A Dahmer fact-check, a minor "Unsolved Mysteries," and ants on a plane

If you dipped into Monster or any other Dahmer-adjacent content over the last week and a half, you may have had the “I broke the story of Jeffrey Dahmer in 1991. Here’s what the new Netflix series got wrong” story from the Independent suggested to you on socials. It’s definitely clickbait, but it’s definitely my job to take said bait, so, while it’s not worth your time to investigate contemporary crime reporter Anne E. Schwartz’s notes on the series, I culled the “highlights” in case you were curious.

• Schwartz headed to the crime scene and found it indifferently guarded by local PD. When she “stuck” her “head in,” nothing struck her as particularly amiss: “I guess the thing that was strange was that it didn’t look strange.” I wouldn’t say this is something Monster got “wrong,” per se. The apartment is production-designed to look grotty, but more is made of…

• “I was a crime reporter for five years so I know what it smells like when you walk into a building with a dead body or a decomposing body. This was not that. This was a very chemical smell.” This I would tend to believe, but it depends on the timeline of Schwartz’s arrival on scene, which isn’t specified (i.e., if crime-scene techs had already removed the remains).

• “Ms Schwartz, who went on to work in communications for the Milwaukee Police Department and Wisconsin Department of Justice, said the depiction of city police officers as racist and homophobic was incorrect.” Oh, well then. 🙄

• The Niecy Nash character lived in a different building, not next door.

• Schwartz updated her “bestselling” 1991 book on the case last year, hmmmmm.