he 20th century has seen many psychopaths on killing sprees, each having their own twisted way of killing or torturing their victims. However, none of them may compare to Jeffrey Dahmer, who had a grotesque method of disposing of his victims. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born in a middle-class family in the city of Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 21, 1960. Dahmer had what his parents described as the most normal childhood a kid could have in the western world. Although in later on testimonies, his father did mention that his son was “strangely delighted” by the crunching of animal bones.
As per most stories of serial killers, it all starts with a change, as has been argued by many. For Jeffrey, this change occurred in High School when his family moved to a suburb of Akron, Ohio. Jeffrey was considered an outcast at the new High School, which lead him to end up in a deep depression. His response to this depression was Alcohol. It got so bad that he was even drinking during class.
From a psychological perspective, something was not right with Jefreey and this is shown by the way he used to fake seizures in order to be integrated into the circles of other kids. During this time, Jeffrey Dahmer also realized that he was gay. As his sexuality blossomed, so too did his increasingly abnormal sexual fantasies. Dahmer began fantasizing about raping men and became aroused by the idea of completely dominating and controlling another person.
This so-called “sexual fantasy” soon became much more as Jeffrey lost control of his emotions and even his own actions. By the time he had graduated from High-School, he murdered his first victim. Eighteen-year-old Steven Mark Hicks is considered to be the first victim Jeffrey strangled to death.
Jeffrey’s signature as a serial killer and what makes him truly special as well as deserving of the first spot as the sickest human being is what he would do with the corpses of his victims. In some cases, he would strip them naked and masturbate over the dead corpses. What followed was a full-on dissection of the victim’s body, from head to toe. All the bones of the victim would be crushed into powder and then fleshed and dissolved with acid, assuring that there is no evidence left behind. This is why it took so many years for the police to catch him.
He briefly attended Ohio State University but dropped out after one term due to his drinking. He also served as a combat medic in the U.S. Army for two years before his alcoholism became a problem. His problems started to get worst as many of the crimes that followed were sexual abuses on men who he would drug and rape. Jeffrey would even go to kids’ parks and masturbate in front of the children, yet no one suspected a thing. His close relatives blamed his drinking problem affected him mentally.
In September 1987, Jeffrey went back to murder by killing 25-year-old Steven Tuomi, his second victim.  After Tuomi, he began actively seeking out young men at gay bars and luring them back to his grandmother’s house. There, he would drug, rape, and kill them. During this time, Dahmer was actually arrested for the molestation of a 13-year-old, but this was only for a couple of months. Once again, the authorities did not suspect anything more.
Dahmer also began to collect grotesque trophies from his victims. This practice began with the murder of a 24-year-old aspiring model named Anthony Sears. After raping and murdering the victim, Dahmer would then preserve Spears’ head and genitals in jars filled with acetone. Over the next two years, Dahmer committed the bulk of his 17 murders. He would lure young men back to his home, often offering them money to pose nude for him before killing them.
In a televised interview Jeffrey went on to try an explain the mental issues that led him to all of the killings and his disturbing rituals with the corpses:
Sometimes Jeffrey would also keep the skull of his victims as trophies, which would, later on, be used as evidence to prosecute him. July 22, 1991 would be the last attempt Jeffrey would make on murdering someone, and that someone was 32-year-old Tracy Edwards. Terrified, Edwards attempted to appease Dahmer, telling him that he was his friend and that he would watch TV with him. While Dahmer was distracted, Edwards punched him in the face and ran out the door — escaping the fate of becoming another one of Jeffrey Dahmer’s murder victims.
Edwards reached a police car and took the two officers to Jeffrey’s house. The police were astonished by what they found inside the house. From photos of dismembered corpses to skulls and even genitals. Although Jeffrey resisted arrest, he was detained. Upon closer inspection of the apartment, the police found four severed heads in the kitchen and a total of seven skulls, many of them painted. In the fridge, they found numerous body parts, including two human hearts.
After being arrested, he attested to all of his crimes. At his trial in 1992, he was given 15 life sentences and 70 years in prison. During his time in prison, Dahmer had constant thoughts of suicide — but he would never get the chance to take his own life. On November 28, 1994, a fellow inmate and convicted murderer named Christopher Scarver beat Dahmer to death with a metal bar in the prison bathroom. According to the witnesses, Jeffrey didn’t fight back, he accepted his fate.
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