Some of the most infamous murderers in history have met violent deaths at the hands of fellow prisoners while serving life sentences. From serial killers bludgeoned in bathrooms to child murderers speared with a broom, these cases highlight the dangers of life behind bars.
Jeffrey Dahmer's fatal encounter
Jeffrey Dahmer, nicknamed the "Milwaukee Cannibal," murdered, dismembered, and ate the flesh of 17 male victims between 1978 and 1991. He was caught after one victim escaped and raised the alarm, leading police to find a severed head and other body parts in his flat.
Dahmer met his end aged 34 while serving multiple life sentences at Columbia Correctional Institute in Wisconsin. He was killed by fellow inmate Christopher Scarver, who beat him over the head with a 20-inch metal bar while they were left alone in a bathroom. Scarver, himself a convicted murderer, told guards: "God told me to do it." He later claimed Dahmer had angered him by shaping his food to look like body parts in the prison canteen. Scarver, now 56, remains behind bars.
Robert Pickton's brutal demise
Robert Pickton took female victims to his pig farm near Vancouver, Canada, in the late 1990s and early 2000s. He was arrested when body parts and possessions of dozens of missing women were found at his property. He bragged of killing 49 women—many of them sex workers—over 15 years to an undercover cop. He was convicted of six murders and sentenced to life in prison.
In 2024, aged 74, Pickton was speared in the head with a broken broom handle by another inmate at the Port-Cartier Institution in Quebec.
Other notorious cases
James "Whitey" Bulger, former boss of Boston's Winter Hill Gang, was convicted of 11 murders in 2013 after years in hiding. On October 30, 2018, the 89-year-old, using a wheelchair, was dragged by inmates at Hazelton prison in West Virginia and beaten with a padlock attached to a belt until he died.
Richard Loeb, who with Nathan Leopold kidnapped and murdered 14-year-old Bobby Franks in Chicago in 1924, was killed in 1936 at Statesville Prison, Illinois, when inmate James Day slashed his throat. Day was later found not guilty of murder.
Albert DeSalvo, the self-confessed Boston Strangler, was found stabbed to death in 1973 at Walpole maximum security prison after a row over drug sales. His alleged killer, a mobster, escaped conviction after a hung jury. In 2013, DNA tests confirmed DeSalvo's guilt in one victim's murder.
