Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (Netflix, 2022)

Confessions of a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes is the third entry in the series of documentaries that Oscar-nominated director Joe Berlinger has made for Netflix. I prefer it to the recent drama-series, that is also on the streamer.

I like it more because The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes takes an analytical look at its subject and therefore feels less exploitative than the drama series. 

The Dahmer Tapes follows similar projects by Berlinger about Ted Bundy and John Wayne Gacy.

The core of the documentary is formed by the many interviews with Dahmer that a young lawyer called Wendy Patrickus recorded while her firm was preparing for the trial defending the serial killer, who was also a necrophiliac and a cannibal.

The goal was to get The Milwaukee Cannibal off on an insanity plea and as long as Dahmer was allowed to drink coffee and smoke cigarettes he would continue to talk and bare his soul (assuming he had one, of course).

The reason he gave was that he wanted to understand who he was and why he did what he did.

The Dahmer case is more interesting than most serial killer cases because his upbringing was relatively normal. Perhaps he felt emotionally abandoned and he definitely struggled with his homosexual feelings. But he wasn’t abused or molested. He certainly seemed to lack empathy and something resembling a conscience: he wanted to be close to human bodies, but if they didn’t want to do what he wanted, they might as well be dead.

His parents divorced when was 18 and he killed his first victim shortly after, before trying to live a regular life for the next nine years. After which he gave in to his impulses and became a serial killer until he was apprehended four years later. In his apartment in Milwaukee he created his private world, where he had total control.

To add insult to injury, his victims were mostly young black and colored men and one of the reasons the police didn’t arrest him sooner was that they couldn’t believe a white man, who was polite and coherent, could commit such horrendous crimes.

Filmmaker Joe Berlinger has made a lot of true crime documentaries, including the Paradise Lost series, about the West Memphis child murders, for which he received an Oscar-nomination. He also made the famous Metallica-documentary Some Kind of Monster.

The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes consists of three episodes: the first is mainly about his younger years, the second about his killing spree and the third about the trial and its aftermath.

In the end Dahmer was convicted to life in prison, without the chance of parole, and in 1994 he was killed by a fellow inmate.

This series gives you a good insight into the serial killer’s mind. I had never seen much of all the films and series about Dahmer, so I found it enlightening.