Claim: Jeffrey Dahmer was a criminal.

Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer -LRB- May 21 , 1960 -- November 28 , 1994 -RRB- , also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal , was an American serial killer and sex offender , who committed the rape , murder , and dismemberment of seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991 . Many of his later murders involved necrophilia , cannibalism , and the permanent preservation of body parts -- typically all or part of the skeletal structure .   Although diagnosed with borderline personality disorder , schizotypal personality disorder , and a psychotic disorder , Dahmer was found to be legally sane at his trial . Convicted of fifteen of the sixteen murders he had committed in Wisconsin , Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 15 , 1992 . He was later sentenced to a sixteenth term of life imprisonment for an additional homicide committed in Ohio in 1978 .   On November 28 , 1994 , Dahmer was beaten to death by Christopher Scarver , a fellow inmate at the Columbia Correctional Institution .