Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (ˈdɑːmər; May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
Although he was diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizotypal personality disorder (StPD), and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of fifteen of the sixteen homicides he had committed in Wisconsin and was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. Dahmer was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.
Jeffrey Dahmer was born May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, the first of two sons to Lionel Herbert Dahmer, a Marquette University chemistry student and later a research chemist, and Joyce Annette Dahmer (), a teletype machine instructor. Lionel is of German and Welsh ancestry, and Joyce was of English, Norwegian and Irish ancestry.
Some sources report Dahmer was deprived of attention as an infant. Other sources, however, suggest that Dahmer was generally doted upon as an infant and toddler by both parents, although his mother was known to be tense, greedy for both attention and pity, and argumentative with her husband and their neighbors.
As Dahmer entered first grade, Lionel's studies kept him away from home much of the time. When he was home, his wife—a hypochondriac who suffered from depression—demanded constant attention and spent an increasing amount of time in bed. On one occasion, she attempted suicide using Equanil.