Jeffrey Dahmer was so obsessed with Star Wars baddie Emperor Palpatine that he wore yellow contact lenses when he went to gay clubs looking for victims.
The serial killer, who is the subject of a new Netflix series directed by Ryan Murphy and starring Evan Peters, was obsessed with the Return of the Jedi’s dark overlord - and not because he loved how he rocked a cape.
Speaking at his 1992 trial, Park Dietz, a forensic psychiatrist, explained why Palpatine, and characters from The Exorcist 3: Legion, were so important to the Milwaukee Cannibal.
“What these characters have in common is that they are evil and corrupt and powerful, and both have the ability to use special powers to control others. In the case of the Emperor he seems to be zapping people with energy beams of some kind.
"Each of the characters in the scenes that he repeatedly viewed actually torments someone else in a way that might be described as torture, but Mr. Dahmer said that was not what was appealing to him… but that he did identify with the power of these characters.”
Dahmer murdered 17 men between 1978 and 1991, butchering their bodies, dissolving their flesh in acid, keeping skulls as trophies and even eating some body parts.
Dietz told the jury that Dahmer identified with Emperor Palpatine and a character who represented Satan in the third outing of William Blatty’s demonic saga.
“It happens that both those characters are portrayed in the films with yellow eyes that give them an eerie look. And Mr. Dahmer even went to the extreme of buying contact lenses with that yellow tint that he would wear when he went to the clubs.
“He wanted to be more like those people and he describes some sense of using the films to get himself in the proper mood to go out and cruise for a victim. Sometimes he would bring a victim home and watch a portion of the film with them and direct their attention to those scenes, too. So it did play some part in setting the right mood for him to commit these crimes. He explained that he identified with these characters as he felt he was thoroughly evil and corrupt just as these two characters were.”
