Excerpt From A Father’s Story
“On July 22, 1991, I called Jeff's apartment several times. My mother had called to tell me that she had been unable to reach him, and that he had missed a promised visit to her house. The next morning, July 23, 1991, I called Jeff's apartment at about nine in the morning. The phone rang several times before someone finally answered it. At the other end I heard a man's voice, but it wasn't Jeff's.
‘Is Jeff there?’ I asked.
‘Jeffrey Dahmer?’ the man asked.
‘No, he's not here right now,’ the man said in a guarded voice, as if he was being cautious about something.
‘Where is Jeff?’ I asked.
‘He's not here,’ the man repeated, still speaking very guardedly. ‘Who is this?’
I could hear something catch in his breath.
‘You're Jeffrey Dahmer's father?’
‘Yes,’ I told him. ‘Where is Jeff?’
‘Well, your son's not here right now.’
‘Someone will call you, Mr. Dahmer.’
‘A detective will call you.’
‘A detective?’ | repeated, thinking now that Jeff had probably gotten into trouble again, perhaps because he was drunk, or worse, that he had molested yet another child.
‘What are you talking about?’ I asked.
It was then that the man on the other end of the line finally told me who he was, that he was a member of the Milwaukee Police Department. He hesitated just an instant, then let the hammer fall. ‘We're investigating a homicide, Mr. Dahmer,’ he said.
‘A homicide?’ I asked, and suddenly I thought that I was about to receive what I felt at that time must surely be the worst news a parent could ever receive, that someone had murdered his child.
‘Homicide?’ I repeated. ‘You mean Jeff's been—’
‘No, not Jeff,’ the man told me quickly, my son's name sounding like something dirty he did not want on his tongue. ‘Jeff is alive and well.’”
This quote struck me because it marks how Lionel had already progressed from facing the reality that his son was capable of inflicting long-term harm on himself through drinking to recognizing that his son had the potential to repeatedly harm others. Lionel had earlier noted his denial that Jeff’s failure of himself might escalate into violence against others:
“Still, his lies seemed relatively harmless. His life, for all its disorder and lack of purpose, still seemed essentially harmless. For all Jeff had done, at least as far as I knew of what he had done, he had harmed no one but himself. I had no reason to believe that he would ever do otherwise.” (p. 122)
“More than anything, I allowed myself to believe that there was a line in Jeff, a line he wouldn't cross. It was the line that divided the harm he did to himself from the harm he might do to someone else. In the most general sense, I knew that Jeff had failed to make a life for himself. I knew that he had done poorly in school, and had been unsuccessful in the army. I knew that he had been unable to find anything that seemed to interest him, or to which he could attach himself. I knew that he had not been able to maintain a lasting relationship with anyone outside his immediate family.
I also had to admit that there was a darker side to Jeff, though I didn't allow myself to consider where this darker side might lead.” (p. 127)
Lionel’s description of himself being informed about the homicide investigation shows a shift from perceiving Jeff as a destructively passive figure to seeing his son as an agent of destruction. Instead of being a victim himself, Jeff has victimized others and so remains physically fine despite having corrupted his own name and identity. The resulting discord Lionel experiences is represented in the contrast between his fatherly concern and the cold formality of the police officer as they speak on the phone; the name of his son has an entirely different significance to him than it has to others who cannot separate it from Jeff’s crimes.
Lionel emphasizes his tendency throughout the years of his son’s adulthood to cling to hope that whatever his son was trying at the moment would be the solution to his long lack of purpose and success. If Jeff had died, these hopes would have been lost because there would be no future in which they might come to fruition. What actually happens is, in a sense, worse because he has destroyed his own potential to lead a good life. Thus, the “worst news” for Lionel to hear is not that death has taken his son but that his son has given himself entirely over to the destruction of himself and others.
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