Thread by @DerfBackderf

Yeah, I too was surprised to see #jeffreydahmer trending.... on Memorial Day!

It's because of a new documentary on Discovery.

#MyFriendDahmer #AbramsComicArts

I vaguely recall being contacted by the production team a while ago. I declined to participate. I don't like tv appearances. I'm not comfortable on tv, and frankly, I don't like being at the mercy of a film editor. I don't want my words turned into sound bites.

Yeah yeah, insert Dahmer joke here. Go ahead. I've heard them all.

Anyways, so I turn down almost all tv interviews, and always have.

When Dahmer was caught, it seemed as if the entire news media was after me. Reporters called day and night, beat on my front door, called my parents to get to me. It was something.

I remember one day there were THREE tv news trucks parked in front of my house, waiting for me. Guess they hoped they could do a gotcha interview if I tried to leave in my car. But I took the train to work, so I snuck out the back door and hopped the backyard fence to catch it!

I just didn't want any part of a viral story like that. And I was working in the news media at that time! For weekly newspapers. Thankfully, none of them were interested in the story either, since they were alt papers and didn't bother with big mainstream stories.

And no story was bigger in summer 1991 than Dahmer.

The story I always recount is this. Dahmer's house in my hometown is on a hilly country road. The story broke and police descended on his boyhood home when they realized it was a crime scene...

...where Dahmer had killed (and obliterated) his first victim, Stephen Hicks, a young hitchhiker he picked up near the local mall in nearby suburban Akron. The scene is in the book. So cops are combing the grounds, gathering evidence...

... and the entire national news media followed them to the house. They were lined up and down the country road outside the police tape, cars, camera trucks, etc.... for FIVE MILES in either direction! It was quite a sight. I drove past to check it out.

If they had known it was me, they would have swarmed my car! I remember that really drove home what I was now dealing with. It's truly terrifying to be swept up in a viral story like that. Trust me, it's no fun. The lack of control is particularly unnerving.

I knew this was a great story, one that had fallen from the sky and dropped in my lap. I was a storyteller. There was never a moment's doubt that I would tell MY story, but it would be MY way and on my terms. I wanted complete control of my story.

Thankfully, I was experienced enough at that point to make that decision. I had been a pro for 8 years in 1991. I knew how to say "no." Of course, it wound up taking longer than expected to tell my story, but that's another tale.

Some bash me for telling it all. Oh yeah, I still get that. It's a small minority, since, after all, the book speaks for itself. It's gotten enough awards and accolades that's it's self-defending at this point.

Besides, it's MY story. I was a part of it. It happened to me. And I have every right to tell it. I think I told it pretty well. I certainly wasn't going to trust a media pack to do the same.

I'm not a fan of these tv crime documentaries either. These things are all identical, the same spooky music, the same quick edits jumping from image to image. I don't like watching them and I won't participate in them. Pop culture documentaries. No thanks.

I foolishly did a handful very early on. Maybe twice. This was when my first Dahmer stories were self-published and I was trying to find a publisher for the larger work. They were awful. So this would have been, geez, late 1990s, early 2000s.

When I saw the finished pieces, I kicked myself for participating.

Then I agreed to be in one when the book came out in 2012. I was doing the whole media blitz to promote the book, mostly radio and print, and I'm happy to do those media. My publicist at the time really wanted me to do it. Again, I was very unhappy with it. More self kicking.

I told my publisher, no more tv. Especially since the book was already a hit on its own.

My view is, all I know, everything I wanted to say, is in the book. I have no interest in just parroting that information for a camera.

I know this sounds weird, since I ok-ed a film adaption, but that's an altogether different animal. I trusted #marcmeyers would do a great job with it, based on his previous films & many long discussions with him. And he did. It's a worthy companion to the book.

My friend, Mike, is in the Discovery piece. He always agrees. I usually send tv requests his way. That's Mike, my partner on the garbage truck in Trashed btw! We've been friends since we were 12 years old, growing up in the same small town. He's a prof now.

I also have little interest in Dahmer's crimes, which is what these pieces are about. My book ends the moment he starts to kill. After that, he's just another monster. The spiral down is what fascinated me, because I was a witness to that.

Another production team contacted me a couple weeks ago. Think it was CNN, but I could be wrong on that. They must've been working on a piece for the Discovery thing. Are they owned by the same conglomerate? I said no.

I'm very proud of the book. It changed my career. I'm humbled and very gratified it resonates with so many readers. It's my best-known work and it likely always will be.

It's also 3 books ago.

My focus now is on Kent State, another very important story to me personally, which should be out now but has been delayed until Sept because of the pandemic & lockdowns. And on future work.