Here’s Whether Ed Gein Really Killed His Alleged Girlfriend Adeline Watkins After She Revealed Their Secret 20-Year Relationship
Every tragic story needs some love. If you’ve watched Monster: The Ed Gein Story, you might be wondering what happened to the serial killer’s love interest, Adeline Watkins.
Ed Gein (Charlie Hunnam) was accused of cutting up women who reminded him of his deceased mother and preserving parts of them both “to bring her back to life and have her with him always, and to destroy her as the cause of his frustration,” according to TIME. He was later diagnosed with Schizophrenia and was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. He was later transferred to Mendota State Hospital.
Monster recounts a budding romance between the serial killer and a friendly woman named Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), who was pivotal in his murder decisions.
Where is Adeline Watkins now?
Adeline Watkins kept out of the spotlight after the spotlight was on her following Ed Gein’s murders. Since she was born in 1907, she’s most likely passed.
The scene where she meets Gein one last time before he dies is likely a fictionalized account and was all in the character’s head and delusions.
Was Adeline Watkins in a relationship with Ed Gein?
Adeline Watkins was never in a relationship with Ed Gein. “I turned him down, but not because there was anything wrong with him,” she said about a proposal from him to the Minneapolis Tribune. “It was something wrong with me. I guess I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to live up to what he expected of me.”
“Eddie liked books about lions and tigers and Africa and India,” she explained about their relationship. They even discussed his potential murders, unknowingly. “Eddie told how the murderer did wrong, what mistakes he had made,” she recalled. “I thought it was interesting.”
“Eddie was so nice about doing things I wanted to do that sometimes I felt I was taking advantage of him,” she said. Even when she rejected his proposal, she said, “I loved him and I still do.”
Watkins later retracted her statements after she was sensationalized by the media. “There was no 20-year romance,” she said, and described their relationship as purely platonic.
Watkins did recall that he was indeed “quiet and polite” but declined that she called him “sweet” and was “quite emphatic in stating that she had never ‘practically dragged him into a tavern,’ as was reported.”
The writers of the show had to work with the little facts of what’s known. “[What] we do know is that she came out at first talking about how they were an item, and they were going to get married,” showrunner Ian Brennan told Netflix’s Tudum. “And then she came out like, ‘No, I made that all up.’ ”
Charlie Hunnam had a different stance: “My interpretation was that she’s in a large part a fantasy of Ed’s,” Hunnam says. “He finds, whether in reality or in his mind, this sort of kindred spirit with Adeline, somebody who can relate and to understand these primal urges and instincts that he has.”
Ed Gein told doctors at Central State Hospital that he’d never had a sexual experience, so he remained single his whole life.
