The Netflix series “Dahmer- Monster: The Jeffery Dahmer Story” recounts the life of infamous serial killer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer and the stories of his victims. Dahmer was arrested in his Milwaukee apartment in July of 1991, thirteen years after he committed his first murder. In Dahmer’s apartment, police found several body parts in the refrigerator, a 57-gallon barrel containing several bodies left to decompose in a mixture of chemicals, and evidence that Dahmer had eaten some of his victims. After extended interviews with Dahmer, police learned that he killed seventeen men and boys during his reign of terror. The 10-episode series highlights what led up to Dahmer’s murders and how he covered it up for so many years.
In the series, writers and producers wanted to emphasize that Dahmer’s victim profile was mostly young black men. Although police were never able to get a clear answer from Dahmer, it is speculated that he attacked mostly black males because of the lack of police surveillance in predominantly black neighborhoods. The series presents many situations where racism directly affected Dahmer’s ability to kill. In the first episode, Dahmer is living next to a black woman and her two children in an apartment complex in a low-income area. The woman complained to the police about smells and suspicious activity coming from Dahmer’s apartment multiple times. The police brush it off and do not listen to her suspicions, allowing Dahmer to continue killing.
In this photo, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mugshot appears next to 15 of his victims. From this photograph you can clearly see a majority of Dahmer’s victims were young black males.
Later in the series, we see Dahmer appear in front of a white judge for child molestation charges. Dahmer was caught drugging and taking pictures of a young boy whose family immigrated from Laos, a country in Southeast Asia. The young boy’s father attempted to speak in front of the judge, but the judge claimed that he could not understand him because of his accent and cut him off. The judge then turned to Dahmer and gave him a light sentence of a year in a correctional facility and said he would leave the details of his conviction off of Dahmer’s record. Although the Dahmer Netflix series may have dramatized the court room details, it still does not change the fact that Dahmer was allowed to walk free only a year after harming a young boy and it was kept off his record. Because Dahmer was a young white male, the young boy’s family were Asian, and the trial took place in 1988, the judge seemed to be biased towards Dahmer.
While committing heinous murders, Dahmer was also trying to discover his sexuality. In the series, Dahmer is seen struggling to find women attractive and fighting his feelings toward men and other tendencies. In the 4th episode, Dahmer tries to convey these feelings to his father, but his father completely changes the subject and does not want to speak of it. It is visible that Jeff feels different from others and just wants someone to listen to him.
Jeffery Dahmer’s sexuality was not only overlooked by his father, but also the police investigating him. In the 2nd episode, Dahmer brings a young boy into his apartment and drugs him. The boy escapes and makes it to the front of the apartment complex, and Dahmer’s next-door neighbor calls the cops because she is worried that the boy is underage and injured. Dahmer’s apartment gets searched, but the cops do not want to “catch anything” so they did a poor job searching and left. Dahmer claimed that the boy was his boyfriend and the police decided not to investigate any more in fear of finding “gay sex toys”. Once the police left, Dahmer murdered the young boy. The series did air a real, recorded conversation between the Glenda Cleveland and police the night police searched Jeffery Dahmer’s apartment.
This audio recording between Glenda Cleveland and police highlight the fact that police ignored Glenda Cleveland’s cries for help and wanted nothing to do with Dahmer because of his sexual preferences.
The blatant evidence of racism and homophobia broadcasted in the Dahmer Netflix series played a role in Jeffery Dahmer’s success as a serial killer. If his father had listened to Dahmer’s call for help or if the police had listened to the cries of those around him, especially the black woman living next door, then maybe Dahmer’s string of murders would have not been as large. The Netflix series has gotten a considerable amount of backlash from viewers and crime reporters for its historical accuracy. Multiple articles have been written about how producers dramatized the instances of racism and homophobia in the series. Although this might be true, there is still hard evidence that racism and homophobia affected Jeffrey Dahmer’s ability to get away with murder for so many years.