Thanks to Christopher Scarver, Jeffrey Dahmer received the punishment many thought he deserved: death. Wisconsin’s ban on the death penalty saved Dahmer from government-sanctioned execution, condemning him to life behind bars. However, Dahmer would live long after his sentencing: Scarver bludgeoned the serial killer to death in November 1994.
“God told me to do it,” Scarver allegedly told a prison guard shortly after the murders, The Chicago Tribune reported. “You will hear about it on the 6 o’clock news. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead.”
Scarver initially pleaded insanity to the murder charges but substituted it with ‘no contest’ in exchange for a transfer to a federal prison.
Scarver is alive and incarcerated at Centennial Correctional Facility, Colorado
Christopher Scarver had little hope of leaving prison alive after a Wisconsin court sentenced him to life for the brutal murder of Steven Lohman. The mentally ill convict had accepted his fate but experienced difficulties adjusting to life in Wisconsin’s prisons.
Scarver secured a transfer to the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado after Federal Judge Barbara Crabb ordered Wisconsin authorities to transfer Scarver and other mentally ill inmates from the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility.
Christopher’s transfer was delayed as authorities searched for a facility that met his treatment needs and provided adequate security. Via a 2005 civil rights suit against the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility, Scarver alleged that the prison subjected him to cruel and unusual punishment.
Scarver claims he spent more than a decade in windowless and non-air-conditioned solitary confinement cells. Such conditions increased the risk of complications for inmates like Scarver, who were on antipsychotics.
A district court determined that the severe conditions imposed on Scarver served ‘no legitimate penological interest.’ The court added that the ‘conditions at Supermax are so severe and restrictive that they exacerbate the symptoms that mentally ill inmates exhibit.’
However, while dismissing the complaint, the court argued that prison authorities didn’t deliberately cause Scarver undue distress. An appeals court rejected Scarver’s appeal attempt.
Scarver didn’t complain about poor treatment in Colorado during his April 2015 interview with The New York Post. Reports claim doctors diagnosed him with schizophrenia and declared him a danger to himself and others.
Christopher has adopted poetry as a hobby and has released two books: The Child Left Behind and God Seed. Scarver has reconnected with his son, Chris Jr., who graduated from Bethany Lutheran College, Minnesota, with a degree in sociology.
Christopher’s mental health was questioned following claims that voices in his head led him to murder
Christopher’s mental health became a topic of discussion after he killed Dahmer and Jesse Anderson. It cast a sharper light on Scarver’s murder of Steven Lohman.
Scarver dropped out of school and enrolled in a job program as a carpenter trainee. Christopher told investigators that a supervisor promised him full-time employment upon successful completion of the course. However, after the supervisor’s dismissal, Scarver wasn’t hired.
The irate Scarver blamed John Feyen, the site manager, for the dismissal. Scarver resorted to alcohol and marijuana abuse, leading to his eviction from his girlfriend’s mother’s home.
On 1st June 1990, he walked into Feyen’s office to exact revenge. Scarver expected to find Feyen alone but found him with another employee, Steven Lohman. Christopher ordered Lohman to lay on the floor as he demanded money from Feyen.
Scarver shot Lohman in the head after Feyen said he only had $15. “Now, do you think I’m kidding?,” Christopher said. “I need more money.” Christopher shot the already dead Lohman two more times before Feyen wrote him a $3000 check.
Scarver fired one more shot into Lohman’s head before Feyen broke free and escaped into the street. Christopher took one shot at Feyen before running away. Authorities arrested Scarver two hours later near his girlfriend’s house.
Christopher said he’d planned to turn himself in, as the voices in his head instructed. The voices came from a family consisting of a woman, a man, a girl, and a boy. They assured him everything would be alright, and he was ‘the chosen one.’
Psychiatrists couldn’t agree on whether Scarver, who’d pleaded not guilty due to insanity, was mentally competent to stand trial. Scarver told William Crowley, a court-appointed psychiatrist, that he didn’t want to go to a mental hospital as the voices in his head told him to go to prison.
Scarver claimed he murdered Dahmer because the serial killer showed no remorse
In April 2015, Scarver told The New York Post that he killed Dahmer because the serial killer showed no remorse. Scarver said he never interacted with Dahmer but noticed how the killer taunted other inmates using imitations of severed limbs fashioned from prison food. Christopher explained:
“He would put them in places where people would be. He crossed the line with some people – prisoners, prison staff. Some people who are in prison are repentant – but he was not one of them.”
Scarver said a guard often escorted Scarver to prevent confrontations with other inmates. In late November 1984, Scarver, Dahmer, and Jesse Anderson were assigned bathroom cleaning duties. Scarver said he was filling his bucket with water when either Dahmer or Jesse poked him in the back.
“I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it,” Scarver said. The three unsupervised men split up, with Dahmer heading to a staff locker room. Scarver grabbed a metal bar, hid it in his trousers, and confronted Dahmer.
Brandishing a newspaper article describing Dahmer’s killings, Scarver asked Dahmer whether he committed the crimes as described. Scarver hit Dahmer twice with the bar, crushing his skull. “He ended up dead,” Scarver said. “I put his head down.” Scarver inflicted the same punishment on Jesse Anderson, a convict sentenced to life for murdering his wife.
Christopher told investigators that in killing the pair, he ‘was simply submitting to the will of God.’ Gerard Boyle, Dahmer’s attorney, doubted Scarver’s assertion that Jeffrey taunted fellow prisoners. Boyle told the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:
“He killed people, but he didn’t taunt people. I never saw him do anything that would lead me to believe that he would mimic the deaths that he caused. I just don’t believe that.”
Scarver speculated that prison officials deliberately left him alone with Dahmer because they wanted the serial killer dead. “They had something to do with what took place,” Scarver said.
Another theory claimed the murders were racially inspired. “Nothing white people do to blacks is just,” Scarver told William Crowley, a psychiatrist. Most of Dahmer’s victims were Hispanic or black; Anderson initially claimed two black men had murdered his wife.
Prison officials said there was no evidence that the murders were racially motivated or that prison officials aided Scarver in killing Dahmer and Anderson.
Also Read: Is Tracy Edwards still alive? His chaotic life detailed