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tickler with one of America’s premier serial killers, the late Jeff “The Chef” Dahmer :
    What did Jeffrey Dahmer say to Lorena Bobbitt?
    “You going to eat that?”
    Dahmer’s cannibalistic crimes inspired a host of sick jokes. One day, for example, his mother came over for dinner. “Jeffrey,” she complained, halfway through the meal, “I really don’t like your friends.” “Then just eat the vegetables, Ma,” Dahmer replied.
    The phenomenon of serial-killer humor appears to have originated in relation to another celebrity psycho who (like Dahmer) resided in Wisconsin: Edward Gein . Not long after Gein’s atrocities came to light, jokes about the “Plainfield Ghoul” began circulating throughout the Midwest. These crude riddles—known as “Geiners”—drew the attention of a psychologist named George Arndt, who published an article about them in a psychiatric journal. Among Arndt’s examples were the following:
    Why did Ed Gein’s girlfriend stop going out with him?
    Because he was such a cut-up.
    What did Ed Gein say to the sheriff who arrested him?
    “Have a heart.”
    Why won’t anyone play poker with Ed Gein?
    He might come up with a good hand.
    Why do serial-killer jokes exist? Are they an expression of pure callousness and cruelty? Probably not. Like other gross and nasty jokes, serial-killer humor offers an outlet for our fears—in the same way that a child walking past a graveyard will whistle a lively tune to calm his nerves. It’s a way of warding off terror with levity. As the saying goes, we laugh to keep from crying.
    “A Visit from Old Ed”
    Woodcut portrait of Ed Gein by Chris Pelletiere
    Sick jokes about Ed Gein weren’t the only kind of black humor circulating in the months following the discovery of his crimes. Researching local reaction to Gein’s atrocities, psychologist George Arndt recorded this ghoulish parody of Clement Moore’s “A Visit from St. Nicholas”:
    ’Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the shed,
    All creatures were stirring, even old Ed.
    The bodies were hung from the rafters above,
    While Eddie was searching for another new love.
    He went to Wautoma for a Plainfield deal,
    Looking for love and also a meal.
    When what to his hungry eyes should appear,
    But old Mary Hogan in her new red brassiere.
    Her cheeks were like roses when kissed by the sun.
    And she let out a scream at the sight of Ed’s gun.
    Old Ed pulled the trigger and Mary fell dead,
    He took his old axe and cut off her head.
    He then took his hacksaw and cut her in two,
    One half for hamburger, the other for stew.
    And laying a hand aside of her heel,
    Up to the rafters went his next meal.
    He sprang to his truck, to the graveyard he flew,
    The hours were short and much work must he do.
    He looked for the grave where the fattest one laid,
    And started in digging with shovel and spade.
    He shoveled and shoveled and shoveled some more,
    Till finally he reached the old coffin door.
    He took out a crowbar and pried open the box,
    He was not only clever but sly as a fox.
    As he picked up the body and cut off her head,
    He could tell by the smell that the old girl was dead.
    He filled in the grave by the moonlight above,
    And once more old Ed had found a new love.
    “He had a bizarre sense of humor.”
    One of Jeffrey Dahmer’s former schoolmates
    J UVENILES
    Little boys who grow up to be serial killers tend to be extremely sadistic, but the targets of their cruelty are almost always small animals, not other children (see Animal Torture ). An exception to this rule was the juvenile psychopath Jesse Pomeroy, one of the most unsettling criminals of nineteenth-century America.
    Pomeroy suffered a difficult boyhood. He was raised in hardship by a widowed mother, who scraped together a meager living as a seamstress in South Boston. And he was cursed with a grotesque appearance—his mouth was disfigured by a harelip, and one eye was covered with a ghastly white film. Still, his