Jeffrey Dahmer List of Crimes: Complete Record

When police entered apartment 213 at 924 North 25th Street in Milwaukee on July 22, 1991, they uncovered one of the most gruesome crime scenes in American history. Over a thirteen-year span between 1978 and 1991, Jeffrey Dahmer operated largely undetected, exploiting systemic biases, social marginalization, and police indifference. Examining the jeffrey dahmer list of crimes requires looking not only at his 17 homicides, but also at a broader record of sexual offenses, physical assaults, drugging, and desecration that preceded and accompanied his killings.

The Definitive Jeffrey Dahmer List of Crimes

While Dahmer was formally tried and convicted on specific murder charges, his actual pattern of criminal conduct encompassed a wide range of state and federal offenses under Wisconsin and Ohio law. Because he pleaded guilty or was convicted after entering an insanity plea, many offenses were subsumed into his homicide convictions, while others formed separate criminal proceedings.

1. First-Degree Intentional Homicide (17 Counts)

Dahmer murdered 17 men and teenage boys between June 1978 and July 1991. Sixteen of these murders occurred in Wisconsin, and one occurred in Ohio. In each instance, Dahmer lured his victims to a private space—initially his parents' home in Bath Township, Ohio; later his grandmother's house in West Allis, Wisconsin; and finally his Milwaukee apartment—where he subdued and killed them, typically by strangulation.

2. Second-Degree Sexual Assault and Child Enticement

In September 1988, Dahmer lured a 13-year-old boy, Somsack Sinthasomphone, to his apartment under the pretense of paying him to pose for photographs. Dahmer drugged the boy, who managed to escape and seek medical help. In May 1989, Dahmer was convicted of second-degree sexual assault and child enticement. He received an eight-year prison term but was granted work release, serving only 10 months in the Milwaukee County House of Correction—a catastrophic judicial lapse that allowed him to resume killing shortly after his release.

3. Drugging and Chemical Incapacitation

Dahmer systematically used central nervous system depressants, primarily Halcion (triazolam), to incapacitate his targets. He slipped crushed sleeping pills into alcoholic drinks offered to men he met at gay bars, bus stations, or shopping malls. Survivors, including Ronald Flowers and Tracy Edwards, recounted losing consciousness shortly after consuming drinks Dahmer provided.

4. Desecration of Human Remains

Following the murders, Dahmer engaged in extensive posthumous mutilation. His actions included dismemberment, defleshing bones using chemicals such as acid and bleach, preservation of skeletal remains, and necrophilia. While Wisconsin law at the time did not carry independent charges for every individual act of necrophilia or cannibalism, these actions were legally documented as evidence of premeditation and depravity during his 1992 competency and sanity trial.

5. Attempted Homicide and Assault

Several victims survived encounters with Dahmer. In 1988, Ronald Flowers was drugged, lost consciousness, and woke up in a hospital with no clear memory of the assault, though his money was stolen. On July 22, 1991, Tracy Edwards was held at knifepoint in Dahmer's apartment for hours before punching Dahmer and fleeing into the street, leading directly to Dahmer's apprehension.

Chronological Record of Victims (1978–1991)

Understanding the full scope of Dahmer's criminal enterprise requires a review of his 17 victims, the dates of their murders, and their ages at the time of death:

• Steven Hicks (Age 18) – June 18, 1978: Killed at Dahmer's childhood home in Bath Township, Ohio, after Dahmer picked him up hitchhiking. Dahmer struck him with a barbell and strangled him.
• Steven Tuomi (Age 24) – November 20, 1987: Killed at the Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee. Dahmer claimed to have had a blackout and awoke to find Tuomi beaten to death.
• James Doxtator (Age 14) – January 16, 1988: Lured from a bus stop to Dahmer's grandmother's residence, drugged, and strangled.
• Richard Guerrero (Age 25) – March 24, 1988: Picked up outside a Milwaukee tavern, drugged, and strangled at the West Allis home.
• Anthony Sears (Age 26) – March 25, 1989: Met at a gay bar, drugged, and strangled at the West Allis residence.
• Raymond Smith / Ricky Beeks (Age 33) – May 20, 1990: Met outside a Milwaukee bar, drugged, and strangled in Dahmer's newly leased apartment on North 25th Street.
• Edward Smith (Age 28) – June 14, 1990: Lured to the apartment, drugged, and asphyxiated.
• Ernest Miller (Age 22) – September 2, 1990: Lured to the apartment; his carotid artery was severed after he was incapacitated.
• David Thomas (Age 23) – September 24, 1990: Drugged and strangled in the Milwaukee apartment.
• Curtis Straughter (Age 19) – February 18, 1991: Met at a bus stop, lured with the promise of money, drugged, and suffocated.
• Errol Lindsey (Age 19) – April 7, 1991: Dahmer performed crude, non-fatal trephination (drilling into the skull to inject hydrochloric acid) before strangling him.
• Anthony Hughes (Age 31) – May 24, 1991: A deaf man who knew Dahmer socially; drugged and murdered in Dahmer's apartment.
• Konerak Sinthasomphone (Age 14) – May 27, 1991: The younger brother of Dahmer's 1988 victim. He escaped briefly into the street, but responding officers returned him to Dahmer's custody after Dahmer convinced them it was a private domestic dispute. He was murdered hours later.
• Matt Turner (Age 20) – June 30, 1991: Picked up at a Chicago bus station, brought to Milwaukee, drugged, and strangled.
• Jeremiah Weinberger (Age 23) – July 5, 1991: Met at a bar in Chicago, brought back to Dahmer's apartment, subjected to chemical injection into the brain, and asphyxiated.
• Oliver Lacy (Age 23) – July 15, 1991: Approached in a public shopping mall, drugged, and strangled.
• Joseph Bradehoft (Age 25) – July 19, 1991: Met at a bus stop, drugged, and strangled just three days before Dahmer's arrest.

Legal Outcomes and Sentencing

Following his arrest on July 22, 1991, Dahmer waived his Miranda rights and provided a detailed, multi-day confession to Milwaukee detectives Patrick Kennedy and Dennis Murphy. Dahmer was charged in Wisconsin with 15 counts of first-degree intentional homicide (prosecutors lacked sufficient physical evidence to try the Steven Tuomi case in Wisconsin at that time).

Dahmer entered a plea of guilty but not guilty by reason of mental disease or defect. This shifted the legal focus to a sanity trial in early 1992 under Wisconsin's bifurcated trial system. The defense argued that Dahmer suffered from paraphilias, necrophilia, and borderline personality disorder to a degree that prevented him from appreciating the wrongfulness of his conduct or conforming his behavior to the law.

On February 15, 1992, the jury rejected the insanity defense, ruling that Dahmer was legally sane at the time of each murder. Judge Laurence Gram Jr. sentenced Dahmer to 15 consecutive life sentences, totaling 937 years, with no possibility of parole. In May 1992, Dahmer was extradited to Ohio, where he pleaded guilty to the 1978 murder of Steven Hicks and received a 16th life sentence.

Institutional and Societal Aftermath

The extent of Dahmer's crimes exposed critical failures across criminal justice and public safety agencies. The majority of Dahmer's victims were Black, Indigenous, Latino, or Asian, and many were members of Milwaukee's LGBTQ+ community. Neighbors, including Glenda Cleveland, repeatedly contacted the police regarding screams, strange odors, and suspicious behavior coming from Dahmer's unit, yet their reports were routinely dismissed.

The handling of 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone became a central flashpoint. Two young Black women found the boy naked and incoherent on the street on May 27, 1991, and called 911. Milwaukee police officers returned the teenager to Dahmer's apartment despite protests from bystanders, accepting Dahmer's claim that the boy was his adult, intoxicated partner. The incident led to departmental investigations, widespread public outrage, and civil lawsuits that ultimately resulted in settlements for the victims' estates.

Dahmer was incarcerated at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin. On November 28, 1994, he was beaten to death by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver, concluding the criminal trajectory of one of history's most heavily documented serial offenders.