In addition to its eerie depiction of Ed Gein, Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story astounded viewers with the sudden appearance of Birdman, another murderer. He was first shown in the finale as a mysterious character who wrote to Gein expressing admiration for the notorious Butcher of Plainfield. A wave of curiosity was sparked by the scene, which was both eerily serene and darkly intimate: Who is Birdman, and did this perverse correspondence ever occur?
The answer is surprisingly simple: no. The Birdman sequence is a dramatic creation, a terrifying artistic tool intended to show how the legend of murderers intensifies over time. However, Birdman is based on Richard Speck, one of the most heinous mass killers in American history. A nation unprepared for such concentrated cruelty was shocked when Speck killed eight student nurses in a spree that began on a summer night in 1966 when he broke into a townhouse in Chicago. Corazon Amurao, the only survivor, bravely testified against him after hiding beneath a bed.
A disturbing story from Speck’s time in prison gave rise to the moniker “Birdman” years later. In his cell, Speck tended to an injured sparrow, as detailed in FBI agent John E. Douglas’s Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit. He threw it into a fan after guards told him he couldn’t keep it. The nihilism that characterized his violence was encapsulated in his chilling statement, “If I can’t have it, no one can.”
Table: Richard Speck (“Birdman”) – Key Facts and Background
| Category | Details |
|---|---|
| Full Name | Richard Benjamin Speck |
| Nickname | The Birdman of Stateville |
| Date of Birth | December 6, 1941 |
| Place of Birth | Kirkwood, Illinois, United States |
| Date of Death | December 5, 1991 |
| Place of Death | Stateville Correctional Center, Illinois |
| Crimes | Murder of eight student nurses (1966) |
| Sentence | 400–1,200 years imprisonment (later reduced to 100–300 years) |
| Notable Alias | “Birdman” (for keeping sparrows in prison) |
| Portrayed By | Actor representing Birdman in Monster: The Ed Gein Story (2025, Netflix) |
| Reference | https://www.biography.com/crime/richard-speck |
The way that Birdman is portrayed on Netflix is based on that actual cruelty, but it is reframed through fiction. Even though the letter he writes to Ed Gein never happened, it is a particularly creative representation of how evil can spread through fascination. The Birdman scene demonstrates how murderers become symbols—some even become idols—due to society’s morbid curiosity and how, over decades, their notoriety takes on an oddly theatrical quality.
Monster so eloquently examines this theatricality. Like Gein, Richard Speck turned into a sort of cultural ghost that appeared in underground videos, prison folklore, and documentaries. Inside Stateville Prison, he was seen using drugs, wearing lingerie, boasting about his crimes, and sporting dyed hair in a notorious 1996 recording. The video was so startling that it led to a thorough examination of Illinois’ penal system. Even though Speck had long since passed away, his image and his act of depravity were still upsetting to the public.
The similarity between Gein and Speck as distinct monstrous breeds is what Monster does a remarkable job of capturing. Gein was a quiet, withdrawn, and hallucinogenic man whose obsession and loneliness grew his horror. Contrarily, Speck was raucous, impetuous, and destructive, representing violence as rebellion as opposed to ritual. However, they both unwittingly joined the same cultural fascination—a media-driven fixation on comprehending the nature of evil.
The show’s co-creator, Ryan Murphy, frequently explores darker human tendencies through these juxtapositions. He examined the obsession with murderers as celebrities in Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story. The Birdman scene in the Gein film carries on that theme, illustrating how one murderer’s notoriety can lead to another’s jealousy. Notoriety turns into money in this eerie cycle. Murphy and his group imply through that symbolic letter that when fame is distorted by cruelty, it can be just as harmful as the crimes that brought it about.
Monster blurs the distinction between psychological metaphor and historical accuracy by situating Birdman in Gein’s orbit. Gein’s crimes took place in the 1950s, but Speck’s happened ten years later, at a time when the media was much more rapid and dramatic. Television muddled empathy with spectacle, and newspaper headlines splashed crime across breakfast tables. The public’s consumption of characters like Speck—not as men, but as myths—may have been influenced by their fascination with Gein’s perverse legacy.
However, the way Birdman is portrayed in the Netflix series has a profoundly human quality. Even though his dialogue is made up, it suggests a desperate need for attention—the need to be noticed, even if it means becoming famous. It reflects the culture of today, where fame frequently passes for approval. The show asks viewers to think about how easily society can glamorize brokenness when it is presented as “legend” through Birdman’s words.
The way that fame functions for both celebrities and criminals across generations is remarkably similar to the contrast between Ed Gein and Birdman. Both began as nobody, existing on the periphery and being disregarded. However, they were immortalized due to public fascination—not for their skill or success, but for their transgression. Atrocities are turned into television gold and criminals into icons by the same morbid alchemy.
In fact, Richard Speck probably knew very little about Gein, never wrote to him, and never admired him. However, the staged scene is still a very powerful narrative device. It presents Gein not only as a killer but also as a lasting presence in popular culture, a person whose deeds inadvertently helped to create a whole subgenre of obsession. Additionally, Monster on Netflix turns that contemplation into a critique of group responsibility by connecting him to Birdman.
