Ed Gein

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Ed Gein

Ed Gein circa 1957
Born (1906-08-27)August 27, 1906
La Crosse County, Wisconsin
Died July 26, 1984(1984-07-26) (aged 77)
Madison, Wisconsin
Cause of death
 Respiratory and heart failure due to cancer
Other names The Plainfield Ghoul, The Mad Butcher
Criminal penalty
 Not guilty by reason of insanity
Conviction(s) Murder
Killings
Victims 2 (known)
Country United States
State(s) Wisconsin
Date apprehended
 November 16, 1957

Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein (/ˈɡiːn/; August 27, 1906[1] – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein confessed to killing two women – tavern owner Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, on November 16, 1957. Initially found unfit for trial, after confinement in a mental health facility he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital.

His case influenced the creation of several fictional killers, including Norman Bates of the movie and novel Psycho and its sequels, Leatherface of the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Jame Gumb (Buffalo Bill) of the novel The Silence of the Lambs and Ezra Cobb of the movie Deranged.

Early life

Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin on August 27, 1906,[1] the second son of George Philip (August 4, 1873 – April 1, 1940[2]) and Augusta Tiffany Wilhelmine (née Lehrke) Gein (July 21, 1878 – December 29, 1945[2]), the daughter of Prussian immigrants.[3] Gein had an older brother, Henry George Gein (January 17, 1901 – May 16, 1944[2]). Augusta despised her husband, and considered him a failure for being an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job; he had worked at various times as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman. Augusta operated a small grocery store and used the proceeds from the sale of the grocery store in 1914 to purchase a farm on the outskirts of the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became the Gein family's permanent home.[4]

Augusta relocated to the farm to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons.[4] Edward left the premises only to attend school. Outside of school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, a fervent Lutheran, preached to her boys about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking, and the belief that all women (except herself) were naturally prostitutes and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament concerning death, murder, and divine retribution.[5]

Edward 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. He was sometimes bullied. To make matters worse, his mother punished him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.[6]

While Gein was devoted to making his domineering mother happy, Augusta was rarely pleased with her boys, believing that they were destined to become failures and alcoholics like their father. In their teenage years and early adulthood, Henry and Ed remained detached from people outside of their farmstead, and had only each other for company.[4]

Deaths in immediate family

George Philip Gein died of heart failure caused by his alcoholism on April 1, 1940, aged 66. Subsequently, Henry and Ed began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. By all accounts, both brothers were considered reliable and honest by residents 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. In 1941,[citation needed] Henry began dating a divorced, single mother of two, and planned on moving in with her; Henry worried about his brother's affection for their mother, and often spoke ill of her around Ed, who responded with shock and hurt.[7][8]

On May 16, 1944, Henry and Ed were burning away marsh vegetation on the property;[9] 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, Ed, Augusta and two deputies[citation needed] searched for Henry, whose dead body was found lying face down.[10] Apparently he had been dead for some time, and it appeared that death was result of heart failure, since he had not been burned or injured otherwise.[10] It was later reported, in Harold Schechter's biography of Gein, Deviant, that Henry had bruises on his head.[7][11] The police dismissed the possibility of foul play and the county coroner later officially listed asphyxiation as the cause of death. Although some investigators suspected that Ed Gein killed his brother, no charges were filed against him.[7][11] The authorities accepted the accident theory and an autopsy was not performed.[12]

Gein and his mother were now alone. Augusta suffered a paralyzing stroke shortly after Henry's death, and Gein devoted himself to taking care of her. Sometime in 1945, Gein 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 home came outside and yelled at Smith to stop. Smith beat the dog to death, which upset Augusta; however, she was more horrified upon learning that Smith was cohabiting with the woman who had yelled at Smith about beating the dog. She suffered a second stroke soon after, and her health deteriorated rapidly.[13] She died on December 29, 1945, at the age of 67. Ed was devastated by her death; in the words of author Harold Schechter, he had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."[11]

Career

Gein held onto 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. It was around this time that he became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities.[7]

Gein was a handyman and received a farm subsidy from the federal government starting in 1951.

Crimes

On November 16, 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared, and police had reason to suspect Gein. Worden's son told investigators that Gein had been in the store the evening before the disappearance, saying he would return the next morning for a gallon of anti-freeze. A sales slip for a gallon of anti-freeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning she disappeared.[14] Upon searching Gein's property, investigators discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was "dressed out like a deer".[15] She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations were made after her death.[16]

Searching the house, authorities found:[17]

  • Four noses
  • Whole human bones and fragments[18]
  • Nine masks of human skin[19]
  • Bowls made from human skulls
  • Ten female heads with the tops sawn off
  • Human skin covering several chair seats
  • Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag[20]
  • Bernice Worden's head in a burlap sack[21]
  • Nine vulva in a shoe box[22]
  • A belt made from female human nipples[23]
  • Skulls on his bedposts
  • A pair of lips on a drawstring for a window shade
  • A lampshade made from the skin of a human face

These artifacts were photographed at a crime laboratory and then destroyed.[24]

When questioned, Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952,[25] he made as many as 40 nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state. On about 30 of those visits, he said he came out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order, and returned home emptyhanded.[26] On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother[27] and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.

Gein admitted robbing nine graves, leading investigators to their locations. Because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave during a single evening, they exhumed two of the graves and found them empty (one had a crowbar in place of the body), thus apparently corroborating Gein's confession.[28][29] Allan Wilimovsky of the state crime laboratory participated with 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 two feet below the surface in sandy soil. Gein had robbed the graves soon after the funerals while the graves were not completed. They were found as Gein described: One casket was empty, one Gein had failed to open when he lost his pry bar, and most of the body was gone from the third but Gein had returned rings and some body parts.[30]

Soon after his mother's death, Gein apparently decided he wanted a sex change and began to create a "woman suit" so he could pretend to be female.[17] Gein's practice of donning the tanned skins of women was described as an "insane transvestite ritual."[31] Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining: "They smelled too bad."[31] During state crime laboratory interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since 1954 whose head was found in his house, but he later denied memory of details of her death.[32]

A 16-year-old youth, whose parents were friends of Gein and who attended ball games and movies with him, reported that Gein kept shrunken heads in his house, which Gein had described as relics from the Philippines, sent by a cousin who had served on the islands during World War II.[33] Upon investigation by the police, these were determined to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from corpses and used by Gein as masks.[34]

Waushara County sheriff Art Schley reportedly assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall. As a result, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible.[11][35] Schley died of heart failure in 1968, at age 43, before Gein's trial.[36][37] Many who knew him 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."[11]

Trial

On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pled not guilty by reason of insanity.[38] Found mentally incompetent and thus unfit for trial, Gein was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, Wisconsin, and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia.[39]

In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial. The trial began on November 14, 1968, lasting one week. He was found guilty of first-degree murder by Judge Robert H. Gollmar, but because he was found to be legally insane, he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.[40][41] Robert H. Gollmar, the judge for the Gein case, wrote: "Due to prohibitive costs, Gein was tried for only one murder—-that of Mrs. Worden."[42]

Aftermath

Gein's house and property were scheduled to be auctioned March 30, 1958, amid rumors the house was to become a tourist attraction. On March 27, the house was destroyed by fire. Arson was suspected, but the cause of the blaze was never officially solved.[43] When Gein learned of the incident while in detention, he shrugged and said, "Just as well."[44] Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for $760 to carnival sideshow operator Bunny Gibbons.[45] Gibbons later charged carnival goers 25¢ admission to see it.[46]

Death

Ed Gein's vandalized grave marker as it appeared in 1999.

On July 26, 1984, Gein died of respiratory failure due to lung cancer at the age of 77 in Stovall Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute.[11] His grave site in the Plainfield Cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers chipped off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is now in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department.[47]

Popular culture

The story of Ed Gein has had a lasting effect on Western popular culture as evidenced by its numerous appearances in movies, music and literature. Gein's story was adapted into a number of movies, including Deranged (1974), In the Light of the Moon (2000) released in the U.S. as Ed Gein (2001), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007) and Hitchcock (2012). Gein served as a model for several book and movie characters, most notably such fictional serial killers as Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), and Jame Gumb (The Silence of the Lambs).[44]

At the time, the news reports of Gein's crimes spawned a subgenre of "black humor".[48] Since the 1950s, Gein has frequently been exploited by transgressive art or "shock rock", often without association with his life or crimes beyond the shock value of his name. Examples of this include the song titled "Dead Skin Mask" from the band Slayer's album Seasons in the Abyss, "Nothing To Gein" from Mudvayne's album L.D. 50, and "Ed Gein" from The Ziggens' album Rusty Never Sleeps.[49] Ed Gein: The Musical premiered on January 2, 2010 in Menasha, Wisconsin. Ed Gein's atrocities were also satirized in Blind Melon's "Skinned" off the 1995 album Soup which juxtapozed cheery instrumentation with semi-factual representations of Gein's crimes; arguably towards a comedic end. [50][51]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 "Birth Record Details". Wisconsin Historical Society. Retrieved 2009-07-23. 
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 Harold Schechter (11 May 2010). Deviant. Simon & Schuster. p. 50. ISBN 978-1-4391-0697-6. Retrieved 5 May 2013. 
  3. ↑ Ancestry of Ed Gein compiled by William Addams Reitwiesner
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Bell, Rachael; Marilyn Bardsley. "The Beginning". Crime Library. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 
  5. ↑ Williams, A ; Head, V ; Prooth, Sebastien C.; Williams, A (2007) Fiendish Killers, Futura
  6. ↑ Bell, Rachael (1906-08-27). "Eddie Gein — The Beginning — Crime Library on". Trutv.com. Retrieved 2013-09-25. 
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Bell, Rachael; Marilyn Bardsley. "Henry". Crime Library. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 
  8. ↑ Schechter, Harold (2003). The Serial Killer Files. Random House. p. 191. ISBN 0-345-46566-0. 
  9. ↑ Judge Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 85.
  10. ↑ 10.0 10.1 Wisconsin Rapids Daily Tribune | Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin | Friday, May 19, 1944 | Page 1.
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 11.2 11.3 11.4 11.5 Schechter, Harold (1998). Deviant: The Shocking True Story of Ed Gein, the Original Psycho. New York: Simon and Schuster. pp. 30–31. ISBN 0-671-02546-5. 
  12. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 86.
  13. ↑ "Augusta Gein, the woman who drove a man Psycho | MND: Your Daily Dose of Counter-Theory". Mensnewsdaily.com. Retrieved 2013-09-25. 
  14. ↑ "Signs of 10 Victims at Farm". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 18, 1957. p. 1, cols. 7–8. 
  15. ↑ Douglas, John E.; Olshaker, Mark (1998). Obsession: The FBI's Legendary Profiler Probes the Psyches of Killers, Rapists, and Stalkers and Their Victims and Tells How to Fight Back. Simon and Schuster. pp. 367–368. ISBN 0-671-01704-7. 
  16. ↑ "Ed Gein case file". 
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 Ramsland, Katherine. "A True Necrophile." Crime Library.
  18. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 192.
  19. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, pages 19–20.
  20. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 22.
  21. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 25.
  22. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 24.
  23. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 46.
  24. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein , Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 48.
  25. ↑ Schechter 1989, p. 97.
  26. ↑ "Gein Also Admits He Killed Mary Hogan; Results of Lie Tests Announced". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 20, 1957. p. 13, col. 6. 
  27. ↑
  28. ↑ "Empty Coffins Discovered in Graves At Plainfield; Appears To Back Up Gein's Story". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 25, 1957. p. 1, cols. 7–8. 
  29. ↑ "DA Convinced Gein Actually Raided Graves". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 26, 1957. p. 1, col. 3. 
  30. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, pp. 48-50.
  31. ↑ 31.0 31.1 Bell, Rachael and Marilyn Bardsley. "Buffalo Bill and Psycho" CrimeLibrary.com.
  32. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981.
  33. ↑ "Youth Tells of Seeing Gein's Heads". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 20, 1957. p. 1, col. 6. 
  34. ↑ Schechter, Harold. "Deviant." Simon and Schuster, 2010. 128. Print.
  35. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 31-34.
  36. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 34.
  37. ↑ Arthur Schley (1925-1968) ancestry.com. Sheriff of Waushara Co. WI 1957-1963, DOB 9 May 1925, dead at 43.
  38. ↑ "Gein Pleads Innocent By Reason of Insanity". Stevens Point Daily Journal. November 21, 1957. p. 1, cols. 7–8. 
  39. ↑ "Cannibal Killers - Moira Martingale - Google Books". Books.google.com. Retrieved 2013-11-30. 
  40. ↑ "Ed Gein Found Guilty of 1957 Murder in Plainfield". Capital Times, Madison, Wisconsin. November 14, 1958. "Ed Gein, the handyman whose home became known as a "house of horrors" 11 years ago, was found guilty today of first degree murder." 
  41. ↑ "Wisconsin Killer Gein Ruled Guilty, Insane". Chicago Tribune. November 15, 1968. "Ed Gein, 62, the recluse who horrified the nation in 1957 when the remains of 11 bodies were found on his farm, was ruled today to have been insane when he killed a Plainfield, Wis., woman." 
  42. ↑ Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 1981, page 81.
  43. ↑ Judge Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein, Pinnacle Books, 3rd Ed, 1989, p. 80.
  44. ↑ 44.0 44.1 Bell, Rachael; Marilyn Bardsley. "Ed Gein: The Inspiration for Buffalo Bill and Psycho". Crime Library. Retrieved 2008-11-23. 
  45. ↑ Hintz, Martin (2007). Got Murder?: Shocking True Stories of Wisconsins Notorious Killers. Big Earth Publishing. p. 62. ISBN 1-931599-96-3. 
  46. ↑ Reavill, Gil Reavill (2007). Aftermath, Inc.: Cleaning Up After CSI Goes Home. Gotham. p. 228. ISBN 1-59240-296-8. 
  47. ↑ Bie, Michael (2007). It Happened in Wisconsin. Guilford, Connecticut: TwoDot. p. 97. ISBN 0-7627-4153-8. OCLC 76820808. 
  48. ↑ George W. Arndt, "Appendix A: Gein Humor" in Judge Robert H. Gollmar, Edward Gein (Pinnacle Books, Windsor Publishing, 3rd ed 1989) excerpted from Arndt's original "Horror, Humor and Human Nature" also published abridged as "Community Reactions to a Horrifying event" by Menninger School of Psychiatry; both versions reprinted in several psychology textbooks.
  49. ↑ The Slayer song "Dead Skin Mask" features a young girl pleading with Gein to release her; Gein never held a live captive and his victims were middle-aged women.
  50. ↑ "Ed Gein: The Musical" premieres Saturday in Menasha
  51. ↑ Warren Gerds column: 'Ed Gein, The Musical' includes local actors

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