Jeffrey Dahmer’s dad has disturbing theory about his son, as Monsters hits Netflix again

The Menendez brothers’ story isn’t the only Monsters series on Netflix: If you were invested in the brothers, you definitely remember watching Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story two years prior. The shows are very similar and both directed by Ryan Murphy, and many people have had their say about whether Lyle and Erik should be freed from prison. However, the reception is mixed, and Lyle even mentions in the show that people are comparing them to Dahmer, which opens up a whole new line of questions.

To compare Erik and Lyle Menendez to Jeffrey Dahmer on Monsters is a pretty insane stretch, and Lionel Dahmer, the father of Jeffrey, has expressed his own theory about why his grew up to commit heinous crimes. The theory basically nullifies any argument that Jeffrey and the brothers are similar in any way. But, what was Lionel’s theory, and does it actually make sense?

The real Lionel Dahmer had a lot to say in interviews about why he believes his son turned out the way he did, and you’ll notice his main argument revolves around Joyce Dahmer, Jeffrey’s mother, and her constant use of different pills while she was pregnant with him.

Lionel, who died last year at 87, talked publicly about the pills during an interview on CBS Inside Edition. He told viewers that his ex-wife had been taking “about 26 tablets of different medications about one month after becoming pregnant.”

“She never even held him. She scared the s**t out of him. And then she just left. She got in her car, and she drove away, and she left that kid in that house all summer,” he said.

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In the interview with Dr. Phil, Shari Dahmer, Jeffrey’s stepmother claimed that: “When Jeff was born, the grandparents were not allowed to hold the baby. Joyce didn’t want anyone touching the baby, or breathing on it. She was afraid of germs.”

Another interesting plot point in the show was in the eighth episode of the show, where Lionel is seen writing a novel – a real book that got published in 1994.

His book, A Fathers’ Story, was a very emotional account of Jeffrey’s early life, but also expressed the same concerns about Joyce’s pills.

via Netflix

He ended the book on a very charged statement, denying any knowledge of Jeffrey’s actions, or any indicators of who he would grow up to be: “How could anyone believe that his son could do such things? How was it possible that all of this had been hidden from me – not only the horrible physical evidence of my son’s crimes, but the dark nature of the man who had committed them, this child I had held in my arms a thousand times, and whose face, when I glimpsed it in the newspapers, looked like mine?”

In the Dahmer season of Monsters, Lionel, played by Richard Jenkins, speaks about what the reasoning behind his behaviour could have been, and again pins a lot of the blame on Dahmer’s mother.

via Netflix

He said that: “You do know that pills are what started this whole thing.

“How many pills you think she was on when she was pregnant with him? Thousands. She was on sleeping pills, sedatives, seizure medication.” This theory addressed on Monsters was the reason his dad believed resulted in the behaviour of his disturbed son, Jeffrey Dahmer.

It’s actually brought up several more times in the show. During a heated altercation with Jeffrey’s mother Joyce outside of the courtroom, he screams “You still on those pills, huh? How many are you f*****g taking?” The show made it out to seem that Lionel and Joyce both had very different theories about what really caused their son’s behaviour, and it’s pretty obvious this was the case in reality thanks to the pair’s many televised interviews.

The Menendez brothers stood by their argument that they had received sexual abuse from their parents, and their one-off murder was an act of self-defence, unlike the string of victims Jeffrey created. The two Monsters cases just can’t be compared, and the theory Lionel Dahmer had proves it.

Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story is available on Netflix now. For all the latest Netflix news, drops and memes like The Holy Church of Netflix on Facebook.

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• A side-by-side look at the Netflix Monsters cast and eerily similar real people they play