Exclusive | How this serial killer youve never heard of inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw and Season 3 of Ryan Murphys hit show Monster

He’s the ultimate psycho killer. Serial killer Ed Gein may not be a household name like Ted Bundy or Jeffrey Dahmer, but he looms large in pop culture, inspiring a trio of iconic horror movie killers: Norman Bates in “Psycho,” Buffalo Bill in “The Silence of The Lambs,” and Leatherface in “Texas Chainsaw Massacre.” Even though the bulk of his crimes were in the 1950s, Gein remains relevant today.Not only are those films classic spooky season staples, but it was also recently announced that Season 3 of Ryan Murphy’s hit Netflix anthology series, “Monster” — which had popular previous seasons about Jeffrey Dahmer and the Menendez brothers — will be about Gein, starring Charlie Hunnam. Harold Schechter, a true crime historian and author who wrote the definitive book about Gein, “Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho,” told The Post that up until Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho” came out in 1960, all the horror movie monsters were from “other places – Eastern European monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein or the Wolfman.

Or, monsters from outer space.Or, monsters that arose out of the Japanese seas, like Godzilla.”But, he said, Norman Bates was “the first really all-American monster.” He added, “and it really transformed horror films after that.

So, Gein is kind of a seminal figure in the history of horror” because he inspired “Psycho,” which, in turn, “created the modern slasher movie.” Gein, who lived in Wisconsin, was born in 1906 and was known as The Butcher of Plainfield.Despite inspiring several fictional serial killers, he only had two confirmed murders (with more suspected).

He’s notorious not for being prolific but for the bizarre and horrifically disturbing nature of his crimes. Schechter, who has written over a dozen books about serial killers and mass murderers, explained, “His whole thing was trying to reconstitute his mother by digging up the bodies of these middle ...