Adeline Watkins: The Woman Who Claimed to Love Ed Gein
- Daniel Holland
- Oct 4
- 7 min read
In 1957, as police uncovered horrors inside a quiet farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, a woman named Adeline Watkins suddenly appeared in the headlines. She claimed she’d once been courted by the killer whose crimes would inspire Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs. But who was she really—and what happened to her after the world turned its gaze her way?
A Morning of Headlines and Horror
On the morning of 16 November 1957, Plainfield’s small police force discovered the body of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner who had gone missing the previous day. Inside a ramshackle farmhouse belonging to Edward Theodore Gein, they found not only her remains but a grim collection of objects fashioned from human body parts, lampshades made of skin, skull bowls, corsets cut from corpses, and masks crafted from faces exhumed from local graves.
The world was horrified. The newspapers called him “The Butcher of Plainfield,” “The Ghoul of Wisconsin,” and “America’s real-life Frankenstein.” Within days, Ed Gein had become the embodiment of small-town evil — a soft-spoken, reclusive farmer whose crimes would reshape modern horror.
But just as the story was being pieced together, a new name appeared in the papers: Adeline Watkins.
The Woman Who Said She Almost Married Ed Gein
Barely a week after Gein’s arrest, The Minneapolis Tribune published a sensational interview with a 50-year-old Plainfield woman named Adeline Watkins. She told reporters she had known Gein for almost twenty years, describing him as a “kind,” “gentle,” and “thoughtful” man.
According to the article, she and Gein had gone to the movies together, exchanged small gifts, and even discussed marriage. She recalled one February evening in 1955 when Gein, shy and stammering, allegedly hinted at a proposal. “He didn’t come right out and say it,” she explained, “but I knew what he meant.”
Watkins painted a picture of an awkward but caring man, someone who walked her home at night and never made untoward advances. Her mother, she said, liked him too. “He was sweet and polite,” Watkins told the reporter. “He’d never hurt a fly.”
For a shocked public trying to understand how this mild-mannered handyman could become a murderer and body snatcher, the interview was electric. The headline read:
“Plainfield Woman Nearly Wedded Ed Gein.”
Small Town, Big Sensation
In the 1950s, rural Wisconsin was as far from Hollywood scandal as one could imagine. The idea that a local spinster had been courted by a man who collected corpses was irresistible to journalists.
Reporters descended on Plainfield like vultures. Every neighbour, store clerk, and schoolteacher who’d ever spoken to Gein suddenly found themselves hounded for comment. People who’d barely known him described him as “odd but harmless.” Others recalled eerie visits to his cluttered farmhouse, where he muttered to himself and kept the doors locked.
But Adeline Watkins’ story stood apart. She wasn’t simply a witness, she was claiming intimacy. Newspapers across the Midwest reprinted her statements, sometimes embellishing them. The Wisconsin State Journal and Chicago Daily News ran similar versions, quoting her as saying Gein was “lonely but good-hearted.”
Some papers hinted that the relationship explained his hatred of women: that her rejection might have triggered something in him. It was the perfect human-interest angle in a case already drenched in the macabre.
Yet, within a week, the entire story began to unravel.
“Blown Out of Proportion”
By late November, Adeline Watkins had apparently grown uncomfortable with the attention. She approached another newspaper, The Stevens Point Journal, to set the record straight.
She said the earlier reports had been “blown out of proportion.” The so-called twenty-year romance was an exaggeration. Yes, she had known Gein, they’d attended the same church, spoken at the general store, and seen a few films together, but she denied that there had ever been serious talk of marriage.
“It was exaggerated,” she told the paper, “and containing untrue statements.”
In this revised version, Watkins portrayed herself as a friendly acquaintance rather than a sweetheart. The stories about candlelit evenings, proposals, and her mother’s approval were inventions of the press, she said. She denied ever entering his home or calling him “sweet.”
This retraction was barely noticed outside Wisconsin. National papers, having already moved on to the lurid details of Gein’s crimes, left Watkins’ clarification buried in the back pages. But in Plainfield, locals whispered that she’d been overwhelmed by the frenzy — or that she’d made the story up entirely.
What We Know About Adeline Watkins
Very little documentation exists about Watkins beyond those few newspaper clippings from November 1957. She was reportedly around 50 years old, unmarried, and living in or near Plainfield. She does not appear in court records, police files, or the official investigation into Gein’s crimes.
She wasn’t one of his victims, and she was never accused of being involved. After her retraction, her name disappears entirely from public record.
Some researchers believe Watkins might have been genuinely confused by reporters eager to spin a story. Others think she exaggerated her connection in a moment of excitement, or loneliness. The frenzy surrounding Gein’s arrest was unlike anything small-town Wisconsin had ever seen. People posed for photographs outside his farmhouse. Souvenir hunters chipped pieces off the property’s fences. In such a climate, even the mildest acquaintance could suddenly be recast as a “romantic partner.”
Why Her Story Matters
For historians, Adeline Watkins’ tale is more than a curious footnote. It reflects the way women’s voices, especially those of ordinary small-town women, were used to humanise, scandalise, or sensationalise male violence.
Her claim came at a time when society struggled to comprehend how an apparently quiet man could commit such unspeakable acts. To imagine Gein as capable of affection, or to believe he had once been “in love,” offered a kind of psychological comfort. It suggested that monsters were not born, but broken.
Watkins’ story also highlights the darker side of 1950s tabloid journalism. The rush to print, combined with the public’s appetite for grisly detail, meant that accuracy was often sacrificed for shock value. Once printed, her words, whether misquoted or embellished, became part of Gein’s mythology.
Ed Gein’s Women
In Gein’s twisted imagination, women occupied a strange dual role: both idolised and desecrated. His obsession with his mother, Augusta, dominated his life. Deeply religious and fiercely controlling, she taught him that women were sinful temptresses. When she died in 1945, Gein’s isolation deepened into madness.
He began frequenting cemeteries, exhuming corpses that resembled his mother, and fashioning grotesque “souvenirs.” He read pulp horror magazines and anatomy books, and he fantasised about becoming a woman himself, wearing the skin of others as a suit.
It is within this psychological landscape that Adeline Watkins’ supposed relationship becomes fascinating. If she truly did spend time with Gein in the years after his mother’s death, she might have represented something profoundly rare in his world: a living woman who treated him kindly.
That doesn’t mean she was ever in danger, but it does show how desperately Gein may have longed for companionship, even as he descended into the darkness that would define him.
Media Myth vs. Human Reality
By the time Ed Gein stood trial in 1958, the press had largely dropped Adeline Watkins’ name. The prosecution focused entirely on the murder of Bernice Worden and the earlier killing of Mary Hogan. Gein was found legally insane and sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin.
In the decades that followed, Gein’s crimes inspired some of the most famous villains in cinema — Norman Bates in Psycho, Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
But Adeline Watkins never reappeared in any of those narratives. Her brief burst of fame was eclipsed by the far more durable myths that grew from Gein’s crimes.
When Netflix released Monster: The Ed Gein Story in 2025, Watkins was resurrected once again — portrayed as a complex woman torn between fascination and revulsion. In the series, she is shown as Gein’s emotional anchor, a figure who almost saved him from himself. It’s a compelling piece of fiction, but, as historians remind us, there’s no evidence such a romance ever existed.
What Happened to Adeline Watkins?
After her retraction in 1957, Adeline Watkins seems to have slipped back into obscurity. No public record marks her death or later life. She may have left Wisconsin, married quietly, or simply lived out her years away from reporters.
In the pre-digital era, it was entirely possible for a small-town resident to vanish from public view without leaving much of a trace. Census data from the early 1960s lists several women named Adeline Watkins in the Midwest, but none can be definitively linked to the woman in those infamous articles.
There is no record of her being harmed by Gein or anyone else. Nor is there any evidence she profited from her fleeting moment of fame. For all we know, she spent the rest of her life wishing she had never spoken to the press.
Fact, Fiction, and the Forgotten Woman
So why does her story still matter nearly seventy years later? Because Adeline Watkins represents something hauntingly familiar: the ordinary person swept up in an extraordinary storm.
In the moral panic that followed Gein’s arrest, every neighbour became a suspect, every acquaintance a potential source. Watkins’ name appeared, was amplified, and then erased, yet traces of her linger, passed from one sensational headline to another.
Her story asks uncomfortable questions about how we construct monsters, and about how women’s voices can be twisted to fit someone else’s narrative.
Did she know Gein well? Possibly. Did she love him? Almost certainly not. But for a few feverish days in November 1957, she was cast as the killer’s would-be bride, a role she never asked for, and one that history never quite let her escape.
Sources
The Minneapolis Tribune, 21 November 1957 – interview with Adeline Watkins.
The Stevens Point Journal, 26 November 1957 – Watkins’ retraction.
Wisconsin State Journal, November 1957 – “Plainfield Woman Nearly Married Slayer Ed Gein.”
Biography.com: “Adeline Watkins Claimed She Had a 20-Year Romance with Ed Gein. It Was All Untrue.” https://www.biography.com/movies-tv/a68061591/ed-gein-girlfriend-adeline-watkins-monster-netflix
People Magazine: “Who Was Adeline Watkins, Ed Gein’s Girlfriend?” https://people.com/who-was-adeline-watkins-ed-gein-girlfriend-11821408
Plainfield, Wisconsin Farmer Ed Gein: Serial Killer and Grave Robber (book, Apple Books edition).
Netflix Tudum: “Monster: The Ed Gein Story Cast Guide.” https://www.netflix.com/tudum/articles/monster-the-ed-gein-story-cast-guide
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