The Evelyn Hartley Mystery, Explained: Addison Rae in Monster: The Ed Gein Story

Warning: This piece talks openly about plot points in Monster: The Ed Gein Story.

Netflix keeps doubling down on its Monster anthology, and this season swings from Dahmer to another American boogeyman: Ed Gein. Charlie Hunnam plays Gein. And yes, that is Addison Rae — better known as a pop star and social-media personality — turning up in a very grim arc as Evelyn Hartley. The show uses her story for a big mid-season jolt, then veers hard into creative license. Let’s sort what the series does versus what actually happened.

What the show does with Evelyn

Rae shows up in episode 3, 'The Babysitter.' The hour follows Gein’s halting courtship with Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son) and his fear-laced views on sex, courtesy of his puritanical mother. Adeline tries a workaround: get him around kids so he can face his fear of fatherhood. That leads Gein to a family looking for childcare, where he’s told their beloved sitter is out with polio and they need a replacement.

That sitter is Evelyn. Gein doesn’t last long on the job. After he’s let go, he confronts her, and by the end of the episode, he’s kidnapped her. Episode 4 opens down in Gein’s basement, with Evelyn dead and Gein wrapping her in bandages and milk — yes, milk. It’s lurid, disturbing, and pointedly sets Gein up as Evelyn’s killer.

The real Evelyn Hartley — and why the show’s version is fiction

In reality, the disappearance of 14-year-old Evelyn Hartley in La Crosse, Wisconsin, remains unsolved — and Ed Gein was cleared in her case. The series invents the polio detail and the babysitting firing as a motive; none of that is documented.

What actually happened

• October 1953: Evelyn, 14, is hired to babysit a professor’s 20-month-old daughter. The professor is Viggo Rasmussen of La Crosse State College; he works with Evelyn’s father, Richard.
• When Evelyn fails to call home as planned, Richard phones the Rasmussen house. No answer. He drives over.
• Inside, he finds troubling signs: Evelyn’s glasses broken, her shoes in different rooms (one downstairs in the living room, the other upstairs). Every room is locked.
• At the back of the house, in the basement, there’s evidence of a struggle, including an open window with the screen removed, a bloody footprint, and blood both inside and outside the home.
• Police bring in dogs. Evelyn’s scent is tracked for two blocks, then disappears northwest of the house — investigators suspect she was transferred into a vehicle.
• Witness accounts: a neighbor sees a car circling the area at about 8 p.m.; another resident hears screams around 7 p.m. but assumes it’s kids playing. A few days later, a local man reports he nearly collided at 7:15 p.m. with a two-toned 1942 Buick speeding west. He says he saw two men and a girl in the car; the girl was slumped in the back, and moments earlier he had seen what he thought was the same girl squeezed between the men and assumed she was drunk.
• Several days later, blood-stained clothing turns up in the vicinity: a bra, pants, a pair of men’s trousers, and a men’s white shirt.
• The search becomes the largest in Wisconsin history: over 2,000 people join in. More than 3,000 individuals are questioned. Authorities even run mass lie-detector tests on local high-school boys — an 'inside baseball' detail that tells you how aggressively (and controversially) they pursued leads.

Was Ed Gein involved?

The show says yes. The record says no.

After Gein’s 1957 arrest, investigators looked hard at him for Evelyn’s case because he had been visiting family in the La Crosse area the night she vanished — reportedly just blocks from the Rasmussen home. He denied involvement, took two polygraph tests, and passed. Police searched his property extensively and found nothing tying Evelyn to the house. By November 1957, authorities publicly cleared Gein in Evelyn’s disappearance, and they also cleared him in the 1947 case of 8-year-old Georgia Weckler, who went missing near Fort Atkinson, Wisconsin.

Even with Gein officially ruled out, rumors never really died down. Then, in 2004, an unexpected lead surfaced: a recorded statement from Clyde 'Tywee' Peterson claiming he, Jack Gaulphair, and a third man kidnapped and murdered Evelyn. All three are now deceased — Peterson died of a heart attack in 1974; Gaulphair died by suicide in 1967 — and without physical evidence, authorities couldn’t move the case forward.

Bottom line: Evelyn Hartley’s disappearance is still unsolved.

The show vs. the truth

Monster bends the facts to link Gein to Evelyn’s death for dramatic impact. It’s a choice — and a big one — because the real investigation cleared him. If you’re watching and thinking, 'Wait, did that actually happen?' the answer here is no.

Where to watch

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is streaming now on Netflix. In the UK, plans start at £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available via Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.