Here’s Whether Ed Gein Really Killed a Nurse in Real Life After Netflix’s Monster Showcased His Schizophrenic Episode
He was the center of “one of the century’s most gruesome criminal cases” in the 20th century. Ed Gein‘s life is highlighted in Ryan Murphy’s latest season of his Netflix anthology series Monster. But like all Ryan Murphy shows, there are some things that stretch beyond fiction.
Ed Gein was a serial killer who was active in the 1950s and 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 arrested in November 1957 in connection to Bernice Worden’s murder, and officials discovered her body dismembered in his property. He was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was later institutionalized.
The show blurs what happens in real life and things that are only in the serial killer’s mind. But, what’s reality and what’s fiction?
Did Ed Gein kill a nurse in the asylum in real life?
Ed Gein did not kill a nurse in real life. The Netflix series showed the killer finding a chainsaw in a cupboard in the asylum and using it to kill Nurse Noz in Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. However, it’s later shown that it was a schizophrenic episode, and it didn’t happen at all in the show or in real life. Gein (played by Charlie Hunnam) was confused on why the nurse was still alive after his episode.
In fact, several sources noted that doctors had praised Gein’s good behavior as a “model patient” while he was in Central State. He was later transferred to Mendota Mental Health Institute where he died in 1984 at the age of 77, due to respiratory failure, secondary to lung cancer.
Who did Ed Gein kill?
As someone whose murders inspired a plethora of horror films like Psycho, and Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Gein garnered a reputation for his gruesome murders. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia after he was taken into custody.
Gein only admitted to the killing of two women, Worden and Mary Hogan, and stealing corpses from graves. The killer reportedly tracked the obituary section of the newspaper to look for freshly buried bodies at the cemetery, including ones close to his mother’s. He was not a cannibal nor a necrophiliac, and only “preserved the remains just to look at,” according to TIME.
Police suspected Gein may have been responsible for more killings, but they all remain unsolved.
