On the evening of the 16th of November 1957 a farmer and handyman by the name
of Edward Theodore Gein was arrested by police in the town of Plainfield
Wisconsin. He was suspected of having some connection to the disappearance of
a local woman the day before. When officers were dispatched to search the
Gein farm, however, it wouldn't be just one woman they discovered, but multiple
human bodies, some of them disfigured in terrible ways.
Gein, it emerged, was a prolific serial killer and body snatcher. His crimes have
gone down in history as some of the most obscene ever committed. At school in his
younger years Gein was a shy and slightly odd child. He spent most of his
time alone largely due to the influence of his mother, who punished him
severely whenever he tried to make friends. She often kept Gein and his
brother Henry confined to the family farm. There she read Bible passages to
them and preached about the evils of the outside world.
Gein remained on the farm for most of his life. When he was 38 a fire he and
his brother Henry had set to burn away vegetation got out of control. The fire
department was called to extinguish the blaze, which they successfully did. It was
only once their job was complete, however, that they made a terrible discovery.
Henry was dead, facedown in a patch of marsh. He had been asphyxiated and struck
in the head. There is little doubt, in retrospect, that this was Gein's first
murder. At the time, however, a lack of evidence meant that it was recorded as
an accident. Gein's mother died a few years after Henry. Gein continued to
live in the farmhouse alone, occupying a single bedroom beside the kitchen. He
boarded up every other room in the house and lived in filthy, chaotic conditions
within the tiny space that remained. It was during this time that Ed's
interest in darker subject matter began to grow.
he developed a taste for death cult magazines and Nazi cannibal adventure
stories. 13 years after Gein killed his brother a local hardware store owner,
Bernice Worden, disappeared in mysterious circumstances. Bernice had been seen the
previous night, but on that morning had not opened her store. Her son, a sheriff's
deputy, went to investigate, and discovered bloodstains and an open cash
register. Gein had been the last customer to visit the store, purchasing a gallon
of antifreeze. Suspicion immediately fell upon him, and he was arrested at a
grocery store nearby. Officers were dispatched to his farm, where they made a
series of grisly discoveries. As well as the body of Bernice Worden - which had
been hung up and gutted like a deer - there were also dozens of other bodies
and hundreds of body parts. Gein had impaled skulls on his bed posts and made
bowls and kitchen utensils from human bones.
He had upholstered chairs and made leggings and a wastebasket from human
skin. Other discoveries included a belt made of nipples a pair of lips being
used as a window shade drawstring, a corset made of a female torso and a
lampshade made from a human face. Gein did not try to hide the truth from the
police. He admitted to making more than 40 visits to three local graveyards to
dig up bodies. His goal, he told them, was to make a "woman suit". Following the death
of his domineering mother he had been determined to craft a second skin out of
stolen body parts so that he could wear it and experience what it would have
been like to be her. It was discovered the Gein had killed at least one other
victim: a woman named Mary Hogan who had disappeared some years before, and whose
remains were found in Gein's house. He was, however, charged only with Bernice
Worden's slaying, to which he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
Few people quibbled with the idea that he was insane. He was declared unfit to
stand trial and sent to a mental hospital. Despite one attempt to retry
him he was never again declared anything other than insane, and spent the rest of
his life in various institutions. Gein died of natural causes aged 77 at the
Mendota Mental Health Institute on July 26th, 1984. While the memories of his
victims have faded into obscurity, his gruesome legend lives on. Ed Gein's story
has been the inspiration for numerous horror books and films, including the
Texas Chainsaw Massacre. He is one of the most well-known and despised serial
killers in American history.