Biography

One of the USA's most notorious serial killers, Jeffrey Dahmer was born and raised in Bath Township, Ohio, a middle-class suburb of Akron. Much has been made of his childhood tendencies -including cases of cruelty to animals- but to outward appearances, at least, he seemed to be a normal child. As an adult he was always gainfully employed and was perceived as quiet and polite by co-workers. At the time of his arrest he had been working at a chocolate factory in Milwaukee and living alone in a small one-bedroom apartment. Dahmer's home was searched on July 22, 1991, after a young man fled his apartment and flagged down a police car. An investigation revealed that the apartment contained the remains of 11 young men, most of them black, Hispanic, or Asian. The bodies had been dismembered, and Dahmer confessed that he had cooked and eaten some of the remains. Asked why he committed such heinous acts, Dahmer told police that he killed because he was "lonely" and did not want his victims to leave him. He explained that he would meet potential victims in bars, shopping malls, or adult bookstores, and invite them back to his apartment where, in exchange for money or beer, he would photograph them naked. He would then drug the beer and, once the victim was unconscious, strangle and dismember the body. Dahmer's victims ranged in age from 14 to 33. On February 15, 1992, Dahmer was found guilty on 15 murder counts in Wisconsin. He was subsequently convicted of another killing in his Ohio hometown. Charges linking him to other murders were dropped for lack of evidence. He was sent to prison in Wisconsin with 15 mandatory life sentences to serve. The first year of his sentence, Dahmer was isolated from the general prison population for his own protection. In 1994 he was sent to a maximum security facility in Portage and was allowed some contact with the other inmates. He died after a brutal beating to death late night November 28, 1994, by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate who claimed God had instructed him to murder Jeffrey Dahmer. Even after Dahmer's death, legal battles continue over his estate. Several families of his victims sued him and were awarded millions of dollars in restitution. Those families have since been trying to gain control of the contents of Dahmer's apartment, including a 55-gallon vat he used to decompose bodies and the refrigerator where he stored his victims' hearts.