plan.
That same year he was arrested for masturbating in front of two young boys close to the Kinnicknnic River. This was the second time he was charged with indecent exposure though he later recanted his story and was convicted of the lesser charge of disorderly conduct. He again received one year probation along with counseling. This kept him out of trouble for that year but just a couple months after his probation was up he would take his second victim Steven Tuomi.
Jeffrey met Steven at a gay bar and then they went back to a hotel room to continue the drinking. The next morning he awoke to find Stevens body lifeless underneath him. He later stated that he had no recollection of killing him. He only had intended to drug him and have intercourse with him while he was unconscious. He then packed up his lifeless body in a suitcase and took it back to his grandmothers house where he had sex with the body. He then waited w few days before he dismembered the body and then proceeded to use the techniques his father had taught him to remove the skin from the bones. Stevens remains were never to be found.