Christopher Scarver -- the man who murdered serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer in 1994 -- spoke to the New York Post's Jamie Schram about why he felt he had no choice but to murder the cannibal -- and why he believes that prison officials wanted him to.
Scarver, who was serving a life sentence for killing a former employer in 1990, said that Dahmer taunted other inmates by constructing severed limbs out of daily meals and covering them with ketchup for blood. The serial killer was never left unattended, Scarver said, because he "crossed the line with some people -- prisoners [and] prison staff."
Even though Scarver said that he never personally interacted with him, it was well known in the prison that he carried a newspaper clipping containing a list of Dahmer's crimes. So when he was left alone with Dahmer and Jesse Anderson, another inmate, on November 28, 1994, he claimed that he knew what corrections officers wanted him to do -- and he did it. "They had something to do with what took place," he argued.
He said that either Dahmer or Anderson had poked him in the back with a mop handle. "I turned around, and [Dahmer] and Jesse were laughing under their breath," he told the Post. "I looked right in their eyes, and I couldn't tell which had done it."
The trio split up, and Scarver went to the weight room to acquire a weapon -- a 20 inch long, 5 lbs. metal bar -- before confronting Dahmer. "I asked him if he did those things [in the newspaper clipping] because I was fiercely disgusted. He was shocked. He started looking for the door pretty quick. I blocked him," Scarver said, then swung the bar at Dahmer's head, killing him.
"He ended up dead," Scarver explained. "I put his head down." He then tracked down Anderson and "put down" his head too.
Although Scarver has repeatedly claimed that he was doing the bidding of prison officials, an investigation into Dahmer and Anderson's deaths concluded that Scarver had acted alone. He pleaded "no contest" to the charges against him and was moved to a federal penitentiary.
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