Monsters: The Ed Gein Story - The truth behind the alleged letter exchange with Richard ‘Birdman’ Speck

Netflix's Monsters: The Ed Gein Story premiered on October 3, 2025, and quickly gained viewers' attention. The third installment of the Monster series follows serial killer and grave digger Ed Gein's story about his grisly crimes, and also depicts how he struggled to differentiate between reality and illusion due to his schizophrenia.

Unlike the previous installments of the anthology series, Monsters: The Ed Gein Story has taken many creative liberties to create the story of Ed Gein. One of those fictional events was the communication between Richard ‘Birdman’ Speck and Gein through letters. In reality, there is no evidence to prove that Speck ever exchanged any letters with Gein, and called him his idol.

More on this in our story.

Monsters: The Ed Gein Story - The truth behind the alleged letter exchange with Richard ‘Birdman’ Speck

Apart from revealing Ed Gein's story in Monsters: The Ed Gein Story, the Netflix series also depicts how Hollywood hits such as Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre were inspired by Gein's crimes.

Furthermore, the series also shows how Ed Gein influenced multiple serial killers that came after him, such as Ted Bundy and Ed Kemper, among others. He even got fan mail from serial killers like Bundy, Richard Speck, also called Birdman, who called him their idol.

However, there is no evidence that can prove that Birdman ever tried to communicate with Gein, and it is one of the fictional stories added by the creative team, which later also helps the authorities to catch Ted Bundy, which is another fabricated tale.

In the finale of Monsters: The Ed Gein Story, titled, The Godfather, Birdman is accurately portrayed as a man who has taken multiple illegal hormonal injections and donned blonde dyed hair. The real Richard Speck's home video from prison also revealed the same physical appearance.

However, in the Netflix series, Speck talked about being a fan of Gein and sending him letters from prison. However, in real life, Speck never mentioned Gein in his home video clip and has never exchanged letters with the killer. The whole scene in the finale was fictional. Furthermore, the show also leaves the scene to the viewers' imagination of whether the scene was just another of Gein's Schizophrenic episodes.

Monsters: The Ed Gein Story - More about Richard 'Birdman' Speck

As per Monsters: The Ed Gein Story, mass murderer Richard Speck was sent to prison for killing nine nursing students in 1966. As per John E. Douglas and Mark Olshaker's non-fiction book, Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, Speck's nickname, Birdman, came into existence after an event in prison.

In the book, it is revealed that Speck took care of a Sparrow in his Prison cell. However, after a guard told him that he could not keep a pet, he threw the bird into a fan, which instantly killed it, resulting in the nickname Birdman. Speck later died in Prison in 1991.

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