Monster Season 3 Unmasks Ilse Koch: Did Her Crimes Influence Ed Gein?

Content warning: This piece discusses torture and abuse. Also, mild spoilers for Monster: The Ed Gein Story ahead.

Netflix's Monster: The Ed Gein Story is not just about Gein. The show wanders into some deeply grim side alleys, including the story of Ilse Koch — a notorious Nazi-era figure whose lurid legend ended up splashed across comics, tabloids, courtrooms, and now, your streaming queue. If that sounds like a wild leap, the series actually makes a case for how this kind of sensational evil bled into the culture that later mythologized Gein — and maybe even reached him back in the day.

So, who was Ilse Koch — and how does she show up in Monster?

In the series, Ilse Koch is played by Vicky Krieps. We meet her through a thread involving Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), who brings Ed a box of grim concentration camp memorabilia as a gift. Inside: photos of prisoners and a glossy comic about the so-called 'B***h of Buchenwald' — Koch's tabloid nickname. Ed hides the book from his mother and reads it in secret, the show cutting between his imagination and flashbacks to Koch's life as the wife of Buchenwald's commandant, Karl Otto Koch.

Monster gets lurid here on purpose: a secret underground room, tattooed prisoners held for unspeakable purposes, and decadent parties where Nazi officers and their wives torment captives. Some of that is stylized, but it is rooted in the way Koch was publicly described at the time. She was infamous by the end of World War II despite not holding an official party post, and she relished status — prisoners in her home were reportedly required to address her as 'eine gnädige Frau' (gracious lady).

'A hussy who rode on horseback in sexy underwear in front of the prisoners and then noted down for punishment the numbers of those who looked at her … Simply primitive.'

— Dr Konrad Morgen, an SS judge and investigator who testified against Koch in all three of her trials

Koch joined the Nazi party in 1932 and worked as a secretary at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp in Berlin. She moved to Buchenwald in 1937 with her husband; they had three children. The worst accusations attached to her name are the ones the show leans into: that she targeted prisoners with tattoos, ordered killings, and kept pieces of tattooed skin for household items — the most infamous claim being lampshades. During the postwar trials, a former inmate testified that tattooed prisoners were singled out, killed by injection, and skinned for these 'specimens.' Whether every piece of folklore matches the evidence is debated to this day, but the allegations were everywhere at the time and fueled her notoriety.

The real-world legal saga: three trials, two countries, and a lot of headlines

• 1947: An American military commission at Dachau tries Koch. The court cannot prove several specific atrocities due to lack of hard evidence, even with former prisoners testifying. She is, however, convicted as part of the broader 'common design' to abuse prisoners and receives a life sentence.
• Later: Her sentence is reduced. With time served, she is released in October 1949.
• Same day: West German officials arrest her again. Bavarian chief prosecutor Johann Ilkow indicts Koch on 25 misdemeanour counts that include grievous bodily harm, incitement to grievous bodily harm in numerous cases 'no longer determinable,' 65 counts of incitement to attempted murder, and 25 counts of incitement to murder.
• 1950–1951: The West German trial lasts seven weeks. 250 witnesses testify, 50 of them for the defense. Koch is convicted and, in January 1951, sentenced to life imprisonment.

There is more inside-baseball context here: the American decision to reduce her sentence sparked so much outrage in the States that a group of US senators launched an investigation into why it happened, ultimately recommending she be tried again by the newly independent West German courts. That push helped bring on the second major case.

Koch gave birth while incarcerated at Landsberg in 1947 — a son, Uwe Koehler, who was placed in foster care. His father was reportedly another imprisoned German war criminal. In her later years, Koch suffered delusions and was convinced that former camp prisoners would harm her. She died by suicide in prison at age 60 on September 1, 1967, leaving a note to Uwe that read: 'There is no other way. Death for me is a release.'

Did Ilse Koch actually influence Ed Gein?

Short answer: we do not know. Gein never publicly discussed Koch, her crimes, or any influence she might have had on his own. In the series, he is shown becoming fascinated by her, culminating in an imagined conversation about their shared depravity. That is dramatization.

What is real is the saturation of Koch coverage in American media at the time, especially after her sentence reduction. Given how loudly the case played in the US — and how senators even stepped in — it is entirely possible Gein knew her name and the legend around her. But there is no definitive link.

Why this tangent matters in a show about Gein

Monster is also tracking how Gein's story fed Hollywood: Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre all borrow pieces of his myth. Pulling Koch into the narrative underlines how these grotesque stories cross-pollinate — real crimes become pulp, pulp becomes movies, and somewhere in the middle, people like Gein might have soaked it up.

Where to watch

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is now streaming on Netflix. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream. Plans start from £5.99 a month.