Content note: animal abuse, murder, rape, sexual violence, torture, necrophilia, child molestation, drug use and misuse, cannibalism, and ableism.

Photo: Mug shot of Dahmer taken by the Milwaukee Police Department, July 1991

The Jeffrey Dahmer case is a wild ride, so it's time for the first 2-parter. Find out how Dahmer got his start. This episode goes right up until he moves into the notorious apartment on North 25th Street.

Resources

• Wiki
• Biography
• Crime Museum
• Inside the Mind of Jeffrey Dahmer: Serial Killer’s Chilling Jailhouse Interview

Transcription

Welcome to this first 2 part episode of the Spooky Sconnie podcast. This is the podcast that talks about everything that is interesting, funky, spooky, criminal, and just plain weird from the state of Wisconsin. For this episode & the next episode, we will be talking about Jeffrey Dahmer who is probably the most well known serial killer from the State of Wisconsin. And being on top of that, he is relatively recent. Um, he was still killing people when I was like four. So a lot of older millennials are very aware and, um, I think probably have memories of, um, you know, seeing information about this case on the news depending on if they were allowed to watch the news a young age. I didn't have any barriers on what I could watch, so I watched a lot. Um, a couple of content notes for these two episodes. Uh, because this is a wild case. We're going to be talking about [animal abuse], murder, rape, sexual violence, torture, necrophilia, child molestation, drug use, and misuse, cannibalism and ableism. So Woo, prepare yourself. Let's just start right in. Just do it.

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Jeffery Lionel Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 21st, 1960. He was the first of two sons to be born to Joyce, Annette Flint and Lionel Herbert Dahmer. Joyce worked as a teletype machine instructor and his father was studying at Marquette University working towards a degree in chemistry. There are conflicting reports on whether or not, uh, Dahmer had a lot of attention as a child. Some accounts say he was very doted upon, others say he was not. Um, it's really difficult to say, I think. He was described as an energetic and happy child until age four when he had to have surgery to correct a double hernia. And he seemed to go through a lot of changes after that.

He recalled his early years of family life being of extreme tension, which he noted between his parents who were constantly arguing with each other. At elementary school, he was regarded as quiet and timid. And on his first grade or report card, one teacher described him as a reserved child whom she sensed felt neglected, and she thought that this neglect stemmed from his mother's chronic health issues. And we can talk all about that on my other podcast, it's called the chronic sex podcast where I talk about a lot of things that have to do with chronic illness, disability and sexuality. So while that is not, uh - while parenting with a chronic illness is not something I've covered yet, that is definitely on the docket for that one. But needless to say, somebody can be chronically ill or disabled and still be a great parent, so let's not resort to ableism with that. Cool.

During this time, Joyce had been spending a lot of time in bed recovering from probably a flare up of a condition. Um, it's unknown or un-noted from the information I found. A lot of it seemed to suggest she was just hysterical and wanted attention and that is clearly not true. Lionel was studying so much that he was away a lot. And when h