Notorious serial killer and sex offender, Jeffrey Dahmer, is still making headlines after being recently rediscovered by a new generation of true crime enthusiasts.
Dahmer is the subject of Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, a new series on Netflix that was released on September 21. So far, the series has received mixed reviews, with some viewers calling it "damn good," and others accusing it of "romanticizing" the infamous murderer, as previously reported.
"#DahmerNetflix is out, let's not romanticize Jeffrey Dahmer just because he is played by Evan Peters. Remember the victims. A thread about each victim and who they were," one viewer had tweeted soon after the show's release.
The 10-episode series is centered on the life of Dahmer, who murdered 17 young men and boys - mostly queer men of Black, Latinx, or Asian descent - in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, between 1978 and 1991.
He would often drug and then murdered his victims, often preserving parts of their bodies through various methods. Over the years, many people believed that the ethnicities of Dahmer's victims made it easier for the notorious killer to remain undetected for so long.
The true crime series also recounts the stories of some of Dahmer's victims, as well as the story of a woman living in a neighboring building who alerted Milwaukee police on multiple occasions after noticing Dahmer displaying odd behavior.
This woman, Glenda Cleveland, maintained that police didn't take her calls and tips seriously because the area Dahmer carried out his crimes was a predominantly Black neighborhood.
Then, in 1991, a then-31-year-old Dahmer was caught after a potential victim managed to escape and alert the police - prompting an arrest and subsequent trial. Dahmer received 16 consecutive life sentences - a total of 941 years. Three years into his sentence, he was killed by a fellow inmate.
However, another prisoner had attempted to slit Dahmer's throat and kill him not long before, but he failed after the razor blade on his makeshift knife broke. The fellow prisoner, Osvaldo Durruthy, now 65, recently told The Daily Mail he had no regrets over the incident.
"I don't have an ounce of regret on what I did to Jeffrey Dahmer. I tried to kill him, and I failed. I don't even regret having to spend an extra five years in prison because I tried to kill him. And I'm glad someone else got him," Durruthy, who is no longer in prison, told the publication.
Durruthy explained that he came to the US in 1980 from his native Cuba - he knew no one and spoke no English. Several years later, he found himself in prison on drug trafficking charges, earning him a total sentence of 31 years.
When Durruthy heard about Dahmer's heinous crimes and learned that he was in a correctional facility 40 miles away, Durruthy says he became fixated on the idea of killing him.
"I've done a lot of bad things in my life that wouldn't make my family too proud. I thought that if I killed him, I could make up for some of the bad things I had done. At the time I thought I had nothing to lose, I was facing years in prison that seemed like a life sentence," he told The Daily Mail.
"I wanted to kill him for my family and for the Black community," he added.
Durruthy ended up trying for two years to get transferred to the same prison as Dahmer, feigning a mental illness until he was eventually diagnosed with schizophrenia. He was then put in a single cell next to Dahmer's.
Using a handmade shank, Durruthy targeted Dahmer during a Sunday prison church service, attempting to slit his throat but breaking his makeshift weapon in the process.
"I wanted to kill Dahmer; he ate people. But I guess God was watching over me and didn't want me to kill him. I don't regret what I did, if I had the chance to do it again I would. I really tried to kill him. I'm glad Dahmer is dead. Maybe when word got out that I tried to kill him, it gave other inmates ideas," Durruthy admitted.
Five months later, Dahmer was violently bludgeoned to death by inmate Christopher Scarver.
