 |
Wisconsin is hunting and farming country, heavily wooded with many isolated tows and smallholdings, Gein was born in Plainfield in 1906 to a heavy-drinking father and a domineering mother. Gein and his brother Henry took over the family farm in 1940, when their father died. The two boys did the work, but their mother ruled their lives. She insisted they remain unmarried, and instilled the belief that women would separate the family and betray any love given.
The farm was not profitable, it was a hard life for Ed Gein, and things began to slip away when Henry died fighting a barn fire. Mrs Gein endured an incapacitating stroke in 1944, and Ed nursed her for a year before a second attack took her life in December 1945.
Ed Gein was alone for the first time, at the age of 39. In this solitude, Gein began to withdraw from reality. He started reading medical dictionaries and anatomical texts and, for the first time, developed an interest in women. His life became more bizarre. Gein qualified for a Government subsidy, and the sum was enough to enable him to suspend all work on the farm. To earn extra money, he did odd jobs for Plainfield residents, including baby-sitting. While his neighbours thought him a little odd, Gein was regarded as a harmless eccentric.
Soon, he had sealed off every room in the farmhouse with the exception of his bedroom and the kitchen. His first serious signal of Gein's impending madness came when he began grave-robbing remote churches at night. In a shed attached to the house, Gein stored his gruesome bounty. Investigators are unsure when Gein began killing, but he was not apprehended until November 1957.
Gein had repeatedly visited the Worden hardware store in Plainfield, showing great interest in the hunting plans of the store's owner, Frank Worden. Worden told Gein that he was planning a trip on Saturday, November 16, and Gein told him he'd drop by the store that day. When Worden returned from his trip late in the evening, he was alarmed to find the store's doors locked. Altered by the absence of his mother, Bernice, Worden discovered a receipt for anti-freeze, made out to Gein in Bernice's handwriting. Worden immediately informed the Sheriff.
Police stopped by Gein's farm and found the body of Bernice Worden hanging in the woodshed. Further searches found the remains of at least 15 women at the house. Most horribly of all, Gein had preserved his mother's skin. He confessed that he often dressed up in it, wore his mother's clothes, and ran outside the farmhouse to dance in the moonlight. ["Graze the skin with my finger tips" - "A pleasant fragrance in the light of the moon"]
Gein was declared criminally insane in December 1957, and committed to Wisconsin's Central State Hospital. He Died there, of natural causes, in 1984.
