In the story of Ed Gein, it’s impossible to overlook the shadow cast by his domineering mother, Augusta. But there is another figure whose role is crucial and yet often forgotten: Henry George Gein, Ed’s older brother, who many believe was his first victim.

Born in 1901, five years before Ed, Henry grew up in the same oppressive household, with George, an alcoholic and ineffectual father whom Augusta openly despised, and Augusta herself, a fundamentalist who turned the family farm into her own pulpit of fire and brimstone. Daily Bible lessons centered on sin, lust, and damnation shaped the boys’ lives.

Unlike Ed, who absorbed Augusta’s sermons with blind devotion, Henry grew increasingly critical. As an adult, he even entered a relationship with a divorced woman, a mother of two — a choice Augusta considered scandalous and unforgivable. To Ed, the true heresy was Henry’s willingness to question their mother. Neighbors recalled Henry warning Ed that Augusta wasn’t the saint he believed her to be. For Ed, such words were blasphemy.

In May 1944, a brush fire broke out on the farm. Both brothers worked to contain it, but when the flames died down, Henry was missing. It was Ed who called the police, and, suspiciously, he led them straight to his brother’s body.

The scene raised troubling questions:

• Henry’s body bore only minor burns.
• There were marks on his head inconsistent with fire damage.
• The coroner listed the official cause as asphyxiation and heart failure.

Despite these inconsistencies, the death was ruled accidental. The case was quietly closed.

But when Ed was arrested in 1957 for the murders of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, Henry’s death came under new scrutiny. Many now suspected that Ed had eliminated the one person who threatened to weaken his devotion to Augusta. For some, Henry was not just another casualty of farm life, but Ed’s first victim.

Henry in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

The Netflix series wastes no time dramatizing this long-standing suspicion. In the first episode, Henry’s death is shown explicitly: after another argument about Augusta, Ed strikes his brother with a piece of wood, drags the body into the field, and stages the fire to cover up the murder.

This is a powerful narrative choice. By filling in the historical gap with a chilling dramatization, Monster reinforces the theory that Ed killed Henry because he represented a dangerous crack in the illusion Augusta had built. Henry’s refusal to worship her as blindly as Ed did made him a threat — and, in the series, that threat is violently silenced.

The show also restores Henry’s humanity. Instead of leaving him as a footnote, it portrays his rebellion, his relationship outside Augusta’s control, and his attempts to pull Ed out of their mother’s shadow. He becomes the foil Ed could never accept — the brother who wanted a normal life, and who, perhaps for that very reason, collided fatally with Ed’s obsession.

The Missing Link in the Gein Tragedy

While Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden are remembered as Ed’s confirmed victims, Henry remains the forgotten link — and perhaps the most telling one. His death left Ed alone with Augusta, intensifying a toxic dependency that became absolute after she died in 1945. From that moment on, Ed’s world shrank into isolation, fantasies, and, eventually, horrors beyond imagination.

By including Henry so prominently, Monster: The Ed Gein Story makes a bold statement: the terror of Plainfield may not have begun with Mary Hogan’s disappearance in 1954 or Bernice Worden’s murder in 1957. It may have begun in 1944, in the Gein family fields, with the mysterious death of a brother who dared to doubt Augusta. Even if it was, as the series suggests, a mix of accident and impulse.

In the end, Henry Gein is the victim who doesn’t appear in official records but is essential for understanding what Ed became. History leaves his death clouded in ambiguity, but fiction grants him the narrative weight he deserves: the man who tried to resist Augusta’s tyranny, and who may have been the first to pay the ultimate price for Ed’s twisted devotion.