Did Jeffrey Dahmer kill his brother? The brother’s relationship explored

Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of the murder and dismemberment of seventeen males between 1978 and 1991. Dahmer often had sex with his victims before drugging and killing them. Before dismembering some of his victims and preserving their body parts, Dahmer had sex with their corpses. During a 1993 episode of Inside Edition, Dahmer gave the reason why he killed:

Jeffrey Dahmer didn’t kill his brother David Dahmer

It’s no secret that Jeffrey Dahmer saw his brother David as a nuisance – a competitor for the crumbs of affection his parents provided. Billy J. Capshaw, Jeffrey’s bunkmate during his stint in the army, told The New York Times that Jeffrey never mentioned his brother:

“He talked about his dad a lot. He wanted to please his dad. He never said anything about a brother.”

As reported by the Associated Press in 1992, David described Jeffrey as a person with ‘a uniform inability to relate to anyone.’ Lionel, the brother’s father, told Larry King that Jeffrey loved David, but Jeffrey ‘just tolerated him because – because his younger brother was so expressive and active that sometimes he got on his nerves.’

Regardless of Jeffrey’s feelings about David, there’s no evidence that he harmed or thought about hurting him. Jeffrey’s murderous nature stemmed from sexual attraction, and he wasn’t sexually attracted to his brother. 

By the time Jeffrey’s murder spree started in the 1980s, he likely had minimal contact with David. After Lionel and Joyce’s divorce, Joyce won custody over David and settled with her relatives in Wisconsin, leaving Jeffrey with Lionel in Ohio. 

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