Edward Theodore Gein - The Plainfield Ghoul

Submitted by Animals on Wed, 07/16/2008 at 6:52pm.

Ed Gein was the insperation of caracters such as Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), Norman Bates (Psycho), and Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre). This is his story-

Gein was born to George P. Gein (1873 – 1 April 1940) and wife Augusta Lehrke (21 July 1877 – 29 December 1945, daughter of Prussian immigrants Friedrich Wilhelm Lehrke and Amelie Fregin) on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, both natives of Wisconsin, had two sons, Ed and his older brother, Henry G. Gein (1901 – 1944). George Gein was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. Despite her deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted, since divorce was not an option due to the family's religious beliefs. Augusta Gein operated the small family grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of another small town, Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent home.Augusta Gein moved to this desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Gein only left the premises to go to school, and his mother blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta Gein, a fanatical Lutheran, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were prostitutes, whores and instruments of the devil.According to Augusta Gein, sex was only for procreation. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder and divine retribution.With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the young Gein became a target for bullies. Classmates and teachers recalled other off-putting mannerisms such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke. To make matters worse, his mother would scold him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading and the study of world economics.Gein tried to make his mother happy, but she was rarely pleased with her boys. She often verbally abused them, believing that they were destined to become failures like their father. During their teens and throughout their early adulthood the boys remained detached from people outside of their farmstead and had only each other for company. Ed Gein's father, George, died of a heart attack in 1940. After the death of their father, the Gein brothers began working at odd jobs to help their mother and the farm. Both Gein brothers were considered reliable and honest by people in town. While both worked as handymen, Ed Gein also frequently would babysit for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting and related more easily to children than adults. Henry Gein began to reject his mother's view of the world and worried about brother Ed's attachment to her. He would speak ill of her around his mortified brother.On May 16, 1944, a brush fire burned close to the farm and the Gein brothers went out to fight it. The brothers were reportedly separated and as night fell, Ed Gein supposedly lost sight of his brother. When the fire was extinguished, Ed Gein reported to the police that his brother was missing. A search party was organized, yet Gein led them directly to his missing brother, who lay dead on the ground. The police had questions about the circumstances under which the body was discovered. The ground on which Henry Gein lay was untouched by fire, and he had bruises on his head. Despite this, the police dismissed the possibility of foul play. Later, the county coroner would list asphyxiation as the cause of death.After Henry Gein's death, Ed Gein lived alone with his mother. Augusta Gein died on December 29, 1945, from a series of strokes. Ed Gein was left alone on the farmstead. In his book Deviant, Harold Schechter explained that Gein had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."Gein remained at the farm, supporting himself with earnings from odd jobs. He boarded off rooms mostly used by his mother, such as the upstairs floor, downstairs parlor and living room, leaving them untouched. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen and also used the kitchen. Gein became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories. He began to make nightly visits to the graveyard. Police suspected Gein's involvement in the disappearance of a hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 16, 1957. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made the first discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, her headless body hung upside down by means of ropes at her wrists and a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was empty, the ribcage split and the body "dressed out" like that of a deer. These mutilations had been performed postmortem; she had been shot at close-range with a .22-caliber rifle.

Searching the house, authorities found:

Human skulls mounted upon the corner posts of his bed
Skin fashioned into a lampshade and used to upholster chair seats
Breasts used as cup holders
Human skullcaps, apparently in use as soup bowls
A human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; deputy reports all claimed that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, while some crime scene photographers claimed it was in a paper bag)
Skin from the face of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner, found in a paper bag
A window shade pull consisting of human lips
A vest crafted from the skin of a woman's torso;
A belt made from several human nipples
Socks made from human flesh
A sheath made from human skin
A box of preserved vulvas that Gein admitted to wearing.
An array of "shrunken heads"

Various neighborhood children, whom Gein occasionally babysat, had seen or heard of the shrunken heads, which Gein offhandedly described as relics from the South Seas, purportedly sent by a cousin who had served in World War II. Upon investigation, these turned out to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from cadavers and used by Gein as masks. Gein eventually admitted under questioning that he would dig up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and take the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his possessions. Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women was described as an "insane transvestite ritual". Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad." During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, who had been missing since 1954. Shortly after his mother's death, Gein had decided he wanted a sex change. He created a "woman suit" so he could pretend to be a female. In Deviant, Harold Schechter relates that Plainfield police officer Art Schley physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall, reportedly causing Gein's initial confession to be ruled inadmissible. Schley died of a heart attack in December 1968, at age 43, only a month after testifying at Gein’s trial. Many who knew him said he was so traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and the fear of having to testify (notably about assaulting Gein) that it led to his early death. One of his friends said, "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him." Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial. The trial started on Wednesday, November 14, 1968. It lasted just one week. He was found not guilty by reason of insanity by judge Robert H. Gollmar and spent the rest of his life in the hospital. While Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. In 1958, Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for a then-considerable sum of USD$760 to an enterprising carnival sideshow operator named Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons called his attraction the "Ed Gein Ghoul Car" and charged carnival-goers 25 cents admission to see it. On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein died of respiratory and heart failure due to cancer in Goodland Hall at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin. His gravesite in the Plainfield cemetery was frequently vandalized over the years; souvenir seekers would chip 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 displayed at present in a museum in Wautoma, Wisconsin. The story of Ed Gein has had a lasting impact on popular culture as evidenced by its many appearances in movies, music and literature. Gein's story was adapted into a number of movies including Stephen Johnston's In the Light of the Moon, later to be retitled Ed Gein for the U.S. market as well as Deranged, and Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (I got this one). The book American Psycho also contains several references to Ed Gein, as does the movie based on that book. Gein's influence is seen in musical groups drawing inspiration from his crimes. There are a number of songs written about Gein including Misfits' "Skulls", Slayer's "Dead Skin Mask", Blind Melon's "Skinned", Macabre's "Ed Gein", and Mudvayne's "Nothing to Gein". In addition, a number of band names have been derived from Gein, including a band by the name of Ed Gein, a drum and bass group by the name of Gein, as well as a New York punk called Ed Gein's Car. Gidget Gein, a former bassist for the band Marilyn Manson derived his stage name from Ed Gein.

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