With the release of the trailer “My friend Dahmer” many people are interested in watching the film, But do you know about the real Jeffery Dahmer before you watch it? Let’s do a brief summary with some facts before you watch the movie.
The quick summary straight from wiki:
“Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal, was an American serial killer and sex offender, who committed the rape, murder, and dismemberment of seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeletal structure.
Although diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. Convicted of fifteen of the sixteen murders he had committed in Wisconsin, Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 15, 1992. He was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution.”
A little more info:
|
Full Name: Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer |
This photo came from crime.about.com |
Jeffrey Dahmer:
When Dahmer was about 6 years old his personality changed greatly. He went from being a very social and bubbly child to being withdrawn. After being such a happy child all the time a blank stare began to stay on his face throughout the rest of his life. It was a hernia surgery that seemed to do the turn around in his life that changed him from a vibrant child to an anti-social little boy. When his family moved to Bath, Ohio it affected him greatly because he was unable to make friends. Signs started to show when he was in his early teens….. while most kids were out being young teenagers he was collecting dead animals and skinning them. During high school he was still distant but made pretty good grades. During high school he began to have a drinking problem which turned into an addiction when he went off to college. He joined the military but was discharged due to his addiction to alcohol.
Dahmer was having issues with his sexuality and was wanting to act out his homosexual fantasies which possibly lead him to pick up his first victim. He was very smart with his murders, he made sure that he covered his tracks and no one could never find out what he was up to. Dahmer was arrested several times because he showed himself at a fair and fondled a little boy. With all of his murders he dismembered the men/boys. He also had necrophiliac tenancies. On occasion he would eat the organs that he had refrigerated. There were 17 known victims of his ranging in age from 14-36.
Once arrested he tried to plea insanity even though he confessed to all the crimes in full detail. The judge and jury found that he could not have been insane because he was smart enough to cover the murders and to plan them out in advance. He was charged with 15 counts of murder (2 had been dropped) which put him with 15 life sentences. He was separated from the majority of the inmates for his own safety but was eventually slowly placed into the prison society. He was supposedly a born again Christian and was forgiven for all of his sins. On November 28th 1994 he and another inmate were murdered by another inmate by being beaten in the head. He wanted to be cremated but there was debate over whether his brain should go to research or not, therefore there was a court case which granted the right to cremate his brain as well. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was cremated one year after his death when his body was released from evidence.
All of the information in this post was compiled from:
http://crime.about.com/od/serial/a/dahmer.htm
http://www.biography.com/people/jeffrey-dahmer-9264755
Some facts:
Jeffrey Dahmer was an animal lover.
He’s seen here with a photo of his dog. There have been many rumors that Dahmer tortured and killed animals. However, these rumors are untrue. He spoke of an incident of his friend trying to run dogs down in the road while they were driving to school and how disgusted he was by that. He seemed to genuinely feel badly about the animal’s deaths.
He may not have tortured and killed animals but he did like to examine their dead bodies.
He had a fascination with dead animal bones and dead animals. He stated once that he liked the sound of the bones clicking together in a bucket. He liked to dissect dead animals and bleach their bones. There is no evidence that he actually killed the animals that he sickeningly “played” with. Once upon finding a dead dog, he impaled it’s head upon a stick. This fascination seems to have started with his father finding a dead animal under the family home’s porch. This fascination with death and remains appears to have stayed with him until his death.
He underwent a double hernia surgery at the age of four.
He was not told, or perhaps didn’t understand, the details of the surgery. This event seemed to turn a happy, normal child into someone who is confused and withdrawn. He didn’t realize the reason for the surgery and was shocked when doctors and nurses were touching him and examining him without explanation. One source even states that Dahmer asked his mother if his genitals had been removed because he was in so much pain. This would be horribly traumatizing and confusing for a boy at such a young age.
His parents fought openly and constantly in front of him before their divorce.
It seems that the Dahmer’s marriage was strained from the very beginning. After Dahmer’s birth, their arguing began effecting someone besides themselves. Dahmer has been quoted as saying: “I decided I wasn’t ever going to get married because I never wanted to go through anything like that.” Research has shown that marital squabbles in front of children can deeply scar them and effectively, change who they become.
It has been reported that he was sexually molested at the age of 8.
The validity of these reports remains unproven although molestation would fit the profile of the childhood of a serial killer. These reports involve an older neighbour molesting Dahmer and having the assault go unreported. I doubt we’ll ever know whether this attack actually occurred or is one of the many rumors of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life.
Dahmer was extremely shy and introverted through his childhood and teenage years.
He went from being a shy little boy to being an extremely introverted teenager who had difficulty connecting with the world around him. He was widely praised by adults for being very obedient when in reality he just didn’t care what was happening. He withdrew into his fantasies and spent a lot of time collecting, dissecting and examining road kill.
Dahmer rarely smiled.
His father said that Dahmer rarely smiled. This can be readily seen in his high school graduation photo shown below. Some sources said that his double hernia surgery at the age of four confused Dahmer so much that he became quite sullen. His smiles were extremely infrequent and rarely evident in pictures. This is his high school graduation photo.
When his parent’s marriage finally deteriorated to the point of separation, Dahmer was left to fend for himself.
In his senior year, Dahmer’s parents split up. His father left alone and his mother left with his younger brother Daniel. Dahmer seized this opportunity of living alone to commit his first murder just a few days after his high school graduation. By this time Dahmer was a very heavy drinker. He picked up a nineteen year old hitch hiker named Steven Hicks and invited him back home for a few drinks. The two drank and had sex. When Hicks went to leave, Dahmer killed him and cut him up into several pieces. He bagged the pieces and buried them in several areas in the woods behind his home. This murder seemed to shock him and he tried to “clean up his act” for the next several years.
Dahmer joined the Army at the insistance of his father who wanted him to get a job or enlist.
Dahmer tried college for two terms and then dropped out. His father then forced Dahmer to enlist in the army hoping that it would clean him up. Dahmer enlisted for six years but was discharged after two for his heavy drinking. It was later investigated whether Dahmer was connected to a series of killings in Germany during his service there. There was no official link between Dahmer and the killings but suspicions remain.
In one of Dahmer’s quotes he says exactly what I’ve been thinking, “It’s hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I’ve done, but I know that I did it.” Perhaps by profiling commonalities in serial killer’s childhoods and lives, we can pinpoint what to watch out for and more importantly, what to avoid when dealing with children. If Jeffrey Dahmer had been stopped after his first murder, sixteen lives would have been saved. Maybe Dahmer’s life itself would have been saved too.
Thanks to bukisa.com for some of the fact’s listed in this post.
Sinful Horror 
One thought on “My Friend Dahmer; Everything you need to know about Jeffery Dahmer before watching.”