My friend the cannibal killer
Jeffrey Dahmer raped, murdered & dismembered 17 people but his old school pal recalls a likeable, if troubled, teen failed by society
John Backderf is in a painful position. He has to square the fact he was schoolmates with a boy who went on to acquire the gruesome nickname of the Milwaukee Cannibal for a string of atrocious crimes.
And what’s more, though he struggles to say it out loud, he admits he actually liked Jeffrey Dahmer at the time.
Dahmer raped, butchered and dismembered 17 men and boys, the youngest 14.
A killer so obsessed with body parts, especially human bones, he often kept his victims’ organs and skulls as trophies, and turned to necrophilia and cannibalism.
From jail, even Dahmer admitted: “It’s hard for me to believe that a human being could have done what I’ve done.”
His crimes were finally discovered in 1991. His killing spree began in 1978, right after he finished high school in their hometown in Ohio, and after John and his pals saw him for the last time.
Since then John, who still goes by his school nickname Derf, has trawled through their friendship, even querying his own role in the making of a murderer. It resulted in his book, My Friend Dahmer, and a film based upon it, in cinemas now.
The 58-year-old concludes Dahmer was initially “quiet and shy” and “well down the social ladder” then, later, an oddball, increasingly troubled, who probably always carried the monster within.
But he believes if an adult had intervened to help the teenager, later diagnosed with a range of personality disorders, 17 victims might not have died.
“You can never lose sight of the fact Jeff slaughtered 17 people and there are thousands who still mourn those victims,” Derf says. “But the Jeff I knew had committed no crime. So, yes, he was a monster, but not always. I liked him.
“He was another sad kid with problems. If we write someone off as a monster, people are absolved of any responsibility for what happened.”
It’s a conclusion which intensifies every time he sees yet another school massacre carried out in the US by a troubled child.
He adds: “I don’t think things have improved one bit. Look at all the school shootings here, it’s the same pattern. Teenagers have a secret world, often a very sinister world.
“It’s difficult for adults to penetrate that, but professionals should at least make an effort, and no one made an effort with Jeff.” Even in the UK, where such cases are rarer, last week two teenagers were convicted for plotting a Columbine-style shootout in their school in Northallerton, North Yorks.
A jury heard they were motivated by their “hero worship” of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, who killed 13 people then themselves at Columbine High School in Colorado in 1999.
“With Jeff, I think the dysfunction was always there, but that doesn’t mean he couldn’t have been stopped,” says Derf.
In the last months at school Dahmer turned to booze, which he openly drank out of a Styrofoam coffee cup from 8am in front of teachers, unchallenged.
“I don’t think he would’ve had a happy life, or a normal life. Maybe he would have been doped up on anti-depressants and institutionalised,” Derf continues.
“My premise is mistakes were made, and if we write Jeff off as a monster we learn nothing. Maybe we learn nothing anyway. It looks that way judging by current events, but I have hope.” Dahmer committed his first murder just three weeks after graduating at 18.
He lured 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Mark Hicks to his house, bludgeoned him then strangled him. He later dissolved the body in acid, crushed his bones and scattered them in woods behind the family home.
The house is not only still standing, it was also used in the filming of the movie.
“It was very intense,” Derf admits. “The house is basically unchanged structurally. It’s very similar. The first murder happened there and a kid’s body was stashed there for the better part of 13 years, what was left of it.”
Derf, now a successful cartoonist, first knew loner Dahmer aged 12.
“He probably wasn’t picked on more than anyone else. Usually he was just ignored, which in itself is a way of bullying,” he says. Dahmer, who grew up with rowing parents who ultimately divorced, already had a morbid fascination with death, unbeknown to Derf.
He would collect road kill and explore how to dissolve it in acid. Once, he mutilated a dog and left its body in local woods. “He stole a foetal pig from the school lab, although we didn’t know it was him then,” adds Derf.
At high school Dahmer became more outgoing, acting out strange mock epileptic fits in class, which Derf and his pals found funny.
It was probably a cry for attention and it worked. The lads formed a cult Dahmer Fan Club, with the aim of encouraging Dahmer to disrupt school. Derf admits the pranks were distasteful, but says there was no harm intended and Dahmer loved it.
“Jeff, when he spoke of those days from prison, spoke of it fondly,” he says. “It was sad to say [it was] the best time of his life because he had friends.
“I don’t think it’s any coincidence he began to kill when school ended.”
But Dahmer’s oddities became darker, especially as he began to drink and Derf began to distance himself. “At the end he wasn’t very likeable, because of the drinking and the total lack of empathy he displayed,” says Derf.
“A kid slipped on the ice and really hurt himself. I was standing with Jeff and he just burst out laughing. I got really mad at him, ‘What’s wrong with you?’. “As he became darker there was a moment with each of us when we decided, ‘that’s enough’.
“It wasn’t fear, just some instinct. He was a little bit dangerous, we could sense that.” Derf has grappled with the question of whether he should feel guilt for not recognising Dahmer’s problems.
He has reconciled to the fact they were kids. Derf adds: “That’s a lot of responsibility to put on a 17-year-old. Where were the adults?”
Dahmer’s killing spree finally ended
At the end he wasn’t very likeable, due to a total lack of empathy and drinking JOHN ‘DERF’ BACKDERF ON DISTANCING HIMSELF FROM PAL
when a potential victim managed to overpower him, fled and contacted police. Derf was stunned when the news broke.
“For several weeks there was kind of a blur,” he says. “At first there were four or five bodies found, then six, seven, then 10; the number kept going up. Then the details of what he’d done to these people. At a certain point you just go numb.
“With the snap of a finger my entire personal history changed. All these silly things we had done in high school, just like that they became very sinister.”
Derf is categorical he has never felt a flicker of sympathy for Dahmer, who was 34 and serving 16 life terms when he was beaten to death by a fellow prisoner in 1994. “He made the choice, whether that was inevitable or not, to kill,” Derf says.
But he ponders constantly whether he could have been stopped. “It sure would have been nice if someone had tried.”
My Friend Dahmer is in cinemas and on digital release now.