Though it’s been over 30 years since Milwaukee Monster’s reign of terror ended, Jeffrey Dahmer’s heinous crimes have received renewed interest with Netflix’s limited series Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story.
The spotlight on the prolific serial killer comes at the cost of salting the wounds of those personally affected by the atrocities he committed. One of those affected was Cola Styles, who met Dahmer when she found one of his victims naked outside, beaten and bloodied.
Although she called 911 to help the nearly unresponsive boy, 14-year-old Konerak Sinthasomphone, police believed Dahmer’s claims that Sinthasomphone was his 19-year-old lover. Despite the pleas of Styles and her aunt Glenda Cleveland to let the police realize that Sinthasomphone was in grave danger, they released the boy into the care of the killer.
Dahmer would later tell investigators that he killed and dismembered Sinthasomphone shortly after authorities left his apartment that night; he would commit four more murders between that night and his arrest two months later.
Styles sits with Milwaukee’s Spectrum News 1 after the release of the Netflix series and says she’s been unable to watch the countless movies, shows, specials and documentaries that have emerged from Dahmer’s case.
In fact, she says she wishes she could wipe the experience from her memory.
“I wondered if I could be hypnotized so I could block that part of my life. I really didn’t want to think about it,” says Styles, who has been using an alias to distance himself from the case since the early 1990s. , said.
Styles Details Meeting Dahmer: I Saw a ‘Streak of Evil’
Styles was only 17 years old when she encountered the dazed Sinthasomphone outside her aunt’s apartment in Milwaukee. Unbeknownst to her, Sinthasomphone had been drugged by Dahmer and injected hydrochloric acid into his skull.
Styles called 911 and was comforting the boy when she was approached by Dahmer. The killer first tried to joke with Styles and her cousin to get them to release Sinthasomphone for him, then got aggressive when they didn’t buy his act.
“When I told him we had called 911, he joked that ‘Jim’ had drifted from drunkenness. But then Jim’s name kept changing. And when he saw I wasn’t buying it, I saw a hint of evil in him. And then he roughly took the boy, trying to take him away, his arm was pulled and twisted a lot, just be very aggressiveStyles told Fox News in 2020.
“I just couldn’t understand why he made it so hard for me to know that help was on the way. I just didn’t feel right about it,” she added.
Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is now streaming on Netflix.