Things That Came Out About Jeffrey Dahmer After He Died

The following article includes graphic descriptions of murder.

Jeffrey Dahmer is easily one of the notorious serial killers in recent memory, if not the most. Dahmer didn’t just stalk people of a certain profile, murder them, and dispose of their bodies. He was responsible for some of the most heinous and atrocious acts that one human can commit against another — the types that make you question the definition of “human.” Dahmer drugged his victims, mutilated them with an electric saw, kept body parts in the fridge, cooked and ate them in various ways, arrayed skulls on his shelf, committed necrophilia, and much more. In short, few others could live up to the first word of the recent 2022 Netflix series, “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.”

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Because Dahmer’s acts were so extreme and his case so high-profile, practically each and every aspect of his life, crimes, capture, trial, etc., have been detailed to the utmost in countless articles, documentaries, interviews, podcasts, books, and more. At this point, it seems like very little needs to be said about Dahmer that hasn’t been said already, and there’s next to nothing left to uncover or reveal to the public. 

That being said, certain aspects of Dahmer’s case didn’t come out right away, at least not while he was alive. He was caught in 1991, received a sentence of 15 consecutive life sentences in 1992 (later extended to 16), and was murdered in prison in 1994. Since then, certain aspects of his case have come to attention, starting with the motivation of the man who killed him.

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When Jeffrey Dahmer died in prison on November 28, 1994, he hadn’t even served two years of his 16 consecutive life sentences. Some might say, “Good riddance, who cares?” Others might wish he suffered more behind bars. But fellow inmate Christopher Scarver had definitely had enough of Dahmer. Carver is the man who beat Dahmer to death with a 20-inch, 5-pound metal bar. 

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The short of the story is: Dahmer made a nuisance of himself behind bars. He played practical jokes on other inmates based on his crimes, like shaping prison food and ketchup packets to look like bloody limbs and leaving them where people would be. He got into “heated interactions” with other inmates, as Scarver told 6abc Action News, and basically messed with people he shouldn’t have.

Carver, who was 25 at the time, watched Dahmer from a distance and didn’t talk to him until the day he killed him. But like everyone else, Carver knew about Dahmer’s crimes and was disgusted by the serial killer. On the day Dahmer died, Carver was on cleaning duty and felt someone poke him in the back — either Dahmer or someone else, he couldn’t tell. Carver went to the prison weight room, got a metal bar, went to the staff locker room, and confronted him. Dahmer looked like he wanted to run away, but Carver blocked his exit. It only took two blows to the head, and Dahmer “ended up dead,” as the New York Post quotes Carver. “I put his head down.”

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In all likelihood, people probably have one question at the top of their minds when first learning about Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes: Why? How could anyone do what he did? What could possibly lead someone, psychologically, environmentally, whatever, to a point where such crimes could be committed? While we could cite psychological precedents all day, delve into amateur analyses, or cite the words of renowned experts, it seems impossible to really, truly, understand what motivated someone like Dahmer. But, we could always take Dahmer at his word and listen to his own chilling motivations to kill.

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Dahmer gave reasons for his crimes in interview footage that came out after his death. In 2022, Inside Edition posted new footage from an old 1993 interview with the killer during the brief period that he was alive and behind bars. Remember that Dahmer would often prowl gay bars looking for victims to bring back to his house, where he would drug them and then commence his crimes. He did this to 17 people over a course of 13 years. 

“I was angry with them [his victims] not because I hated them but because I wanted to keep them with me,” Dahmer said during the interview in question. “And as my obsession grew I was saving body parts such as skulls and skeletons and eventually I did turn to cannibalism.” He continued by saying that he still felt “the old compulsions,” finishing with, “I deserve death.”

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As mentioned, there have been plenty of testimonials, interviews, analyses, etc. about Jeffrey Dahmer’s case, many of which happened while he was alive. But certain accounts only surfaced after he died, as in the case of the 2021 book with a name that alludes to cannibalism: “Grilling Dahmer: The Interrogation of the ‘The Milwaukee Cannibal.'” The book includes a detailed firsthand account of Dahmer’s arrest, but it largely focuses on his subsequent interrogation from the perspective of the man responsible: Detective Patrick Kennedy of the Milwaukee Police Department.

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While the basic facts of Dahmer’s case are well-known by now, including how he kept body parts in the fridge in his apartment, “Grilling Dahmer” affords a new, detailed perspective on events. One passage, for instance, describes how Kennedy got the call about heading to Dahmer’s apartment. Events follow him from his desk with a cup of coffee to peering into the killer’s fridge. There, he saw “a clean, barren refrigerator holding only an open carton of baking soda and a cardboard box containing a freshly severed head.”

The full text of “Grilling Dahmer” tells a story of lurid, heretofore unrevealed details from Kennedy’s interrogations of Dahmer. For example, Dahmer explained that removing the insides of a skull “was just like cleaning out a cantaloupe.” It’s taken three decades after Dahmer’s death for such information to come out, but it’s likely still unbearable for loved ones of victims to learn such things.

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