By: Kendall Zuniga
In the year 1978, hitchhiker Steven Hicks was on his way to a rock concert in Ohio, when suddenly a car pulled up alongside Hicks and asked where he was heading to, if he had needed a ride, and if he wanted to go back to his house to enjoy an alcoholic beverage with him. Hicks graciously took the offer and went back to the stranger’s home not knowing that Jeffrey Dahmer’s face was the last face he was going to see and speak to. Steven Hicks was only 19 years old at the time of his murder, Dahmer was only 18 years old and had graduated high school three weeks prior to the murder of his first victim.
Dahmer was active between the years of 1978 and 1991 with his victims ranging from 32 to as young as 14 years of age, dismembering, sexually assaulting, and experimenting on his victims. 14 year old Konerak Sinthasomphone was Jeffrey Dahmer’s youngest victim and was the first victim of Dahmer’s to be experimented on as an at-home lobotomy. Only months prior to Konekrak’s murder, his brother, Somsack, was sexually assaulted by Dahmer and managed to get away before anything more was to be done to him. Sadly that wasn’t the case for his younger brother, Konerak. Konerak managed to get away from Dahmer, neighbor Glenda Cleveland, actually called the police to have a look at the boy but police returned young Konerak back to Dahmer after he claimed that the boy was his boyfriend who had a drinking problem. Konerak died later on that night at the hands of Jeffrey Dahmer.
In 1991, a victim by the name Tracy Edwards managed to get away from Dahmer and was found by the police and taken to Dahmer’s apartment for questioning. When police arrived and questioned Dahmer they almost let him go, but police spotted polaroid’s of dismembered victims and immediately put Jeffrey Dahmer under arrest. Authorities were in complete and utter horror when searching through Dahmer’s house, finding human remains, including two human skulls in Dahmer’s fridge and a large barrel in his room filled with acid and decomposing body parts of his former victims. After 13 years, 17 young boy and men victims, and what felt like forever to the victim’s families, their murderer was finally caught and in custody.
Jeffrey Dahmer was sentenced 15 terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992 and later received a 16th term of life imprisonment leaving him with a total of 941 years in prison without the chance of receiving parole. Though Jeffrey Dahmer’s life sentence was cut short on November 28, 1994, when a fellow prison inmate learned of Dahmer’s crimes and beat Dahmer to death with a 20-inch metal bar from a piece of exercise equipment leaving Dahmer lifeless.
More recently on the terms of Jeffrey Dahmer, a new Netflix series called “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” was released. Telling the story of Dahmer getting caught, his time leading up to his killings, and his victims’ backgrounds. This show offers an in depth experience in the mind of world known serial killer, Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer.
Victims names:
June 18, 1978: Steven Hicks, 18
November 20, 1987: Steven Tuomi, 24
January 16, 1988: Jamie Doxtator, 14
March 24, 1988: Richard Guerrero, 25
March 25, 1989: Anthony Sears, 26
May 20, 1990: Raymond Smith (also went by “Ricky Beeks”), 33
June 1990: Edward W. Smith, 28
September 1990: Ernest Miller, 22
September 24, 1990: David C. Thomas, 23
February 18, 1991: Curtis Straughter, 18
April 7, 1991: Errol Lindsey, 19
May 24, 1991: Anthony “Tony” Hughes, 31
May 27, 1991: Konerak Sinthasomphone, 14
June 30, 1991: Matt Turner, 20
July 5, 1991: Jeremiah Weinberger, 23
July 15, 1991: Oliver Lacy, 23
July 19, 1991: Joseph Bradehoft, 25