Jeffrey Dahmer: Criminal Psychology and Theories of Deviance

Introduction

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on 21st May 1960. He was a notorious serial killer and rapist who engaged in a range of other crimes. Dahmer killed 17 males between 1978 and 1991 and subjected his victims to heinous acts including dismemberment, rape, cannibalism, and necrophilia. Dahmer was beaten and killed by a fellow inmate at a correctional institution in Columbia. This paper examines his childhood, adult life, the causes of his criminal involvement, and the psychological theories that scholars have used to explain the behavior of such a criminal and serial killer.

Dahmer's Childhood

By most accounts, Dahmer was a normal child in terms of upbringing and birth. He began to change as he grew older, becoming uncommunicative and withdrawn. Between the ages of 10 and 15, he showed no interest in social activities or hobbies. However, he developed an unusual fascination with dead animals and began drinking heavily in high school — a problem that only worsened in his senior years and beyond. He was enlisted in the military through his father's influence but was later discharged due to his chronic alcoholism.

His childhood appears to have had a significant impact on his later life. His mother is reported to have suffered from mental illness. The difficult relationship between his parents and the neglect he experienced after his younger sibling David was born, when Dahmer was around five years old (Martens, 2005, p. 300), seems to have affected him psychologically. He underwent two hernia surgeries, which also appear to have been traumatic experiences from which he never fully recovered. He transformed from an outgoing child into a withdrawn, unconfident one. Before he reached the age of eight, his family had moved three times — a disruption that damaged his social relationships and led his peers to regard him as odd and bizarre (Martens, 2005).

He began showing early warning signs around the age of 10, becoming increasingly withdrawn and losing both the desire and ability to communicate until he was 15 (Dahmer, 1994). He reportedly began drinking heavily at 13 (Dahmer, J., n.d.) and was drunk during his high school graduation.

Early Adulthood and Escalating Crime

When Dahmer later moved to Florida, he spent considerable time in hospital and was eventually expelled from medical facilities due to his heavy drinking. He became increasingly erratic after moving into his grandmother's home. She discovered a range of strange items there — including a .357 Magnum under his bed and a male mannequin in a closet. His fascination with dead animals persisted; he would dissect squirrels in the basement and dissolve the remains in chemicals. He was arrested in 1982 and again in 1986 for indecent exposure. His grandmother asked him to leave in the summer of 1988 because of his bizarre behavior.

He then moved to an apartment near his workplace at the Ambrosia Chocolate Factory. The day after moving in, he was arrested for drugging and sexually fondling a 13-year-old boy. He was sentenced to five years in prison and required to register as a sex offender, but he was released two months early to a work-release camp. After moving to a new apartment, a string of murders followed until his capture in 1991 (Crime Museum, 2015).

At 17, Dahmer was consumed by violent necrophilic and sexual fantasies rooted in a desire for control, brought on by emotional and social frustration and intense loneliness (Martens, 2005, p. 300). These urges were reportedly aggravated after he stole a shop window mannequin, which he would lie with in bed when his parents were away. Through this behavior, he discovered his homosexual tendencies. When his parents divorced shortly afterward and his mother and younger brother moved out, his alcoholism and depression deepened. He became emotionally numb in his attempt to suppress loneliness and isolation (Jamet, 2012).

Dahmer committed his first murder at age 18 in 1978. He picked up a hitchhiker named Steven Hicks, lured him home with the promise of beer, and struck him in the back of the head with a heavy dumbbell when Hicks tried to leave. He buried Hicks in the backyard, later confessing that he killed him simply because he did not want him to go. Nine years passed before Dahmer killed again: Steven Tuomi was murdered in September 1987 (Crime Museum, 2015).

Dahmer picked Tuomi up from a bar, and the killing appeared to be impulsive — Dahmer later claimed he had no memory of committing it. He killed two more people in 1988 and another in 1989, typically selecting victims from bars, taking them home, having sex with them, and then killing them. He retained the skull of one victim, Anthony Sears, as a trophy. After briefly returning to his grandmother's home, he moved back into his own apartment between 1990 and 1991 and killed four more people (Crime Museum, 2015).

He once brought home a vial of blood from the Milwaukee Blood Center, where he worked, and drank it — though he reportedly never repeated the act (Dahmer, J., n.d.). He sometimes ate body parts of his victims (Turvey, 2010, p. 118), acts that he described as ritualistic, apparently helping him to memorialize and preserve his victims' presence (Suberize, 2011).

Criminal psychopaths have been described as dominant, manipulative, impulsive risk-takers who pursue antisocial lifestyles (Porter et al., 2000, p. 220) and who are driven by a wide range of sexual gratifications. Dahmer's brutal and sadistic behavior was notably triggered by alcohol, a known catalyst for criminal psychopathy.

In one widely reported incident, a 14-year-old boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone was found wandering the streets, drunk and disoriented. Women nearby called emergency services. Dahmer arrived at the scene and claimed the boy was his 19-year-old lover. Police failed to run a sex offender background check or verify the boy's age, and returned him to Dahmer. The victim was killed that same night. Dahmer dismembered him and preserved his skull as a souvenir.

By the summer of 1991, Dahmer was killing at least one person per week. He fantasized about turning his victims into zombies so he could have ongoing sexual encounters with them as submissive partners. He employed extreme and bizarre methods, including drilling holes into victims' skulls and injecting hydrochloric acid or boiling water. Residents of the Oxford Apartments noticed a foul odor and sounds resembling falling objects coming from his unit.

Unlike many serial killers who target victims of a single racial background, Dahmer killed across the racial spectrum. He was finally arrested after attempting to lure Tracy Edwards to his apartment. Edwards was forced into the bedroom at knifepoint but managed to escape during a struggle, flagged down a police vehicle, and led officers back to Dahmer's apartment. Police discovered photographs of dismembered bodies and made the arrest. Further investigation uncovered a severed head in the refrigerator, three additional heads in the apartment, numerous human remains, seven skulls, a human heart in the freezer, and an altar with human skulls and candles arranged nearby (Crime Museum, 2015).