- 9 hours ago
Separating fact from fiction in Netflix's latest true crime sensation! Join us as we analyze what the streaming giant's portrayal of Wisconsin's notorious grave robber got right—and where the creators took dramatic liberties. From the reality of his grave robbing to the fabricated Ted Bundy connection, we're dissecting the historical accuracy!
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00Don't break my heart, Eddie.
00:03Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:06And today, we're counting down our picks for the moments that the third season of Netflix's true crime anthology series nailed,
00:12and the ones that totally missed the historical mark.
00:16Make sure you've seen Monster before you watch this video, because a major spoiler warning is now in effect.
00:22Toby, where are we going to get the money?
00:26Who's going to let us make this?
00:27Nobody's going to let us.
00:30Number 5.
00:31Ed Gein helped to apprehend Ted Bundy.
00:35Wrong.
00:36Could I see the photos of the man you're hunting?
00:40What he did?
00:41In the previous season of Monster, viewers were shocked to learn that Eric Menendez and OJ Simpson were actual prison buddies.
00:49A similar moment in Ed Gein also features a disturbing pop culture crossover.
00:54The Netflix series frames one climactic moment as Ed Gein secretly advising law enforcement on the Ted Bundy investigation.
01:02Are they arousing to you, Ed?
01:10No.
01:14Might have been when I was younger.
01:16Unfortunately for true crime aficionados, that is entirely fictional.
01:21In reality, Gein died in 1984, long before the full scope of Bundy's serial murders was understood or resolved.
01:29Bundy was arrested in 1978, tried in the early 1980s, and executed in 1989.
01:35No credible source ties Gein to any Bundy case assistance.
01:40He's a loner, this man.
01:45When you're alone too much, your thoughts can make you want to do things.
01:52I spent too much time alone in that house after mother died.
01:56Number 5, Ed Gein was a grave robber, right?
02:01Mother?
02:07Are you there?
02:11You can bring me back, you know.
02:18Tell me how.
02:19This is the backbone of Gein's criminal record, and Netflix's portrayal largely respects the historical record.
02:27After his 1957 arrest, Gein confessed to exhuming the corpses of women who had resembled his deceased mother.
02:33Then, using skeletal parts, skulls, skin, and organs, to fashion household objects and garments.
02:40Your dead shall live, their body shall rise.
02:45You who dwell in the dust, awake, and sing for joy.
02:52Investigators corroborated parts of this confession by opening graves and discovering exhumed bodies matching his descriptions.
02:59Many of the items, a chillingly banal mix of lampshades, bowls, masks, furniture, were recovered.
03:07That core narrative is far from a TV invention of showrunner Ian Brennan's imagination.
03:12It is the bedrock of how Gein entered the public imagination.
03:17I hope the setup's still there.
03:20Eddie, is this a graveyard?
03:22It sure is.
03:25Go on, you're going to like it.
03:26Number 4, Ed Gein was in a relationship with Bernice Worden.
03:31Wrong.
03:32You're always such a bright light walking in here.
03:36You're the only person who's ever kind to me.
03:42That's not true.
03:43It is.
03:44It is.
03:45And true kindness always makes me cry.
03:49Gein and Bernice Worden share a tense but emotionally loaded relationship story arc.
03:55Historically, their connection was strictly transactional and criminal.
03:59Worden was the 58-year-old Plainfield hardware store owner.
04:03Gein showed up as a customer, asked her for antifreeze, his last known receipt, and that interaction
04:10is central to investigators linking him to her murder.
04:13However, there is no evidence of a deeper emotional relationship between them.
04:40Even though the Netflix show depicts Gein and Worden falling into a whirlwind romance and
04:45making plans for a life together, the show's decision to dramatize a personal bond invents
04:51subtext absent in archival records, excerpts, or retrospective criminal analysis.
04:57I talked to mother, and she told me something about your venereal disease.
05:08What on earth are you talking about-
05:12Quiet, please.
05:14This is hard enough.
05:16Number four.
05:17Ed Gein was a babysitter.
05:19Right.
05:19You're nervous to have children, because like most men who don't have big families,
05:24you've never been around them.
05:28I have an idea.
05:32Hello.
05:33Hi, Mrs. Heller.
05:35This is Eddie.
05:37Hello.
05:37Here's one factoid that you may be shocked to learn was rooted in fact.
05:42Ed Gein, despite his later infamy, carried a reputation in Plainfield as a handyman and
05:48sometimes babysitter for neighbors.
05:51Locals saw him as odd, but non-threatening.
05:54Historical profiles underscore this to dramatize how a murderer cloaked in domestic normalcy
05:59crossed into horror.
06:01Have you babysat before?
06:03No, I wouldn't say babysat, but I do get along with kids.
06:08I think on account of sometimes I feel like I still am when I like doing things that kids
06:14like to do, like chasing things through the woods and digging things up and whatnot.
06:20That detail isn't Hollywood fabrication.
06:22They pulled it from community anecdotes and earlier journalistic accounts of Gein's life.
06:27With that said, though, it should be noted that the series' depiction of Gein's adventures
06:32and babysitting is heavily fictionalized, and no evidence exists to suggest that he showed
06:38off his collection to young children.
06:41How'd you do that?
06:44That's not real.
06:46Sure is.
06:48Wouldn't matter if it weren't.
06:50Still a good trick, anyhow.
06:54So that's a real finger?
06:56Yes, sir.
06:58Where'd you get it?
06:59Doesn't matter where I got it.
07:00Number three.
07:02Ed Gein killed Evelyn Hartley.
07:04Wrong.
07:05You were just following me, weren't you?
07:08You followed me last night, too.
07:11You took my job.
07:14What?
07:16I'm just a babysitter.
07:17That's what I mean.
07:19That was my job.
07:21Helping me with my family plans.
07:23One dramatic thread in Monster implies Gein abducted and murdered teenage babysitter Evelyn Hartley,
07:30portrayed in Monster in a cameo by pop star and social media personality Addison Rae.
07:35That claim is unverified and speculative, but Hartley did indeed disappear in La Crosse in 1953.
07:44Years later, after Gein's arrest, he was questioned in Hartley's case.
07:49Gein took two polygraph tests, which he passed, and investigators found no physical link tying Hartley to his property.
07:56All in all, the published record consistently states the case remains unsolved, and Gein's involvement is unproven.
08:04I said stop! Stop your crying!
08:07Number three.
08:08Ed Gein had an extremely troubled relationship with his mother, Wright.
08:13All I wanted was a girl.
08:16Prayed and prayed to the good Lord for it, but it was not his will, so I must abide by that.
08:23No matter how much it pained me to lay with your father.
08:27Oh, they only let him defile me twice.
08:29You know that. I told you that.
08:32Netflix leans heavily into the domineering mother dynamic, and with good reason.
08:38Augusta Gein was a religious zealot who preached sexual guilt, isolated her sons, and aggressively discouraged their social contact with women.
08:47After George Gein died in 1940, followed by Henry in 1944, Augusta's hold on Ed deepened.
08:54He stank like a farm animal.
08:57And what did that shiftless drunkard ever give me?
09:02First, an evil son, who humiliates his mother and is determined to drag us all to hell, and then I got you, a son so prone to all manner of weakness, who seems set on breaking his mother's heart.
09:13When she died a mere year after Henry, Ed sealed off her room, transforming it into a shrine and refusing to let others enter it.
09:22That maternal fixation forms the psychological core of his compulsions.
09:27The show simplifies and heightens it, but the relationship structure is grounded in established accounts.
09:33I'm real sorry about Henry, mother.
09:37I know I ain't always impressed you.
09:47You loved Henry more.
09:51He wasn't a good son to you.
09:53Number two.
09:54Ed Gein killed his brother Henry.
09:57Wrong.
09:58Where you been?
10:00Oh, mother's gonna whip you when she sees you.
10:03No, no, no, no.
10:06Edward.
10:07Only one left by the whip him is you.
10:09Yeah, okay.
10:10Yeah, okay.
10:12Stop it.
10:15The season hints at Kane and Abel-style fratricide, that Ed intentionally killed Henry Gein before starting a fire to cover up his involvement.
10:23In truth, the circumstances of Henry's 1944 death remain ambiguous, and the incident was officially ruled accidental.
10:31According to historical accounts, Ed and Henry were burning brush when a fire got out of control.
10:37Afterward, Henry's body was found in the marsh.
10:41On Monster, Ed bludgeons Henry to death, after the latter expresses a desire to be free of their mother's iron grip.
10:48Some sources mention possible bruising or a head injury, and some retrospective authors suggest suspicion.
11:08But no forensic evidence, investigation, or conviction supports homicidal intent or action.
11:15The show turns ambiguity into certainty for dramatic effect.
11:19We'll clear that brush tomorrow.
11:22Set some fires before the weather gets worse.
11:26You're right about mother.
11:30She's a good woman.
11:33I'll make it right with her.
11:34Number two, Ed Gein inspired history's most famous horror movies.
11:40Right.
11:41Gein was schizophrenic, was he not?
11:44Yes.
11:45They are often triggered in early adulthood, and for Eddie, it really seemed like the trigger was these photographs of Nazi atrocities.
11:52And had he not seen them, might have stayed a small town simpleton.
11:58Such is the power of the photographed image.
12:03This is one place where Netflix doesn't need to stretch the truth.
12:07Multiple canonical horror properties draw from Gein's stomach-turning mythology.
12:12Robert Bloch's novel, Psycho, and its subsequent Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation, borrow maternal fixation.
12:19The Texas Chainsaw Massacre uses the idea of wearing human skin.
12:24And the Silence of the Lambs, a massively successful Oscar winner, nods at making a woman's suit.
12:31Historians, critics, and the show itself reference this lineage repeatedly.
12:36Ed Gein couldn't get over the pictures he saw of World War II.
12:41World War II drove him literally insane.
12:45Those images.
12:49Can you imagine if he saw what we're doing in Vietnam?
12:53Hamburger Hill, Meat Lai.
12:56That direct cultural influence is beyond dispute, and part of why Gein remains such a touchstone.
13:01Particularly in influencing tales of the macabre, that the movie-going public can't get enough of.
13:08Many actors wanted this role, Mr. Perkins.
13:12Montgomery Clift.
13:14Roddy McDowell.
13:16Lawrence Harvey.
13:18But I chose you.
13:20Because you alone understand this sickness.
13:24You have a secret, Mr. Perkins, don't you?
13:30Number one.
13:31Ed Gein and Adeline Watkins had a long, twisted courtship.
13:36Wrong.
13:37I'm never gonna believe what came.
13:39You're the only person I can show this to.
13:44Why is that?
13:46Because you're the only one in this town who's like me.
13:49What are we like?
13:52Weird.
13:52The show gives significant screen time to Adeline Watkins, played here by Susanna's son,
14:00as Gein's longtime girlfriend.
14:02Not quite an enthusiastic partner, but a morbidly curious voyeur.
14:06The historical anchor is much weaker.
14:09I know.
14:10It's a mess.
14:13Oh, it's more than a mess.
14:15You can't live like this, Eddie.
14:17That's what I'm saying.
14:19Ever since Mother got sick.
14:21Oh, sheesh.
14:27At least let me help you clean up a bit.
14:29In November 1957, Watkins gave a high-profile interview claiming she and Gein had a 20-year
14:35romance, including movie dates and a proposal.
14:38But within weeks, she publicly retracted or altered the claims, describing the original
14:44story as exaggerated, and stating the real contact was limited to a short period after 1954.
14:50She said she never entered Gein's home and minimized the emotional depth.
14:55Whatever the case may be, the show expands a half-truth into a central emotional arc.
15:01What kind of nipple?
15:02Well, all kinds of beasts got nipples.
15:05No, but you know what I'm saying.
15:07It's from an udder, right?
15:09You could call it that.
15:11Ed Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia.
15:32Right.
15:33There's a reason that you hear voices.
15:36There's a reason that you see things that aren't there.
15:41When you can't remember things you did, and you worry that you did things you didn't do.
15:45And the belief in an ability to resurrect your mother somehow.
15:49If Monster, the Ed Gein story got one major psychological detail right, it's this one.
15:57After his 1957 arrest, Ed Gein underwent extensive psychiatric evaluation.
16:03Doctors described him as having a warped but childlike psyche, showing little understanding
16:08of the horror of his crimes.
16:10He was deemed unfit to stand trial, and committed to Wisconsin's Central State Hospital for the
16:16criminally insane.
16:17I can't stay here.
16:20Ed, we've talked about this many times.
16:25I know the judge said I was crazy, so I gotta be in a hospital.
16:29But he also says I can't stand trial, which means I can't be guilty.
16:34What am I doing in a place like this?
16:36While some modern observers debate whether Gein displayed psychosis or extreme personality
16:41disorder, contemporary court documents and expert testimony consistently list
16:46schizophrenia as the primary diagnosis.
16:50Yes, the show undoubtedly takes liberties with the content and intensity of his visions, but
16:55it gets the broad strokes correct.
16:58Ed Gein lived in a world detached from reason, ruled by his mother's memory and his own fractured
17:04mind.
17:05These all point to a diagnosis, Ed.
17:09What is it?
17:11You have a schizoid disorder.
17:14You're schizophrenic.
17:20All right.
17:22It's a brain illness.
17:23Which part of Monster the Ed Gein story chilled you to the bone?
17:28Is there anything we missed?
17:30Be sure to let us know in the comments below.
Recommended
12:11
|
Up next
12:25
13:46
2:08
1:42
2:11
12:42
10:29
15:22
1:52
2:01
16:50
14:24
20:29
10:59
12:27
Be the first to comment