in

Spiral into Darkness: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story (Part 2)

Jeffrey Dahmer's school picture from A&E Biography, "Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within (1996)."

Last week, I looked into Jeffrey Dahmer’s crimes and talked about his victims. This week, I look into his background to answer the question of who would commit such horrific acts?

“Jeffy”

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, at Evangelical Deaconess Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. By all accounts, his parents were incompatible opposites. Jeffrey’s father, Lionel, is described as a reserved, scientifically-minded person. At the time Jeffrey was born, Lionel was pursuing a bachelor’s degree in chemistry at Marquette University. Jeffrey’s mother, Joyce (née Flint) Dahmer, aka “Rocky,” is described as a more emotional, sensitive person. She worked as a telephone operator and became a teletype machine instructor.

The Dahmers’ opposing dispositions led to many arguments. In his book, The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, author Brian Masters gives an example of how the Dahmers interacted. On a freezing Milwaukee winter night, Joyce stormed out of the house during an argument. She walked out onto the snow-covered ground with no boots on and froze in a local park until Lionel found her and took her home. [1] 

Masters writes that Joyce said she felt helpless and lonely as a child. She realized later on that her father was distant because of his alcoholism. Later on, Jeffrey would be described as being distant himself as well as being an alcoholic. [2]

During her pregnancy, Joyce experienced attacks during which her muscles would tighten up and her doctor would have to give her an injection to get her to relax. She also was sick in bed for two months straight. [3]

After Jeffrey’s birth, Joyce stopped breastfeeding. It made her irritable and nervous. When she refused to breastfeed anymore, she and Lionel argued. She stormed out of the house in her nightgown. Lionel found her lying in a grassy field. Masters writes “…thousands of mothers in the Western World decline to feed their offspring at the breast, and one ought not to give the event greater weight than it deserves, but it may be instructive to imagine the effect upon the child of such a sudden withdrawal of sustaining contact. Some children will take it in their stride and be comforted by the bottle. Others may feel the abrupt change in their tactile world as a kind of rejection or distance, which they are, obviously, too young to interpret.” [4]

Jeffrey began talking when he was two years old. He referred to himself as “Jeffy” and could hold up two fingers to indicate his age. Jeffrey suffered from physical complications beginning at age four. Doctors determined that he would need to get a double hernia operation. Jeffrey talked about this with Dr. Judith Becker, who was one of many mental health professionals who examined him for his insanity defense. He told her that he remembers the extreme pain and that he thought his genitals had been cut off. Masters points out that nothing is mentioned about how his ordeal was explained to him or if anything was said at all. Masters says that all Joyce wrote in her diary that Jeff was well behaved in the hospital but that he “…really disliked the doctor after his ordeal.” [5]

Jeffrey developed a fascination with animals and anatomy at a very young age. Unlike many children who grow up to be violent, Jeffrey never abused or tortured animals. He had pets as a child including a kitten named Buffy and a dog named Frisky. Frisky would be Jeffrey’s companion from age eight until adulthood. When Jeffrey was little, Lionel found some bones in the crawl space under their house. Jeffrey was fascinated by the bones, which he called his “fiddlesticks,” and played with them often. He indulged his fascination with anatomy with roadkill—animals that were already dead.

At school, Jeffrey was described as shy and had difficulty making friends. While he was introverted, he did have some friends. At home, Joyce had increased her medication and her dependence on it gradually increased as Jeffrey got older. She spent most of her time in bed. When he got home from school, she was just getting up.

A black and white photo of a man and woman. The woman holds a baby.
Lionel and Joyce Dahmer pose with their son Jeffrey. Photo: Screencap from A&E Biography, “Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within (1996).”

In his book, Dahmer Detective, Detective Patrick Kennedy recalls Jeffrey talking about his childhood. “I remember my early childhood as being one of extreme tension. I never really felt at ease or comfortable. It wasn’t that my mom and dad didn’t love me, I know that they did, they told me so. They took care of the house and showed me love, but it was never peaceful. I could feel it. My mom and dad were always at each other’s throats. They fought all the time, not physical fighting, although there was some pushing and shoving that went on. It was mostly a lot of arguing and screaming.” [6]

Jeffrey added that whenever his parents fought he would go into his fantasy world to escape it. He said that his mother was never abusive toward him. He eventually found out that his mother had been treated for mental illness. Jeffrey overheard a conversation between relatives and found out that his mother had to be hospitalized for postpartum depression after he was born. Dahmer said that he felt like his mother’s illness was his fault. [7] 

The family settled in Ohio in 1966 when Lionel earned a position as a research chemist at Pittsburgh Plate and Glass Company. His parents gave him Frisky the dog to fill the space left by Buffy the kitten, who was given away when they decided to move. Joyce became pregnant again. Far from jealous, Jeffrey enjoyed listening to his mother’s stomach. His parents even allowed him to name the baby and he chose the name, David. [8]

During a Sunday family drive, Joyce and Lionel found the now-infamous home at 4480 Bath Road in Bath, Ohio. The Dahmers built a permanent home in rural Bath. Jeffrey enthusiastically helped Lionel raise chickens, ducks, sheep, and rabbits. Jeffrey made a friend in the neighbor’s son, Steven Lehr, who was a year younger than him. The two rode their sleds together in winter and Jeffrey covered his friend’s paper route when the Lehrs went on vacation.  [9]

In junior high school, Jeffrey played clarinet in the school band and had a group of boys he hung out with at lunchtime. Masters writes that Jeffrey “…was regarded by the others as slightly odd, ‘a smart kid, but really bizarre,’ or  simply ‘nice, quiet, reserved.’ ” Jeffrey recalled, “I was never one to go out and voluntarily play football and baseball or anything like that.” [10] 

Jeffrey found some common ground with a boy named David Borsvold. The two boys shared an interest in geology and dinosaurs. They put together projects for the school science fair on dinosaurs, and about different types of molds and fungus they found in the wooded areas surrounding the Dahmers’ family home. [11] By all accounts, Jeffrey was smart but his grades at school were always poor. Even after his parents hired a tutor, his grades never improved.

When he was nine years old, Jeffrey invented a game that he called “Infinity Land” that he would play with his friend, David. The pieces were stick people and moved along a spiral that descended into a black hole. If the stick people got too close to each other, they would be annihilated. Masters writes “…and with hindsight it is possible to discern signs of which he was entirely unaware. The stick men were fleshless; they were not conceived with the full contours of people, but with the bare essence of bone. Their danger lay in closeness; any contact resulted in oblivion, suggesting that intimacy was the ultimate disaster and the severest risk. The oblivion was represented by the black hole of infinity, an abject, featureless, hopeless nothingness, which, perhaps, the infant already saw when he gazed into himself. Or perhaps he saw it as the danger facing anyone who got near him.” [12] 

Jeffrey told Kennedy and Murphy that he continued experimenting with roadkill until he was 14 years old. He said that when his parents argued, he would go out and wander the quiet roads in rural Ohio. When he saw dead animals lying at the roadside, he wondered what they looked like inside. He began bringing them home, dissecting them, and examining the insides. He went from dissecting to wanting to preserve their bones. [13] 

Lionel was pleased when his 10-year-old son asked him how to preserve animal bones. He saw Jeffrey’s interest as the curiosity of a budding scientist. Perhaps he thought that his son would follow in his footsteps. Lionel gladly showed Jeffrey how to preserve the bones. As Jeffrey recalls defleshing a dead beagle that he found, it’s like a foreshadowing of events to come. He defleshed the already dead dog, cleaned all the bones, and reassembled the dog. [14]

A little boy hugs a black and white puppy.
Jeffrey Dahmer with his dog, Frisky. Unlike most serial killers, Jeffrey never harmed animals. He dissected roadkill. Frisky was Jeffrey’s pet until adulthood. Photo: Screencap from A&E Biography, “Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within (1996).

Jeffrey told the detectives, “I think this early interest was the beginning of my obsession. The mixing of my sexual interests and the cutting-up of dead animals slowly merged. I don’t remember being sexually stimulated as a kid when I was engaged in this behavior, but I do know that it gave me great pleasure and that it consumed a lot of my time and thoughts. At any rate, the two thoughts became one and I couldn’t think about sex with a man without also having thoughts of cutting open his human body and examining insides.” [15] 

As far as Jeff’s background is concerned, Joyce described a lonely childhood much like her son. Her father was a distant alcoholic. Joyce medicated with prescription drugs, not alcohol, and was distant from Jeffrey. She’s described as spending most of her time in bed.  At one point, Joyce spent a month in a mental institution. 

Lionel was her polar opposite—distant and reserved.  He was a workaholic who spent little time at home. When he was home, he and his wife argued constantly. He sounds as if he was at a loss as to how to deal with an emotionally demanding wife.

Lionel admitted in a 1994 interview with reporter Stone Phillips that, like Jeffrey, he was shy when he was young. He said that with shyness comes a lack of control and a sense of inferiority. Lionel told Phillips that he was obsessed with fire. He burned down his neighbor’s garage while trying to start a small fire. He said he also was bullied. After being confronted by bullies, he had these bizarre experiences where he would wake up with a feeling that he had hurt or killed someone.

He repressed his emotions while Joyce expressed hers. Perhaps throwing himself into his work was his way of coping with the situation.

Jeffrey described feeling guilty about causing his mother’s condition. It seemed that his parents were consumed with their problems with each other. He admitted that he retreated into himself when they argued. His interest in pursuing science instead of sports made him an outsider among other boys. Even those who accepted him thought that he was bizarre. Feeling like an outcast at school plus receiving little attention at homemade Jeffrey a perpetual outsider looking in.

David Dahmer, Jeffrey’s younger brother, agreed that the atmosphere in their house was tense. He said that their parents’ animosity was directed toward each other and not him or Jeffrey. Masters quotes David as saying, “Jeff never learned to be open with his feelings of frustration…he went out to the forest by himself and cut down trees for firewood. They could hear him slamming against tree trunks from inside the house. It sounded like vented anger (and would be so interpreted by one of the psychiatrists at Dahmer’s trial), but it was more likely the solace of utter isolation. Jeffrey quite simply felt he did not belong and that if he were to belong he would only do harm.” [16]

David did not grow up to be a serial killer. When Shari, who would become Jeffrey’s stepmother, met the brothers she noted the difference between them. Masters writes, “Shari had been struck by the wide disparity in personality between the brothers—while David was ‘charismatic’ and ‘extrovert,’ Jeffrey was locked up, introverted, extremely polite and extremely quiet. ‘My heart went out to him,’ she said.” [17]

At age 13, Jeffrey had his first sexual encounter with a boy. Eric Tyson was three years younger than Jeffrey but the two spent time together fishing, hiking, and building a treehouse. Eric suggested that the two kiss and undress. Jeffrey went along with the plan. The two met on a few more occasions but stopped because they were afraid of getting caught. [18]

Kennedy quoted Jeffrey’s thoughts on his sexuality, “I knew from my earliest sexual awakenings that I was gay. I was always attracted to men and never really questioned why. I just accepted the fact that I liked men and not women. I was raised Lutheran and I knew the faith frowned on homosexuals. I could see that openly gay people could have a tough time of it, so I decided to keep this my little secret.” [19]

A face shot of a blonde teenage boy wearing glasses.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s high school photo. Classmates recalled that he showed up drunk every day and made a spectacle of himself. Photo: Screencap from A&E Biography, “Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within (1996).”

Strange Times at Revere High 

From Eastview Junior High, Jeffrey entered Revere High School. He traded clarinet and science fairs for alcohol and went from being introverted to being the class clown.

According to Masters, David Dahmer recalled that Jeffrey began drinking at age 14. [20] Classmate, Marty Schmidt, recalled in an interview with A&E Biography that she saw him in class at 8:00 a.m. with a Styrofoam cup of scotch. When she asked him what it was, he said “It’s my medicine.” 

Former classmate, Mike Kukrel, told A&E Biography that Jeffrey was always polite and well-dressed. He also said that he was smart and could’ve gotten better grades if he applied himself.  

Schmidt told an anecdote about a class trip to Washington, D.C. Jeffrey got a group of his classmates into the White House for a private tour of then-Vice President Walter Mondale’s office whom they also met. Graphic novelist, John “Derf” Backderf, recalled the event in his book, My Friend Dahmer. No one was sure how he did it. He just made a couple of calls from a payphone and got them in.

As a result of his alcohol consumption, he gained a lot of weight. Jeffrey began to engage in odd behavior in class. He would often bleat like a sheep, fake seizures, and purposely knock things over. He got the attention of Backderf and his friends who formed the Dahmer Fan Club.

Backderf told the Ackron-Summit Library in a 2012 interview that he knew Jeffrey from seventh grade to high school graduation. Backderf said that for a while he and his friends thought Jeffrey was funny and entertaining. As Jeffrey’s behavior became “darker and darker,” and his drinking got out of control, he and his friends pushed him away.

In a 2018 interview with The Independent, Backderf recalls that he and his friends, “…were bored stiff…and just looking to get through the day, and Jeff was entertainment. He was a little bit dangerous, he was a little bit unpredictable, and that was fun for us.” Backderf also said, “There was always a darkness about him that was really kind of repellent.” He made sure that he was never alone with Jeffrey. Hearing about the death of 19-year-old Steven Hicks understandably gave Backderf chills—especially because it took place around the time that he knew Jeffrey. He certainly doesn’t regret or feel guilty about pushing Jeffrey away. Backderf questions why the adults in Jeffrey’s life didn’t do more to help him.

At age 16, Jeffrey made a new friend in Jeff Six. The two met every day to smoke weed and drink.[21] Jeffrey also took notice of a man who jogged past his parents’ house every day. He knew he couldn’t just approach him. He concluded that he would have to render the man unconscious to be able to do what he wanted to do with him. One morning, he decided to wait for the jogger to pass—armed with a baseball bat. He planned to knock the jogger unconscious and drag him into the wooded area surrounding his family home. Lucky for the jogger, he decided not to pass that day. [22]

Jeffrey turned 18 in 1978. That year was his senior year at Revere High School. Joyce and Lionel decided to divorce that year as well. Masters says that Jeffrey also was caught drinking at school that year. The teacher, referred to as Mr. Smesko, caught him with a 12-pack of beer near the school parking lot. Smesko said he was going to report him. Jeffrey told him that he was having problems at home and that Mr. Kungle, the school guidance counselor, was aware of it. [23]

Alcohol abuse, poor grades, and bizarre behavior—all of this was attributed to the Dahmers’ parents’ marital problems. Jeffrey told Stone Phillips that his dark sexual fantasies began at approximately age 14 or 15, culminating in the jogger incident—his first attempt at assault and victimizing someone. This confirms that 1978 marked three to four years of Jeffrey obsessing about sex with violence.

In an interview for Jeffrey Dahmer: Killer Cannibal, on Reelz, psychologist Dr. Fred Berlin said, “Dahmer was a serious alcoholic and he was an alcoholic at a very young age. When you see someone who’s got a drug or alcohol problem at a very young age it certainly suggests that something must be troubling them and drinking is likely occurring in relationship to that.” [24]

A shelf in a store filled with bottles of various types of alcohol.
Jeffrey began drinking at age 14. His alcoholism would progress until his adulthood. Photo: Screencap from A&E Biography, “Jeffrey Dahmer: The Monster Within (1996).”

Dr. Berlin stresses that Jeffrey’s main issue with himself wasn’t that he was gay but that he wanted a lifeless partner. He poses the question to imagine how it would feel for someone to realize that they wanted to have sex with the dead.

A mother with mental illness, a workaholic father, no social connections, repressed homosexuality, and—last, but not least—fantasizing about needing a partner unconscious or dead to have sex with them. All of this was spinning around in the mind of an adolescent boy with no one to turn to.

Jeffrey admitted that the intolerance he witnessed in society plus his father’s devout Christian beliefs, prevented him from being open about his sexuality. His class-clown act was a defense mechanism. Psychologist, Dr. Sherry Ginn, told Reelz that, “Instead of having people laugh at him because they might have thought that he was odd or he was weird, he makes them laugh at him on his own terms.” [25] Alcohol enabled him to play the part and dull everything else that was going on inside of his head and around him. Jeffrey’s inability to establish relationships with others probably further cement this need for an unconscious, zombie-like or dead partner.

In 1978, Jeffrey managed to get a date for Revere High School’s senior prom with 16-year-old Bridget Geiger. His classmates, Mike Costlow and Lynn Soquel set up the date. Bridget didn’t know Jeffrey well but was aware of his odd reputation as both a class clown and a heavy drinker. Bridget would agree to go with him if he agreed to stay sober. [26] 

Masters writes that Jeffrey was so nervous that night that he wasn’t able to pin Bridget’s corsage on her dress—her mother had to do it. They went to a restaurant before heading to the prom. Bridget had a 1:00 a.m. curfew but would be home by 11:00 p.m. Socially awkward, and with his mind filled with the darkest fantasies, Jeffrey’s night at the senior prom was a disaster. [27]

Shortly after they arrived at the prom, Jeffrey disappeared. He came back as Bridget began to look for a ride home. He said that he was still hungry,  went out to look for a McDonald’s, and got lost (The prom wasn’t held at the high school but in Akron, Ohio). They realized that Jeffrey had been drinking. The group left the prom and went to a bar in Bath before heading home. Jeffrey gave Bridget a handshake good night. [28] 

Jeffrey saw Bridget, Mike, and Lynn one last time. He invited them to a séance at his parents’ house. Lionel came home early and broke up the party. Lionel disapproved of Jeffrey’s friends. On another occasion, Lionel contacted police and reported that jewelry, estimated at $1,000, was stolen from the house. Jeffrey’s friend, Jeff Six, was at the house that day. After the alleged theft, Lionel told Jeffrey that his friends were not allowed in the house anymore. One night, when Mike and Jeff Six went to the house to see him, Lionel answered the door and told them not to come back. [29]

The family had a small gathering for Jeffrey’s graduation. Lionel and Joyce’s divorce was pending and drained most of Lionel’s finances. Jeffrey’s grandparents offered to pay for college if he improved his grades. It was decided that he would enroll at Ohio State University and begin courses in September. Jeffrey didn’t seem very enthusiastic. [30] 

In August 1978, Joyce and Lionel’s divorce became final. She filed a restraining order against Lionel and he moved to a nearby motel. Joyce left to stay with her parents in Wisconsin and took David with her. Jeffrey was alone in the house. He just turned 18, had no money or food but plenty of alcohol. [31] 

In September, Lionel eventually returned to the house with his girlfriend, Shari Jordan. They found that the house was a mess and Jeffrey was disoriented. He had committed his first murder in June. [32]

With no one in the house, Jeffrey was left alone with his violent sexual fantasies. When he encountered 19-year-old Steven Hicks hitchhiking along the road. His fantasy had finally materialized into reality.

His downward spiral continued. In part three, I look into what happened after that first murder in 1978 until he hit rock bottom with his arrest in 1991.

Works Cited 

[1] Masters, Brian. (1993). The Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer. Hodder and Stoughton. Great Britain, p. 1-3, p. 24

[2] Masters, p. 25

[3] Masters, p. 26

[4] Masters, p. 27

[5] Masters, p. 30

[6]  Kennedy, Patrick, Maharaj, Robyn. (2016). Dahmer Detective: The Interrogation and Investigation that Shocked the World. Poison Berry Press. Canada, p. 81

[7] Kennedy, Maharaj, p. 81-82

[8] Masters, p. 33-37

[9] Masters, p. 37

[10] Masters, p. 37

[11] Masters, p. 37-38

[12] Masters, p. 38

[13] Kennedy, Maharaj, p.83

[14] Kennedy, Maharaj, p.83

[15] Kennedy, Maharaj p. 84

[16] Masters, p. 40

[17] Masters, p. 62-63

[18] Masters, page 44

[19] Kennedy, Maharaj, page 83

[20] Masters, p. 44

[21] Masters, p. 48

[22] Masters, p. 51-52

[23] Masters, p. 57-58

[24] Adams, Ashley.  (Director). (2019, May 19). Jeffrey Dahmer: Killer Cannibal [Television broadcast].

[24] Adams, Ashley.  (Director). (2019, May 19). Jeffrey Dahmer: Killer Cannibal [Television broadcast].

[26] Masters, page 58

[27] Masters, p. 59

[28] Masters, p. 59

[29] Masters, p. 60

[30] Masters, p. 61

[31] Masters, p. 61-62

[32] Masters, p. 63

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Written by MD Bastek

Just a person who loves horror and writes about unusual things

A skeleton lies curled up on a sandy ground.

Field of Cadavers: How Body Farms Offer Valuable Insight

Fear Street Part Three: 1666 Is the Best Film in the Trilogy