5 Facts About Ed Gein

Ed Gein was born in 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, and raised on a remote farm in Plainfield. His father, George, an abusive alcoholic, died in 1940. In 1944, his brother, Henry, died in a mysterious fire that some investigators suspected Gein caused. However, it was the 1945 death of his religious fanatic mother, Augusta, that devastated him. “Augusta was continuously outraged by the flagrant immorality of the modern world,” Harold Schechter writes in his Gein biography, Deviant, adding that she was “a stern disciplinarian, self-righteous, domineering and inflexible.” After her death, Gein sealed off her bedroom, leaving it untouched. He lived alone in the farmhouse with no electricity or plumbing, gradually descending into madness. Read the full story here.

Gein, then 51, admitted to murdering Bernice Worden, a 58-year-old hardware store owner, in 1957. Police discovered her body hanging in his barn, disemboweled. According to a 1957 issue of Time, police also found a chamber of horrors: “Around the house the police also found: 10 skins of human heads, neatly separated from the skull; assorted pieces of human skin, some between the pages of magazines, some made into small belts, some used to upholster chair seats (the largest piece, rolled up on the floor, was the front upper section of a woman’s torso); a box of noses.”

They also discovered the remains of Mary Hogan, a local tavern owner who was 51 when she went missing in 1954. Both women resembled his late mother, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, and Gein admitted killing them because Wisconsin winters made grave robbing too difficult. Read the full story here.

Following Augusta’s death, Gein told investigators he began visiting local cemeteries at night to exhume bodies. According to the Journal Sentinel, he spent a decade exhuming remains from at least 15 women. He used their skin and body parts to craft a “woman suit,” which he wore in an attempt to “become” his mother. According to investigators, Gein fashioned masks, belts and vests from human skin, mounted skulls on bedposts and kept noses, nipples and other body parts in boxes as part of his ritualistic obsession. Read the full story here.

Shortly after his arrest, Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia. He pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and was declared unfit to stand trial. According to the Journal Sentinel, he was committed to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun. In 1968, he was deemed mentally competent and stood trial for Worden’s murder. Though found guilty, Gein was ruled insane and transferred to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, where he remained until he died in 1984 at age 77. He was never charged for Hogan’s murder or his grave-robbing acts. Read the full story here.

Gein’s disturbing crimes shocked the public and quickly made national headlines, cementing his place in infamy. His obsession with his mother, his use of human skin, and his distorted identity inspired iconic horror movie characters, including Norman Bates in Psycho, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. Read full story here.