Jeffrey Dahmer Research Paper

The Calm, Unsuspecting Killer

Nobody feared him, nobody knew him, nobody knew his victims. He was a loner, his victims were loners, and nobody knew they were missing. His victims never stayed in the same place for long periods, so when they went missing, nobody noticed. They were on the fringe of society(“Jeffrey” 3). He knew what he was doing and continued to do it. Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was one of the most horrific serial killers of all time, beginning in childhood to early adulthood, leading to his murders, and eventually his trial and death.

Jeffrey was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960, to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He seemed like an average child until around four when he had surgery to correct a double hernia(“Jeffrey” 3). Friends and family noticed a change that negatively affected him. He became more shy and distant. It did not help that when Jeffrey was six, the family moved to Bath, Ohio, where he was sexually molested by a neighbor(Newton 59). This event went unreported. The same year his mother, Joyce, gave birth to Jeff’s younger brother, David(Lassieur 87).

Later,

The trial began in January of 1992 with an eight-foot wall of bulletproof glass around where Dahmer would be sitting to reduce the risk of him getting shot(pink 10). He was charged with fifteen counts of murder(green 61). Since he had already confessed his murders to the police, he pleaded guilty but insane. They claimed the cause of his killings was a result of his fear of being alone. This in effect, directly lead him to have sexual relations with the bodies(blue 97). “He ate the body parts of people because they would come alive in him….[Dahmer] experimented with different types of kitchen seasonings to make the cooked human flesh taste better”(blue 98). His plea of insanity did not work because, on February 15, 1992, the jury found him guilty and sane. He then received fifteen life sentences with a sixteenth added in May(pink