Was Glenda Cleveland from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story a real person?

Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix. The series isn’t for the faint of heart, it can be a lot for some viewers. Of course, there’s Evan Peters, who plays the titular role. Another character we’re introduced to is Glenda Cleveland, played by Niecy Nash.

The new series is about murderer and sex offender Jeffrey Dahmer. He killed and dismembered 17 men and boys between 1978 and 1991. His later murders involved necrophilia, cannibalism, and the permanent preservation of body parts.

The show, which consists of 10 episodes, exposes the crimes, with the story centering around the victims and their communities. A part of the tale is the systemic racism of the police, which enabled one of the most notorious serial killers in the nation to continue his murderous spree for over a decade.

In the series, Glenda Cleveland is one person who is suspicious of what he does but wasn’t listened to by the cops. When television shows or movies are made about a true story, not all the plot lines or characters necessarily follow the true story. For productions, they sometimes need to dramatize, or feel like an additional role helps tell the story more. Was that the case for the character Glenda Cleveland in the new Netflix series?

Was Glenda Cleveland from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story a real person?

Glenda Cleveland was actually a real person. She was Dahmer’s neighbor who repeatedly tried to alert police of what was happening in the apartment. But as is portrayed in the show, she was ignored multiple times.

According to Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, on May 27, 1991, Cleveland called the police after her daughter and niece found a bleeding, naked, and incoherent boy on the street. He’d been running from Dahmer. That boy turned out to be 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone.

After repeatedly calling police and their eventual arrival, Dahmer convinced them that the boy was an adult, the two were in a relationship, and were having a domestic dispute. The officers believed him and left, which led to Sinthasomphone’s death. It’s believed the serial killer could have been stopped two months earlier if police had listened to Cleveland, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel.

On July 22, 1991, Dahmer was arrested and later went to trial. He was sentenced to sixteen terms of life imprisonment on February 17, 1992. A little over two years later, he was beaten to death by a fellow inmate.

As for Cleveland, she passed away on December 24, 2011, at 56.