Anne E. Schwartz says Ryan Murphy’s dramatization of the notorious serial killer “doesn’t bear much resemblance to the facts of the case.”
“Dahmer – Monsters: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer”
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Netflix’s Dahmer: Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is a ratings juggernaut for the streaming service, but the Ryan Murphy series has been plagued by ethical grievances since it premiered. Some questioned the impact dramatizing such horrifying events could have on victims’ families, while others are simply fed up with true crime shows and find the genre incredibly unhelpful.
The latest voice to chime in on the show is Anne Schwartz, a journalist who published the story of Dahmer’s murders while working as a crime reporter for the Milwaukee Journal in 1991. In a new interview with The Independent, Schwartz criticized the show in a different way, reasoning that she felt it took too much artistic license and said the series “doesn’t bear much resemblance to the facts of the case.”
Schwartz pointed out that Glenda Cleveland, played by Niecy Nash on the series, wasn’t literally Dahmer’s neighbor, a detail that immediately drew her attention from the show and made her question its accuracy.
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“In the first five minutes of the first episode, Glenda Cleveland knocks on his door. None of that ever happened,” Schwartz said. “I had trouble with the buy-in because I knew it wasn’t correct. But people don’t watch it like that, they watch it for entertainment.”
Schwartz also disagrees with the show’s decision to portray the cops investigating the case as homophobic and racially biased, dismissing the choice as unfair treatment of people she has spent significant time with.
“I spent a lot of time with them and interviewed the people who were at the crime scene,” she said. “Again, that’s a dramatization, but at a time when it’s not exactly easy for law enforcement to gain trust and buy in from the community, it’s not a very helpful portrayal.”
While Schwartz understands that Murphy’s series is a television show made for entertainment purposes, she worries viewers will take the show at face value and leave with a flawed understanding of the case.
“When people see Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, that’s awful.’ I want to tell them it didn’t necessarily end that way,” she said.
Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix.
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