Who was Ed Gein, the serial killer in Netflix's hit true crime thriller 'Monster'?
The Emmy Award-winning true crime Netflix series Monster is back with its third-season offering: The Ed Gein Story. Just a few days after the limited series launched globally, it has become Netflix's most-watched television show in 62 countries worldwide. It's currently third in the streaming platform's Top 10 TV shows in the Philippines.
Ed Gein shocked the world and became known as "the butcher of Plainfield" for the grisly murders he committed in the 1950s. He did not only kill people—he also stole corpses from graveyards and used them to create home items like furniture and clothing like face masks and suits that he would wear.
According to Britannica, the American serial killer was born on Aug. 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, the younger of two brothers. His childhood was difficult, having an alcoholic father and a domineering mother who verbally abused both her sons. Despite this, Gein worshipped her.
The Gein family eventually moved to a primitive, ultra-conservative farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin. A 1957 TIME Magazine article described the home as having no electricity and plumbing.
Reports stated that Gein’s mother, Augusta, raised her sons to hate women. Often, she told them women were the source of all sin. The constant rhetoric influenced Gein so much that he began avoiding going on dates with women. He became a recluse, only leaving the farmhouse to go to school.
When Gein was 34, his father George passed away due to heart failure. Four years later, Gein’s brother Henry died allegedly from a fire, though circumstances surrounding his death remain mysterious.
The younger Gein’s notoriety started in 1957, when police was investigating the disappearance of a hardware store owner named Bernice Worden. Police eventually discovered that Gein had been systematically robbing graves of women and making household items and clothing out of the women’s body parts.
In time, media covering the case nicknamed Gein “the butcher of Plainfield.”
Per Britannica, Gein admitted to killing two women that allegedly looked like his mother, though he entered a not guilty plea by reason of insanity. Diagnosed as schizophrenic, he was ruled unfit for trial in 1957 and was later placed in psychiatric institutions.
In 1968, the court determined that Gein could take part in the trial in his own defense.
He was found guilty of murdering Worden, "but then was deemed insane at the time of the crime," according to Britannica.
He was transferred to a mental hospital and stayed there until 1984—the same year he died of respiratory failure related to lung cancer.
The real monster
In an interview with Tudum, co-creator Ryan Murphy pointed out that what makes Monster interesting "is the thesis statement of every season, [which] is, 'Are monsters born or are they made?'"
“And I think in Ed’s case, it’s probably a little of both,” he said.
For the first season of Monster, Murphy and co-creator Ian Brennan told the story of Jeffrey Dahmer, also known as the “Milwaukee cannibal,” who murdered then dismembered 17 boys and young men from 1978 to 1991. While Dahmer was serving 16 consecutive life sentences in a Wisconsin prison for the murders, he was killed by a fellow inmate in 1994.
Monsters’ second installment told the story of the Menendez brothers. In August 1989, Lyle and Erik Menendez fatally shot their parents in their Beverly Hills home. Their defense team argued that the brothers committed the crime only because their father sexually and emotionally abused them, and their mother did nothing to protect them. The Menendez brothers were eventually found guilty and sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
In the same Tudum interview, Charlie Hunnam, who plays Ed Gein, asked of his character, “Who was the monster? This poor boy who was abused his whole life then left in total isolation, suffering from undiagnosed mental illness? Or the legion of people who sensationalized his life for entertainment and arguably darkened the American psyche and the global psyche in the process?”
Monster: The Ed Gein Story is now streaming on Netflix.
