Jeffrey Dahmer was a killer of seventeen people.
Jeffrey Lionel Dahmer ( May 21 , 1960 -- November 28 , 1994 ) , also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal , was an American serial killer and sex offender , who committed the rape , murder , and dismemberment of seventeen men and boys between 1978 and 1991 . Convicted of fifteen of the sixteen murders he had committed in Wisconsin , Dahmer was sentenced to fifteen terms of life imprisonment on February 15 , 1992 .