dahmer and the head (plus other assorted goodies) in the box

[Anne Frasier]

a few nights ago i was flipping through channels and came across an old interview with jeffrey dahmer and his dad. the spin was that there was nothing in dahmer's past that could have brought about such deviant behavior. then they both proceed to tell the story of the head in the box. dahmer's dad came to visit him and found a locked box. dad flipped out, thinking it was porn. they fought about it. his dad was going to take the box to the basement and break off the lock to expose the porn, which wasn't really porn but a severed head.

dahmer was an adult at this time, and as i listened to both their stories i just kept thinking how odd and extreme his dad's reaction was.

[Steve Allan]

See?!? Denying someone their porn will lead to bad bad things. Now, I'm off to tell my wife this. :)

[p. b. smith]

Dad's reaction tells me he had some deeply buried reservations about his son. I remember reading Dahmer's father was very upset when his son's homosexual orientation was revealed. Maybe he's homophobic and thought it was gay porn?

Wonder what Dahmer would have done if Dad had broken the lock and discovered the head? Would Dad's head have gone into the box next?

[Anne Frasier]

steve, good luck with that. :D

p.b.: i don't know much about dahmer, but i suspected dad's homophobia was at the root of his severe reaction.

[David Terrenoire]

I apologize, but I can't help but think of getting head jokes. I'm wrong, I know. So wrong.

[Anne Frasier]

well, we're waiting....
:D

[Robert Gregory Browne]

I don't know why, but I keep getting this image of a dad and his son sitting around joking about a head in a box. "Oh, jeez, remember that time I found that locked box in your apartment and I thought it was porn?"

Dahmer laughs. "Yeah, that was frickin' hilarious." He turns to the interviewer. "My old man's getting all upset because he thinks I'm holding out on him, thinks I've got all this porn I'm not sharing -- "

"Well, you always were stingy with the porn."

"-- and the whole time all I've got is this stupid kid's head in the box and Dad's getting upset over nothing."

Then the two start laughing uproariously and the interviewer joins in.

[Anne Frasier]

LOL! that would make a great SNL skit!

[RJ]

I watched this in stunned disbelief - How on earth can someone say that there was "nothing in his past that could have been interpreted as deviant behavior." I found the interest in "road kill" to be a pretty large red flag. The dismembering & attempts to perform an autopsy certainly doesn't seem to be pointing the way to sainthood.
The whole, he said - she said, between Mr. & Mrs. Dahmer seemed to me a mute point, all things considered. I do however, congratulate the brother for taking the initiative to distance himself and go on with his life. Changing his name was the best thing he could have done. (There's no way he would have ever gotten out of the long shadow cast by the actions of his brother.)

[Anne Frasier]

yeah, it seemed like a lot of clues were overlooked during the course of the interview, which strangely enough dealt with why a person would do such things. maybe the dahmers were basically in control of the interview, and maybe this was JD's attempt to remove all blame from his parents.

[norby]

It would seem to me that Dahmer's father probably had an idea that there was something wrong with his kid (even if you ignore all the warning signs that had to have been there throughout his childhood). Not to mention-wouldn't the box have smelled a little funky?

[Anne Frasier]

norby, i wondered about the smell too. had to have been really airtight or mummified. i even wondered if it was true. maybe it was really just porn. :D

[Mary Dee]

Somewhere, probably in Newsweek, I read that Jeffrey Dahmer's mother had been heavily medicated during her pregnancy. From a very early age he suffered from pica (spelling) or the need to eat strange things, especially road kill. The kid was never normall. Pornography would have been a good thing but he was not that healthy.