Christopher Scarver

Christopher J. Scarver Sr. (born July 6, 1969) is an American convicted triple-murderer known for murdering Jeffrey Dahmer, a serial killer, and Jesse Anderson, a murderer, at the Columbia Correctional Institution in 1994. Scarver used a 20-inch (51 cm) metal bar, which he had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room, to beat and fatally wound Dahmer and Anderson. Scarver was sentenced to two further life sentences for the murders of Dahmer and Anderson.

Early life

Scarver is the second of five children and was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended James Madison High School before dropping out in the eleventh grade, and was eventually kicked out of his mother's house after becoming addicted to alcohol and marijuana. +more Scarver was hired as a trainee carpenter at a Wisconsin Conservation Corps job program. He said that he had been promised by his supervisor, Edward Patts, that upon completion of this program he would be hired full-time, but Patts was dismissed, and as a result, Scarver's full-time position never materialized. This resulted in Scarver drinking heavily, and while in his drunken state, he began to hear voices calling him the "chosen one". He was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and was said to have been suffering from messianic delusions.

Murder of Steve Lohman

On June 1, 1990, Scarver went to the Wisconsin Conservation Corps training program office and found site manager John Feyen and employee Steve Lohman present. Forcing Lohman down at gunpoint, Scarver demanded money from Feyen. +more Upon receiving only $15 from him, the enraged Scarver shot Lohman once in the head, killing him. According to authorities, Scarver then said, "Now do you think I'm kidding? I need more money. ", shooting Lohman twice more, both post-mortem, before Feyen wrote a $3,000. 00 check to Scarver, who then fired at and missed Feyen as he fled to his car outside.

Scarver was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and sent to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1992.

Murders of Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer

On the morning of November 28, 1994, Scarver was assigned to a work detail with two other inmates, Jesse Anderson, serving time for the murder of his wife, and Jeffrey Dahmer, a cannibalistic serial killer; the detail included him cleaning the prison gymnasium toilet. When corrections officers left the three unsupervised, Scarver attacked Jeffrey Dahmer with a metal bar that he removed from a piece of exercise equipment from the prison weight room; he then beat Jesse Anderson with a wooden stick at the showers. +more He returned to his cell and informed a corrections officer that "God told me to do it. Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer are dead. ".

Both men were mortally wounded by the beatings. Dahmer was declared dead an hour after arriving at the hospital, and Anderson died two days later after doctors removed him from life support. +more After being found competent enough to stand trial, Scarver received two more life sentences for Dahmer and Anderson's murders. It is believed that Scarver murdered Dahmer and Anderson, who were both white, because of Dahmer's murders of black males and because Anderson had stabbed his wife to death and attempted to frame two black males as the perpetrators of the attack. Scarver was quoted as having said, "nothing white people do to blacks is just. ".

Aftermath

In 2005, Scarver brought a federal civil rights suit against officials of the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in which he argued that he had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, contrary to his constitutional rights. Scarver stated that he spent 16 years in solitary confinement as a result of the murders of Dahmer and Anderson. +more A district court judge dismissed the suit against several of the defendants and ruled that the actions of the remaining officials could not be considered unlawful. Scarver unsuccessfully appealed the decision in 2006. Later, federal district court judge Barbara Crabb ordered that Scarver and about three dozen other seriously mentally ill inmates be relocated from the Wisconsin facility. Scarver was eventually relocated to the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado.

In 2012, an agent representing Scarver announced that Scarver was willing to write a tell-all book about the murder of Dahmer.