Tony Hughes is the victim at the centre of one of the most compelling episodes of Netflix's true-crime series Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The 31-year-old was an aspiring model and was heading for a successful career in front of the camera.
Now, Hughes' mother Shirley Hughes, has hit out at the streaming giant and the production claiming that the series doesn't offer an accurate portrayal of what happened. Speaking to The Guardian, Ms Hughes said that she hadn’t seen all of the show, which focuses one episode on her son, who was deaf and just 31 years old at the time of his slaying in 1991. Nonetheless, she’d concluded that “it didn’t happen like that”.
“I don’t see how they can do that,” Hughes told The Guardian, before adding that it was difficult to talk about Tony’s murder and politely ending the call. “I don’t see how they can use our names and put stuff out like that out there.”
Read more: Cannibal serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer focus of new Netflix drama
Those behind the show, including creator Ryan Murphy and lead actor Evan Peters, have insisted that the show strived to put the victims' stories and their families' stories at the centre of their production. Instead, they have faced backlash and criticism for not consulting family members first.
The cousin of victim Errol Lindsey, Eric Perry, wrote on Twitter that his relatives found out about the series when Netflix released it. Perry says that Netflix wasn’t required to consult victims’ families because the events it portrays are public record, but the way things went down re-traumatised the loved ones of those murdered by Dahmer.
Perry’s cousin and Lindsey’s sister, Rita Isbell, who is portrayed as calling Peters’s Dahmer “Satan” in a courtroom scene, wrote an essay for Insider that said the show felt “harsh and careless”. She said it might be different if it benefitted victims' families whatsoever.
“It’s sad that they’re just making money off of this tragedy. That’s just greed,” Isbell said.
Who was Anthony 'Tony' Hughes?
Tony was an aspiring model who lost his hearing permanently as a child. It is claimed that Hughes first met Dahmer at a party in 1989.
After his death, his sister Barbara Hughes-Holt had described her brother as "a party person'' who loved to dance.
"Tony wasn't one that you could fool," she told the Chicago Tribune in 1991. "He wasn't a naive person at all.'"
In the show, Hughes was portrayed by deaf actor and former reality television star Rodney Burford. Burford's performance as Hughes has been praised as compassionate and haunting, but many have found the episode gruelling to watch.
Hughes' murder is believed to have been Dahmer's first attempt to "zombify" his victims. Dahmer drugged Tony and drilled a hole into his skull.
Tony did not survive the horrific experiment and was left on Dahmer’s bedroom floor for three days before the killer dismembered him and preserved his skull.
In the follow-up documentary series, Conversations with a Killer: The Jeffrey Dahmer Tapes, the murderer is heard telling his defence team that he "wanted to keep him with me". Speaking of his experimental lobotomy, he said: "I wanted to see if I could think of a way to keep him with me without actually killing him."
Shirley Hughes, who was teaching a Bible class in Milwaukee when her son was murdered, hasn’t spoken much in public about Tony. She learned of his killing after investigators discovered his skull in Dahmer’s apartment and identified it through dental records.
But, at the time that Dahmer was charged, she told United Press International that she felt relief at knowing why her son had disappeared while also being emotionally shattered by the fate he met.
"It hurts," Shirley Hughes told the wire service. "I shed tears.
"They’re not tears of sorrow, and it’s not disbelief in the Lord. The tears [are] tears of hurt because it hurts.
"It hurts real bad. But you have to trust and pray and just keep going day by day.”
Shirley Hughes constantly attended Dahmer’s court hearings, according to the Associated Press. She was also present to deliver an emotional impact statement in which she recited a poem about her son's murder.
She finished by making the American Sign Language sign for "I love you". She said: "Two fingers and one thumb means ‘I love you’ in sign language.
"When you cry, take one teardrop and place it outside your window ledge and when I pass by, I’ll exchange it for one of mine. Two fingers and one thumb, mom."
Though Dahmer wasn’t known to have money, in 1992, Ms Hughes won a civil court judgment allowing her to intercept $10m of any money offered to the serial killer for movie, publication or television rights to his story.
The Manchester Evening News has contacted Netflix for comment.
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