Wisconsin serial killer Ed Gein will be Ryan Murphy's next 'Monster ...

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Wisconsin Lore: The Plainfield Butcher, Ed Gein

Wisconsin Lore: Dark stories from Wisconsin's past

Lou Saldivar, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Ryan Murphy can't get enough of Wisconsin serial killers.

Two years after making Jeffrey Dahmer the focus of his Emmy-winning series "Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story," Murphy says the next subject in his "Monster" series for Netflix will be Ed Gein, the Plainfield man who confessed in 1957 to killing two local women and to digging up bodies from from graveyards and using body parts and skin to make everything from trophies to lampshades.

Murphy made the announcement at the Los Angeles premiere of "Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story" Monday night. The series, a dramatization of the story of the two brothers who murdered their parents and the sensationalized trial that followed, debuts on Netflix Sept. 19.

"Sons of Anarchy" and "The Lost City of Z" star Charlie Hunnam will play Gein, Murphy said.

Netflix said production on the Gein "Monster" series will begin next month.

Gein's story has been fodder for scores of dramatic and true-crime productions. It inspired Milwaukee writer Robert Bloch's novel "Psycho," which was adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into the 1960 shock-horror movie that transformed the genre. Gein also inspired other horror classics, from "The Texas Chain Saw Massacre" to "The Silence of the Lambs."

Most recently, MGM+ aired "Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein," a limited documentary series drawing from never-before-heard jailhouse interviews with Gein.

Murphy's "Dahmer" was one of the most streamed shows of 2022, but it also was criticized for being exploitive. Families of some of Dahmer's real-life victims criticized the series, saying it glorified his story at their loved ones' expense.

"Dahmer" received 13 Primetime Emmy nominations, winning for outstanding supporting actress in a limited series or movie made for television, for Niecy Nash-Betts. Nash-Betts played Glenda Cleveland, the Milwaukee woman who tried to get police to investigate Dahmer.