Law&Crime Sidebar - Critics Say Netflix's Jeffrey Dahmer Series Insults Victims, Glorifies Serial Killer

Episode Date: September 29, 2022

As Netflix's "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" tops the charts, critics are slamming the series claiming the show insulted victims and glorified a serial killer. The Law&Crime Network's Jesse Weber discusses the hot debate with true crime author and expert Katherine Ramsland.GUEST: Dr. Katherine Ramsland: https://twitter.com/KatRamslandLAW&CRIME SIDEBAR PRODUCTION:YouTube Management - Bobby SzokePodcasting - Sam GoldbergVideo Editing - Michael Deininger & Logan HarrisGuest Booking - Alyssa FisherSocial Media Management - Kiera BronsonSUBSCRIBE TO OUR OTHER PODCASTS:Court JunkieObjectionsThey Walk Among AmericaCoptales and CocktailsThe Disturbing TruthSpeaking FreelyLAW&CRIME NETWORK SOCIAL MEDIA:Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/lawandcrime/Twitter: https://twitter.com/LawCrimeNetworkFacebook: https://www.facebook.com/lawandcrimeTwitch: https://www.twitch.tv/lawandcrimenetworkTikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@lawandcrimeSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Wondery Plus subscribers can binge all episodes of this Law and Crimes series ad-free right now. Join Wondry Plus in the Wondery app Apple Podcasts or Spotify. Agent Nate Russo returns in Oracle 3, Murder at the Grandview, the latest installment of the gripping Audible Original series. When a reunion at an abandoned island hotel turns deadly, Russo must untangle accident from murder. But beware, something sinister lurks in the grand. View Shadows. Joshua Jackson delivers a bone-chilling performance in this supernatural thriller that

will keep you on the edge of your seat. Don't let your fears take hold of you as you dive into this addictive series. Love thrillers with a paranormal twist? The entire Oracle trilogy is available on Audible. Listen now on Audible. Jeff. Thanks, Grandma. I could just leave the sheets outside my door. Kind of like to make my own bed. We get into the controversy surrounding Netflix's new Jeffrey Dahmer show. Should true crime programs like this no longer exist? I'll be joined by true crime author and expert Catherine Ransland. Welcome to Sidebar, presented by Law and Crime.

I'm Jesse Weber. For all of you true crime fans out there, I'm sure I don't have to tell you about this, but there is a new Netflix show that is getting a lot of attention, but it's also receiving a bit of controversy. I'm talking about Monster, the Jeffrey Dahmer story. It stars Evan Peters as the notorious serial killer who murdered 17 people. And it's been reported that the series is so popular that it has the best opening week of any new show on the streaming service, which is pretty incredible. But anytime you have a dramatization of a real life killer, it's bound to get people talking. And it's bound to get people talking in maybe the wrong ways or there's a lot of criticism. And that's clearly what's happening here. From the response of victims family members to a Dahmer prosecutor to the LGBTQ community. there is a lot here. So to help me break down what exactly is happening with this Netflix show, I'm joined by a very special guest, Catherine Ramslet. Now, Catherine has appeared in more than 200 crime documentaries and magazine shows.

She's an executive producer of Murder House Flip, and she's consulted for CSI, Bones, The Alienist. And not only that, she's also the author of more than 1,500 articles and 69 books, including How to Catch a Killer, the Psychology of Death, Investing. and the mind of a murderer. Catherine, good to see you. Welcome to Sidebar. Thank you for inviting me.

I'm happy to be here. Who better to ask than you, my very first question, why this fascination with Jeffrey Dahmer? I mean, there have been other Dahmer films before. There was one starring Jeremy Renner, I think, in 2002. Why are we seeing this fascination with Dahmer? It's a general trend. There's a huge interest in true crime, and in particular, serial killers.

So we're seeing quite a few of them being done over and over and over. again. And now they're really looking at the long form, the episodic types of things. So instead of a one-hour documentary or even a two-hour movie, they like to have multiple episodes so they can really draw out the story. I'll be the first of a minute. I haven't watched the Netflix show. And to be completely honest, I deal with so much of it here at work that sometimes when I like to let loose, I don't, you know, relax, I stay away from it. But I know people have watched it. Some people have loved it. Some people have said it's very disturbing. find it difficult to watch have you seen it yourself have you had observations about the show i've seen it

i think it's uh long um i do there's a lot of emphasis on the victim's story rather than just on domer but i think one of the controversies that i've noticed is that they're trying to humanize him and you know he is a human being they're they're trying to give context to how he became this way and there's a there's a place for that so i don't really see any reason why we can have a story like this. If you don't want to see it, don't tune in. But I think the other controversy is probably more pointed in that is the victim's families have to relive this and really in a long, intense form. It's not that they have to see it, but people talk to them about it. They see it talked about it on social media. Nobody was contacted. Not that any

production team necessarily has to do that. They don't. But some of them feel as if you're going to use my testimony. Why not pay me? Cut me in on some of this. I've seen some comments like that. I don't think that's necessarily all of the victim's families. But I understand that point of view. And I think that's probably the controversy that is maybe the most highlighted right now. Let's focus on that. So the big controversy, right, as you said, Netflix, and the reason Netflix is coming under fire is because they said this show is going to give victims a voice. And yet, as you said, the victim's family members were never consulted about this. And as you also said, it's retramatizing. They see ads all over the place. They see the shows. I mean, this is a tweet from Eric Perry,

who says that he is a cousin of Errol Lindsay, and Lindsay was 19 when he was murdered by Dahmer in 1991. And Eric Perry tweeted, I'm not telling anyone what to watch. I know true crime media is huge right now. But if you're actually curious about the victims, my family, the Isabel's, are pissed about this show. It's re-traumatizing over and over again. For what? How many movies, shows, documentaries do we need? And I think that's part of a larger conversation. So I'm going to ask you, you said that the victims don't have to be necessarily consulted, but should they have been here by Netflix? If you're going to say you're giving the victims a voice, should they have been consulted? And is there something wrong about creating

true crime like this as entertainment? Well, I don't know why they wouldn't have been consulted. I've done documentaries on the BTK killer because I did work with him. And we talked with all the victims, family members who would talk to us about, first of all, being featured and being part of it, but certainly letting them know that we were doing this. And I don't know why you can't. Production teams are large enough where somebody could have made those connections. Should we be watching True Kama's entertainment? I mean, that's just where we are. I don't, I don't know that there's really any way to stop that. It's really about mystery. Partly, it's about the mystery of the kind of person who Dahmer became. How could this have happened? How could a person be like this?

It's mystery about, you know, who murdered whom. So true crime is really, it's not necessarily entertainment so much it's about challenge. It's about curiosity. So it's, yeah, I think there's a place for it. But to push back on that, right, there's a difference between having a true crime documentary where you're actually speaking to the players of the case. You're speaking to experts about the case and you're going through the actual footage. And the reason I say that versus what happens here where you're having actors literally playing out the point. of a real life situation. So one of the criticisms of the Dahmer show, Rita Isbell provided a victim impact statement back in the day against Jeffrey Dahmer, very intense. And that was basically

acted out on the show by actor Deshawn Barnes, who, you know, recreated this scene. So this is a real life moment that you're recreating. And her response, Rita Isbell's response, has not been that positive about that. She says, I was never contacted about the show. I feel like Netflix should have asked if we mind or how we felt about making this and didn't ask me anything, they just did it. So perhaps it's not the end of true crime. But should there be an end to these kinds of actual television programs where you have actors portraying these real life scenes and these real life actors in really highly sensitive subject matter? Well, that's a scripted series. So that's certainly is different from a documentary where you do have experts and people who are

involved in the case talking about it. I don't know if we can really say what should or shouldn't be out there. But I do think when you use a scene that was that emotional and intense, and she was in the courtroom not because it was where she wanted to be. She was there giving it a statement. And to have that use without her knowledge and having someone play her, I think that is a matter of an ethical judgment that maybe should have been rethought. There's no reason why they couldn't have contacted her to say we're going to feature this scene and maybe even get her input on it. She might have felt better about it if they had. And I don't mean to be bashed Netflix here. I'm addressing all the controversy at the surrounding. You talk about maybe

something they should have thought of. Well, apparently they initially, with this series, one of the other pieces of controversy, is they labeled it in the LGBTQ space, given the sexual identity of many of the victims. Netflix has since dropped that LGBTQ tag, because they labeled it. They're because it received this backlash online. What did you make of that? What did you think of what Netflix did? I don't know why they dropped the tag. I mean, I think it's simply a tag that alerts viewers to the kind of content they might

counter and they can make a decision. So I don't know why they dropped the tag. I don't know what was behind that decision. They dropped it because of the criticism from the victim's family members. That's at least my understanding. And they could be saying, you know, you're exploitation, right? You know, you're trying to gain people's attention to this and viewers' attention to this at the expense of victims, family members, and the LGBTQ community might be saying, don't do that. We hear the backlash. We don't want to be a part of it.

I still think it's kind of a viewer's label. It's a way to alert viewers to content that perhaps, you know, they want to make decisions about, it's just like any warning system. Here's what you can expect to see. So I'm not sure the label was dropped for a good reason. Well, I do want to ask you about this as well. There's another piece of controversy with the show because former Milwaukee DA Michael McCann, he actually prosecuted Jeffrey Dahmer back in the 90s. He is criticizing the Netflix show. He says the show is creating this false suggestion or this false impression that police didn't thoroughly investigate these murders because they involved gay and or black people. And he says any characterization of this is ludicrous. He's told that to DMZ.

And he also told TMZ that they just couldn't track down Dahmer sooner because they're there was a lack of evidence at the crime scene. What is your take on that? Is he being genuine about that? Because I know that there was criticism about how this investigation was initially handled. There was a lot of criticism. And I think in particular, with the underage boy, was obviously underage. And I think that's the second episode where it's very clear the police really didn't investigate, even though there were witnesses who were urging them to reconsider and look into this. I think that there was, it's all city officials do this, no matter what the case. If police response was perceived to be inefficient or ineffective or underplayed or whatever,

a city officials always take that stand no matter what, that we did everything we could have. I personally am not sure that's true. I think there's probably more that they did that the citizens don't know about, but certainly there was prejudice at play. It's still at play, even today. So I'm with the citizens on this. I do think there could have been a better police response to Dahmer. That's fair.

I mean, because again, in actual the show, one of the actresses, I want to get her name right, Nisi Nash, she portrays Glenda Cleveland. There's a scene where she's alerting the police to what Dahmer's up to or as many times she kept calling them and they kind of wrote her off. You know, maybe the implication was because she was a blind woman. black woman. So again, that's why you see him reaching out. I guess the final question I have as we look at this show. And we saw it a little bit also with the Zach Ephron, Ted Bundy show as well. Do you get concerned at all that there becomes this fascination, maybe this obsession with making

these serial killers a star in a way? I know they're saying they're giving the victims a voice, but it's Evan Peters playing Jeffrey Dahmer. It's Zach Ephron playing Ted Bundy. Do you have any concern about that? That at the end of the day, people are looking at serial killers. And maybe I don't want to say favorable light, but they're kind of glamorizing maybe their behavior in a certain way or putting them up on this pedestal or there might be some star power there. Well, I agree with that in the Zach Ephron movie. That was definitely glamorizing Bundy well beyond what he really was. And it did create a whole legion of new fans who actually went to some bizarre extremes on places like TikTok creating videos about how much they love him and wish he was their boyfriend, et cetera.

I'm not sure I see that happening in the Dahmer show, though, because it doesn't really come across as very, I don't think he comes across as very sexy. He's, he's rigid, he's inept, he's socially awkward. Yeah, maybe he's, you know, pleasant to look at. There's not a lot about him, I think, that is being glamorized. That doesn't strike me that way from the episodes I've seen. But yes, I think making them the star of the show for a certain faction of fans. will glamorize them and make these people much more attuned to them. But that's going to happen anyway, regardless of whether you have a show like this or not.

I'll say this much. I think to wrap up the conversation, my personal opinion about it is there comes a situation where this is Hollywood and you have to do what you have to do, whether it's casting or the story, to gain attention to these particularly important true life events that maybe people didn't know about as well. As long, I think, as they keep it accurate and they don't create falsehoods, that never happened. If you're telling the truth, but you're telling that story, even with a scripted television, maybe there's more benefit than harm, right? And I think that could be

something to think about it. I mean, having been part of Hollywood, they do add in things that aren't necessarily true because it's for effect. So then people either have to go search it out to see what's true and what isn't true, which isn't really fair. I do know that, yes, Hollywood's in a business. They're trying to get viewers. They're trying to get as many viewers as they can. That pays off. But I also know they'll add things or exaggerate things for effect that isn't necessarily a fair rendering of the story, especially in a scripted series where they do have a lot more room to kind of say, well, this is based on true story. I think the Dahmer one is pretty accurate from what I've seen. Yes, I know there are some things they've added in or expanded on, but for the

most part. I mean, I've only, I haven't watched the whole thing, but I have certainly followed it enough to go, yeah, that, that happened, and that's what he was like. And yeah. Well, maybe we'll have a discussion when we, when we both watch the full series, and then we could talk about it after. Well, there is one thing I'd like to, I'd like to point out if I can. I don't think, I don't think Joyce Dahmer is getting a fair shot, actually. I think she did not get a chance really to give her own voice to things because she died from cancer and she was going to write her own book. Most of what we're seeing about her is from the point of view of Lionel Domer. And I kind of think that's a one-sided portrait. I don't think she was as horrible as she's being portrayed to be. And that bothers me.

All right. I think that's fair. Again, I think this should be a continuing conversation because we actually see this happening more and more. But Catherine Ramsland, thanks for taking the time. I really thought it was an interesting conversation. And hopefully people will learn something from it. But, Catherine, thanks so much. Well, thank you. And thanks everybody for joining us here on Sidebar. Please subscribe on Apple Podcast. Spotify, YouTube, wherever you get your podcast. I'm Jesse Weber. We'll speak to you next time.

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