Ryan Murphy Claims He Tried to Contact Family of Jeffrey Dahmer Victims While Making ‘Monster,’ But “Not a Single Person Responded”

One of the main controversies swirling around Netflix‘s serial killer series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is that families of victims say they were never contacted about the show. Now, creator Ryan Murphy says he did try and reach out to friends and relatives of the young men killed by Jeffrey Dahmer, but never heard back.

Murphy, whose series tells the story of Dahmer and the 17 men he killed between 1978 and 1991, said he and his team researched the project “for a very long time,” while speaking at the DGA Theatre in Los Angeles on Thursday, per The Hollywood Reporter.

“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,” he said.

Without input from friends and family, Murphy said the Monster team “relied very, very heavily on our incredible group of researchers who…I don’t even know how they found a lot of this stuff,” adding, “But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people.”

Murphy also said during the event that he would be willing to fund a memorial for Dahmer’s victims after Niecy Nash-Betts, who stars in Monster as Glenda Cleveland, questioned why one doesn’t already exist.

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

He continued, “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.”

Murphy’s remarks come after people like Shirley Hughes, the mother of Dahmer victim Tony Hughes, objected to Monster in an interview with The Guardian earlier this month. Shirley’s son, a deaf and mute aspiring model, was killed by Dahmer in 1991, but she said the show’s depiction of his murder was inaccurate.

“I don’t see how they can do that. I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there,” she said at the time.

Before Shirley spoke out, Rita Isbell expressed her own distaste with Monster. Isbell, whose 19-year-old brother Errol Lindsey was murdered by Dahmer, claimed in September that Netflix never contacted her about the show.

“Netflix should’ve asked if we mind or how we felt about making it,” she said, per Insider, claiming the streamer “didn’t ask me anything,” and “they just did it.”