Edward Theodore “Ed” Gein
Born: August 27, 1906; La Crosse County, WI
Died: July 26, 1984 (age 77); Respiratory and Heart Failure
# of Victims: 2+
Childhood –
Ed Gein had a childhood that was very sheltered by his parents. George Gein, Ed’s father, was an alcoholic who was frequently unemployed and abused Ed and his brother, Henry. Augusta, Ed’s mother, had a deep seeded hatred for her husband, but refused to get a divorce due to religious beliefs. Augusta owned and operated a small grocery store and purchased a farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin. This farm became the family’s permanent home.
Augusta moved herself and her family to this secluded farm to prevent the outside world from influencing her children. Ed was only allowed off of the property to go to school. The rest of his time was spent mostly doing chores on the farm. Augusta was a fervent Lutheran who constantly pounded the immorality of the world into her children’s brains. Growing up, Ed and his brother were forced to believe that drinking was evil, and that all women excluding their mother were prostitutes and instruments of the devil. Every afternoon, Augusta would read passages from the bible, normally choosing the most graphic verses she could find in the Old Testament regarding death, murder, and divine retribution.
Ed had a slight growth over one eye, and a very feminine demeanor, causing him to be a target for bullies at school. Ed also had tendencies to laugh randomly, as if at his own jokes. His mother scolded him every time he tried to make friends. However, despite his lacking social development, he did fairly well in school, especially in reading.
Ed tried desperately to make his mother happy, but Augusta was rarely pleased with either of her sons, believing indefinitely that they would become failures like their father. She often abused them, and the boys remained very detached from the outside world through their teens and early adulthood.
FAMILY MEMBERS’ DEATHS –
George Gein (Father) – Heart attack, 1940
Henry Gein (Brother) – Asphyxiation, 1944
Augusta Gein (Mother) – Stroke, 1945
After his mother died, Gein claimed that he was alone in the world, saying he “lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world.”
Gein boarded up all the rooms in his house that his mother had frequented, but remained living there in one small room next to the kitchen. He became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories.
ARREST –
November 16, 1957 – Bernice Worden, the owner of the Plainfield hardware store went missing. Gein was suspected, and police searched his property. They found Bernice’s decapitated body in a shed, hanging upside down with her torso “dressed out” like a deer. She had been shot with a .22 caliber rifle and then her body had been mutilated after death.
When the police searched the house, they found several odd things:
- Four noses
- Whole human bones, and bone fragments
- Nine masks made of human skin
- Bowls made of human skulls
- Ten female heads with the tops sawed off
- Human skin covering the seats of chairs
- Mary Hogan’s head in a paper bag
- Bernice Worden’s head in a burlap sack
- Nine vulvas in a shoe box
- Skulls on his bedposts
- Organs in the refrigerator
- A pair of lips on the drawstring for the window shades
Upon questioning, Gein stated that between the years 1947 and 1952, at night, he went into a “daze-like” state roughly forty times, visiting three different graveyards to exhume the recently buried bodies of middle-aged women who resembled his mother. On about thirty of these occasions, he came out of the daze and left the cemetery empty handed. Other times, he would take the bodies home, tan their skins, and create the things they found in his house. Gein admitted to robbing nine different graves. He also admitted to the murder of tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954. However, he denied ever committing any necrophilia-like acts on the bodies he stole, claiming “they smelled too bad.”
After his mother died, Gein decided that he wanted a sex-change, and he started creating a “woman suit” so that he was able to pretend to be a woman. His wearing the skins of dead women was described as an “insane transvestite ritual.”
On November 21, 1957, Ed Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder, where he plead not guilty by reason of insanity. He was found mentally incompetent and unfit to stand trial, and then sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, WI. He was later transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, WI. In 1968, doctors determined that Gein was fit to stand trial.
Gein’s trial began on November 14, 1968 and lasted a single week. He was found guilty of first-degree murder, and sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a mental hospital.
On July 26th, 1984, Ed Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer.
POPULAR CULTURE –
There are many movies based on Ed Gein. These include In the Light of the Moon (Later re-titled Ed Gein), Deranged, and Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield. Gein also inspired characters in many books and movies such as Norman Bates from Psycho, Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs.
