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In this article:
- Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now the second-most-viewed show ever on the platform after its third week of incredible popularity.
- Part of the show’s success is owed to the great writing and outstanding performances by Evan Peters and his supporting cast. However, the true story of Jeffrey Dahmer’s life is outlandish enough that it really doesn’t require much fluff.
- This article will go through some of the moments in the Dahmer series that were unbelievably accurate.
In its third week on the platform, Ryan Murphy’s Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story series continued to top Netflix’s global Top 10 English TV list, racking up 205.33 million hours viewed in that week alone. That brings its total viewership to 701.37 million hours since its release, making it the second-most-viewed Netflix series of all time (right behind the fourth season of Stranger Things released earlier this year). Is it a good thing that this generation has a profound fascination with the Milwaukee Cannibal? I’ll let you decide for yourself. But, there’s no denying that this series is supremely captivating.
Evan Peters, who stars in the series as Dahmer himself, has claimed that playing this role was one of the hardest things he’d ever had to do. The result, however, was one of the most believable and chilling performances that I’ve ever seen on a television screen. Peters’s portrayal of Jeffrey Dahmer, from those nauseating little grins to the bursts of anger akin to demonic transformation, will almost certainly earn him an award or two. And the series as a whole did a great job of being sensitive toward the families of the victims and not glorifying this horrific serial killer while still making for a gripping viewing experience.
However, while the production and performances in this series certainly contributed to its success, the outlandish and true story of Jeffrey Dahmer and his murdering spree needs no embellishment. In fact, the Dahmer series is incredibly accurate in most aspects. While there were some aspects of the show that were fictional, you wouldn’t believe how much of this series is an accurate representation of true events.
Here are some of the details from Dahmer: Monster – The Jeffrey Dahmer Story that are unbelievably true.
Jeffrey Dahmer Was Actually Pulled Over With Human Remains in His Car
The third episode in this series depicts Dahmer’s murder of 18-year-old Steven Hicks. Dahmer invites Hicks over to his house with the promise that he’ll drive him to a concert where his friends were waiting for him. Unfortunately, Hicks became Dahmer’s first-ever murder victim and never made it to that concert. In the series, Dahmer is pulled over for swerving and interrogated by a traffic cop with Hicks’s remains in the back of his car.
According to a testimony that Dahmer gave to The New York Times, the story that he was pulled over with human remains in his car was entirely true. Dahmer was intoxicated and was pulled over by Milwaukee police around 3 a.m. for swerving. However, the police officer did not notice the trash bags containing Steven Hicks’s body in the back of the car and let Dahmer go.
Jeffrey Dahmer Actually Poured Motor Oil Into a Jar of Tadpoles
The second episode of the series depicted an incident in which a young Jeffrey Dahmer gave a jar of tadpoles to his teacher. However, once the teacher gives the tadpoles away to another student, Dahmer grows angry and enters that student’s home to steal the tadpoles back. Dahmer then proceeds to pour motor oil into the jar in order to poison the tadpoles.
According to A Father’s Story, the book written by Jeffrey Dahmer’s father, Jeffrey actually did gift his teacher a jar of tadpoles, which were then given to another student. Dahmer’s father claimed that he followed the other student to his home, found the tadpoles in the garage, and then poured motor oil into the jar. He then left the dead tadpoles there for the other student to discover, which is even more sinister than the events portrayed in the series.
Jeffrey Dahmer Told Tracy Edwards That He Was Going to Eat His Heart
The very first episode of Dahmer: Monster is a precursor for all of the terror that is to come in the rest of the series. This episode depicts an incident in which Dahmer lures a man named Tracy Edwards into his home. He then forces Edwards to lie on his bed while he listens to his heartbeat. He then tells Edwards that he wants to eat his heartbeat because he plans to eat it later.
According to testimony from Tracy Edwards himself, Dahmer held him at knifepoint and listened to his heartbeat. In Edwards’s own words, “At that point, he told me he was going to eat my heart.” Luckily, Edwards was able to escape Dahmer’s Milwaukee apartment and flag down a police car on the street. Edwards told the police that Dahmer had tried to kill him, which eventually led to the arrest of this prolific serial killer.
Jeffrey Dahmer Actually Showed the Exorcist III Movie to His Victims
Another detail from the first episode of the series is that, before violently attacking Tracy Edwards, he tells him to sit down in his room and watch a film. That film is The Exorcist III, which details the reign of terror of The Gemini Killer, a psychopathic murderer who likes to keep the body parts of his victims.
The real Tracy Edwards recalled Dahmer actually putting on The Exorcist III before trying to kill him. And, during an interview with Inside Edition, Dahmer himself confirmed that he would force his victims to watch the film, saying “I felt so hopelessly evil and perverted that I actually derived a sort of pleasure from watching that tape.” Obviously, Dahmer seemed to have been inspired by the film as his crimes were strikingly similar to those committed by the film’s fictional villain.
Glenda Cleveland Did Repeatedly Call Milwaukee Police About Her Suspicions
Jeffrey Dahmer’s youngest victim was a 14-year-old Laotian boy named Konerak Sinthasomphone who managed to escape Dahmer’s apartment before being spotted stumbling and intoxicated in the street by Dahmer’s neighbor Glenda Cleveland, who reported the boy to the police. The two police officers eventually ended up returning the boy to Dahmer, who then proceeded to brutally murder him.
After the incident, the real-life Glenda Cleveland routinely called the Milwaukie police to check on the boy’s well-being, especially after she saw a newspaper article about the boy’s disappearance. Although Glenda Cleveland did not live in the apartment next to Dahmer’s as the show depicted (she lived in the next building over), she routinely called the police about the incident for months. She even contacted the FBI, who replied by saying they had no jurisdiction. Dahmer wasn’t arrested until 7 weeks after Sinthasomphone was murdered.
