The arrest of notorious criminal Ed Gein in 1957 brought forth a bizarre claim of an alleged romantic relationship with a Plainfield woman named Adeline Watkins. However, the nature of this connection, initially sensationalized in the press, was soon walked back by Watkins herself.
Following Gein’s apprehension, 50-year-old Adeline Watkins gained notoriety by claiming to the Minneapolis Tribune that she had been Gein’s girlfriend for around two decades.
She reportedly described the “Butcher of Plainfield” as “good and kind and sweet” and mentioned they shared an interest in reading, including a macabre fascination with discussing murder cases.
Watkins even claimed that Gein had proposed to her during a final date in February 1955, an offer she stated she declined.
This story was then quickly refuted by Watkins just weeks later.
In a subsequent interview with the Stevens Point Journal, Watkins clarified that the initial report was “blown up out of proportion to its importance and containing untrue statements.”
She maintained that while she had known Gein for 20 years, their regular interactions only started after 1954.
Watkins stated that Gein had “called on her for only seven months, and then only intermittently,” visiting her home on some afternoons or evenings, and that the two had attended the Plainfield Theater “a few times.”
She also asserted that she had never been inside the Gein home, where police later discovered his gruesome collection of human remains.
For his part, Gein never publicly commented on any relationship with Watkins, leaving the whole truth of their connection a mystery.
It is known that there is no factual basis to support the fictionalized portrayal of her complicity in his crimes, a storyline explored in the recent Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
Gein was confirmed to have murdered two women—Mary Hogan in 1954 and Bernice Worden in 1957—and was known to have exhumed corpses from graves for various purposes. He was eventually found guilty of murder but declared not guilty by reason of insanity.
READ: BTK Killer Dennis Rader Confronted In Kansas Prison Over New Victims And Decades Of Lies
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