"It's famous for beer and cheese, and a serial killer."
This is how Kiwi David Farrier, host of the hit Netflix series Dark Tourist, nonchalantly announces the beginning of his trip to Milwaukee to join a tourist on the trail of notorious cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, who hediscovered had penned what could be the most haunting drawing on Earth.
Dahmer notoriously killed, dismembered — and in some cases ate — 17 men and boys from 1978 to 1991. Their body parts were discovered in his apartment, including three heads preserved in a fridge.
American serial killer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer. Photo / Getty Images
The "Milwaukee Monster", who had homosexual fantasies and would drug and rape his victims, was busted in 1991 when one managed to escape. He was sentenced to 900 years in jail before being murdered by a fellow inmate in 1994.
Dahmer has attracted quite the cult following over the years and Tickle creator Farrier met with one fanatic called Natalie — a self-proclaimed "dark tourist".
She enthusiastically explains why his story is so fascinating: "There's never been a case quite like his, where there were lobotomies, attempts to turn people into zombies, cannibalism, all of this in one.
"He wasn't a sadist either, he actually granted the small mercy of drugging and strangling his victims … before the eviscerations."
Then, things get weird when she pulls out the skull of a "South American male" and when Ferrier asks if there are similarities between her and Dahmer, she denies it but confesses she's "weird".
The Dahmer sketch is chilling. Photo / Supplied
A detail of the sketch.
But things got a whole lot stranger when the duo met with Dahmer's lawyer Wendy Patrickus, who pulls out a piece of paper that her client had given her detailing the twisted shrine he had built in his apartment.
Kiwi David Farrier in the Dark Tourist episode. Photo / Supplied
"He saved the entire bodies of these two on the end … he had a thing for hands, he'd save the hands a lot of times and obviously the penis," she explains, pointing to the drawing.
"He had this lamp that had these globes that went over the top of each one of the skulls that he would have to kind of highlight it. And then he would just sit there in his chair and it was his own little shrine to himself."
A detail of the sketch.
Farrier's shocked expression says it all, as he struggles to comprehend what he's seeing. Natalie sits there seemingly in a trance as she absorbs the details of the image, while fiddling with her necklace
"It's so odd because it's almost like a child's drawing and yet it's about something so incredibly … I mean this is like True Detective (an American TV show) or something right, but beyond," Farrier says.
"Way beyond", Wendy agrees.
He continues: "It's so eerie thinking of Dahmer drawing this, and signing it."
Farrier met with one fanatic called Natalie. Photo / Supplied
As they leave the room, Farrier asks Natalie "How was that for you." She gushes over how incredible it was.
"Seeing the papers that she has, the drawing of the shrine that he made, I couldn't take my eyes off it."
He agrees that the simple line drawling was "captivating".
"As someone who's never killed anyone, or made a trophy room full of skulls, it's kind of fascinating getting inside the mind of someone who has," Farrier continues.
"I think that's why people like me and Natalie are drawn to this stuff, it's like taking a weird holiday, some escapism before going back to your normal dull existence. Grateful you're alive and don't have any corpses rotting in your bathtub."
Dahmer was sentenced to 900 years in prison, where he was killed by an inmate. Photo / Getty Images
He concluded: "We're all sickos Natalie, that's what I think. We just didn't know it till now."
A scene from Dark Tourist. Photo / Supplied
The segment also shows the duo venturing into Shakers Bar, the hub of the Dahmer tourism industry, to meet the guides from the Cream City Cannibal Tour who take tourists to the streets where Dahmer picked up seven of his 17 victims, including Club 219.
The tour is dominated by women in their 30s, and apparently a lot of bachelorette parties are held there too.
Here's one final grisly detail the tourists are told: Dahmer had tried to create a sex slave that wouldn't have any needs, wouldn't speak or do much in general. But he still wanted them alive, so he drilled a few centimetres into their skulls, and poured boiling water inside.
- David Farrier's Dark Tourist season 1 is available on Netflix
