Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home

This is Jeffrey Dahmer's childhood home.

It is situated at 4480 West Bath Road, on the northwestern outskirts of Akron, Ohio.

Jeffrey lived here with his parents, Lionel and Joyce, and his younger brother, David.

Although Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, his family moved to Doylestown, Ohio, when he was just six years old.

After living in Doylestown for two years, Lionel and Joyce decided to buy this picturesque three-bedroom house near Fairlawn.

Following a series of moves, the couple had finally found the perfect place to raise their two sons.

As a child, Dahmer reportedly developed an unusual fascination with animal bones. Over the years, this interest grew to the point that he eventually started collecting them.

Although this morbid obsession started before he moved to Bath Road, it is likely that the patch of woodland at the back of his home gave him enough privacy to nurture it. There, hidden among the trees, he could decapitate dead squirrels, chipmunks, and other roadkill that he had actively sought out.

The fact that his parents were often too busy to pay close attention to him probably didn't help matters either.

As a teenager, Damher started abusing alcohol and fantasizing about dominating and controlling a male partner. By that stage, he had long realized that he was sexually attracted to men.

His first attempt to act out his fantasies ended in failure.

After becoming fixated on a male jogger who regularly ran past his house, Dahmer eventually picked up the nerve to ambush him with a baseball bat.

Fortunately, for some reason or another, his intended target decided not to jog past that day.

During this period, his parents' marriage was steadily falling apart. Their relationship was a deeply unhappy one, and the pair constantly argued. Although they made one last attempt to fix things, all hope of this was lost when Lionel learned that Joyce had a brief fling while she was out of state at her father's funeral.

Shortly afterwards, they divorced, and Lionel decided to move out.

Dahmer's first victim was murdered at this address in June of 1978. At the time, he was staying at the house by himself because his mother and brother were living with relatives in Wisconsin.

On June 18th, 1978, Dahmer spotted 18-year-old Steven Mark Hicks hitchhiking at the side of the road and decided to pick him up. After luring Hicks back to Bath Road by promising him free alcohol, he eventually attacked him with a dumbbell and then strangled him to death.

Notably, this attack occurred after several hours of drinking, at a point when Hicks stated that he was leaving.

Following the murder, Dahmer dismembered his victim's body in the basement before burying it in the wooded area at the back of his house.

A few weeks later, he decided to dig up the remains and remove all of the flesh from the bones. After dissolving the flesh in acid and pouring it down the drain, he ground Hicks' bones up into dust and then scattered them in his back yard.

Dahmer continued to live at this address until July of 1979, when he joined the US Army and was deployed to West Germany.

However, his drinking problem steadily worsened while he was stationed abroad. As a result, the army decided to cut him loose and discharge him.

After a brief period of living back home with his father and his new stepmother, he was eventually sent to live with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin.

It wasn't until ten years later that he moved into his infamous apartment on North 25th Street.

Further information is available in the "Photos" section below.

Photos

Photos of the house and other related images.

---