My Son Is a Serial Killer: The Story of Jeffrey Dahmer's Father

In July 1991, the country was shaken by the incomprehensible crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. Day by day, the world learned more and more filthy and horrifying details of his murders: dismembering young people, lobotomy, necrophilia, cannibalism, and even skulls kept on a homemade altar inside an apartment…

But no one was more shaken than Jeffrey Dahmer’s parents—the loving father, stepmother, and grandmother—who for years tried to help him not sink to the bottom.

In his candid book, Lionel Dahmer describes how the oddities in Jeff’s behavior gradually turned into a full-scale obsession with killing, and analyzes what, as a father, he did wrong. Lionel asks himself: why did his son grow into a monster? How did a person who he essentially didn’t know—lived with them and grew up in their home, alongside him?

These are memoirs that formed the basis for Netflix’s film "Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story"—a unique look at a madman’s insanity through the eyes of his family; a heartbreaking testimony that inhuman horror can be hiding very close to you.

— "Lionel Dahmer, the father of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, wrote one of the bravest books ever published about serial killing." — Kirkus Review

— "A kind and honorable father, Lionel, shares his memoirs about trying to come to terms with his son’s nature—a mass murderer, necrophile, and cannibal." — Literary Review

— "What makes Lionel Dahmer’s narration so convincing is that, in his memoirs, he tries to look not only into his son’s soul, but also into his own." — The New York Times