CANON CITY, Colo. — The inmate who fatally beat serial killer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer in prison in the early-1990s has revealed his reasons for doing so in a new interview.
Christopher Scarver, who was incarcerated at the same Portage, Wis., prison as Dahmer back in 1994, recently divulged the details of his killing to the New York Post.
“Some people who are in prison are repentant — but he was not one of them,” he told the Post, recounting details of Dahmer’s brutal and unapologetic taunts to other inmates.
Scarver said in the interview Dahmer used to fashion limbs out of the prison food, applying ketchup on places to represent blood.
Though they were taunts, the actions represented a more chilling reality. Dahmer was arrested in 1991 after police found human remains and decomposing bodies in his apartment. Dahmer later confessed to 17 murders, many of which included the rape and dismemberment of the victims.
In 1992 Dahmer was sentenced to 15 life terms in prison after a court rejected his insanity defense.
Despite Dahmer’s abominable past, Scarver told the Post the killer initially left “no impression” on him.
“I never interacted with him,” he told the Post. He would watch from afar, avoiding contact due to Dahmer’s friction with other inmates.
That was until Nov. 28, 1994.
Dahmer, 34 at the time, and another inmate were tasked to clean the bathrooms — unshackled and unattended.
Scarver, then 25 and himself a convicted murderer, was with them. He told the Post he’d kept a newspaper clipping that detailed Dahmer’s killings.
He found his fellow inmate to have a lust for flesh, and was “disgusted” with the details of his actions.
Scarver told the Post he’d gone to retrieve a mop when he felt someone poke his back. When he turned around, he saw Dahmer and the other inmate “laughing under their breath.”
“I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it,” he told the Post.
But after the three men split up, Scarver decided to follow Dahmer to the locker room.
He told the Post he confronted Dahmer with the news article, asking the killer if he’d really done the things described in the story.
When Dahmer tried to escape, Scarver then took a metal bar and swung it at his head, crushing Dahmer’s skull.
Scarver then found the other inmate, Jesse Anderson, and did “[p]retty much the same thing.”
Scarver told the New York Post he believes the prison officials left them all alone on purpose, knowing he hated Dahmer and wanted him dead.
“They had something to do with what took place. Yes,” he told the Post.
After the murders he pleaded insanity, but later changed it to “no contest” in exchange for a transfer to a federal penitentiary.
According to the New York Post, Scarver was then sentenced to two life terms on top of the one he was already serving at the time.
Scarver had been sentenced in 1990 for the murder of his former boss during a robbery, the Post notes.
He is currently incarcerated at Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colo.
Scarver now spends some of his time writing poetry for his website.
