The reporter who broke Jeffrey Dahmer’s original story opened up about what went wrong with the Netflix show

Created and Written by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan, dahmer chronicles the brutal murders of men and boys by serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, played by Evan Peters, between 1978 and 1991.

The show was praised by some for taking a more critical look at how Milwaukee police authorities failed to arrest Dahmer and how that ultimately led to the deaths of numerous men, who were predominantly black. dahmer sheds light on the racism, homophobia and more that allowed Dahmer to commit murder for more than 10 years.

In real life, Jeffrey Dahmer confessed to police “a total of 17 murders” when he was finally arrested in 1991. A year later, Dahmer was convicted of 16 murders and sentenced to 16 life sentences. In 1994 he was murdered while serving his life sentence.

Since its debut dahmer has been criticized by people for re-romanticizing the Jeffrey Dahmer murders. The family member of one victim spoke about not being contacted prior to the show’s release, and she called it Netflix’s way of “making money from this tragedy.”

And now, the original journalist who broke the Jeffrey Dahmer murders story opens up about the “inaccuracies” of this new Netflix series, describing a conversation she had with Dahmer herself.

Anne E. Schwartz, who worked as a crime reporter for the Milwaukee Journal in 1991, was one of the first people to arrive at the Oxford Apartments, where Dahmer committed most of his murders. She had received a call from a police source stating that she had found human remains in an apartment. Once there, she recalled watching police uncover the extent of Dahmer’s crime after discovering Polaroids of his victims.

She has written two books based on her coverage of the Dahmer murders, and in an interview with the Independent she explained how dahmer “does not bear much resemblance to the facts of the case.”

“When people see Ryan Murphy’s Netflix series and they’re like, ‘Oh my god, that’s awful,’ I want to tell them it didn’t necessarily end that way,” she told the publication.

One of the inaccuracies that Schwartz couldn’t deal with dahmer is Glenda Cleveland’s role as Dahmer’s next-door neighbor. The series sees Glenda (Niecy Nash) making several attempts to alert the police to Dahmer’s murders while living next door to him.

“In the first five minutes of the first episode, Glenda Cleveland knocks on his door. None of that ever happened,” Schwartz said. “I had trouble with the buy-in because I knew it wasn’t correct. But people don’t see it that way, they see it for entertainment.”

Schwartz noted that in real life, Glenda Cleveland lived “in a separate building” at the Oxford Apartments.

Aside from challenging the prevailing dramatizations dahmerSchwartz described her own conversation with Jeffrey Dahmer after the publication of her 1991 book, which is no surprise given that it is a real crime TV series The man who couldn’t kill enough.

Schwartz said she received a “very quick” call from Dahmer after several psychiatrists she spoke to blamed his behavior on his parents. “For someone who didn’t show emotion or didn’t seem to care, he was very protective of his parents, especially his mother,” she said.

“He didn’t have a tone of voice in his voice. He was so banal, he was so shallow. There was nothing. He just said no one was responsible for what I did but me.”

Schwartz ended her interview by saying that not only is this show tough on the victims’ families, but also on the people of Milwaukee, who still see it as a “horrible blemish on the city” and that “they don’t want people to think about that.”

She even recalled how, after the Dahmer murders drew attention, people would often go to the Oxford Apartment to shop for souvenirs, with some trying to take “bricks and dirt” after the apartments were demolished. The vacant lot has been closed to this day.