The first crime was committed in 1978, although they only managed to stop him in 1991, when one of his victims managed to escape from him. He received a prison sentence of almost a millennium and his death was also marked by brutality.
More than 900 years in prison. That was the punishment that Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, better known as the Milwaukee Butcher, received. This American serial killer killed 17 people between children and adults between 1978 and 1991. But he not only killed his victims, but also sometimes dismembered them and even ate the corpses.
The first murder was committed at the age of 18, when he picked up a man who was hitchhiking on the road. Then he took him to his house and killed him. Not content with that, he masturbated on the corpse. But it doesn’t end there: hours later she opened it and masturbated on it again, finally dismembering it and hiding the parts of it in the pipe of his house.
Although he had led a fairly normal life, there were some issues that plagued Jeffrey. On the one hand, he was secretly a homosexual and had a fascination with dissecting and butchering animals since he was a child. This practice was later transferred to humans.
After his first murder, he became addicted to alcohol and drugs. In most of it, his victims ranged from boys to adult men from the gay community and people of color. Because these people belonged to vulnerable populations and marginalized by the State, their disappearances were not given much importance.
His criminal acts began to become increasingly bloody, as he was not only raping corpses. On some occasions, since he could no longer find a way to dispose of the bodies, he ate his victims or kept body parts in the freezer.
On July 22, 1991, Tracy Edwards, his latest victim, managed to escape despite being handcuffed. When the man told the police everything he had experienced, the authorities decided to intervene.
This is why they went to Dahmer’s apartment and when checking his room, they discovered several photos of corpses. Seeing himself cornered, the serial killer tried to escape, but they still managed to stop him.
From skulls to male genitalia
In his house, a human head was found in the refrigerator, two bags containing a human heart and male genitalia. In a room there were five skulls and various objects such as knives, saws and hammers. As well as photos detailing the processes of dismemberment of human bodies that she carried out.
In a drawer, a complete skeleton was found with the bones cleaned with chlorine, a dissected scalp and a 260-liter barrel filled with acid with three torsos and other human parts. Traces of blood were also found on the walls.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s apartment in Milwaukee, where he committed the crimes. (Photo: Kulturmeister)
There are more than 60 hours of police interviews with Dahmer after his arrest, and the killer waived his right to have a lawyer present during all interrogations.
Dahmer’s obsession with his victims: “I wanted to keep them with me”
In an interview with Inside Edition magazine in 1993, the killer explained why he committed the crimes. “He had these obsessive desires and thoughts of wanting to control my victims, to possess them permanently,” he maintained. “And that’s why you killed them?” the journalist asked.
The response he received was terrifying: “Of course, not because I was angry with them, not because I hated them, but because I wanted to keep them with me. And as my obsession grew, I kept saving body parts like skulls and skeletons.”
Dahmer was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal disorder, and psychotic disorder. However, at trial he was deemed legally sane.
Justice sentenced him to 15 life sentences and later he was charged with a sixteenth for an additional homicide in the state of Ohio: in total, he was sentenced to more than 900 years in prison.
After this, he was sent to the Columbia Correctional Institution, a maximum security prison in the city of Portage, Wisconsin. The end of his life was also marked by brutality, since at the age of 34 he died after a confrontation with another prisoner. The body was cremated and the ashes were given to his parents, Joyce and Lionel.
To this day, the bestiality of these crimes continues to be remembered. Last week, Netflix launched a miniseries called “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”, where in 10 episodes they tell how these murders were that frightened the United States at that time.
