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00:00He is one of the most infamous serial killers in modern history.
00:05Jeffrey Dahmer, necrophiliac and cannibal, murdered 17 men and boys over the course of 13 years.
00:12But what was going on in the mind of this monster?
00:15Are killers born evil, or do they become evil over time?
00:24My name is Dr. Eric Hickey.
00:26I'm a criminal psychologist by trade, and my areas of expertise are homicide, sex crime and psychopathology.
00:32I work on the dark side, pretty much.
00:35Dr. Hickey has an unusual connection to the Dahmer case that no other criminal psychologist has.
00:41I became involved with the Dahmer case many years ago.
00:45I happened to be in a store.
00:47I saw a man who looked unusual.
00:50So I just walked over to him and started talking to him.
00:53And he said, he was from Chicago.
00:55I said, what brings you to California?
00:57And he said, my mom tried to kill herself.
01:00And I came out to help her.
01:01I said, I know who you are.
01:03You're Jeffrey Dahmer's brother, aren't you?
01:05So we became friends.
01:07I met his mother and interviewed her.
01:09And oh my gosh, that just led to so many other things.
01:13Because of that, that moment in the store, it led to a whole other avenue of investigation.
01:20Let's start from the beginning.
01:22Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960 to Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Annette Rocky Dahmer.
01:29As a child, Dahmer was often isolated.
01:33Both of his parents struggled with depression and fought constantly throughout their marriage.
01:38So Jeffrey had a difficult childhood.
01:41There was problems in the home between the husband and wife.
01:45There wasn't a close-knit family.
01:47He didn't have the attachment that most people have growing up.
01:50And he felt alone.
01:52Of course, one day he comes home, I think when he was 17, his mother was gone.
01:57She took David, the son, the youngest son, and left.
02:00And that was traumatizing for him.
02:04The young Dahmer was painfully shy and withdrawn.
02:08He also displayed an interest in dead animals, dissecting carcasses and collecting chicken bones and bleaching them.
02:15He stated that this process excited him.
02:18This is not uncommon with any child that experiences trauma.
02:21And it's certainly a common trait among many serial killers.
02:25When we talk about animal abuse, setting fires, these are results of childhood trauma.
02:32Lack of attachment.
02:34Children can't express themselves, they can't tell you what's really bothering them.
02:38So they'll often set fires or hurt animals.
02:40That's their voice.
02:42This is a cry for help.
02:44The piece that we never talk about is the fantasies that fuel the fire.
02:53Dahmer's trauma and fascination with dead animals began to interact with his blossoming sexuality.
02:59He became obsessed with having control and power.
03:03It was also around this time that he realized he was gay, which made him feel ashamed and confused.
03:09He really was very conflicted as well.
03:12He was lonely, conflicted, had lack of attachment.
03:15All these things kind of set the groundwork for where he would go.
03:19It was a very interesting process because it wasn't one day he just woke up and said,
03:23I'm going to be a killer.
03:24I mean, he built into that over the period of several years.
03:29As you recall, in this case, he had fantasies about killing a young man.
03:35Over time, fantasies become behavior.
03:39I started having obsessive thoughts of violence intermingled with sex.
03:48And it just got worse and worse.
03:52I didn't know how to tell anyone about it, so I didn't.
03:55I just kept it all inside.
03:57He had a desire to be with someone who had been buried.
04:00So in paraphilic terms, he had this sexual fantasy about being with someone who was unconscious.
04:07Merriam-Webster defines paraphilia as a pattern of recurring sexually arousing mental imagery or behavior
04:14that involves unusual and especially socially unacceptable sexual practices.
04:19Now, there's different kinds of paraphilia, right?
04:21There's the non-criminal paraphilia.
04:23People get into latex.
04:25They get into plushies and furries, things like that.
04:29We do know by the time that young men reach the age of 18,
04:3499% of them have masturbated themselves into oblivion.
04:38We know that for a fact, okay?
04:40I'm always being concerned about that 1% who didn't.
04:43What happened to them? Are they lying?
04:45About 10% of American males are involved with different forms of paraphilia.
04:51Four of those 10 men are actually into criminal paraphilia.
04:55I mean, about half of those then get into the very, very violent types of criminal paraphilia.
05:02In high school, Dahmer began drinking heavily to cope with his dark fantasies.
05:07He was known to play pranks and fake epileptic fits.
05:11By the time he was 16, he began fantasizing about what it would be like to have sex with a dead body.
05:17Jeffrey had a lot of fantasies.
05:19He didn't share those fantasies.
05:21Over time, fantasies become behavior.
05:26So nobody wakes up in the morning as a necrophile.
05:29It's a process of becoming.
05:31People get into these fantasies, and the fantasies develop.
05:34We're all sexual beings.
05:36We all have to find ways to be sexual.
05:38But there are groups of people in our society who are not comfortable in their own skin.
05:42They're not comfortable talking to other people.
05:46Now, there's a reason why he was more comfortable with dead people,
05:51because he lacked the skill set to be intimate.
05:55In such low self-esteem, he was so insecure in his own life
05:59that eventually he became more comfortable with people who would not reject him.
06:06They were dead.
06:08It was only a matter of time before Dahmer enacted one of his fantasies.
06:12In June 1978, three weeks after high school graduation,
06:16Dahmer picked up hitchhiker Stephen Hicks and brought him back to his father's house.
06:21The two shared a few drinks, but when Hicks tried to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned him with a barbell.
06:26Dahmer proceeded to have sex with the body before dismembering and disposing of it.
06:31When Jeffrey killed Stephen Hicks, it was, I'm sure, a great relief for him.
06:36He finally got to act out his fantasies.
06:38He already knew how he was going to do it.
06:40I mean, he had planned it out in fantasy first,
06:43and so he knew that this was the right time and moment to grab him, lure him in, and kill him.
06:50And now he gets to be with the body, and finally, that was his level of intimacy.
06:55He gets to be intimate with the body, which most of us take for granted in normal relationships.
07:00But now this person is dead.
07:02They're not going to reject him.
07:03They're not going to laugh at him.
07:04They're not going to make him feel insecure.
07:06He gets to do what he wants to do.
07:08I think that really set the stage for later on in his life as he fantasized.
07:15After high school, Dahmer joined the Army but was discharged in 1981.
07:20Then, Dahmer moved in with his grandmother and worked the graveyard shift at a local chocolate company.
07:25Dahmer wouldn't kill again for almost 10 years.
07:29How is it possible that someone like him is able to control his urges?
07:33Did he find other ways to satisfy himself?
07:37So that's when I went to meet Jeffrey Dahmer's mother.
07:40That was a really interesting interview that we had.
07:43So I know that Dahmer had been doing something bad during all those years when he hadn't been killing.
07:49And she said, well, he did tell me.
07:51Because at the trial, at his trial, it didn't come out.
07:54But I'll tell you now, in confidence, what he told me.
07:59And I'm going to quote her.
08:00She said, you know, he would go to...
08:03He would look at young men who had been killed in a car accident.
08:05They died of illnesses.
08:06He would go to the viewings.
08:09Then he would go to the funerals.
08:12Then he would go to the cemeteries where they were buried.
08:15And at night, he would dig them up to have sex with them.
08:19That was his...
08:20Those were his words to me.
08:22That kept him occupied for several years.
08:25So he kept the fantasies going and actually acting out how many he had sex with.
08:31I don't know.
08:32She doesn't know.
08:33She didn't know.
08:34But certainly, the whole fantasy development about being with someone who had been buried was really, really important to him.
08:41But grave robbing couldn't satisfy his urges for long.
08:44He even owned a mannequin at one point, but it wasn't the same thing.
08:48In 1987, Dahmer's killing career would resume, and he would take the lives of 16 additional men and boys.
08:55Often, he'd pick them up at gay bars, bathhouses, and porn shops, and take them back to his apartment for a drink.
09:01He was very low-profile.
09:03He'd just meet people.
09:04He was very friendly.
09:06Invite them to his home.
09:08Sure, tomorrow, have a drink.
09:09Then he would spike the drink, and they'd become unconscious.
09:13In the beginning, it wasn't that way.
09:16The men went to his home.
09:18They stayed with him for a few days.
09:20He didn't kill them immediately.
09:22It's when they said they had to leave, that's when he knew he had to kill them,
09:28because he couldn't allow them to abandon him, to reject him.
09:33Many of Dahmer's victims shared a similar profile.
09:36They were mostly men of color who were in peak physical condition,
09:40or in Dahmer's words, had a Chippendale body type.
09:43I think he deliberately selected men in places that he thought these men would not be missed.
09:50And there may have been this piece, I'm speculating on this,
09:54they chose men of color because he wasn't a man of color.
09:58And that way, he wouldn't be a suspect.
10:03Because if these men of color were disappearing,
10:06they'd be looking for someone else of a man of color who might be doing it.
10:09And he certainly didn't fit that description.
10:11Once his victim was unconscious, Dahmer would strangle them,
10:15then proceed to have sex with the body.
10:17But because Dahmer engaged in these activities within the confines of his apartment,
10:22he had the freedom to explore other sexual desires as well.
10:26He would dismember the bodies, sleep next to the corpses,
10:31and cut holes in the torso to use it for sex.
10:34He decapitated and castrated his victims,
10:37would clean the flesh off their bones and collect the skulls.
10:41He drilled holes into his victims' heads in an attempt to turn them into zombies.
10:46So a great question is, how does a person desensitize themselves
10:51to the point where they can actually kill people and have sex with them after they're dead?
10:55Why would somebody want to do this?
10:57Well, their need is so great to be with somebody.
11:00Even if they're dead, at least it is a form of intimacy.
11:03Yeah, think about that. It's a pretty dark place to be in your life.
11:07But people are there. There are people who do this, and I've interviewed them.
11:12In a huge escalation of his behavior,
11:15he also began to eat the flesh of his victims.
11:19So there's different forms of cannibalism.
11:22And some is not sexual.
11:24We know there have been Indian tribes and so forth, they have eaten their victims,
11:28but it wasn't sexualized.
11:29We know in some cases, as in the case of Jeffrey Dahmer, there was a sexual component to it.
11:34Now, there is the blood part, where he sampled the blood.
11:40So blood itself is a type of paraphilia.
11:44I'm sure he tasted it.
11:46And from there, it was very easy to then taste the flesh.
11:51And of course, you know, terrible thing to say, but it tastes like chicken.
11:55I mean, it was something that they explored.
11:58And so when he realized it didn't taste bad,
12:01then he kept advancing in that and doing more of that.
12:05So Jeffrey ate penises.
12:08I mean, he ate internal organs, and he was, in some ways, I guess, socializing, if you will.
12:13He was exploring their bodies.
12:15And he had some favorite victims, people he preferred.
12:18Physically, they were becoming part of him.
12:21He drank their blood.
12:22They were part of him, and now he eats their flesh.
12:25It was all part of this, I need to feel powerful.
12:29I need to feel I'm normal.
12:32All of this was working towards one grandiose plan that Jeffrey Dahmer had in his mind.
12:37A fantasy that would eclipse everything before it.
12:40So this drawing by Jeffrey Dahmer details his fantasies.
12:44On this end of the table, he had one fully articulated skeleton.
12:48On the other end, another one was in the bathroom.
12:50That he was still taking the flesh off the bones.
12:53And then all these heads on this table behind him.
12:57He says, I could sit in this black chair,
13:00surrounded by my friends, my best friends.
13:03And they could never leave me because they were physically part of me.
13:07And emotionally, they were part of me.
13:10He said, when I could sit in that chair, he said, I would finally feel powerful.
13:15Those are his words.
13:17I would feel powerful.
13:20But the truth is, you never feel comfortable in your own skin.
13:24Jeffrey Dahmer was almost caught several times.
13:28One of his victims, Conorak Synthesymphone,
13:31even escaped at first and was found by police in the middle of the night.
13:35However, Dahmer managed to convince officers that they were lovers,
13:39and the police let Dahmer go.
13:42He had practice, and the more practice he did,
13:44the easier it became, and there was no turning back.
13:47There was escalation, absolutely.
13:50Which would eventually, he knew, he knew intellectually,
13:53that an end was coming.
13:56Absolutely, he knew.
13:59Just before midnight on July 22, 1991,
14:02a would-be victim of Dahmer's, Tracy Edwards,
14:05escaped from Dahmer's apartment where he had been captive,
14:08with handcuffs dangling from one arm.
14:10He alerted police, who accompanied him back to Dahmer's apartment.
14:14When they went to his house, we had body parts cooking on the stove.
14:18I mean, all kinds of, we had them, body parts in drawers.
14:21I mean, you can imagine the stench going to that apartment.
14:25You can imagine the two police officers
14:28who walked into that apartment
14:31and realized that Jeffrey was standing behind them.
14:34And they were looking at these body parts.
14:37I would love to have interviewed them.
14:40What they must have thought,
14:43wait a minute, look at all these heads and the guys behind us.
14:47But Jeffrey knew it was over.
14:50He could have killed them.
14:52But he wasn't, he had, he knew the end was coming.
14:55When the police arrived, he knew he was going to just give it up.
14:58There was no struggle from him at all.
15:00Yeah, he got me.
15:02Dr. Hickey recalls the first thing
15:05Jeffrey Dahmer's mother told him when they met.
15:07And the first thing she said, she said,
15:10my son never tried to hurt anybody.
15:13He killed them, but he never tried to hurt them.
15:16Which was absolutely true.
15:18Every necrophile I've ever interviewed or researched,
15:21none of them ever tried to hurt the victims.
15:23They just killed them.
15:25I'd say 95% of them are not sadistic
15:27because they want the corpse to be with the corpse.
15:29I interviewed a guy, Larry Hall.
15:32Larry Hall was a convicted serial killer
15:34who confessed to the murders of 35 women and young girls.
15:38Larry was a necrophilic killer.
15:40I said, so Larry, when you had the victims down on the ground
15:44and you strangled them from behind,
15:46did you ever look to see their faces?
15:48Or when you had them up against a tree in the woods
15:50and you were strangling them, did you ever look at their faces?
15:52He says, no, why would I do that?
15:54Because he wasn't interested in their suffering.
15:56He just needed them to be dead.
15:58So Jeffrey Dahmer never intended to hurt his victims.
16:02Ever.
16:04Look at some of his interviews.
16:06He talked about how pathetic his life was,
16:08what a waste his life was.
16:10There was no sadism.
16:12What he wanted was to be with somebody.
16:14And so killing them was the process of getting to be with somebody.
16:20Soon after his arrest,
16:22Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to the murders.
16:24The case went to trial in early 1992,
16:27where a parade of psychiatrists took the stand in Dahmer's case,
16:31diagnosing him with paraphilia,
16:32borderline personality,
16:34schizotypal disorder,
16:36and sexual sadism.
16:38But was Jeffrey Dahmer a psychopath?
16:40Jeffrey Dahmer was definitely not a psychopath.
16:43Not even close.
16:45Because every necrophile I've interviewed or researched,
16:49none of them are true psychopaths.
16:52So Jeffrey was a sociopath.
16:55And the difference, there's quite a big distinction,
16:58and I train law enforcement to understand these distinctions.
17:00A true psychopath is someone usually who's very sadistic.
17:05They have no empathy.
17:07They manipulate, they control people.
17:10And certainly we see some of that with sociopaths.
17:13Sociopaths are very emotional.
17:15They still love their moms.
17:17They still have emotional attachments.
17:19So is it possible, then,
17:21that Jeffrey Dahmer felt guilty for the crimes he had committed?
17:24Jeffrey never felt badly specifically for the victims.
17:28I think he recognized that there was a dead zone within himself.
17:33I think most men, I can't speak for women,
17:36have a place where we can go where we don't feel badly about anything.
17:40We can go there, but most of us don't go there
17:43because it's pretty scary to know you can look at someone suffering
17:46and you don't feel badly about it.
17:48Jeffrey had this dark spot in him which grew and grew and grew,
17:52and that's where he lived his life,
17:54was in this dark, dark zone.
17:55On a personal note, I mean, I call that evil.
17:58I think Jeffrey became a very evil person.
18:01Was he a bad person?
18:04It's complex.
18:08On November 28, 1994,
18:11Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by another inmate at the Wisconsin prison
18:15where he was serving his life sentences.
18:17When I met with his mom,
18:19eventually she told me that he finally said to her on a phone call,
18:22he said, I don't want to be in prison anymore,
18:25but I also know I'm too dangerous to be on the streets.
18:28Because he knew if he was back on the streets,
18:30he'd probably do it again.
18:32And what, maybe three weeks later, he was dead.
18:35And I think that when he was attacked,
18:38it was probably a relief for him.
18:41Dahmer was a big guy.
18:43He could have handled himself.
18:45The man who attacked him actually killed Dahmer
18:47and another man at the same time.
18:49I think he had a lead knife.
18:50Dahmer could have fought back.
18:52But he didn't.
18:54I'm sure he did not fight back.
18:56He wanted to die.
18:58And this was his way out.
19:00I think had he not been killed,
19:02that he would have eventually taken his own life.
19:04Absolutely, he would have killed himself.
19:06As he said in his own words,
19:08my life was pathetic.
19:10I think he wanted to end that pathetic life,
19:13recognizing all the harm he had done to his family,
19:16to the community, to our nation.
19:19I mean, it was just so overwhelming for him,
19:22I think that he just knew
19:24what's the point of being alive.
19:26I think he'd gotten past fantasizing
19:28about killing people.
19:30So, when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer,
19:33was he born a killer or made one?
19:36So when we talk about Jeffrey Dahmer,
19:38we have to talk about nature versus nurture.
19:40Actually, nature and nurture.
19:42I think that in his case,
19:44there was some chemical depression in the family.
19:46I think he probably inherited some of that.
19:49His father was depressed, his mom was depressed.
19:51And I think that helped set the stage
19:53for the lack of attachment.
19:55Now, keep in mind, we're all different.
19:57So we don't all cope with stressors the same way.
20:01Some people handle stress better than others.
20:03And when we talk about biology and genetics,
20:05we have to realize that
20:07you inherit things genetically.
20:09You inherit temperament, schizophrenia perhaps,
20:11passed on to families.
20:13You have to have the nurturing part.
20:14Nature kind of loads the gun
20:16and nurturing pulls the trigger.
20:18So I think as we go down that pathway,
20:21we have to understand
20:23it's not just one quick, simple answer.
20:25It is complex.
20:27And all the psychiatrists who studied his case
20:30would agree that there was multiple things
20:32that were involved.
20:34So, was there anything that could have been done
20:37to prevent this?
20:39He was a very needy person
20:41and he didn't know how to express himself very well.
20:44He was very sad in some ways
20:46because a lot of this could have been avoided
20:48had there been early intervention.
20:51But he didn't have people to turn to
20:54and he didn't know how to do it.
20:56And by the time he should have, could have,
20:58he was already deep into his fantasy world.
21:01Parenting is so important.
21:04Most people who have troubles like that
21:08don't become murderers.
21:10He really made some choices.
21:12It wasn't like he was mentally ill.
21:14What he was doing,
21:16he just allowed himself to go down that pathway
21:18because his need to be with people was so great.
21:23There was a lot of things along the way,
21:25but he made his own decisions.
21:27And as he crossed those lines,
21:29he got to a point where there was no return.
21:31He could never go back.
21:33And he became much more comfortable
21:35with the idea of being people who are dead.
21:38And that, of course, was a game changer for him
21:41and for our nation.
21:43It is over now.
21:45This has never been a case of trying to get free.
21:48I didn't ever want freedom.
21:51Frankly, I wanted death for myself.
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