Usually, when we think of murderers, we believe that they are terrible people that we shouldn’t feel sorry for. Just because the actor who plays them in a movie is attractive or they get their own reality TV show doesn’t mean they should get away with killing someone. But what if their victim treated them horribly? Does that justify their actions or make what they did “okay?”
A very famous case is Gypsy Rose Blanchard-Anderson. At a young age, her mother Dee-Dee Blanchard started claiming Blanchard-Anderson had various health problems, such as muscular dystrophy. This caused her mother to believe her daughter needed a wheelchair and serious medical treatments. Later in June of 2015, Blanchard-Anderson and her then boyfriend stabbed Blanchard 17 times in her sleep. Blanchard-Anderson was sentenced to a 10-year-long sentence for her role in the crime but later got out after eight years of good behavior. In June 2024, Blanchard-Anderson and Ryan Anderson, her husband at the time, released a docuseries about their life: “Gypsy-Rose: Life After Lock Up.” According to Biography website, Blanchard-Anderson says in a voiceover, “This docuseries chronicles my quest to expose the hidden parts of my life that have never been revealed… until now.” Blanchard-Anderson has maintained that her mother’s abusive behavior was the motivation behind her murder, but I don’t think what she planned out was okay in any way, and the fact that it is making her famous is not okay.
Lyle and Erik Menendez are two more convicted murderers who might be accused of using their parents’ murder for attention. On Aug. 20, 1989, the brothers shot their parents a total of 16 times in their family living room. Both brothers testified that their father had threatened to kill them if they admitted to the public that he was abusing them.
On Sept. 19, 2024, the limited series “Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story” was released on Netflix and tells the dramatized story of the brothers. The brothers and family have stated they don’t really want anything to do with it despite the positive reaction it is getting online. On Sep. 25, the brother’s aunt released a statement on X saying “Ryan Murphy’s ‘Monsters, the Lyle and Erik Menéndez Story’ is a phobic, gross, anachronistic, serial episodic nightmare that is not only riddled with mistruths and outright falsehoods…” But many fans aren’t really taking the actual story seriously and mainly seem to focus on the fact that the actors in the series are attractive. Nicholas Alexander Chavez, who plays Lyle, and Cooper Koch, who plays Erik, have recently risen to fame on TikTok, with edits of them on the show going viral. This made the old case more popular, with some fans justifying their actions simply because the actors are attractive. From what I’ve seen online, people claim that what they did was 100 percent okay because of that, but what Gypsy did wasn’t.
On the topic of “Monsters,” the first season of the Netflix series was about Jeffery Dahmer, one of the most notorious killers of the late 70s to early 90, also known as the Milwaukee Cannibal or the Milwaukee Monster. Dahmer’s first murder was in 1978, but he wouldn’t be arrested until 1991. According to the New York Post, Dahmer ate his victims for a more vulnerable reason: “He said he chose to eat them because he wanted them to be part of him…He was so desperate, so desperately lonely, so ashamed of being gay.”
In Feb. 1992, Dahmer was sentenced to 15 consecutive life terms in prison but was later killed in prison two years later. “Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story” aired on Netflix on Sept. 21, 2022, and starred Evan Peters. Soon after the show came out, fans started dressing up as Dahmer for Halloween. Like the Menendez brothers, the killer was idolized and became famous because of his attractiveness in the show. Like Koch and Chavez, Peters grew popular on TikTok, with edits and Halloween costumes of his character being made popular.
We shouldn’t idolize and swoon over murderers because that doesn’t make what they did okay. The fact that people make what Dahmer and the Menendez brothers okay because their actors are attractive isn’t okay. With Blanchard-Anderson, the fact that she got her reality TV show because she was popular online is crazy. On the other hand, it is okay to feel sympathy for them. But for now, let’s refrain from dressing up as them for Halloween.
