Ed Gein

Ed Gein
Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), also known as the Butcher of Plainfield or the Plainfield Ghoul, was an American murderer, suspected serial killer and body snatcher. Gein's crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety in 1957 after authorities discovered that he had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned keepsakes from their bones and skin. He also confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954, and hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957.
Gein was initially found unfit to stand trial and confined to a mental health facility. By 1968, he was judged competent to stand trial; he was found guilty of the murder of Worden, but he was found legally insane and was remanded to a psychiatric institution. Gein died at Mendota Mental Health Institute from respiratory failure resulting from lung cancer, on July 26, 1984, aged 77. He is buried next to his family in the Plainfield Cemetery, in a now-unmarked grave.
Early life
Childhood
Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1906, the second of two boys of George Philip Gein (1873–1940) and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein (née Lehrke; 1878–1945). Gein had an elder brother named Henry. Augusta, who was fervently religious and nominally Lutheran, frequently preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking and her belief that all women (apart from herself) were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting verses from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation concerning death, murder and divine retribution.
Augusta hated her husband, an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job; he had worked at various times as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman. During his time in La Crosse, Gein's father owned a local grocery shop, but he soon sold the business and left the city with his family to live in isolation on a farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became their permanent residence. Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders who could have influenced her sons.
Gein left the farm only to attend school. Outside of school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Gein was shy, and classmates and teachers remembered him as having strange mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. To make matters worse, Augusta punished him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, Gein did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.
Deaths in immediate family
On April 1, 1940, Gein's father died of heart failure caused by his alcoholism, at age 66. Ed and his brother Henry began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. The brothers were generally considered reliable and honest by the rest of the community. While both worked as handymen, Ed also frequently babysat for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults. Henry began dating a divorced mother of two and planned to move in with her; he worried about his brother's attachment to their mother and often spoke ill of her around Ed, who responded with shock and hurt.
On May 16, 1944, Ed was burning away marsh vegetation on the property; the fire got out of control, drawing the attention of the local fire department. By the end of the day—the fire having been extinguished and the firefighters gone—Ed reported his brother missing. With lanterns and flashlights, a search party searched for 43-year-old Henry, whose dead body was found lying face down. Apparently, he had been dead for some time, and it appeared that the cause of death was heart failure since he had not been burned or injured otherwise.
It was later reported, by biographer Harold Schechter, that Henry had bruises on his head. Police dismissed the possibility of foul play and the county coroner later officially listed asphyxiation as the cause of death. The authorities accepted the accident theory, but no official investigation was conducted and an autopsy was not performed. Questioning Gein about the death of Bernice Worden in 1957, state investigator Joe Wilimovsky brought up questions about Henry's death. George Arndt, who studied the case, wrote that, in retrospect, it was "possible and likely" that Henry's death was "the 'Cain and Abel' aspect of this case".
With Henry deceased, Gein and Augusta were now alone. Augusta had a paralyzing stroke shortly after Henry's death, and Gein devoted himself to taking care of her. Sometime in 1945, he later recounted, he and his mother visited a man named Smith, who lived nearby, to purchase straw. According to Gein, Augusta witnessed Smith beating a dog. A woman inside the Smith residence came outside and yelled for him to stop, but Smith beat the dog to death. Augusta was extremely upset by this scene; however, what bothered her did not appear to be the brutality toward the dog but, rather, the presence of the woman. Augusta told Ed that the woman was not married to Smith and so had no business being there, and angrily called her "Smith's harlot". She had a second stroke soon after, and her health deteriorated rapidly. Augusta died on December 29, 1945, at the age of 67. Ed was devastated by her death; in the words of Schechter, he had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."
Work
Gein held on to the farm and earned money from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms used by his mother, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor and living room, leaving them untouched. While the rest of the house became increasingly squalid, these rooms remained pristine. Gein lived thereafter in a small room next to the kitchen. Around this time, he became interested in reading pulp magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities, specifically concerning Ilse Koch, who selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins.<ref>The Psycho Records, p.2, by Laurence A. Rickels, 2016</ref>
Gein received a farm subsidy from the federal government starting in 1951. He occasionally worked for the local municipal road crew and crop-threshing crews in the Plainfield area. Sometime between 1946 and 1956, he also sold an parcel of land that Henry had owned.
Crimes
Confirmed
On the morning of November 16, 1957, 58-year-old Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared. The hardware store's truck was seen driving out from the rear of the building at around 9:30a.m. The hardware store saw few customers the entire day; some area residents believed that this was because of deer hunting season. Worden's son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, entered the store around 5:00p.m. to find the cash register open and blood stains on the floor.
Frank Worden told investigators that on the evening before his mother's disappearance, Gein had been in the store and was to have returned the next morning for a gallon of antifreeze. A sales slip for the antifreeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning that she disappeared. That evening, Gein was arrested at a West Plainfield grocery store, and the Waushara County Sheriff's Department searched the Gein farm.
A sheriff's deputy discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed on Gein's property, hung upside down by her legs with a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists. The torso was "dressed out like a deer". She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations were made after her death. Searching the house, authorities found:
Whole human bones and fragments
A wastebasket made of human skin
Human skin covering several chairs
Skulls on his bedposts
Female skulls, some with the tops sawn off
Bowls made from human skulls
A corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist
Leggings made from human leg skin
Masks made from the skin of female heads
Mary Hogan's face mask in a paper bag
Mary Hogan's skull in a box
Bernice Worden's entire head in a burlap sack
Bernice Worden's heart "in a plastic bag in front of Gein's potbelly stove"
Nine vulvae in a shoe box
A young girl's dress and "the vulvas of two females judged to have been about fifteen years old"
A belt made from female human nipples
Four noses
A pair of lips on a window shade drawstring
A lampshade made from the skin of a human face
Fingernails from female fingers
These artifacts were photographed at the state crime laboratory and then "decently disposed of". When questioned, Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952, he had made as many as forty nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state. On about thirty of those visits, he said that he came out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order and returned home emptyhanded. On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.
Gein admitted to stealing from nine graves and led investigators to their locations. Allan Wilimovsky of the state crime laboratory participated in opening three test graves identified by Gein. The caskets were inside wooden boxes; the top boards ran crossways (not lengthwise). The tops of the boxes were about below the surface in sandy soil. Gein had robbed the graves soon after the funerals while the graves were not completed. The test graves were exhumed because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave during a single evening; they were found as Gein described: one casket was empty; another casket contained Gein's crowbar; and the final casket saw most of the body missing, yet Gein had returned rings and some body parts. Thus, Gein's confession was largely corroborated.
Soon after his mother's death, Gein began to create a "woman suit" so that "he could become his mother—to literally crawl into her skin". He denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining: "They smelled too bad." During state crime laboratory interrogation, Gein also admitted to shooting 51-year-old Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since December 8, 1954, whose head was found in his house, but he later denied memory of details of her death.
A 16-year-old youth, whose parents were friends of Gein and who attended baseball games and movies with him, reported that Gein kept shrunken heads in his house, which he had described as relics sent by a cousin who had served in the Phillippines during World War II. Upon investigation by the police, these were determined to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from corpses and used by Gein as masks.
During questioning, Sheriff Art Schley reportedly assaulted Gein by banging his head and face into a brick wall. As a result, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of heart failure in 1968 at age 43, before Gein's trial. Many who knew Schley said he was traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and this, along with the fear of having to testify (especially about assaulting Gein), caused his death. One of his friends said: "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him."
Suspected
In addition to the murders of Hogan and Worden, Gein was also considered a suspect in several other unsolved cases in Wisconsin. In November 1957, authorities confronted Gein with a list of missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and Worden. Their suspicions were further aroused after the discovery of Hogan's remains. However, lie detector tests seemingly exonerated Gein of any other murders, and his psychiatrists concluded that his violence was only directed to women who physically resembled his mother.
Georgia Jean Weckler, age 8, disappeared near her farm home in Fort Atkinson at approximately 3:30 p.m. on May 1, 1947. She was given a lift home from grade school in Jefferson by a neighbor who dropped Weckler off at the lane that led from U.S. Highway 12 to the Weckler farm. Weckler was last seen pausing to open the family mailbox and removing a stack of mail. She was never seen again. Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored, possibly black, 1936 Ford sedan with a gray plastic spotlight in the vicinity that afternoon; Gein owned a black 1937 Ford.
Evelyn Grace Hartley, age 15, went missing while babysitting a 20-month-old girl at the home of La Crosse State College professor Viggo Rasmusen on the evening of October 24, 1953, in La Crosse. That evening, her father Richard called the Rasmussen house several times after she failed to check in as planned at 8:30 p.m.; he received no answer. Concerned, he drove to the Rasmussen house to find the doors were locked, the lights and radio on and items scattered all over the house. The living room furniture had been moved around to different places, as were Evelyn's school books. Richard found her shoes in different rooms, one shoe upstairs and one downstairs. He also found his daughter's broken glasses upstairs. Richard did not find Evelyn in the house. After his arrest, Gein was considered a suspect in Evelyn's disappearance, as he was visiting a relative a few blocks from the Rasmussen house at the time. However, he denied involvement in the disappearance and passed two lie detector tests; police found no trace of Evelyn's remains during a search of Gein's property.
Victor Harold Travis, age 41, a resident of Adams County, went off to hunt deer in the company of 43-year-old acquaintance Raymond Burgess, a resident of Milwaukee, on November 1, 1950. In the late afternoon, the pair stopped for refreshments at Mac's Bar in Plainfield for several hours. At around 7 p.m., they both left the bar, got into Burgess’ car and drove away. The hunters, along with the car Burgess was driving, were never seen again and no trace of them was ever found. Travis and Burgess had been hunting on the farm next to Gein's despite his objections on the day of their disappearance.
In addition, Gein has also been tentatively linked to the June 1954 disappearance of neighbor James Walsh, age 32; Walsh and his wife lived near Gein, who performed chores for her after her husband went missing. Gein was also investigated for potential involvement in the August 1956 disappearance of Irene Keating, age 30, who was last seen in Plainfield, and in the attempted abduction of Judy Rodencal, age 16, from Auroraville.
Aftermath
Trial
On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent, thus unfit for trial. He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison.
In 1968, doctors determined Gein was "mentally able to confer with counsel and participate in his defense". The trial began on November 7, 1968, and lasted one week. A psychiatrist testified that Gein had told him that he did not know whether the killing of Worden was intentional or accidental. Gein had told him that while he examined a gun in Worden's store, the weapon discharged and killed Worden. He said he had not aimed the rifle at Worden, and did not remember anything else that happened that morning.
At the request of the defense, Gein's trial was held without a jury, with Judge Robert H. Gollmar presiding. Gein was found guilty by Gollmar on November 14. A second trial dealt with Gein's sanity; after testimony by doctors for the prosecution and defense, Gollmar ruled Gein "not guilty by reason of insanity" and ordered him committed to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane. Gein spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital. Judge Gollmar wrote, "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder—that of Mrs. Worden. He also admitted to killing Mary Hogan."
Fate of Gein's property
Gein's house and property were appraised at $4,700. His possessions were scheduled to be auctioned on March 30, 1958, amidst rumors that the house and the land it stood on might become a tourist attraction. Early on the morning of March 20, the house was destroyed by fire. A deputy fire marshal reported that a garbage fire had been set from the house by a cleaning crew who was given the task of disposing of refuse, that hot coals were recovered from the spot of the bonfire, but that the fire did not spread along the ground from that location to the house.
Arson was suspected, but the cause of the fire was never officially determined. It is possible that the fire was not considered a matter of urgency by fire chief Frank Worden, son of Gein's victim Bernice Worden. When Gein learned of the incident while in detention, he shrugged and said, "Just as well." Gein's Ford sedan, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for $760 to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons charged carnival-goers 25¢ admission to see it.
Death
Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute due to respiratory failure secondary to lung cancer on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77. Over the years, souvenir seekers chipped pieces from his gravestone at the Plainfield Cemetery, until the stone itself was stolen in 2000. It was recovered in June 2001, near Seattle, Washington, and was placed in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department. The gravesite itself is now unmarked, but not unknown; Gein is interred between his parents and brother in the cemetery.
In popular culture
Gein's story has had a lasting effect on American popular culture as evidenced by its numerous appearances in film, music, and literature. The tale first came to widespread public attention in the fictionalized version presented by Robert Bloch in his 1959 suspense novel Psycho. In addition to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film of Bloch's novel, Psycho, Gein's story was loosely adapted into numerous films, including Deranged (1974), In the Light of the Moon (2000) (released in the United States and Australia as Ed Gein (2001)), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007), "Ed Gein, the Musical" (2010), and the Rob Zombie films House of 1000 Corpses and its sequel, The Devil's Rejects. Gein served as the inspiration for myriad fictional serial killers, most notably Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs) Garland Greene (Con Air) and the character Dr. Oliver Thredson in the TV series American Horror Story: Asylum.
American filmmaker Errol Morris and German filmmaker Werner Herzog attempted unsuccessfully to collaborate on a film project about Gein from 1975 to 1976. Morris interviewed Gein several times and ended up spending almost a year in Plainfield interviewing dozens of locals. The pair planned secretly to exhume Gein's mother from her grave to test a theory, but never followed through on the scheme and eventually ended their collaboration. The aborted project was described in a 1989 New Yorker profile of Morris.
Ed Gein inspired American thrash metal band Slayer to write the song "Dead Skin Mask" from their 1990 album Seasons in the Abyss.
The character Patrick Bateman, in the 1991 novel American Psycho and its 2000 film adaptation, mistakenly attributes a quote by Edmund Kemper to Gein, saying: "You know what Ed Gein said about women? ... He said 'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right ... [the other part wonders] what her head would look like on a stick'."
In 2012, German director Jörg Buttgereit wrote and directed a stage play about the case of Gein called Kannibale und Liebe at Theater Dortmund in Germany. The part of Gein was played by actor Uwe Rohbeck.
According to George W. Arndt, news reports at the time of Gein's crimes spawned a subgenre of "black humor", called "Geiners".
In 2022, Ed Gein was featured in an episode of Netflix's Dahmer – Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story'' as a possible inspiration for Jeffrey Dahmer. However, a direct connection between the two is seen as speculation.
In 2023, a multi-part docuseries about the life and upbringing of Ed Gein called "Psycho: The Lost Tapes Of Ed Gein"
See also
Grave robbery
Body snatching
Anatoly Moskvin
General:
List of homicides in Wisconsin
List of serial killers in the United States
Notes
References
Bibliography
External links
1906 births
1984 deaths
1957 murders in the United States
20th-century American criminals
American hermits
American male criminals
American people convicted of murder
American people of German descent
American people who died in prison custody
American prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment
Body snatchers
Criminals from Wisconsin
Deaths from respiratory failure
Human trophy collecting
People acquitted by reason of insanity
People convicted of murder by Wisconsin
People from La Crosse County, Wisconsin
People from Plainfield, Wisconsin
People with schizophrenia
Necrophiles
Prisoners sentenced to life imprisonment by Wisconsin
Prisoners who died in Wisconsin detention
Serial killers from Wisconsin
Suspected serial killers