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Jeffrey Dahmer is considered one of the darkest serial killers in US history.
There were 17 victims in total. From 1978 to 1991, American Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 people in such a cruel and cruel manner that he was dubbed the Milwaukee Cannibal (after the city where he committed most of his crimes).
And while recent US history has been littered with serial killers causing the deaths of hundreds of people, the truth is that the methods Dahmer used – not just to kill his victims, but to dispose of their bodies – They have garnered the center of attention from both seasoned criminalists and the general public.
Dozens of television series, films and plays have been made about his life and crimes, not to mention the written texts, from reports to books containing the testimonies of his classmates.
The last of these products premiered on the Netflix streaming platform, a series of ten chapters that explore Dahmer’s crimes but also his childhood and part of his youth entitled “Monsters: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer“.
However, its premiere was not without criticism. to a large extent, because many feel that the series’ narrative doesn’t take into account the victims’ perspective.
“If the show benefited them in any way, it wouldn’t feel so harsh and neglected. It is sad that they are only making money from this tragedy. It’s just greed,” said Rita Isbell, sister of Errol Lindsey, one of Dahmer’s victims. .
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The main role in the series is played by Evan Peters.
But who was Jeffrey Dahmer and why are his crimes still drawing people’s attention?
A “normal” childhood
One of the issues that has most caught the attention of law enforcement agencies and the doctors who treated Dahmer is that, unlike most serial killers, the man did not endure a traumatic childhood of abuse and mistreatment.
He was born in May 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, USA.
His father, Lionel Dahmer—who continued to visit him in prison after his crime was discovered—was a chemist, and his mother, Joyce Annette, was a telegraph operator.
According to several biographies, including those published by the A&E channel, some of his teachers noticed a change in Jeffrey’s temper. when he was about 10 years old and they related it to his father not being home much and his mother being diagnosed with mental illness.
As a teenager, however, he began exhibiting some of the behaviors that would mark the years he committed the murders.
As shown in the Netflix series, Dahmer was always interested in dissecting dead animals.
Many of them he took from those who died being hit by vehicles on the freeways near his home.
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Dahmer’s father, Lionel, worked as a chemist.
Her father’s later partner, Shari Dahmer, said the magazine TIN THE who knew this Dahmer He used acid to thin animals’ soft tissues and extract the bones, a practice he applied to his victims’ bodies.
According to Dahmer’s own account to authorities, which was later published in local reports, his parents’ divorce, which occurred shortly before high school graduation, further deepened the sense of abandonment his teachers had experienced during his childhood.
And during this time he commits his first murder: in June 1978 bush to Steven Hicks, an 18-year-old on his way to a concert near Dahmer’s home.
Dahmer, who was also 18 at the time, found him driving his car on a nearby street and offered to drive Hicks to the concert, but first invited him over to his house for a drink.
There he hit him twice on the head with a weight he was training with. Dahmer explained to police many years later that the reason he hit Hicks was because he was desperate to go to the concert and didn’t want to join him.
serial killings
With Hiccup, he also began a macabre ritual with the bodies of his victims: he dismembered them, diluted the parts in acid, and then stored the bones that remained after the soft tissues were destroyed.
In the case of Hicks, who would repeat himself with other victims, Dahmer said he kept his entire head so he could look at him alone.
For around nine years, nothing more was heard of any Dahmer crime. He went to Ohio University, ex where he was exmatriculated after only one semester because of his absenteeism and his low academic average.
His father, who has given several interviews about his son, points out that he sent him to the army after he was expelled from university, but also fled from there because of his alcoholism.
In 1981, Dahmer moved with his grandmother to a house outside of Milwaukee. There he had his first sexual encounters with other men, devoted himself to gay bars and was unemployed for a long time, partly because of his alcohol addiction.
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A coroner searches for the remains of Steven Hicks under the house where Dahmer lived when he was 18.
In November 1987 he committed his second murder: that of Steven Tuomi, a 25-year-old man. According to the statement he gave during his trial after his arrest, Dahmer met Tuomi in a bar and convinced him to go to a hotel room with him.
Dahmer points out in his statement that he doesn’t remember killing Tuomi, who woke up the next day with the young man’s lifeless body and his hands covered in bruises.
From there he began a series of murders that followed a similar modus operandi: Dahmer met a young man in a bar, took him home – first to his grandmother’s room in the house, but her grandmother would eventually throw him out of there and that Mann would end up renting a cheap apartment in downtown Milwaukee — where he drugged his victim and then strangled her.
First she brought home men she seduced in bars but then he started offering them money to pose naked for him.
This is how Richard Guerrero, James Doxtator, Anthony Sears, Raymond Smith, Edward Smith, Ernest Miller, David Thomas, Curtis Straughter, Errol Lindsey, Konerak Sinthasomphone, Tony Hughes, Oliver Lacy, Matt Turner and Joseph Bradehoft were murdered.
After the murder ended, Dahmer dismembered the body and attempted to preserve his parts by storing them in the refrigerator or by immersing them in substances such as saline solutions.
These dismemberment and preservation tasks were performed in the apartment he rented in downtown Milwaukee, and despite constant complaints from neighbors about the smell and strange noises, Authorities failed to locate him for more than five years.
a survivor
In July 1991, Dahmer persuaded Tracy Edwards, a 32-year-old black man, to accompany him to his home to take some photos of him for $100.
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Dahmer was killed by another prisoner while serving his sentence in a US prison.
However, as he recounted at the trial that followed shortly thereafter, Edwards discovered Dahmer’s plansShe managed to escape from the apartment and caught the attention of two police officers who immediately went to the place.
After discovering a few photos of dismembered corpses there, Dahmer was arrestedlaborious.
Besides assuming he murdered 11 people in his statement to the police, Milwaukee authorities found at least four of his victims’ heads, organs such as a heart and a barrel of human remains dissolved in acid, among other macabre apartment findings.
In his statement Dahmer admitted to committing acts of cannibalism and necrophilia with the bodies of his victims.
After a brief trial, Dahmer was found guilty of at least 15 murders and sentenced to as many life terms. He was taken to Ohio State Penitentiary.
Two years later, he died after being hit in the head by another cellmate in the middle of a prison fight.
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