The Dahmer Book

by Steven David Lampley

  On December 18, 1966, Joyce gave birth to their second child, a son. Lionel and Joyce allowed Jeff to name his brother and he chose the name of David. In later childhood, Jeff would let it be known that his younger brother would get on his nerves because David was outgoing and personable.

  Jeff began attending Hazel Harvey Elementary School and, after Jeff began the first grade, Joyce was known to spend large amounts of time in bed. While at elementary school, an elementary school teacher, seeing Jeff's withdrawal and feelings of being neglected, tried to get Jeff to have some interaction with the other students and it was met with minimal success.

  The family then moved into another home where Jeff formed a friendship with another child, Lee.

  Jeff's Home at 4480 West Bath Road

  (Map Provided Compliments of OpenStreetMap)

  At his new school Jeff had one teacher he particularly liked and took her a bowl of tadpoles he collected. Not too long after, Jeff noticed that the tadpoles were missing from the classroom and, when he asked, his teacher stated that she had given the tadpoles to, Lee, Jeff's friend. Angered that she had given the tadpoles to Lee, Jeff went to Lee's house and poured motor oil into the bowl, killing them.

  In 1968 the family moved to 4480 West Bath Road in Bath, Ohio, in an older contemporary styled home that was constructed in the early 1950s situated on a little over an acre and half of partially treed land, and this would serve as their residence for many years to come. The move forced Jeff to leave any elementary school friends that he had, behind. Jeff began attending Bath Elementary School.

  [SIDE NOTE: There is some dispute regarding whether or not Jeff was abused by a neighbor when Jeff was eight years old.]

  The Bath, Ohio, residence was where, in 1970, during dinner one night over a meal of chicken, Jeff spoke up and asked his dad what would the effect be should chicken bones be soaked in bleach. Lionel became encouraged as his son was expressing an interest in science! To help foster Jeff's interest, Lionel took Jeff and showed him how to bleach bones. Jeff received a chemistry set by his parents as a gift and Jeff used this chemistry set to experiment with insects and animals.

  Some of his new friends would later recount that Jeff was interested in the organs and inner workings of animals.

  By age ten, Jeff would begin collecting road kill and bleaching the bones of chickens. He learned how to use acid to remove the muscle from the bones of these dead animals. At age ten, those close to Jeff noticed a rigid nature to him. He was becoming less laid-back and even more stoic, withdrawn, and tense. This increase in rigidity continued through his fifteenth year, but along with this rigidity came an increase in Jeff's shyness. Because of this shyness, Jeff would often just stay in his room or watch television.

  Around the age of twelve, Jeff became employed at a local nursery and he seemingly loved his new job. The nursery manager stated that Jeff was always very helpful and excited to be working there, but Jeff did not work there long.

  When Jeff was approximately fourteen years old he had a homosexual experience with a boy who lived across the street. The two undressed and performed body rubbing and kissed.

  HIGH SCHOOL AND HOME STRESS

  “I think in some way I wanted it to end, even if

  it meant my own destruction.'

  Jeff Dahmer

  There was a great deal of tension in the Dahmer household due to the arguing between his mom and dad. (In a probation hearing in 1987, Jeff was asked what he would change in his childhood if he could and her replied that he would change that his parents did not get along together.)

  Jeff described his parents as constantly being at each other’s throats and his mother having some psychological problems and, at some point, suffered a mental breakdown in his early childhood. It was not a happy home life and he was feeling the effects.

  Things continued pretty status-quo for a while.

  Jeff became a freshman at Revere High School in 1974 and it was at this time he stated he began to masturbate two to three times per day and began drinking. Jeff believed that if he drank better than the others, they would like him.

  [In 1976, Jeff and his family took a trip to Puerto Rico and that was the first time Jeff had ever tasted rum. Not much else is known about this trip.]

  If Jeff was attempting to get people to like him, his antics at school seemed to push more away from him that befriend them. During photos for the annual, Jeff went to the photo session for the National Honor Society and managed to work his way into the session and have his photo included in the group! Someone caught it, however, and before the annual was printed, had his face blocked out. He liked to play jokes on people. In fact, Jeff was so well known for his impetuous actions that whenever someone would do something silly or funny it was deemed “Doing a Dahmer” by the other students. Known as the class clown, two of Jeff's frequent jocose acts were to make chalk outlines of human figures on the school floors and act as if he was having seizures. He seemed to like the laughs and the attention. It was during a class trip in 1977 to Washington, D.C., that Jeff made a telephone call to Vice-President Walter Mondale's Office in the White House, but the VP was not there that day. Despite needing attention, Jeff never allowed anyone to get close to him and rarely talked about himself.

  While Jeff was renowned for his antics, he was also known as being intelligent and polite in school but Jeff preferred to try to make people believe he was less intelligent than he was because he thought people would like him more. Quite intelligent, Jeff's grades ran the gambit and he had 'As' as well as 'Fs.' His parents hired a tutor to try to help Jeff bring his grades up, but the attempt was unsuccessful.

  Jeff had a very low self-esteem and would have bouts with self-denigration. He had no plan for his life or goals and was an underachiever as he would later admit.

  In high school, he participated in the band, playing the clarinet his freshman year, and was on the staff of the school newspaper (The Lantern) in his eleventh year, and played on the tennis team during the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth grades.

  Jeff became aware that he was homosexual around the age of fifteen or sixteen. Jeff did not let this be known as, he would state later, being a homosexual in his town was a major detriment and not accepted.

  Despite his reputation, Jeff did have a small circle of friends although none of which were really close and no one with whom he would regularly hang out. Friends, yes, girlfriends, no. Jeff never dated in high school and he only had a date to the prom because a friend of hers who was dating a friend of Jeff's asked her to go with him. His date later recounted that Jeff didn't actually ask her until the day before the prom and she accepted because neither she nor Jeff were popular and if she didn't accept, she would not be going to the prom. Jeff's date wore a baby blue dress and he wore a brown suit. While at the prom Jeff left the building for about an hour, telling his date that he needed to get something to eat. She was not happy. After the prom was over, he and his prom date ended up at Little Joe's Pub to talk and drink a soda. Jeff did not kiss his date when they parted for the night.

  Jeff always had an interest in animals and this interest grew in high school. He would often collect roadside kill and then dismember the animals in the wooded area to the rear of his house in order to se how they worked and what they looked like inside. Jeff also began to experiment with different household liquids to see which ones cleaned the bones better. Sometimes, Jeff would be accompanied by a friend as he collected the dead animals. According to Jeff, he never tortured or killed animals and only dismembered those he found already dead. Occasionally, as he was cutting open the roadkill animals, Jeff would often fantasize what it would be like to cut open a human.

  On one occasion, however, Jeff did find an Irish Setter and was going to kill it and dismember it, but the dog looked up at him in his eyes and Jeff

  Jeff’s Senior Class Photo

  (Wiki Public Domain)

  could not bring himself to kill the canine and let it go. On another occasion, Jeff
found a large dog on the roadside that had been killed and took it home with him. As with the other roadkill, Jeff cut it open to look inside. He then completely cleaned the skeleton and was going to reconstruct the bones and mount the skeleton as a display, but he never did so.

  On one of his road kill excursions, he found a dog and took it back to his house, cut it open, removed the viscera and hung it in the woods east of his home. The same wooded area where a girl had committed suicide in 1977.

  It was in his Junior or Senior year that Jeff remembered beginning to have thoughts of killing people. Perhaps these thoughts led to his increased alcohol consumption and occasionally, he would go to a classmate's home and secretly drink the liquor he would find there.

  At one point, Jeff was seen bringing alcohol to school and when approached by one of his classmates, he simply responded that the alcohol was his medicine. Jeff would keep liquor, usually Scotch, in his school locker and drink during the school day. He would frequently go to his friends' homes and get into their liquor cabinet and drink what he could find there.

  Despite becoming an alcoholic, Jeff hid his feelings very well. He never showed anger and was mild-mannered.

  Just a few weeks prior to his graduation from high school, a teacher saw Jeff sitting in close proximity to the Revere High School parking lot with several cans of beer with him. When the teacher threatened to turn him in, Jeff asked her not to and explained that he was having a lot of problems at home and he had already talked to the RHS counselor about them

  During Jeff's senior year, his parents went to a marriage counselor to attempt to salvage their marriage, but these efforts were unsuccessful and Lionel filed for divorce citing extreme cruelty and gross neglect against Joyce.

  The divorce was particularly nasty and caused a lot of stress on the family, especially on Jeff who adamantly wanted his parent to stay together.

  Jeff was very embarrassed and bothered by his parents divorcing and tried to keep the divorce a secret.

  It was during this time that Jeff developed strong feeling of being left alone and strong desires of not wanting people to leave him.

  Jeff began developing fantasies of murdering people around age eighteen and he stated these feelings were due to the frustration and the loneliness of being left alone. His fantasies of murder increased after he moved to Milwaukee in 1981.

  AFTER HIGH SCHOOL

  “I have always had the sense it was wrong. I don't

  think anybody can kill somebody and think that it's right.”

  Jeff Dahmer

  In early 1978, Lionel moved into a hotel close by and Joyce, soon after, took David, twelve years old at the time and in full custody of his mom, and moved, claiming she wanted to go “find herself,” to Chippewa Falls, instructing Jeff not to tell his father where they moved. (Custody of David was awarded to Joyce after an intense custody battle.) Since Jeff was now eighteen years of age, he was not under the court order for custody by his parents. Jeff graduated from high school and now had the house by all by himself.

  Hicks...

  It was late afternoon on Sunday, June 18, 1978, two weeks after his graduation, and Jeff was driving the four-door, blue car his father Lionel had left behind, southbound on Cleveland-Massillion Road and was across from the firehouse when he observed a shirtless white male teenager hitchhiking. Liking what he saw, he stopped to offer the teen a ride to go back to Jeff's house to drink some beer. That teenager was Steven Mark Hicks, a recent graduate of Coventry High School in Akron, Ohio. Steven was a slender male approximately six feet in height, approximately 150 pounds, with straight, shoulder length, light brown hair. He was clean shaven, wearing blue jeans and shoes with a necklace with a dental retainer hanging around his neck.

  Hicks, on his way to a concert at Lockwood Corners, was receptive to Jeff's offer and got into the car for the trip to the house to enjoy the beer before continuing his journey to the concert. Jeff made a U-turn and headed back to his house. Upon arrival, the two exited the car and Jeff led Hick's to his bedroom where they drank beer.

  It was about two hours later when Hicks made the statement that he needed to leave and head to the concert. Jeff, realizing his dream of having an attractive male at his disposal, was not pleased with Steven's decision to leave and the two ended up in a physical altercation. Jeff came up behind him, striking him in the head with a ten-pound barbell, knocking him to the floor unconscious. Once on the floor, helpless, Jeff took the barbell and choked Hicks until he was dead. Jeff had just committed his first murder.

  With Hicks on the floor, dead, Jeff took advantage of the situation to get his pleasure and stood over him masturbating. Once finished, Jeff moved Hicks under the crawl space of the house and Hicks remained there until the next day.

  Realizing that he needed to dispose of the body and all evidence, Jeff decided to dismember Steven's body and put the parts into three different trash bags with the intent to ditch the bags in a roadside gulley. Shortly before three in the morning, Jeff loaded the three trash bags with Hicks' dismembered body parts into the backseat of his dad's car for the intended location to dump the body. It was approximately 3:00 am and as Jeff was en-route to dump the body parts, he was stopped by a police officer. The officer explained to Jeff that he had been stopped because he was driving left of center. Jeff was very nervous but tried his best to remain calm and, by doing so, seemed to work in his favor.

  The officer, taking his flashlight, looked in the backseat where Jeff had loaded the three trash bags and inquired as to what was inside the bags. Jeff told the officer that they contained trash and that he was intending to take the trash to the dump later that day. The officer believed the story without any further inquiry into the bags.

  The officer also inquired as to why Jeff was driving around so late and Jeff explained that his parents divorced and he could not sleep so he was riding around to try to take his mind off of it.

  Suspecting that Jeff may be riding around under the influence, the officer radioed for another police officer to back him up in order to administer a field sobriety test. Upon the arrival of the second officer, Jeff was asked to step to the back of his vehicle for the test.

  Jeff was made to walk a straight line and given the finger-to-nose test, all of which Jeff passed.

  The officer who initially made then traffic stop issued Jeff a citation and allowed him to leave. Jeff would pay the fine of $20.00 for the traffic citation.

  It was now about 3:30 am. And Jeff decided to just go back home and dispose of the body later. Arriving back home, Jeff took the trash bags and placed them in a drainage pipe behind his house. The bags would sit there for two weeks before Jeff would return to break up the bones after the body had decomposed. After the bones were broken into small pieces using a grey handled sledgehammer, Jeff scattered them in a rocky cliff area behind his house.

  Jeff burned the victim's identification and clothing and disposed of Hicks' necklace, throwing it approximately ten feet out in the Cuyahoga River. Jeff also disposed of the knife in the same river.

  The family of Hicks reported him missing, but after several months, the missing persons case was classified active but dormant.

  The victim was Steven Mark Hicks, Jeff's first victim. An innocent teen just trying to get to a concert.

  It was the next month when Jeff's dad and fiancee moved back into the house with Jeff when they discovered he was living in the house alone.

  Lionel married his fiancee on December 24, 1978.

  COLLEGE

  “The only motive that there ever was was to

  completely control a person, a person I

  found physically attractive, and keep them with

  me as long as possible even if it meant just

  keeping part of them”

  Jeff Dahmer

  In August of 1978 Jeff enrolled at Ohio State University indicating a major in business. While in his first semester, Lionel made a surprise visit and discovered Jeff's dormitory room littered
with empty alcohol bottles.

  Lionel paid for Jeff's second term, but due to his son's alcoholism, Jeff dropped out of college after just three months.

  Upon returning home, Jeff got money from selling his plasma and began to drink heavily. During one such drunken spell, Shari, Jeff's step mother, came home and found him drunk and passed out on his bed. He had been drinking the liquor from their liquor cabinet and was replacing what he drank with water to try to hide his drinking.

  ARMY

  “I should have gone to college and gone into real

  estate and got myself an aquarium.

  That's what I should have done.”

  Jeff Dahmer

  Jeff's dad, frustrated with the way things were going in his son's life, gave him an ultimatum, get a job or join the military.

  Jeff enlisted for a three year tour on December 29, 1978, in Cleveland, Ohio, at the Military Entrance Processing Station (MEPS), Jeff's Military ID Number: 284-60-5333).

  All individuals wishing to enter the military are processed through one of the MEPS stations across the country.

  MEPS serves as medical in-processing and swearing in. MEPS processing is basically the same for all military branches: hearing and vision tests, blood tests, blood pressure, physical ability, temperature, height, weight, and an in-depth medical question assessment. Unfortunately, what was missing in that, and other MEPS, was a psychological assessment. If the Army had given psychological assessments, would an assessment have picked up Jeff's murderous beginnings? That will never be known.