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Jeffrey Dahmer: A Serial Killer Essay

A serial killer is someone who commits a series of murders, usually in a pattern, with no apparent motive. Jeffrey Dahmer, also known as “The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough” and one of America’s most infamous serial killers, is responsible for the murdering, dismembering, and eating of seventeen boys between the years of 1978 and 1991 (Wright and Hensley 78). A solid 100 percent of the adult and children that know Jeffrey Dahmer, identify him as a serial killer (Tithecott xi).

Dahmer portrays thoughts of death and murder because of the actions he took during his thirteen year killing spree motivated by his ocial deficits and many mental illnesses. Jeffrey Dahmer was a white male born in 1960, who killed, mutilated, and sometimes ate seventeen male victims in Wisconsin and Ohio from 1978-1991 (Tithecott 8). Despite what people may think, Dahmer came from what many would consider a typical all-American family, with no history of having an impoverished or deprived background (8).

When Dahmer was eight years old he and his family moved to Bath, Ohio (O’Meara 1). After Dahmer’s crimes came to light, his father revealed that not long after they had moved to Bath, Dahmer was sexually molested by a neighbor boy and that, “may be why e has trouble with his sexuallity. ” (Davis 21). When Dahmer was in school as a child, he was shy, but also displayed impulsive and angry behavior (Bennett 300). As a result of this his strange behavior, he was socially isolated and the other children considered him to be odd and bizarre (Bennett 300).

One thing that set Dahmer apart from the other children was his height. Although he was tall for his age, Dahmer would never bully the smaller children he went to school with, however, if one of them were to get injured his reaction was to laugh instead of helping the children (Davis 22). As a child, Dahmer was frequently apathetic and showed no normal emotions (Bennett 300). Dahmer feared his own aggression, and he gave up the idea of contact with others (300). He felt as though he was an outcast that belonged to neither his family, nor any other social network (300).

At the age of ten, Dahmer began to experiment on the bodies of dead animals (Wright and Hensley 78). He was fascinated by the nature of things, particularly about how things lived, and how they died (Davis 22). Dahmer would remove the skin of the the animals, soak the bones in acid, and place their eads on stakes behind his home (Wright and Hensley 78). When Dahmer was around fourteen he began to drink, and took the dark road into alcoholism (Davis 24). His trouble continued at the age of fifteen when he stole a shop-window dummy (Bennett 300).

Dahmer would lay in bed with the dummy when his parents were not home (300). It was at this time that he developed his first necrophilic fantasies and became aware of his homosexual desires (300). Dahmer’s troubles continued into high school. In June 1978, just two weeks after Dahmer graduated from high school was when the killing began (Wright and Hensley 78). Dahmer picked up a hitchhiker in the vicinity of his home, after having a few drinks, Dahmer hit the man over the head with a barbell and strangled him to death (78).

In the fall of 1978, Dahmer enrolled in Ohio State University, but did not return for the second half of his freshman year (78). After dropping out of college, Dahmer enlisted in the U. S. Army in an attempt to rejoin society (78). Although he was in the military, Dahmer continued to abuse alcohol (78). Dahmer served three years in the military, but was then discharged from the army for his addiction to alcohol (78). Along with being addicted to alcohol, Dahmer is believed to have suffered from a unique combination of psychological and personality disorders (Strubel 42).

Dahmer’s mental illnesses included a combination of paraphilias, depression, substance dependence, Asperger’s Disorder, disordered personality, and social skills deficits (42). The mental illnesses that Dahmer is most associated with is cannibalism and necrophilia (42). Necrophilia is a sexual attraction to corpses, this is a rare disorder that has been known of since ancient times (Rosman and Resnick 153). Cannibalism is when ne person eats another. In more recent times, and in Dahmer’s case, necrophilia has been highly associated with cannibalism (Rosman and Resnick 153).

Dahmer’s mental illnesses are what is believed to have pushed him to commit serial murder. Jeffrey Dahmer, the killer of mostly blacks, and mostly gays, started his thirteen year murdering rampage by killing the first of his seventeen victims in 1978 (Wright and Hensley 78). As it was discovered many years later in his small apartment in Milwaukee, his gruesome behavior towards his first victim would be replicated many times over (78). Dahmer would lure his victims into his apartment, and when they were in his clutches he would go into bizarre rituals such as cannibalism and necrophilia (Tithecott 29).

Most serial killers enjoy torturing their victims before killing them, they relish their victims’ cries of agony and pleas for mercy (Strubel 44). Dahmer, however, did not do this (44). He would usually sedate his victims and then kill them quickly, not wishing for them to suffer (44). Dahmer also exercised total control over his victims to the point that he even attempted to make zombies out of some of them (Bennett 301). Another strange aspect about Dahmer was that after his victims were deceased, he would take pictures of their corpses so that he could remember their appearance (Bennett 301).

Perhaps one of the most famous displays of Dahmer’s bizarre killings was his shrine. Dahmer planned to build a shrine out of the skulls and skeletons of his victims (Strubel 44) He claimed that the shrine would channel supernatural power to him, although many believe that the shrine was his own twisted way of maintaining a connection to his victims, and remembering the time they shared (44). Dahmer continued his murderous rampage for many years until finally on July 22, 1991 ,the killing cycle ended when police entered his apartment and arrested him (Wright and Hensley 79).

Hidden in Dahmer’s apartment, police found skulls, body parts preserved in formaldehyde or in the refrigerator, and a meticulously organized scrapbook of his dead victims (Strubel 44). Dahmer was later sent to prison after his insanity plea claiming that he had became “enamored, overwhelmed, caught up in the character in Exorcist III. ” was rejected by the jury (Tithecott 9). Dahmer remained in prison ntil he was murdered by a fellow inmate, armed with a broom, in November 1994 (Berglund 17).

To conclude, Jeffrey Dahmer was a man with many mental illnesses and social deficits that made him into the killer responsible for the deaths of seventeen boys from 1978 to 1991 (Wright and Hensley 78). His murderous rampage lasted for many years before he was finally arrested in July of 1991, and taken to prison where he remained until his death in 1994 (Berglund 17). Although Dahmer died, the stories of his gruesome crimes lived on and made him one of the most infamous American killers we know today.

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