Jeffrey Dahmer on July 22nd 1991, Police

Jeffrey Dahmer

On July 22nd 1991, police in Milwaukee Wisconsin came across a young man named Tracy Edwards running down he street with a pair of handcuffs attached to one wrist. Edwards told the police that he had been held captive in the apartment of Jeffrey Dahmer, who had threatened to kill Edwards. When the police interviewed Dahmer, he tried to pass off the incident as a simple misunderstanding, but when the police discovered some photos of dismembered body parts, they immediately arrested him. Upon a further search, police discovered photo albums of dismembered victims, as well as body parts littered throughout the apartment. "Several heads were in the refrigerator and freezer; two skulls were on top of the computer; and a 57-gallon drum containing several bodies decomposing in chemicals was found in the corner of bedroom." ("Cannibal and Serial Killer Jeffrey Dahmer is Caught.") The Milwaukee police had stumbled upon the site of an orgy of killing where Dahmer had had murdered 11 victims; he would eventually confess to the murders of 17 young men over a period of more than a decade. But the most disturbing aspect of this killing spree was the fact that this monster was not only a serial killer, "Dahmer was a cannibal." (Berry-Dee 120)

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer "was born on May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee's Evangelical Deaconess Hospital." (Davis 20) He grew up in Milwaukee, a quiet, strange child who spent much of his time alone dissecting dead animals he found in the woods. After his mother and father divorced in 1977, Jeffrey remained with his father who was away for much of the time. It was in the summer of 1978 that Jeffrey committed his first murder, killing Steven Hicks, a hitchhiker Dahmer had picked up. Although he would not kill again for more than nine years, once Dahmer began killing again in September of 1987, his murders became more frequent and his actions increasingly disturbing. While he committed sporadic murders throughout 1988 and 1989, it was when he moved into his infamous apartment in 1990 that he began to kill and even eat his victims.

Jeffrey Dahmer has been classified as a psychopath, and psychopaths "are often characterized by a chaotic family life, lack of parental attention and guidance, parental substance abuse and antisocial behavior, poor relationships, divorce, and adverse neighborhoods." (Martens 1) People with this particular psychiatric disorder often feel isolated from the community around them; and this isolation can then cause psychopaths to seek excessive stimulation without the ability to control their desires. Ultimately they burn out on the stimulation and become depressed, creating a situation where a person suffers social isolation, loneliness, and associated emotional pain which can lead to violent criminal behavior.

Jeffery Dahmer suffered from this disorder and often found himself lonely and dejected. He could not make real friendships or have real relationships with people. "Ever since his youth, Dahmer had trouble making friends and spent much of his time alone with his dead things." (Fox 78) As an adult, Dahmer attempted to make friends and have relationships with his victims, but when they ultimately rejected him, he could not take it. At first he tried to sedate, and even lobotomize his victims in order to make them stay. He believed that if he drilled a hole into their skull and injected chemicals such as hydrochloric acid, he could create a zombie whom he could keep around. But when this failed, he tried something far more disconcerting, he tried to keep his victims around by consuming them.

When arrested, Dahmer continually stated that he killed for company, and consumed his victims "in order to become one with them, he believed that in this way his victims further lived in his body." (Martens 2) In a strange way, Dahmer's cannibalism was an expression of love for his victims, to maintain their presence he consumed them, and they literally became a part of him. This is what anthropologists call "affectionate cannibalism," and some primitive cultures practice eating their loved ones in unique funeral rites. (Fox 79) In the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, by eating his victims, he not only expressed his love for them, by also managed to express his desire to keep the victims from leaving him and exerted complete control over them.