Shirley Hughes, the mother of Jeffrey Dahmer victim Tony Hughes, has spoken out against the Netflix series, Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, which depicts the serial killer’s murders. “I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there,” she said.
In an interview with the Guardian, Shirley, now 85, has joined the growing number of relatives who have slammed Ryan Murphy’s dramatization starring Evan Peters as the gruesome killer who murdered 17 men and teenage boys over 13 years. The series, which has quickly become one of the most watched originals on Netflix, even features Rodney Burford as Tony, a deaf and mute man who was killed in 1991, with Karen Malina White portraying his mother, Shirley.
“I don’t see how they can do that,” she said, with the outlet reporting that she explained “it was difficult to talk about Tony’s murder” before hanging up.
In addition to Shirley, Errol Lindsey’s sister, Rita Isbell, and a cousin named Eric Perry, both lashed out against the limited series for not reaching out to them prior to its debut on Netflix and for “retraumatizing” their experiences.
In an essay for Insider, Isbell, whose emotional victim impact statement was recreated word-for-word onscreen by actress DaShawn Barnes, wrote that what she saw of the series “bothered me, especially when I saw myself – when I saw my name come across the screen and this lady saying verbatim exactly what I said.”
Suddenly, “it felt like reliving it all over again,” she explained. “It brought back all the emotions I was feeling back then.”
Meanwhile, Perry’s comments went viral on Twitter after he said it was “wild” they recreated Isbell’s moment in court. “It’s retraumatizing over and over again, and for what?” he wrote.