The latest season of “Monster” tells the story of Ed Gein, a Wisconsin man who killed at least one person and dug up bodies from a cemetery. But there are some killers so vile, the creators of the show say they won’t make a season about them.
Ian Brennan, one of the creators of Netflix’s “Monster” series, told TODAY.com during the “Monster: The Ed Gein Story” red carpet premiere that murderers like Ted Bundy will never get the “Monster” treatment.
“Ted Bundy is just a monster. It’s just about sadism and sexual violence. We just don’t find that interesting,” Brennan says. “It’s like, not only is that hard to watch, that’s like hard to write. Like, I just don’t, there’s not a mind there that you want to get inside, or even to get inside.”
“There’s a deep banality to most evil, really, and that’s why someone like Ed (Gein) is so interesting,” he added. “I hesitate to even call him evil, that’s like the wrong vocabulary to even describe him. He was just so deeply strange.”
Charlie Hunnam stars as Ed Gein in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story.”Netflix
Brennan said he and Ryan Murphy, the co-creator of “Monster,” try to find stories that are multi-dimensional for the series.
“Rather than recoil, you just sort of want to lean in,” Brennan said. “And whenever we get to a place where we’re leaning in on something, even as as macabre and dark and strange and upsetting as the Ed Gein story, you know you’re on to something.”
Brennan described Gein as “a very, very fascinating person” who “contains multitudes.”
“A big part of this series is starting seasons and abandoning them, because you never know quite know what’s gonna feel right. Sometimes we start writing and it’s like, ‘Eugh,’ particularly when you’re dealing with murder,” he said. “Most murders, most murderers are not interesting. They’re just tragic and awful and violent and sadistic. So it takes like, an interesting curveball that can sort of get past all those criticisms internally and be something you want to spend eight hours with.”
Brennan previously said in an interview with Variety published on Sept. 30 that serial killers like the Golden State Killer and John Wayne Gacy have “nothing redemptive” in their stories.
“The second the name comes up for us, every year, both of us go, No. There’s no pathos,” Brennan said of Gacy.
As for Bundy, Murphy told Variety: “When you look at those crimes, what are the themes there? It doesn’t ask you any questions about society. It feels too murderous — not interesting enough.”
While there may never be a full season about Bundy, the serial killer does make an appearance in “Monster: The Ed Gein Story.” Here’s what to know about the fictional connection between Ed Gein and Ted Bundy.
Did Ed Gein Help Find Ted Bundy?
In the last episode of “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” Gein, played by Charlie Hunnam, appears to help authorities find Bundy, though it also could be a figment of his own imagination as he thinks through the killers he could have influenced after he inspired movies like “Psycho.”
In real life, Gein had no connection to Bundy’s arrest.
Gein was arrested in 1957 after investigators found the body of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner, hanging by the heels on his property, according to the Associated Press.
When investigators went inside Gein’s home, they found a house of horrors, including severed body parts, furniture made of human skin and more, according to the AP.
After his arrest, Gein admitted to killing two people and digging up the graves of several women in interviews with investigators, according to a transcript of the interviews included in the book, “The Ed Gein File” compiled by John Borowski.
Gein was sent to a psychiatric hospital after his arrest, and in 1968, a judge found him guilty of murder, though the same judge later ruled Gein was insane at the time of the crime and sent him back to the facility, according to the Associated Press.
In 1978, Gein was transferred to the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he would remain until his death in 1984, meaning he was in the hospital when Bundy committed his crimes and was unable to help authorities with Bundy’s arrest.
Bundy was convicted of killing three people, though he confessed to killing more than two dozen women and girls, and he’s suspected in the murderers of even more, according to the FBI.
A Pensacola, Florida, police officer initiated a traffic stop on Feb. 15, 1978, after he noticed an orange Volkswagen Beetle was stolen, according to the FBI. Bundy, inside the car, resisted arrest but was eventually taken into custody.
The officer didn’t know who Bundy was, but he was later identified, as he had been added to the FBI’s Ten Most Wanted Fugitives list on Feb. 10, 1978, according to the FBI.
After Bundy was convicted, he was sentenced to death and was executed by electric chair on Jan. 24, 1989.
