Jeff and his little brother David were raised in Bath Township, Ohio.
Unlike many other killers, Jeffreys parents were not abusive. Joyce had some relatively mild psychological problems, but Lionel tried to be as loving a father as possible, struggling to reach his quiet and isolated son.
As a small child, Jeff seemed happy enough, playing with his dog or riding his bike, but was fascinated with death. When Lionel removed some animal bones from under the porch, the remains of small creatures killed by small local predators, Jeff seemed quite pleased by the sound they made dropping back into the bucket. His father dismissed it as childhood curiosity.
Jeff was the class clown, known for doing things as ridiculous as faking seizures for laughs. In fact, he was lonely and isolated in school, with few friends.
By high school, he was a full-blown alcoholic, drinking before, after, and even during class.
When his parents divorced, his father was the one to move out of the house. When Jeff was 18, Joyce took David and left. Jeffrey was alone in the house with little food and a broken refrigerator until his father and his new wife found out about the situation and moved into the house.
Trying to help his son, Lionel assisted Jeffrey get into the University of Ohio. But it was already too lateJeff Dahmer made his first killing at age 17, when he picked up a hitchhiker , brought him home, murdered him, and scattered the bone fragments in the woods behind the Dahmer home.
When Jeff flunked out of college, a desperate Lionel took him to enlist in the army. The ever docile Jeffrey went along with his fathers wishes as if he had no opinion of his own.
Alcohol got the young Dahmer discharged from the army while he was stationed in