Ariana Grande wishes she could have had dinner with serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, and Shirley Hughes, the mother of Tony Hughes, one of Dahmer’s victims, is not having it. Shirley slammed the “Thank u, Next” singer, voicing her outrage to TMZ.
Grande was recently a guest on the “Podcrushed” audio podcast when she admitted with a laugh that she “would have loved to meet” the infamous killer and sex offender who murdered 17 men and boys, most of whom were Black.
She recounted a bizarre story on the podcast hosted by “Gossip Girl” actor Penn Badgley. Years ago, she was having a Q&A with young fans accompanied by their parents when a child asked her, “If you can have dinner with anyone, living or dead, who would it be?”
“I was like, oh, you’re so cute. Mom and Dad, can I give the real answer?” Grande said on the podcast, revealing her response to audible gasps in the studio. The pop icon continued, “Jeffrey Dahmer is pretty fascinating. I would have loved to have met him.” She then joked that she would want “a third party” along, presumably for protection.
Shirley said she found it disturbing that the singer would mention Dahmer so casually and show such a lack of empathy for the victims’ loved ones. She added that it brought back painful trauma for her family. “To me, it seems like she’s sick in her mind,” she told TMZ. “It’s not fancy or funny to say you would have wanted to do dinner with him. It’s also not something you should say to young people, which she says she did.”
Tony’s sister, Barbara Hughes, also voiced her displeasure, telling TMZ that Grande’s comments glamorized the horrific killer. She called on the singer to publicly apologize so her young fans would understand this wasn’t right.
“Unfortunately, until it happens to her and her family, she just doesn’t know what we have been through,” said the sister.
Grande also revealed that she was “infatuated” with serial killers from a young age, prompting concerned questions from onlookers.
“Why does nobody else find this incredibly weird,” asked one shocked X user. “Where’s the media training for celebs nowadays?” queried another.
Tony Hughes was a deaf, non-verbal gay model living in Madison, Wisconsin, when he was targeted and murdered by the infamous killer in 1991. “Jeffrey Dahmer picked him up, took him home, drugged him, dismembered his body, and kept his skull,” according to The Associated Press. Considered to be one of the most gruesome murderers in modern history, he admitted to eating some of his victims’s body parts, including their hearts. He was also widely believed to be a racist and was serving 15 consecutive lifetime sentences when he was beaten to death in prison in 1994.
Tony’s tragic story was depicted in the Netflix series “Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story,” which was criticized by the victims’ families when it was released in 2022 for not emphasizing the stories of those who were killed. When actor Evan Peters won the Golden Globe for his portrayal of Dahmer, Shirley publicly slammed the series as romanticizing the serial killer, stating it’s “a shame that people can take our tragedy and make money.”
