How did serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer's neighbor Glenda Cleveland try to stop him?

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is all set to premiere on Netflix on Wednesday, September 21, 2022. The Evan Peters-starrer mini-series will explore the life and death of the infamous serial killer, who was also accused of cannibalism and assaulting corpses.

There is a lot of information available about the serial killer who claimed at least 15 victims (perhaps even more, according to some reports), so it is possible that viewers may find it difficult to acquaint themselves with every little detail before the mini-series' premiere.

In the chilling trailer for Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story, we see Glenda Cleveland (Niecy Nash) refusing to eat a sandwich from her neighbor Jeffrey Dahmer. According to an article in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel,

"The serial killer could have been stopped two months earlier if police had only listened to [Cleveland]."

Unfortunately, authorities did not follow this lead, possibly delaying the arrest of the serial killer. Read on for more details about Glenda Cleveland, who tried her best to stop Jeffrey Dahmer before the authorities caught up.

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Who was Glenda Cleveland and what did she do to stop Jeffrey Dahmer?

Dahmer was one of the most prolific serial killers of the 1980s. He was active for over 13 years, murdering over 15 young men, mostly of African-American descent.

He preyed on men in gay bars, malls, and bus stops with the promise of s*x or money. Then, he brought them home and gave them alcohol laced with drugs before killing them and assaulting their corpses. He also, allegedly, performed acts of cannibalism.

Glenda Cleveland was Dahmer's neighbor. According to reports, back in 1991, a few months before Jeffrey Dahmer's arrest, Glenda had apparently reported him to the police after her teenage daughter, Sandra Smith, saw something strange happening with their neighbor.

Sandra and Nicole Childress, Glenda's teenage niece, allegedly saw a young boy running away from Dahmer in an alleyway on the morning of May 27, 1991. The boy was bleeding and incoherent.

Glenda reported the incident right away, but the authorities, allegedly, did not probe enough. Sandra Smith said:

"We tried to give the policemen our names, but he just told us to b*tt out . . . I couldn’t understand why he didn’t want our names. I said, 'What are you going to do about this? This is a boy.'"

The police were convinced by Dahmer that the boy in question was his lover, who had been intoxicated at the time. It later turned out that the boy was 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, who had been drugged, assaulted, and injected with hydrochloric acid by Dahmer.

Although Cleveland tried her best, Dahmer managed to wiggle out of the situation. He went on to commit four more murders after that.

In the trailer for the Netflix mini-series, Jeffrey Dahmer is shown offering a sandwich to Glenda that appears to be made out of human meat. Although this incident has not been confirmed in real life, Dahmer reportedly engaged in acts of cannibalism during his crime spree.

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story will explore this case in detail when it airs on Wednesday, September 21, 2022, on Netflix.