The true story behind Birdman’s crimes as seen in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

Monster: The Ed Gein Story brings Birdman into focus, and the name points to Richard Speck, the man who murdered eight student nurses in Chicago in 1966. The series places Speck’s legend beside Ed Gein’s history to show how real cases fed later myths and screen stories.

The show also stages letters and prison scenes to connect Birdman to Gein. Those beats read as crafted drama. There is no public record that Speck and Gein corresponded, and the finale’s broader network of killers is shown as stylized storytelling, not a real chain of contacts.

Disclaimer: This article contains major spoilers for Monster: The Ed Gein Story finale. Reader's discretion is advised.

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How Monster: The Ed Gein Story uses Birdman

The show presents Birdman as an imprisoned admirer who sends Gein provocative letters and boasts about influence. That fits the season’s theme about how notorious cases spawn copycats and cults of personality.

Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein (Image via Netflix)

In a Variety interview, the showrunners said the goal was to confront audience fascination while focusing on mental illness and harm, not to turn crimes into triumphs.

The finale also stages Gein’s proximity to other infamous killers, including Ted Bundy, as part of a deathbed haze. Director Max Winkler described the Bundy material as a stylized choice that contrasts “pure evil” with a troubled subject, not a case file, according to Variety.

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The real Birdman behind Monster: The Ed Gein Story

Richard Speck, later nicknamed “Birdman,” murdered eight nursing students during a single night in 1966. A ninth woman hid and survived, helping police identify him.

Monster: The Ed Gein Story (Image via Netflix)

He was sentenced to death, then resentenced to eight consecutive prison terms after the death penalty was struck down in Illinois. Speck died in custody in 1991. According to People, he has been called the “first mass murderer” of the television era and is not classified as a serial killer.

The “Birdman” nickname reportedly stems from a prison tale. As recounted by FBI profiler John E. Douglas in his book Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit, Speck nursed an injured sparrow in his cell, then threw it into a fan when told pets were not allowed, saying,

“If I can’t have it, no one can.”

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What Monster: The Ed Gein Story imagines vs. what records show

There is no verified record that Speck and Ed Gein ever corresponded. The letter-writing shown in the episode functions as a narrative device to depict morbid fandom, not a documented exchange. There is no evidence that the two men actually wrote to each other.

The same caution applies to Gein's “assisting” on Ted Bundy. Gein was confined in Wisconsin long before Bundy’s crimes and capture. The finale’s consultation sequence is staged as a vision near death, not a historical collaboration. Variety’s conversation with Max Winkler frames this as an intentional, dreamlike contrast rather than fact.

For Gein’s own crimes, the basic outline remains well established. He confessed to killing Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan and admitted to grave robbing. TIME’s 1957 coverage described Worden’s body found on Gein’s property and the discovery of items made from human remains inside the farmhouse. Those details anchor the season’s factual spine.

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Monster: The Ed Gein Story streams on Netflix. Many claims tied to Birdman’s nickname and Gein’s farmhouse finds are documented, while the finale’s letter chain and FBI scenes should be seen as dramatized fiction.