he is one of the most infamous serial killers in modern history Jeffrey Dahmer necrophiliac and cannibal murdered 17 men and boys over the course of 13 years but what was going on in the mind of this monster are killers born evil or do they become evil over time my name is Dr Eric hickey I'm a criminal psychologist by trade and my areas of expertise are homicide sexual crime and psychopathology I worked on the dark side pretty much Dr hickey has an unusual connection to the Dahmer case that no other criminal psychologist has I became involved
with the Dahmer case many years ago I happened to be in his door I saw a man who looked unusual and so I just walked over to him and started talking to him and he said he was from Chicago I said what brings you to California and he said my mom tried to kill herself and I came up to help her I said I know who you are you're Jeffrey Dahmer's brother aren't you so we became friends I met his mother and interviewed her and oh my gosh that has led to so many other things
because of that that moment in the store it led to a whole nother Avenue of Investigation let's start from the beginning Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21 1960 to Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Annette Rocky Dahmer as a child Dahmer was often isolated both of his parents struggled with depression and fought constantly throughout their marriage so Jeffrey had a difficult childhood there was problems in the home between the husband and wife there wasn't a close-knit family he didn't have the attachment that most people have growing up and he felt alone of course one day
he comes home I think when he was 17 his mother was gone she took David the son youngest son and left and that really was traumatizing for him the young Dahmer was painfully shy and withdrawn he also displayed an interest in dead animals dissecting carcasses and collecting chicken bones and bleaching them he stated that this process excited him this is not uncommon with any child that experiences trauma and it's certainly a common trait among many serial killers when we talk about animal abuse setting fires these are results of childhood trauma lack of attachment children can't
express themselves they can't tell you what's really bothering them so they'll often set fires or hurt animals that's their voice this is a cry for help the peace that we never talk about is the fantasies that fuel the fire Dahmer's trauma and fascination with dead animals began to interact with his blossoming sexuality he became obsessed with having control and power it was also around this time that he realized he was gay which made him feel ashamed and Confused he really was very conflicted as well he was lonely conflicted I had lack of attachment all these
things kind of set the groundwork for where he would go very interesting process because it wasn't one day just woke up and sounded like a killer I mean he built into that over the period of several years as you recall in this case he had fantasies about killing a young man over time fantasies become Behavior start of have having obsessive thoughts of violence intermingled with sex and it just got worse and worse I didn't know how to tell anyone about it so I didn't I just kept it all inside he had a desired to be
with someone who had been buried so in perfect terms he had this sexual fantasy about being with someone who was unconscious Merriam-Webster defines paraphilia as a pattern of recurring sexually arousing mental imagery or behavior that involves unusual and especially socially unacceptable sexual practices now there's different kinds of paraphilia right there's the non-criminal paraphilia people get into latex they get into plushies and furries things like that we do know but young men reach the age of 18 and 99 of them have masturbated themselves into Oblivion we know that for a fact okay I'm always being concerned
about that one percent that who didn't what happened to them are they lying what would happen about 10 percent of them American males are involved with different forms of paraphilia four of those 10 men are actually in the criminal paraphilia I mean about half of those then get into the very very violent types of criminal paraphilia in high school Dahmer began drinking heavily to cope with his dark fantasies he was known to play pranks and fake epileptic fits by the time he was 16 he began fantasizing about what it would be like to have sex
with a dead body Jeffrey a lot of fantasies didn't show those fantasies over time fantasies become Behavior so nobody wakes up in the morning as a necrophile it's a process of becoming people get into these fantasies and the fantasies develop we're all sexual beings we all have to find ways to be sexual but there are groups of people in our society who are not comfortable in their own skin they're not comfortable talking to other people now there's a reason why he was more comfortable with dead people because he lacked the skill set to be intimate
in such low self-esteem he was so insecure in his own life that eventually he became more comfortable with people who then could not who would not reject him they were dead it was only a matter of time before Dahmer enacted one of his fantasies in June 1978 three weeks after high school graduation Dahmer picked up hitchhiker Stephen Hicks and brought him back to his father's house the two shared a few drinks but when Hicks tried to leave Dahmer bludgeoned him with a barbell Dahmer proceeded to have sex with the body before dismembering and disposing of
it when Jeffrey killed Stephen Hicks it was I'm sure a great relief for him he finally got to act out his fantasies he already knew how he was going to do it I mean he he had planned out in fantasy at first and so he knew that this was the right time and moment to grab him lure him in and kill him and now he gets to be with the body and finally that was his level of intimacy he gets to be intimate with the body which most of us take for granted there's normal relationships
but now this person is dead they're not going to reject him they're not gonna laugh at him I'm not gonna make him feel insecure he gets to do what he wants to do I think that really is set the stage for later on in his life as he fastized After High School Dahmer joined the army but was discharged in 1981. then Dahmer moved in with his grandmother and worked the graveyard shift at a local Chocolate Company Dahmer wouldn't kill again for almost 10 years how is it possible that someone like him is able to control
his urges did he find other ways to satisfy himself so that's when I went to meet Jeffrey Dahmer's mother that was a really interesting interview that we had and I so I know that Dahmer had been doing something bad during all those years when he hadn't been killing and she said well he he did tell me because at the trial and his trial it didn't come out but I'll tell you now in confidence what he told me and I'm going to quote her she said you know he would go to he would look at young
men who had been killed in a car accident they died of illnesses he'll go to the viewings then he would go to the funerals then he would go to the cemeteries where they were buried and at night he would dig them up have sex with him that was his that was those his words to me that kept him occupied for several years so he kept the fantasies going and they're actually acting out how many he had sex with I don't know she doesn't know she didn't know but certainly the whole fantasy development about being with
someone who've been varied was really really important to him the grave robbing couldn't satisfy his urges for long he even known a mannequin at one point but it wasn't the same thing in 1987 Dahmer's killing career would resume and he would take the lives of 16 additional men and boys often he picked them up at gay bars bath houses and porn shops and take them back to his apartment for a drink he was very low very low profile we just meet people he's very friendly you know invite them to his home sure tomorrow have a
drink then you would spike the drink and they become unconscious in the beginning it wasn't that way the men went to his home they stayed with him for a few days he didn't kill them immediately it's when they said they had to leave that's when he knew he had to kill them because he couldn't allow them to abandon him to reject him many of Dahmer's victims shared a similar profile they were mostly men of color who were in Peak physical condition or in Dahmer's words had a Chippendale body type I think he deliberately selected men
in places that he thought these men would not be missed and there may have been this piece I'm speculating on this they chose men of color because he wasn't a man of color and that way he wouldn't be a suspect because if these men of color were being disappearing they'd be looking for someone else of a man of color who might be doing it and he certainly didn't fit that description once his victim was unconscious Dahmer would strangle them then proceed to have sex with a body but because Dahmer engaged in these activities within the
confines of his apartment he had the freedom to explore other sexual desires as well he would dismember the bodies sleep next to the corpses and cut holes in the Torso to use it for sex he decapitated and castrated his victims would clean the flesh off their bones and collect the skulls he drilled holes into his victims heads in an attempt to turn them into zombies so a great question is how does a person desensitize themselves to the point where they can actually kill people have sex after they're dead why would somebody want to do this
well their need is so great to be with somebody even if they're dead at least it is a form of intimacy yeah I think about that's a pretty dark place to be in your life but people are there there are people who do this and I've interviewed them in a huge escalation of his behavior he also began to eat the Flesh of his victims so there's different forms of cannibalism and some is not sexual we know there's been Indian tribes and so forth they have eaten their victims but it wasn't sexualized we know in some
cases as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer he was a secret component to it that now there is The Blood Part where he sampled the blood so blood itself is a type of paraphilia I'm sure he tasted it and from there it was very easy to then taste the flesh and of course you know terrible thing to say but tastes like chicken I mean it it was something that they explored and so when he realized it didn't taste bad then he kept advancing in that and doing more of that so Jeffrey ate penises I mean
he he ate internal organs and he was in some ways I guess socializing if you will he was blowing their bodies and he had some favorite victims people he he preferred physically they were becoming part of him he drank their blood they were part of him and now he eats their flesh it was all part of this I need to feel powerful I need to feel I'm normal all of this was working towards one grandiose plan that Jeffrey Dahmer had in his mind a fantasy that would Eclipse everything before it so this drawing by Jeffrey
Dahmer details his fantasies this end of the table he had one fully articulated Skeleton on the other end another one was in the bathroom but that he was still taking the flesh off the bones and then all these heads on this table behind him he says I can sit in this black chair surrounded by my friend my best friends and they could never leave me because they were physically part of me and emotionally they were part of me he said when I could sit in that chair he said I would finally feel powerful those are
his words I would feel powerful but the truth is you never feel comfortable in your own skin multiple times victims Connor synthism phone even escaped at first and was found by police in the middle of the night however Dahmer managed to convince officers that they were lovers and the police let Dahmer go he had practice and the more practice he did the easier it became and there was no turning back there was escalation absolutely which would eventually he knew he knew intellectually that an end was coming absolutely he knew just before midnight on July 22
1991 a would-be victim of dalmers Tracy Edwards escaped from Dahmer's apartment where he had been captive with handcuffs dangling from one arm he alerted police who accompanied him back to Dahmer's apartment when they went to his house we had body parts clicking on the stove I mean all kinds of he had them body parts and drawers and then you can imagine the stench going to that apartment you can imagine the two police officers who walked into that apartment and realized that Jeffrey was standing behind them and they were looking at these body parts I would
love to have interviewed them what they must have thought wait a minute look at all these heads and the guys behind us but Jeffrey knew it was over he could have killed them but he wasn't he had he knew them was coming when the police arrived he knew he was going to give it up there was no struggle from him at all yeah I he got me Dr hickey recalls the first thing Jeffrey Dahmer's mother told him when they met and the first thing she said she said my son never tried to hurt anybody he
killed them but he never tried to hurt them which was absolutely true every necrophile I've ever interviewed or research and none of them ever try to hurt the victims they just kill them I'd say 95 are not a sadistic because they want the corpse to be with the corpse I interviewed a guy um Larry Hall Larry Hall was a convicted serial killer who confessed to the murders of 35 women and young girls and Larry was a necrophilic killer I said so Larry when you had the victims down on the ground and you're strangling from behind
did you ever look to see their faces or when you had them up against a tree in the woods in your strangling them did you ever look at their faces he says no why would I do that because he wasn't interested in their suffering he just needed him to be dead so Jeffrey Dahmer never intended to hurt his victims ever if you look at some of his interviews he talked about how pathetic his life was what a waste his life was there was no sadism what he wanted was to be with somebody and so killing
them was the process of getting to be with somebody soon after his arrest Namor confessed to the murders the case went to trial in early 1992 where a parade of psychiatrists took the stand in Dahmer's case diagnosing him with paraphilia borderline personality schizotypal disorder and sexual sadism but was Jeffrey Dahmer a psychopath Jeffrey Dahmer was definitely not a psychopath not even not even close because every necrophile I've interviewed or researched none of them are true Psychopaths so Jeffrey was a sociopath and the difference there's quite a big distinction and I train law enforcement to understand
these distinctions a true psychopath is someone usually who's very statistic they have no empathy they they manipulate they control people and certainly we see some of that with sociopaths but sociopaths are very emotional they still love their moms they still have emotional attachments so is it possible then that Jeffrey Dahmer felt guilty for the crimes he had committed Jeffrey never felt badly specifically for the victims I think he recognized that there was a a dead zone within himself I think most men I can't speak for women have a place where we can go where we
don't feel badly about anything we we can go there but most of us don't go there because it's pretty scary to know you can look at someone suffering and you don't feel badly about it you know Jeffrey had this dark spot in him which grew and grew and grew and that's where he lived his life was in this dark dark Zone on a personal note I mean I I call that evil I think Jeffrey became a very evil person was he a bad person it's complex on November 28 1994 Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by another
inmate at the Wisconsin prison where he was serving his life sentences when I met with his mom eventually she told me that if he finally said to her on a phone call he said I I don't want to be in prison anymore but I also know I'm too dangerous to be on the streets because he knew if he was back on the streets he'd probably do it again and what maybe three weeks later he was dead and I I think that when he was attacked it was probably a relief for him drama was a big
guy he could handle himself the man who attacked him actually killed Dahmer and another man at the same time he had I think he had a lead pipe Dahmer could have fought back but he didn't I'm sure he did not fight back he wanted to die and this was his way out I think had he not been killed that he would eventually take it his own life absolutely he would have killed himself as he said in his own words my life was pathetic I think he wanted and that pathetic life recognizing all the harm he
had done to his family to the community to our to our nation I mean he was just so overwhelming for him I think that he just knew that what's the point of being alive I I think he got past fantasizing about killing people so when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer was he born a killer or made one so when we're talking about Jeffrey Dahmer we have to talk about nature versus nurture nature and nurture I think that in his case there was some you know chemical depression and the family I think could probably inherited some
of that his father was depressed his mom was depressed and I think that helped set the stage for the lack of attachment now keep in mind we're all different so we don't all cope with stressors the same way some people handle stress better than others and when we talk about biology and genetics we have to realize that you inherit things genetically right here temperament schizophrenia craps you know pass out of families you have to have the nurturing part this nature kind of loads the gun and nurturing pulls a trigger so I think as we go
down that pathway we have to understand it's not just one quick simple answer it is complex and all the psychiatrists who studied his case would agree that there was multiple things that were involved so was there anything that could have been done to prevent this very needy person and he didn't know how to express himself very well I mean it's very sad in some ways because a lot of this could have been avoided had there been early intervention but he didn't have people to turn to and he didn't know how to do it and by
the time he should have could have he was already deep into his fantasy world parenting is so important most people who have troubles like that don't become murderers he really made some choices it wasn't like he was mentally ill you know exactly what he was doing he just allowed himself to go down that pathway because his need to be with people was so great there's a lot of things along the way but but he made his own decisions as he crossed those lines he got to a point where there was no return he could never
go back and he became much more comfortable with the idea being people who are dead and that of course was a game changer for him and for and for our nation it is over now this has never been a case of trying to get free I didn't ever want freedom frankly I wanted death for myself [Music]
