Among the many legends surrounding the “Butcher of Plainfield,” few are as enigmatic as that of Adeline Watkins. Unlike the confirmed victims — Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden — Adeline survived. But her name entered macabre folklore in 1957, when she told the press she had been Ed Gein’s longtime girlfriend.

At that moment, the world was reeling from the discoveries at Gein’s farm: human remains stolen from cemeteries, mutilated bodies, grotesque artifacts made of skin and bone. Amid the chaos, Adeline’s interview with the Wisconsin State Journal struck a curious, almost dissonant chord. She described Ed as “kind,” “polite,” and “sweet.” She claimed they had met twenty years earlier and that he had even proposed to her two years before his arrest. She said she declined, fearing she “wouldn’t be able to live up to what he expected of a wife.”

These statements were voraciously reproduced by the press, fueling an impossible narrative: how to reconcile the monster revealed in the headlines with the man described by a woman as gentle and attentive?

But soon came the contradictions. In later interviews, Adeline backtracked. She said the story had been exaggerated, and that her encounters with Gein were, in fact, brief — about seven months, with long gaps in between. She denied ever visiting his home and walked back her more romantic claims. By then, however, newspapers had already crystallized her initial version. And so, Adeline Watkins became an inseparable part of the myth.

The lingering question is: why did she tell that story? Was it an attempt to gain attention amid the media frenzy? A memory distorted under the pressure of reporters? Or perhaps the revelation of a bond that was real, but subtler, which she later chose to deny?

The truth is that, to this day, there is no solid evidence that Gein ever had a long-term romance, let alone proposed marriage. What we do know is that Adeline existed, that she knew Ed, and that, at some level, she saw him in a way few could imagine: not as a potential killer, but as a solitary, polite, and timid man.

It is precisely this ambiguity that Ryan Murphy brings to the screen in Monster: The Ed Gein Story. Played by Suzanna Son, Adeline is presented as the only woman besides Augusta, Ed’s mother, to occupy an intimate place in his life. In the dramatization, she becomes companion, confidante, and accomplice in morbid obsessions — a kind of “female mirror” to Gein’s psychological abyss. The series gives flesh to the narrative Adeline once sustained, amplifying it with dramatic intensity.

In the end, Adeline Watkins is less about who she was — an ordinary woman who crossed paths with Ed Gein — and more about what she represents: the human face behind the monster, the possibility that even the most terrifying criminals may carry traces of normalcy, tenderness, or even the desire for love. Her story reveals as much about the media’s hunger in 1957 as it does about our contemporary need to fill in the gaps with fiction.

Looking at Adeline, we see a distorted reflection of Ed Gein himself: an ordinary life swallowed into a myth she never chose, but one that transformed her forever into a character.