Serving up a Month of Jeffrey Dahmer [Murder Made Fiction Podcast]

First Month Take-Aways

It’s been a busy and also heavy first month on Murder Made Fiction podcast for Jenn and I. We’ve spent September looking at a variety of texts that explore Jeffrey Dahmer as a teenager, as a man, as a sexual predator, as a bogeyman, and as an example of social injustice, particularly in the treatment of Black and queer marginalized communities.

We started the month with a mini-primer on Dahmer‘s backstory and his killing spree, which resulted in the deaths of 17 men. It’s a gruesome story, filled with sexual assaults, murder, and cannibalism (so, you know, content warning).

Then we dove into multiple films and television shows, including:

• My Friend Dahmer (2017): Marc Meyers‘ adaptation of Derf Backderf’s comic memoir, which is a mostly bloodless affair and features a great starring turn by former Disney star (now rocker) Ross Lynch (listen here).
• Dahmer (2002): Jeremy Renner had a run at playing the notorious gay killer in an early role that – again – learns more into tense drama than outright sensationalism. For more details, listen here.

• Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story: Over on Patreon, we unpacked the first season of Ryan Murphy‘s smash hit MONSTER episode by episode, which does a much more thorough job of exploring the fall-out of the crimes and telling victim-centric stories. Our favorite was episode six, “Silenced” which looked in-depth at the relationship between Dahmer (Evan Peters) and victim Tony Hughes (played by Rodney Burford).
• Finally, our last Patreon episode of the month tackled the Tubi documentary Fresh Meat: Killing Dahmer, which proved to be a low-budget affair that leaned into sensational elements and unusual talking heads to tell the story of Dahmer’s murder in prison.

Having now consumed all of these different interpretations, we’re ready to summarize what we’ve learned, how we feel about the various depictions and re-evaluate our relationship with true crime.

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Summary: Jeffrey Dahmer

After a month of discussing Jeffrey Dahmer, Jenn and Joe debrief what we learned about his crimes and his victims. We also compare the various fictionalized depictions of him from film and TV.

Plus: where we’re going in our second month!

That’s it for Jeffrey Dahmer. We’ll be back next week with a brand new primer on a brand new killer: Ed Gein!

If you want more Murder Made Fiction, please support the show on Patreon. Subscribe today to get 8 hours of content, including a full-length primer on Dahmer, the Tubi doc Fresh Meat, and individual coverage of all 10 episodes of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.