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?
In Murphy’s tale, Bernice Worden (Lesley Manville) is portrayed as more than a victim — she’s a romantic interest, drawn into Gein’s macabre orbit after a chance meeting at her hardware store. An outcast, like Gein, the two quickly strike up an affair, with Worden encouraging Ed’s kinks like dressing in lingerie. Their tryst ends when he shoots and kills her in her store. Her death is dramatized further with a fictional clue: investigators discover a gift tag addressed from Worden to “Eddie,” which supposedly leads to Gein’s capture. In reality, Worden was a hardware store owner in Plainfield, Wisconsin, and one of Gein’s two confirmed victims, but there’s no evidence she had any romantic or sexual relationship with him. And the gift tag subplot is entirely invented; it was actually a receipt from his visit that prompted police to pay him a visit.
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?
In another invented subplot, Gein fixates on a young babysitter named Evelyn Hartle (Addison Rae) who he believes robbed him of a job – and a chance to start a family with Adeline. He abducts her and kills her in his home as a strange sort of payback. The real Evelyn Hartley vanished in 1954 in La Crosse County, but there’s no evidence connecting Gein to her disappearance. Authorities questioned him because he was known to be in the area, but he was cleared of any involvement after failing to find her body on his property.
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?
Early on in Monster, Gein commits his first unthinkable crime: murdering his brother, Henry (Hudson Oz) in the family barn. The two argue over their mother’s overbearing involvement in their lives, leading Gein to beat his older brother to death. He then sparks a brush fire to hide the body, using the chaos to explain away Henry’s untimely demise. This is one of the show’s few dramatic liberties that could come with its own grain of truth as Henry really did die under mysterious circumstances and Gein was the first to “find” his body.
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
Monster: The Ed Gein Story wants to make a point about our fascination with killers, but over the course of its eight episodes, it keeps tripping over its own ambition. Gein is framed with pathos, moments of charisma, and the series has some genuinely striking visuals, making it hard not to be drawn in even as the show tries to warn us against that very impulse. The irony is obvious: the harder it works to deconstruct his legend, the more it ends up erecting 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.
