The jogger with whom Jeffrey is obsessed turns out to be Dr. To cope, Jeffrey turns to drinking heavily, and begins killing animals himself.
Meanwhile, Joyce starts relapsing into chronic mental illness, leading to increasingly bitter fights between her and Lionel. Derf and his friends form the "Dahmer Fan Club," using Jeffrey for a variety of pranks such as sneaking him in every club yearbook photo, and conning their way to a meeting with then Vice President Walter Mondale during a school field trip to Washington, D.C. Jeffrey inspires Derf to draw him in various situations drawings that would later be incorporated into Derf's graphic novel My Friend Dahmer. During school, Jeffrey imitates the speech and gestures of his mother's interior decorator (who has cerebral palsy), clears his backpack, and makes loud noises, catching the attention of aspiring artist John "Derf" Backderf and his friends. In 1978, Lionel trashes Jeffrey's collection of bones and orders him to make friends at school. This hobby is initiated by his obsessive interest in how animals are "fitted together".
For a hobby, Jeffrey collects dead animals that he dissolves to the bones using chemicals provided by his father, who is a chemist. Jeffrey develops an obsession with a male jogger whom he sees every day from his school bus. In 1974, Jeffrey Dahmer was a high school freshman living in Bath, Ohio, with his parents, Lionel and Joyce, and his younger brother Dave.