Jeffrey Dahmers Death Explained
An Early Fascination with Death
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Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer, born in 1960, was curious about death from a young age. His early fascination with the concept came with his beginning to collect dead animal remains after his family moved to Ohio from Wisconsin. This morbid hobby only increased as he got older, eventually connecting to his burgeoning sexual desires. According to him, these fantasies of physically controlling an incapacitated partner began when he was a teenager. Around the same time, he started to realize he was gay, something he felt he needed to repress in the early 1970s. Dahmer’s warped thinking led him to his first murder right after he graduated high school in 1978, which he alleged was unintentional. He didn’t kill again for nine years. Dahmer tried to stifle his urges by finding other sources of pleasure, like a store mannequin or a recently buried corpse. But from 1987 to 1991, he lured, drugged, and killed 16 more males in Milwaukee. Once he was apprehended, Dahmer wanted to make a full confession and assist law enforcement with identifying the victims. He admitted to committing sexual crimes involving the deceased and sometimes cannibalizing their remains. He also described performing experiments on his victims, attempting to put them in a zombie-like state of compliance.
“For What I Did I Should Be Dead”
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Since the moment of his arrest on July 22,1991, Jeffrey Dahmer seemingly believed he deserved to die for his awful crimes, even saying as much. He reportedly asked Detective Dennis Murphy why he didn’t “just shoot [him].” Whether or not he was truly remorseful is up for speculation. But he undoubtedly knew what he did was wrong and in his eyes, it was punishable by death. After being evaluated by several mental health professionals, he was deemed legally sane. Doctors spoke of his longtime obsession with death and attraction to lifeless bodies, with more than one diagnosing him with necrophilia. In February 1992, Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms, plus another life sentence for the 1978 murder he committed in Ohio. Many called for the death penalty, but capital punishment had been abolished in Wisconsin in 1853. With Dahmer’s 900+ years in Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, he’d never see outside prison walls. In his trial statement, Dahmer expressed his desire to die for the horrible acts he committed. A large portion of the public also believed the death penalty was the deserved sentence..
Finding Religion in Prison
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Dahmer’s first year in prison was spent in solitary confinement because of worries for his safety around other inmates. During this time, he started reading the Bible and became a born-again Christian. He began seriously studying religion and on May 10, 1994, he was baptized by Minister Roy Ratcliff, who’d go on to meet with him every week until Dahmer’s death. Oddly enough, serial killer John Wayne Gacy was executed on the same day, and there was a partial solar eclipse. Against advice, Jeffrey Dahmer requested to be moved out of solitary confinement into the general population, exposing him to other prisoners. His mother Joyce Flint worried about her son’s safety, but said he told her over the phone, “I don’t care if something happens to me.” Others have also claimed Dahmer didn’t fear dying and seemed to be ready to meet his maker. He reportedly said to one of the guards, “This is a living death.” On July 3, 1994, Dahmer was attacked after a prison chapel service. An inmate, Osvaldo Durruthy fashioned a makeshift blade and attempted to cut Dahmer’s throat. Durruthy, who was in prison on possession charges, reportedly did it in hopes of returning to his home country of Cuba, which didn’t happen. He did, however, receive an additional 5 years on his sentence. Since the weapon broke, Dahmer survived the attack but this wouldn’t be his only violent altercation.
The Death of Jeffrey Dahmer
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Early on November 28, 1994, almost five months after he was attacked, 34-year-old Jeffrey Dahmer met his end. While they were momentarily unsupervised during work detail in the prison gym bathrooms, 25-year-old fellow inmate Christopher Scarver bludgeoned him to death using a metal bar from the gym’s weight room. Scarver also fatally wounded Jesse Anderson, another convicted murderer on duty with them. Dahmer suffered severe head trauma and died soon after the attack. Christopher Scarver was serving a life sentence for the June 1990 killing of Steven Lohman, an employee at the Wisconsin Conservation Corps training program. Scarver claimed he was promised a full time job and became angry when he wasn’t hired. After he started to overindulge in alcohol and was kicked out of his mother’s home, he sought revenge. He went to the training center office to confront the site manager John Feyen, who he blamed for the job loss. But he ended up shooting Lohman instead, while stealing money from Feyen. Scarver was arrested hours later and confessed. He also said that voices told him he was the son of God, the “chosen one.” For killing Dahmer and Anderson, Scarver received two more life sentences. In a 2015 interview with the New York Post, he said he read about the crimes Dahmer committed and believed his behavior indicated that Dahmer was unrepentant. Namely, Dahmer taunted guards and inmates with cannibal-related jokes, like making his food look like body parts. Per his will, Jeffrey Dahmer was cremated, except for his brain which was preserved. His ashes were divided between his parents, who fought over what should be done with his brain. Joyce wanted to donate it to science and Lionel wanted it destroyed. Though studying his brain could have provided insights into his psychology, the latter won and the organ was ordered to be destroyed.
