Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer (May 21, 1960 – November 28, 1994), also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster, was an American serial killer and sex offender who killed and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991.
Dahmer committed his first murder in Ohio in 1978; he did not resume killing until 1987. The modus operandi for many of his later crimes involved him luring a victim to his Wisconsin apartment where they would be drugged, sexually assaulted, and murdered. Many of his later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism and the permanent preservation of body parts—typically all or part of the skeleton.
Dahmer was arrested in 1991 after an intended victim escaped from his apartment. Although diagnosed with borderline personality disorder (BPD), schizotypal personality disorder (StPD), and a psychotic disorder, he was declared legally sane at his trial. He was convicted of 16 counts of murder (15 in Wisconsin and one in Ohio) and sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment without parole in 1992.
On November 28, 1994, Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.