Hello! Are you interested in the True Crime genre? If you’re looking up that new Dahmer series, the answer is probably yes. How well do you know the show and the notorious serial killer? Test your knowledge with our quiz.
Who was Jeffrey Dahmer? His persona doesn’t have to be introduced to anyone seriously interested in True Crime, but I’m going to attempt it anyway for any newbies and casual readers.
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Jeffrey Dahmer was a serial killer who operated between 1978 and 1991. He murdered 17 people during this time. Dahmer was eventually arrested in 1991 after his would-be victim, Tracy Edwards managed to escape from his apartment and alert the authorities.
Dahmer was born in Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960, to Joyce and Lionel Dahmer. Dahmer was reportedly a happy, active child until his double hernia surgery at 4 years old seemed to have a negative effect on him.
By his early teenage years, Jeffrey seemed detached, and nervous, and didn’t have many friends. He likely suffered because of his mother’s depression and his father’s absence. He supposedly had a fascination with dead animals from an early age. According to Lionel Dahmer, Jeffrey was curious about the animal bones found around their house and enjoyed the sound they made.
By the age of 14, young Dahmer began drinking alcohol, including hard liquor, and he would even take it to school with him. Dahmer’s drinking problem was already out of control when he killed for the first time in 1978 at 18 years old.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s first victim was a hitchhiker, Steven Mark Hicks, at the time of his death almost 19 years old. Dahmer lured him to his house on the pretext of drinking. When Hicks wanted to leave after several hours, Dahmer killed him, to later bury him in a shallow grave in his backyard.
After Dahmer decided to drop out of college, his father insisted on him enlisting in the Army. Dahmer’s alcohol abuse continued in the Army, and he was eventually deemed unsuitable for military service and discharged in March 1981. It is a common belief that he didn’t take any victims during his time in the military.
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Jeffrey Dahmer spent around a year after his discharge trying to live on his own before returning to his father’s house in Ohio. He continued to drink heavily and was eventually arrested for indecent exposure. He was arrested again in 1986 for masturbating in front of two boys. He received a year’s probation.
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Dahmer took 17 lives in total. He usually picked men and boys that were on the fringes of society: hitchhikers, sex workers, people whose disappearance wouldn’t cause the authorities to get particularly interested in them.
The murderous spree finally ended when Dahmer’s would-be victim, Tracy Edwards, managed to escape him and let the police to him. The police officers arrested Dahmer after finding numerous body parts and photographs of dismembered bodies in his apartment.
Dahmer’s trial started in January 1992. Racial tensions surrounded the event due to the fact that most of Dahmer’s victims were black.
After Dahmer’s demise in 1996, Milwaukee business owners raised more than $400,000 to buy the objects he used on his victims. They quickly destroyed them to disengage the city from the atrocities committed by Dahmer’s actions and the media frenzy that surrounded his trial.
On February 17, 1992, Jeffrey Dahmer was given fifteen life sentences in prison for fifteen murders. Later a 16th term was added to his punishment.
Dahmer supposedly adapted well to prison, despite being separated from the general population at first. He eventually persuaded the authorities to let him integrate more fully with the other inmates. He discovered religion through books and photos sent that his father Lionel sent him, and the Columbia Correctional Institution permitted him to be baptized by a local pastor.
In 1994 Dahmer was murdered by another inmate Christopher Scarver. Dahmer was given the task of working in collaboration with Scarver and another convict, Jesse Anderson. When the guard stepped away for a bit, Scarver beat both Dahmer and Anderson to death with a metal bar. After about an hour, Dahmer was declared dead.
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