He tortured and killed animals in his youth.

FICTION

This is a very popular misconception about Jeffrey Dahmer.  Animal abuse is an important “red flag” in children because it often leads to abuse of people when their age progresses.  There has been proven to be a link between violence against animals and violence against people, specifically domestic abuse and murder.  However, not all serial killers have animal abuse in their backgrounds.  Jeffrey Dahmer falls into this category.  He did have a deep fascination with dead animals though he found them that way instead of causing their deaths.  He “experimented” on road kill.  He would often skin dead animals and dissect them.  He even experimented with bleaching animal bones just like he would later do with human bones.  He said that he liked the sound of animal bones clinking together.

He was a cannibal.

FACT

He was, unfortunately for his victims, a cannibal.  There is some dispute over how much of a cannibal he was though.  It has been claimed that he has only been proven to have eaten part of the bicep muscle of one victim — as if that weren’t enough!  Dahmer himself is quoted as saying:  “During dismemberment I saved the heart, also meat from the thigh, bicep, liver cut it into small pieces, washed them off, put these in plastic…clear plastic freezer bags and put them on the floor of the freezer.  Just as an escalation of trying something new to satisfy.  And, I would cook it and then, look at the picture and …  It made me feel like they were part of me.”

It was widely rumoured that he ate large sections of his victims, and this very well may be true..  You can just imagine him in his apartment stirring a giant pot full of soup made from his victims.  It was also rumoured that he was the president of a Cannibal “society” club.  This wasn’t true.  In fact, he wasn’t even a member of the gruesome club in question.

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The apartment building he committed his crimes in has been destroyed and replaced by a memorial.

FICTION

While it is true that the apartment building was completely knocked down and destroyed, there is no memorial in place.  It seems that plans of a memorial fizzled out due to lack of funding and perhaps a wish by the entire community to put these gruesome acts behind them.

Dahmer used a chainsaw to dismember his victims.

FICTION

Jeffrey Dahmer lived in an apartment during the period when many of his victims were murdered.  A chainsaw would have surely drawn the attention to other residents — although the smell did not seem to.  His victims were dismembered in the tub with a knife.  The police lists of evidence taken from the apartment do not list a chainsaw.

One of his victims almost escaped.

FACT

Konerak Sinthasomphone was found running naked in an alley by paramedics after two female passersby called 911.  The police arrived shortly after and were told by Jeffrey Dahmer that the boy was his 19 year old lover who had drank too much.  The boy was dazed by drugs that Dahmer have given him to subdue him and unable to communicate clearly with the police.

The two female witnesses, who happened to be black, argued with police that the boy was resisting Dahmer and was terrified.  The police chose to listen instead to Dahmer, who lead them back to his apartment.  They found a neat although badly smelling residence and left the two alone, not wanting to get in the middle of a homosexual domestic situation.  They checked Dahmer’s identification but did not realize that he had been charged with sexual assault of minors in the past.  They did not check the source of the odour in the apartment, which was a dead body.  They left Konerak in Dahmer’s care.  Dahmer strangled the 14 year old to death and sodomized him.  He later boiled the flesh off the skull to keep it as a “trophy”.  Coincidentally, Konerak was the brother of a boy once molested by Jeffrey Dahmer.

He was strapped to the table during the autopsy.

FACT

This one seems to be true, although hard to believe.  It has been reported by many that this is just how autopsies of inmates are done in Milwaukee.  It seems that hand cuffs attached to a belly chain are put on dead prisoners before transport to a hospital or coroner’s office.  A guard stays with the body until completion of the autopsy and the shackles are not removed until it is sent to the mortuary.  Each death of an inmate is treated as if it were a crime and the “chain of evidence” needs to be preserved at all costs for future court proceedings.  The evidence being, of course, the dead body which is not likely to get up and run away.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s brain was kept by scientists to research.

This one is both FACT and FICTION.

In Dahmer’s last will and testament, he asked that his remains be cremated as soon as possible after his death and that there was no funeral or marker of his grave.  His body was cremated a few days after his death but his brain was preserved in Formaldehyde and sent Dr. Pincus of the Georgetown University Medical Center at the request of Dahmer’s mother, Joyce Dahmer.  She wanted the University to examine Jeffrey’s brain to see if anything could be learned from it.  Jeffrey’s father, Lionel, strongly opposed this brain examination on the grounds of Jeffrey’s will.  His brain was eventually cremated and added to the ashes split between his parents without being examined.  We will never know what could have been learned about Jeffrey Dahmer’s extremely bizarre behaviour.

Dahmer claimed to find God in prison and was baptized.

FACT

Roy Ratcliff was the prison pastor and spiritual mentor of Jeffrey Dahmer.  He came to know Jeffrey Dahmer over a period of about seven months and even once said that Dahmer was a “friend and brother of faith”.  Dahmer immersed himself in the bible and spent many hours at the church’s chapel.  He claimed remorse and vowed to live a life of righteousness which is how he was able to be baptized.  The ceremony was performed on May 10, 1994 which was the same day that John Wayne Gacy, another notorious serial killer, was executed.

Ratcliff claimed to want no publicity in the matter although he allowed himself to be photographed for Time Magazine and later went on to write a book about his experiences with Dahmer entitled: “Dark Journey, Deep Grace”. 

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Photograph of Portage Prison where Dahmer lived after his conviction and where he died.

Jeffrey Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate after all of the guards mysteriously left them alone together.

FACT

On the morning of November 28, 1994, Jeffrey Dahmer was paired up with two other men to do janitorial work.  One of the men was named Jesse Anderson.  He was in prison for murdering his wife.  The other man was Christopher Scarver.  He was in prison for first degree murder.  He was a delusional schizophrenic who believed that he was the son of God.

Usually a work detail such as this would be supervised by a guard.  However, in this situation, all four guards on duty were in the bathroom.  Twenty minutes after the work detail started, guards found Christopher Scarver back in his cell and the other two men outside bleeding.  Jesse Anderson was dead and Jeffrey Dahmer’s skull had been crushed.  He was pronounced dead on the way to the hospital.  Ironically, he was once quoted as saying “If I were killed in prison, that would be a blessing right now.”

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He committed the murder of Adam Walsh.

UNKNOWN

Adam Walsh is the son of John Walsh, host of “America’s Most Wanted”.  He was kidnapped from the toy department at a mall in Florida in 1981 and was later found dead.  The “Code Adam” in Walmart for missing kids is named after him.

It has been rumored that Jeffrey Dahmer committed this atrocity.  He was working less than 10 miles from the mall where Adam was kidnapped in the same time frame.  There are at least 2 witnesses that put someone of his description at the scene of the abduction.  After Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the 16 murders, both witnesses went to police to say that he was the man they saw at the mall.

It is unknown whether or not he committed this murder.  Some say that it does not fit his regular modus operandi — that he preferred young men, not boys.  However, he was arrested for exposing himself to two young boys aged 12 and molesting another, aged 13, before the murders. 

Dahmer was questioned about the case by the police and claimed his innocence.  He maintained until his death that he did not commit any murders between the years of 1978 and 1987.  This in itself is very hard to believe.  Dahmer described his urge to kill in the following quote: “One thing I know for sure.  It was a definite compulsion because I couldn’t quit”.  If he was so driven to kill then how did he manage to avoid doing it for a period of 9 years?

Although he did protest his innocence, the investigator recalls him saying the following about the case: “‘You know, Neil, anyone who killed Adam Walsh could not live in any prison, ever”.  These words still haunt that investigator, Neil Purtell.  He is reported to be one of the most co-operative serial killers ever when it came to confessing his crimes and helping investigators solve them but that does not mean that he confessed all.

Serial killers strike fear and loathing into the hearts of the general public.  They also have a strange fascination.  It is bizarre to realize how far people can deteriorate and what they are compelled to do.  People are often driven to find differences between themselves and killers and to discover just exactly how the killers came to be.  For a look at some other serial killers and of Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood, please refer to the following articles:

10 Weird Facts About Jeffrey Dahmer’s Childhood.

10 Weird Facts About Ted Bundy’s Childhood

10 Weird Facts About Charles Manson’s Childhood

Self-Portrait of a Madman: John Wayne Gacy, The Killer Clown

Self-Portrait of a Madman: Charles Manson