So, here’s what really happened to Ed Gein’s ‘girlfriend’ Adeline Watkins after his arrest

Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story shows Ed Gein’s so-called girlfriend, Adeline Watkins, as a long-term, complicated figure in his life, but it skips over what actually happened to her after his arrest. The show makes it feel like she was deeply involved, even almost a partner in his grim world. But in reality, things were way more ordinary.

Most people, including me, thought she was just a figment of Gein’s twisted imagination because of all the parallels in the show. But in reality, Adeline Watkins was very much real. She was from Plainfield, Wisconsin, living with her widowed mother in 1957 when she became part of the story right after Gein was caught.

via Netflix

After Gein’s arrest in 1957, Adeline initially gave an interview to the Minneapolis Tribune which was republished in the Wisconsin State Journal claiming she’d been with Gein for 20 years. She painted him as this gentle, kind man. She also said that he had proposed to her in 1955.

However, just a few weeks later, Adeline gave another interview to the Stevens Point Journal. She clarified that the first story had been “blown out of proportion”. She then claimed that while they had known each other for 20 years, they were actually only in a relationship for seven months on and off.

So, all the gruesome stuff Netflix dramatises, she apparently had zero connection to it.

So, what happened to her after?

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via Netflix

After setting the record straight, Adeline stepped completely out of the public eye. She didn’t really go to New York to become a crime photographer. According to the YouTube channel Marvelous Videos, she went on to live a normal, quiet life. Adeline eventually married a man named Torqulson and settled in Monroe, Wisconsin. She lived decades far away from any media circus or drama surrounding Ed Gein. She passed away in 2003 at the age of 81.

Unlike the dark, cinematic version, she never spiralled into danger or obsession. She simply lived her life quietly, far from the nightmare Ed Gein created.