That question — nature versus nurture — has hounded criminologists, psychologists and the screenwriter behind every serial killer movie ever made. With the latest season of its true crime anthology series, “Monster,” Netflix is jumping into the conversation by focusing on perhaps the most influential killer you’ve never heard of: Ed Gein.
Who is Ed Gein, and why is he getting the Netflix treatment? Known as the Plainfield Ghoul, Gein (played by Charlie Hunnam in “Monster”) haunted rural Wisconsin during the 1950s and is confirmed to have killed two women. Two killings may not technically label him as a serial killer — but he was also a suspect in other unsolved cases.
However, it’s the gruesome details around those killings that went on to inspire the likes of “Psycho” and “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” After Gein was arrested, authorities entered his farm and found a house of nightmares: lampshades and masks made from human faces, a victim decapitated and disemboweled like a deer and, most infamously, a “woman suit” made out of skin peeled off corpses. “I don’t think there’s anything else that comes close,” says James Alan Fox, a research professor of criminology at Northeastern University. “There are a lot of other cases that are bizarre in one dimension or another, but this had the whole smorgasbord.” Fox opens his book “Extreme Killings” with Gein’s case for a reason. It has murder, grave robbing and an all-consuming and abusive relationship between mother and son.
