On Sept. 21, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a crime drama that people have been looking forward to, will finally be available on Netflix. It tells the horrifying true story of Jeffrey Dahmer, one of America’s most famous serial killers, and the horrible murders he did from 1978 to 1991.
After killing people for more than a decade, Dahmer was finally caught and put in jail in 1991. He was given 16 sentences of life in prison, but a fellow prisoner beat him to death. What about Dahmer’s family, you ask? Where is David Dahmer, his brother? Is he alive now? In 2022, we talked about where Dahmer’s family is now.
Jeffrey Dahmer’s childhood was not always easy. His parents always had problems with each other, which made Dahmer feel ignored and alone. Lionel Dahmer, his father, spent a lot of time away from home, and Joyce Dahmer, his mother, was often sad. Even a teacher from Dahmer’s elementary school noticed that he had changed. He began to act like he was being left behind. Then, in 1966, Joyce gave birth to David Dahmer, who was Jeffrey’s younger brother. He even got to name him, but things got worse between them when Dahmer saw that his parents loved and paid more attention to his brother.
When Dahmer’s parents split up, he chose to live with his father while his mother and younger brother went to live with relatives in Wisconsin. Not long after that, Dahmer killed his first person in a brutal way.
After Dahmer was found guilty of killing and mutilating 17 boys and young men, his family’s lives were changed forever. They were constantly bothered, and some of their family members moved away to try to forget the past. So, where are Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents and siblings now?
How did Jeffrey Dahmer’s father die?
While Jeffrey Dahmer was in jail, Lionel Dahmer and his new wife Shari went to see him often. They did this until 1994, when Jeffrey Dahmer died. Lionel even wrote a book called A Father’s Story, in which he tells his version of Jeffrey’s life and what it was like to be the father of a famous serial killer. It’s not clear if Lionel Dahmer will still be alive in 2022, but research suggests that he will.
In a 1994 interview with People, Lionel said that Jeffrey’s grandmother was afraid to leave her home because she was constantly bothered by reporters who sat outside her house. Because of Jeffrey’s terrible crimes, his grandmother pretty much lived the rest of her life in fear until she died in 1992.
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How did Joyce Flint get hurt?
The Los Angeles Times said that Joyce moved to Fresno, California, just before police caught Jeffrey Dahmer. There, she ran a home for older people before joining the Central Valley AIDS Team as a case manager. She helped people with HIV and AIDS until she died in 2000. In an interview with Hard Copy, Joyce said that she talked to Jeffrey every Sunday night while he was in jail. Joyce also said that she had gone to see Jeffrey in prison once.
What was David Dahmer’s fate?
David Dahmer changed his name and took on a new identity after he graduated from the University of Cincinnati. He hasn’t been seen or heard from since. David has never talked about his older brother in an interview, and he has cut all ties with him and his horrible crimes. David may or may not still be alive in 2022.
When Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story comes out on Netflix on Sept. 21, be sure to check it out.
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Early years
Dahmer was born in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, on May 21, 1960. He was the first of his parents’ two sons. His mother, Joyce Annette (née Flint), was a teletype machine instructor, and his father, Lionel Herbert Dahmer, was a chemistry student at Marquette University and later a research chemist.
Lionel Dahmer’s family was from Germany and Wales, and Joyce Dahmer’s family was from Norway and Ireland.
Some sources say that Dahmer wasn’t cared for when he was a baby. Other sources, though, say that both of Dahmer’s parents spoiled him as a baby and toddler, even though his mother was known to be tense, eager for attention and pity, and argumentative with her husband and the people who lived near them.
As Dahmer started first grade, Lionel spent most of his time at university. When he was home, his hypochondriac and depressed wife constantly asked for his attention and spent more and more time in bed. On at least one occasion, she used Equanil to try to kill herself. So, neither parent spent much time with their son. He later said that from a young age, he felt “unsure of the stability of the family” because he remembered his parents being very angry with each other and fighting a lot when he was young.
Dahmer was a “active and happy child,” but he changed a lot after he had surgery for two hernias just before his fourth birthday. In elementary school, Dahmer was known for being shy and quiet. One of his teachers later said that he showed early signs of abandonment because of his mother’s illnesses, which got worse when she got pregnant with her second child. Still, Dahmer did have a few friends when he was in grade school.
The family moved to Doylestown, Ohio, in October 1966. When Joyce had a baby in December, Jeffrey got to pick the name for his new brother. He chose David. Lionel got his degree and began working as an analytical chemist in nearby Akron, Ohio, the same year.
Dahmer was interested in dead animals when he was young. He may have become interested in dead animals when he was four years old and saw his father take animal bones out from under the family home. Lionel said that Dahmer was “oddly thrilled” by the sound the bones made and became obsessed with them. He called them his “fiddlesticks” at first. He sometimes looked under and around the family home for more bones. He also looked inside the bodies of living animals to find out where their bones were.
In 1968, the family moved to Ohio’s Summit County, in the township of Bath. This was their third home in two years, and their sixth home since they got married. The house was on an acre and a half of woods, and Dahmer started collecting big bugs like dragonflies and moths and the bones of small animals like chipmunks and squirrels in a small hut just a short walk from the house. Some of these bones were stored inside the hut in jars of formaldehyde.
Two years later, while having chicken for dinner with Lionel, Dahmer asked him what would happen if he put chicken bones in bleach. Lionel was happy that his son seemed interested in science, so he showed him how to safely bleach and store animal bones. Dahmer used these techniques to preserve the bones he was collecting. He also started collecting dead animals, including roadkill, which he would dissect and bury near the hut. Sometimes, he would put the skulls on top of makeshift crosses. One of Dahmer’s friends said that Dahmer told him he was interested in how animals “fit together.” In 1975, Dahmer cut off the head of a dead dog, nailed its body to a tree, and stuck the dog’s head on a stick in the woods behind his house. Later, he invited a friend to see the display and said he had found the bones by accident as a “prank.”
Lionel taught his son how to preserve animal bones the same year Joyce started taking more Equanil, laxatives, and sleeping pills every day. This made it even harder for her to talk to her husband and kids.
The teen years and high school
From the time he was a freshman at Revere High School, Dahmer was thought of as a weirdo. By the time he was 14, he was drinking beer and hard liquor during the day. He would often hide his alcohol in the jacket he wore to school. He told a classmate who asked why he was drinking Scotch in a morning history class that the alcohol he was drinking was “my medicine.” Staff thought Dahmer was polite, very smart, and had average grades in his freshman year, even though he didn’t talk much. He liked to play tennis and was in the high school band for a short time.
Dahmer found out he was gay when he turned 13, but he didn’t tell his parents. At the start of his teens, he had a short relationship with another teen boy, but they never met. Dahmer later said that he started fantasizing about dominating and controlling a completely submissive male partner when he was in his early to mid-teens. His masturbation fantasies gradually changed so that he focused on the chests and torsos of the men in his fantasies. Over time, these fantasies got mixed up with dissection. When Dahmer was about 16 years old, he had a fantasy that he would knock out a certain male jogger he found attractive and then use his body sexually. Dahmer once hid in bushes with a baseball bat to wait for this man, but he didn’t come by that day. Later, Dahmer said that this was the first time he tried to hurt someone.
Even though his classmates at RHS thought of him as a loner and an oddball, Dahmer became something of a class clown who often pulled pranks, which became known as “Doing a Dahmer.” These pranks included bleating and pretending to have epileptic seizures or cerebral palsy at school and in local stores.
By 1977, Dahmer’s grades were getting worse, so his parents hired a private tutor, but it didn’t help him much. In the same year, his parents tried to save their marriage by going to counseling. They kept fighting all the time. In September 1977, Lionel found out that Joyce had a short affair. He and Joyce decided to get a divorce and told their sons that they wanted to do it in a friendly way. In the beginning of 1978, Lionel moved out of the house and stayed for a while in a motel on North Cleveland Massillon Road.
Dahmer got out of high school in May 1978. A few weeks before he graduated, one of Dahmer’s teachers saw him drinking several cans of beer while sitting near the school parking lot. When the teacher threatened to tell the principal, Dahmer told him he was having “a lot of problems” at home and that the school’s guidance counselor knew about them. In the spring of that year, Joyce and David left the family home and moved to Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin, to live with relatives. Dahmer had just turned 18 and was still living at home with his family. On July 24, 1978, Dahmer’s parents finally split up. Joyce got to keep her younger son and will get alimony payments.