“Why in the world would you read that!?”

I already heard it from my wife, so I might as well acknowledge what you’re probably thinking too. Why in the world would I read this? Why would I buy this book by Jeffery Dahmer’s dad over all the other books I saw at that thrift store? And why the heck would I complete it the very next day?

Why This Book?

“True Crime” stories are a rare breed for me. Perhaps the first I’d ever read was A Death in Belmont, because I had loved Sebastian Junger’s The Perfect Storm so much and I wasn’t really sure what I was getting into. I also read Jon Krakauer’s Under the Banner of Heaven, because I had loved his Everest adventure, Into Thin Air, so much (and because I was traveling through Utah at the time). I suppose I could say that I read this book because I’m in Wisconsin at the moment, and I like to read “local” books when I can. But there’s gotta be more to it than that.

I have to admit that what first attracted me to this book was the spectacle of those infamous Jeffrey Dahmer murders of the early 90s. Learning about such evil, though, would not have been the least bit edifying and definitely not worth the dollar I spent. Instead, the fact that this book promised to offer a completely unique take on it all is what drew me in, the perspective of the father who had raised the person who would eventually turn into America’s most infamous monster. I’m a father myself now, and with all the nonsense that’s going on in our world today, it helps to witness and to learn from the failures of fathers past.

The Son, the Father

Like most Americans, I knew about this case when it broke, simply because not a single person in the country could avoid it. The problem though: I was only a child. I was only 8 years old when Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for the final time, and his face was plastered all over the news. I was 9 when he was finally convicted and sentenced to some 900+ years in prison. I was 11 when his father published this book, which was the same year that Jeffrey was murdered in prison by a fellow inmate. Throughout it all, my parents sheltered me from most of the morbid details. They certainly weren’t eating up every tidbit of news that came out during the trials, but I heard enough Dahmer jokes during those years from other kids to realize that this was one monstrous killer.

Lionel Dahmer opens the book with an acknowledgement that he’ll be donating some of the proceeds of the book to the families of the victims his son had killed. Thomas H. Cook then acknowledges in the Foreword, first that early critics of the book’s release had accused Lionel of simply trying to make a buck off all the hype, but also that this book has nothing to do with that. As one reads the book, the father’s sorrow, disgust, and open self-reflection makes it cleat that this was not something he wanted to write but needed to write. Clearly, there would be some haters wanting to blame Jeffrey’s sickness on his father or on his upbringing. What father in his situation wouldn’t want to voice his own side of the story?

This same sense of something dark and shadowy, of a malicious force growing in my son, now colors almost every memory I have of his childhood. In a sense, his childhood no longer exists. Everything is now a part of what he did as a man. (54)

Embracing the Darkness

This isn’t a book at all that makes a reader think, “What if my kid turned into a deranged cannibal?” I haven’t had the slightest thought of my own kids giving in to the darkest corners of their hearts. Instead, this book seems to be all about encouraging people to wake up and notice. Notice the darkness that might be in your child and address it. Right now. Is their shyness normal or is it deeper, based in fear, turning them inward, cutting them off from normal and healthy relationships? Converse with your children. Don’t ignore those warning signs that you see in them or simply hope they’ll grow out of it. Pay attention to similar tendencies towards darkness and anti-social or destructive desires in your own heart\ and life as well, and be willing to address them and discuss them with others.

While this book is not written from a Christian perspective (the Dahmers were apparently nominal Presbyterians in the ’90s), it has something to teach us about what can happen when children—or their parents—make peace with the secret sins in their own hearts. It also shines light into the fallacies that some parents believe about parenting, that it’s always good for kids just to “be themselves,” to embrace their flaws, to make mistakes. While certainly I agree with this in part, too many parents are unaware of where to draw the line. They hope that their kids will eventually learn, or that nature will eventually take its course. The problem with this mentality is that they’ve far too much trust in nature and in human nature especially, both of which are cursed and stained with sin.

In the eyes of parents, I think, children always seem just a blink away from redemption. No matter to what depth we watch them sink, we believe they need only to grasp the lifeline, and we can still pull them to safely to shore. (139)

Things Will Get Better…Somehow

After Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested for child molestation, his father finally realized that something was terribly wrong with his son, even though he (and all the Milwaukee law enforcement) had no clue that Jeffrey had not only molested this boy but had also already killed four men previously. Yet rather than digging deeper and confronting his son’s issue where it was, growing blacker every day, Lionel admittedly continued the pattern of fatherhood he’d established long before and shirked his responsibilities.

I knew that if he were ever to be “corrected,” it would only be through the intercession of some power other than my own. It might be God, I thought. Or it might be the State. It might be some counseling program. Or it might simply be another person who, against all odds, could teach him how to live a better life. Whatever force it was, it would have to come from outside Jeff, and it would not be me. (140)

Why was this true? Why could this father—who had never abused his son—not be the source of Jeffrey’s “redemption” now when he apparently needed it most? Lionel admits that he had always fled the difficult problems of life, especially those involving communication and relationships. When Jeffrey and his brothers were young and his marriage was slowly devolving, for example, he had delved deeper into his PhD. work and found solace only in his predictable, analytical research at the lab. This same gut reaction of avoiding confrontation and communication let Jeffrey slip further and further away. That’s really what this book is about.

This book contains plenty of the grisly details of the Dahmer murders, but is not a biography of Jeffrey. It truly is the memoirs of a father (along with his mother and his new bride) experiencing the most devastating experience imaginable: discovering not that his son was murdered, no, far worse. Not that his son had a sexual infatuation with young boys, and not even that his son was a killer…but that his son was a monster, a serial killer, a necrophiliac, a cannibal. Every new revelation was worse than the last, and when he first learned of the gruesome details at the trial, Lionel Dahmer simply couldn’t take it all in. Who could? He writes that instead of taking all this information as descriptions of his son, he viewed them merely as analytical facts, evidence to be filed away into various folders, statistical information and nothing more.

During the trial and following the conviction, Lionel and his wife would eventually change their names from the besmirched-beyond-repair “Dahmer,” and Lionel would visit his son regularly at monthly intervals, enjoying the positive changes he was seeing, once the Prozac started showing its effects. He noted Jeffrey’s sudden interest in the Bible, specifically in the Creation-Evolution debate of which he’d learned nothing in public high school. He anticipated even more positive changes in the future, though he dreaded any potential interaction once his son was moved from solitary confinement to Gen-Pop. He published this book in 1994, and I’m not quite sure if that occurred before or after Jeffrey was bludgeoned to death with a barbell by a fellow inmate. He certainly finished the manuscript before that awful news reached home.

Concluding Thoughts

After finishing this book, I watched a few Dahmer documentaries on YouTube. There are so many, I simply want to mention Lionel and Shari’s appearance on Larry King Live ten years after the fact. At that time, Lionel continued his campaign to ensure that parents confronted their children about odd or anti-social behaviors, because this was their duty as parents. He couldn’t stress it enough. It’s a message worth hearing.

I know that all teens go through their hormonal phases and that a fraction of a fraction of a fraction ever turn into psychopaths, but the reality is that too many teens allow rebellion to ruin their lives before they even begin. Parents from all walks of life—but especially professing Christians—need to recognize the battle that evil wages against these young souls when the hormones are raging, the friends are pulling, and minds are reeling with new and fantastic ideas, and lives are lived vicariously inside the dark, merciless depths of the smartphones.

Deuteronomy 6 gives us parents a very clear answer as to how we can train our children up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord, and that is to keep them constantly bathed in the Word—whether lying down or sitting, whether standing or walking, all of our family activities should be characterized by Scripture, and I need to remind myself of that as much as you.

Can’t say that I’d recommend this book. It’s depressing and gross and just not how you want to spend your weekend. But if you’re discerning and have some hand in counseling or psychology, this might be something that could benefit you. Especially if you’re a father.

©2020 E.T.