Ryan Murphy Says He Contacted '20 of the Victims' Families and Friends' While Preparing for Dahmer Series

Ryan Murphy says he and his team reached out to many victims' family and friends for Dahmer - Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.

While the record-breaking Netflix original has received some backlash from victims' families, Dahmer creator Murphy claims they reached out with the hopes of having people close to the victims involved with the series. 

"It’s something that we researched for a very long time," said Murphy. "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," he continued. "But it was just like a night and day effort to us trying to uncover the truth of these people."

Despite the criticism from victims' families, Murphy says he wants to do more for them. Actress Niecy Nash, who stars as Dahmer's neighbor Glenda Cleveland in the series, raised questions about why no memorial had been created for the victims, and Murphy responded that he'd like to help make that happen.

"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. 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."

Dahmer: Monster - The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is streaming on Netflix. 

Jade Budowski is a freelance writer with a knack for ruining punchlines and harboring dad-aged celebrity crushes. She was previously a reporter/producer at Decider and is a member of the Television Critics Association. Follow her on Twitter: @jadebudowski.