Christopher Scarver: 5 Fast Facts You Need to Know

christopher scarver

Mugshots Christopher Scarver and Dahmer

Christopher Scarver is the convicted murderer who beat Wisconsin serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer to death in a state prison.

Scarver also murdered Jesse Anderson, a Wisconsin man who was in prison for stabbing his wife to death.

Dahmer was murdered in prison on November 28, 1994, by Scarver. He died at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin.

Dahmer’s serial killings are featured in a new Netflix series. “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” started streaming on September 21, 2022. “Across more than a decade, 17 teen boys and young men were murdered by convicted killer Jeffrey Dahmer. How did he evade arrest for so long?” the Netflix site for the show asks.

Here’s what you need to know about Christopher Scarver:


1. Scarver Left Dahmer ‘Gurgling’ on the Floor

A Wisconsin State Journal article from 1994, accessed through Newspapers.com, describes how Scarver, today 53, “bashed in Jeffrey Dahmer’s head with a metal bar and left him gurgling on the floor.”

“God told me to do it,” Scarver said, according to that article. Scarver, Dahmer and Anderson had been assigned to clean a prison gymnasium, that article says.

An article in the Akron Beacon Journal from November 29, 1994, the day after Dahmer’s death, said that his “bloodied body was found in a staff bathroom at 8:10 a.m., 12 minutes after he and two other inmates arrived for janitorial duty.”

Dahmer was 34 years old when he died. He was found “breathing but unresponsive” and pronounced dead an hour later at a hospital, according to the story, accessed via Newspapers.com.

That report says that Dahmer was “beaten so severely his face was unrecognizable.” Dahmer died of “severe head injuries,” according to that story.


2. Scarver Said He Killed Dahmer Because the Serial Killer Molded ‘Severed Limbs Out of Prison Food’

Scarver told The New York Post in 2015 that he murdered Dahmer because the serial killer “would fashion severed limbs out of prison food to taunt the other inmates.”

According to Scarver, Dahmer would “drizzle on packets of ketchup as blood.”

“He would put them in places where people would be,” Scarver told The Post.

Scarver told the news site that either Dahmer or Anderson poked him in the back while they were mopping an area of the prison. “I turned around, and [Dahmer] and Jesse were kind of laughing under their breath,” Scarver told The Post. “I looked right into their eyes, and I couldn’t tell which had done it.”

Scarver told the Post he carried a newspaper clipping of Dahmer’s murders and confronted the serial killer with it. “I asked him if he did those things ’cause I was fiercely disgusted. He was shocked. Yes, he was,” Scarver said to The Post.

Scarver has a son who has written him in prison. “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do. And you are the toughest kid I know,” Scarver responded, according to CNN.


3. Scarver Was Convicted of Murdering a Crew Chief at a Conservative Corps. Office After Demanding Money

According to a 1991 Associated Press article, Sarver pleaded insanity but lost that claim in the earlier murder case.

He was sentenced to life in prison for the “execution-style slaying of a man shot three times in the head as the assailant demanded more and more money.”

Scarver dropped out of high school in his senior year. He was a carpenter trainee. He was working in something called the Wisconsin Conservation Corps. that provided people needing work with training in carpentry.

He was dropped by the program and started using drugs and alcohol.

In 1990, he went to the office to take money.

Scarver grew angry when the officer manager, John Feyen, didn’t give him much money, so he forced crew chief Steve Lohman, 27, to “lie on the floor,” according to the criminal complaint as described in the AP story.

After Feyen gave him $15, Scarver shot Lohman in the head, telling Feyen, “Not you think I’m kidding? I need more money.”

Feyen wrote a check for $3,000 but Scarver shot Lohman in the head a second time. “This is still not enough,” he said.

Feyen started to sign over his payroll check but Scarver shot Loham a third time in the head.

According to the AP, Scarver “revealed views that whites mistreated Blacks.”


4. Dahmer Was Killed With a 20-Inch Metal Bar From Exercise Equipment

christopher scarver

MugshotChristopher Scarver

A 1994 Associated Press article on Dahmer’s autopsy says that he remained shackled until the autopsy began.

He was “bludgeoned to death,” that story reported.

The autopsy was performed by Robert Huntington III.

Dahmer died within minutes of the beating, the AP reported.

That AP story reported that “prison records…quote an inmate as saying he overheard Scarver remarking he expected to be paid for the slayings.”

The story says that Dahmer and Anderson were murdered “with a 20-inch metal bar from exercise equipment.”

Dahmer’s brain was removed during the autopsy and “preserved for possible study,” the AP reported.

A 1994 Associated Press article, also accessed via Newspapers.com, said that Dahmer died after being taken off life support.

Dahmer had been assigned to clean a prison restroom when he was attacked, the article said.

Scarver was the “sole suspect,” according to the AP.

There were questions for years about Dahmer’s death, namely: How was Scarver able to get away with it if prison guards were there?

The story quoted Columbia County Sheriff James D. Smith as saying that “eight people were in the prison’s recreation area around the time of the attacks, including two guards, a recreation director, and other inmates.”

Anderson and Dahmer were found in different locations; Dahmer was discovered in a staff bathroom “in a pool of blood” while Anderson was discovered in a locker room, according to the AP.

The AP article says that a “bloody broom handle” was found near Dahmer.

To the Post, Scarver claimed the guards knew he hated Dahmer and vanished at the time of the murder. “They had something to do with what took place. Yes,” he alleged. The guards have never been formally accused in connection with the deaths of Dahmer or Anderson.


5. Today Scarver Is in an Out-of-State Prison

jeffrey dahmer

MugshotJeffrey Dahmer

Scarver, now 53, remains in prison, but he was shipped out-of-state, according to the state of Wisconsin Department of Corrections database.

Scarver is currently being held at the Centennial Correctional Facility in Canon City, Colorado, according to PopBuzz.

Scarver wrote a book of poetry behind prison walls.

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