Netflix show missed out Ed Gein’s most disturbing real quote, and it’s only four words

Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story has thrown true crime into a spiral of horror, but the most chilling thing about Ed Gein isn’t even in the series. It’s a quote about what he did with the bodies.

The new season of Ryan Murphy’s Monster anthology stars Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein, the real-life murderer who inspired some of Hollywood’s most terrifying villains, from Psycho’s Norman Bates, The Silence of the Lambs’ Buffalo Bill, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre’s Leatherface.

The series shows Gein’s disturbing psychology, focusing on how his obsession with his late mother drove him to commit some of the most grotesque crimes in American history. But one of the most horrifying details about Gein never made it into Netflix’s retelling, and it’s just four words long.

Credit: Netflix

In real life, when police asked Gein if he had ever sexually violated the corpses he dug up, he gave a bone-chilling reply: “They smelled too bad.”

The bluntness of that response has haunted investigators for decades. It’s a disturbingly casual remark that captures exactly how detached from humanity Gein had become, and people watching the Netflix show are now rediscovering it as they search for the real story.

While the series covers his confessions, his “woman suit” made from human skin, and his obsession with his mother, which, according to forensic psychologist Katherine Ramsland, was an attempt to “literally crawl into her skin,” it stops short of including that nauseating line.

Credit: Netflix

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This could have been a deliberate choice. The Ed Gein Story has already faced backlash for being excessively graphic, with critics calling parts of it “too disgusting to watch”. So it’s possible that even Ryan Murphy decided the four words “They smelled too bad” were simply too grim to include.

Gein was ultimately found guilty but legally insane after confessing to the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan. He spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital, dying of lung cancer in 1984.

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Featured image credit: Netflix