Reporter who ‘broke’ the Jeffrey Dahmer story points out all the things that were fake in the Netflix series

Anne E. Schwartz, the reporter who broke the Jeffrey Dahmer case, has pointed out that Ryan Murphy’s series is merely a ‘dramatisation’.

While many are loving Netflix’s Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, the journalist was quick to point out that the show took a great deal of ‘artistic license’ as many significant details do not ‘bear a great deal of resemblance to the facts of the case’, as per The Independent.

Anne, who worked for the Milwaukee Journal in 1991, recently sat down with the outlet to share her thoughts on the series depicting police officers who worked on the case as racist and homophobic. 

She said: “I’ve spent a lot of time with them, interviewing the people who were at the scene. Again this is a dramatisation, but at a time when it is not exactly easy for law enforcement to get trust and buy in from the community, it’s not a very helpful representation.”

Netflix

In the Netflix show, Glenda Cleveland, who first told police about Jeffrey’s strange behaviour, is portrayed as living in the Oxford Apartments building along with the serial killer. However, in reality, she lived in a separate building.

Anne added: “In the first five minutes of the first episode you have Glenda Cleveland knocking on his door. None of that ever happened.

“I had trouble with buy-in, because I knew that was not accurate. But people are not watching it that way, they’re watching it for entertainment.”

Anne was one of the first reporters to enter the serial killer’s infamous Oxford Apartments home, where he killed and dismembered the bodies of his victims.

While she noted that the Milwaukee Cannibal’s apartment looked normal on the surface, officers quickly learnt of his crimes by discovering polaroid pictures of his victims.

REUTERS / Alamy Stock Photo

After Anne reported on Jeffrey’s atrocities, she published her bestselling book, The Man Who Could Not Kill Enough, about the case in 1991.

The former reporter told the Independent that after her book was released, she received a phone call from Jeffrey himself.

He notified her that he hated how she depicted his parents in the book, as she insinuated they had made their son a killer, especially his father, who taught him how to preserve and bleach animal bones.

She told the outlet that Jeffrey was exceptionally protective of his parents.

But while Jeffrey ripped into her work, she observed that ‘he had no inflection in his voice. He was so vanilla, he was so flat. There was nothing. He just said no one was responsible for what I did except me’.