By his own admission, Lionel Dahmer makes an unreliable witness. A research chemist at home with hard facts and uneasy with people, he admits that even before his son’s crimes came to light, “I did not possess any particular insight into his character."-He confesses that he was oblivious to his son, and the evidence he supplies is persuasive. He didn’t recognize his son’s alcoholism. He never thought his son was particularly odd until Jeffrey’s grandmother found a male mannequin in the closet. Not until Jeffrey’s trial did Lionel find out that his little boy had once kept a dog’s head on a stick.
Lionel is haunted by the idea that had he been a better father, he might have averted Jeffrey’s descent into evil. Yes, but. Maybe. The world is full of lousy dads, messed-up sons and sad, broken families. That is no sure-fire recipe for a serial killer. There are too many pieces missing from this puzzle to make sense of it. But if ‘A Father’s Story” is an inconclusive curiosity, an oddball piece of flotsam. it is not without merit. In stark contrast to the tabloid media, which tame our monsters by turning them into cartoons, Lionel Dahmer reminds us with a host of mundane details that his son is human. That’s the most frightening, mysterious fact in this story.
Ironically, having tried to retrieve Jeffrey from the machinery of sensationalism, Lionel Dahmer and his publishers now seem inclined to undo their handiwork. Lionel has agreed to appear with Stone Phillips on NBC’s “Dateline,” where for the cameras he confronts his son in prison, and be is pondering talk-show dates. For their part, Dahmer’s publishers claim that they will market his story “with dignity,” but that seems to translate into: this book isn’t just for people who move their lips when they read. According to Paul Bresnick, Dahmer’s editor at William Morrow, “You could describe our overall packaging strategy this way: take the high road, with the conviction that this is a unique opportunity to publish an important document.” P. T. Barnum couldn’t have said it better.
