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- [00:00]
A
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Between Kevin's cool bomber jacket and my sweaters, it's the perfect clothing for our favorite fall activities like wandering around searching for old timey historical crime scenes or picking pumpkins.
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My Quince jacket looks nice and keeps me comfortable. Plus it's half the cost of similar products from Quince's competitors. Soon we'll be checking out Quince again and I will encourage Anya to finally get some more berets.
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C
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- [03:31]
A
Content Warning this episode contains discussion of murder, violence, torture, sexual crimes, necrophilia, abuse of corpses, and some profanity.
- [03:43]
B
Today we're talking about a show that is popular, successful, and very controversial. This is the third season of Netflix's American crime drama anthology, Monster. It's called Monster the Ed Gein Story.
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A
This is our second ever episode of Spindocs. Documentaries and docudramas about true crime stories hold a lot of sway over the public. Spindocs is our miniseries where we analyze and discuss some of those projects. We want to analyze them for accuracy, ethics, narrative and more.
- [04:19]
B
Monster is a Netflix show created by Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan. The first season delved into Wisconsin serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The second focused on Lyle and Eric Menendez, who of course murdered their parents in Beverly Hills, California. This year, on October 3, 2025, Netflix dropped all eight episodes of their series on Geen. They were all written by Brennan. Unlike a documentary where filmmakers bring in experts, use archival footage and use other techniques to tell a true story, this is a documentary, drama or docudrama. It features true events that are dramatized and reenacted throughout and surround. These Monster docudramas have attracted controversy and a large viewership. They are often described with adjectives like explicit, violent, graphic, lurid and gory.
- [05:21]
A
But before we go more into Monster, let's take a moment to talk about its subject, Edward Theodore Gein, the Butcher of Plainfield. The Plainfield Ghoul Ed Gein.
- [05:33]
B
Born in 1906, Gein grew up with his older brother Henry and his parents, George and Augusta, in Wisconsin. The family ultimately moved to A farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, a small town in the middle of the state.
- [05:48]
A
George Gein was violent and abusive. Augusta Gein was fervently religious and also emotionally abusive. Their youngest son idolized his mother to a very creepy extent. In 1940, George died. In 1944, Henry died. 1945, Augusta died. Ed Gein was left all alone. So he did odd jobs. He read lots of pulp magazines. He began digging up corpses from a local cemetery and fashioning the body parts into items that he left around his house. But eventually, the grave robbing was not enough.
- [06:25]
B
On December 8, 1954, Mary Hogan disappeared. She was a tavern owner who feared strangers. Blood stains were found in her tavern. No one knew it at the time, but Gein had shot and killed her and taken her body for his own sick purposes.
- [06:46]
A
Then, on November 16, 1957, her niece Worden disappeared. She owned a hardware store. Her son was Deputy Sheriff Frank Warden. He found blood stains on the floor of his mother's store. He gave a crucial clue to investigators. Gein was supposed to visit Mrs. Worden that day to get antifreeze. That receipt for antifreeze was the last one she ever wrote. Police arrested Gein and the investigators descended on his property.
- [07:14]
B
That farmhouse turned out to be a portal into hell.
- [07:18]
A
Warden's body was found. Geen had shot her, killing her. Then, after she was dead, he mutilated her. He decapitated her, hung her upside down. He eviscerated her. He put her head in a sack. He left her heart in a plastic bag. Investigators also found Hogan's skull. They discovered a lampshade made with someone's face. Skulls on bedposts, chair coverings made from skin. A shoebox filled with female genitals. Gein admitted that he had spent years stealing body parts. He said he wanted to make a woman suit so that he could become the mother he mourned so fiercely. Most of the body parts belonged to victims of Gein's grave robbing. But there were two murder victims also to account for.
- [08:02]
B
Diagnosed with schizophrenia, Gein was initially found mentally incompetent. He ultimately went for a bench trial. He was found guilty on the basis of the facts. But a second trial set especially around the question of his sanity and saw him found not guilty by reason of insanity. That did not mean he got out. Gein was sent to a mental hospital. He remained committed for the rest of his life until his death in 1984. So that is the gruesome story of Ed Gein.
- [08:36]
A
Gein's horrific crimes resulted in much media coverage at the time. Through those headlines, he entered into popular culture. His crimes inspired the 1959 Robert Bloch novel Psycho and the 1960 Alfred Hitchcock film adaptation of that work, as well as the 1974 Texas Chainsaw Massacre. For many years, remembrance of Gein's crimes mostly lived on through Half Forgotten newspaper frenzy and those quintessential horror classics.
- [09:03]
B
Now let's get back to Monster.
- [09:06]
A
I want to be very clear about something. We did not watch Monster. We've not watched any of the seasons. We did not watch the Ed Gein story. We did not want to watch it personally. Neither of us cares for horror films or horror television shows. This might sound odd because we are very interested in true crime, but we just do not care to watch fictional depictions of really graphic violence. We do not judge anyone who likes that. It's just not for us. So us declining to watch this one is not a moral judgment. It's just a personal choice. We don't think there's anything wrong with anyone enjoying scary or disturbing movies or shows.
- [09:43]
B
And you can tell we didn't watch it because in a few moments you're going to hear me mispronounce the man's name. And I apologize in advance for that. But in this instance, even though we didn't watch it, we knew that this program has been criticized for its many inaccuracies, embellishments, and narrative choices. And as we delved into researching this particular season, we found that their depiction of Ed Gein was not an exception. So for us, true crime is about the truth and learning about real stories. It seems strange to us that Hollywood would add fictional thrills and chills to stories that are already very gripping on their own. Of course, this is just our perspective.
- [10:26]
A
Obviously, Monster is a successful show, so we imagine that they are doing something right as far as attracting interest. But even beyond the gore and schlock factor, we just see that sort of thing as a bit of a waste of our time. We are uncomfortable with graphic, lurid and inaccurate depictions of violence involving murder victims who were real people whose lives mattered. Even worse, shows like this often do confuse unsuspecting audience members who may not realize that artistic liberties have been taken. Not everyone has time to do deep dive research on all these cases, but.
- [10:58]
B
We got questions from listeners. They wanted to know how much of this thing is accurate. So we did our research about the facts included in the program.
- [11:07]
A
We also found someone who did watch the program. More than that, we found one of the world's premier experts on Ed Gein.
- [11:15]
B
We actually feel it is safe to say that author Harold Schechter is a big reason we are talking about Gein right now. Back in 1989, he came out with a book called the Shocking True Story of the Original Psycho. This volume really delved into who Gein was and what exactly he did. Mr. Schechter did extensive original research, interviewing people who knew Gein and really getting into the records. It is an excellent book and a must read for anyone who wants to know the true story of Gein. It's available as an audiobook, too.
- [11:52]
A
Mr. Schechter watched the Ed Gein story with some interest.
- [11:57]
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He thought he might have to sue them for failure to credit his work. And today he will talk to us about that experience, the experience of watching this depiction of a story that he so diligently researched and wrote about.
- [12:11]
A
Mr. Schechter will talk about whether or not there is evidence Gein engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation, his relationship with a woman who appears in the series named Adeline Watkins, whether or not he murdered his own brother, Henry Hunters Victor Harold, Travis and Raymond Burgess, or Evelyn Grace Hartley, a missing teenager. His relationship, or lack thereof, with other killers like Richard Speck or Ted Bundy, and whether or not he was actually idolized by later serial killers. Without further ado, we will get into talking about Monster with Harold Schechter. My name is Anya Cain. I'm a journalist.
- [12:46]
B
And I'm Kevin Greenlee. I'm an attorney.
- [12:49]
A
And this is the Murder Sheet.
- [12:51]
B
We're a true crime podcast focused on original reporting, interviews, and deep dives into murder cases.
- [12:57]
A
We're the Murder Sheet.
- [12:59]
B
And this is Spindox, the ed Gein Story 2025, with author Harold Schechter.
- [13:16]
C
Sam.
- [13:50]
B
Thank you so much for joining us. You've had such a distinguished career. You written a wide variety of excellent books, including most recently, 50 states of murder. I've also enjoyed your work with the artist Eric Powell. Fascinating. With Frederick Wertham. So you've done some great work on that. You've just. You've also edited what I consider to be the single best anthology of true crime writing ever. You've done so much. And in addition to that, this is my words, not necessarily yours. I think you're the premier authority on the Ed Gein case.
- [14:27]
C
Thank you. And as the premier authority, I want to correct your pronunciation.
- [14:33]
B
Thank you.
- [14:35]
C
It looks as though it should be pronounced Gein, but it's actually pronounced Geen. The reason for that, which I found out from Errol Morris, who's a Gein fanatic and interviewed him extensively. When Gein was institutionalized, the family name, his father was Scotch Scottish, and the family name was originally mcgeen, and they dropped the mc, so it ended up being just Geen. So that is the correct pronunciation.
- [15:08]
B
You're going to be doing a lot of correcting today because of what we're going to be discussing. So I appreciate us getting a great start there. But before we get into some of the mistakes or inaccuracies in this program, we're talking about Ryan Murphy's season three of Monster. What was your reaction when you first learned that he would be doing this project on Eddie Gein?
- [15:33]
C
Well, my first reaction was wondering why they hadn't bothered to option my book or in any way reach out to me. The short answer that I've been telling people is for a long time I was aggrieved and upset because I felt sure, you know, that anyone doing the Gein story would have to rely on my book, which really brought the Gein story to the attention of the wider public. Then after I saw the series, I was upset because they didn't use my book. Well, they did use it. There's no question about their using it. There are things in the show that could only have come from my book. But there's so much distortion and flat out fabrication and lies in the series that barely, except in the broadest way, it has very little to do with the historical facts of the Gin case.
- [16:40]
B
They, they pretty obviously I, I think anybody who does work on this case, frankly, is going to be using your research primarily for a deviant. And also I, I mentioned you really recently did something with Eric Powell. They're going to be using your work. Have you thought about filing any sort of legal action?
- [17:00]
C
Well, I did definitely, for sure, and had a lawyer who contacted Netflix. But then after watching the Show Again, it's 90% made up stuff. So I, we concluded that in a way, I didn't really have the basis for a legal case, you know, because it wasn't obviously a lot of material. If you're dealing with Gein, who's a historical figure and a public figure is what is considered to be in the public domain, even though I did all the research and went to Plainfield. This is going Back to around 1987, interviewed Keene's neighbors and one young man, I mean, I guess probably at that time he was in his 30s, maybe early 40s, who had been Gein's nearest neighbor as a child and been Inside the house, I interviewed Judge Golmar. The judge at his trial interviewed psychiatrists who treated him. I did a lot of deep research.
- [18:11]
A
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- [19:48]
C
But even though Ian Brennan was the creator of the show, the writer of the show, Ryan Murphy's partner, obviously didn't do all that research. He got it from my book. It's still considered to be in the public domain. So there's no legal basis. And the rest of the stuff, again, is just a pure product of Ian Brennan's Florida imagination. So, you know, again, so we, we both concluded there was no real legal basis for a lawsuit, probably an ethical basis, but you can't really enforce that, right?
- [20:33]
A
I, I think you've already answered this a little bit with some of your statements already, but I'm just going to ask it directly anyway. Are people who watch this show going to walk away with an accurate Understanding of who Gein was and what he did?
- [20:46]
C
No, absolutely not. You know, I've become a little bit of a media superstar over the last couple of weeks. I've been interviewed by, you know, Rolling Stone in the New York Times and New York Post and People and Inside Edition. And that's one of the things I tell everybody. One of the things that's upsetting to me is that people are going to come away from the show thinking they know who Ed Gein was and what his story was. That he engaged in autoerotic asphyxiation. You know, from the first scene of the show, I was like, hello, What? You know that he had an affair with Bernice Worden, that he helped solve the Ted Bundy case, that Adeline Watkins was this hot blonde 20 year old who was his accomplice. Just some, you know, all of that stuff. You know, one thing after another.
- [21:45]
B
So you see, you mentioned the autoerotic asphyxiation for stuff like that. Is there any truth to that at all or is it just something made up entirely from whole cloth?
- [21:54]
C
The latter, yes, as far as I know, entirely made up out of whole cloth.
- [22:00]
B
Adeline Watkins, any truth to how that was portrayed on the show?
- [22:05]
C
There was an Adeline Watkins. If you see photographs of her, and I don't mean to be cruel, she looks like Margaret Hamilton in the wizard of Oz, the Wicked Witch of the west, who was apparently something of a publicity hound. When the media descended on Plainfield after the discovery of the crimes, she suddenly appeared claiming to have been Ed's girlfriend, of which there is absolutely no evidence. And she later retracted a lot of what she said. You know, it is conceivable that he might have once asked her to go roller skating with him or something, but the way she's depicted in the show, it's just over the top, crazy, made up stuff.
- [22:51]
B
Did he have any role whatsoever in the Ted Bundy investigation?
- [22:55]
C
No. You know, one of the things that bothers me most about the show is he's portrayed as a serial killer. And a point I keep making to people is it's one of my major objections to the show, which it depicts him as somehow, you know, this precursor of all these later serial killers and the model for all these later serial killers who, by the way, I'm sure had no knowledge of him whatsoever. But the term, the term serial killer, the phrase serial killer was coined by the FBI Behavioral Science Unit specifically to describe sadistic sex murderers like John Wayne Gacy and Ted Bundy and Edmund Kemper. You know, people who derive their perverse pleasure from abducting and slowly torturing and then killing helpless victims. That's not who Gein was. Gein did murder two women, but he was not interested in torturing them. He executed very swiftly. He was just interested in having their corpses to bring back to his farmhouse to perform his different, you know, mutilations on. So the whole notion again that they, that or that he murdered his brother, there's no evidence that he murdered his brother. The notion that he murdered those two hunters and then the chainsaw with a chainsaw and it's just, well, it's, it's just crazy.
- [24:32]
A
You know, just while we're talking about Geen a bit, what do you think did motivate him? You mentioned he's not akin to sort of the, the Ted Bundy's, the Edmund Kempers. So what, what do you think was driving him to do what he did?
- [24:48]
C
Well, Gein was essentially a necrophile. I think underlying his crimes was this desire both to bring his mother back into his life, to resurrect his mother, whom he consciously worshiped and couldn't seem to live without, and at the same time enact these undoubtedly unconscious homicidal impulses towards her, you know, by mutilating all these corpses of the woman that he brought back. So again, ultimately, the question of what motivates somebody like Gein, the source of his madness, is impossible to completely answer. I, I always say to people it's as impossible to explain Ed Gein as it is to explain Mozart. There are just certain mysteries of human behavior that, you know, are beyond rational explanation. But his whole mother complex was obviously a very, very, very big part of that. So again, he was, as you know, he would read obituaries and when some woman that he would have known was a very small community died, he would go to the cemetery that night when the soil was. Hadn't settled yet, and exhume the coffin and take. Remove the corpse or whatever parts of it he wanted, bring him back to his farmhouse, do what he did with them. We don't know exactly everything he did, but he obviously dissected them and made these creepy artifacts, these macabre artifacts out of their body parts. And then when he ran out of suitable raw material, you know, corpses in the graveyards, he murdered these two women, turned them very quickly into corpses, and then brought those bodies back.
- [26:59]
B
Before we get back to the things that were inaccurate or just fiction in this program, we're talking about trying to figure out reasons why people do Things. And why? Maybe impossible to know because we're not in somebody else's head. I'm going to ask you a similar question. Why do you suppose someone like Ryan Murphy would take a case involving real people, real victims, these people lived and breathed, and just create just utter fiction out of it?
- [27:32]
C
Well, to some extent it struck me as a throwback to 1920, 1930s and 40s Hollywood biopics. You know, they do these movies about Thomas Edison or Louis Pasteur or whatever. They take the broad outlines of the life and then fill it in with whatever they thought would be entertaining for a couple hours to an audience. And in a sense, that's what Murphy and his co creator did with this. They took the broad outlines of Gein's life, his life, you know, life in Plainfield, obsession with his mother, the necrophiliac activities and so on and so forth. The making of his skin suit. They took all that probably from my book and. And then just filled it in, you know, with all this stuff that they thought would somehow be entertaining, which evidently it is. I mean, it's a big hit on Netflix. So. Yeah, I mean, Hollywood has always done that. This seems to me particularly egregious only because it's kind of presented as true crime. So.
- [28:54]
A
Yeah, I mean, we've watched docu series, probably older ones, or docudramas, I should say, from. I remember NBC, we watched the one on Jeffrey McDonald and it actually held pretty close to the source material, which I believe was Fatal Vision. So there's an ability to do these things where it's fictionalized, but it's essentially very close to reality. And this obviously did not meet that standard.
- [29:17]
C
No, I mean, I would say yes, it not only did it not meet that standard, but it flagrantly violated it.
- [29:28]
A
I'm just like, looking back, this is kind of a weird question, but like, had they optioned. Are you in, in a way glad they didn't option your book? Because then that you would have had your book tied to something like this where they were just going to make up a bunch of stuff anyway.
- [29:41]
C
Well, as I said, yeah, I mean, as literally this. My. The lawyer, a very wonderful lawyer that I retained wrote this letter to Netflix and the Netflix guy wrote back denying that they had really sort of acknowledged that they might have referred to my book. But. But as I said, I mean, I actually felt kind of relieved when I watched it because ever since I heard that they were doing it, you know, I'd been seething inside. They were just going to rip me off and Say, well, it's all in the public domain. And then when I saw it, I said, wow, they didn't rip me off at all. They just made stuff up. So there was a certain degree of relief. Although I still think they should have at least acknowledged my book as a source.
- [30:43]
A
I think so, too. It's. It's. I mean, I.
- [30:45]
B
We're.
- [30:46]
A
We're big believers in giving people credit for the research they did and what they uncovered. And I think that would have certainly been the right thing to do. But I'm glad that no one now will say, well, Harold Schechter said he was going crazy with chainsaws in the woods, because obviously you didn't do that.
- [31:00]
C
That's. Yeah. Well, again, you're dealing with, as it turned out, not with a legal issue, but with an ethical issue. And Hollywood ethics in this regard, you know, have always been on the questionable side.
- [31:17]
B
So did Gein write letters to Richard Spack?
- [31:22]
C
No, of course not. All that stuff is just made up. I'm sure Spec had no idea who the thing about Gein was. People knew who Gein was, but it was sort of like a fringe element of hardcore horror people. I mean, I didn't know who Gein was when I first came across his name before I started writing the book, in a way. And again, I don't mean to sound immodest. It was my book that brought him, you know, to the larger public attention. But, you know, the notion, again, that these serial killers saw Gein is like a model or an inspiration or, you know, it's totally insane.
- [32:11]
A
So you're saying that Ed Gein was not a influencer for serial killers as he's portrayed in this show?
- [32:17]
C
No, not at all. They had no idea who he was. He was not in contact with any of them. He was not a serial killer. They had no idea who he was. It's just made up.
- [32:31]
B
Yeah. And I think you're absolutely correct. You're not being a modest when you say that prior to your book, which at least my copy came out in.
- [32:38]
C
89, very first edition. Yeah.
- [32:44]
B
And I noticed, by the way, on, like, page one of the book, you mentioned how to pronounce the name.
- [32:48]
C
So I guess you didn't read that page.
- [32:51]
A
Give him that one.
- [32:54]
B
I. I don't think the case was very well known until that point, as you correctly point out. So I'm just curious, before we get back into discussing some of the errors, how did you come across this case?
- [33:04]
C
I came across it because, as you may or may not know, for 42 years, my day job was a professor of American literature at one of the senior branches of the City University of New York. In order to supplement my meager academic salary, especially since I had young kids, I started writing, you know, commercial books, trade books, and I had been working on a book about the movies when I came across the fact that Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre had both been inspired by the Gein case. Sansa Lambs had not come out yet when I wrote my book. So that was fascinating to me. I mean, my Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre were and remain my 2 all time favorite horror movies. Yeah, I started looking into it and pitched the idea to my editor and yeah, next thing you know, I was a true crime writer, which was not, you know, not the career path I had foreseen for myself.
- [34:15]
B
There's a list of things here. Did he do magic shows for the neighborhood kids that included body parts?
- [34:25]
C
I'm sorry, I'm sorry for like, breaking out into hysterical laughter. He did babysit. Apparently he got along better with kids than he did with adults. But, yeah, he's perfectly nice babysitter.
- [34:43]
B
Was he involved with a pretty brutal torture murder of Evelyn Hartley?
- [34:50]
C
No. When all the body parts were discovered in his farmhouse, as often happens when sensational crimes are suddenly, you know, when the perpetrator suddenly caught. All these lawmen from throughout the Midwest descended on Plainfield hoping they'd be able to close out these cold cases. And the disappearance of Evelyn Hartley was one of them. But I'm sure Gein had nothing to do with that. Again, it was not Gein's mo.
- [35:25]
B
I wonder, would we save time if I just ask you, what did the show get correct?
- [35:30]
C
Pretty much. Well, there was an Ed Gein. His mother did die. They sort of depicted. Again, they got it. Let me put like this. Whatever is accurate in the show seems to have come from my book. You know the scene where Ed drives his mother to that of the farmhouse and the guy's beating the dog to death. And know that comes from my book. I. I kind of made up myself the fact that he was fascinated with Ilsa Cough. I mean, I knew he was definitely obsessed with those men's magazines which at the time did often feature, you know, hot Nazi women commandant, you know, torturing people. Yes, but there's no evidence that Ilsa Koch was specifically one of them. And yeah, he dug up graves. He dressed up in a skin suit. I'm not sure that he put on a face mask because they show. You know, from what I understand, he basically Hung those up as trophies on his wall. But he did wear what they called a mammary suit, so, yeah, that's pretty much it.
- [36:50]
B
Wow.
- [36:51]
C
Yeah.
- [36:52]
A
I guess in terms of, you know, a situation like this, why do you think. Why do you think it's bad for Hollywood or for people telling these stories to spread inaccuracies and untruths about real crimes?
- [37:08]
C
Well, especially as a former professor, I think passing off, you know, total. Can I say. Please do. Total is historical truth. You know, just, you know, it's just promulgating ignorance. You know, you're just making people ignorant. You're making people think they know something when they don't.
- [37:42]
A
Yeah, I've seen some people defend it, saying, well, anyone who's watching a Netflix Ryan Murphy show and thinks they're getting a history lesson is, you know, it's their fault for being naive. But I. I think there is something to be said for. There's a responsibility when you're claiming to tell a true story to. To get it right, because not everyone has the time to extensively research things.
- [38:04]
C
Well, those people are. Are speaking the truth. The trouble is, you know, not, you know, many, many, many, many, many, many people probably reaching into the millions, don't realize that about Ryan Murphy and the shows. You know, I've heard from. I just got a. I've gotten several texts. Just got one yesterday from a young woman who's a daughter of one of my neighbors who I know very well, you know, asking if it was all true. She was saying, well, I know it's dramatized, but, you know, I just assumed it was real. And she's a very smart person. So those people online who recognize that Ryan Murphy exploits these stories for entertainment purposes and just puts in whatever he and his collaborator think will titillate the audience. You know, people don't know that you.
- [39:07]
A
Mentioned titillating the audience. And one thing, you know, we've seen from this is, you know, it's very graphic, violent, disturbing. What are your thoughts on the portrayal of violence in this show, real and otherwise? Evelyn Hartley. Right. They're portraying her be tortured to death when that's not even clear that that's what happened to her. And seemingly no link between. Between her and Gein. Like, I guess I just. I find it distasteful personally, but I guess. What are your views on that?
- [39:38]
C
Well, what's again, distasteful to me is just, you know, it's. It's a complete lie that he had anything to do with the disappearance of Evelyn Hartley. As far as the portrayal of explicit violence and gore. That is the essence of the horror genre. I'm just watching now this movie Bring Her Back. Know if you saw it, but, you know, there's a scene where this kid starts in closeup gnawing on a butcher knife, you know, and it showed him. You know, it shows his teeth being ripped. But. But that's, you know, that's horror, right? That's modern horror. Gein's major contribution was not that he inspired, you know, the granddaddy of all these serial killers. Green's major contribution was he transformed, through the character of Norman Bates, the genre of American horror and, you know, ultimately stands behind the whole slasher movie craze and splatter movies and so on and so forth, which have always been excessive, you know, extremely, extremely gory and graphic. So I don't have any problem, per se, with a portrayal of graphic, grotesque violence in horror movies. I've lost my taste for it. You know, I'm not. You know, I'm not into torture porn. I stopped probably with the first Saw movie, but I have no particular problem with it. Again, my problem is, as we've been discussing, that it never happened.
- [41:24]
A
And then I was curious, you know, in terms of the performance of the actor playing Gein, was that accurate and grounded within the real man, obviously, beyond the things he's doing that are not real, just in terms of the actual portrayal, what did you think of that?
- [41:39]
C
I didn't have any real problem with that. He was obviously way more ripped than Ed was. And I thought they did a pretty good job of making him facially, kind of resemble Gein. The voice was, you know, a little strange. But I. I guess we've all heard Gein's voice by now in that Lost Tapes documentary, which I was in. Yeah, I thought he was. I thought he did a good job under the circumstances. What, given what was being asked of him.
- [42:13]
B
Well, I'd like to jump back. Well, first, if we ever want to talk about violence in pop culture, a conversation about Dr. Wertham, who you've written about. But I wanted to jump back to. I bought the first edition of Deviant when it came back out a long time ago, and looking at the back cover, it says that this is a true story, more horrifying than any movie or novel. That's absolutely true. It lives up to that billing. And it occurs to me that maybe one reason people like Ryan Murphy fictionalize things, because it's easier.
- [42:50]
C
Well, let's say they had stuck totally accurately to my book. They're obviously, you know, this is an eight part series, you know, there wouldn't have been again, the kind of sensationalistic, you know, when I write my books I, I try to avoid sensationalism because the subject matter itself is so sensationalistic. But if you're making what amounts to the episodes vary in length. So let's say six hour, you know, a six hour traumatization of Gin. You know, it's much more tension grabbing, you know, to open with a scene of him, you know, dressed up in a girdle, you know, engaging in auto erratic asphyxiation. And obviously much more dramatic to have him chainsawing up a couple of guys or torturing a teenager and so on and so forth. I mean, nothing until you really get to the discovery of Gein's crimes. In my book, nothing that dramatic or sensationalistic happened. There's kind of a slow build, which was deliberate on my part in terms of the way I constructed it. So again, I understand the dramatic rationale behind doing what they did. My issue, you know, it began with a disclaimer, you know, the following story was inspired by these crimes but takes extraordinary liberties with the truth. I wouldn't have any problem with it.
- [44:45]
A
Yeah, I mean, Psycho and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, as you mentioned, are influenced by what Gein did, but they're not claiming to. They're just doing their own thing.
- [44:55]
C
Ultimately, you know, at this point, Gein has become a mythological figure in our culture. You know, if you look at the, if you look at real psycho killers of the past, people like Billy the Kid or Jesse James, I mean those guys were hardcore psycho killers and see the kinds of movies that have been made about them, you know, which have no relationship to the truth, historical truth at all. You can argue, you know, that you can take the Geen story and do anything you want to do with it, make it as entertaining in your own way as you want to. Again, my issue has to do with its being presented as the true story.
- [45:37]
A
Well, I, I think ultimately one thing, and I'll, we'll end with this, but one thing that struck me was the epigraph of your book, Deviant kind of ended up predicting this a little bit because it's Proverbs 21:16 scene and it's the man that wandereth out of the way of understanding shall remain in the congregation of the dead. We're all going to be in the congregation of the dead here. If our understanding of this case is just through what's on the Netflix show and we need to go deeper than that to really understand this case.
- [46:07]
C
One of the reasons I call my book Deviant and have that epigraph has to do with deviating, you know, from a certain path. And in that sense, ironically or appropriately, you know, the Netflix series deviates so far from the truth that it's, you know, it sort of fulfills, you know, or is an example of, of what that title was meant to suggest.
- [46:37]
A
So it's all come full circle. Well, is there anything that we didn't ask you about that you wanted to mention or you think it's important for the audience to understand this, the situation, what's going on with Netflix? Anything?
- [46:52]
B
No.
- [46:52]
C
I do want to put in a plug for the graphic novel that I did with Eric Powell. Did you hear what Eddie Geen done, which I also have reason to believe was on the set they made when they made the movie? So. Yeah, but other than that, no, thank you. They're really good questions and I'm very happy to address them.
- [47:17]
A
Thank you so much.
- [47:17]
C
Thank you so much, sir.
- [47:18]
A
We really, really appreciate it.
- [47:19]
C
Yeah, same here. Thank you.
- [47:21]
B
Thank you.
- [47:22]
A
Take care.
- [47:23]
C
Bye. Bye.
- [47:23]
A
Bye. Thanks to Harold Schechter for watching the Ed Gein story so that we didn't.
- [47:30]
B
Have to, but in all seriousness, we would encourage you to get Mr. Schechter's book entitled Deviant. Mr. Schechter also did a graphic novel with Eric Powell, and that is called did you hear what Eddie Gein done? That's also excellent. In fact, all of Mr. Schechter's books are very, very good. He's one of the best crime nonfiction authors out there, and we will include links in our show notes.
- [47:55]
A
We'd really encourage you to check those out because we find that when it comes to crime nonfiction, carefully researched true stories are always better, more gripping and more chilling than whatever Hollywood cooks up.
- [48:07]
B
Thanks so much for listening to the Murder Sheet. If you have a tip concerning one of the cases we cover, please email us@murdersheetmail.com. if you have actionable information about an unsolved crime, please report it to the appropriate authorities.
- [48:27]
A
If you're interested in joining our Patreon, that's available at www.patreon.com/murder sheet. If you want to tip us a bit of money for records requests, you can do so at www. Buymeacoffee.com murdersheet. We very much appreciate any support.
- [48:51]
B
Special thanks to Kevin Tyler Greenlee, who composed the music for the murder sheet and who you can find on the web@kevintg.com if you're looking to talk with.
- [49:02]
A
Other listeners about a case we've covered, you can join the Murder Sheet discussion group on Facebook. We mostly focus our time on research and reporting, so we're not on social media much. We do try to check our email account, but we ask for patience as we often receive a lot of messages. Thanks again for listening.