Jeffrey Dahmer
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 in a series of crimes involving drugging, strangulation, necrophilia, dismemberment, and cannibalism. His first murder occurred in Ohio in 1978 when he was just 18. After a period of relative inactivity, he began killing again in Milwaukee in 1987, luring victims — predominantly gay Black men — to his apartment with promises of money to pose for photos or companionship. Dahmer's apartment at 213 Oxford Apartments became a house of horrors. He kept body parts as trophies, photographed his victims, and attempted to create lobotomized "zombies" by drilling holes in living victims' skulls and injecting acid. In May 1991, a 14-year-old victim escaped and was returned to Dahmer by police officers who accepted Dahmer's claim that the boy was his adult boyfriend — a catastrophic failure that resulted in the boy's murder. Dahmer was finally arrested in July 1991 when Tracy Edwards escaped from his apartment with a handcuff dangling from one wrist and flagged down a police car. Officers returned to the apartment and found photographs, a human head in the refrigerator, and the remains of multiple victims. Dahmer confessed fully and was convicted of 15 murders in 1992, receiving 15 consecutive life sentences. Dahmer was beaten to death by a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin on November 28, 1994, less than three years into his sentence. His case raised serious questions about law enforcement's treatment of minority communities and prompted a review of the officers who returned his escaped victim. A 2022 Netflix series about his life sparked renewed debate about whether such portrayals exploit victims and their families.