In June of 1978, Dahmer murdered his first victim. Steven Hicks was a hitchhiker Dahmer picked up on the highway. The two young men went back to Dahmer's home, where they drank several beers. Not wanting Hicks to leave, Dahmer bludgeoned him to death with a dumbbell. He then carefully "dissected, dissolved, and pulverized" the body before scattering the remains all over the Dahmers' backyard (via Crime Museum). When Dahmer's parents returned home later that night, nothing was seemingly amiss.
More than nine years passed before Dahmer claimed his second victim, Steven Tuomi, in the fall of 1987. This doomed young man left a bar with Dahmer one night after the two had been heavily drinking. During a police interview after his arrest years later, Dahmer recalled waking up to Tuomi's corpse lying next to him. Dahmer realized that he had murdered Tuomi during a period of time that he was blacked out from alcohol.
Dahmer began frequenting gay bars more and more. His M.O. was to lure young men back to his apartment, where he would then drug them and sexually assault them. Afterward, he would strangle them to death. While almost a decade had passed between his first two murders, Dahmer murdered one man a year from 1987 to 1989, and four more in 1990. The urge was growing well beyond Dahmer's control as the year 1991 began to tick away.
