A friend of mine recently told me the story of a strange encounter he once had. It was in April 1991, at Wauwatosa’s Hart Park Bock Beer Fest where he was working as a bartender. He served Jeffrey Dahmer a beer and in the course of their interaction a conversation ensued. At one point Dahmer said, “I’m going to be famous one day.” My friend naturally inquired why, to which he answered, “I’m a serial killer” and then asked my friend to turn him in. Just silly banter, my friend would think. With his arrest a few months later on July 22, Dahmer did become (in)famous.
It was almost inevitable if you were out and about during those years of Dahmer’s killing spree that you would have known him or one of his victims, or at least noticed him at his favorite haunt, Club 219. Among my acquaintances there’s one individual who even befriended Dahmer as a co-worker at Ambrosia Chocolate.
Meanwhile, with the 30th anniversary of his 1991 capture in the offing as unsavory as the subject may be to most Milwaukeeans, gay or otherwise, the Jeffrey Dahmer story is about to be revisited. Cable is already rerunning a 2019 docu-drama, “Jeffrey Dahmer, Killer Cannibal.” A New York filmmaker is making enquiries in the community about her Dahmer project. Netflix, meanwhile, just announced a 10-episode mini-series entitled “Monster—The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” with Evan Peters in the title role. The Netflix series is set to begin production soon, with release scheduled for 2022. From the sound of it, “Monster” approaches the subject like any other sensationalized crime show but, according to reports, will suggest Dahmer’s ability to continue his killings was due in part to the nature of white privilege and the indifference of the justice system towards victims of color.
Race Was a Factor
That angle of race as motive for Dahmer’s murders and of his enduring impunity from consequences for them for over a decade is the subject of Josef Benson’s new book The Sniper: A Cultural Reading of Jeffrey Dahmer. Benson is an Associate Professor of English at UW-Parkside whose academic work focuses on gender studies and issues of race and culture in literature. In a recent conversation with the author, I asked him about his book’s thesis. His response mentioned Milwaukee’s history of segregation, white male fetishization and brutalization of Black bodies and the Milwaukee Police Department’s adversarial relationship with the city’s marginalized communities. Essentially, Benson shifts focus from Dahmer to the greater endemic social aspects that allowed the killings to happen. Back in 1991 when Dahmer was asked how he chose his victims, he denied there was any racial motivation. Three decades later, Benson’s perspective may reveal yet another facet of the depths of our nation’s deeply rooted racist instincts. The book is slated for release in May.
Interestingly, in 2018, while conducting research for his book, the author broached the subject on a social media page dedicated to Wisconsin’s gay history. He mentioned his investigations, especially into the racial aspects of the Dahmer case. The response he received was a virtual shout down. To my surprise, one respondent, whom I know well as a local activist, simply refused to entertain the notion of Dahmer as a part of the city’s LGBTQ history. The one-note chorus of disapproval ended with the page administrator’s simply deleting the entire discussion.
Like it or not, the unfortunate reality is that Dahmer is not only a part Milwaukee’s LGBTQ history but of the city’s itself. Each year, however, as we inevitably revisit that chapter, distasteful as it is, we learn more about ourselves.
