AP Photo / Charles Bennett

Jeffrey Dahmer House: Photos of His Homes in Akron Ohio and Milwaukee Wisconsin

Jeffery's House Photos

Akron Home

Jeffery's House Photos

Milwaukee Home

Sarah Paschall

Jeffrey Dahmer murdered numerous young men between 1978-1991.
Dahmer was arrested for his crime in 1991.
A Netflix series titled Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story was released on the platform in 2022.
Dahmer was bludgeoned to death in a prison restroom by a fellow inmate in 1994.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was a serial killer that raped, murdered and dismembered young men and boys over the span of 13 years between 1978 and 1991. Jeffery Dahmer, the serial killer who ate people, became known by the media as the “Milwaukee Cannibal” due to his penchant for eating parts of his victims. The nauseating acts committed by Dahmer are the stuff of nightmares and continue to haunt those familiar with the gruesome details of the case. To get a better idea of who he was and how this demented man lived, we’ve got an in-depth look at the new infamous Jeffery Dahmer house.

Where Did Jeffrey Dahmer Live?

In his early years, Dahmer lived in Akron Ohio with his family and then later move to Wisconsin (where he would commit most of his murders). Below is an in-depth look at both his childhood home in Akron as well as the dreaded apartment where so many of his victims lost their lives.

Jeffrey Dahmer House Ohio

Jeffrey Dahmer House Milwaukee

Jeffrey Dahmer House Ohio

Where is Jeffery Dahmer from? Well, Jeffery Dahmer childhood home is located on W Bath Rd in Akron, Ohio. The Dahmer family moved into this 3-bedroom, 2.5-bathroom home in 1968 when Jeffrey was only 8 years of age. It was here where Dahmer’s obsession with death would begin to flourish, and in 1978, it would become the scene of his first murdber – a hitchhiker by the name of Steven Hicks. Following the murder, he buried victim Steven Hicks in the woods that surround the property.

The mid-century modern home, built in 1952, was featured in the Akron Beacon Journal due to its modern architecture and unique overall style and beauty for the time. The 2,170 square foot residence last sold for $244,500 in 2005 to musician, Chris Butler. In 2016, Butler made the house available to rent for $8000 for the week that the Republican National Convention was underway and later attempted to list the home for a higher price, but property records indicate that the owner has had no luck offloading Dahmer’s childhood home. As of 2019, the property’s estimated value is $260,500.

Jeffery Dahmer childhood home ohio — My Friend Dahmer / Inside Edition / Stouffer Realty, Inc.

Jeffrey Dahmer House Milwaukee

The former 1-bedroom, 1-bathroom apartment where Jeffrey Dahmer murdered several of his victims no longer exists – instead, what can be found in its place is simply the plot of land where it originally sat. Named Oxford Apartments Milwaukee, the contemporary brick building was located on North 25^thStreet in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

After police discovered the gory secrets behind the walls of apartment 213, The Campus Circle Project, a private organization funded by Marquette and local business owners in the Marquette area as a means to revamp the neighborhood, purchased the complex for $325k, quite a bit less than its estimated value of $500k. They had the building demolished in November of 1992, only a year after Dahmer’s arrest. The decision to tear down the 49-unit complex was not only because it acted as a bloody landmark that was hurting the neighborhood, but also because it attracted unwanted attention from curious visitors hoping to see the location. Following the destruction of Oxford Apartments, the city of Milwaukee purchased the plot of land where the apartments originally sat for $500 and opted to leave the spot empty, never building another structure on the site.

Jeffrey Dahmer House Milwaukee — murderpedia.org

Who Was Jeffrey Dahmer?

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960. He was the first-born child of Joyce Annette and Lionel Herbert Dahmer. As a child, Dahmer was viewed as your average happy, hyper kid until around age 4, when he had to undergo surgery to repair a double hernia. This, along with the birth of his brother and the family’s frequent relocating, seemed to cause Dahmer to become increasingly withdrawn. By age 14, Dahmer had begun drinking hard liquor in school and was known by his classmates to stage some pretty weird pranks which consisted of him sneaking into school groups and faking epileptic seizures.

Upon hitting puberty, Dahmer made the realization that he was gay and would later admit that he often fantasized about having a completely submissive partner to which he could dominate and control, a fantasy that would later develop into dissecting other men. He attempted his first assault at age 16, hiding in the shrubs along a jogging path in hopes of knocking out a particular jogger that had caught his attention, but the man was not jogging on the path that day, so the plan was scrapped. At the age of 18, only 3 weeks after graduating high school, Dahmer committed his first murder.

Dropping out of college due to failing grades and alcoholism, Dahmer was convinced to join the Army by his father. He enlisted and trained as a medical specialist at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, TX, before being stationed in Baumholder, Germany. It would later be revealed that Dahmer drugged and raped 2 fellow soldiers while he was stationed in Germany.

Receiving an honorable discharge after being deemed unfit for duty due to his drinking and declining performance, Dahmer went on to move back in with his family. It was during this point where it seems Dahmer became increasingly interested in the idea of necrophilia, even planning to dig up a recently deceased teen from the nearby cemetery; but after being unable to dig up the hard soil, his plan never came to fruition. In May of 1990, Dahmer moved into his own place, taking the mummified remains of his 5^th victim with him, and then only one week after settling in, Dahmer claimed his 6^th victim, one of the many that would lose their lives at his apartment on North 25^th Street.

Jeffrey Dahmer Childhood

Even at a young age, Dahmer was already displaying some highly disturbing behavior, behaviors which would later be considered textbook for serial killers; for starters, Dahmer had a deeply troubling fascination with dead things, and would even collect insects, like butterflies, and place them in jars to die. As he grew, so did his fixation on death, as he began to collect roadkill for the purpose of dismembering the bodies and storing parts of the animals in jars, keeping them in his family’s shed. When questioned about his macabre collection, Dahmer would simply reply that he was interested in how each of the animals “Fitted together”.

When roadkill was no longer enough to satiate his twisted obsession, Dahmer eventually graduated to killing animals in order to dissect them. As time passed, Jeffrey’s father, Lionel, became increasingly worried about his son’s anti-social behavior, both towards children his age and his family. Lionel, in hopes of bonding with his son, humored Jeffrey’s interest in bones (believing it was more of a scientific interest) and showed his son how to properly clean and preserve animal bones. This came after Jeffrey questioned his father one night about what would happen if chicken bones were placed in a bleach solution. He would later use what his father taught him to dispose of his victims.

Jeffrey Dahmer Crime Scene

At first glance, the scene at Oxford Apartments back in 1991 wouldn’t seem out of the ordinary – Dahmer’s unit was messy, but about what you’d expect for a man living alone. He had paintings on the walls, a fish tank with live fish, furniture, and just the general appearance of normalcy, but when police scratched just slightly past the surface of this visage, the dark truth hidden within the walls of apartment 213 quickly began to unravel, telling a story that no one was prepared for at the time.

Crime scene photos of the bathroom show bottles of chloroform and ether casually placed on a shelf near the toiletries (a chemical combination that Dahmer often used to drug his victims), a large barrel of hydrochloric acid, later discovered to have been filled with 3 human torsos, sat against the bedroom wall, not far from the blood-stained bed covered by floral-print sheets. Saws, a hammer, and drills photographed in the home were the tools by which Dahmer attempted to make his “totally compliant” lover. Photographs of Dahmer’s freezer show large, plastic-wrapped packages stored away, packages that would later be found to contain parts of his victims.

Additionally, police found a drawer in the apartment filled with polaroids, taken by Dahmer, of his victims in various states of decay as well as sexual acts being performed with the remains. They are incredibly graphic and disturbing, so we’ve chosen not to publish them here, but if you must, The Crime Mag has published a few.

Jeffery Dahmer house milwaukee — Milwaukee Police Department

Jeffrey Dahmer Victims

The majority of Dahmer’s victims were murdered by way of strangulation after being drugged with sleeping pills. By 1991, however, he had begun experimenting with his victims and injecting hydrochloric acid, and even boiling water at times, directly into their brains in an attempt to create the completely submissive, zombie-like love slave he had always wanted. In at least 3 of these cases, the victims who were injected died from Dahmer’s cruel and unusual experimentation.

How Many People Did Dahmer Kill?

Jeffrey Dahmer is known to have claimed the lives of 17 victims between the years of 1978 and 1991, with at least 12 of these victims being murdered at his apartment, 3 being murdered and butchered at his grandmother’s home, 1 at his childhood home in Bath, Ohio, and 1 being murdered at the Ambassador Hotel.

Jeffery Dahmer Victims

1978

June 18: Steven Mark Hicks (age 18)

1987

Nov 20: Steven Walter Tuomi (age 25)

1988

January 16: James Edward Doxtator (age 14)
March 24: Richard Guerrero (age 22)

1989

March 25: Anthony Lee Sears (age 24)

1990

May 20: Raymond Lamont Smith (age 32)
June 14: Edward Warren Smith (age 27)
Sept 2: Ernest Marquez Miller (age 22)
Sept 24: David Courtney Thomas (age 22)

1991

Feb 18: Curtis Durrell Straughter (17)
April 7: Errol Lindsey (age 19)
May 24: Tony Anthony Hughes (age 31)
May 27: Konerak Sinthasomphone (age 14)
June 30: Matt Cleveland Turner (age 20)
July 5: Jeremiah B. Weinberger (age 23)
July 15: Oliver Joseph Lacy (age 24)
July 19: Joseph Arthur Bradehoft (age 25)

Jeffrey Dahmer Sketch

During the investigation of Dahmer’s home, police found a crudely drawn sketch of a strange sort of shrine Dahmer planned to build in the apartment using the skeletal remains of his victims. In the sketch, made even eerier due to its childlike style, Dahmer plans out a black table at the center of the shrine with a wall plaque (directly above the table) that has fluorescent-colored eyes. Sitting in front of the table was a black plush chair and black shower curtains covering the window behind the shrine. In his notes scribbled along the sides of the illustration, Dahmer even specifies that two painted skeletons be placed on both sides of the shrine as well as two incense burners and blue globe lights above to illuminate the scene.

Jeffery Dahmer Sketch — Milwaukee Police Department

The table that Dahmer had planned to use for this twisted alter was one that he already had in his home; in fact, he made several of his victims pose for Polaroids on this specific table before murdering them.

How Did Jeffrey Dahmer Get Caught?

On July 22 of 1991, police officers spot a terrified young man, later identified as a 32-year-old man by the name of Tracy Edwards, running down the street in handcuffs. Edwards tells the officers that Dahmer had held him captive in his apartment and had threatened to kill him. The officers escort Edwards back to the apartment to see what exactly happened and (insanely) almost believe Dahmer when he tries to exclaim that he and Edwards simply had a misunderstanding; that is until they spot some of the Polaroids Dahmer had of dismembered victims laying out. With this discovery, Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested and when police do a more thorough search of his home, his dark secrets are quickly revealed. Dahmer was initially sentenced to 15 life terms on Feb 15, 1992, but an additional life term was added for another murder that was committed in 1978.

Shockingly, and especially tragic, is the fact that Dahmer could have already been behind bars two months prior to this incident had it not been for the total disregard of two other police officers that had been called to Dahmer’s home after he was found to be chasing a naked, bloodied 14-year-old boy (Konerak Sinthasomphone) down the street near his Oxford apartment.

Dahmer had convinced officers that the violent scene was nothing more than a lover’s quarrel gone wrong and Sinthasomphone was drunk, and so they actually returned the boy back to Dahmer, to which he then proceeded to murder the child shortly after police left the scene. The boy, whose body was later discovered amongst Dahmer’s other victims stored in his apartment, was identified as the brother of a Laotian boy Dahmer had been arrested for molesting back in 1988. Officer Gabrish and the two other officers who responded to the call (and essentially allowed Dahmer to have his victim back) were later fired.

Shockingly, these two officers would later be reinstated, and earn back pay for the time they were suspended.

What Happened to Glenda Cleveland?

Dahmer’s neighbor, Glenda Cleveland, had called the police to report suspicious activity in Dahmer’s apartment countless times but was continuously ignored.

It was also Glenda and her family who found 14-year-old Sinthasomphone on the night of his murder and contacted the authorities.

Following Dahmer’s arrest, Glenda Cleveland would live on the same street as the infamous Oxford Apartments until 2009. She passed away of natural causes on December 24, 2010 at the age of 56. Cleveland would be honored by the County Board in Milwaukee and the Common Council for her efforts in the Dahmer case.

Did Glenda Cleveland Live Next Door to Jeffrey Dahmer?

While the new Ryan Murphy series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story depicts Cleveland as sharing the same complex as Dahmer, she reportedly lived across the street.

Dahmer’s actual next door neighbor in the building was Pamela Bass. It was Bass who noticed the foul smell coming from Jeffrey’s apartment and heard the strange noises. Bass was on relatively pleasant terms with Dahmer for a time, even accepting a sandwich from him (Dahmer apparently served sandwiches to neighbors occasionally).

Yes, unfortunately, she did eat the sandwich in reality and yes – Bass would later say she feared he used human meat for it following his arrest.

How Did Jeffrey Dahmer Die?

On November 28, 1994, while incarcerated, Dahmer and another prisoner, Jesse Anderson, were bludgeoned in the prison bathroom with a 20-inch metal bar by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver. Despite his initial claims that the act was not premeditated, Scarver would later admit to authorities that he had hidden the metal bar in his clothes with intentions of killing Dahmer and Anderson.

When Guards initially found Dahmer, lying in a bloodied heap, on the bathroom floor, he was still alive and was immediately rushed to the nearby hospital with severe wounds to the head and face, but he was pronounced dead only an hour after arriving at the ER.

Scarver, believed to be schizophrenic, has made several claims as to his reasoning for killing his two fellow inmates; one being that God had told him to do it, while another was that the murders resulted from a confrontation. Regardless of the actual cause for the murders, Scarver was sentenced to two more life terms (in addition to the life term he was already serving for a murder committed in 1990).

Jeffrey Dahmer Grave Site

As per the instructions written in his will, Jeffrey Dahmer was cremated and his parents, who are divorced, both received half of their son’s ashes.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer Family

Jeffrey Dahmer was the eldest of two children born to Lionel and Joyce Dahmer. The Dahmer’s had a strained marriage; but beyond this, they were nothing more than a relatively normal family with normal problems – certainly nothing that would lead their oldest son to become one of the most notorious serial killers in US history.

Left to Right: David Dahmer, Lionel Dahmer, and Jeffery Dahmer

Jeffrey Dahmer Brother David Dahmer

David Dahmer, son of Lionel and Joyce and brother of Jeffrey, was born December 18, 1966, in Doylestown, Ohio. David actually received his name from his brother (Jeffrey), who was allowed to choose a name for his younger brother when he was born. After the gruesome discovery at his older brother’s home in 1991, however, David Dahmer changed his name started a new life under a new identity. In an interview on Larry King in 2004, however, David’s father and stepmother spoke briefly about their youngest son, stating that he was happy, had a career, and was about to welcome a second child with his wife.

Jeffrey Dahmer Father

Lionel Herbert Dahmer, born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on July 29, 1936, acted as PPG Industries’ senior research chemist in Barberton, OH, from 1960-1962. Following the arrest and conviction of his son, Lionel began working on a book, titled A Father’s Story, which explores his search for answers as he tries to understand what exactly caused his son to become a killer. In his writings, Lionel Dahmer also looks to himself, as well as his rocky marriage with now-ex-wife, Joyce Dahmer, for possible causes to their son’s troubled mind.

Jeffrey Dahmer Mother

Joyce Annette Flint was born on February 7, 1936, in Columbus, Wisconsin, and was the wife of Lionel Dahmer and mother of Jeffrey Dahmer. After ending her marriage to Dahmer’s father in the late 1980s, Joyce relocated to California and went on to manage a retirement community for a time before taking on the role of a case manager for the Central Valley AIDs Team in 1991. She dedicated the remainder of her life to the treatment of HIV and AIDS in the Fresno area until succumbing to breast cancer in November 2000.

My Friend Dahmer

My Friend Dahmer (2012) is a memoir and graphic novel by John “Derf” Backderf that explores his friendship with a teenage Jeffrey Dahmer while the two were attending high school together. In his novel, John depicts Dahmer as an isolated teen bullied at school, overlooked by adults, and suffering from early alcoholism.

The novel would later be adapted for theater as a single act play by the NYU Theater Department, and then was later adapted into a movie script for a 2017 film, by the same name, directed by Marc Meyers and starring Ross Lynch in the leading role as Jeffrey Dahmer.

Other Wisconsin Serial Killers

Jeffrey Dahmer was not the only infamous killer to come out of Wisconsin; Ed Gein, known as “The Butcher of Plainfield”, was a deranged killer that was known to use pieces of his female victims to craft decorations for his home. Gein murdered two women; a tavern owner by the name of Mary Hogan in December of 1954, and then a local store owner, Bernice Worden, on the 16^th of November 1957. Worden was found in the shed on Gein’s property shot with a .22-Caliber rifle, decapitated, and horribly mutilated. In addition to the two murders Gein committed, it was also discovered that he had been digging up women from the nearby cemeteries and taking parts from corpses to add to his collection. He was the inspiration for Thomas Harris’s character “Buffalo Bill” in the novel/film Silence of the Lambs (1991).

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story

In 2022, Netflix released a 10-episode limited series that chronicles the life and crimes of Jeffrey Dahmer. In the series, Jeffrey Dahmer is played by American Horror Story veteran and all around incredible actor, Evan Peters.

Other top names in the series include Richard Jenkins as Lionel Dahmer, Molly Ringwald as Shari Dahmer, and Niecy Nash as Glenda Cleveland.