On November 28th, 1994, three killers entered the gymnasium at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin — and only one walked out. This is the story of the death of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00On November 28, 1994, three killers entered the gymnasium at the Columbia Correctional
00:05Institution in Wisconsin, and only one walked out. This is the story of the death of Jeffrey
00:11Dahmer.
00:12Milwaukee police found body parts in a Northside apartment, and now they wonder if they've
00:16uncovered some kind of death factory.
00:20They certainly had. Jeffrey Dahmer was handed 16 consecutive life sentences for his unspeakable
00:25crimes.
00:26When he was sent to Columbia Correctional Institution, Dahmer himself agreed that, for
00:30his own safety, he should be placed in solitary confinement. But solitary is hard on a person,
00:35and after a year, he wanted out. After his murder, one of Dahmer's lawyers, Steven Eisenberg,
00:41told the Associated Press,
00:42"...he wanted to be in with the general population. He didn't want to sit in a hole all day long."
00:47During his time in prison, Dahmer was said to have found God. He was baptized in May
00:511994 by the Reverend Roy Ratcliffe, who later told the AP that Dahmer felt he had a good
00:56relationship with other inmates. He said,
00:59"...there was no sense of dread or fear for his life."
01:02However, other sources claim Dahmer told his family that he simply didn't care if anything
01:07happened to him. Another of Dahmer's lawyers, Gerald Boyle, said,
01:10"...Dahmer had a death wish, and I know that he didn't have the gumption to do it himself,
01:14so I predicted that the day would come when he would be killed in prison."
01:18On the day he died, Dahmer was assigned to the work detail he'd held for three weeks,
01:22editorial duties. He was paid 24 cents an hour for the work. That day, he would be cleaning
01:27the gym with two other inmates.
01:30Convicted murderer Christopher Scarver was one of the other men assigned to work with
01:33Dahmer on the morning of his death. After dropping out of high school, Scarver had joined
01:37the Wisconsin Conservation Corps, where he was trained to be a carpenter. After his training
01:42year ended, he began abusing drugs and alcohol. A few months later, he robbed the Corps office.
01:48During the robbery, Scarver killed a witness, and in 1992, he was sentenced to life in prison
01:52with the possibility of parole after 50 years. Arriving at the Columbia Correctional Institution
01:57in the same year as Dahmer, Scarver was well aware of who he was, even if he didn't get
02:02to know it. He later told the New York Post,
02:04"...there was no impression. I never interacted with him."
02:07But that didn't mean Scarver didn't keep an eye on the most infamous inmate in his prison.
02:12He claims he saw Dahmer taunt other inmates by shaping his food into body parts and pretending
02:16ketchup was blood. Scarver added,
02:18"...you cross the line with some people. Prisoners, prison staff. Some people who are in prison
02:23are repentant."
02:24But he wasn't one of them.
02:27No, there are times when I still do, still do have the old compulsions.
02:33On April 21, 1992, Jesse Anderson and his wife Barbara were eating dinner at a restaurant
02:38in Milwaukee. Afterward, while walking out to their car in the parking lot, they were
02:42allegedly attacked by two Black men, one of whom had been wearing an L.A. Clippers
02:46hat found at the scene. At least, that was the story Anderson told the authorities. Thing
02:51is, no men had been spotted at the scene. Only Anderson, who, as it later transpired,
02:56had planted the hat himself and stabbed and bludgeoned his wife to death. Anderson stood
03:00trial for his wife's murder and received a life sentence upon conviction.
03:04While Dahmer may have been the focus of Christopher Scarver's anger that morning, he was no fan
03:09of Anderson, either. Not only was Scarver furious that the husband had tried to pin
03:13his crime on Black men, but he had apparently continued to espouse openly racist views in
03:17prison. One incident involving a portrait of Martin Luther King Jr. particularly stuck
03:22in Scarver's mind. He told the New York Post,
03:24"...there was a picture in the arts and crafts room that a prisoner had spent a lot of time
03:28painting and he hung it up in that room to dry. Anderson painted a blood dot on King's
03:33forehead as if it were a bullet hole."
03:36While Scarver would later claim that he had no plans to kill Dahmer that day, he did come
03:39prepared. Earlier that morning, Scarver had secreted a 20-inch-long metal bar from one
03:44of the machines in the gym into the leg of his pants. The guards left the three unshackled
03:48inmates to their work at 7 p.m., and later, Scarver felt someone poking. He later recalled,
03:54"...I turned around and Dahmer and Jesse were kind of laughing under their breath. I looked
03:58right into their eyes and I couldn't tell which had done it."
04:01Eventually, the men split up to clean different areas. But while Anderson went off on his
04:05own, Scarver followed Dahmer to one of the gym's bathrooms. There, Scarver confronted
04:10the serial killer about his crimes. He later said,
04:12"...I asked him if he did those things because I was fiercely disgusted. He was shocked.
04:17He started looking for the door pretty quick. I blocked him."
04:21That's when he beat Dahmer almost to death with the metal rod. Scarver then found Anderson
04:25and attacked him as well.
04:27"...They knew the potential dangers, it's not the prison's fault. Jeff, for all that
04:31he was a killer, could never defend himself."
04:36Dahmer put the murder weapon back in the gym before returning to his cell. A guard noticed
04:39he was back early and asked why. Scarver replied,
04:42"...God told me to do it. You will hear about it on the 6 o'clock news. Jesse Anderson and
04:47Jeffrey Dahmer were dead."
04:50While it's not uncommon for inmates to kill each other in prison, it should have been
04:53much harder to kill Dahmer. According to Scarver, Dahmer was always followed around by a guard
04:58when he was out of his cell, to keep just such a thing from happening. Scarver told
05:02The Post,
05:03"...I saw heated interactions between Dahmer and other prisoners from time to time."
05:08There had already been one close call. Hoping to get himself deported back to his home country
05:12of Cuba, an inmate named Osvaldo Durruti attacked him in the prison chapel with a razor. The
05:17attack failed. Durruti later recalled,
05:20"...I'm not proud of that. At that moment, you know, my mind was so disturbed."
05:28While there were three guards in the vicinity on the day Dahmer died, none of them were
05:31actually overseeing the work detail like they were supposed to. Allegedly, one guard
05:35was listening to music, another was in a back office, and the third was escorting two prisoners
05:40to the gym. Scarver believes that Dahmer was left unprotected on purpose. He thought that
05:45the guards hated Dahmer as much as anyone else.
05:48They had something to do with what took place, yes. Legally, the guards were not considered
05:53criminally liable, although the state of Wisconsin formed a panel to look into supervised work
05:57duties after the murks occurred.
05:59When Christopher Scarver told a guard that Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson were dead,
06:03that wasn't quite true. At the time, both of them were still alive. Dahmer was found
06:08in a puddle of blood at 8.10 a.m. Emergency services were called, and both Dahmer and
06:12Anderson were taken to the nearby Divine Safety Hospital. Reportedly, Dahmer had been beaten
06:17so badly that he was hard to recognize. One of the paramedics told the Associated Press,
06:22"...there was a substantial amount of blood."
06:25Another man who saw him said,
06:26He didn't look like his former pictures.
06:29Dahmer lived for about an hour after the attack. He was pronounced dead a little after 9 a.m.
06:34The following day, the preliminary autopsy results were published, which found he had
06:38died of multiple skull fractures and brain trauma brought about by two blows to his head.
06:43His will requested he be cremated immediately, but because of the court case against Scarver
06:47and a dispute over Dahmer's remains by his divorced parents, he wouldn't be put to rest
06:52for another year.
06:53Anderson, meanwhile, lived for two days after the attack before succumbing to his injuries.
06:58"...convicted serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was attacked this morning while cleaning a
07:03prison bathroom. He died of massive head trauma en route to hospital."
07:08As the news of Dahmer's death spread that afternoon and evening, emotions ran high.
07:12A crowd of reporters descended on the home of the serial killer's father, while others
07:16camped out at Dahmer's old apartment, where many of the victims had died. The AP reported
07:21that a random passerby in Dahmer's old neighborhood, in Milwaukee, screamed out,
07:25"...if you kill anybody like that, you deserve to die like you did."
07:29That was decidedly not the opinion of E. Michael McCann, the district attorney who had put
07:33Dahmer behind bars for the killings. He said,
07:36"...this was murder. I hope whoever did this doesn't emerge as a pope."
07:40It was the families of the victims, though, who were most affected by these events. The
07:44media began badgering various family members after the attack, asking them what they were
07:48feeling now that Dahmer was dead. At least one victim's father told the press he just
07:52wanted to be left alone, although some relatives were more for the coming.
07:56The grandmother of victim Purtis Stratter said,
07:58"...so you do, so you get."
08:01But the mother of victim Anthony Hughes told the AP,
08:03"...it's nothing to rejoice about."
08:05And the mother of victim Oliver Lacey said,
08:08"...the hurt is worse now because he's not suffering like we are."