Did Ed Gein have any contribution to the infamous Ted Bundy investigation? Details from Netflix's new Monster entry, explored 

Netflix has turned fact into a fever dream again. Monster: The Ed Gein Story ends with a twist: the "Butcher of Plainfield" helping investigators track down Ted Bundy. America’s two most infamous killers are somehow crossing paths in the name of justice. But before you start imagining Gein scribbling Bundy’s mugshot on a chalkboard in his Wisconsin cell, let’s hit pause, shall we?

Here’s the truth: it never happened. Not even close!

Long before Bundy's terror started in the 1970s, Gein was locked up at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin. About sixteen years before Bundy began killing women all over the Pacific Northwest (in 1958), he was ruled legally insane. It's just fanfiction when Gein helps investigators catch Bundy.

But it’s intentional fanfic. According to The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Ryan Murphy drops clues throughout the finale that suggest the sequence might be happening inside Gein’s delusional mind. It's a fantasy of relevance, where he imagines inspiring (and even guiding) other serial killers. It’s a mirror trick in line with Murphy’s "fact-meets-fiction" style.

Still, it’s led to a frenzy of Google searches asking: Did Ed Gein really help catch Ted Bundy? The answer is no.

Were Ed Gein and Ted Bundy ever connected?

No, Ed Gein and Ted Bundy never met, spoke, corresponded, or so much as existed in the same investigative universe. When Bundy began his killing spree in 1974, Gein had spent nearly two decades in a psychiatric facility.

He died in 1984, five years before Bundy’s execution.

So where did this "connection" come from? Monster thrives on bending the truth for punch. In the finale, FBI agents interview Gein (a callback to the Mindhunter-era Behavioral Science Unit), and he helps profile Bundy. In reality, FBI profiler John Douglas (the inspiration for Holden Ford in Mindhunter) met Gein but described him as "so psychotic" that the conversation was useless.

Bundy, for his part, was caught through a routine traffic stop in 1978, not because of a tip from the "Ghoul of Plainfield." The only real overlap between them? Both became pop-culture icons, as their crimes spawned fascination, books, and films. In that sense, Murphy’s "meeting" of their worlds is a commentary on how America is resurrecting its monsters for entertainment.

More facts that Monster: The Ed Gein Story twists

If you’re watching Monster: The Ed Gein Story and find yourself wondering what’s real, join the club! Murphy’s team took creative license with gusto.

Yes, Ed Gein made lampshades from human skin and confessed to robbing graves. But no, he didn’t commit half the murders on screen, nor did he flirt with a woman named Adeline Watkins (she denied dating him).

The series also invents his involvement with Nazi war criminals like Ilse Koch and scenes implying necrophilia and cannibalism. Gein denied both of these, and there’s zero evidence. His true horrors were plenty: he exhumed bodies, made furniture out of human remains, and killed two women --- Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden.

But by tying Gein’s delusions to Bundy’s crimes, Monster taps into how horror bleeds into American consciousness. Co-creator Ian Brennan even said the show "turns the camera back on us," and makes us question why we keep consuming true crime like comfort TV. It’s exactly what Murphy does best.

To wrap up, Gein didn’t catch Bundy, Bundy didn’t know Gein, and the real monsters here are our collective obsession with them!

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You can stream Monster: The Ed Gein Story on Netflix.

NEXT UP: Charlie Hunnam stands up for his character on Monster: The Ed Gein Story, but viewers aren’t having any of it

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