Many of his murders involved cannibalism

Ryan Murphy’s latest thriller, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, dropped on Netflix yesterday and it’s all about America’s most notorious serial killer. Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story stars Evan Peters playing the cannibal serial killer who killed 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. Although he’s one of the most-known serial killers in the world, here’s the true story of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

Jeffrey Dahmer was born in 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. There have been several reports on whether Dahmer was neglected as a child and it appears he came from a broken home. His mother reportedly suffered from depression and attempted suicide, and his dad was studying away for most of Dahmer’s childhood. When Dahmer reached 18 his parents divorced.

When he was about six, Dahmer moved to Ohio and his younger brother David was born. Dahmer was interested in dead animals, specifically animal bones, from an early age. He also apparently collected insects and skeletons of small animals, like squirrels, and preserved them in jars. His dad showed him how to bleach and preserve animal bones.

At high school, Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t have many friends. He drank heavily, while teachers thought he had good academic potential but his grades were average. He also started throwing fake fits and mocking people with cerebral palsy.

As a young teenage, Dahmer allegedly had a brief relationship with another teenage boy but he didn’t tell his parents he was gay. Later on he admitted to having fantasies about men which involved dissection.

Just three weeks after graduating high school in 1978, Dahmer committed his first murder. He picked up 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Mark Hicks and lured him into his home for a few beers. He then stranked Steven to death, stripped him, masturbated, dissected the body and buried the remains in a shallow grave in his back garden. He later dug up Steven’s body so he could dissolve it in acid and scatter the bones.

After this Dahmer joined the US army for a few years. Here he continued to drink. In 1981 he was discharged and back in his hometown of Milwaukee he started gay bathhouses where he’d sedate and assault men. In the late Eighties he committed his second murder, a man he brought back to his hotel.

Dahmer then started to carry out murders in his grandmother’s home. She then asked Dahmer to move out because of his drinking and tendency to bring men back late at night. But there was also a foul smell coming from the basement and garage – where he would store and dispose of his victims. He then moved out into an apartment in Milwaukee and his continued his murders into the 90s.

Many of his murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the permanent preservation of the skeleton.

Dahmer was arrested several times in his life, once for groping a young boy. But authorities only discovered his murderous activities when he was arrested after one of his victims escaped in 1991. Running down a Milwaukee street with handcuffs on one wrist, Tracy Edwards told the police that Dahmer was trying to kill him.

After searching Dahmer’s apartment on the same day, police found body parts and severed heads in his fridge, freezer, cabinet and kettle.

In 1992, Dahmer was arrested for life. Despite being diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder and a psychotic disorder, Dahmer was unable to convince the jury that his cannibalism and necrophilia were the result of madness. Dahmer was given 15 life sentences and told he would never be eligible for parole.

On 28 November 1998 Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, another inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix. For all the latest Netflix news, drops, quizzes and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook. 

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