By Jay’Mi Vazquez
Managing Editor
Director Ryan Murphy and the rise of his true crime biographical shows are intriguing yet; they contain inaccuracies that can be proven.
“Monster: The Ed Gein Story” premiered on Oct. 3 on Netflix and is Murphy’s latest installment of his popular series.
This is the third season of the series, and it follows the life of murderer Ed Gein who killed two women in the 1950’s and robbed the bodies of people who rested in their graves. Gein would use those bodies to create furniture, clothing and disturbing women costumes.
I was floored that I had never heard of this man before considering the damage he has done and how he was the inspiration for so many movies I love, including “Psycho,” “Silence of the Lambs” and “Texas Chain Saw Massacre.”
As I was watching the show, I could not help but notice that Murphy was trying to victimize Gein and make the audience feel empathy towards him.
Gein mentally deteriorated once his beloved mother Augusta Wilhelmine Gein passed away in 1945. The show displayed his unhealthy obsession with her and how her death led him to killing.
Addison Rae is someone I have not paid attention to since her TikTok days in the Hype House, but wow was her acting amazing. Rae portrayed a high school babysitter named Evelyn Hartley who has been rumored to be kidnapped and murdered by Gein in the 50’s.
The link between the two is that Hartley would babysit for a family, but she contracted polio and the family needed a different babysitter. Gein would help with the children after Hartley, until an unsettling situation spooked the family, and he was fired.
I looked this up and there has been no correlation with the disappearance of Hartley and Gein. Gein was investigated and took a lie detector test, which he passed.
The evidence that was left behind in her disappearance did not match Gein but instead showed that more than one person was responsible for the crime as witness statements and show prints left behind. This not being included in the show ruined it for me because I do not like fictionalized stories in a show based off true events.
This is not the first time Murphy has included false information. He caused chaos with Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers’ stories as he included inaccuracies.
I also felt bamboozled as I was under the impression that Gein’s second victim was in a relationship with him. I learned later through my own research that their relationship was false.
Another thing that was debunked from the show was that Gein never spoke to other serial killers through letters, nor did he help in capturing Ted Bundy.
This is extremely dangerous because we should not be rewriting history. Whether to make a show more interesting, facts are facts, and Murphy should be ashamed of himself.
Ryan Murphy is reintroducing the world to these true crime events, which can have a positive or negative effect depending on how you look at things. Murphy needs to stick to the facts more in his series, stop adding fake scenes and stop making excuses for why these people became monsters
