Opinion

Is the Dahmer series beneficial or detrimental to the victims' families?

By Haley Sheffield

Oct. 17, 2022

Recently Netflix released a crime fiction mini series called “Dahmer-Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story”, which was released on September 21, 2022. This short series was produced by Ryan Murphy, with Evan Peters playing Dahmer. According to Maglio from IndieWire, this production reached a huge sum of 196.2 million hours viewed in the first week of being released.

For the ones who aren’t aware on who Jeffery Dahmer is, he was an Amercian serial killer and sex offender, who commnitted murders of at least 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. In which his modus operandi was rape, dismemberment, necrophilia, and cannibalism. Tracy Edwards was the last person Dahmer tried to murder, who was able to escape his apartment. Culverhouse from GoodtoKnow says this led to Dahmer's arrest in 1991. In 1978, Dahmer committed his first murder. Dahmer picked up Steven Hicks who was a hitchhiker, then lured him back to his house, strangled and beat him with a barbell before he dismembered the body and disposed of the parts in trash bags. This is what began the grueling 13 years of killing without capture. Dahmer would often drug his victums with temazepam before engaging in sexual acts with them. He then would kill them by strangulation, taking Polaroid photos of the process in which he cut the body parts up, would soak them in acetone, store them in the fridge, and other disgusting things. Growing up he had a normal childhood but as he got older he became uncommunicative which led to an alcohol problem. He became obsessed with turning his victims into “zombies” so they would never be able to leave him, he “didn’t want to be alone anymore”. The neighbors could not stand the smell of the apartment anymore and tried to report it multiple times. One victim managed to escape after being lobotomized by Dahmer, he was returned by the police after being told they are in a relationship, says the Crime Museum.. Overall, there have been many victims of Jeffery Dahmer, each having their own story.

With the new release of Monster there has been talk about ethical controversy that comes along with the production. After watching this series, there was a really realistic feel of the heinous acts Dahmer made, as well as highlighting the victims' trauma. However, it questions the ethical choice made by the producers when capitalizing the victims' trauma for a tv series. Many of the victims' families have spoken out on the release of the series. Families stated that the creators of the show along with Netflix didn't let them know nor ask them for permission to use their stories. Rita Isball (sister of Errol Lindsey) who was murdered in 1991, says “I was never contacted about the show, I feel like the Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it. According to The New York Times, “They didn't ask me anything, They just did it.” Then, Eric Perry, who is a relative of Errol Lindsey says, “retraumatizing over and over again, and for what?” To me this is disrespectful because as we see in the series, these families went through an extremely hard time because of what Dahmer did. But the series highlights the acts of Dahmer rather than how the victims felt and how their families reacted to this.

In my opinion, contacting Dahmer's victims' families is the least Netflix could’ve done before releasing this series. The show focused on Dahmer’s actions and showed in depth details about most of his crimes. They shared details about his childhood and family/home situations, but gave little to no details about his victims. I believe that it is important to learn about people like Dahmer because it is a real issue, but not give them multiple tv shows, movies, books, podcasts, etc. Some individuals idolize Dahmer, which is disturbing enough. While Dahmer was imprisoned he was sent multiple letters asking for autographs, sending money, graphic pictures, etc. Overall, I think that the use of media is to educate people, as well as sharing light on victims and survivors, not just the perpetrator.

This article was written by Haley Sheffield, a journalism student at Waynesboro High School.