
Jeffrey Dahmer: The Milwaukee Cannibal
15 Sentences, Four Preventable Deaths, and the System That Let Him Continue
In 1988, Jeffrey Dahmer was convicted of sexually assaulting a thirteen-year-old boy, placed on five years of probation, and returned to his apartment. Within months, he was killing again. His probation officer never saw inside his refrigerator. She accepted what she was told.<br /><br />This chapter of the series focuses not on what Dahmer did, but on how the institutions surrounding him β probation, policing, oversight β either failed to look or chose not to. The structural collapse is most visible on the night of May 27, 1991, when Milwaukee officers responded to a call near Dahmer's building and found a naked, disoriented fourteen-year-old on t...

