American serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer was BOTD in 1960. Born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he grew up in a dysfunctional middle-class family, with a mentally ill mother and an absent father. He developed an early interest in killing animals and preserving their carcasses, and by 14 was a heavy user of alcohol, possibly triggered by his guilt over his homosexuality. In 1979, he committed his first murder, picking up a young hitchhiker whom he murdered before dissecting and disposing of his body. After dropping out of university, he joined the US Army, though was discharged two years later for persistent alcohol abuse. He moved to Ohio to live with his grandmother, drifting in and out of work and visiting local gay bars and saunas. Between 1987 and 1991, Dahmer murdered a further sixteen men and boys, mostly vulnerable young gay and bisexual men of colour. In 1991, Dahmer abducted, drugged and tortured 14 year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, who attempted to escape. Local police failed to investigate the case fully, dismissing it as “a domestic dispute”, and Sinthasomphone was returned to Dahmer’s apartment, who later killed him. Three months later, another of Dahmer’s intended victims managed to escape and alert police, who searched his apartment, discovering the remains of multiple bodies. He was arrested and confessed to sixteen counts of murder. His trial became an international sensation, with media reports fixating on Dahmer’s admissions of necrophilia and cannibalism. Sentenced to life imprisonment, he was murdered in prison by a fellow inmate in 1994, aged 34. His trial has been extensively critiqued by queer commentators, pointing to the police force’s failure to properly investigate the murders of young gay men, and the homophobic press coverage that equated Dahmer’s homosexuality with his crimes. The subject of innumerable books and documentaries, he has been portrayed frequently onscreen, most recently by Evan Peters in Ryan Murphy’s 2022 TV series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.