Christopher Scarver's Real Name: Christopher Scarver

Quick answer: Christopher Scarver's real name is Christopher Scarver. He is an American prisoner who, according to the Associated Press and History.com, was already serving a life sentence for murder and was later sentenced to additional life terms after a 1994 case involving fellow inmates Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson.

Real name and early life

He is known as Christopher Scarver. Independent publishers used here record that public name rather than a longer legal form, so the public name is used in the title. A birth date and birthplace are not independently recorded in the sources cited here. The Associated Press, in a later roundup of prisoners who died behind bars, identifies him as Christopher Scarver and says he was already serving a life sentence for a 1990 murder. History.com independently says he was already serving a life term for murder at the time of the 1994 case discussed below.

Career highlights

Legal matters

This section records reported convictions and sentences. It does not add operational detail.

The Associated Press says that in 1994, at the Columbia Correctional Institution in Wisconsin, Jeffrey Dahmer and another inmate were killed, and that Scarver, already serving a life sentence for a 1990 murder, was Dahmer's killer. History.com, in a This Day in History entry last updated May 27, 2025, dates Dahmer's death to November 28, 1994, at the Columbia Correctional Institute in Portage, Wisconsin, and says fellow inmate Christopher Scarver also killed the third man on their work detail, inmate Jesse Anderson. This page records both the Associated Press's Institution wording and History.com's Institute wording for the prison's name, and History.com's identification of the second inmate as Jesse Anderson.

History.com says Scarver's motive was not entirely clear, and that in his subsequent criminal trial he maintained that God told him to kill Dahmer and the other inmate. It says that Scarver, already serving a life term for murder, was sentenced to additional life terms and transferred to a federal prison. The Associated Press does not independently give the later sentence wording used by History.com, but it does independently record the prior life sentence and Scarver's identification in the 1994 case.

Name notes for searchers

People looking up Christopher Scarver are looking for the person described here, who appears in news accounts of the 1994 deaths of Jeffrey Dahmer and Jesse Anderson in a Wisconsin prison. Independent sources support the public name used in the title.