Jeffrey Dahmer is not a conventional serial killer. He is not the result of sexual or physical abuse from his parents, of a poor social or economic background, of his sexual preference as contemporary theories might have suggested.
In reality, I think that Jeffrey Dahmer was a mix of all this, the perfect mix that created a serial killer. By taking each of the elements of his life that motivated him to kill individually, they would not represent a reason enough to explain the murders of 17 young men. But we can explain this killer rampage by associating all these elements.
In his interview with Robert Ressler, he confessed that the nights before his arrest, he was thinking about stopping the killings. No more killing, no more victims. This was the reason why he bought all the acid barrels that were found in his apartment. He thought about getting rid of everything, even the pictures, the skeletons, and to move to a new place and start a new life. He felt he could not go on. In fact, as he drugged one of his last victims, Oliver Lacy, and placed him on the bed, Lacy’s body rolled over and knocked down the two griffin statues representing power that should have been part of his shrine. For him, that was the sign of the fall of his power, the end of his “reign”. But it is evident by studying his personality that it would have been impossible for him to stop, as he enjoyed what he did, that it made him feel alive, powerful, but also loved and important. He would not have been able to have any kind of relationship with a living person.
On the other hand, Jeffrey was disappointed with his meetings with psychiatrists. He had the need to understand what pushed him to kill 17 men. He wanted to know why. But his interviews with psychiatrists did not give him any answers, they gave him labels, put a name on what he was, but did not shed any light on the causes, the reasons that made him one of the most prolific serial killers of his time, that made him “the Monster of Milwaukee”.
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