What was left out of Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer dramatisation

Netflix’s Jeffrey Dahmer miniseries is already pretty gruesome and horrific. But there were things the series didn’t show you.

Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is streaming now on Netflix.

The number one show on Netflix in Australia, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is stirring the true crime obsessive in many viewers.

The story of the notorious American serial killer who killed 17 boys and men is a chilling, stomach-churning watch.

The compulsive, if not exploitative, series explores the many depraved aspects of Dahmer’s crimes, from his necrophilia, cannibalisation and mutilation of his victims, and a system that enabled him getting away with it for many years.

The Ryan Murphy co-created series starring Evan Peters as Dahmer depicts in grisly detail many of the serial killer’s most sadistic behaviours, but as with any dramatisation, it takes some creative liberties – and has left some things out.

So here’s what the show isn’t quite telling you.

Glenda Cleveland didn’t live next door

Niecy Nash as Glenda Cleveland in the series.

The crusading Glenda Cleveland, portrayed in the series by Niecy Nash, is seen in Murphy’s series as a dogged citizen trying to get cops to pay attention to Dahmer’s behaviour, having heard all manner of horrors through the connected vents between their apartments.

In reality, Cleveland didn’t live next to Dahmer in the same building but in a building down the road.

According to Indiewire, the character of Cleveland in the series is a composite of the real-life counterpart and Dahmer’s actual next door neighbour, Pamela Bass. Bass told a 2012 documentary, The Jeffrey Dahmer Files, that she heard screams in the night, as well as the sounds of bones breaking. And she could smell rotting flesh.

Cleveland did witness the 1991 incident in which 14-year-old Dahmer victim Konerak Sinthasomphone was sent back to the serial killer’s apartment by police after trying to escape.

Those idiot cops

Jeffrey Dahmer killed 17 boys and men.

Speaking of the cops who sent a teenage kidnapping and torture victim back to his captor to be killed, Dahmer – Monster said the two officers were later awarded “officer of the year” accolades.

This didn’t happen. They were actually suspended after the Sinthasomphone incident but were later reinstated to the force in 1994. What champs.

The details around what Dahmer did to his young victim – drilling holes in his skull and pouring into it hydrochloric acid in an attempt to create a sex zombie – that all happened.

Tony Hughes

Evan Peters as the dramatised Dahmer in the Netflix series.

Dahmer – Monster spends most of episode six delving into the relationship between the murderer and Tony Hughes, a 31-year-old deaf man he met at a Milwaukee gay bar in 1991.

In the show, after their first night together, Dahmer bludgeons him to death with a hammer and interferes with his corpse.

In real life, a friend of Hughes says Dahmer had been in Hughes’ life as early as 1989, two years before his disappearance. Dahmer claimed he had never met Hughes before the fatal night but Hughes’ friend said Dahmer had sought out the would-be victim several times in the years leading up to the killing.

His childhood

A young onscreen Dahmer in Ryan Murphy’s series.

According to ScreenRant, while the show touched on some details of his childhood injuries – such as his hernia – it left out more informative facts.

When he was a newborn, Dahmer’s legs were in casts for the first months and he wore lifts in his shoes until he was six. As a kid, he coped with the double whammy of his mother’s mental illness and his family’s nomadic life, moving three times in two years.

The series painted a picture of how Dahmer learnt taxidermy to preserve his victims but he also learnt how to bleach his victims’ bones to preserve them from his dad. His father was a chemist and he showed young Dahmer the technique with chicken bones, believing his son was showing an interest in science.

As a young teen, Dahmer showed traits that are often linked to sociopathic behaviour, including nailing a dog’s carcass to a tree at 13.

He also drank from 14 onwards and would hide bottles of alcohol in an army surplus jacket. He referred to it as his medicine.

What they found in his house

Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in a prison fight in 1994. Picture: Supplied

The series uses news footage of human remains being removed from Dahmer’s house but it didn’t go into detail exactly what they found.

An outside company was contracted for the gruesome work and some of the staff involved were barely adults.

Police found inside the builder an altar to honour himself. Upon the altar were two skeletons and seven of his victim’s skulls. He had a further four heads in the refrigerator when he was caught. He had originally intended for his altar to have 12 skulls in total.