The Zombie Maker

By M.P. Pellicer | Stranger Than Fiction Stories
Jeffrey Dahmer was captured more than three decades ago, however mention of his name still causes a shudder.

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Christopher Scarver c.1994

Dahmer was incarcerated in 1991, to serve 16 life sentences for the crimes he admitted to, which were: drugging, strangling and dismembering his victims. He had sex with four corpses, ate parts of others, and flushed brains and other organs down the toilet.

​He admitted to 17 victims since 1978, that ranged in age from 14 to 33. Many have wondered if there were more.

Dahmer was sentenced to five years of probation for molesting a child in 1989.

It was reported that: "police found torsos soaking in acid, severed heads in the refrigerator and freezer, a hand and genital organ in an 80-quart kettle and photos of victims in various stages of dismemberment. Two human hearts and a bicep were in the freezer, set aside to eat later."

Three years after Dahmer was convicted he was killed in prison by another inmate named Christopher Scarver, 25, who also killed Jesse Anderson a businessman who bludgeoned, and stabbed his wife more than 20 times. 

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Columbia Correctional where Dahmer and Anderson were killed by Scarver

In 2015, Scarver changed his story as to why he killed Dahmer.

He claimed that he hated Dahmer because he taunted other inmates by "turning his food into the shapes of severed body parts, and then adding ketchup to make it look like blood." Another complaint from Scarver was that Dahmer was not repentant. He said he kept a newspaper article detailing how Dahmer killed 17 young men and boys from 1978 to 1991.

According to Scarver, Dahmer caused so much friction with other inmates that when he was outside of his cell he had an escort of at least one guard.

Scarver said he kept his distance from Dahmer until November 28, 1994 when he along with Dahmer and a third inmate, Jesse Anderson were brought to clean the prison bathrooms. They were unshackled, and the guards left them unattended.

​Scarver described how he was filling a bucket, and someone poked him in the back. When he turned around Dahmer and Anderson were laughing under their breath.

Dahmer and Scarver went to a staff locker room where Scarver grabbed a metal bar from a weight lifting set, and asked Dahmer if he'd done what was described in the article.

He then proceeded to beat Dahmer, as he described it, "I put his head down." He then went to where Anderson was working and he meted out the same beating, he "got his head put out."

Anderson survived until December 1, when he was taken off life support. Dahmer was beaten so severely it was difficult to recognize him. He died an hour after he was found.

Four months before, another inmate tried to cut Dahmer's throat during chapel service, but the razor he had made fell apart.

Dahmer's stepmother told newspapers in 1994, that his family expected that he would meet his end while in prison. 

Gerald Boyle his trial lawyer said, "Dahmer had a death wish and I know that he didn't have the gumption to do it himself, so I had predicted that the day would come when he would be killed in prison."

Scarver said he didn't believe it was an accident he was left alone with Dahmer, and he inferred that the officials wanted him to execute Dahmer who they wanted dead all along.

After first pleading insanity Scarver changed it to "no contest" in exchange for a transfer to a federal penitentiary.

When he killed Anderson and Dahmer, Scarver was serving a a life sentence for the execution-style murder of a former boss that he shot four times in the head.  The motive for the murder was robbery and vengeance against a job training program that he thought had wronged him. After he killed the man he forced a program site manager to write him a check for $3,000.

His explanation to police when he was arrested was that "the voice" had told him what to do. When he went to prison he proclaimed he was the son of God, and that a family of voices told him "who I could trust and who was my enemy."

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Anderson who was killed along with Dahmer by inmate Christopher Scarver

For the murder of Dahmer and Anderson he got two additional life terms. Prior to this, according to prison records, Scarver had attacked prisoners and staffers, slashed his own wrists and made death threats.

Dahmer's attorney Stephen Eisenberg said he received a letter from inmate Derrick Hendricks who also went by the name of Melanie Samuels, a transvestite with a history of personality disorders who claimed Dahmer was one of seven names on the hit list of inmates' "death squad." Hendricks was serving time after being convicted in 1992, for having sex with teenage boys in Milwaukee.

Six months after Dahmer and Anderson were killed four prison guards were suspended for a security breakdown. The panel who investigated the incident rejected conspiracy theories.

Ten months after his murder, Dahmer's body was cremated as he had requested. His brain was held back as his parents feuded over whether to donate it for research. His father Lionel Dahmer had claimed his half of his son's ashes, and his mother Joyce Flint was to receive the rest. She was the one that wanted the brain to be examined for biological factors that affected her son.

Scarver went to different prisons through the years, and he ended up at Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colorado.

In 2015, he said that part of his insanity was caused by prison food. He writes poems, and has self published poetry books.

Gerald Boyle who defended Dahmer in 2015, said he didn't believe the story that Scarver killed Dahmer because he was being taunted. Boyle served on a governor's commission that investigated Dahmer and Anderson's murder, and at that time Scarver never said a word about Dahmer taunting him or any other prisoner about his crimes.

Boyle said, "He told me he had a hit list of five guys who he did not feel were worthy of the word murderer because of who, and how they killed." He felt it was humiliating to be in the same work detail with them.

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Oxford Apts. before they were torn down

In 1991, Dahmer lived at the The Oxford Apartments located at 924 N. 25th St., Milwaukee. It was torn down in 1992. The unimaginable happened in apartment 213.

After the 49-unit building was razed any attempts to put something in its place has not panned out, and even now the lot is vacant, marked along its perimeter with a fence.

In 1996, Joseph Zilbert won the right to many of Dahmer's personal belonging, many of which were in the apartment. He had found out some of them would be put up for auction. He raised over $40,000 to buy and destroy them.

It wasn't only Dahmer's last domicile that was eventually torn down, the Ambrosia Chocolate factory where he worked during the late 1980s was demolished in 1993.

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List of Dahmer's victims

After Dahmer's arrest in 1991, there were questions as to whether he'd claimed other victims besides the ones he admitted to.

The Edmonton Journal reported that German police were looking at Dahmer as a person of interest in "five mutilation-murders near an Army base he served at in Baubolder, Germany." Since there were females  among the victims, which didn't fit his M.O., he was never formally accused of the crime

There was another set of murders in central Germany during 1991, that the authorities wondered if they were Dahmer's handiwork. One was Erika Handschuh, 22, a hitchhiker strangled and stabbed in 1980, however she did not match the type of victims that Dahmer preferred which were gay, black men.

Dahmer and the Army parted ways in March 1981, when he received an honorable discharge. Then he went to Florida and worked in a sandwich shop in Miami Beach. This was when Adam Walsh, 6, was taken from a Sears Store and found decapitated in a Miami canal. Dahmer denied this crime.

It was reported by Preston Davis, a soldier who worked in the military med unit that he was drugged and raped by Dahmer inside an armored personnel vehicle.

Another soldier, Billy Joe Capshaw who was put in a room with Dahmer also claimed he was raped. He told The Independent: “I had probably been raped eight to 10 times, I don’t know. He was tying me to the bunk with motor-pool rope. He took all my clothing from me. He would either beat me before he raped me, or he would beat me after." He complained of the incident, and he was given a rape kit but nothing was done. He was sent back to his room where Dahmer raped him again. Capshaw escaped out a window.

By 1991, Dahmer was averaging a victim per week. Once dead he would drill holes in his victim's skull, then pour boiling water or hydrochloric acid inside with the idea of turning them into "zombies" that would submit as his sexual partners. 

Tracey Edwards escaped from Dahmer in July, 1991 and led police to the apartment where he was almost killed. He was hailed as a hero who helped to capture the "Milwaukee Cannibal".

He was lured to Dahmer's apartment the same as other victims, with a promise of beer or money in exchange for posing for nude photographs. The drinks would be drugged, and Dahmer would stab or strangle the men while they were unconscious.

Edwards who had absconded from his native Tupelo, Mississippi was subsequently extradited and arrested for the sexual battery of a 14-year-old girl. Over the years he had other charges that included theft, property damage, drug possession and bail jumping. He'd been living on the streets since 2002. In 2011, he was arrested in connection to the death of a man who was thrown from a Milwaukee bridge. He was charged with homicide but pled guilty to the reduced charge of aiding a felon.  He was sentenced to a year and a half behind bars. His current whereabouts are unknown.

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Jeffrey Dahmer's home where lived for 10 years. His first murder was committed here in 1978.

In 2009, Chris Butler bought Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home in Bath, Ohio that sits on 2 acres of forested hillside. It'd been on the market for six months, priced below anything comparable in the area.

The real estate agent is the one that told him why it had been unsold all those months. It was disclosed that in 1978, Dahmer lured and murdered Steven Hicks, 18, a hitchhiker with a promise of drugs and alcohol. He used a barbell to club Hicks after he said he wanted to leave. He strangled him and then cut up his body in the house's crawlspace. Later he scattered Hicks’s bones around the yard. It wasn't until 1991, that Hick's parents found out what their son's fate had been. Investigators found Hicks’s teeth and bone fragments around the grounds of the Bath property.

Dahmer was 18 years old when he killed Hicks. This was the year his parents divorced. His father had separated from his mother for gross negligence and moved out to a hotel. Then Dahmer's mother left with his brother and moved to California. Jeffrey Dahmer was left alone in the house.

Butler said that those who knew where he lived, would eventually ask if he had any ghosts.

Roe York and Cheryl Kneram approached him about gathering EVPs on the property. They scheduled it on May 21, which was Dahmer's birthday. Night vision camcorders and audio recorders were placed in the crawlspace.

Butler left for the night and when he returned, he found out that all the gear close to the crawlspace had malfunctioned. A 2 GB sound file refused to open. In the end nothing notable was captured.

The home was up for sale back in 2012, but never sold. It was listed again in April 2014. In 2016, it was being offered for rent at $8,000.

In 2023, Lionel Dahmer, age 87, passed away. He agonized about raising a serial killer. He visited his son in prison monthly after his conviction. Joyce “Rocky” Flint, 64, Jeffrey Dahmer's mother died in 2000.

In 2024, Ariana Grande named Jeffrey Dahmer as her ideal dinner date. Victims' families condemned the singer for glamorizing the serial killer.

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