CRJ 308
Week 5- Case Study –Jeffery Dahmer
Robert Honeysucker
June 22, 2013
Professor Mauldin
This paper will speak on one of America’s most notorious serial killers, Jeffery Dahmer. It will speak on many of his cases, the criminal investigation (or lack of it), and his trial and sentencing. Then it will go into his psychological history. It will make an attempt to analyze the path that made him commit these heinous crimes. Lastly, it will explore some of the ethical issues of his case. In the end, it will take a stance on the outcome of the case. Although he may have been insane, he really was a monster.
Biography
Jeffery Dahmer was born May 21, 1960 in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. His parents were Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. His father was a graduate student in chemical engineering and his mother was a homemaker. Eventually his father earned his PhD. He lived basically a happy formative years until age 6, when he had a surgery to correct a double hernia. This time seemed to effect a change in him. He became insular and lacked self-confidence. His father found new careers, moving the family from Wisconsin to Iowa and then Ohio. With each move he became more insecure. By his early teens he was disengaged, and basically friendless.
Dahmer was preoccupied with dead insects and animals as a child. “On one occasion, he discovered a dead dog alongside the street. He disemboweled it and decapitated it, then impaled the animal on a stick near his residence.”(Purcell, 2006). Dahmer claims his compulsion to necrophilia and murder began at 14. “Dahmer described himself as being surrounded by arguing parents at home and arrogant jerks in school.”(Martens, 2011). But the breakdown of his parents’ marriage, their bitter divorce and the psychological stresses associated with it probably was the catalyst for turning thoughts into actions.
In June, 1978, after high...