Mamma’s Boy: Ed Gein

When you think of terrifying serial killer, Ed Gein, you think monster, cannibal, Texas Chainsaw Massacre; not mamma’s boy. But the truth is, Ed Gein was more like Norman Bates (Psycho) than Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs).

Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse County, Wisconsin. He was the youngest of two boys born to George Philip Gein and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein. His brother, Henry, was five years older than him.

The Gein family wasn’t a happy family. They were dysfunctional, with George being an abusive alcoholic who was unable to keep a job, and Augusta who despised her husband, and was more than just passionate about her religion (Lutheran). To her, the outside world would pervert or negatively influence her sons, so she kept them as isolated as she could.

For a few years, George owned a grocery store, but sold it and moved the family to a 155-acre farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin. This allowed Augusta to keep her boys safe, only allowing them to leave for school. At home, she preached about the innate immortality of the world. She taught them that drinking was evil, her husband being a prime example. She told the boys that women, with the exception of herself, were the Devil’s tools, and by nature whores and prostitutes.

After school, time was always reserved for reading from the Bible, and Augusta most often chose verses from the Old Testimate depicting death, murder, and divine retribution.

Edward had no friends at school. Kids found him to be shy with strange mannerisms. He would burst out laughing, at what appeared to be nothing. Beyond that, if he even tried to make friends, he would be immediately punished by his mother. All that aside, he was a very good student, even excelling at reading.

Even after finishing up school, both Ed and Henry remained at home with their parents, and on April 1, 1940, at the age of 66 their father, George, died of heart failure, a result of his alcoholism. That left Ed and Henry responsible for the family and all living expenses. They took on odd jobs around town, and were seen as honest and reliable, giving them opportunities for more work.

Both put in time as handymen, and Ed was a frequent babysitter for all the neighbors. This was easily his favorite job, as he was able to relate better with the children than he ever did with adults.

Life without their father was good, until Henry began to date a divorced, single mother of two. As he began making plans to move in with her, his concern about how close Ed was to their mother grew. He felt Ed was too attached and began to speak ill of their mother when Ed was around, creating a rift between them and Ed reacting with both shock and hurt.

Then on May 16, 1944, the two of them worked to burn away marsh vegetation on their property. The fire burned out of control, and the local fire department was dispatched. By the end of the day, they had managed to extinguish the fire, but Henry was nowhere to be found. Ed reported him missing, and a search party gathered with lanterns and flashlights.

Henry was found, lying face down, and it was believed he had been dead for a while. His death was ruled asphyxiation, and he had also suffered heart failure. Foul play was ruled out as he had not been burned, however he did have bruises on his head. No investigation was opened, despite some suspecting Ed had something to do with it.

Not long after Henry’s death their mother, Augusta, had a paralyzing stroke. Ed devoted himself to taking care of her. In 1945, he and his mother went to purchase straw from a man named Smith who lived nearby. According to Ed, Augusta witnessed Smith beating a dog. A woman inside the Smith home came outside and yelled to stop. Smith beat the dog to death. Augusta was extremely upset by this scene. What bothered her did not appear to be the brutality toward the dog but the presence of the woman. Augusta told Ed that the woman was not married to Smith so had no business being there. “Smith’s harlot”, Augusta angrily called her.

Augusta had a second stroke shortly after the Smith incident, and her health deteriorated rapidly. At the age of 67, Augusta Gein passed away, leaving behind a devastated Ed, who had lost his one and only friend and love.

Ed was now the sole owner of the farm. He boarded up the rooms his mother had used, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor, and living room, leaving them just as she had left them. He lived in what was left of the home, which quickly showed signs of severe neglect.

He continued to work odd jobs, and received a farm subsidy from the federal government starting in 1951. Not needing all the land, he sold off an 80-acre parcel. This meant he didn’t have to work, although he did take on the occasional odd job. To the people in town, he was just a strange man, “Weird Ed,” who mostly kept to himself. Little did anyone know what he was doing in his spare time.

Without his mother, he was free to read anything he wanted, and picked up several adventure magazines and others involving death. He was especially interested in anything involving true crime, cannibals, or the atrocities committed by Nazi’s. Ed was especially fascinated by the medical experiments carried out by Nazi’s in the concentration camps.

Ed managed convince a local farmhand named Gus to help him with a job. That “job” was to dig up freshly buried bodies and haul them back to Ed’s house. Ed told him he was doing some experiments, and Gus didn’t think any more of it. Later, when questioned by police, Ed admitted to having made around 40 late night visits to local graveyards to exhume the recently buried. He claims he was often in a “daze-like” state, and there were many times he would come out of his daze while still in the cemetery, and opt to leave empty handed.

The graves that attracted him the most were those of middle-aged women, whom he felt closely resembled his mother. He would dissect their bodies, keeping the parts he liked the best such as heads, sex organs, livers, hearts, and intestines. He would flay the skin from the body, then drape it over a tailor’s dummy. The skin would be tanned, and later turned into articles of clothing, such as the “woman suit,” which he wore in order to “become” his mother.

Human facial skins, that had been carefully peeled from the skulls of the corpses to be used as masks were thought to be shrunken heads. Kids from town would sneak onto the property to try and catch a glimpse of these shrunken heads, which Ed described as being relics from the Philippines sent to him by a cousin who had served on the islands during WWII. Ed would chase the kids off though, adding to the mystery surrounding him.

But Ed grew weary of the already deceased. He needed fresher bodies, and that led to him killing tavern owner, Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954. Although Ed didn’t go out much, he did frequent Mary’s tavern, which was over 7 miles away from his home. The reason? Mary Hogan bore a very close resemblance to his mother. Police suspected foul play in her disappearance, as they discovered a pool of blood and a spent .32 calibre cartridge, but they had no other leads, and her case ran cold.

While it was suspected that Ed was involved in several other unsolved cases including the disappearance of Georgia Weckler (8), Evelyn Hartley (15), Victor Travis (43), and Ray Burgess. However, none of those disappearances were linked to Ed until the disappearance of Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden.

November 16, 1957, the majority of the men of Plainfield left for the 9-day deer hunting event. Ed, however, did not join them and knowing the town would be mostly deserted, he chose to take a trip to Worden’s hardware store. He first went in and purchased antifreeze, but returned later, on the pretense of trading in his rifle. He shot Bernice, killing her, then taking her back to his farm.

Later that day, when Bernice’s son, Frank, the deputy sheriff, returned to town, he found his mother gone, and blood stains on the floor. The cash register was open, and they found a .22 caliber rifle out of place on its rack. The only other item of note was a receipt for antifreeze, made out to none other, than Eddie Gein.

When the police arrived, Frank immediately accused Ed, saying, “He’s done something to her.”

Questioning the residents who had remained in town that day, it was discovered that the hardware store’s truck had been driven out from the rear of the building around 9:30 in the morning. Also, the store had been closed the entire day, but residents didn’t give it much thought, thinking it was due to the deer hunting event.

Police tried calling Ed at his farm, but he wasn’t home, or at least not answering. On a hunch, they were able to track him down at the home of his cousin, Bobby Hill. There, he had helped Bobby replace a car battery and stayed for dinner. After asking only a few questions, police knew they had their man, and they arrested Ed on the spot.

When police arrived at the farm that Ed called home, they found the house locked. Entering through the shed, or outbuilding, they were unable to see much of anything, as there was no electricity. The building smelled awful, the floor covered in trash and waste. As they continued through, one of the officers felt something brush his arm. He turned and looked, and was horrified. The naked body of Bernice Worden was “hanging from the ceiling by her feet, dressed out like a deer, gutted and decapitated.” Bernice had been beheaded and slit open from vagina to sternum.

Further investigation produced human skulls affixed as posts on Ed’s

bed. A box of organs, and furniture that was made from bone and skin. Skin masks,a belt made from the nipples of his victims. Then, there was the woman suit, made of pieced together skin, complete with a vest and breasts. The complete list, as documented by police is as follows:

Whole human bones and fragments
A wastebasket made of human skin
Human skin covering several chair seats
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 pot bellied stove”
Nine vulvae in a shoe box
A young girls’ 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

All items were photographed at the state crime lab, and then destroyed.

Ed admitted to grave robbing, stealing from nine graves in local cemeteries, and even led investigators to their locations. When the crime lab opened three of the graves, they found the caskets inside, but two of the graves were found empty, while the third had a crowbar left inside.

When asked if he had had sex with the deceased after he dug them up, he responded, “They smelled too bad,” denying any claims of necrophilia. Then he admitted to killing Mary Hogan, having shot her.

Ed was arraigned on November 21, 1957, on one count of first degree murder. He plead not guilty by reason of insanity, and was subsequently diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent. Unfit for trial, they sent him to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison Wisconsin, and in 1968 doctors determined that Ed was now “mentally able to confer with counsel and participate in his defense.” His trial began November 7, 1968, eleven years after his initial arrest.

The trial only lasted a week, and was held without a jury as requested by the defense team. During the trial, a psychiatrist testified that Ed had told him that he did not know whether the killing of Bernice Worden was intentional or accidental; that while he examined a gun in Worden’s store, the gun went off, killing Worden. Ed testified that after trying to load a bullet into the rifle, it discharged. He said he had not aimed the rifle at Worden, and did not remember anything else that happened that morning.

Ed Gein, now known as “The Butcher of Plainfield,” was found guilty of first degree murder on November 14, 1968 by Judge Robert H. Gollmar.

A second trial focused on Ed’s sanity, and Judge Gollmar ruled that Ed was “not guilty by reason of insanity,” and he was ordered to be committed to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane where he spent the rest of his life. He was not tried for the murder of Mary Hogan, although he had admitted to it, due to “prohibitive costs.”

Ed Gein’s farmhouse and property were scheduled to be auctioned on March 30, 1958. Rumors filled the town, claiming the house would become a tourist attraction, but three days before the auction, on March 27, the house was destroyed by fire. Police suspected arson, but to this day, the cause has never been officially determined.

Ed’s car, which was used to haul the corpses of his victims, was sold in auction for $760 to Bunny Gibbons, a carnival sideshow operator. The car was put on display, and Bunny charged carnival goers 25¢ admission to see it.

Ed Gein died on July 26, 1984 at the age of 77. He had lung cancer, and died due to respiratory failure. His body was laid to rest at the Plainfield Cemetery where visitors chipped pieces from his gravestone until the stone was eventually stolen, in 2000. After its recovery in June 2001 near Seattle, Washington, it was placed in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff’s Department. Ed Gein’s grave remains unmarked, but he can still be found, buried between his parents and his brother Henry.