Ed Gein

Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein was a murderer and body snatcher during the 1950s.

History
Ed Gein was born on August 27, 1906 into an unhappy family; his father, George Gein, was a drunk and usually unemployed and frequently physically abused Ed and his older brother, Henry. Their mother, Augusta Gein (née Lehrke), was a religious fanatic who also abused Ed and Henry and taught them that all women, herself excluded, were prostitutes and instruments of the devil. Though she despised George, their religious belief prevented the possibility of divorce. She had the family move to the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin in order to keep her sons away from any outside influences.

Throughout his upbringing, Ed was kept at the farm, only being allowed to leave to go to school, where he was frequently bullied by his classmates. Augusta also scolded Ed whenever he tried to make friends. Despite this social isolation, he did fairly well at school, especially at reading. Even when the Gein brothers were in their teens, they were kept at the farm, having only each other for company. When George died of a heart attack in 1940, they took a number of odd jobs in the town to support their living. As Henry matured, he came to reject his mother's view on the world and became worried about Ed's close attachment to her, often speaking ill about her in front of him. In 1946, a bush fire came close to the farm and Ed and Henry went out to put it out. After the fire was put out, Henry was found dead with blunt force trauma and no signs of having been burned by the fire. Though some investigators suspected that Ed had killed him, the coroner listed the cause of death as asphyxiation and no charges were pressed.

After that, Ed lived alone with Augusta, who died on December 29, 1945 after a series of strokes. Remaining on the farm and making a living through various odd jobs, Ed boarded up the rooms that had been used by her, including the upstairs, the downstairs parlor and living room. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen and began reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories. Over the following years, Ed would visit cemeteries, dig up freshly-buried middle-aged women and take them to his farm. Eventually, he began targeting live women. In the middle of November, 1957, local investigators linked him to his second known murder victim, store owner Bernice Worden, through a sales slip. When they searched his property, they found Worden in a shed, shot dead, decapitated and gutted the same way a hunter would cut open a deer post-mortem. In the house, they also found: Gein was arrested and, during questioning, confessed to killing Mary Hogan, a tavern operator who had gone missing in December 1954, and adding her body parts to his collection. He had been a suspect when she disappeared, but there was no hard evidence incriminating him and the local police never visited his home. He was charged with the murder of Bernice Worden, the other murder having been left out due to prohibitive costs, and pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was found mentally unfit to stand trial until 1968, when he was tried for the murder and found guilty. He was then sent to another mental institution, where he remained until he died of respiratory and heart failure on July 26, 1984.
 * A shoebox containing female genitalia
 * A belt made of nipples
 * A human heart in a paper bag
 * Tops of human skulls used as bowls
 * A human head
 * A suit made of human skin
 * Human skin covering several armchairs
 * Human organs in the refrigerator
 * Whole human bones and fragments

Modus Operandi
As Gein claimed to have been in a daze-like state whenever he went grave robbing or killed his victims, the details of his murders are a bit vague, but it has been established that he killed both his victims by shooting them with a .22 rifle, after which their remains were made part of his macabre collection. The women he dug up or killed were middle-aged women who resembled his mother. During his grave-robbing days, he would find potential targets through the obituaries of the newspaper.

Pathology
After his arrest, Gein was diagnosed as having been a schizophrenic as well as a sexual psychopath. His mental illness stemmed from his love-hate relationship towards women, which later turned into a full-scale psychosis. After his mother’s death, Gein had decided that he wanted to become a woman. The bodies he collected were meant to be used as components for a “woman suit”. Gein was a necrophiliac as body parts excited him sexually, though he denied ever actually having sex with the bodies on the grounds that they “smelled too bad”.

Legacy
Ed Gein has served as inspiration for several fictional serial killers, including Norman Bates, the killer from Psycho, and Jame Gumb, aka Buffalo Bill, a serial killer in The Silence of the Lambs. He has also been referred to on a few occasions on Criminal Minds, most notably in Cold Comfort, in which the BAU dealt with a necrophiliac, accompanied with a flashback. Gein may also directly or indirectly have been part of the inspiration for Rhett Walden, as both had domineering and emotionally abusive mothers and were schizophrenics. Walden’s habit of keeping his mother’s body in the house may have have been mainly inspired by Norman Bates from ‘’Psycho’’, who did the same and was, in turn, inspired by Gein.

Known Victims

 * December 1954: Mary Hogan
 * November 17, 1957: Bernice Worden
 * Notes: Gein was also suspected of a number of other deaths and disappearances in the area, but was never linked to any of them.