In the following months, before Dahmer's final arrest, he was able to kill as much as he liked. He was living on his own so it was easier to get away with the killing. The victims were usually chosen because of their sexuality. Dahmer would hang out in gay bars and just pick up on the homosexuals that would inhabit them. It seems that Dahmer was particular to the
African-American race, but that did not hold true for all the cases. At the crime scene, there were parts of bodies that were dismembered. Dahmer would lead the victims back to his house, drug them, sexually assault the victims, and then dismember them. Dahmer would use acid to take away the skin from the skulls of the victims and then keep these skulls as trophies for his
fantasies. Dahmer would also dismember the bodies of the victims and keep them in his apartment for safekeeping. When the police discovered Dahmer's apartment, they found, not only skulls kept as trophies, but also an entire industrial size bin full of human bodies. They also found a human head in the refrigerator of his apartment.
When the police arrived at the scene of the crime they smelled a very foul smell, which would be later learned to be the stench of the dead bodies that had been decaying in his apartment. Dahmer had built a shrine to himself to remind him of all the victims that he had killed (Fisher, 2006). These victims included Anthony Sears, Edward Smith, Raymond Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Anthony Hughes, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Matthew Turner, Jeremiah Weinberger, Oliver Lacy, and Joseph Bradehoft (The Serial Killer Database, 2007).
A couple of months after Dahmer had killed the fourteen year-old boy, Konerak, two Milwaukee police officers were patrolling a very high crime scene near Marquette University and they would be blown away at their findings. At about midnight, the two officers sat in their squad car and observed an African-American male with handcuffs on one of his wrists. The two police officers, thinking that this man had more than likely escaped from another police officer, approached the man for questioning. The man questioned, Tracy Edwards, told of a "weird" man who had put cuffs on him and acted in a very bizarre manner. The two police officers hesitated, wanting to stay away from this homosexual affair, but proceeded to check out the situation. Edwards led the officers to the Oxford apartments where a very calm and rational Dahmer would answer the door.
The officers questioned Dahmer about the handcuffs, and he gladly went towards the bedroom to retrieve the key. Edwards, remembering the knife in the bedroom that Dahmer had threatened him with, alerted the officers and they proceeded into the bedroom before Dahmer. The officers were shocked when they found not only photographs of dead men, but also dismembered bodies, skulls, and a human head in the refrigerator. Dahmer suddenly turned on one of the officers, but was taken down by the other (Fisher, 2007).
After Dahmer was arrested, he went to court and entered a plea of insanity, which was prompted by his lawyer, but the court was not in favor of this plea. Rather, Dahmer was convicted and was sentenced to fifteen consecutive life terms for a total of 957 years in prison. Dahmer was paired up with two highly dangerous men on a work detail and on the morning of November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by these two men, when left alone to do their work (“World of Criminal,” 2005-2006).
Why does a Jeffrey Dahmer happen? How does a man become a serial killer, necrophiliac, cannibal and psychopath? Dahmer was attracted to the bones of dead animals at a very early age, and acted upon these feelings in the violent fantasies that he committed. Dahmer was affected by the divorce of his parents, his moving around, and the operation that he received at an early age. Dahmer graduated from being fascinated by the decaying bones of animals to the sexual, as well as violent fantasies that led to the spree of killings that he committed. I think that Dahmer had a very big problem with the isolation that he faced at an early age in life. This isolation could very well have contributed to his low self-esteem. He must have felt he had no worth as a person or any confidence (Lamberton & Minor-Evans, 2007).
Dahmer saw that his parents were never happy, and maybe that's why he had homosexual tendencies. Dahmer was continuously consumed with necrophilia, which is the fetish with the dead. He not only collected the bodies of dead animals at an early age, but also he had fantasies about killing people and then having sex with the corpses. I think that you have to put Jeffery Dahmer in a class all his own, because of the fascination that he had with the corpses, and the power that they gave him once he had killed them.
A lot of serial killers were more worried about what would happen to them, and they would get rid of the bodies of the people that they had just killed. Dahmer kept parts of his victims and did not attempt to get rid of much evidence at all. Dahmer was very remorseful for the crimes that he had committed, and was very cooperative with the authorities and with the families of his victims. That is not usually seen among serial killers today. Jeffrey Dahmer is a mystery that may never be solved. Hopefully, something can be learned from his life that will prevent future crimes elsewhere.
