- [Narrator] Jeffrey Dahmer's crimes seem like a nightmare
but that doesn't mean he wasn't all too real.
Who was he?
Why did he do any of it?
How did he not get caught?
We're going to answer all the questions you're sure to have
about the real monster after watching "Dahmer".
The details of his heinous crimes are extremely disturbing.
Please watch with caution.
Is "Monster" based on a real person?
Yes, Jeffrey Dahmer was a rapist and serial killer
who haunted Milwaukee in the late 1980s and early 1990s.
Prior to his arrest in confession in 1991,
he killed and mutilated 17 men.
The murders caused a nationwide media frenzy.
When was Dahmer's first kill?
Dahmer was surprisingly young when he first killed, just 18.
That's much younger than your average serial killer
at 27 and a half.
However, there was an unusually long gap
between his first and second murders
with the latter taking place when Dahmer was in fact, 27.
Did Dahmer wear yellow contacts and if so, why?
We know that Dahmer had a fascination with certain movies
and movie characters.
"Exorcist III" was one of his favorites
but he bought yellow contacts to more closely resemble
Emperor Palpatine from "Return of the Jedi".
He later said that he related to a character of pure evil.
Just how bad was the smell in Dahmer's apartment?
The odor in the show was very real and very bad.
It permeated the Oxford Apartment's building,
always pointing back to apartment 213.
Pamela Bass stuffed towels beneath her door to block it
but it caused one tenant to just up and leave the building
after a month.
When neighbors chatted Dahmer,
he deflected or once even bought Pine-Sol
as if that would help.
The sounds were nightmarish too.
Buzz saws, thumps and crying.
Did Dahmer have a vat of acid in his house?
Yes, Dahmer had an industrial grade 57 gallon barrel
full of acid in his bedroom.
When the police finally raided his apartment in 1991,
they found multiple headless torsos in it.
So now you understand the smell.
According to a psychiatrist that spoke with him,
Dahmer would wait until the bodies turned to slush
and then flush that down the toilet.
Did Dahmer target black and brown people more frequently?
He certainly seemed to especially after moving
to a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Out of his 17 confirmed victims, just three were white
and two of those didn't really fit his MO.
11 were African American so you can understand
why the Black community in Milwaukee was upset,
especially when it seemed for a while that Dahmer
would be tried by an all white jury.
How badly did law enforcement mess up the Dahmer case?
There are a few ways that law enforcement
broke its own rules regarding Jeffrey Dahmer.
The first is the infamous mishandling
of the 14 year old Laotian boy, Konerak Sinthasomphone
who briefly escaped from Dahmer's apartment.
A committee found that when the two officers returned
the boy to Dahmer's clutches, despite neighbors pleas,
they violated 16 police rules
including failing to check Dahmer records
which would've shown his prior sexual assault arrest.
Adding insult to grave injury,
the officers apparently made jokes over police radio
after the incident.
The second involves Dahmer's parole officer.
Contrary to normal practice,
she failed to visit Dahmer's apartment
either because of a heavy caseload
or she didn't want to visit a high crime neighborhood.
Either way though, Dahmer was allowed to use
his killing den unimpeded.
Did Infinity Land exist and what were the rules?
We know about Infinity Land through a childhood friend
of Dahmer's who played it with him.
It's a grim game that's even more shocking when you realize
that it was designed by a nine year old Jeffrey.
Players manipulated an army of stick men
but if they got too close to each other,
they were annihilated.
Closeness was deadly.
A spiral was placed over fallen figures
representing a black hole, oblivion.
Did Dahmer really serve his neighbor a tainted sandwich?
We don't know for sure but we do know that Dahmer served
a sandwich to his neighbor Pamela Bass
on at least one occasion.
Unlike the show's depiction,
the relationship between Dahmer and Bass
was a little less antagonistic.
She even bought a couch off of him
so she actually ate the sandwich he offered.
Understandably, she still wonders about its contents
to this day.
What did Dahmer's parents do?
All things considered, they were fairly normal.
Lionel Dahmer was a chemist at a giant paint
and coating supplier which probably and unfortunately
caused his son's later fascination with
and use of caustic chemicals.
It's fair to say that Joyce Flint Dahmer struggled
as a housewife during Dahmer's childhood.
But by most accounts, she thrived in her second act
as a case manager for AIDS patients in California.
Both parents were apparently devastated
by their son's crimes.
What did Lionel really find in Grandma Dahmer's basement?
In the show, Lionel finds a kind of chemical sludge
which seems damning enough but what's really interesting
is that Lionel's second wife Shari suggested
that he found more in media accounts after Dahmer's arrest.
In 1991, she told a newspaper that Lionel didn't know
if what he found were human bones or animal bones
but sounds like they were bones.
Why did Dahmer get discharged from the army?
We don't know why exactly
but we know he was honorably discharged in 1981
before his enlistment was up.
Dahmer himself said that it was under chapter nine
of the Code of Military Justice
which governs alcohol and drug use.
But two soldiers including his bunkmate have since given
horrific accounts that a drunken violent Dahmer bullied,
drugged and raped them while in the service.
Who was Anthony Hughes?
Was he really deaf?
Tony Hughes was a 31 year old African American man,
Dahmer's 13th victim.
He was indeed deaf and mute.
There are reports that Hughes knew Dahmer for a few years
but he came home with Dahmer after meeting him
at a Milwaukee gay club one night.
His mom later recalled that he was friendly and energetic.
Even after all Dahmer took for them,
the Hughes family notably offered sympathy
to Dahmer's parents after Dahmer's death.
How many Polaroids did Dahmer have and why?
74, the photos depicted bodies
in various stages of dismemberment.
They were like gas leak keepsakes.
According to reports,
even veteran cops were unable to look at them.
What did dumber want to do with all these gruesome trophies?
Dahmer planned to build a shrine or temple to Satan
with his skulls and skeletons.
This is actually his drawing but he also used body parts
for sexual gratification.
Did Dahmer's victim really escape
and go to the cops like that?
Tracy Edwards is definitely real but he isn't alone.
At least five potential Dahmer victims escaped
and later told friends but Tracy was different.
When Dahmer handcuffed and threatened him
and then flaunted his collection of mutilated bodies,
Tracy used his knowledge of karate to free himself
and tell the police.
In articles around the time,
he modestly refused to be called a hero but Dahmer himself
later said he would never have been caught without Tracy.
Did the judge really give Dahmer such a lenient sentence?
Unbelievably, yes.
A state judge who presided over Dahmer's 1989
sexual assault case could have given him
two consecutive sentences of 10 years
instead apparently moved by Dahmer's pleas for mercy,
he gave him a year in prison with work release
plus probation and counseling
for sexually assaulting a teenage boy.
It likely contributed to the loss of 12 lives.
Was there a side of Dahmer we didn't see?
Dahmer could be sly and manipulative when he wanted to be.
There's an unbelievable story
about how he went to DC on a high school trip
and somehow talked his way into a private tour
of Vice President Walter Mondale's office
while the VP was there.
And on the other side, we see a lot of his violent outbursts
in the show but he could also be relatively cautious.
He typically didn't target men who had cars for instance,
fearing that the cars could be traced.
Did Dahmer kill anyone else?
Dahmer confessed at length to detectives but serial killers
are known to give partial confessions
leading some to believe that Dahmer may have killed more.
On the very plausible side, there's Dean Vaughn,
the real neighbor from episode seven who was found raped
and strangled one floor above Dahmer
but for whatever reason, cops never linked it to Dahmer.
Perhaps more of a stretch is Adam Walsh,
the infamously murdered son
of "America's Most Wanted" host John Walsh.
Not only was Dahmer mere miles away
at the time of Walsh's disappearance but two witnesses claim
they saw a thin blonde disheveled man
who they later ID'd as Dahmer in the toy store
Walsh vanished from.
What happened to the locations at which Dahmer killed?
Dahmer killed at four locations,
three in the Milwaukee area.
His childhood home in Bath Ohio where he killed hitchhiker
Steven Hicks still exists.
In 2014, the three bedroom was put on the market
for about $300,000.
The Ambassador Hotel in Milwaukee where Dahmer blacked out
and killed Steven Tuomi is apparently much nicer than it was
in the CD early 90s.
Rooms start now at $105 a night.
Site of three killings,
Dahmer's grandmother's two story house also still exists
on a quiet suburban street outside Milwaukee.
There's no sales data we could find.
Then there were the Oxford Apartments.
Dahmer committed so many crimes there that the Red Cross
took the unusual step of designating its occupants
as disaster victims.
The building was torn down in the fall of 1992
although that wasn't without controversy
for many of the poorer residents.
Park or memorial was planned but it never came to pass
so now it's just a barren lot.
What happened to the man who killed Dahmer?
Christopher Scarver pleaded no contest to the killing
of Jeffrey Dahmer and one other inmate
and was sentenced to two consecutive life sentences
on top of his first life sentence for burglary homicide.
But initially, Scarver pleaded innocent
by reason of insanity.
He said Voices of a family drove him to commit
all of his murders.
Although he later admitted that Dahmer's alleged grotesque
humor in the cafeteria influenced his decision.
Those are just some of the most searched questions
about Dahmer but will probably never be able to answer
everything about this incomprehensible monster.
(soft upbeat music)