By Emily Gianni
Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is so good and I learned so much about Jeffery Dahmer and his victims. If you have not watched this show, stop reading this and go watch it: I will give spoilers. First, the way it was filmed was amazing. There were gruesome parts of the show, but no parts became so explicit that you could not continue watching it. Only one part really stood out to me and gave me nightmares, which is when Dahmer opened a bag of blood and drank it, pouring it down his face and body. There were no other parts where he clearly ate people’s body parts, but I cannot get this image of Dahmer drinking someone’s blood out of my head.
When watching this series, I learned so much more about the victims and who Dahmer targeted. For one, I did not know that Dahmer only targeted and killed men, most of which were black men. He killed seventeen men, from the ages of fourteen to thirty two years old. When Dahmer first started to kill, he was only eighteen years old. I was so shocked because Dahmer got baptised to try to be forgiven for his sins on the same day that John Wayne Gacy was executed for murder. This was so ironic and disgusting and I could not get beyond this fact. He was finally killed in prison at thirty four years old.
I was so angry with how the police force handled Glenda Cleveland’s calls and nerves about what Dahmer was doing. Cleveland was not taken seriously because she was a black woman. When the fourteen year old boy was drugged up and Cleveland called the police to investigate, they did not look further into the situation. They trusted Dahmer when he said the boy was his boyfriend who was just really drunk. Cleveland knew something was wrong with Dahmer, as he brought men over to his appartment and she never saw or heard from them again.
Cleveland also smelt the dead bodies from Dahmer’s apartment. Cleveland continuously called the police and told them that something was wrong, but yet again, they did not further investigate. When Cleveland scheduled a meeting, it took her seven times to reschedule the meeting to figure out what was to happen with the park memorial where her old apartment building was. Cleveland was not taken seriously because she was a black woman. When the two cops let the fourteen year old boy go back to Dahmer, I could not believe this. The story got worse when the cops were reinstated back to the force after their short leave of absence, and they even made horrible calls to one of the victim’s parents because they were immigrants and their English was not up to their standards. This part of the TV show really disgusted me and showed me all that is wrong with humankind, especially those in higher power.
I feel like this TV show could have incorporated Dahmer’s victims and their families more. I think out of ten episodes, there should have been more than two episodes that talked about what the families got in return or how the government handled the families. The families lost their children because of Dahmer, and he proceeded to get fame through articles, cartoons and fan mail. He was a canablist, rapist and pedophile, and did not deserve the fame that was given to him. People heard about what he was doing and some began to idolize him or make him out to be a superhero.
It also irritates me that the lot of the Oxford Apartments was not turned into a memorial for the victims. During the show, it was claimed that many people did not want anything on the lot, instead, they just wanted to forget about what happened. This is not even remotely fair to say because seventeen people lost their lives because of this disgusting man. It is important to hear what happened to the victims, not just to see what happened to them through Dahmer’s experience. It is more beneficial to hear from the families, or the survivors of Dahmer. Their stories deserve to be told and those who lost their lives deserve to have a memorial because their names deserve to be heard: Steven Hicks (18), Steven Tuomi (24), James Doxtator (14), Richard Guerrero (22), Anthony Sears (24), Raymond Smith (32), Edward Smith (27), Ernest Miller (23), David Thomas (22), Curtis Straughter (17), Errol Lindsey (19), Tony Hughes (31), Konerak Sinthasomphone (14), Matt Turner (20), Jeremiah Weiberger (23), Oliver Lacy (24), and Joseph Bradehoft (25).