Life of a Serial Killer, Jeffrey Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer was born in Milwaukee on May 21, 1960 with two loving parents by the name of Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. He seemed like an ordinary child until the age of six, when

In 1982 Jeffrey moved

Checking the genetics of a person can tell much about the person and who they are. Does where a person lives and the environment they are in constantly influence them to commit crime? Is it the genetic makeup of the person that makes a more probable chance for them to commit a crime? “Drilling into the skull of a young man he began to funnel a stream of sulfuric acid into the head of his unconscious victim to create a zombie to fulfill all of his fantasies. Dead within a day, he mummified the head of his victim placing it in the freezer beside the skulls of those who came before. Dismembering the remnants of the body he placed skin, blood, and bone into a fifty-gallon vat of acid dissolving what was left of the young man”(Center Crisis Management). Jeffrey Dahmer one of the most notorious serial killer did not murder for financial gain, rage, or vengeance, he murdered to feed a desire. Could Dahmer’s DNA be the reason for his impulses to kill? Many theories criticize the biological perspective, but the studies of those who commit murder suggest the biological theory could be accurate.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 in West Allis,Wisconsin. He and his parents, Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Annette, were an average american family who strived for the best. Jeffrey’s father was a graduate student who wanted to pursue a career as an analytical chemist. His mother worked as a teletype machine instructor. However, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother was not a stable women. She had a history of psychological problems which meant that her son was susceptible to mental illness due to genetic factors. Growing up, Jeffrey had trouble with interacting with his peers. He also had a peculiar fascination with dead animals and “according to his father, his son was ‘oddly thrilled’ by the sound the bones made and instantly developed a fixation for playing with and collecting animal bones (“Jeffrey Dahmer” Wikipedia).” As he got older, he developed an addiction to alcohol. He started drinking heavily during high school which negatively affected his grades. Another issue that Dahmer faced in his early life was

Jeffrey Dahmer is a notorious man and it is for all of the right reasons that he has been labeled notorious. From 1987 to 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered, sexually assaulted, and dismembered seventeen young men. He has been defined as many different things: necrophile, sadist maniac, psychotic, and many more. There were many signs that led up to his deviant behavior. A look into his adolescence will show some of those clear signs.

Some of the events in Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood can be seen as a direct line to his personality. When he was little he was a curious and extroverted child. However, after he

Not long after his dishonorable discharge, Dahmer was sent to live with his grandmother where he got a job, but before long was arrested for drunkenness and disorderly conduct. Soon, the offenses worsened as his alcoholism and emotional issues intensified, including but not limited to indecent exposure, child molestation, and culminating with his arrest for multiple murders in July of 1991. At the 1989 sentencing of Dahmer for child molestation, his father, Lionel Dahmer stated, “There was something missing in Jeff.... We call it a "conscience"... that had either died or had never

When Dahmer entered the first grade, Lionel noticed Dahmer had become very shy and showed a general lack of self-confidence. Jeffrey became distant, in comparison to his outgoing self earlier in his life. At age 15, Dahmer would ride around with plastic bags collecting animal remains for his own personal cemetery. He would strip the flesh from the bodies of dead animals that

Jeffrey was arrested in the same year, 1988, for sexually fondling and drugging a young teenage boy (age thirteen); for this, he was put on probation for five years and for one year he was assigned to a work release camp where he was registered as a sex offender from the incident with the thirteen year old boy. Due to good behavior and a built up trust with the authorities, Dahmer was paroled from his work release camp two months early.

Shortly after the birth of his brother the Dahmer family relocated to Ohio for a job opportunity offered to his father. After they moved Jeffrey really started to exhibit signs of introversion with his lack of engagement in activities, not having many friends, and missing emotions. His parents attempted to get Dahmer involved by signing him up for tennis, soccer, and 4-H. At age 10 Jeffrey began his fascination with dead animals. The young boy would ride his bicycle around the neighborhood, and pick up any road kill he could find. Dahmer would then dissect the deceased animals to observe their internal anatomy. Likewise, he would scrape the flesh off the animals’ bones, and then preserve them to keep as a memento. When Jeffrey was around 14 his fantasies of necrophilia began, this also involved the calamitous period of his parents’ marriage. The psychological stress of the demise of his parents’ marriage really weighed heavily on the young adolescent. It was during the time of puberty where Dahmer discovered his homosexual identity. Jeffrey did not expose his sexuality to his family, but did engage in a relationship with another male during this pubescent

Within the various fields of criminology, the examination of the reasoning behind why individuals commit crime is important in modern debates regarding how crime should be controlled and prevented. Over the years, numerous theories have developed and continue to be explored – both individually and collectively. Some of the most significant theories with regards to the criminal behaviour of Jeffrey Dahmer include: rational choice theory, attachment theory, differential association theory, biosocial theory and social control theory. This assignment will focus solely on social control theory and how it relates to the case of Jeffrey Dahmer.

According to available information, Jeffrey Dahmer led a virtually pretty normal childhood. He was born May 21 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin to his parents’ Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. When he was six years old his brother David Dahmer was born and the family moved to Ohio. During the move Jeffrey became more shy and withdrawn. When he was ten years old his mother was admitted to the hospital for her anxiety. This put a strain on his parents marriage. Also, when he was around 14 or 15 years old, he started to have more thoughts about violence and sex, but “didn't know how to tell anyone about it so he didn't” (Jeffrey Dahmer). Throughout high school, he saw his

Jeffrey Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 to parents Lionel and Joyce Dahmer (Davis, 1998). While living in his birthplace of Wisconsin, Dahmer was described by his father to be “’[v]ery exuberant, he liked to wrestle, liked to run around, ham it up for the camera and he liked to play with kids and get together with them’” (Harris, 1996). As Dahmer entered adolescence, his father earned a Ph.D. in chemistry and the family began to move around Ohio (National Center for Crisis Management, n.d.). After the move, his parents fought often and eventually divorced. During this period, Dahmer became “withdrawn and uncommunicative” (Jeffrey Dahmer, 2017) and

began wondering what their insides might look like? While he continued experimenting with road kill, Jeffrey realized that his fascination with animals went much further than just dissection. On the way home from the bus stop one afternoon, Jeff experienced his first kiss with a young boy. He slowly came to realize that as he dissected animals and enjoyed relationships with men, he would enjoy intercourse and dissection of unconscious men. Jeffrey felt like he could never tell anyone about his feelings or thoughts so he never did. At age 15 he decided that he would ambush a nearby neighbor and knock him out with a baseball bat. When the neighbor never showed up on his evening jog Jeffrey assumed that it was never meant to be. He never pursued that neighbor after that evening.

Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men between the years of 1978 to 1991 in which he participated in necrophilia, dismemberment and cannibalism (Meyer, 2006). As a child, Dahmer was shy and suffered from low self-esteem. At a young age, Dahmer displayed abnormal behavior starting with the collecting of dead animals and using acid to strip off the meat having necrophilia desires. This escalated in his teen years turning into fantasies of killing and mutilating men. After graduating from high school, he was living alone and the feelings of abandonment returned giving him justification in his mind to commit crimes. Throughout his teens years he abused alcohol, which also lead to abnormal behavior. By the