Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers may have been household names, but that isn’t the case for the third installment in Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s Netflix anthology series. “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” shines a light on the killer and grave robber who came to inspire “Psycho,” “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “The Silence of the Lambs.”
If those three movies seem too tonally separate to be based on the same man, that’s kind of the point. More than most famous killers, Gein’s story has been defined by contradictory tellings. Based on some of the most shocking moments from the Netflix original, here’s what’s true in “The Ed Gein Story” and here’s what was embellished.
Ed Gein was fascinated by WWII and Nazi Germany: Possibly
That’s a common theory around the killer. Around the time Gein started committing his crimes, more reports and photographs from World War II emerged, exposing the world to the horrors of Nazi Germany. James Buddy Day, the director of “Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein,” noted that Gein owned several detective magazines that detailed the horrors inflicted upon people in concentration camps.
“We actually went back … and you could actually find literal descriptions of things Gein must have read and took, then did, because they match what they found in his house exactly,” Day told Movieweb in 2023.
One of the most direct examples of this has to do with the German war criminal Ilse Koch. The wife of Karl-Otto Koch who ran the Buchenwald concentration camp, she was known for her sadistic cruelty. Over 277,800 people were held prisoner at the camp, and about 56,000 people died before the camp was liberated in 1945. The S.S. in Buchenwald were known for crafting “gifts” made of human remains. Many accused her of owning a lampshade made of tattooed human skin, but those accusations were dropped during her trial as they were made without proof.
Koch was nicknamed “The Bitch of Buchenwald” as well as “The Witch of Buchenwald.” Though TheWrap was unable to find the exact comic referenced in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” sexualized comics detailing the atrocities the Nazis committed did exist. Koch died by suicide in 1967 while in prison.
Gein dated Adeline Watkins: True
Watkins and Gein did have a relationship, but it wasn’t as intense as what appears on Netflix. Shortly after Gein’s arrest, Adeline Watkins told the Minneapolis Tribune that she almost married Gein. In the original article, she described the killer and grave robber as “good and kind and sweet.” Watkins claimed their romance lasted for 20 years and that they talked about books and “every murder that we ever heard about.” She also noted that she sometimes felt she was taking advantage of him and that she was the one who ended their relationship.
“I turned him down, but not because there was anything wrong with him. It was something wrong with me,” Watkins said at the time. “I guess I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to live up to what he expected of me.”
Roughly two weeks later, Watkins gave another interview with the Stevens Point Journal, stating that her relationship with Gein “was blown up out of proportion to its importance ” and that her first interview contained untrue statements. In that second article, she said that she had known Gein for 20 years but only regularly interacted with him after 1954. She also said Gein “called on her” for seven months and refuted calling him “sweet.”
Gein killed Evelyn Hartley: False
At least it’s false according to authorities. Hartley disappeared at the age of 15 in the middle of Gein’s crime spree. In October of 1953, she was babysitting a 20-month-old child. When the baby’s father returned, he found that the doors were locked but furniture throughout the house had been scattered. Though his child was safe, Hartley was nowhere to be found.
A 1,000-person search unit comprised of police officers, Boy Scouts and National Guards looked for Hartley but were unsuccessful. After Gein’s arrest, he became a suspect in the unsolved case. However, the police ultimately dismissed Gein as a suspect.
Some still believe Gein was guilty of her murder, largely because lie detectors can be tricked. When the team behind “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” did their own research around the Hartley disappearance, they walked away thinking it was “irrefutable” that Gein was responsible, series director and co-showrunner told TheWrap.
However, there’s no proof that Gein stalked Hartley after she resumed her babysitting job. That flourish seems as though it was added for dramatic effect and to piece together Gein’s relationship with Watkins.
Gein chased people with a chainsaw: False
That seems to be an invention from “Texas Chain Saw Massacre” director Tobe Hooper. He partially came up with the idea for the revolutionary horror movie while waiting in line a hardware store around Christmas time. Hooper became so agitated by the shoppers around him that he imagined grabbing a chainsaw from a nearby display and mowing down everyone around him.
That was the spark that led to the 1974 indie flick. Hooper and Kim Henkel also drew inspiration from Gein as well as Elmer Wayne Henley, who was involved in the Houston Mass Murders. Specifically, Gein’s creation of a mask made of a human face as well as the way he dissected and strung up Bernice Worden inspired Leatherface.
Gein had sex with the bodies he dug from graves: False
In the Netflix show, Charlie Hunnam’s Gein is shown having sex with a corpse on at lease one occasion. He even refuses to have sex with Adeline (Suzanna Son) because she’s “too warm.”
But the real Gein denied ever having sex with either of the women he murdered or with the bodies he exhumed. Gein said the bodies smelled too bad.
Gein gave his neighbors meat from corpses, claiming it was venison: Possibly
According to locals, Gein was known to give residents of Plainfield meat that he claimed was venison. However, Gein was not know to be a deer hunter, which has led some to wonder if the meat he gifted people actually came from graves.
“Another resident, who was allegedly given ‘venison’ by Gein, politely but firmly closes the door in my face,” Scott Hassett wrote in Isthmus in a piece published in 2007.
Gein helped catch Ted Bundy: False
This is just another example of Gein’s mental illness and inability to separate fact from fiction.
Gein’s tombstone was stolen: True
Though Gein died in 1984, this happened around 2000. The Seattle Post-Intelligencer reported that the tombstone was stolen and added as part of the “Angry White Male Tour.”