Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story follows the crimes of the notorious serial killer, Jeffrey Dahmer. The story is told from the perspective of Dahmer’s victims and the people around him. The series is now streaming on Netflix.
Warning: This article contains heavy spoilers
Plot summary
Jeffrey Dahmer heads outside as his neighbour interrupts him and complains about the horrible smell emanating from his apartment. He blames it on meat gone bad because he forgot to turn his freezer on and promises to take care of it soon.
He goes to a club nearby that is frequently visited by homosexuals. He buys two of the patrons a drink and they remind him that he’s done that for them before. A third man named Tracy joins them and asks Jeffrey if he plans to do more than just buy drinks.
Tracy and Jeffrey hit it off and he tells those guys that he does art photography for a living and would like to take tasteful pictures of them in exchange for payment. Tracy goes back with him to his apartment but is troubled by what he sees.
The apartment is a mess and Jeffrey drugs Tracy and threatens him with a knife to obey his every word. Tracy feels the effect of the drugs and plays along but the first chance he gets, he manages to escape and flags down a police car.
He takes them back to Jeffrey’s place and the police find evidence of murder including polaroids of dead men. Jeffrey Dahmer is arrested and his father, Lionel is called into the station.
Jeffrey is cooperative with the police and shares everything about his killing with the detectives. He also talks about his childhood and when he first felt the compulsion or his sickness brewing.
He had a troubled childhood as his mother, Joyce was going through mental issues and turned to pills while his Lionel wasn’t always present. When he was at home, he would argue with his wife. Lionel finally found a way to bond with his son by teaching him how to dissect roadkill and examine the insides.
This hobby stuck with Jeffrey for the rest of his life as he cut up his victims and even ate some of their organs.
In his senior year of high school, his parents get a divorce and Jeffrey is abandoned by Joyce as Lionel goes to live with another woman. Jeffrey fends for himself and develops a drinking problem, even drinking beers in class.
He picks up a hitchhiker one day and takes him home to hang out but when the guy tries to leave, Jeffrey strikes him in the head and kills him. He melts off the skin from the body and crushes up the bones, scattering them all over his backyard.
When Lionel returns with his new wife, Shari, he notices that Jeffrey is going through a difficult time so he helps him get into college. When college doesn’t work out, Jeffrey is sent to the army but he is eventually discharged.
Lionel sends Jeffrey to live with his grandmother and begs him to get a decent job so that he can get his life in order. Jeffrey is coming to terms with his sexuality and is arrested at the state fair for exposing himself.
Jeffery visits bathhouses regularly to sleep with other men he meets at the club but he gets banned after drugging some men and leaving them in a sorry state. He takes a man to a hotel once but he accidentally drugs himself by mistake and ends up killing the man.
He goes on a stretch of months without killing anyone before starting up again. One time, his grandmother interrupts him and he has to let the man go. Another time, a boy manages to escape and Jeffrey is sent to prison for a year for molesting a minor.
When he gets out, Jeffrey gets the apartment he is eventually arrested in. His neighbour, Glenda Cleveland, always felt that he was a strange man and calls the police multiple times on suspicion that Jeffrey is doing something terrible.
Jeffrey is a quiet tenant initially but after killing a deaf man named Tony Hughes who he was in a relationship with, he goes on a spree of picking up men and bringing them back to his place to kill them.
When a 14-year-old boy stumbles out of his apartment with barely any clothes on, Glenda calls the police but Jeffrey convinces the officers that the boy is his 19-year-old lover and they let him go.
Lionel struggles to come to terms with the actions of his son and looks for different explanations or people to blame but he also blames himself for not being there or getting him the help that he required.
Glenda also has massive pressure on herself because she was the only one who contacted the police but she was ignored. Reverend Jesse Jackson tries to get her voice heard but it doesn’t have the impact they hope for.
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story ending explained in detail:
What happens to the victim’s families?
Jeffrey killed 17 men & boys during his lifetime and the families of all of those victims had to deal with the trauma for a very long time as well as the harassment from fanatics of Jeffrey Dahmer.
The families decide to sue the city for damages as well as Jeffrey Dahmer’s estate and they do secure some monetary compensation but it does nothing to fix the ordeal that they have gone through.
What is the police backlash to the case?
Two officers who don’t observe the clear signs of distress and return the 14-year-old boy back to Jeffrey’s care are suspended with pay but are eventually reinstated with a slap on the list.
With racial tensions high at the time, the officers band together to protect their own even though they are in the wrong in this situation and deserve significant blame for their part in it.
Some officers even anonymously call one of the victim’s fathers and harass him with hateful and racist messages.
What happens to the apartment where he lived?
The city buys the entire building where Jeffrey Dahmer lived and they put a plan in place to tear it down. They offer relocation expenses and other support to the tenants in the building including Glenda Cleveland.
When Glenda enquires what will come up in its place, she learns that they will build a park over there so Glenda suggests naming it in honour of Jeffrey’s victims.
However, the city would rather just forget about the unfortunate situation and they never build anything on that vacant lot and leave it empty.
How and when does Jeffrey die?
Jeffrey is sentenced to 15 consecutive life sentences in prison in 1992 and while he’s in there, he is sent a lot of fan mail along with petty cash for him to spend.
He doesn’t get along with the other inmates and is even shanked in the neck once but he survives. During his imprisonment, Dahmer finds religion and gets baptized to become a born-again Christian.
In 1994, Jeffrey is left unsupervised for a short period while he’s cleaning the men’s gym. There are two other inmates with him, Jesse Anderson and Christopher Scarver. Scarver kills both of them and claims that God sent him as a vessel to carry out justice on Jesse and Jeffrey for their crimes.
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