The Biggest Lies Told in ‘Monster: The Ed Gein Story’ Reveals This Depressing Fact About True Crime
Editor’s Note: The following contains spoilers for Monster: The Ed Gein Story.The latest installment in Netflix’s Monster anthology, The Ed Gein Story, bills itself as a study of how society turns killers into icons — but for that to work, it really shouldn’t have so much fun doing the same. Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan’s still-warm true-crime entry is gripping, sure, but it’s also disturbingly slick, finding cinematic pleasure in the very horrors it claims to dissect. And it’s filled with enough fictional flourishes to turn what should be a terrifying real-life account into something resembling a dark fairy tale. There’s a made-up love interest, a murdered brother, even a run-in with Ted Bundy for good measure — all dressed up in moody lighting, operatic gore, and more than a few peeks at star Charlie Hunnam’s six pack.
By the time the credits roll, it’s hard to tell whether Monster is critiquing America’s obsession with infamy or cashing in on it. The show claims to question our appetite for violence, but it’s too busy feeding it to succeed at anything meaningful. And the reason it falls short has nothing to do with Hunnam’s transformative turn or a lack of material to mine and everything to do with Murphy and Co.’s insistence on making shit up to turning a two-victim killer into something closer to a doomed antihero. Twisted romances, chainsaw obsessions, and Freudian subplots — none happened, at least, not the way Monster wants you to believe. Let’s break down what’s fact and what’s fiction in the show.
Did The Bernice Worden Romance Happen?
Did Adeline Watkins Help Ed Gein’s With His Crimes?
Suzanna Son’s Adeline Watkins is presented as a manic, death-obsessed woman who ends up encouraging Gein’s murderous behavior. Theirs plays like a doomed Bonnie and Backwater Clyde romance: she features heavily in his grisly inner world, whispering sick ideas and fueling his descent into violence, with a New York subplot that has her assaulting land ladies before returning home to harass victims’ families, further inserting herself into the narrative of his crimes. The truth of Watkins’ role in Gein’s life is murkier, but not nearly as salacious. She was a real person who had minimal contact with Gein, first admitting to dating him for a brief time before recanting that fact and claiming he was just an acquaintance. There’s no evidence she played any role in his criminal activity or engaged in the sinister behaviors the show attributes to her.
Did Gein Kill Babysitter Evelyn Hartley?
Did Gein Mutilate and Have Sex With Corpses?
Netflix leans hard into the idea that Gein engaged in necrophilia, showing him handling and even eating from human remains. The real story is darker in a different way: Gein did desecrate corpses and preserve parts of them — creating masks, belts, and a full “woman suit” from human skin — but there’s no evidence he ever had sexual contact with the bodies. His obsession was visual and ritualistic, not erotic. Gein himself denied sexually assaulting his victims, claiming the smell deterred him from abusing corpses in that way.
Did Ed Gein Really Kill His Own Brother?
Is the Chainsaw Murder Scene in ‘Monster’ True?
Later in the season, while Gein is butchering Worden’s body in his barn, a pair of lost hunters wander onto his property, prompting him to give chase with a chainsaw. The point of the scene is to draw a connection between Gein’s crimes and later cinematic depictions like Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chain Saw Massacre – which might have been inspired by, but certainly wasn’t a recreation of, Gein’s reign of terror. While Victor Travis and Raymond Burgess did disappear in 1952, there is no evidence linking their fate to Gein. Authorities questioned him due to his proximity to their last known location, but he denied involvement and was cleared of any connection.
Was Ed Gein Obsessed With Nazi War Crimes and Ilse Koch?
One of the triggers for Gein’s murder spree, at least in the show, was his fascination with Nazi atrocities, particularly the infamous Ilse Koch, whose alleged use of human skin inspires some of the show’s grisly imagery. In reality, there’s no evidence that Gein had any direct connection to Koch or her crimes. He did read about World War II atrocities in magazines, but the show exaggerates this interest, using it to add a sense of historical horror and to frame his choices as something influenced by “monsters” of the past.
Did Gein Really Help The FBI Catch Ted Bundy?
Technically, the show debunks its own fabricated rumor by the end of the season finale, but it’s worth repeating that no, Gein did not help authorities apprehend infamous serial killer, Ted Bundy. Bundy did study past killers, including Gein, and his kills were likely inspired by the Butcher of Plainfield, but the sequence in the series of Gein working with profilers to stop his crime spree was a figment of the troubled man’s broken psyche – proving just how far gone he was, even near the end of his life.
‘Monster’s’ Attempt to Dismantle the Legend Only Builds It
At the same time, the series flirts with bigger ideas — the weight of repression, the fallout of rigid masculinity, the cracks left by untreated mental illness — but never fully commits. Instead, it leans on familiar true-crime flourishes, from pop culture references to stylized gore. Still, you catch glimpses of what could have been a sharper critique, moments that hint at the real terror: our willingness to keep retelling these stories for entertainment. And the false belief that we need to fictionalize these real-life horrors because they’re not sensational enough for TV.
