The U. CART later known as Live TV. This Day In History. History Vault. Black History. US Government. Great Britain. Sign Up. Art, Literature, and Film History. World War II. Cold War. On 26 July Ed Gein died of cancer and was buried in Plainfield cemetery, right next to his mother and only yards from the graves he had robbed 30 years earlier.
Ironically vandals later desecrated his grave. Ed Gein remained for many years a bogeyman figure in much of America and his crimes still resonate today as an example of the nightmarish consequences which can follow on from a warped childhood.
Gein had been the last customer at the hardware store and had been seen loitering around the premises. Gein's desolate farmhouse was a study in chaos. Inside, junk and rotting garbage covered the floor and counters. It was almost impossible to walk through the rooms. The smell of filth and decomposition was overwhelming. While the local sheriff, Arthur Schley, inspected the kitchen with his flashlight, he felt something brush against his jacket.
When he looked up to see what it was he ran into, he faced a large, dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams. The carcass had been decapitated, slit open and gutted.
An ugly sight to be sure, but a familiar one in that deer-hunting part of the country, especially during deer season. It took a few moments to sink in, but soon Schley realized that it wasn't a deer at all, it was the headless butchered body of a woman. Bernice Worden, the fifty-year-old mother of his deputy Frank Worden, had been found. While the shocked deputies searched through the rubble of Eddie Gein's existence, they realized that the horrible discoveries didn't end at Mrs.
Worden's body. They had stumbled into a death farm. The funny-looking bowl was a top of a human skull. The lampshades and wastebasket were made from human skin. A ghoulish inventory began to take shape: an armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved in a shoebox, a belt made of nipples, a human head, four noses and a heart. The more they looked through the house, the more ghastly trophies they found. Finally a suit made entirely of human skin.
Their heads spun as they tried to tally the number of women that may have died at Eddie's hands. All of this bizarre handicraft made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based on Eddie, which became the central theme of the Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho.
This movie helped put "Ghastly Gein" back in the spotlight in the mid's. Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for the character of another serial killer, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs.
Like Eddie, Buffalo Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in some insane transvestite ritual. How does a child evolve into an Eddy Gein? A close look at his childhood and home life provides a number of clues. Eddie was the second of two boys born to the couple. The first born was Henry, who was seven years older than Eddie. Augusta, a fanatically religious woman, was determined to raise the boys according to her strict moral code. Sinners inhabited Augusta's world and she instilled in her boys the teachings of the Bible on a daily basis.
She repeatedly warned her sons of the immorality and looseness of women, hoping to discourage any sexual desires the boys might have had, for fear of them being cast down into hell.
Augusta was a domineering and hard woman who believed her views of the world were absolute and true. She had no difficulty forcefully imposing her beliefs on her sons and husband. George, a weak man and an alcoholic, had no say in the raising of the boys. In fact, Augusta despised him and saw him as a worthless creature not fit to hold down a job, let alone care for their children. She took it upon herself to not only raise the children according to her beliefs but also to provide for the family financially.
She began a grocery business in La Crosse the year Eddie was born, and it brought in a fair amount of money to support the family in a comfortable fashion. She worked hard and saved money so that the family could move to a more rural area away from the immorality of the city and the sinners that inhabited it. In they moved to Plainfield, Wisconsin to a one-hundred-ninety-five-acre farm, isolated from any evil influences that could disrupt her family.
The closest neighbors were almost a quarter of a mile away. Although Augusta tried diligently to keep her sons away from the outside world, she was not entirely successful because it was necessary for the boys to attend school.
Eddie's performance in school was average, although he excelled in reading. It was the reading of adventure books and magazines that stimulated Eddie's imagination and allowed him to momentarily escape into his own world. His schoolmates shunned Eddie because he was effeminate and shy. He had no friends and when he attempted to make them his mother scolded him. Although his mother's opposition to making friends saddened Eddie, he saw her as the epitome of goodness and followed her rigid orders the best he could.
However, Augusta was rarely pleased with her boys and 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 the company of each other.
Eddie looked up to his brother Henry and saw him as a hard worker and a man of strong character. After the death of their father in , they took on a series of odd jobs to help financially support the farm and their mother. Eddie tried to emulate his brother's work habits and they both were considered by townspeople to be reliable and trustworthy.
They worked as handymen mostly, yet Eddie frequently babysat for neighbors. It was babysitting that Eddie really enjoyed because children were easier for him to relate to than his peers.
He was in many ways socially and emotionally retarded. Henry was worried about Eddie's unhealthy attachment to their mother. On several occasions Henry openly criticized their mother, something that shocked Eddie. Eddie saw his mother as pure goodness and was mortified that his brother did not see her in the same way. It was possibly these incidents that led to the untimely and mysterious death of Henry in On May 16th Eddie and Henry were fighting a brush fire that was burning dangerously close to their farm.
According to police, the two separated in different directions attempting to put out the blaze. During their struggle, night quickly approached and soon Eddie lost sight of Henry. After the blaze was extinguished, Eddie supposedly became worried about his missing brother and contacted the police.
The police then organized a search party and were surprised upon reaching the farm to have Eddie lead them directly to the "missing" Henry, who was lying dead on the ground. The police were concerned about some of the things surrounding Henry's death. For example, Henry was lying on a piece of earth that was untouched by fire and he had bruises on his head. Although Henry was found under strange circumstances, police were quick to dismiss foul play.
No one could believe shy Eddie was capable of killing anyone, especially his brother. Later the county coroner would list asphyxiation as the cause of death.
The only living person Eddie had left was his mother and that was the only person he needed. However, he would have his mother all to himself for a very brief period. On December 29th, , Augusta died after a series of strokes. Eddie's foundations were shaken upon her death.
Harold Schechter in his book Deviant, explained that Eddie had "lost his only friend and one true love. Eddie boarded off the rooms his mother used the most, mainly the upstairs floor, the downstairs parlor and living room. He preserved them as a shrine to her and left them untouched for the years to follow.
He resided in the lower level of the house making use of the kitchen area and a small room located just off of the kitchen, which he used as a bedroom. It was in these areas that Eddie would spend his spare time reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories.
At other times, Eddie would immerse himself in his bizarre hobbies that included nightly visits to the graveyard. After the death of his mother, Eddie became increasingly lonely. He spent much of his spare time reading pulp magazines and anatomy books. The rooms he inhabited were full of periodicals about Nazis, South Sea headhunters and shipwrecks. From his readings Eddie learned about the process of shrinking heads, exhuming corpses from graves and the anatomy of the human body.
He became obsessed with these weird stories and he would often recount some of them to the children he babysat. Eddie also enjoyed reading the local newspapers. His favorite section was the obituaries.
It was from the obituaries that Eddie would learn of the recent deaths of local women. Having never enjoyed the company of the opposite sex, he would quench his lust by visiting graves at night. Although he later swore to police that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the dead women he had exhumed "they smelled too bad" , he did take a particular pleasure in peeling their skin from their bodies and wearing it.
He was curious to know what it was like to have breasts and a vagina and he often dreamed of being a woman. He was fascinated with women because of the power and hold they had over men. He acquired quite a collection of body parts, some of which included preserved heads. On one occasion a young boy that he sometimes looked after visited Eddie's farm. He later said that Eddie had showed him human heads that he kept in his bedroom. Eddie claimed the shriveled heads were from the South Seas, relics from headhunters.
When the young boy told people of his experience, his story was quickly dismissed as a figment of the young boy's imagination. Then somewhat later, the boy was vindicated when two other young men paid a visit to Eddie Gein's farm. They too had seen the preserved heads of women but thought them to be just strange Halloween costumes. Rumors began to circulate and soon most of the townspeople were gossiping about the strange objects Eddie supposedly possessed.
However, no one took the stories seriously until Bernice Worden disappeared years later. In fact, people would often joke with Eddie about having shrunken heads and Eddie would just smile or make reference to having them in his room. No one thought he was telling the truth or maybe they just didn't want to believe it was true.
During the late 's and 's, Wisconsin police began to notice an increase in missing persons cases. There were four cases that particularly baffled police. The first was that of an eight-year-old girl named Georgia Weckler, who had disappeared coming home from school on May 1, Hundreds of residents and police searched an area of ten square miles of Jefferson, Wisconsin, hoping to find the young girl.
Unfortunately, Georgia would never be seen or heard of again. There were no good suspects and the only evidence police had to go on were tire marks found near the place where Georgia was last seen. The tire marks were that of a Ford. The case remained unsolved and wouldn't be opened again until years later when Eddie Gein was convicted of murder. Another girl disappeared six years later in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Fifteen-year-old Evelyn Hartley had been babysitting at the time she had vanished.
Evelyn's father repeatedly tried to phone the girl at the house where she was babysitting and there was no answer. Worried, the girl's father immediately drove to where she was babysitting. Nobody answered the door. When he peered through a window, he could see one of his daughter's shoes and a pair of her eyeglasses on the floor. He tried to enter the house, but all the doors and windows were locked.
Except for one -- the back basement window. Her son, a deputy, became suspicious of Gein, who was believed to be somewhat odd. Apparently, Gein had kept various organs from his grave digging and murders as keepsakes and for decoration. He had also used human skin to upholster chairs. Though it is believed that he killed others during this time, Gein only admitted to the murders of Worden and Hogan. In , Gein was declared insane and sent to the Wisconsin State Hospital in Mendota, where he remained until his death in But if you see something that doesn't look right, click here to contact us!
As the fighting gets closer to Phnom Penh, the United States steps up its air activities in support of the Cambodian government. President John F. Kennedy decides to increase military aid to South Vietnam without committing U.
Later that decade, his health failing, he was transferred to the Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he died of cancer and respiratory illnesses on July 26, The story of Gein's gruesome activities, particularly his devotion to a dead mother, strongly influenced Robert Bloch's novel Psycho , which was adapted to the big screen the following year by Alfred Hitchcock. Additionally, Gein served as the inspiration of other notorious movie villains, including Buffalo Bill The Silence of the Lambs and Leatherface The Texas Chainsaw Massacre , and has been referenced in numerous songs over the years.
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