that s huge for my bottom line. what s in your wallet? 1994, jeffrey dahmer s mother, joyce flint, was tormented, feeling unfairly blamed for her son s horrific crimes. she had planned to write a book tentatively titled an assault on motherhood about her ordeal. in fact, her co-author set next to her during the interview, sometimes interrupting when she felt the questions were too much for joyce to handle. the book was never published but
book tentatively titled an assault on motherhood, and that s how i feel, like i m being assaulted by statements that can t be substantiated, that people have said are not so but here i am one more time having to defend myself. i want to get across that we as women just can t take this kind of thing anymore. if something bad happens to our son or our child there has to be a place for us to go. i want a place for ape all the victims to have a place for where there s some compassion and understanding instead of a blame a blaming. coming up, joyce talks about the pain of feeling blamed for her son s crimes and disputes more of her ex-husband s recollections.
when i interviewed jeffrey dahmer in 1994, his father lionel had just written a book as part of his own painful journey to try and understand how his son became a serial killer. despite regular visits to the prison, father and son had never spoken about many of the topics covered in the book, until our interview. you ve read the book? right. he called it a father s story, pretty simple title. right. not a simple story, though? no, not a simple story. not one that was easy for me to read. but i m glad he wrote it. did it hurt? was it painful to read? yes, it was painful. some parts of it were, for me, were even fun to read. there were good parts to it wasn t all negative.
something he should have shared with me before he ever married me, if he s got some thought that that had anything to do with jeff. you mean his mental state, that you weren t informed? dreaming of murder yes. exactly. obsession with explosives? he never talked to you about any of that? none of that. i think one of the points is it s all clear in retrospect. i mean, he for instance, one of the anecdotes that he tells in the book, joyce, is when jeff was 4 years old and he had crawled lionel had crawled underneath the house to remove some dead animals and he put the bones of dead animals into a bucket. and jeff, at age 4, probably innocently, went over and was playing with the bones and seemed fascinated that absolutely astounds me. excuse me for interrupting you,
causes. but this father and son spoke about both as did dahmer s mother in a rare interview. as you ll see even looking back more than a decade later there are still no easy answers. hi, jeff. how are you? good to see you. good to see you. hi, jeff. stone phillips. hi, mr. phillips. how are you? nice to see you. spending the last few days with your folks. great. talking about a lot of different things. hey, you re lucky that you came up with a day of no snow. it was snowing like crazy all weekend. is that right? yeah. how are things going for you here? oh, slow and steady. nothing nothing out of the ordinary really. you ve read the book? yes, yes, i read the book. my dad sent it to me about last week and spent all night reading it.