Notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer 'didn't mean to hurt' any of the victims he murdered, his late mother told a forensic psychologist.
The late Joyce Dahmer claimed that her son, Jeffrey Dahmer, 'never tried to hurt' the victims he murdered and defiled during a killing spree that lasted 13 years. Speaking on the 9 March episode of the Catching Evil podcast, forensic psychologist Dr. Eric Hickey recounted his conversation with Joyce Dahmer after her son was arrested.
'I want you to know that my son never tried to hurt anybody. He killed them, but he never tried to hurt them,' she claimed. According to Hickey, Joyce was well aware of her son's twisted behaviour at the time of the murders.
Thirteen Years of Horrific Killings
Jeffrey Dahmer claimed his first victim at 18, in 1978. After hitting a hitchhiker over the head with a dumbbell, Dahmer dissected, dissolved, and pulverised the victim's body before scattering the remains in his father's backyard. It took him nine years to commit his second murder, but by the summer of 1991, he was killing around one person per week.
Some of the men Dahmer murdered were solicited prostitutes, while others he lured to his flat under the impression of casual sex. The murders were unspeakably horrific, involving rape, lobotomy, necrophilia, cannibalism, and dismemberment.
Joyce Dahmer Knew About Her Son's Urges
Hickey said that Joyce knew her son was, at the very least, thinking of consummating his urges. '[Jeffrey] would look in newspapers for young men who had been killed in car accidents,' Joyce allegedly told Hickey. 'Then he'd go to the viewings of the bodies.'
'From there, he would go to the funerals themselves, and then he would go to the cemeteries where they were buried, and then at night, he would attempt to dig them up because he wanted to be with somebody.'
At the height of his murder spree, Dahmer increasingly became obsessed with the prospect of turning his victims into youthful and submissive sexual partners. He would drill holes into their skulls and inject acid into their brains, in an attempt to turn them into 'zombies.'
'We're all sexual beings so we know that, at some point, people have to express their sexuality,' Hickey explained. 'I think sometimes people who don't have sex with other people will, in the end, seek out dead people because it's better than nothing.'
Jeffrey Dahmer's Arrest, Trial, and Death
Dahmer was arrested on 22 July 1991, after a victim escaped his flat and told the police. He pleaded insanity at his trial, citing his disturbing and uncontrollable impulses.
The court declared Dahmer sane and convicted him on 16 counts of murder. He was sentenced to 16 life terms, totalling 947 years. He died in 1994 after he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.
Joyce Dahmer called her son 'a victim of compulsion' in a 1993 interview with Hard Copy. 'He's not a monster. He's a human being. And I think he deserves some help,' she explained.
She admitted she has since been tormented by what her son did. After Jeffrey's death, Joyce insisted on having her son's brain studied by medical professionals. A judge ruled to have Jeffrey's brain cremated.
Joyce Dahmer died from breast cancer in 2000.
