Is Jeffrey Dahmer still alive?

Jeffrey Dahmer‘s cannibalistic, serial killing legacy is the stuff of nightmares. Even so long after his arrest, his crimes send shivers down our spine. We all know he was eventually caught and sent to prison, but is he still behind bars?

Dahmer lured multiple young men and boys to his Milwaukee apartment, where he would often drug them, rape them and murder them. Then in 1991 one of his intended victims managed to escape and was able to report him. But what police found at his apartment, haunted them (and us) for years to come. Jeffrey Dahmer had been storing bodies in various states of decomposition in his small city apartment. He had body parts in his fridge, soaking in barrels of acid, and possibly the most shocking discovery–in cooking pots. Dahmer had been eating his victims.

Dahmer was convicted of his heinous crimes in 1992. He admitted to much of what he had done and even gave recorded interviews about his life and murders. In unemotional language, he gave disgustingly detailed accounts of his crimes and his victim’s last moments. So, is he still serving his sentence?

Is Jeffrey Dahmer still alive?

Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 life terms in prison. Then in 1994, Jeffrey Dahmer was killed by a fellow prison inmate Christopher Scarver. According to Esquire, Scarver beat Dahmer and another fellow inmate, Jesse Anderson to death with a metal bar from the prison weight room. When the three men were left alone and unhandcuffed to clean the bathrooms, Scarver claimed one of the two men poked him in the back with a mop handle. He claimed to have turned around to see both of them laughing but was unsure who did it.

Scarver, who was in prison for fatally shooting a former boss, was allegedly schizophrenic. When asked about the motives for his crimes, he simply replied “God told me to do it.” He went into more detail with the New York Post, saying that Dahmer allegedly made human limbs out of food in the prison cafeteria and wasn’t repentant for his crimes. Scarver had read about what Dahmer had done in the newspaper and hadn’t liked what he read. He claimed to have confronted Dahmer with the article telling him he was “disgusted by” all the things Dahmer had done. He then began to beat him with the metal bar before moving on to Anderson. Dahmer was 34 at the time of his death.

It was a violent end to the violent life Dahmer led. Although in truth, his death did not bring relief to the victim’s families as many felt he went to his death leaving behind many questions unanswered. Many of the families were unable to bury the remains of their lost loved ones and were horrified to hear of their final moments.

Dahmer was cremated soon after his death and his ashes returned to his family. But, bizarrely, he would still be the subject of another court battle. His parents, who were divorced, each argued that they should be given custody of their son’s remains. A judge eventually decreed they be divided in two and split between them. It’s unknown whether these parts were ever scattered, so Dahmer’s current location may well be a dusty urn at the back of a Wisconsin closet.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s life and horrifying legacy remain etched in the collective psyche to this day. It is hard to forget about the seemingly quiet and soft-spoken man who looked every bit the part of a friendly neighbor, the shy kid in school, or a quiet coworker, yet was capable of such horrors. His violent end left more questions than answers although it seems there may never be any real answers to his crimes or why they happened.