How did Jeffrey Dahmer die? Serial killer’s death explained, when did it happen - who is Christopher Scarver

In 1992, at the age of 32, American serial killerJeffrey Dahmer was sentenced to 15 terms of life imprisonment, with another life term added at a later date - however, just over two years into his sentence, he was murdered whilst behind bars.

The life and crimes of Dahmer is currently the subject of much discussion following the release of the new Netflix miniseries Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which see’s American Horror Story star Evan Peters as the killer himself.

This is everything you need to know about the death of the Milwaukee Cannibal and the man who killed him, fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.

How did Jeffrey Dahmer die?

Dahmer died inside Columbia Correctional Institution after he was attacked by a fellow inmate called Christopher Scarver.

On the morning of 28 November 1994, Dahmer, Scarver and a third inmate, Jesse Anderson, were led out of their cells to carry out their assigned work details, which included cleaning the toilet block.

The three were left unsupervised in the shower area for roughly 20 minutes, and at around 8:10am, Dahmer was found on the bathroom floor with severe head injuries.

It was discovered that Scarver, with a newspaper clipping about Dahmer’s crimes, had bludgeoned him using a bar he had taken from the prison gym. Scarver had concealed the bar in the leg of his trousers.

Dahmer survived the initial beating, however he maintained massive skull and facial fractures, and died an hour after he was taken to hospital. Scarver also attacked Anderson, who died two days later of similar injuries.

Afterwards, Scarver replaced the bar in the exercise room and walked back to his cell undetected by guards.

In his will, Dahmer had requested that no service be held for him upon his death - instead, he wished to be cremated. In September 1995, Dahmer’s body was cremated and his ashes split between his parents.

Who is Christopher Scarver - where is he now?

Scarver, born 6 July 1969, is an American man who was convicted of murder in 1992, and sentenced to life in prison. He arrived at Wisconsin’s Columbia Correctional Institution around the same time as Dahmer.

Scarver was born and raised in Milwaukee and is the second of five children. He attended James Madison High School, however dropped out when he was in 11th grade. Scarver enrolled in a one year Conservation Corps job program as a carpenter trainee.

Scarver said that he was told that he would be given a job by supervisor Edward Patts upon the completion of the program - however, after Patts was dismissed, the full time job that Scarver was allegedly offered also disappeared.

As a result, Scarver started drinking heavily and smoking cannabis and, after his mother made him move out of the house and his girlfriend became pregnant, he started plotting his revenge on the man he felt responsible for “losing his job”, site manager John Feyen.

On 1 June 1990, Scarver entered into the training program office expecting to find only Feyen, however there was another worker there as well, Steven Lohman.

At gunpoint, Scarver demanded money from the men, but when Feyen showed him that he only had $15 in his wallet, Scarver shot Lohman in the head.

He said: “Now, do you think I’m kidding? I need more money.”

Scarver shot Lohman twice more before getting Feyen to write him a check for $3,000. He shot Lohman in the head once again before Feyen was able to escape into the street. Scarver took a shot at Feyen before fleeing with the check, $15 and the manager’s credit card.

Hours later, Scarver was found by police on the stoop of his girlfriend’s apartment building. When he was arrested, police found the check, credit card and the semiautomatic pistol that he had used.

Months after the shooting, Scarver told a court appointed psychiatrist: “I don’t know what came over me. I was never in any trouble with the law, never in a fight with anyone.”

He also said that he heard voices that said that he was the son of God, and that “told me to do what I’m here for today”. Scarver said that the voices told him “everything was going to be all right and it was meant to happen like this” and that he was “the chosen one”.

Today, Scarver remains in prison and in his leisure time writes songs, stories and poetry.

Who was Jesse Anderson?

Anderson was the other inmate that Scarver killed at the same time as Dahmer.

Born 3 May 1957, Anderson was convicted of the murder of his wife, Barbara Lynch, in August 1992, and sentenced to life in prison with no chance of parole for 60 years.

Prior to the murder, Anderson and Lynch had lived in Cedarburg, Wisconsin, with their three young children. He and Lynch had married in 1985, in Chicago.

On 21 April 1992, Anderson and his wife went out together for dinner and a movie at a shopping mall in Milwaukee.

Anderson told police that, as they were about to get into their car, two young Black men attacked his wife, stabbing her in the face and head. He claimed to detectives that he had attempted to rescue her, and in doing so was stabbed four times in the chest.

Anderson did sustain a knife wound which punctured his lung, however all the other wounds were superficial. After the attack, Lynch never regained consioucness and died two days later at the age of 33.

At the time, William Vogl, former head of the Milwaukee police homicide unit, told reporters: “It jumps out at you, this type of injury, the mutilation of the face.

“That to me, ties it to a… crime of passion.”

Anderson showed police a Los Angeles Clippers basketball hat that he claimed to have knocked off the head of one of the attackers, however, after details of the crime went public, a university student informed the authorities that Anderson had purchased that very hat from him a few days earlier.

Additionally, employees at a military store told police that the fishing knife used to murder Lynch was sold to Anderson a few weeks prior. The store in question was reportedly the only outlet in Milwaukee that sold that specific kind of knife.

Anderson had also called his wife’s insurance company a month before the murder to check that her $250,000 policy was still active.

Following his release from the hospital, Anderson was arrested and subsequently found guilty of the murder of his wife.

Why did he kill Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson?

After killing Dahmer and Anderson, Scarver said that he had been told to murder the two men by god.

He was quoted by a prison guard as having said: “God told me to do it. You will hear about it on the 6 o’clock news.

“Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead.”

In an interview with the New York Post in 2015, Scarver opened up more about his decision to kill Dahmer and Anderson.

According to the interview, Dahmer would use prison food and tomato sauce packets to fashion severed limbs and blood to wind up his fellow inmates.

Scarver said: “He would put them in places where people would be.

“He crossed the line with some people - prisoners, prison staff. Some people who are in prison are repentant - but he was not one of them.”

On the day that Scarver killed Dahmer and Anderson, he said that he had just gotten his mop and was filling up his bucket with water when someone prodded him in the back.

Scarver said: “I turned around and [Dahmer] and Jesse were kind of laughing under their breath. I looked right into their eyes and I couldn’t tell which one had done it.”

He explained that after the three were split up, he followed Dahmer towards a staff locker room.

He said: “I asked [Dahmer] if he did those things, cause I was fiercely disgusted. He was shocked. Yes, he was.

“He started looking for the door pretty quick. I blocked him. He ended up dead. I put his head down.”

Scarver said, after the incident with Dahmer, he then entered the locker room where Anderson was working and that “pretty much the same thing [happened]” with him.

Scarver believed that it was no accident that he ended up with Dahmer unsupervised, since prison officials allegedly knew that he wanted the killer dead.

He said that the guards “had something to do with what took place” as they conveniently disappeared right before he killed Dahmer.

In exchange for a transfer to a federal penitentiary, Scarver pleaded “no contest” to the murders. He was given two life terms on top of the life sentence that he was already serving.

It has also been speculated that Scarver was motivated to kill Dahmer and Anderson due to how their respective crimes affected Black people and the Black community - most of Dahmer’s victims where either Black or Hispanic, and Anderson had attempted to frame two Black men for the murder of his wife.