Ryan Murphy and Joe Berlinger are two sides of the same Netflix coin, creating fiction and non-fiction cottage industries (respectively) from infamous true-crime stories. It is therefore fitting that both simultaneously turned their attention to the most notorious serial killers of the late ’80s and early ’90s, Jeffrey Dahmer – Murphy with his Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Berlinger with his new Conversations with a Killer: The Tapes of Jeffrey Dahmer. The third installment in his Conversations documentary series (after 2019’s Ted Bundy and 2022’s John Wayne Gacy), which includes audio interviews with the lunatics themselves, Berlinger’s latest installment (October 7) is, like its predecessors, a light for headline-worthy revelations. But thankfully it’s also a cut above Murphy’s dramatized version, which explores the devil’s reign of terror comprehensively and clearly.
What sets Dahmer apart from so many other serial killers is quite simply the depth of his depravity. When defense attorney Wendy Patrickus says that when she first met her new client, she felt like Clarice Starling in The Silence of the Lambs, the reference is apt since Dahmer is the kind of monster typically only found in multiplexes . He’s Leatherface, Hannibal Lecter, and Henry (from Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer) rolled into one, except in a mild-mannered Everyman guise that allowed him to remain undetected while carrying out his crimes. The fact that a neighbor recalls once seeing a movie-like mist coming out of Dahmer’s door, as well as Dahmer’s fondness for The Exorcist III and Return of the Jedi — to the point that he even bought and wore yellow contact lenses to more closely resemble the Emperor – reinforces the impression that Dahmer was a docile predator fit for a horror film.
Unfortunately, The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes isn’t fiction, and despite the usual array of superfluous dramatic recreations, it treats its material with the necessary sobriety. Per its title, Berlinger’s three-part series is most notable for a collection of previously unreleased recorded chats with the killer that Patrickus had from July to October 1991 after his arrest and before his 1992 trial, at which he was found guilty and received fifteen life terms imprisonment. This material is fascinating, not only because there is so much of it, but because Dahmer is extremely candid and discusses the details of his childhood, the gradual development of his deviant impulses, the execution of his murders and the necrophilia, dismemberment, grisly experiments, and cannibalism, who followed. Dahmer’s first-person perspective is central throughout, conveying his cold, calculating madness.
“It’s something you have to deal with… It’s just so bizarre, isn’t it?” Dahmer notes at the beginning of The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes. “It’s not easy to talk about. It’s something I’ve had buried inside me for many years, and yes, it’s like trying to pull a two-ton rock out of a well. Such difficulties notwithstanding, however, Dahmer proves to be a surprisingly open and introspective pseudo-narrator, professing an abiding interest in analyzing his thoughts, drives, and actions to better understand why he “didn’t seem to have the normal feelings of empathy.” . and eventually committed unimaginable atrocities. “What triggered all this? I wish I could give you a good, direct answer to that,” he muses at one point. He later admits that “talking and analyzing shows me how distorted my thinking was”. However, a full sense of self remains elusive, as does any apparent sympathy or remorse (a throwaway statement notwithstanding) for the lives he hatedly taken and the families and communities he left in tatters.
While the basic “why” of Dahmer’s killing spree is unknown – to him and to us – The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes nonetheless diligently examines the well-known motivations of the killer. A by-product of a broken home, Dahmer loved dead animals as a child and became a heavy drinker as a young adult, flaring up in college and the military. Dahmer, a habitually antisocial and lonely gay man, fantasized about being with incapable men he could (physically and sexually) control, and he first made those twisted dreams a reality in Ohio in 1978 when he used a barbell to kill his virgin victim, 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks. Nine years passed before Dahmer killed again. By this time he was living in West Allis, Wisconsin, with his grandmother, a devout and caring woman who never knew that her grandson would pick up strangers in gay bars and bathhouses, drug them and murder them at her house at night and for breakfast in the morning down.
“The bloodshed he wrought was unthinkable and included drilling holes in some men’s heads and pouring acid into their brains to turn them into compliant zombies; eating others to keep them with you forever; having sex with corpses; use of acid to dispose of bones; and keep skulls as souvenirs.”
Dahmer eventually moved into Milwaukee’s Oxford Apartments, where – driven by a series of triggers – he lost whatever control he had over his homicidal compulsions. The bloodshed he caused was unthinkable and included drilling holes in some men’s heads and pouring acid into their brains to turn them into compliant zombies; eating others to keep them with you forever; having sex with corpses; use of acid to dispose of bones; and keep skulls as souvenirs. Fear of abandonment and a yearning to prevent it were at the core of his malicious behavior, and Berlinger explores these distorted themes in interviews with attorneys, forensic psychologists, police officers, and journalists involved in the case. Also composed of home videos, family and crime scene photographs, and archived television news reports, The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes gets as close to its subject matter as possible while touching on the socioeconomic and racial dynamics inherent in this story of a sick white man chasing down poor gay people of color and coming repeatedly in contact with the local police – and then avoid being arrested by them.
Dahmer was undoubtedly the beneficiary of cultural prejudices and circumstances (such as the then rampant AIDS epidemic, which made the disappearance of gay men a relatively common occurrence). Still wondering what sparked a desire for carnage in Dahmer’s heart and mind (“To murder someone and eliminate them immediately gives no great lasting pleasure or sense of accomplishment. And yet I still felt compelled to do it .” years”) remains unanswered in The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes. While insightful into the various factors and feelings that drove him to do what he did, Berlinger’s documentaries are extremely chilling because they stare into the abyss and see only unfathomable darkness.