The son of the man who murdered Jeffrey Dahmer said the serial killer’s name has followed him around his ‘whole life’. Watch an interview with him here:
Dahmer, who is the subject of chilling new Netflix series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, was convicted of the brutal killing of seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991, having admitted to eating the flesh of his victims.
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After being sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment in both Wisconsin and Ohio, Dahmer was beaten to death at Columbia Correctional Facility in Wisconsin by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver in 1994.
Scarver’s son, also called Chris Scarver, spoke about the bizarre reality of knowing his parent had put an end to Dahmer’s life in a 2014 interview with CNN, recalling how at first he didn’t fully comprehend the magnitude of what had happened.
Describing the time he found out his father had murdered Dahmer, Scarver said: “I was about 10, and I saw it on TV. And that’s how I found out.
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“[…] A big picture of him popped up, and I was just shocked at that point.”
As for the first time he heard Dahmer’s name, Scarver – who was aged 19 at the time of the interview – added: “When I was young, I didn’t know what it meant, obviously. But that name has been around me for my whole life.”
Scarver was born just after his dad committed a murder that landed him in jail with serial killer Dahmer.
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He initially believed his dad would eventually come home, only to find things went from bad to worse when Scarver Senior bludgeoned Dahmer and another inmate to death in the showers of the prison gym.
When reporter Jean Casarez asked about how there was still a question as to whether or not his dad had been ‘set up’ by guards because he should not have been left alone with the two men in prison, he replied: “I think about that all the time. It makes me wonder if he even did it.”
But Scarver understood that his dad pleaded no contest to the murders, and is currently serving three life sentences in Colorado.
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However, he also believed his convicted murderer father was the one who helped him when he was most vulnerable.
“I was actually starting to go down the wrong road, and that’s why I wrote [to] him,” Scarver remembered.
“I didn’t know what to do, I needed some guidance.
“And I just told him everything I was going through, and how I felt about me and his relationship – all these built up years, all that pain that I had, I finally just let it go and just talked to him.”
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His dad wrote back, telling him: “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do. And you are the toughest kid I know.”
Scarver still credits his father with keeping him on the right track, having printed out a prison photo of him and stuck it to his dorm room door while at college.
Topics: True Crime, US News
Jess Hardiman