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My objective of this page, and this project as a whole, is to look into Jeffrey Dahmer and how his killings effected the community of Bath, Ohio.  As a lifelong resident of Bath, Ohio, I have always been interested in the topic of Dahmer and the short and long term effects he had on my community and get to the bottom of the rumors that float around Revere High School.

If you live in the U.S., there is almost no doubt you’ve heard of Jeffrey Dahmer.  One of America’s most prolific serial killers, Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin on May 21, 1960 and moved to Bath, Ohio some time when he would have been in elementary school.  He went on to attend Revere Highschool and just a few years after he graduated, he made his first kill while living in Bath.  After a long string of seventeen murders and cannibalism through Ohio and Wisconsin, Dahmer would be caught on July 22, 1991.

During his time at Revere High School, Jeffrey Dahmer had a strange school life, especially for today’s standards.  He was known as a bit of a loner by other kids at Revere according to my Aunt Stephanie.  He kept to himself and did not have many friends.  He was known to occasionally skip school, for multiple days at a time sometimes, and carry a mysterious Styrofoam cup as he walked the halls, my aunt adding in an interview “it could’ve been water, it could’ve been Kool-Aid” (Hackenberg 3).  It would seem that this would be the beginning of his alcoholism that caused him to drop out of the Ohio State University.  Dahmer was also known as a class joker.  My aunt recalled from her sister that “in the time she was with him is school it was like oh that Jeffrey Dahmer said that like he said something funny” (Hacknberg 4).  In a short documentary I saw on TV a while ago, the person speaking said that, in school, he would take rats that were dissected in biology classes to do further experiments at home, and at home, he would catch rodents in his backyard and dissect them and bury them.  I do not know if this is true, but if it is, it is a disturbing sign of what was to come.

Jeffrey Dahmer’s Revere High School yearbook photo from 1978.