Now, when I look at photographs of my son at this age, I can't help but wonder if strange shapes were already forming in his mind, odd notions that he himself could not understand, vague fantasies that might have frightened even him, but which he could not keep at bay.

Looking at all the baby and boyhood photos of Jeffrey, it wasn't hard to sympathize for the potential that was lost in Jeffrey himself. The book does give some insight into what may have caused Jeffrey Dahmer to become the killer the world know him as.On July 23, 1991, Milwaukee chemist Lionel Dahmer discovered - along with the rest of the world - that his son Jeffrey was a murderer who, over a period of many years, had carried out some of the most ghastly crimes ever committed in the United States. He says very firmly that all this shoving the responsibility onto this person or that person or alcohol or drugs, it’s all bullshit.

But as we both separately realized, even this light, generally relaxing activity, so common among ordinary people at the end of the working day, was now filled with extreme and unavoidable tension for us. It was absolutely a sad read, and left me feeling for everyone involved in Dahmer’s murders, but I’m glad I’ve read it. While Lionel seemed slightly untrustworthy or hypocritical at times, he provided a perspective on Jeffrey that I had never really heard before. He tries out the blame shoe on everybody and everything—media, drugs, Mom, school, genetics, and mostly himself.Lionel Dahmer shares his and his son's tragic and sad story and provides some theories on why his son came to be a pedophile and necrophiliac monster, you could sense while you're reading the book that he's in unbelievable mental anguish, guilt ridden, blaming him self for it and his wife and struggling to make sense of what happened and trying to rationalize it. Lionel Dahmer bravely confesses his own early experiments with perversity, a long stint as a pyromaniac culminating in almost burning down a neighbors garage, attempting to hypnotize a girl when he was thirteen in the hopes of "having [his] way with her" and his own dissociative personality that was a lesser version of what developed in his son.