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Was Ed Gein’s Girlfriend in ‘Monster’ Real?

October 5, 2025

Ryan Murphy’s new horror series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, dropped on Netflix on October 3. It tells the chilling real-life tale of the Wisconsin farmer and handyman turned grave robber and killer.

Gein’s obsessions were arguably driven by his bizarre relationship with his domineering mother, Augusta Wilhelmine Gein, an enmeshed fixation that later became the focal point of the Alfred Hitchcock classic, Psycho. In fact, Gein has been the inspiration for other infamous serial killer characters, from Texas Chainsaw Massacre to Silence of the Lambs, according to the Wisconsin Historical Society. The mild-mannered (seemingly) Gein lived in the small town of Plainfield, WI, and he died in a state mental institution in 1984.

The Netflix series’ first episode introduces a surprising character into Gein’s life, however. She is a young neighbor by the name of Adeline Watkins, and she is painted as Gein’s girlfriend. That has a lot of viewers of the series wondering whether this could possibly be true. Could a macabre serial killer like Gein, who was known to dress up in human skin that he stole from the graves of women who looked like his mother, actually have a girlfriend?

The answer is that Adeline Watkins really existed, and there is evidence that she did date Gein, although the degree to which they were involved is contradicted by Watkins herself. Thus, it’s a bit murky in real life. She did not resemble the actress who plays the fictional Watkins, however, and the relationship appears to be heavily fictionalized when it is contrasted to newspaper articles in the 1950s.

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The seminal story that generated the Ed Gein girlfriend narrative was published by the Minneapolis Tribune in the wake of Gein’s arrest. It was reprinted on Newspapers.com by the Wisconsin State Journal, and it includes a photo of Watkins along with an interview. However, in a later newspaper interview a few days later in 1957, Watkins denied that she had said some of the quotes in that interview, and the most she would admit to was going to the theater with Gein a couple of times.

Other newspaper articles from the time explain that Gein’s mother was opposed to him dating women and was a stern religious figure.

The Nov. 21, 1957, article in the State Journal blares the headline, “Plainfield Woman Nearly Wedded Gein.”

Then, 50, and not a co-ed like is depicted on Netflix, the initial story reported that Watkins had confirmed a 20-year romance with Gein, and called him “nice.”

“I loved him and I still do,” she told the Minneapolis Tribune, according to that report.

She also claimed that she turned down a proposal from the killer – who admitted slewing two other women – and said she did so because she didn’t think she could “live up” to what he expected.

Watkins described going to the theater and taverns with Gein but described him as more inclined to prefer a milkshake in a drugstore.

In the follow-up story, though, Watkins downplayed the relationship, saying she had only known Gein for a couple of months, but acknowledged they went to the theater together. Now, she said that the claims of a romance were “exaggerated” but that he did call on her several times. She also said she felt sorry for him. That article ran on Dec. 3, 1957, in the Stevens Point Journal.