Netflix’s Monster: The Ed Gein Story has captivated audiences globally since landing on the streaming platform on October 3.

The show features many real-life figures, including Ilse Koch (played by Vicky Krieps), Psycho star Anthony Perkins (Joey Pollari), and Adeline Watkins (Suzanna Son), along with others.

This is the third season of Ryan Murphy’s true crime anthology series and also features prolific serial killers, such as Ted Bundy (John T. O’Brien) and Richard Speck (Tobias Jelinek), but many want to know about the elusive Birdman.

Who is the Birdman in Monster The Ed Gein Story?

The show depicts Speck corresponding via letters with Ed Gein (Charlie Hunnam) about his time in jail, hailing the Plainville Ghoul as his inspiration.

Speck also mentions the Birdman, who was also a real-life serial killer and the nickname for infamous American criminal Robert Stroud.

The Birdman of Alcatraz and convicted killer Robert Stroud (Image: GETTY)READ MORE: Did Ed Gein really talk like that? Listen to chilling recordings of killerREAD MORE: Did Ed Gein kill a nurse in the asylum?

Convicted murderer Stroud killed a bartender and while in prison attacked fellow inmates and guards. In 1916, he murdered a prison guard and was sentenced to death but this was commented to life imprisonment in solitary confinement.

He became known as the Birdman and the ‘Birdman of Alcatraz’ after he nurtured a nest of three injured sparrows that he’d found in the prison yard while doing time at Leavenworth.

After a couple of years, he’d ended up with 300 canaries and would go on to research and write the book Diseases of Canaries, published in 1933.

He was allowed to maintain his hobby because it was felt as a beneficial use of his time, according to Alcatraz History.

Stroud continued to research bird illnesses and document their habits and physiology, even marketing medicines for them.

Ed Gein’s story is told in a new Netflix drama (Image: NETFLIX)

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But his equipment and ornithology came to an end when it emerged he’d been using his equipment to make alcohol on the side.

In 1942, Stroud was transferred to Alcatraz, where he would spend the next 17 years of his life.

In 1959 Stroud was moved to the Medical Center for Federal Prisoners in Springfield, Missouri and died four years later in 1963 of natural causes.

He was immortalised onscreen by Burt Lancaster in the movie Birdman of Alcatraz, which earned the star an Oscar nod for Best Actor.

Interestingly, the reason Speck may have also referenced Birdman was due to his own dealings with a sparrow while in prison.

Ed Gein was influenced by his domineering mother Augusta(Image: NETFLIX)

As per Mindhunter FBI Agent Robert Ressler’s book Whoever Fights Monsters, Speck captured a sparrow and kept it as a pet.

When he was warned by a prison guard that he’d be put in solitary if he didn’t release the creature, Speck killed the bird by throwing it into an overhead fan.

The stunned guard asked why Speck had committed the violent act, to which the serial killer was reported to have said: “[B]ut if it ain’t mine, it ain’t nobody’s.”

Monster: The Ed Gein Story is streaming on Netflix now

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