[15] Other sources, however, suggest that Dahmer was generally doted upon as an infant and toddler by both parents, although his mother was known to be tense, greedy for both attention and pity, and argumentative with her husband and their neighbors.

One teacher recollected she detected early signs of abandonment[22] due to his father's absence and mother's illnesses, the symptoms of which increased when she became pregnant with her second child.

[n 5] By age 14, he had begun drinking beer and hard alcohol in the daylight hours,[41] frequently concealing his liquor inside the jacket he wore to school.

[48] By Dahmer's admission, he began fantasizing about dominating and controlling a completely submissive male partner in his early to mid-teens, and his masturbatory fantasies gradually evolved to his focusing on chests and torsos.

The process of their divorce soon became increasingly bitter and acrimonious, and Lionel moved out of the house in early 1978,[55] temporarily residing in a motel on North Cleveland Massillon Road.

Dahmer later told police he felt he could not return home to face his father, so he opted to travel to Miami Beach, Florida, both because he was "tired of the cold"[91] and in an attempt to live by his own means.

[55] Dahmer initially spent his evenings on the beach as he continued to work at the sandwich shop until phoning his father and asking to return to Ohio in September of the same year.

[92] After his return to Ohio, Dahmer initially lived with his father and stepmother and insisted on being delegated numerous chores to occupy his time while he looked for work.

As she was the only family member to whom Dahmer displayed any positivity or affection,[95] they hoped that both her influence and the change of location might persuade him to quit drinking, find a job, and live responsibly.

[96][97] Initially, Dahmer's living arrangements with his grandmother were harmonious: he accompanied her to church, willingly undertook chores, actively sought work, and abided by most of her house rules (although he continued to drink and smoke).

On August 8, 1982, at Wisconsin State Fair Park,[100] he was observed exposing himself "on the south side of the Coliseum in which 25 people were present including women and children".

[105] By late 1985, Dahmer had begun to regularly frequent the bathhouses, which he later described as being "relaxing places", but during his sexual encounters, he became frustrated at his partners' moving during the act.

[134][135] In September 1988, Dahmer's grandmother asked him to move out, largely because of his drinking, his habit of bringing young men to her house late at night, and the foul smells emanating from the basement and the garage.

Less than three months after the murder of Edward Smith, Dahmer encountered a 22-year-old Chicago native named Ernest Miller outside a bookstore on the corner of North 27th Street.

In his statement to police after his arrest, Dahmer said that, after giving Thomas a drink laden with sedatives, he did not feel attracted to him, but was afraid to allow him to awaken, fearing that he would be angry over having been drugged.

[163] He regularly complained of feelings of both anxiety and depression to his probation officer throughout 1990, with frequent references to his sexuality, his solitary lifestyle, financial difficulties, and—shortly before Thanksgiving—his apprehension regarding meeting and facing his father and younger brother.

[179] Dahmer then drank several beers while lying alongside Sinthasomphone before briefly falling asleep, then leaving his apartment to drink at a bar and purchase more alcohol.

[182] In the early morning hours of May 27, Dahmer returned toward his apartment to discover Sinthasomphone sitting naked on the corner of 25th and State, talking in Lao, with three distressed young women standing near him.

"[228] A more detailed search of the apartment, conducted by the Milwaukee police's Criminal Investigation Bureau, revealed a total of four severed heads in Dahmer's kitchen.

[229] Investigators discovered collected blood drippings upon a tray at the bottom of Dahmer's refrigerator, plus two human hearts[230] and a portion of arm muscle, each wrapped inside plastic bags upon the shelves.

[233] In reference to the recovery of body parts and artifacts at 924 North 25th Street, the chief medical examiner later stated: "It was more like dismantling someone's museum than an actual crime scene.

[238] On September 14, investigators in Ohio, having uncovered hundreds of bone fragments in woodland behind the address in which Dahmer had confessed to killing his first victim, formally identified two molars and a vertebra with X-ray records of Hicks.

Defense expert Fred Berlin testified that Dahmer was unable to conform his conduct at the time that he committed the crimes due to his paraphilia or, more specifically, necrophilia.

Palermo concluded that Dahmer had a severe mixed personality disorder,[274] with antisocial, obsessive-compulsive, sadistic, fetishistic, borderline and necrophilic features, but otherwise legally sane.

[279] On February 15, the court reconvened to hear the verdict: Dahmer was ruled to be sane and not suffering from a mental disorder at the time of each of the 15 murders for which he was tried, although in each count, two of the twelve jurors signified their dissent.

[295] Upon Dahmer's request, after one year in solitary confinement, he was transferred to a less secure unit,[296] where he was assigned a two-hour daily work detail cleaning the toilet block.

[303] Referring to his crimes in a 1994 interview with Stone Phillips on Dateline NBC, Dahmer had stated: "If a person doesn't think that there is a God to be accountable to, then what's the point of trying to modify your behavior to keep it within acceptable ranges?

[308] Joyce related that in her weekly phone calls, whenever she expressed concerns for her son's physical well-being, Dahmer responded with comments to the effect of: "It doesn't matter, Mom.

[319][320] On August 5, 1991, as the nature and scale of Dahmer's crimes initially came to light, a candlelight vigil to celebrate and heal the Milwaukee community[321] was attended by more than 400 people.

[n 20] In an August 1991 interview given to the Christian Science Monitor, Farrell stated that news of the murders, as well as the conduct of Milwaukee police officers John Balcerzak and Joseph Gabrish with regards to victim Konerak Sinthasomphone, exacerbated and highlighted racial tensions within the city.