My first source that I decided to look through was an article on Jeffrey Dahmer that I found on TruTv.com. I decided to start with this source because I still don’t know much about Dahmer. Yes I know that he was a serial killer, sex offender, cannibal, and psychopath, but I didn’t know all the details about Dahmer. I wanted to find out how his childhood was, what made him like this, what was he exactly doing to his victims, who he was doing it to, where he was doing it, and how he felt about it all. I believe that it’s important that I know these facts about Dahmer before I dive in and figure out what made him they way he was.

Marilyn Bardsley, author of this article, is an expert on serial killers along with being a Wall Street Journal bestselling author. This source comes from a website, but she also has gotten her articles to appear on different TV channels because of her credibleness and trustworthiness.  The audience would be people who are interested in serial killers and want to know more about Jeffrey Dahmer himself. The purpose of this article is to inform readers about the many different things about him and what he went through.

The content of this articleis not to form an argument, but to help you gain knowledge by informing you about Jeffrey Dahmer. Bardsley talks about almost everything you can think of with Dahmer. From early childhood to growing up, victims of his sprees, why he did it, where hedid it, what he did with the bodies, how he got caught, the punishment, and the death of Dahmer were all talked about. He had a normal childhood as some would say but what triggered his enjoyment of dead things was when his “father gathered the tiny animal bones” (Bardsley 13) and Dahmer enjoyed the sound it made. By the time he was 6, he had a double hernia which surgery was needed for. After surgery, his parents noticed that he has changed for the worse. Ever since then, happy Dahmer turned into a boy who was “shy, distant, [and] nearly uncommunicative” (13). His victims were gay men he usually found at gay bars who were from ages 14 all the way to 31. Dahmer would offer them money to pose in bikini bottoms at his apartment for him to photograph. Dahmer would do the same to most of his victims, have them pose for pictures, drug their drinks, strangle them till they died, and then either have sex with the body or masturbate on them (10). He did these awful things because it turned him on and gave him a great deal of sexual pleasure. Dahmer would either eat the bodies, cut them open and save them, or make trophies out of the heads and genitals. When Dahmer got caught of all his killings, “he was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms or a total of 957 years in prison” (20).

While reading this source, I think it gave me a clear understanding of the details I needed to know about Dahmer. The facts that Bardsley included let me believe everything she was saying because of her invented ethos she has created upon herself. She also gives specific details that include dates, times, names, and specific quotes of Dahmer. I doubt that everything I read in that one article could be everything I need to know about Dahmer because of how much fame he got and of how long these killings were going on for. Even though she could’ve talked about a lot more, she still did an amazing job of telling us about Dahmer. This particular source helps my understanding of my question because it gave me the knowledge of why he was doing what he was doing. This source is going to be great to go back to and get different key terms and concepts that I can search to find more specific information on what I am looking for. Something that this source was missing that I will have to look into is how the death of Dahmer happened without any guards noticing it or being there to prevent it. From this point, I want to go more in depth into why he did all that he did and how did the prison change its ways after the death of Jeffrey Dahmer.

Bardsley, Marilyn. “Jeffrey Dahmer.” Trutv.com. Web. 29 Oct. 2013

I will be doing my project on Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer and sex offender from Wisconsin. I want to find out why did he choose only gay black men to rape and what made him want to do this to people. I am interested in Dahmer because I find it fascinating that there are people out there that actually do this and don’t feel bad about it and I want to investigate why he did and what made him do it. This is worth searching because at the time, people weren’t as concerned with black men as much as they would’ve been with white men so individuals didn’t really know what was going on at the time when Dahmer was performing these activities which makes it thrilling to see how he got away with it for the time that he did. I do not have a perfect understanding of this topic at this time because I never knew about Dahmer until this year, and I still don’t know why he did this, what him do it, and how no one caught on to what was going on right away.