Jeffrey Dahmer’s father Lionel dies aged 87 in hospice care after years of defending serial killer son and saying he would ‘always stick by him’
The father of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer has died at the age of 87 while receiving care at a hospice in Ohio.
A Medina County Health Department official confirmed the death to The American sun on Tuesday.
His cause of death was not immediately announced.
It comes almost a year after the death of his second wife Shari, who died at the age of 81.
Shari died on January 13 from complications due to health problems at a nursing home near the couple's home in the village of Seville, Ohio.
Jeffrey Dahmer's father Lionel has died in a hospice at the age of 87 after years of supporting his serial killer son
Lionel Dahmer's death was confirmed on Tuesday and comes almost a year after the death of his second wife
Lionel had spent the last years of his life in the village since his son's sick crimes came to light, being cared for by a caretaker named Jeb.
Dahmer murdered seventeen young men and boys in Wisconsin and Ohio between 1978 and 1991, raping and cannibalizing his victims.
He was convicted of his crimes in 1992, but murdered in prison two years later at the age of 34.
Dahmer's close bond with his father was portrayed in the controversial Netflix series Monster.
Growing up, the two practiced taxidermy together, with father and son often dissecting dead animals together.
Before his death, Lionel had reflected on the “red flags” and missed opportunities to save some of his son's victims, including a chilling incident in which he almost opened a box containing the mummified remains of one of Dahmer's last victims.
A documentary revealed a phone conversation between the two, made by Dahmer from prison, in which he bragged about the sick trophies.
He recalled how his father had threatened to open the box stored at his Daher's grandmother's house because he thought it contained pornographic material, but he was convinced not to do so.
Jeffrey Dahmer murdered seventeen young men and boys in Wisconsin and Ohio between 1978 and 1991 before brutally dismembering and cannibalizing them
Despite his son's heinous crimes, Lionel supported his son until he was murdered in prison at the age of 34.
“So when I visited Milwaukee, I saw this box in the closet in his room and I said, 'I'm going to open it,' and I went down to the basement to get some tools to open the box. he explained in a Dr. Phil interview that was part of FOX Nation's documentary: My son Jeffrey: the Dahmer family ties.
'He kept complaining that he couldn't even have a square meter of land with what he wanted, and I said, 'I'm going to open it anyway, look what's in here,' because I thought it had something to do with pornography . .
''I said, “What would you have done Jeff if I had opened it?” and he said something like, “the jig would have been,” something non-emotional, non-committal.”
In another shot in the documentary, Lionel can be heard telling his son that he too had “weird thoughts” when he was younger, but that he “never got caught.”
He also once asked his murderous son what his “very first fantasy” was, which was “strange or disturbing.”
The father then says during the prison phone call, “Nothing, absolutely nothing is too big not to be forgiven.”
Lionel promised to “always stay with” his son, stating that everyone sins and that Dahmer was simply “at the extreme end of that.”
Lionel once told his son, “Nothing, absolutely nothing is too great not to be forgiven” during a phone conversation between the two while Dahmer was in prison.
His son's disturbing crimes and their relationship returned to the spotlight after the Netflix show.
The two relied on each other after Lionel's divorce from Dahmer's mother Joyce in 1978.
Joyce left with Dahmer's brother David, leaving him with his father in the aftermath of the breakup over her affair.
Dahmer began the first of his brutal murders the year of his parents' divorce, just three weeks after graduating high school.
The killer picked up hitchhiker Steven Mark Hicks and lured him back to his home with the promise of alcohol before attacking him.
Lionel gave several interviews and wrote his own book, A Father's Story, detailing his account of the gruesome murders.
The father of two was born on July 29, 1936 in West Allis, Wisconsin. His father was a teacher and hairdresser and died young, along with Lionel's mother.
Lionel later became a chemist by profession and introduced Dahmer to taxidermy as a scientific hobby.
In 2020 he appeared in the documentary JEffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster and described how “devastating” it was to discover his son had been murdered in prison.
Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver, a fellow inmate at Columbia Correctional Institution.