Christopher J. Scarver is an American convicted murderer best known for his fatal assault on serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson at the Columbia Correctional Institution in 1994. Scarver used a 20-inch metal bar, which he had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room, to beat Dahmer, and another convicted murderer, Jesse Anderson. Both Dahmer and Anderson later died from their injuries. Scarver was sentenced to two further life sentences for the killings.
Early life
Scarver is the second of five children and was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He attended James Madison High School before dropping out in the eleventh grade. Eventually, his mother forced him to leave the house because of his increasing alcoholism. Scarver was hired as a trainee carpenter at a Wisconsin Conservation Corps job program. He said that he had been promised by Edward Patts, a supervisor, that upon completion of this program he would be hired full-time, but Patts was dismissed, and as a result, Scarver's full-time position never materialized.
Murder conviction
On June 1, 1990, Scarver went to the Wisconsin Conservation Corps training program office and found Steve Lohman, the supervisor who had replaced Edward Patts. Scarver demanded money from Lohman: upon receiving only $15 from Lohman, Scarver shot him in the head. At the same time, he demanded money from site manager John Feyen. According to authorities, Scarver said, "Do you think I'm kidding? I need more money." Scarver shot Lohman twice more before Feyen gave a $3,000 check to Scarver and ran away. Scarver was convicted and sentenced to life in prison and sent to the Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, Wisconsin, in 1992.
Murders in prison
On the morning ofNovember 28, 1994, Scarver was assigned to a work detail with two other inmates, Jesse Anderson and Jeffrey Dahmer; the detail included cleaning the prison gymnasium toilet. When corrections officers left the three unsupervised, Scarver beat the other two men with a metal bar that he had removed from a piece of exercise equipment in the prison weight room. When he returned to his cell early, an officer asked him why he was not still working. During that time two officers found Dahmer and Anderson. Scarver said that Dahmer had taunted other inmates by constructing "severed limbs" out of food and ketchup. Dahmer was declared dead an hour after arriving at the hospital; Anderson died two days later. After being found competent to stand trial, Scarver received two more life sentences for these murders. In 2005, Scarver brought a federal civil rights suit against officials of the Wisconsin Secure Program Facility in which he argued that he had been subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, contrary to his constitutional rights. Scarver stated that he spent 16 years in solitary confinement as a result of the Dahmer killing. A district court judge dismissed the suit against several of the defendants and ruled that the actions of the remaining officials could not be considered unlawful. Scarver unsuccessfully appealed the decision in 2006. Later, federal district court judge Barbara Crabb ordered that Scarver and about three dozen other seriously mentally ill inmates be relocated from the Wisconsin facility. Scarver was eventually relocated to the Centennial Correctional Facility in Colorado. In 2012, an agent representing Scarver announced that Scarver was willing to write a book about the killing of Dahmer. In 2015, Jamie Schram of the New York Post reported that Scarver had believed that Dahmer was unrepentant for his crimes. Schram reported that Dahmer would taunt fellow inmates by shaping his prison food into severed limbs and drizzling packets of ketchup on them to simulate blood. It also reported that, although Scarver had not interacted with Dahmer before killing him, he knew that Dahmer was very unpopular with fellow inmates and had seen him get into several altercations with other prisoners. Scarver was reported to have said that he was revolted by Dahmer's crimes and that he carried a news article in his pocket detailing the crimes. Immediately before murdering Dahmer, Scarver allegedly presented the newspaper clipping to him and asked him whether it was true. Scarver was reported to have said that prison staff left him alone with Dahmer because they wanted Dahmer dead and they knew that Scarver hated him. In a 2015 blog post, Scarver disputed some of these statements.
