Jeffrey Dahmer, a notorious serial killer, disclosed his motives for murdering 17 people in a previously unreleased prison interview.
Dubbed the ‘Milwaukee Cannibal’, Dahmer was apprehended in 1991 after a 13-year spree of murdering men and boys.
His heinous acts have inspired numerous articles, books, and television series, including the first season of Netflix’s Monster, all attempting to understand why this seemingly ordinary individual became one of America’s most infamous killers.
Dahmer was caught while attempting to kill his final victim, who managed to escape and alert police officers outside his apartment. Inside, they discovered photographs of dismembered bodies.
In a 1993 interview at Columbia Correctional Institution, conducted by journalist Nancy Glass, Dahmer shared insights into his motivations.
During the conversation, Dahmer, wearing his recognizable square glasses, recounted his crimes in detail with a detached demeanor.
He explained to Glass: “It’s a process that doesn’t happen overnight when you depersonalize another person, and view them as just an object – an object for pleasure – instead of a living breathing human being, it seems to make it easier to do things you shouldn’t do.”
Despite knowing it was wrong, Dahmer described the thrill that began with his first murder in 1978. Steven Hicks, his first victim, was 18 when Dahmer killed and dismembered him.
Dahmer admitted: “I had these obsessive desires and thoughts [of] wanting to control them to – I don’t know how to put it – possess them permanently.”
He continued: “Not because I was angry with them, not because I hated them, but because I wanted to keep them with me and as my obsession grew, I was saving body parts such as skulls and skeletons.”
After killing Hicks, Dahmer joined the army, which paused his murders for eight years. He revealed that he refrained from killing in the military because there “wasn’t an opportunity to fully express what I wanted to do to do there”.
However, after being dishonorably discharged in 1981 due to alcoholism, he relocated to Milwaukee, where he began consuming pornography and frequenting gay bars, providing him opportunities to continue his killings.
Dahmer described the murders as an addiction: “It was almost a surge of energy. I wouldn’t have to worry about any of their needs or anything, I just had complete control of the situation.”
His methods grew more gruesome, and he started photographing the dismemberment process as keepsakes.
He also aimed to create an altar from skulls and skeletons when he couldn’t keep the victims with him wholly. Although there were moments of self-revulsion, the compulsion to continue his actions was overpowering.
Dahmer conceded that nothing could have stopped him had he not been captured. “I was dead set on going with this compulsion it was the only thing that gave me any satisfaction,” he stated.
In the prison gym on November 28, 1994, fellow inmate Christopher Scarver killed Dahmer, one year after Dahmer’s interview was broadcast.