Male and Female Serial Killers

Part 4

Despite having regular appointments with his probation officer he still managed to commit four murders in 1990 and eight in 1991 before his arrest. In the summer of 1991, he began taking at least one victim per week. He became obsessed with the idea of turning his victims into zombies so they would "act as youthful and submissive sexual partners"(Jeffrey Dahmer). He tried to do this numerous ways. One way was to drill a hole into the victim's skull and pour either hydrochloric acid or boiling water into the hole. Soon after his neighbors began to complain of a foul smell coming from his apartment. On one of these occasions, one of his victims, who had been lobotomized, made his way onto the street and asked several bystanders for help while Dahmer was out buying beer. When Dahmer came back, he managed to convince the police, who had arrived on the scene, that the victim was just his intoxicated boyfriend. Lucky for Dahmer the police did not check his record so they did not see that he was a registered sex offender. The oversight allowed him to escape arrest for just a little bit longer. On July 22, 1991, Dahmer lured Tracy Edwards, who was supposed to be just another one of his victims, into his home with the promise of money in exchange for his company. When inside of the house Dahmer forced him he the bedroom with a butcher knife. Edwards managed to break free during their struggle and managed to escape the house. He flagged down a police cruiser once on the streets. When police arrived at Dahmer's apartment Edwards alerted them to the knife in the bedroom. Police found images of the bodies of Dahmer's victims and dismembered limbs which finally allowed them to arrest Dahmer when they entered the bedroom.

Further investigation of the home lead police to find various items such as a severed head in the refrigerator and three more heads were found throughout the entirety of the apartment. A total of seven skulls were found in the apartment as well as a human heart that was found in the freezer. In one of the closets in the apartment, an altar made with candles and human skulls was discovered. After being taken into police custody, Dahmer confessed to the murders and went into detail about how he committed them. He was indicted on fifteen murder charges during his trial that began on January 30, 1992. Dahmer plead insanity for a defense due to the nature of his uncontrollable and rather disturbing impulses, even though all of the evidence pointed at him to have committed the murders. The trial proceeded for about two more weeks; he was found sane and guilty on all fifteen murder charges. He was then sentenced to fifteen consecutive life sentences, which is a total of 957 years. In May of the same year, he entered an additional guilty plea for his first victim, Steven Hicks, and an additional life sentence was added to the fifteen, making it sixteen sentences and a total of about 1,020 years of imprisonment(Jeffrey Dahmer).

Before passing away, Dahmer served his time in the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin. While in prison Dahmer began to show remorse for his actions and even wished for his own death. He reportedly found religion through the books and photos his father sent him. After reading the bible he declared himself to be a born-again Christian and was "ready for his final judgment"(Jeffrey Dahmer). He was even granted permission by the Columbia Correctional Institution to be baptized by a local pastor. He was attacked twice by fellow inmates, the first not being fatal, as it was a slice to his throat that only left him with superficial wounds. The second, however, was what sent him to his death. He was attacked for the second time on November 28, 1994. It happened while he and two other inmates, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver, were cleaning the prison showers. The guards who were watching them temporarily left them unsupervised. While they were gone, Scarver brutally beat both Anderson and Dahmer with a metal bar he obtained from the prison weight room. The prison guards made this discovery upon their return. Dahmer was pronounced dead an hour after the attack while Anderson succumbed to his injuries days after.