Gein's Twisted Connection to Notorious Killer Bundy Revealed

In October 2025, the new season of the Netflix series "Monster" has sparked intriguing questions about the potential connection between two of America's most notorious killers: Ed Gein and Ted Bundy.

The series delves into the tumultuous life and grisly crimes of Gein, also known as "The Butcher of Plainfield," who confessed to murdering two women and robbing several gravesites in the 1950s. Interestingly, the show's eighth and final episode suggests that Gein may have lent a hand to authorities as they pursued Bundy, the infamous "Campus Killer" who preyed upon and murdered at least 30 women and young girls in the Pacific Northwest between 1974 and 1978.

While the show's inclusion of this Gein-Bundy storyline is fictional, it is true that Gein was alive and able to witness Bundy's case unfold in real-time. Gein committed his first murder in 1954, over two decades before Bundy's killing spree. The lonely farmer was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of his life in a mental institution, where he remained until his death in 1984 at the age of 77.

Bundy, on the other hand, was not arrested until 1978 after a chance traffic stop, and he was later executed in 1989 after confessing to 30 murders while on death row, just five years after Gein's passing.