Weise had grown up with a difficult and disrupted family life; his parents were a young unmarried couple who separated before he was born. His mother Joanne Weise was 17 years old at the time of his birth. Joanne's family insisted that she give up her son to the father, Daryl Lussier, Jr., who was a few years older than her. Jeff Weise did not live with his mother again until after he was two years old, when she reclaimed him and took him to live in Minneapolis. In later Internet postings, Weise wrote that his mother had become an alcoholic who was sometimes physically and emotionally abusive. In 1992, she started dating Timothy "Troy" DesJarlait, and they married in 1998 after having had two children together. Jeff moved around often because of his mother, and attended several different schools during his adolescence.