The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer

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While awaiting sentencing for his sexual assault case, Dahmer again put his grandmother’s basement to gruesome use. In March 1989, he lured, drugged, strangled, sodomized, photographed, dismembered, and disposed of Anthony Sears, an aspiring model. Dahmer found Sears particularly attractive and later said he did not want to “lose him,” and so Sears became the first victim from whom Dahmer kept preserved body parts for a long period of time, mummifying his head and genitals, according to Masters. A prison guard claimed that shortly after the murders, Scarver, who was believed to be schizophrenic, said “God told me to do it.” In 2015, Scarver spoke to the New York Post about his reasons for killing Dahmer. Scarver alleged that he was disturbed not only by Dahmer’s crimes but by a habit Dahmer had developed of fashioning severed limbs from prison food to antagonize other inmates. It was not a case of hating them. It was just the only way I knew of to keep them there and keep them with me. [from The Scotsman; published on August 15, 2000]

Dahmer later said that after Tuomi’s killing, his “obsession [with killing] went into full swing” and he “didn’t even try to stop it after that.” He killed two more victims at his grandmother’s house before she forced him to move out in 1988. She had no knowledge of his crimes but was tired of his drinking, his tendency to bring young men to her house, and the foul smells occasionally coming from her basement, according to Masters. Sexual Assault Charges and Sentence From a young age, Dahmer developed a fascination with animal bones and studied how to be clean and preserve them. As a child, he collected large insects and the skulls of small animals, preserved in jars of formaldehyde, according to the Brian Masters book The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14

In September 1989, about a year after moving into his new apartment, Dahmer lured a 13-year-old Laotian boy to his house, claiming he wanted to take nude photos of him. This resulted in charges of sexual exploitation and second-degree sexual assault for Dahmer. He pleaded guilty, claiming that the boy had appeared much older. The Englishman Masters is an intellectual with opinions on everything. I really wish I could say that I’ve read at least one biography that didn’t suffer from the author’s bias/opinionated commentary, but that’s simply not the case. No one would want to read just the cold, hard facts. Plus, the mere exercise would be paradoxical – the arrangement of words in a sentence can change the meaning entirely, and depending on where and how much information you give, the reader’s impressions will be entirely different. Maybe I was born too late. Maybe I was an Aztec. [from Albany Times Union; published on February 5, 1992] Bizarre connections to the ancient Roman deity Dionysus, the American Indian legendary creatures known as wendigos, and other ancient mythos that, while interesting on its own, seemed out of place here.

It’s hard for me to believe a human being could do what I have done, but I know I did it. [from Albany Times Union; published on February 1, 1992] I do not blame the police, the courts, or the probation system. I failed the system, it did not fail me. [from Sunday Times; published on July 28, 1991] The 2012 documentary The Jeffery Dahmer Files included fictionalized reenactments of Dahmer’s life (with Andrew Swant portraying him) along with real-life interviews with people involved with his cases. Several other documentaries have been produced about Dahmer as well. In September 2022, Netflix released a ten-part anthology series called Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. Co-created by American Horror Story creator Ryan Murphy, the series starred Evan Peters as Dahmer and highlighted incidents in which Dahmer was nearly apprehended before his arrest, with a particular focus on how police incompetence allowed him to extend his killing spree.

Steven Tuomi, 24

Dahmer initially pleaded not guilty to all charges, despite having confessed to the killings during police interrogation. He eventually changed his plea to guilty by virtue of insanity. His defense then offered the gruesome details of his behavior, as proof that only someone insane could commit such terrible acts. What I’ve done has cut both ways. It’s hurt the victim, and it’s hurt me. ... I don’t know what I was thinking when I did it. [from The New School Psychology Bulletin; Volume 5, No. 1, 2007]

A new docuseries entitled My Son Jeffrey: The Dahmer Family Tapes about serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer will begin streaming on September 18 on Fox Nation. The four-part series includes never-before-released audio recordings of Dahmer, including phone conversations he had with his father, Lionel, while in prison. According to Court TV, Dahmer said in one recording that he fully intended to keep killing if he hadn’t been captured: “I was so wrapped up in what I was doing. I felt I was gonna continue doing that for the rest of my life.” Then there’s the focus on the “shrine”. All that talk about Dionysus and wendigos was meant to give context to the bizarre, ritualistic, quasi-religious nature of Dahmer’s modus operandi. By now everyone familiar with the case knows about the “shrine” he was building, complete with griffin statues standing guard and flashing lights (?). The average onlooker would assume the altar was nothing more than a byproduct of mental illness, yet another sign of the insanity. But Masters bulks it up, ascribing the attributes of our primitive pagan ancestors to a primal killer’s instincts. And that’s fine – it makes sense, I suppose. Dahmer doesn’t know why he did it or where the idea came from, so Masters is putting his own spin on it, drawing his own conclusions. Everyone is going to see this case through their own filters anyway. At his trial for child molestation in May 1989, Dahmer was the model of contrition, arguing eloquently, in his own defense, about how he had seen the error of his ways and that his arrest marked a turning point in his life. His defense counsel argued that he needed treatment, not incarceration, and the judge agreed, handing down a one-year prison sentence on “day release”—allowing Dahmer to work at his job during the day and return to the prison at night—as well as a five-year probationary sentence. After My Friend Dahmer, this is the second book on Dahmer I have read. And considering how I felt about that one, I can’t say that this was worse. However, it wasn’t my ideal, so to speak. It’s very dry in places and meanders quite a bit, plus Masters isn’t emotionally connected to any of this at all, except that he was present during the trial. A 1994 photo of Jeffrey Dahmer’s father, Lionel Dahmer, and stepmother, Shari, standing outside of Columbia Correctional Institute where Jeffrey was imprisoned. Getty Images

The subtleties of social life were beyond my grasp. When children liked me, I did not know why. Nor could I formulate a plan for winning their affection. I simply didn’t know how things worked with other people. ... And try as I might, I couldn’t make other people seem less strange and unknowable. [from The New School Psychology Bulletin; Volume 5, No. 1, 2007]