Did Jeffrey Dahmer spend time at Bos Meadery in Madison (and leave a momento behind)?

Today there’s a mead hall in downtown Madison, WI called Bos Meadery that’s a wonderful place to visit and drink (plus, they brew their own – I highly recommend ordering a flight to sample their original options).

As the story goes, before it was a mead hall, it was a bakery. Today, there is one, strange remnant left behind that echoes back to its time as a bakery. It’s not an industrial mixer, or a large table for rolling out dough to make pastries. Rather, it’s a bit of graffiti left behind, a dated autograph by a former employee who would go on to become infamous for all the wrong reasons.

The employee – cannibalistic serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer.

As reported by Iris Hutchings, who took these photos, “Dahmer worked in the building when it was a bakery, so the story is that the name/date were written by him while he was there (totally unverified as far as I’m aware)… I’m not sure about whether the elevator is open to the public, or if it’s locked.”

So, this is a call for information. Can anyone submit and concrete evidence that Dahmer in fact did work in Madison, WI, specifically, a Bakery on East Washington Ave?

If the graffiti is legitimate, the date of May 13, 1987 coincides with a time Dahmer was living in West Allis, WI, a western Milwaukee suburb that’s about 75 minutes from Madison. He was already a murderer at this point, having killed his first victim in 1978. In 1985 he had worked at Milwaukee’s Ambrosia Chocolate Factory as a mixer, so the idea of him working at a bakery does pair with some former work experience. His second murder took place in November 1987, just a half year after he (possibly) signed the elevator.

I mean, if you’re taking a picture in the “Dahmer elevator,” you’re probably gonna lean into the horror or ham it up a bit… or both.

Though about nine years passed between Dahmer’s first and second victim, he became a more prolific killer as time went on, finally killing eight people between February and July of 1991. He was apprehended about a week after his final killing, in July 1991, was given 16 life sentences for his crimes in August of 1992, but his time in prison was brief as he was murdered at Columbia Correctional Institution in Portage, WI in November 1994.

Is this just weird, random macabre graffiti, possibly written be someone long after the news of Dahmer’s crimes hit the news? Or Did Dahmer himself leave this mark behind.