Ed Gein was not the only serial killer in Monster.
The third season finale of the Netflix anthology series featured real-life murderer Jerome Henry “Jerry” Brudos (played by Happy Anderson). He was dubbed the “Shoe Fetish Slayer” after confessing to murdering four women in Oregon in the late 1960s, according to the Statesman Journal.
Brudos derived his name from his obsession with women’s feet.
In Monster, the serial killer and known necrophile is interviewed by two FBI agents looking into “The Campus Killer,” who was later identified as Ted Bundy. Though Brudos provided no information about their unidentified killer during the fictional meeting, he did praise Gein’s work, implying that this scene may have only occurred in the Plainfield Butcher’s mind.
The season ends with Brudos visiting Gein in a dream as he dies of lung cancer in a mental institution. Other notorious killers such as Charles Manson and Ed Kemper are present, a scene that creator Ryan Murphy describes as reflecting the far-reaching and unsettling impact Gein’s crimes had on society.
“It was a dark legacy,” he explained to Tudum in October 2025. “There were many, many dark creatures in our world — Richard Speck, Ted Bundy — who were influenced and obsessed with Ed for all the wrong reasons.”
So who was Jerry Brudos? Here’s everything you need to know about the Shoe Fetish Slayer’s life, including whether or not he was as close to Ed Gein in real life as Monster suggested.
Who was Jerry Brudos?
Brudos, a serial killer and necrophile, was convicted in the late 1960s of murdering three women at his Salem, Oregon, home. According to the Statesman Journal, he pleaded guilty to the murders of Karen Elena Sprinker, Jan Susan Whitney, and Linda Dawn Salee in June 1969.
Linda Slawson, his fourth alleged victim, was previously identified as a Jane Doe. Despite his confession to killing and dismembering her body, the Statesman Journal reported in 2006 that there was insufficient evidence to prosecute him for her murder.
All four women went missing between January 1968 and April 1969. In May 1969, Salee and Sprinker’s bodies were discovered weighted down in a nearby river, while Brudos’ home was searched in response to a tip from a college student.
Inside, police discovered copper wire, rope, and photographs of the missing women. He was arrested and later admitted to raping and killing his victims, as well as practicing necrophilia with their remains.
At the time of his arrest, Brudos lived with his wife, Ralphene Brudos, and their two children. Despite his claims that she knew nothing about his crimes, she was charged with first-degree murder in Sprinker’s death in September 1969, according to the Corvallis Gazette-Times.
After being acquitted, Ralphene divorced Brudos.
Did Jerry Brudos really talk to FBI agents about Ted Bundy?
In Monster, Brudos is interviewed by FBI agents following an abduction and murder committed by Bundy, who is still at large. Although there is no evidence that the exchange occurred in real life, the Shoe Fetish Slayer was one of many serial killers interviewed by FBI special agent John Douglas while working for the Behavioral Science Unit.
“He said, ‘John, I have hypoglycemia,'” he recalled Brudos telling Fox News in May 2019. “‘When I have an attack I can just walk off to this building and kill myself accidentally because I’m just out of my mind.'”
He elaborated, “What he’s doing is giving me what you call excuse abuse. He killed women, cut off their feet, and photographed them in high heels due to a hypoglycemic attack. If you hear something like that, you’ll chuckle and say, “Wait a minute.” I am familiar with the case you are discussing. “You did not do that.”
There is also no evidence that Brudos knew about or mentioned Gein in any way.
What happened to Jerry Brudos?
According to the Statesman Journal, after pleading guilty in 1969, Brudos received three consecutive life sentences. He spent the rest of his life in the Oregon State Penitentiary, where he applied for parole several times.
In 1995, the Oregon Parole Board informed the convicted killer that he would spend the rest of his life in prison. He died from liver cancer on March 28, 2006, at the age of 67.
“I heard he suffered with his cancer,” Whitney’s sister, Cindi Elliott, told the Statesman Journal in March 2006. “Well, he did not make death easy for my sister or the other girls. I hope eternity isn’t easy for him.”
Has Jerry Brudos been fictionalized in other works?
Yes, Brudos was fictionalized in both Monster and the 2017 crime drama Mindhunter. The series followed the establishment of the FBI’s Behavioral Science Unit in the 1970s and starred Jonathan Groff as an FBI agent loosely modeled after Douglas.
In Mindhunter, the agent interviews Brudos, played by Anderson in season 1 and season 3 of Monster, to help develop profiling techniques for catching serial killers.
