A resurfaced CNN interview has reignited discussion about the 1994 prison murder of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, with the son of his killer recalling how he learnt of the incident as a 10-year-old boy.
Christopher Scarver Jr. said he discovered that his father, Christopher Scarver, had beaten Dahmer to death at Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin through television broadcasts.
In the archived interview, which has resurfaced online, Scarver Jr. recalled the shock of seeing his father on television, saying he was too young at the time to understand the circumstances surrounding Dahmer’s crimes.
The man who killed Jeffrey Dahmer has a son. He found out what his father did from the evening news. On November 28, 1994, guards left Dahmer in a prison gym bathroom with two other inmates for about 20 minutes. Only Christopher Scarver walked out alive. He was already serving life for murder. In the video below, his son, now a college senior, talks about growing up with that name. For years he hoped his father would come home. Then it hit him that he never would, and it turned into anger. As a teenager he started going down the wrong road. So he wrote to the man who killed Dahmer and told him everything. His father wrote back: “Tough times don’t last. Tough people do. And you are the toughest kid I know.” He keeps his dad’s prison photo in his dorm room. This month Dahmer is back on TV in American Horror Story. Scarver is still serving three life terms in Colorado. Could you still love a father like that?
— Sammy (@0xSammyAlpha) October 25, 2026
“I was about 10, and I saw it on TV. And that’s how I found out. When I was young, I didn’t know what it meant, obviously. But that name has been around me for my whole life,” he said.
Reflecting on the circumstances of the killing, Scarver Jr. questioned how his father was left unsupervised with Dahmer and another inmate. He said he continued to wonder whether prison staff had deliberately arranged the encounter.
Despite the circumstances surrounding his father’s actions, Scarver Jr. said reconnecting with him during a difficult period in his adolescence helped him navigate personal struggles.
He recalled writing to his father to open up about their strained relationship and the emotional pain he had carried over the years.
“I was actually starting to go down the wrong road, and that’s why I wrote [to] him. And I just told him everything I was going through, and how I felt about me and his relationship, all these built up years, all that pain that I had, I finally just let it go and just talked to him,” Scarver Jr. said.
He added that his father offered him words of encouragement that stayed with him.
“Tough times don’t last. Tough people do. And you are the toughest kid I know,” he recalled his father telling him.
Dahmer was convicted of murdering 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991 and sentenced to 16 consecutive life terms in prison.
His crimes came to light on July 22, 1991, after Tracy Edwards, a man who had escaped from Dahmer’s Milwaukee apartment, alerted police. Investigators subsequently searched the residence and discovered human remains, including skulls, severed heads, preserved body parts and photographs documenting the dismemberment of victims.
Authorities established that Dahmer had drugged, strangled and sexually assaulted his victims, as well as dismembering their bodies. He also committed acts of necrophilia and cannibalism.
Although Dahmer pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, a jury found him legally sane at the time of the offences.
He was serving his sentences at Columbia Correctional Institution when Scarver beat him to death on November 28, 1994. Another inmate, Jesse Anderson, was also attacked in the incident and died two days later.
