What's real and what's fiction in Netflix's Ed Gein series, 'Monster' JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal SentinelOctober 7, 2025 at 3:10 AM 0 What's real and what's fiction in Netflix's Ed Gein series, 'Monster' "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" appeared at No.
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JR Radcliffe, Milwaukee Journal SentinelOctober 7, 2025 at 3:10 AM
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What's real and what's fiction in Netflix's Ed Gein series, 'Monster'
"Monster: The Ed Gein Story" appeared at No. 1 on Netflix's self-selected "Top 10" this weekend, just as two previous intstallments of the series from producer Ryan Murphy have done. And like the previous two, including an Emmy Award-winning 2022 series about Milwaukee serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer, the story of Ed Gein has a number of exaggerations and fabrications over its eight episodes.
So what's fact and what's fiction? Here's what we know, with information drawn primarily from past reporting and books "The Ed Gein File: A Psycho's Confession and Case Documents," produced and edited by John Borowski, and "Ed Gein: Psycho" by Paul Anthony Woods.
Warning: This article contains spoilers for "Monster: The Ed Gein Story" and includes descriptions of the graphic details portrayed.
How many people did Ed Gein kill in real life?
Ed Gein confessed to killing two people: hardware-store owner Bernice Worden, 58, in 1957, and tavern owner Mary Hogan, 54, in 1954. Both deaths are portrayed in the show.
Though he was questioned about other cases, he never admitted to any additional killings, and no evidence was produced to suggest otherwise. Gein's house contained body parts from several other bodies; he said he had uneartheed remains of nine to 10 other women from nearby cemeteries. His claims were verified when investigators checked out the grave sites.
Did Ed Gein help catch serial killer Ted Bundy?
The eighth and final episode of "Monster" gets as metatextual as possible; you'd be well served to take almost none of it seriously.
Seemingly creating an homage to another popular Netflix/serial killer saga, "Mindhunter," FBI agents John Douglas and Robert Ressler visit Gein during the process of trying to catch a serial killer that the audience already knows is Ted Bundy. The actors portraying the two agents look startingly like actors Jonathan Groff and Holt McCallany, who play characters based on the real-life agents in "Mindhunter." The show even brings in Happy Anderson, the actor who played "Shoe Fetish Slayer" Jerry Brudos — the same role he played on "Mindhunter."
The episode tries to convince us that most of the era's serial killers used Gein as inspiration, and that the agents were ultimately able to catch Bundy because of information passed along by Gein. The show meddles enough with the events to make the viewer question whether it's all a schizophrenic episode generated in Gein's own mind. But anyway, none of that actually happened.
Bundy was initially arrested fleeing a patrol car.
In case that wasn't enough of a wink from the show's creators, there's a scene in the finale where the head nurse at the institution holding Gein advises him to write a book, noting that so many other people have taken liberties with his story. Like some of the liberties listed below.
Did Ed Gein really talk like he does in the Netflix show?
Actor Charlie Hunnum discussed with Variety the process of cultivating Ed Gein's voice. Recordings of Gein's voice are rare, but Hunnum was able to get audio of a 70-minute interview.
Did Ed Gein have a girlfriend, Adeline Watkins, who collaborated on some of his crimes?
Gein was friendly with a woman named Adeline Watkins for a short time, but her role in the TV show is greatly exaggerated and mostly outright fictionalized.
The real Watkins gave an interview in a Minneapolis newspaper about their relationship that was characterized as a two-decade romance, though she clarified in a follow-up interview that details were blown out of proportion. She said they had a shared love of reading; Gein had developed an interest in tribal cultural practices around the world, which he read about in geography magazines, according to "Ed Gein: Psycho."
Though she is portrayed in the first episode of the miniseries, the real-life Adeline Watkins refuted the idea that she had a lengthy romance with Gein. She insisted she didn't know him well until 1954, long after the events of the first episode.
She said their closeness lasted roughly seven months, and only intermittently. She said they attended some movies together and that she'd never been inside his house. Gein never shared any additional details about Watkins.
The show portrays Watkins introducing Gein to the story of Ilse Koch, a real-life Holocaust war criminal. Both Koch and Gein were notable for creating a lampshade out of human skin, though it isn't clear that Gein had followed her story particularly closely, and Watkins would not have been the person to introduce him to that information.
The fictional Watkins serves as Gein's confidante on the show, even suggesting he pursue certain avenues for his perversion.
Did Ed Gein model his actions after Holocaust war criminal Ilse Koch?
Gein easily could have been aware of Koch's war atrocities during Nazi Germany, but there isn't any indication that he held her in the esteem that the show version of Gein does, nor that he modeled any behavior after her.
A later episode of the show features a conversation over radio between Koch and Gein, at that time prisoners a world apart. The exchange is later revealed to be a schizophrenic episode. Koch is played by Vicky Krieps, a Luxembourg actress perhaps best known to American audiences for her role in Paul Thomas Anderson's Best Picture nominee "Phantom Thread." Another actress from that film, Lesley Manville, portrays Gein victim Bernice Worden.
Did Ed Gein have a love affair with Bernice Worden before killing her?
The show takes a major leap in characterizing the relationship between Gein and hardware store owner/manager Bernice Worden as romantic. The real-life Gein admitted to investigators that he wanted to possess her, but more so because she resembled his mother, a detail he consistently agreed was befitting his two living victims.
The show portrays Gein sleeping with Worden, then rejecting her in the moments before he shoots her in the hardware store with a gun off the rack, having carried a shell casing into the store in his pocket. The nature of the killing is consistent with real-life events, but investigators question Gein on the show because they find a gift tag addressed to "Eddie" from Worden. In real life, Gein was identified because he left a receipt for antifreeze, the last thing Worden sold in her store.
During his stay at Central State Hospital following his crimes, Gein told doctors he had never had a sexual experience, consistent with the strict religious code imparted by his late mother.
The discovery of Worden's decapitated body in Gein's shed, grisly as it is, closely mirrors reality and even looks almost exactly like how the body looked in crime-scene photographs.
Did Ed Gein kill his brother, Henry?
The first episode of "Monster" portrays Gein killing his 43-year-old older brother, Henry, after Henry expressed a desire to get away from their domineering mother, Augusta. In the show, Gein strikes Henry with a piece of wood, then drags his body into the woods and stages a brush fire to explain Henry's death.
The real brush fire in question took place in the spring (not the winter, as portrayed on the show), and fires of that sort were common. Henry's body sustained serious burns, and the official cause of death was asphyxiation leading to heart failure. Though his body did exhibit some markings that could have been wounds, officials at the time ruled out foul play.
Gein never confessed to having a role in his brother's death, but he did confess to murdering two women. After those crimes became known, they gave rise to some suspicion that Ed played a role in Henry's death.
Did Ed Gein kill a nurse?
In the seventh episode of the show, one sequence portrays Ed Gein killing a nurse at the hospital where he is confined. In the show, that's later revealed to be a schizophrenic episode. Gein never did anything of the sort in real life and was regarded as a model patient.
He was sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (part of what is now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun and later transferred to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison. He died in 1984 at age 77 of respiratory failure, related to lung cancer.
Did Ed Gein kill babysitter Evelyn Hartley?
The third episode portrays Gein stalking and then kidnapping babysitter Evelyn Hartley, seemingly bothered that she took his job of watching over two young kids.
The sequence that ends in her abduction and killing is entirely fabricated by the show.
The real-life Hartley did indeed disappear from La Crosse County in 1954, more than two hours from Gein's home in Waushara County. After Gein's crimes were unearthed in 1957, he was questioned about Hartley because he had visited family in the La Crosse in the immediate area around the time of her disappearance, but he steadfastly denied that he had anything to do with her disappearance. He certainly didn't cross paths with her because she was babysitting a family that Gein himself had known.
Her case has not been solved, though a tape unearthed in 2004 provided some possible assailants, and nothing involving Gein, who was cleared of any connection later in 1957.
Did Ed Gein actually babysit children?
Yes. Though the television show portrays Gein as a character so eccentric that townspeople don't feel comfortable sharing a nearby seat with him at the local diner, Gein was enigmatic but trustworthy to the locals in his younger years. He did odd jobs around the town and, according to "Ed Gein: Psycho," would even occasionally watch local children for a short time when parents had to run an errand.
There is no indication Gein drove children to his home, subsequently scaring them with the remains he kept there, as was portrayed in the show.
Did Ed Gein make a bowl out of human skulls?
In episode 2, the show portrays Gein eating from a bowl made from a human skull. That is indeed one of the things Gein made with the remains he exhumed from nearby cemeteries.
Did Ed Gein wear body parts from bodies he unearthed from cemeteries?
Yes, Gein confessed to wearing parts of the bodies that he had cut from those he exhumed. Gein reportedly told investigators that his deep, conflicted connection to his mother made him want to become a woman, or more like one. After repeatedly visiting his mother's grave in the cemetery, Gein decided to dig up some corpses to help him become more like a woman — by wearing their skin.
Did Ed Gein retrieve his mother's body once she was buried?
Episode 2 implies that one of the bodies Gein brought back to the house was that of his own mother, Augusta (the Gein character later admits it's not her mother's actual body). Though he did visit her grave regularly, she was not among the bodies he unearthed.
In the show, Adeline is brought home to "meet" his mother, but the real-life Watkins clarified in an interview that she never went inside his home (and furthermore, her relationship with him was not as longstanding as the show implies).
There's no indication it would have been a secret in Plainfield that Augusta Gein had died, though in the show, Ed's character is able to mislead people about her status. This makes Gein seem more consistent with the character Norman Bates of "Psycho."
Did Ed Gein kill tavern owner Mary Hogan?
Although Gein was arrested because of the disappearance of Bernice Worden and the discovery of her body on his property, she was not his first victim.
During his interrogation over Worden's killing and all of the grisly discoveries in his home, Gein admitted that, in 1954, he shot and killed Mary Hogan, a 51-year-old tavern owner who had been missing for three years. Hogan's skull and some skin were found in Gein's house.
Gein had not been a suspect in Hogan's disappearance, though the show implies he was part of the investigation into her disappearance. He was never tried for her death even though he confessed to it.
Did Alfred Hitchcock cast Anthony Perkins in 'Psycho,' because he was 'like Ed Gein?'
In episode 3, the character of Alfred Hitchcock tells the character of Anthony Perkins that he has to play the role of Norman Bates in "Psycho" because he was "like him," meaning like Ed Gein. Hitchcock refers to a dark secret that Perkins harbors.
This is presumably a reference to Perkins' status as a closeted gay man, something Hitchcock likely knew, and not because Perkins had homicidal tendencies. The role defined Perkins for good and bad, changing his career and making him harder to cast as anything but a villain after that.
Did Ed Gein kill two hunters who wandered onto his property?
Once Gein's crimes came to light, he was questioned about a number of additional disappearances in the region. That included a pair of hunters named Victor Travis and Raymond Burgess; on the show, Gein hunts them down and murders them with a chainsaw.
There is no evidence Gein had anything to do with their disappearance, nor does it fit his MO. Gein also used knives and not a chainsaw for his actual crimes; the introduction of the chainsaw in Texas Chain Saw Massacre was purely an invention for the film.
The hunters' disappearances remains a mystery, though is it possible one was hired to kill the other?
Did Ed Gein practice necrophilia?
The show tells a different story, but the real-life Gein repeatedly denied having sex with corpses, referring to the smell as a deterrent.
Did Ed Gein put vulvas in a box in his house?
That detail is true.
Was Ed Gein a cannibal?
Gein denied he had eaten human flesh, and there was no evidence that he had. The show implies he at least flirted with the idea and that he distributed venison to area residents, leaving some to question if he was actually giving away human flesh. There is no indication that's what was happening.
Was there an auction for Ed Gein's belongings after he was arrested?
Yes, several items from Gein's home were sold after his crimes were unearthed. His farmhouse was set ablaze and ruined, but his 1949 Ford was purchased for $760 dollars and taken around the area as an exhbition item, including a charge for admission. It was subsequently banned from fairs because of its grisly origin.
This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: What's real, what's fiction in Netflix's Ed Gein series, 'Monster'
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