Right now on eBay, buyers can get their hands on a Joe Exotic/”Tiger King” costume. They can bid on Jack the Ripper outfits, top hat and cape included. Or any number of “sexy” versions fictional murderous characters. There are even costumes for a fictional “Night Stalker,” though they don’t resemble Richard Ramirez at all.
What they can’t do is bid on a Jeffrey Dahmer Halloween costume — not the glasses, not a wig — no matter how much they loved the Netflix’s hit miniseries “Dahmer.” Not even a gray hoodie, beige jacket or striped shirt if they are advertised in connection to the cannibalistic serial killer.
EBay, which did not respond immediately to The Times’ request for comment Thursday, has pulled all items invoking Dahmer from its website, according to BuzzFeed News.
“Items closely associated with or that benefit violent felons, their acts, or crime scenes within the past 100 years” are prohibited on the auction website under eBay’s “violence and violent criminals” policy.
(That’s the same policy that prevents the sale of “[f]ilms, images, or devices that contain or claim to contain real acts of violence, rape, execution, torture, crime scenes, morgues, dead bodies or body parts of dead persons.” So — it’s a good thing.)
Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms without possibility of parole in 1992 after pleading guilty to the murders of 15 young men and boys he lured to his Wisconsin residence. He drugged his victims and then killed them, butchered them and had sex with the corpses. He ate some body parts.
Dahmer confessed to killing 17 people — one in Ohio, the rest in Wisconsin — between 1978 and his July 1991 arrest. A Wisconsin judge dismissed his insanity plea before sentencing him. Dahmer later received a 16th life sentence for the Ohio murder. There was insufficient evidence to prosecute one of the Wisconsin killings.
Dahmer was beaten to death by another prison inmate in November 1994, at age 34.
Netflix’s “Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” which premiered in September, is the streamer’s second-most-watched English-language show, behind the sci-fi/horror juggernaut “Stranger Things.” “Conversations With a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes,” a documentary about the killings, is also available on Netflix.
So, those who simply can’t make it through Halloween without dressing up as Dahmer will have to buy their creepy 1980s aviator glasses elsewhere.
However, if they want an “If you can’t beat ‘em, eat ‘em” shirt featuring the killer’s face, those were still available Thursday on eBay.
