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America's Most Infamous Crimes with Katie Ring
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Early Obsessions That Led To His First Murder Pt. 1
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- [00:00]
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Foreign. This is Crime House. Before Jeffrey Dahmer became one of America's most terrifying serial killers, he was just a quiet teenager with disturbing fantasies. No one stopped. He was abusing alcohol, dissecting dead animals, and cutting himself off from the world around him. The warning signs were there, but no one saw where they were leading. Until one summer day in 1978. This story isn't just about how a killer was made. It's about what happens when isolation, obsession, addiction, and violence go unchecked. Until a young man crosses a line he can never come back from. Today I'm going to take you back to Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood, the chaos of his teenage years, and the first murder that marked the beginning of one of the darkest killing sprees in history. Every crime tells a story about the people involved, the system that tried to stop it, and the nation that couldn't look away. Some cases are so shocking, so deeply woven into who we are, that decades later, we're still asking, how did this happen? I'm Katie Ring, and this is America's Most Infamous Crimes. Every Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, I'll take you deep into cases that have a lasting imprint on society and still haunt us today. I want to thank you for being part of the Crime House community. Please rate, review, and follow America's Most Infamous Crimes wherever you get your podcasts and to get all episodes at once ad free. Subscribe to Crime House plus on Apple Podcasts. Before I get started, please be advised that this episode contains descriptions of physical and sexual assault and murder. So please listen with care. This is the first of three episodes on Jeffrey Dahmer, maybe the most infamous serial killer in modern history. Between 1978 and 1991, Dahmer killed at least 7, 17 people. And today we're going all the way back to the beginning, to Dahmer's chaotic home life, the warning signs that nobody caught, and how a troubled, lonely teenager crossed a line that there was no coming back from. To really understand ourselves, we need to understand where we come from, and Jeffrey Dahmer's no exception. So before we get into his story, let's start with his parents, Joyce and Lionel. Because Jeffrey's mom and dad played a huge role in who he became. And honestly, from what I can tell, they weren't exactly suited for parenthood. Jeffrey's parents got married on August 22, 1959, when they were just 23 years old. And from day one, the marriage had problems. Lionel was deep in a chemistry master's degree program and put his Career ahead of everything, including his new wife. And Joyce did not take that lying down. Here's the thing about Joyce. When she was growing up, her own father was a neglectful alcoholic. So the minute she felt that Lionel wasn't giving her enough attention, which was basically all of the time, she let him hear about it. They were fighting constantly, almost from the moment they said, I do. But that didn't stop them from starting a family. Just days after their wedding, Joyce got pregnant. And nine months later, on May 21, 1960, Jeffrey Dahmer was born. For a little while, having a baby smoothed things over between them. But it didn't last for long. When Jeffrey was just 2 years old, the family packed up and moved from Milwaukee to Ames, Iowa, so Lionel could pursue a PhD in chemistry at Iowa State University. It was their second move since Jeffrey was born, and Joyce struggled with all of the upheaval. There was more tension, more fighting, and more stress. But for all the chaos swirling around little Jeffrey, he honestly seemed to be handling it okay. He was a relatively normal kid, a sweet one. Even at 18 months old, he already had a pet fish and a turtle. And after the move to Iowa, he started feeding a squirrel that came to his windowsill every morning, who he named Jiffy. According to Joyce, he was gentle and kind with all of his animals. But there was something else going on, too. Something much darker. In 1964, when Jeffrey was just 4, his dad was clearing out the crawl space under their house and found a pile of old animal bones. When Lionel asked him about it, Jeffrey said he called them his fiddlesticks. Now, plenty of kids think skeletons are cool, but Jeffrey's interest bordered on obsession. He liked to hold his pets and feel their bones through their skin. He wondered if all animals looked the same on the inside. And that same year, something happened to Jeffrey that would impact him for the rest of his life. At just four years old, he underwent surgery to repair a double hernia in his lower abdomen, which extended into his scrotum. When he woke up from the surgery, he was in so much pain that he was convinced his genitals had been removed. He talked about it to a psychologist, Dr. Judith Becker, years later, when he was already behind bars. It's the kind of traumatic experience that leaves a mark on anyone. And it clearly left one on Jeffrey. Back home, after the hospital, things weren't getting any easier. By 1966, when Jeffrey was about 6 years old, Joyce was in rough shape. She was taking two different anti anxiety meds and wasn't really paying attention to her dosages. Most days she was in a fog, and on the day she wasn't, she was on a razor's edge. On the rare occasions when Lionel was actually home, the two of them fought nonstop. It wasn't a healthy environment for anyone, let alone a little kid. But this was the 1960s, and divorce still came with a lot of stigma. So the Dahmers stayed together. If anything, they doubled down because they started trying for a second child. Jeffrey seemed genuinely excited about having a sibling. He'd press his head against Joyce's stomach and put his hand on her belly so the baby would know he was there. Maybe he was excited because deep down he hoped he'd finally have someone in that house who was on his side. Someone to weather it all with. On December 18, 1966, Jeffrey got his wish. Joyce gave birth to a baby boy, and Jeffrey got to pick the name David. For a while, things seemed to settle. Lionel finished school and landed a job as a chemist in Ohio. After years of moving from one rental to the next, Lionel and Joyce finally bought a house. A big ranch style home on nearly two acres of secluded wooded land in a small Ohio town called Bath. After six different addresses since they were married, it seemed like the Dahmers might finally have some stability. Jeffrey loved it. He started making friends with some of the local boys, hanging with them at school and exploring the woods. For a brief shining moment, it looked like the Dahmer family might be headed for better days. But nothing lasts forever. Around 1970, when Jeffrey was about 10 years old, Joyce's health hit a wall. She was spending most of her days in bed, taking up to eight anti anxiety pills a day on top of sleeping pills and laxatives. Eventually it got so bad she had to be hospitalized, spending a month in a psychiatric ward. For Jeffrey, this was devastating. Throughout his entire childhood, his mother's mental health had been a dark cloud with only brief, rare moments of sunshine. He'd never truly seen her happy. And according to author Brian Masters, who wrote the Shrine of Jeffrey Dahmer, Jeffrey may have actually blamed himself for her suffering, even though that couldn't have been further from the truth. It was the kind of thing that could make any kid lash out. But instead of making trouble, Jeffrey turned inward. He stopped engaging with the people around him because he figured that the less he put himself out there, the fewer problems he'd cause. It got so bad that he became completely detached, cut off from everyone around him, with nobody to pull him back. And when he re emerged, there was no getting rid of the darkness that surrounded him.
- [08:02]
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Dead on a doorstep, gone after a hike. Vanished without a phone, wallet or trace. Twelve of America's top scientists with ties to classified programs and not a single explanation. This is Vanessa, host of Crime House 24 7. The these weren't random people. They held secrets most Americans will never know about. And someone or something is making them disappear. One researcher texted a friend before she was found dead, quote, if you see a report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. End quote. Since then, the cases have only multiplied. Now Congress is demanding answers from the FBI, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. And the question nobody can answer is simple. Who is targeting America's scientists? And that's just the surface. We're going deeper on crime house 24 7, where we cover breaking true crime news daily. Follow Crime House 247 wherever you listen to podcasts, so you never miss what happens next.
- [09:08]
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Jeffrey Dahmer's home life came with a lot of problems. And his father, Lionel, noticed that his son was struggling. And he tried to fix it in a way a lot of dads would, by signing Jeffrey up for activities. Tennis lessons, music lessons, the Boy Scouts, anything that might catch his interest. But none of it stuck. Jeffrey was as disconnected as ever. There was only one thing that still seemed to hold his dead animals. So Lionel tried to point that fixation in a healthy direction. One night, after a family chicken dinner, Jeffrey asked his dad what would happen if they put chicken bones in bleach. It was a strange request, but Lionel was just glad Jeffrey was showing interest in something, so he went along with it. They put the bones in a pan of bleach together. It was one of the few genuine father son moments that the Dahmers ever had. And looking back, knowing what we know now, it's hard not to see the shadow of something sinister in it. A lot was changing in Jeffrey's life, not just with his family, but in himself. This was around the time he hit puberty, which also meant coming to terms with his sexuality. And Jeffrey knew from a young age that he was gay. His first real romantic encounter happened when he was 13 years old with a neighborhood boy named eric, who was 10. The two of them hiked and fished together and would sometimes hang out at a treehouse in the woods. One day, Eric reportedly suggested they take their clothes off and kiss. This happened a few times before it eventually stopped. For most kids, this would be a significant first experience, a childhood crush, that mix of excitement and confusion. But not for Jeffrey. He felt no attachment to Eric whatsoever. At Least not emotionally. He was only interested in Eric's body, but not in a romantic way. Not even really in a sexual way. It was the same cold, clinical fascination he had with animals. Just a body, an object to examine. Safe to say, this wasn't a healthy way to approach a romantic relationship. But Jeffrey was so withdrawn, nobody was really clocking it. And soon his problems would only get worse. Because by the time Jeffrey hit 14, there was a new and dangerous presence in his life. Alcohol. When he got to high school, Jeffrey started drinking a lot. By his sophomore year, his classmates noticed him showing up to first period with a Styrofoam cup full of scotch. He also started smoking pot and would layer the two until he was completely numbing. The kid who'd always been quiet and shy was now doing anything he could to get a reaction. He'd fake seizures in the hallway, pretend to trip and fall, even randomly bleat like a sheep. In the middle of class. It seemed like he was screaming for someone to notice him. But nobody intervened. Jeffrey kept his grades decent enough and technically stayed out of trouble, so his teachers let his concerning behavior slide. But at home, things were even worse. Lionel and Joyce had completely stopped even pretending to be civil. The only communication between them was insults. And whatever parenting energy they had left went mostly to his little brother, David. Meaning Jeffrey was pretty much left to his own devices. And he was happy to let the world pass him by. But there was one subject in school that genuinely captivated biology. Specifically, dissection. His childhood interest in animal bones kept growing to the point that he started conducting his own experiments in his treehouse. He'd collect dead animals he found in the forest or on the side of the road and then take them apart to see what was inside. But here's something that always strikes me. Jeffrey never hurt any animals himself. In fact, if he had personally interacted with an animal while it was alive, he couldn't bring himself to dissect it. When a neighbor's dog was hit by a car, Jeffrey showed no interest in it at all. It's like he needed a certain emotional distance from the living creature before he could engage with the body. That same pattern showed up in another pornography. Jeffrey spent hours going through magazines, fixating on men's torsos and chests. Again, it wasn't really lust in a typical sense. It was the same consuming, detached interest in the thing itself. And then the interest jumped from the page to real life. When Jeffrey was around 16, he started noticing a male jogger who passed by their house almost every day. He became completely consumed with this man. Jeffrey would spend hours alone in his room, fantasizing about what it would be like to have access to the jogger's body, but not to connect with him or pursue him romantically. Jeffrey wanted to possess him. To be with a body that couldn't say no, that couldn't walk away. Jeffrey knew he couldn't just walk up to this guy and start a conversation. He didn't have those social skills. And more importantly, that's not what he wanted. So the wheels in his mind started turning, and he decided that the only way to get what he wanted was by force. One afternoon, when his parents weren't home, Jeffrey grabbed a baseball bat from the closet. Then he went outside and hid in a ditch by the side of the road, waiting for the jogger to come by. But he never showed. After a while, Jeffrey gave up and went back inside. He never tried again. Maybe the jogger changed his route. Maybe Jeffrey lost his nerve. Whatever the reason, the fantasy stayed a fantasy for the moment. In the backdrop of all of this, Jeffrey's drinking was getting worse. And his home life wasn't getting any better. As bad as things had been between Lionel and Joyce when he was a kid, they were even worse now. And Jeffrey would be the one to pay the price. In 1977, around the same time Jeffrey Dahmer was hiding in that ditch with a baseball bat, Lionel and Joyce tried marriage counseling. Let's just say it didn't work. Then things got even more complicated. That September, when Joyce's dad died, she traveled out of state for the funeral. And while she was away, she found comfort in another man. She didn't exactly try to hide it. When she got home shortly after Lionel and Joyce filed for divorce, you'd think the boys might feel some relief. At least the fighting would stop, right? Unfortunately, that wasn't the case. Lionel and Joyce spent the divorce trying to get the boys on their side. Meanwhile, both parents were battling over custody, but only of David. Jeffrey was almost 18 by now and about to graduate legally. He barely registered being effectively erased from your own parents. Custody battle had to sting, even for someone as walled off from the world as Jeffrey Dahmer. He didn't talk about it with anyone. He had no close friends, no other family, really. And he and David had a seven year age gap, so they weren't very close either. So Jeffrey did what he always did. He numbed himself. His drinking got so out of hand that a teacher found him sitting alone outside the school downing a 12 pack of beer. Left Completely to his own devices. Jeffrey's mind kept circling back to that jogger, to that ditch, to the plan that almost happened. He replayed it over and over in his head, imagining what would have happened if the jogger had come by that afternoon. He was drowning in these fantasies, with no one to pull him back to reality. Then, In May of 1978, Jeffrey graduated from high school. That same month, he turned 18 and was officially an adult. He had decent enough grades to enroll at Ohio State University in the fall, but for the time being, he was essentially alone. Joyce was mostly taking David to visit family in Wisconsin. And although Lionel lived in a motel, he was not stopping by. There was nobody around. No school, no responsibilities, no distractions. Just Jeffrey, his thoughts and an endless stretch of empty summer days. For weeks he let the thoughts take over until he couldn't keep them inside any longer. So on June 18, 1978, Jeffrey Dahmer got in his car and went for a drive. Maybe he was looking for the jogger again, or maybe he just needed to get out of the house. But at some point, driving down a back road in the summer heat, he spotted a young man about his own age walking along the shoulder, shirt off, thumb out, trying to hitch a ride to a concert. So Jeffrey pulled over. The hitchhiker's name was Stephen Hicks. Jeffrey offered him a lift, but asked if he wanted to stop by his place for a few beers first. Stephen had probably been standing on that road for a while, and by that point, a couple of cold ones and a ride probably sounded just fine. So he said, sure, why not? Back at the house, Jeffrey cracked open some beers and the two of them got to talking. A few drinks in, Stephen mentioned that he had a girlfriend he was planning to see later. They hung out for a bit, but as the sky started to get dark, Steven made it clear that he wanted to get going and make his way to the concert. So Jeffrey nodded and said he'd be right back. He walked to the room where he kept his workout equipment and picked up a 10 pound dumbbell. Then he crept back to where Stephen was sitting, and as quietly as he could, Jeffrey raised the weight above his head and swung it down onto Stephen's skull. Steven lurched forward, grabbing his head. He was still conscious, and before Jeffrey could swing again, Steven scrambled to his feet and tackled him. The two of them went down to the floor, fighting over the dumbbell. But Jeffrey was bigger and stronger, and Steven was dealing with a serious head injury. Jeffrey got the upper hand and struck him again. This time Stephen went Unconscious, Jeffrey stood up and looked at what he'd done. There was a rush and excitement and a flicker of doubt. He could still stop this. He could call for help, even get Steven to a hospital. But he wasn't going to do that. Jeffrey pressed the bar of the dumbbell across Stephen's throat and held it there until he stopped breathing. At that moment, Jeffrey Dahmer became a murderer. He undressed the body, then laid down next to Steven and held him, caressing his torso. It was everything he'd spent years imagining. No emotions to navigate, no rejection of fear. No one who could leave. Just a body completely in his control. And once that feeling peaked, it shifted into something else. Lust. Jeffrey got up and pleasured himself. And once he was done, another emotion came crashing over him. Fear. Because now he had a dead body in his house and had absolutely no idea what to do with it. He'd spent years fantasizing about this. He'd thought about it from every angle, but he'd never thought about what came after. So once it got dark, he carried Steven's body outside and hid it in the crawlspace beneath the house. There's a grim symmetry to that. Jeffrey's obsession with dead bodies had started years earlier when he'd found old animal bones in the exact same crawl space as a little kid. Now he was putting his first victim there. But he didn't have time to dwell on that. He knew stashing the body under the house was only a temporary fix. Eventually one of the parents would be back and he needed a longer term plan. By the next morning, he'd settled on something and went out and bought a large knife. In his mind, the body would be easier to get rid of in pieces. So he went back down to the crawl space, dismembered Steven's body and stuffed the remains into trash bags. But before he got rid of everything, he did something that mirrored what he'd done to animals as a kid. He slit open the stomach and examined the organs inside. Once that was done, Jeffrey went back upstairs to spend the rest of the day drinking, trying to figure out where to throw away the bags. By nightfall he had a plan. He'd drive the remains out to a ravine a few miles away and dump them. He drank through the evening to work up the nerve, and around 3am he staggered outside, loaded everything into his car and hit the road. The country roads were dark and empty. The just like he had expected, he thought he was in the clear. Until, seemingly out of nowhere, he looked in his rearview mirror and saw red and Blue flashing lights. A police officer was pulling him over, and he had pieces of a dead body in the backseat. At the end of each episode, I like to take a moment to answer any questions you may have about the case and share my thoughts, so make sure to comment below. When I talk about this case, I always think about that one jogger who got away. And there's something called the burnt toast theory, which is an idea that a small, ordinary disruption can quietly change what happens in your life. Not because they're planned, but because even the smallest shift in timing can alter an outcome completely. For example, you burn your toast in the morning, and at that time, it is annoying and inconvenient, but because of it, you left the house a little late that day. Or change your routine and you end up missing a crash by seconds. Whenever I hear about Dahmer's story and this jogger, I always think back to what that guy's burnt toast theory was. Why he didn't go on that run that day, why he switched his route, or, you know, what saved him. Maybe he was even aware that Dahmer was watching him. When it comes to nature versus nurture, do you think Jeffrey Dahmer was born this way or made this way? This is the question I always get at the center of pretty much every serial killer's case. And my answer is always a mix of everything. Biology, personality, environment, and experiences over time. Because there's no evidence that Dahmer was born with something that guaranteed he would become what he became. No single gene, no clear brain defect, no moment that you can point to and say, this is when it all started. Even though his dad has pointed towards the hernia surgery, but at the same time, his environment alone doesn't explain it. Because many people experience instability, isolation, trauma, and abuse as kids and never become close to violence. So what a lot of experts point to is an intersection of all of these things. A personality that wasn't just attached, but deeply internal, isolated. Someone who struggled to connect, who lived more in his own mind than in relationships with others. He also showed a lack of empathy, seeing people and animals solely as objects for his possession. He also showed a morbid curiosity with animals and bones and people's bodies, and a reliance on fantasy and a growing need for control. So over time, those traits, combined with the neglect, instability, isolation, the alcohol and drug use and his unchecked fantasies, became a perfect storm of nature and nurture that gradually shaped him into something extremely dangerous. One of the more frustrating things about Jeffrey Dahmer was the fact that there were several warning signs that nobody caught. This is one of the things that gets me, because he showed signs over the years. And I know that his interest in animals and animal bones, that he never harmed any animals, which is one of the key signs of a psychopath, is that actually experiencing that violence of killing the animal. So a morbid fascination with the bones and the insides, you know, is very odd, but might not seem as staggering as someone who is violently murdering innocent animals. But he was also drinking scotch from styrofoam cups at 14, smoking weed, faking seizures in school. He was obviously desperate for attention. Any of those things in isolation might seem like a kid just acting out, but when you put them all together, a trained eye should have seen that something was seriously wrong. And yet not one adult in his life, not a parent, not a teacher, not a counselor, ever stepped in. It's honestly sad how little anyone cared about him. Like they didn't even care enough about him to punish him. And that's not excusing what he did. Obviously, nothing could excuse it. But I do think the question of whether this was preventable is a real one. And the evidence suggests that the answer might have been yes. I want to hear your thoughts on Jeffrey's sexuality and what. Why it matters to the context of this story. Obviously, I don't think that his sexuality is in any way what caused him to become what he was. But I do think it is worth examining in the context of growing up in a small town in Ohio in the 1970s. That was not something you could be open about. There was no template for healthy attraction, no way for him to seek help or even language to describe what he was feeling. There were also feelings of shame. The secrecy, isolation, and the fact that his desires developed without connection, without expression, and without interruption. His earliest sexual experiences were already tangled up in the darker impulses. And what ultimately drove his crimes wasn't attraction. It was control. So growing up in an environment where his sexuality had to be hidden, where anything he felt was already shameful and secret, likely made it even harder for anyone to recognize the warning signs for what they were. Something a lot of people don't know about. Jeffrey Dahmer is the hernia surgery at age 4. I think this is really interesting because on one hand, yes, like, waking up as a kid convinced that your genitals had been removed after surgery is a kind of terror that, at four years old, is a major trauma. And research consistently shows that early medical trauma can have lasting psychological effects, especially when it involves a child's. Body and their sense of physical self. I also think that this is part of the story that his dad added in. And I don't know if it might be some homophobia, but he talks about, you know, the testicles in the surgery, although a hernia is only the abdomen coming down into the scrotum. But I feel like he was kind of hinting towards, you know, something hormonal that might have been wrong with his child. But I do think that there was a certain amount of trauma that came along with that surgery. And so I don't know if that actually played a role. But I think it's easy for someone to point back towards a certain trauma and be like, this is where he changed. Like, he changed after this one thing, and I think that's what his dad consistently says, is that, you know, it was really just after the surgery that he became this weird kind of introverted boy. When we examine serial killers, a lot of the times we go back to the parents. Which brings us to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer and the question of culpability. I think way too many parents have kids thinking that it will solve their marital problems, but it never does. It always makes things way more complicated, and kids are always the ones who end up paying the price in the end. Now, were his parents 100% at fault? No, I don't think so. But they did definitely fail their son, and they were two people who were clearly in way over their heads. Joyce's mental health struggles were severe and real, and she was living in an era when women had very few resources or outlets. And Lionel did what a lot of men in his generation did. He put his head down, threw himself into work and expected everything at home to kind of just sort itself out and maybe put a little effort into trying to get his son interested in things. But that was kind of the only band aid he tried to slap on his son to make him somewhat normal. But neither of them had the tools to raise a healthy child, let alone a child who clearly needed serious psychological support. Now, we never know whether it would have or not, but somewhere along the way, this could have played a big role and stopped all the damage he did. Thanks so much for joining me for this episode. Make sure to rate, review and follow America's Most Infamous Crime so we can keep building this community together and to get all episodes at once. Ad free. Subscribe to Crime House Less on Apple Podcasts. Come back tomorrow for our next episode on Jeffrey Dahmer.
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Dead on a doorstep. Gone after a hike. Vanished without a phone, wallet, or trace. 12 of America's top scientists with ties to classified programs and not a single explanation. This is Vanessa host of crime house 24 7. These weren't random people. They held secrets most Americans will never know about. And someone or something is making them disappear. One researcher texted a friend before she was found dead, quote, if you see a report that I killed myself, I most definitely did not. End quote. Since then, the cases have only multiplied. Now Congress is demanding answers from the FBI, the Pentagon, and the Department of Energy. And the question nobody can answer is simple. Who is targeting America's scientists? And that's just the surface. We're going deeper on crime house 24 7, where we cover breaking true crime news daily. Follow Crime House 247 wherever. You listen to podcasts so you never miss what happens next.