- Monster season 3 is coming to Netflix
- Charlie Hunnam will play the notorious serial killer
- Who was Ed Gein and what did he do?
Monster season 3 is creeping closer, with Charlie Hunnam set to play one of America’s most infamous serial killers, Ed Gein, in Monster: The Original Monster.
The series follows 2023’s Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menedez Story which came after Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. In addition to being linked by clunky and unnecessarily long titles, each critically acclaimed series focused on different real-life killers.
Read more: All we know about Monster season 3 The Ed Gein Story
Season 1 saw Evan Peters play Jeffrey Dahmer, while season 2 introduced audiences to newcomers Cooper Koch and Nicholas Alexander Chavez as Erik and Lyle Menendez respectively.
For the show’s hotly-tipped third outing, series overseers Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan have invited British star Hunnam to play a serial killer whose crimes inspired classic movies like The Silence of the Lambs and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Read more: Menéndez family criticize new Monsters series
So who is Ed Gein, the focal point of Netflix’s Monsters season 3? Read on to explore his grizzly wrap sheet…
Who was serial killer Ed Gein?
Gein is an American serial killer whose crimes also included stealing bodies from graves and making household keepsakes from human remains. He was arrested in 1957 following the disappearance of a woman in his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin.
Gein was born in 1906 and raised in a highly religious Lutheran family in rural America. Gein had a tense relationship with his mother Augusta who was deeply connected to the Lutheran faith and would regularly preach the evils of women who she believed to be instruments of the devil.
Despite these factors, Gein grew up to idolise this controversial matriarch. A carpenter and tanner by trade, he was skilled at treating animal skins to make leather and led a largely isolated life in his farmhouse home.
By 1945, Gein’s mother, father and brother had all passed and not long afterwards, his crimes began taking place. After his arrest in 1957, Gein admitted to tampering with multiple graves between 1947 and 1952.
Arrest and investigation of Ed Gein
After police investigated, they discovered these claims were likely true due to various disturbances made to local graves. It also emerged that Gein was attempting to create a suit made of human flesh that resembled his mother. This was later used as the basis for Buffalo Bill, the fictional killer in The Silence of the Lambs.
Gein was known to have committed two murders but was suspected to be responsible for many more. These suspicions were fuelled by the range of body parts discovered in his rural farmhouse. Among these macabre items were skulls, leggings made of human skin, dismembered heads, fingernails, noses, human skin used as chair covers and a waste bin made of tanned human flesh.
After initially being deemed unfit for trial, Gein was eventually tried in 1968. He was found guilty and spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Gein died in 1984 of lung cancer.
Who is starring in Monster season 3?
In addition to Hunnam, Monster: The Original Monster will feature Rosanne star Laurie Metcalf as Gein’s overbearing mother Augusta.
British star Tom Hollander will play iconic suspense director Alfred Hitchcock. It is well known that Hitchcock used Gein as the inspiration for his fictional killer Norman Bates in Psycho. Olivia Williams will play the filmmaker’s wife Alma Reville.
In early February 2024, Addison Rae and Suzanna Son were added to the cast in undisclosed roles.
