What Happened To Jeffrey Dahmer's Mother, Joyce, In Real Life?

The 2022 release of Netflix's true crime series "Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story" sparked renewed interest in the early '90s serial killer. The drama chronicles the life of the infamous Jeffrey Dahmer (Evan Peters) and details his arrest, trial, and imprisonment, while also focusing on how the fallout from Dahmer's crimes affected his family, his victims' families, and the Milwaukee Police Department. 

Of all the real-life characters depicted in the series, viewers have developed a particular interest in Dahmer's mother, Joyce Flint (Penelope Ann Miller). The real-life Flint passed away from breast cancer on November 27, 2000, at the age of 64, and while many people close to Dahmer — including his father, Lionel Dahmer — have written books about their experiences with the serial killer, Flint repeatedly turned down paid interviews and refused to make money off her son's villainous notoriety.

Joyce Annette Flint was born in Columbus, Wisconsin, on February 7, 2023. She received her master's degree in counseling and married Lionel Dahmer in August 1959. Flint gave birth to Jeffrey and his younger brother, David, before she and Dahmer divorced in 1978. Before her death, Flint developed a close relationship with Bill Janz, a reporter from the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. His obituary of her, plus the few select interviews she granted in the nine years between her son's arrest and her death, are enough to give us some insight into the final portion of her life.

Joyce Flint moved to Fresno, California, in the late '80s, where she managed a retirement residence. In 1991, she joined the Central Valley AIDS Team, but her life was derailed when, in July of that year, her son Jeffrey Dahmer was arrested and charged with killing and mutilating the bodies of 17 men and boys. Flint continued her work with AIDS patients after Dahmer's arrest, and in 1996, she founded The Living Room, an HIV community center.

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel columnist Bill Janz reported in Flint's obituary that after Dahmer's imprisonment, he continued to speak to his mother from prison "usually once a week, by telephone." When she wasn't speaking with her son, Flint was left to wrestle with his actions. In a 1993 interview with "Hard Copy" (via YouTube), Flint said she was blamed for her son's choices but that she believed his urges were not a result of how he was raised. "Intellectually, I knew ... that I'd done a good job as a parent," she said. "I knew this had to come from something outside of Jeff. ... We still do blame mothers."

In spite of what she told the press, Flint struggled internally with the idea that she somehow influenced Dahmer's choices. The LA Times reported that Dahmer told his lawyer Gerard Boyle that his mother was an excellent parent, but Boyle said, "She had to live with the idea that she was the mother of a monster, and it drove her crazy."

After Jeffrey Dahmer was killed in a Wisconsin prison in 1994, Joyce Flint and her ex-husband, Lionel Dahmer, were involved in a very public disagreement over what to do with his brain. Jeffrey Dahmer had requested that he be cremated after his death, but Flint advocated for donating his brain to science so researchers could investigate whether there were any biological factors that could account for his actions. "I want something useful to come from this nightmare," she told Bill Janz, as Janz reported in her obituary.

Flint's hopes were contested by Lionel Dahmer, who requested that Jeffrey's brain be cremated along with the rest of his body in accordance with his son's wishes and to help provide closure for the victims and their families. A judge sided with Lionel Dahmer, and Jeffrey and his brain were cremated.

Flint struggled emotionally with her son's crimes and is believed to have attempted to take her own life at least two times. In March 1994, months before her son was killed, it was reported that Flint was found lying face down in her home with her gas oven door open, along with a will and a handwritten letter. Bill Janz wrote that Flint tried again in May 1996 on what would have been her son's birthday. Her attempt failed, and she told Janz that she asked herself, "What makes you think you can get off the planet when you want to?"