Ed Gein, often referred to as The Butcher of Plainfield or The Plainfield Ghoul, was an infamous American murderer and grave robber. Born in 1906 in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, Gein had a troubled childhood that was marked by a religiously fanatical mother and a distant, abusive, and alcoholic father. His tragedies towered after losing all his immediate family members between 1940 and 1945. This arguably marked the start of his strange atrocities.
When the authorities raided his Plainfield, Wisconsin home in November 1957, following the disappearance of a woman, they walked straight into a house of horrors. Not only did the police find the woman they were looking for, but they also discovered that for years, Ed Gein carefully skinned and dismembered his victims to create items like lampshades and body suits. He said that he intended to make a skin suit that would allow him to virtually bring his mother, with whom he was fascinated back to life.
Before His Crimes, Ed Gein Had A Troubled Childhood
As stated earlier, Ed Gein was born on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He was the second child born to George Philip Gein, his father, and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein, his mother. He was raised alongside his older brother, Henry.
Gein was raised in a lonely farmhouse and his mother kept him and his brother away from the outer world, hence their upbringing was unusual. Gein only left the farm to go to school. He devoted most of his free time after school to farm tasks.
He was very shy in school and often displayed strange attitudes like sporadic laughter that seemed to come from his jokes. His mother scolded him every time he attempted to make friends and this made his situation worse. But despite his inadequate socialization, Gein’s academic performance was impressive.
Gein’s mother, who was deeply religious at home, set aside time each afternoon to read him and his brother passages from the Bible. Typically, she would choose passages that dealt with death, murder, and divine vengeance from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation.
On the other hand, his father was an alcoholic who struggled to hold down a job; he took several jobs as an insurance salesman, a tanner, and a carpenter. He also ran a small grocery store in La Crosse but later sold it and moved his family out of town to live alone. Their new residence, a 155-acre farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin would later turn out to be a house of horror.
The death of all his immediate family within a short period of 5 years left him more isolated and devastated
The years 1940 to 1945 were probably the most tragic moments in the life of Ed. He lost his father to a heart failure on April 1, 1940. Following his father’s death, Ed and his brother began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. Ed frequently babysat for neighbors and he once remarked that he enjoyed babysitting, because he related more with kids than with adults.
He later lost his brother Herny on May 16, 1944, and asphyxiation was cited as the cause of his death. But it was later reported, by biographer Harold Schechter, that there was a possibility Henry was murdered by his brother.
With Henry deceased, Ed and his mother were left alone. But death came knocking again when Augusta went down with a stroke shortly after Henry’s death. She had a second stroke soon after the first, leading to a rapid deterioration of her health. She passed on December 29, 1945, aged 67. Being the only family he had left, Ed was devastated by his mother’s death, making him feel he was all alone in the world.
After his mother’s death Ed became increasingly isolated. He left the house in a filthy state and lived in a compact space adjacent to the kitchen. It was at this time that he developed an interest in pulp magazines and adventure stories, especially ones about cannibals or Nazi crimes. One such story concerned Ilse Koch, who chose to have tattooed inmates executed so they could make lampshades and other products out of their skins.
SEE ALSO: Khalil Wheeler-Weaver: The Shocking Story Of The Serial Killer
His Crimes Remained Unknown Until 1957
Gein’s crimes came to light in 1957 when police discovered the mutilated corpse of a local hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in his farmhouse near Plainfield, Wisconsin. Upon searching Gein’s property, authorities further found a gruesome collection of human remains, including numerous body parts and organs, some fashioned into items like a belt made of nipples and a lampshade made of human skin. He also kept human bones, vulvae, fingers, and skulls.
Why was he collecting those items? Well, your question is as good as mine. The irrational explanation was that after his mother passed, Gein began to create a ‘woman suit’ so that he could become his mother. He intended to crawl into her skin and possibly become her or have her back to life.
Meanwhile, several people suspect he had sex with the bodies he exhumed from different graves. But he denied this allegation. According to Ed, the bodies smelled too badly.
He admitted to robbing numerous graves from local cemeteries, as well as confessing to the murders of two women, Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden.
Apart from the killings of Hogan and Worden, Gein was also a suspect in several other unresolved Wisconsin cases. Authorities presented Gein with a list of unresolved instances involving missing persons that transpired between Worden’s and his mother’s deaths in November 1957. The discovery of Hogan’s remains only increased their suspicions. Lie detector tests, however, appeared to clear Gein of any additional killings, and his doctors concluded that he limited his violence to women who had a physical resemblance to his mother.
Several experts have been captivated by Gein’s psychological profile, which sparked conjecture about several potential causes for his abnormal conduct, such as his relationship with his controlling mother and his issues with gender identity.
Ed lived in a Mental Hospital until his Passing in 1984
Accused of one count of first-degree murder, Gein entered a plea of not guilty because of insanity in Waushara County Court on November 21, 1957. He spent the remainder of his life in a mental hospital after being declared legally insane despite his guilty verdict. He passed away in 1984, at the age of 77, from lung cancer-related respiratory failure.
Though he is no more, time has not diminished Ed Gein’s legacy, which still fascinates and terrifies people who explore the darkest recesses of the human psyche.
Many books, movies, and TV shows have been influenced by his story, including Tobe Hooper’s The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho.
