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6th December 2023
08:23am GMT
Lionel Dahmer, the father of notorious serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, has died at the age of 87.
A spokesperson for the Medina County Health Department confirmed the news to the US Sun.
They told the outlet: “We have been notified of the death of Lionel Herbert Dahmer, who was born on July 29, 1936.
“We are waiting for a copy of his death certificate to be sent over to us so we can register the death.
“It was so recent that I would imagine we won’t see that for a couple of days.”
According to the publication, Lionel had been living a private life in Ohio in recent years.
Also known as the ‘Milwaukee Cannibal’ or the ‘Milwaukee Monster’, Jeffrey Dahmer murdered at least 17 men, mostly young, gay African Americans, between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer would lure his the men back to his home by promising to pay them to pose nude for photographs.
He then drugged and strangled them, before killing and mutilating his victims. He is also reported to have occasionally cannibalised their bodies.
Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences without the possibility of parole, which amounted to a total of 941 years in prison.
Throughout his life, Lionel was asked about how his son ended up becoming one of the most infamous serial killers in modern American history.
When he was asked about this in an interview with Good Morning America in the 1990s, he said: "The closest I could come to why—to give some type of a causality for all this—is that I think it was a cumulative thing.
"I think there were several events in his life starting with the hernia operation, his concern about having his penis being cut off which he expressed to his mother at the time, I didn't even know about that until the trial in February '92.
"That plus a blow to the back of the head, plus I don't know these various incidents, going around and getting roadkill.
"All these things came to a cumilative ending and it hooked on, I firmly believe it hooked into his sexuality at age 14 or 15.
"There really were no overt signs. He wasn't foaming at the mouth or talking to himself in his sleep, or acting in a weird fashion."
Just two years after he was sentenced, Dahmer was killed in prison by Christopher Scarver and another inmate.
Last year, Netflix released ‘Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story’, a dramatisation of his life and crimes which stars Evan Peters as Dahmer.
The series was directed by Ryan Murphy who sought to give victims a voice and highlight the systemic racism, white privilege and homophobia that contributed to Dahmer avoiding arrest for so long.
For his performance as Dahmer, Evan Peters won a Golden Globe.
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