The latest true crime show from Netflix, this time charting the crimes and background of infamous serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, has made a powerful impression on viewers and critics. The series has a sickly feel to it - its yellow-tinged shots transporting us into the warped mind of Dahmer and his miserable Milwaukee apartment where he carried out most of his crimes throughout the 1980s.
There’s a lot to be confounded by in the show, not least of all the headspace of the man himself, but perhaps one of the most striking questions that viewers have is around Dahmer’s yellow eyes, or more specifically the yellow contact lenses that he likes to wear. Yep, that creepy yellow-eyed representation of Dahmer on the Netflix cover for the show isn’t just there for stylisation, it’s based on an actual thing that the notorious killer used to do.
In the show, we first see Dahmer with yellow eyes in Episode 2, after he drugs 14-year-old Lao boy Konerak Sinthasomphone in his apartment. From the first-person perspective of the boy, we see the back of Dahmer on the end of the bed, before he turns around to reveal that he is wearing yellow contact lenses. At first, you think that maybe the yellow eyes are part of the boy’s intoxicated delirium, but then we realise that Dahmer’s actually put them in to present to his victim.
Dahmer then seems eager to show off his contact lenses to his victim, saying that he likes them because they make him look like Emperor Palpatine from Star Wars: Return of the Jedi, who “is so fucking cool.” Throughout the show, Dahmer watches various movies with his victims. Along with Star Wars, another of his favourites was The Exorcist Part III, and in Episode 1 we see him watching a clip from that movie where a demon - again with yellow eyes - attacks a priest attempting to exorcise it from its human host. Both of these movies, and their respective villains, were actually obsessions of Dahmer’s in real life, and not just added to the show for spooky effect.
ALSO READ:As Dusk Falls Creator Talks Choice, The Game’s Launch, And What’s Next
There have been myriad interviews with Dahmer over the years before his death at the hands of a fellow inmate in 1994, but in none of them did he talk about his love of Star Wars, The Exorcist, or The Emperor. The information about his penchant for those movies and yellow contact lenses was first conveyed back in 1992 by Dahmer’s lawyer, Gerald P. Boyle, during the trial. A1992 story by The Washington Postcovering the case said the following:
Boyle said Dahmer became obsessed with two movie characters – the emperor in “Return of the Jedi” and Satan in “The Exorcist III.” Dahmer bought yellow contact lenses in an attempt to resemble the emperor and felt that “because of what he was . . . there was no other entity to relate to other than Satan,” Boyle said.
Tying Dahmer’s movie interests into Satanic worship was probably a bit of a stretch by Boyle. Despite owning a Satanic Bible, Dahmer never expressed an interest in Satanism nor identified as a Satanist, but using ties to Satanism in court would have been very evocative at a time when the US was still in the midst of its so-called “Satanic Panic.”
It’s likely that Boyle’s information regarding the contact lenses being based on The Emperor and the demon from The Exorcist came from psychological evaluations of Dahmer himself, but it’s also likely he embellished the story for the jury. The details are so specific that in all probability Dahmer wore yellow contactsat some pointwith his victims, but we can’t be sure that it was some kind of long-term habit or gimmick for him.
