Jeffrey Dahmer is one of America’s most infamous modern serial killers, but he was also a religious man who was raised attending church and reading the bible.
WATCH: Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story trailer
Despite his upbringing, Dahmer’s faith was often left out of reports about him, something Dahmer seemed to take issue with.
“I’ve said so lots of times in the various interviews I’ve given to the media, but each time when the report airs, that part is left out,” Dahmer said once, according to Rev. Roy Ratcliff.
A 1994 report published in the Beaver County Times paper just days after Dahmer’s death noted that “like many prisoners, Jeffrey Dahmer found religion behind bars”.
However, the infamous serial killer was raised in a protestant community and his family reportedly attended a Church of Christ church in the local area.
Meanwhile, a 2007 study noted that he and his grandmother “…went to church together and read the Bible”.
“Jeff immersed himself in the Bible while he was alone, too, in a conscious attempt to wrestle with the blackness within him and purge it,” author Brian Masters wrote,
In fact, Dahmer’s religious upbringing seemed to stay with him into adulthood and he is believed to have to grappled with his faith and his murders.
In a 1991 statement, he spoke of “reading the Bible then, trying to get my life straightened around” despite his crimes.
WATCH: Jeffrey Dahmer discusses his killings
He is also said to have made the following comments after he was sentenced to life in prison: “I should have stayed with God. I tried and failed and created a holocaust.
“Thank God there will be no more harm that I can do. I believe that only the Lord Jesus Christ can save me from my sins.”
It was there that Dahmer is said to have leaned even further into his faith, going so far as to be baptised again just months before he was brutally beaten to death by another inmate.
In the Church of Christ faith, this would serve as a symbolic washing away of sin and was performed by the Rev. Roy Ratcliff.
Ratcliff also visited Dahmer once a week at the prison, suggesting the serial killer was deeply invested in his faith before he died in 1994.
In his own book, Rev. Ratcliff later wrote that he reassured Dahmer that he was “right” with God despite his horrific crimes.
“I had to explain the meaning of grace and how it was applied many times before he was able to relax this concern,” he wrote.
“Once he could see that being a Christian made him right in God’s sight, no matter what, he was able to lay aside many of his fears.”
Understandably, some Christians took issue with Rev. Ratcliff’s comments about the killer.
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