The third season of Ryan Murphy’s acclaimed anthology series “Monster” premieres on Netflix on October 3. This upcoming eight-part miniseries, called “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” delves into the chilling life of the infamous serial killer, who confessed to taking the lives of two women in the 1950s, alongside a troubling history of heinous acts that startled a nation and reshaped perspectives on American brutality.
Portrayed by Charlie Hunnam, Ed Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, in 1906. With an alcoholic father, George, and a fanatically religious mother, Augusta, Gein and his brother Henry grew up under a suffocatingly strict regime. The family relocated to a farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, where the boys were seldom allowed to leave the property, save for school. Augusta instilled a sense of dread about the outside world, frequently reading them Biblical teachings and emphasizing its dangers.
George passed away in 1940, thrusting Ed and Henry into the roles of the family’s providers. Both took jobs outside the farm, while Henry eventually married a local woman. As Ed aged, his attachment to his mother deepened, becoming increasingly co-dependent.
Four years later, tragedy struck when Henry died in a fire that Ed had initiated as a controlled burn. After firefighters extinguished the blaze, they discovered Henry’s body intact, leading to heart failure being ruled as his cause of death. However, rumors of foul play began to emerge regarding Ed’s involvement.
In the wake of Henry’s death, Augusta suffered two debilitating strokes, which only exacerbated the already isolated lifestyle Ed and his mother shared until her passing in 1945.
Following Augusta’s death, Ed sealed off her rooms in the farmhouse, preserving them as a shrine while living in squalor. He picked up odd jobs in Plainfield, even caring for local children. His increasing isolation fostered a dark obsession with pulp magazines, particularly stories of violence involving Nazis and cannibals. He became particularly fixated on Ilse Koch, the wife of a Nazi known for creating lampshades from victims’ skins.
Gein remained an enigma until 1957, when he was implicated in the abduction of Bernice Worden, the owner of a local hardware store who vanished shortly after Ed made a purchase. A subsequent investigation led authorities to Gein’s property where they found Worden’s body, skinned and decapitated, hanging from the rafters of his barn. Inside his home, officers unearthed her severed head and heart preserved in containers, along with human bones, body parts, and skins crafted into masks and furniture.
During police questioning, Gein not only confessed to Worden’s murder but also disclosed that he had unearthed bodies from nearby cemeteries. He guided investigators to the disinterred graves, corroborating their findings.
Investigation of Gein’s residence revealed the skull and face of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner reported missing since 1954, whom Gein admitted to shooting.
Ed’s confessed motives were sinister, claiming he intended to create a suit from the skins of these women, aiming to wear it and transform into a living incarnation of his mother.
Aside from Hogan and Worden, Gein’s victims primarily consisted of exhumed corpses, but he is also regarded with suspicion regarding the disappearances of several other women and girls, notably 8-year-old Georgia Jean Weckler and 14-year-old Evelyn Grace Hartley, whose fates remain unsolved. Nevertheless, there has been no concrete evidence tying him to these girls’ disappearances.
Gein’s trial was fraught with drama; an officer involved in his interrogation assaulted him, rendering his confessions inadmissible in court. Ultimately, he was charged with first-degree murder and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and deemed unfit for trial.
After spending 11 years in state psychiatric facilities, he finally faced trial in 1968, where he was ruled not guilty by reason of insanity, leading to his indefinite confinement in a mental institution until his death from respiratory failure at the age of 77 in 1984.
The Gein farmhouse met its end in a fire prior to the trial, and Gein’s case gained notoriety, influencing popular culture profoundly, including inspiring Alfred Hitchcock’s creation of the character Norman Bates in “Psycho.” This connection solidified Gein as a defining figure representing the archetype of the American serial killer.
Post-trial, Gein became the blueprint for Leatherface in Tobe Hooper’s “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre,” and following his death, his life inspired characters like Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of the Lambs,” Garland Greene in “Con Air,” and Dr. Oliver Thredson in Ryan Murphy’s own “American Horror Story: Asylum.” Numerous films have directly drawn from Gein’s chilling narrative, including 1974’s “Deranged,” 2001’s “Ed Gein,” 2007’s “Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield,” 2010’s “Ed Gein, The Musical,” 2003’s “House of 1000 Corpses,” and 2005’s “The Devil’s Rejects.”
It’s clear that “Monster” is not the first foray into retelling Ed Gein’s dark tale. Like Murphy’s previous installments featuring Jeffrey Dahmer and Eric and Lyle Menendez, this series promises to delve into Gein’s life with an unprecedented level of depth, intensity, and, for many, an element of gripping entertainment.
Alongside Hunnam, the cast includes Laurie Metcalf portraying Augusta Gein, Lesley Manville as Bernice Worden, Vicky Krieps as Ilse Koch, Tom Hollander as Alfred Hitchcock, Olivia Williams as Hitchcock’s wife Alma Reville, Joey Pollari as Anthony Perkins, the actor who portrayed Norman Bates, and Will Brill as Tobe Hooper.
The ensemble also features Suzanna Son as Gein’s love interest Adeline Watkins, Robin Weigert as Adeline’s mother Enid, Charlie Hall as Worden’s son, Tyler Jacob Moore as the sheriff who attacked Gein, Mimi Kennedy as Perkins’ psychologist Dr. Mildred Newman, and Addison Rae as Evelyn Grace Hartley.
The series promises to explore not just Gein’s horrific crimes but also the origins, consequences, and aftermath of this dark chapter in American history.
