Jeffrey Dahmer's Honor Society Photobomb Just Resurfaced On Reddit
The new Netflix limited series, Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, raised questions about the infamous serial killer's involvement with The National Honor Society.
One scene in the 10-episode series shows a young Jeffrey Dahmer quietly sliding into Revere High School's yearbook photo for the honor society, and viewers are left wondering whether the murderer actually made the grades to earn a spot in the elite group.
Two photos, one that blacked Jeffrey's face out, and another where he's clearly shown, are currently circling Reddit and Twitter feeds. Initially, Jeffrey's face was blacked out and erased by the yearbook team.
One of Jeffrey's classmates also added some backstory on the matter. Mike Krukal explained in a previous documentary, Jeffrey Dahmer: Mind of a Monster, that Dahmer's appearance in the photo was a strange prank, per LAD Bible.
"In our senior year, they took photographs of all the groups; they took photographs of the sports groups and the clubs and everything else. And Jeff Dahmer got in group photos that he was not a member of," Krukal said.
Was Jeffrey Dahmer in the National Honor Society?
No. Jeffrey was not a member of the prestigious club at his high school, and in fact, he didn't particularly excel academically, with grades ranging from As to Ds, per the New York Times. This is also depicted in the series, with Jeffrey struggling to figure out what he should do with his life after graduation.
Krukal explained the irony behind Jeffrey's yearbook photo prank while being interviewed for the documentary Mind of a Monster. "In our senior year, Jeff Dahmer was not in that group academically, but he’s in this photograph, and I believe it’s the president of the group had him blacked out. So in all the yearbooks there’s a body without a head," according to Blurred Reality.
The photo wasn't his first prank.
In 1991, the New York Times reported that "Mr. Dahmer was so known for pranks like faking epileptic seizures and sneaking into the yearbook picture of the honor society that, some classmates recall, 'Don't do a Dahmer' became a current phrase."
Later, when he was in prison, Jeffrey would pull pranks like making the food look like severed limbs and dipping them in ketchup, which the other inmate who would eventually beat him to death in 1994 called "unnerving."
People reacted to the photos on Reddit and Twitter.
Here you can see the photo of Dahmer in the yearbook.
Some see the picture as "a symbol of his wasted youth. His face blacked out. The boy who didnt belong,” according to Twitter threads.
A Reddit thread about Jeffrey's blacked-out face in the yearbook photo also got people talking more generally about his high school years and what they'd heard about him.
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"He was very strange in high school. He would make up these fits where he would convulse on the floor and try to appear to be a class clown. Hence why he photo bombed almost every club," a user commented. "His drinking became totally out of hand and he almost didn't graduate. 3 weeks after graduation is when he killed his first victim."
The creepy nature of the photo stands out in the memory of Jeffrey's former classmate. The photo was "one of the first things I thought about when I heard he was arrested for some reason," Krukal said, per Blurred Reality. "I just remembered this strange photograph that is so haunting today to look at and know that this person, right dead center in the middle, is Jeffrey Dahmer."
Jeffrey Dahmer's homicidal habits began in 1978 when he murdered 18-year-old hitchhiker Steven Hicks. Earlier that year, Jeffrey had graduated from high school. Over the next decade, he would go on to kill another 16 times.
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