What happened to the parents and brother of Jeffrey Dahmer, the ‘Milwaukee Butcher’?

Netflix has a new hit with Monster: The Jeffey Dahmer Story. After its launch on 21 September, the production based on the murders perpetrated in the United States by one of the bloodiest serial killers of the 20th century had the streaming services biggest debut on record, with over 196 million hours viewed. Dahmer, known as the ‘Milwaukee Butcher’, murdered 17 youths and children between 1978 and 1991.

The ruthless history and everything that surrounded the Milwaukee Cannibal, his keeping some parts of their corpses and even eating others, has aroused enormous interest. The criminal was captured in 1991, sentenced to 16 life sentences and three years later he was murdered.

For decades his name has been synonymous with terror. His story has been told countless times which in turn has sparked interest about his family.

The work created by Ian Brennan and Ryan Murphy explores, of course, Jeffrey’s parents: Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Anette Flint. The father of the Milwaukee butcher is currently 86 years old, resides in Ohio and decided to step away from public life in 2020 after many years of expressing his opinion about his son’s crimes. In fact, the chemist wrote a book called A Father’s Story in which he recounted Jeffrey’s early years. He published it in March 1994, just a few months before his son was murdered, and describes how Jeffrey’s crimes affected him, deepened his relationship with him and confessed that he put himself in his place during the trial .

However, some passages were harshly criticized, especially when he talks about the possible causes that led his son to commit such crimes. In the book he suggests that the medications his wife was taking during pregnancy could have negatively affected the baby’s brain.

In addition, he questions whether Jeffrey’s shyness during his childhood was an unseen sign of his murderous tendencies and blames himself for not giving him the emotional attention he surely required. During Jeffrey’s short time in prison, Lionel’s visits were constant and always began with a hug.

For her part, Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother died in 2000 from aggressive breast cancer. She separated from Lionel in the 70s, when her son was 18 years old, after several years of arguments and unhappiness due to the chemist’s determination to get a doctorate. According to her, there were never any warning signs and she described Jeffrey as “a normal boy.”

Before she died, she publicly acknowledged that she wanted Jeffrey’s brain to be donated to science for investigation to see if there was any cause behind the cannibal’s brutal character, but Lionel opted for cremation. Some of her testimonies reveal that she was never able to overcome her son’s criminal history: “I wake up every morning and for a split second I don’t know I’m Jeffrey Dahmer’s mother, and then it all floods in,” she said in 1993.

She even tried to commit suicide twice, once months before her son died and again on his birthday in 1996. The first time she turned on a gas oven and left the door open, but luckily she was found before she died. The second time she herself called 911 after attempting to poison herself with carbon monoxide in the garage but failed.

Jeffrey Dahmer's brother changed his identity

The younger brother of the Milwaukee butcher decided to change his identity when the murderer was arrested and it was widely publicised that he had murdered 17 people. To this day his name is unknown, but Lionel Dahmer and his partner Shari, who also appears in the Netflix production played by Molly Ringwald, said in a 2004 interview with Larry King that David had a career and for that then he was expecting his second child. He is currently 56 years old.

War for the Ashes of Jeffrey Dahmer

Following Jeffrey’s prison murder, a court battle broke out between Lionel Dahmer and Joyce Flint over their son’s remains. The court ruled in favor of Jeffrey’s father and he was able to completely incinerate the body, without the possibility of the offender’s brain being analyzed in case there were biological aspects behind the crimes. The ashes were distributed between the parents.