Ryan Murphy says he reached out to families of Dahmer’s victims but ‘not a single person responded’

Relatives of Jeffrey Dahmer’s victims spoke out against the popular series

Ryan Murphy has said that he reached out to the families of Jeffrey Dahmer’s families, but “not a single person responded”.

Netflix released Murphy’s thriller Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story last month, starring Evan Peters as the serial killer and cannibal.

Since its arrival on the platform, the show has been met with controversy with viewers complaining about its many gruesome scenes. Many people also said that the series was exploitative.

Family members of Dahmer’s victims – including the mother of Tony Hughes, who was among more than a dozen men killed – condemned the show.

Eric Perry – a cousin of Errol Lindsey, another of Dahmer’s victims – tweeted that the series was “retraumatising” his family.

Murphy has since addressed the controversy, claiming that he attempted to contacted the families of Dahmer’s victims.

Speaking at a Dahmer promotional event in Los Angeles, Murphy said – as per We Got This Covered – that his production team reached out to 20 of the victim’s families in the process of making the series but heard nothing back.

He said: “And we, over the course of the three, three and a half years when we were really writing it, working on it, we reached out to 20, around 20 of the victims’ families and friends trying to get input, trying to talk to people and not a single person responded to us in that process.

“So we relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers who… I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff. But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.”

Murphy said he would be “happy” to pay for a memorial for Dahmer’s victims, stating that he has been trying to “get a hold of people” to talk about making that a reality.

Conversations With A Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes (Netflix) (Netflix © 2022)

“Anything that we could do to get that to happen, you know, I would even be happy to pay for it myself. I do think there should be something. And we’re trying to get a hold of people to talk about that,” he said.

“I think there’s some resistance because they think the park would attract people who are interested in paying homage to the macabre… but I think something should be done.”

The true-crime series was watched for 196.2 million hours in its first week, making Dahmer the platform’s most watched new show ever in its first week.

Dahmer murdered 17 men and boys between the years 1978 and 1991. He was arrested in 1991 and was murdered in prison three years later.