Did David Dahmer Know? Fact-Checking Jeffrey Dahmer's Relationship with His Brother
The fracture within the household became permanent in 1978. Lionel and Joyce underwent a vicious divorce marked by explosive arguments, accusations of mental instability, and a contested custody battle. When the split was finalized, the court awarded custody of David to Joyce, while Jeffrey, having just turned 18, fell outside the custody arrangement.
Joyce took 11-year-old David and moved to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, to live with relatives before eventually relocating to California. Lionel moved out to stay at a local motel. Jeffrey was left completely unsupervised in the family home on West Bath Road for several months. It was during this exact window of domestic abandonment, in June 1978, that Jeffrey committed his first murder, bludgeoning and strangling 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks.
David was hundreds of miles away when that first murder occurred. From that summer onward, the brothers effectively existed in different worlds. While David attended middle and high school under Joyce’s care, Jeffrey drifted into the military, returned to Ohio, moved in with his grandmother in West Allis, Wisconsin, and eventually took up residence in Milwaukee's Oxford Apartments. Phone calls were rare, and face-to-face reunions were virtually non-existent.
