Netflix’s “Conversations With a Killer:
The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes is a documentary series that is both fascinating and scary at the same time. That’s because it looks at every aspect of the serial killer’s horrible actions, both through his own taped story and through first-hand accounts from people who knew him well. Michael Ross is one of them. He used to know Jeffrey and was friends with a few of his victims. Now, if you want to find out more about him, you have the important facts.
What’s Michael Ross’s name?
In the late 1980s and early 1990s, when Michael was a young man living in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, he often went to gay bars to really be himself in a place where the community was important. That’s where he seems to have met Jeffrey for the first time, along with Anthony Sears, Anthony “Tony” Hughes, Edward Smith, and many others. Over time, though, Jeffrey began to target them. Michael still remembers that when the truth about Jeffrey came out, “several people in the bars said, ‘I remember him’… Well, we all did, of course. This is how big Milwaukee is.”
Michael says in the docuseries that the gay lifestyle in the Midwestern city at this time was “really on the rise,” but the truth is that they still had to deal with a lot of problems. “You could just be you. You had freedom, so you were comfortable,” he said, adding later, “We were all just becoming who we are; accepting ourselves.” A lot of those people had good hearts.” But because of the HIV/AIDS epidemic and other personal problems, some people just disappeared or left the city, so it was kind of normal for a few to never be seen again.
“When you walked into a bar, people would often say, ‘Child! Another one isn’t there.’ You’d say, ‘What? Who’s not here?'” Michael described. “Because Milwaukee is so small, especially the Black gays. So if you didn’t see someone for two to three weeks, you thought they had moved. But then, I would say about once a week, someone else would say, “So-and-so is gone.” Even his friend Earnest Miller disappeared at the beginning of September 1990, and he remembers very clearly the last time he saw one of his closest friends, Tony Hughes, in May 1991, when Hughes left Michael at the bar to dance with Jeffrey.
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What is Michael Ross doing now?
Michael could never have imagined that Jeffrey killed many of the missing people in his apartment in horrible ways, but it’s true, and it came to light in July 1991. Though he also thinks that law enforcement was at least partly to blame because “I was in the bars a lot,” he says. No one asked me who I knew.” He said, “No police officer or detective ever came up to me and asked me what I knew about this person or that person.” This didn’t last a few weeks or a few months; it went on for years. If the victims had been white and gay, there would have been a more thorough search.
“Every time I think about any of those men, it makes me sad,” Michael said honestly. “Because, like everyone else at the time, they were trying to figure out who they were. They didn’t expect to die.” As for Michael himself, as far as we can tell, he still lives near Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and stays out of the spotlight by living a quiet life. We don’t know much about his personal or professional life right now, which is too bad. All that matters is that the former prison official seems happy with who he is and where he is now.
Early years
Dahmer was born on May 21, 1960, in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. He was the first of his parents’ two sons. His mother, Joyce Annette (née Flint; February 7, 1936–November 27, 2000), taught people how to use teletype machines. His father, Lionel Herbert Dahmer (born July 29, 1936), studied chemistry at Marquette University and later worked as a research chemist. Lionel Dahmer’s ancestors were from Germany and Wales, and Joyce Dahmer’s were from Norway and Ireland.
Some sources say that Dahmer wasn’t cared for when he was a baby. Other sources, on the other hand, 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 their neighbors.
As Dahmer started first grade, Lionel spent most of his time at university. When he was home, his hypochondriac and depressed wife, who was always sick, demanded constant 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 seen as shy and quiet. One of his teachers later said that he showed early signs of abandonment due to his father’s absence and his mother’s illnesses, which got worse when she was expecting their second child. [20] Even so, Dahmer did have a few friends when he was in elementary 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 got a job 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 from a small hut near 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 he 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.
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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. [36] He often hid 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 his first attempt to attack someone and make them obey him.
Dahmer was kind of a class clown at RHS. He often pulled pranks, which became known as “Doing a Dahmer.” For example, he would bleat and act like he was having epileptic seizures or cerebral palsy at school and in stores. Dahmer sometimes did these things to get money so he could buy alcohol.
By 1977, Dahmer was getting worse grades. His parents paid for a private tutor, but it didn’t work out very well. 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.