Why Loving True Crime Doesn’t Mean Glorifying a Grave-Robbing, Skin-Wearing Monster and that includes Ryan Murphy’s new Ed Gein miniseries.
Let’s get one thing straight: I’m a spooky bitch. I love true crime. I love haunted shit. I love weird shit. I love spooky stories, dark documentaries and unraveling real-life mysteries. But there is a huge difference between being fascinated by the macabre and greenlighting a ten-part prestige mini-series about Ed Gein. That’s not just toeing the line between storytelling and exploitation… that’s grabbing the line, setting it on fire, and selling merch out of the ashes.
We don’t need this.
We’ve never needed this.
And here are the top reasons why this series shouldn’t happen and why it’s downright disturbing that it even got pitched in the first place.
1. We Already Know the Story And It’s Disgusting Enough
Ed Gein isn’t some unsolved case. He’s not part of a wrongful conviction saga. He’s not a window into a system failure. He’s just a gruesome, deeply disturbed man who murdered women, robbed graves and played arts and crafts with their corpses.
He’s already inspired Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs, which, let’s be honest, are all the cultural saturation we ever needed from this creep, especially when you consider that those are interpretations of his crimes, not actual documentary or narrative style reenactments.
Turning Gein’s actual crimes into ten hours of streaming content isn’t journalism. It’s not even horror. It’s just a snuff film with better lighting.
2. There’s a Big Difference Between True Crime and Horror Cosplay
True crime should be about accountability. It’s about injustice and the victims. This is not any of those things.
This is horror porn wearing a documentary mask. It’s entertainment with just enough “based on a true story” branding to pretend it’s something meaningful. But let’s be real: no one’s watching a Gein series to learn. They’re watching for the shock value.
This is exploitation in high definition.
3. Ed Gein Miniseries: Victims Are Completely Erased (Again)
Name one of Ed Gein’s victims. Just one. I’ll wait. Exactly.
Because we’ve spent decades elevating the killer while the women he brutalized are barely footnotes. His crimes were horrifyingly personal. He targeted women, defiled their bodies and erased their humanity. But instead of honoring them, we keep retelling his story like he’s some twisted antihero.
This was the same situation and how the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer felt when Ryan Murphy created Monster (2022), starring Evan Peters.
A ten-part series makes damn sure the spotlight stays on the monster, not the murdered. And we need to stop pretending that’s ever okay.
4. He Turned Skulls Into Soup Bowls.
That Should Be Enough to Shut This Down.
Let’s take a moment to actually remember what Ed Gein did.
Not the sanitized version. Not the “inspired by” dramatizations from Psycho.
The real, horrible shit.
Three Absolutely Feral Things we do not need to see in an Ed Gein miniseries on tv:
- He made a belt out of human nipples. And no, that’s not a metaphor. This was found in his home. Do you want that on your TV? You want a costume designer creating a prosthetic nipple belt so we can… what? Gasp and tweet about it? Come on now.
- He turned human skulls into soup bowls. That’s right. He served food in actual skulls. I don’t care how “aesthetically disturbing” someone thinks that shot might be. It’s unbelievably grotesque. And if you’re trying to storyboard it, you’re part of the problem.
- He wore women’s faces like masks. Not symbolically. Literally. Ed Gein wore actual skin. We do not need an extended, multi-episode arc that treats this like some kind of psychological unraveling. He wasn’t complicated. He was sick.
This isn’t horror fiction. These were real women. Real graves. Real flesh.
And it is not entertainment.
5. Why Is It Always White Men Pitching This Shit?
Let’s have a moment of honesty about the kinds of stories that get greenlit in Hollywood.
Who’s in the writer’s room? Who’s at the production table? Who’s saying, “You know what we need? A stylish, longform exploration of a cannibal-adjacent, grave-robbing serial killer”?
It’s almost always white men.
These are the same kind of white men who gave us incest storylines in Game of Thrones and The White Lotus and called it “edgy.” The ones who get obsessed with serial killers as if they’re misunderstood geniuses instead of violent misogynists who create an Ed Gein miniseries.
And because the system favors these creators, like Ryan Murphy, we keep getting the same recycled depravity, while real stories about marginalized communities, trafficked teenagers, missing Indigenous women and unsolved Black femicide get buried under the buzz for another Jeffrey Dahmer project.
It’s a tone-deaf choice, and it’s exhausting.
6. We Don’t Need “The Ed Gein Cinematic Universe”
This is the part where we zoom out.
What are we really doing here?
Do we think we’re learning something? Are we imagining justice being served? Are we reclaiming anything by watching hour after hour of brutalized female bodies for “context”?
Or are we just numbing ourselves to violence, fetishizing the grotesque and pretending it’s art?
There are better stories to tell. There are better horrors to explore, ones rooted in injustice, systems of power and actual accountability. There’s a way to love true crime without glorifying the monsters.
what Can We do when it comes to true crime?
Start demanding better.
If you love true crime but hate the exploitation, use that energy. Share this post and share these resources. Donate some dollars, time or social media reach to the survivors we all owe so much more than lurid mini‑series.
Organizations You Can Support:
- Native Women’s Wilderness Dedicated to raising awareness for Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women (MMIW) in the U.S. and Canada. They center Native voices and fight for visibility in law enforcement and media.
- Black and Missing Foundation Founded to locate and bring home missing persons of color whose disappearances are often ignored by mainstream media and law enforcement.
- National Indigenous Women’s Resource Center Advocates for the safety and sovereignty of Indigenous women and supports policy change around the epidemic of missing Native women.
- National Center for Missing and Exploited Children (NCMEC) While national in scope, NCMEC’s tools for searching and reporting are vital for spreading awareness.
What You Can Do Right Now:
- Share missing persons flyers from these orgs
- Donate to their efforts or even $5 makes a difference
- Use your platform to amplify cases the media won’t touch
- Write to your representatives about the crisis of MMIW and missing Black women
If we’re going to keep watching true crime, let’s make damn sure we’re not only watching the wrong people. Let’s center the women who deserve to be found and never forgotten.
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