Prolific serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer will once again be portrayed on screen, this time by Evan Peters, in a series by Ryan Murphy.
The actor, who has appeared in several of Murphy’s productions such as Pose and the American Horror Story anthology, will appear as the murderer in the limited series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story alongside Niecy Nash and Penelope Ann Miller.
According to Deadline, the story will be “largely told from the point of view of Dahmer’s victims, and dives deeply into the police incompetence and apathy that allowed the Wisconsin native to go on a multiyear killing spree”.
Over the course of ten episodes, the series will examine, through dramatisations, at least 10 occasions when Dahmer was close to being apprehended by law enforcement but avoided prosecution. Murphy will dive into how “white privilege, racism, and homophobia” played into these instances.
Two-time Oscar nominee Richard Jenkins has also been cast as Dahmer’s father Lionel — a chemist who showed his son how to bleach animal bones for preservation — a process Jeffrey subsequently used on some of his victims.
Dahmer has long been a source of fascination for filmmakers and true crime enthusiasts alike, particularly as necrophilia and cannibalism featured heavily in his atrocities.
The killer, who committed his first murder in 1978, was responsible for the death and dismemberment of 17 men and boys over the course of three years.
Dahmer sought out mostly African American men and would entice them to go home with him where he would drug their alcoholic drinks and then strangle them to death. He would then engage in sex acts with the corpses before dismembering them and disposing of them, often keeping their skulls or genitals as souvenirs. He also frequently took photos of his victims at various stages of the murder process, so he could re-live the experience at a later date.
He was known to also attempt crude lobotomies, drilling into victims’ skulls while they were still alive and injecting them with muriatic acid.
The serial killer’s reign of terror finally ended on July 22, 1991, when one of his intended victims managed to escape and flag down two Milwaukee police officers — leading them to Dahmer’s apartment.
Polaroids of dismembered bodies were found in the bedroom and further searches yielded a head in the refrigerator plus three more in the freezer, along with preserved skulls, and jars containing genitalia.
Dahmer was convicted of 15 of the 16 murders he had perpetrated, after being found to be legally sane — despite having been diagnosed with borderline personality disorder, schizotypal personality disorder, and a psychotic disorder.
He was sentenced to 16 terms of life imprisonment but was beaten to death by his fellow inmate Christopher Scarver.
To date, five films have been made about the murderer, with the most recent being 2017’s My Friend Dahmer, which chronicles his high school years and the events leading up to his first murder.
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