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| Welcomes you to.... |
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| The TRUE Story |
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| Ed Gein |
| Edward Theodore Gein was born August 27th, 1906, to George and Augusta Gein in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He was one of only two children. His older brother Henry, was born on January 17th, 1902. Augusta Gein was a harsh tyrant, quick to criticize, and wore the pants in the family. George Gein was a lazy man with, as Augusta put it, "No backbone!" Out of work again, and with Augusta constantly yelling at him, he bacame proprieter of a small meat and grocery shop in 1909. However, Augusta, with her looming presence, did most of the work. In 1913, Augusta decided that the Geins would become farmers. Pinching every penny from the grocery store had paid off and she had accumulated enough money for a modest farm. She particularly wanted them away from the evils and sins of the city. The Geins moved to a small dairy farm near Camp Douglas, but stayed their less then a year. In 1914, Augusta moved them to a 195 acre farm in Plainfield known as the old John Greenfield place. Augusta was happy with her new homestead, a seven room two story L-shaped frame house with several outbuildings and a barn. Ed and Henry grew up going to school, doing hours of chores on the farm, and being abused by their drunken father. His mental instability, and that of Augustas, continued to decline, shutting themselves, and their sons off from the rest of the world. Diminishing in poverty, isolated from the community, and living with two tormented and violent parents, Eddie Gein, now so attatched to his mother, he practically thought of her as a God, sank farther into a remote world of fantasy. The Gein farm was becoming a breeding ground for madness. On April 1st, 1940, George Gein's hard and fruitless life came to an end. His service was held at Goult's funeral parlor in Plainfield. But his death did not represent a seriuos loss to the family. He had spent most of his time drinking, and beating or yelling at his sons, and as far as Eddie and Henry were concerned, it was a big relief. They continued to eke out a living, just managing to get by. The farmhouse slowly deteriorated, still unequipped with either plumbing or electricity, it showed signs of withering.........paint peeling, leaking roof, and splintered front stairs. The house that Augusta was once so proud of was now delapidating. But she trudged on, running the farm with an iron fist and Eddie worshipped the ground she walked on. On May 16th, 1944, Henry Gein mysteriously died while with Eddie fighting a fire on some marshland near their farm. Eddie claimed that the fire got out of control, and it bacame dark, and couldn't locate Henry. Eddie rounded up a search party, and following him, he led them directly to Henry, who was laying face down, in a scorched area of grass. However, Henry had no evidence of being burned. He did, however, have several large bruises on his head. Someone mentioned the strange fact that Eddie couldn't locate his brother earlier, but was able to take the search party directly to Henry's body. Eddie just shrugged and said, "Funny how that works." So, in the third week of May, 1944, Goult's funeral parlor had itself another customer, and Eddie Gein had his mother all to himself. But not for very long....... It was quite a shock to Eddie, that shortly after Henry's death, Augusta, became very ill. She was hospitalized, and slowly recovered. As the winter of 1945 approached, Augusta had her second stroke, and on December 29th, 1945, Augusta Gein died. And Goult's buried another Gein in the local cemetery. Eddie was in shock, and absolutely alone in the world. He had little contact with the outside world, and now stopped caring about anything. America was starting to prosper and there were sunny days ahead. But for Ed Gein, and for life in the little Wisconsin town that harbored him, darkness was just starting to fall. Over the next several years, life continued on fairly normal for Eddie, as far as the townspeople could tell. He did odd jobs for neighbors, ran errands, and even babysit kids to support himself. By the early 50's, Eddie was in full retreat from society, reality, and sanity itself. He spent most of his time in the darkness of his decaying old farmhouse, that was now over grown with weeds. Occaisionally he would venture into the small town of Pine Grove to Mary Hogan's tavern....not to drink, but to visit the owner Mary Hogan, a foul mouthed lady with a shady past who in Eddies eyes, closely resembled his mother. Eddie began reading Nazi war/torture magazines, and books on headshrinking. And he also makes sure to read, and in certain cases, tear out and save.......the local obituaries. Eddie made several trips to the Plainfield cemetery to try to raise his dead mothers spirit from the grave, and was not successful. He thinks about the other women in his life, but they are a poor substitute for his mother. One evening, during a light rain, the urge hits him and he can barely control himself.....clearly it has been too long since he last made a visit. Small midwestern towns are not known for their night life, but Eddie knows at least three places nearby where the women are always waiting and available.........graveyards. Mary Hogan, the tavern owner disappeared December 8th, 1954. When deputies arrived at her bar, they found a spent .32- calibur cartridge next to a large patch of dried blood on the floor. Someone had apparently shot the tavernkeeper, and dragged her body out the door, and disappeared into the darkness. A farm to farm search was conducted, and two years later, the same question was buzzing around town.........what ever happened to Mary Hogan? To one local farmer, Elmo Ueek, who mentioned that in front of Eddie, his response was very strange. Eddie shrugged and said, "She's down at my house." It was about this time, a rumor about Eddie started circulating around Plainfield. According to some local kids, who occaisionally visited Eddie and had even been in his delapitating farmhouse, said they had seen shrunken heads hanging inside. With Eddies increasing weirdness, the rumor of shrunken heads, and the run down appearance of his property, the old Gein farm developed a reputation among the children of Plainfield as a haunted house. One thing is certain......if the local kids were afraid of the appearance of his gloomy old farmhouse, it's fortunate for them they weren't around on those nights when a far more ghastly sight could be seen in his front yard. - the figure of what appeared to be an elderly female with wiry gray hair, mottled flesh, withered breasts and the face of a corpse. To see this apparition, one might have believed that Eddies attempts to raise his dead mother from the grave were successful, and that the grotesque creature cavorting obscenely in his yard under the moonlight was the resurrected corpse of Augusta Gein herself. Her name is Eleanor Adams, a fifty-one year old mother of two, from Plainfield. As far as her family is concerned, her body is resting in piece in the Plainfield cemetery. Unfortunately for them, tonite she is with Ed Gein. Her cold body is layed out on a table inside his farmhouse, and he is studying her corpse with great fascination. On a small table nearby, lay Eddies tools......he grabs a sharp insturment, and begins work on his prize. Novembr 16th, 1957. Deer season was opening, and every able bodied man in Plainfield would be out in the woods that day looking for game. Every man that is, except Eddie Gein. The game he was after wouldn't be found in the woods, but rather right in town. Eddie drove his maroon '49 Ford sedan into town that morning just after 8am. His first stop was a Standard station for kerosene. Next stop......Worden's Hardware Store. He entered the store, purchased some antifreeze, and left. Moments later, Eddie returned. He told Bernice Worden, the store owner, he was thinking about trading in his Marlin rifle for a different model. Eddie found one he liked and slid it out of the display rack. Mrs. Worden walked to the front of the store and looked out the window, with her back to Eddie. She never saw him slip a .22 calibur shell into the rifle, nor could she have known that in his festering madness, he thought she was deserving of divine punishment. Bernice Worden's life, like that of Mary Hogan's, had just come to a bad end. A very bad end. By 5pm that cold and gloomy day, hunters were returning from the woods. Frank Worden, Bernices son and local sheriff, came back empty handed. As he entered his mother's hardware store he knew something was terribly wrong. The cash register was missing, and there was a large amount of blood on the floor, that was streaked all the way to the back door, and upon looking out the back door, he noticed the hardware store truck was missing. He immediately called other deputies to the scene. He suspected an intruder.....someone who had been hanging aroung the store lately, and had asked his mother out on a date.........Ed Gein. Within hours, lawmen from as far away as Madison were converging on Plainfield. They decided to locate Gein and question him. One deputy drove by the Gein farm and no one was home. Then he drove to the Hill's house. The Hills owned a small store, and Eddie used to visit their house regularly. As the deputy pulled up, Bob Hill and Eddie Gein were sitting in Gein's car, outside the house. The deputy approached the car and told Eddie he'd like to speak with him. Eddie got out, and got into the backseat of the squad car. Eddie started saying someone framed him. "For what?" they asked. "Well, Mrs. Worden." Eddie said. The officers looked at him...."What about Mrs. Worden?" Eddie smiled, "Well, she's dead ain't she?" The officers were the only people who knew she was missing and no one knew what had happened to her. They knew they had their man in the backseat. His name was Ed Gein. They informed Eddie he was a suspect in the hardware store robbery, and he was taken to Wautoma and put in a jail cell. The investigation started at Gein's decaying old farmhouse. Two deputies walked around the place checking the doors. One door, that led to the summer kitchen, was flimsy and gave way to the officers kick. The house had no electricity so they entered with flashlights. There was clutter everywhere, and it was very disorderly. As they walked around something bumped into one of the deputies from behind. He swung his flashlight around to see a large dead white carcass hanging upsidedown from the rafters. It had been slit open and gutted out like a deer. Only it wasn't a deer.....it was a human being. It was the headless corpse of Bernice Worden. The officers ran outside and vomited, not believing what they saw. Now, senses cleared, they had to re-enter Eddies haunted house and face the horror that awaited inside. They radioed for back up, and walked back into the darkness. Her body had been decapitated and butchered like a deer. It had been attatched to a pully system and hoisted up to the rafters by the feet. Her head was found in a steaming warm burlap bag stuck between two old mattresses. Ten penny nails had been pounded into each ear, and a cord was attatched to the end of each nail, so it could be carried around like a lamp. Soon, a portable generator was secured, and as more deputies converged on the scene, Eddies house of horrors was lit up to reveal more horrible images then anyone could have ever imagined. The house was piled high with trash, with barely a path through out and to each room. They observed a coffee can stuffed with wads of chewed gum, old cracked dentures displayed like an award, and a wash basin full of sand. Then they saw a funny looking soup bowl on the kitchen table that turned out to be the sawed off top of a human skull, two complete skulls on Eddies bedposts, a kitchen chair that the seat was made of dried human skin, and lampshades, bracelets, a waste basket and a tom-tom all made out of dried human skin. Eddies creepy old farmhouse had become the workshop of a fiend. As the officers rumaged through the piles of trash they found an old shoebox full of female genitalia, some of them spray painted, with colored ribbons attatched, human skin leggings, a complete female chest vest, that had been dried so it could be worn, and a sizable human skin mask collection. They were the actual facial skins of nine women, that had been painstakingly peeled from the skulls with the hair still attatched, tanned and dried to be worn like Halloween masks. Eddie Gein actually wore these "human skin clothes" while dancing around in his front yard late at night. Another officer found a brown paper bag behind the kitchen door, and when he pulled out it's contents, it turned out to be the decapitated head of Mary Hogan, the tavern owner. The three year mystery of the missing barkeeper had finally been solved. Sifting through Gein's "Hell House", they found scraps of skin, shin bones, scalps, faces, withered breasts, lips, noses, heads, and more. It was impossible to tell how many victims supplied body parts. When investigators came to the last downstairs bedroom, it was boarded off. They pried off the wood barriers to find Augusta Gein's bedroom. Left intact, just as it was the day she died. Except for the thick dust covering everything, everything was left the way it was years before her death. That night, while Eddie was in jail, one of the deputies actually assaulted him, because he hadn't "come clean." Rumors spread fast through Plainfield that Gein's farm was a murder factory. News of the hideous crimes spread faster and soon America was transfixed by the horror. Rumors abound from Gein murdering children to him being a cannibal. Some even made their way into the local newspaper as fact. The fact is, he never admitted to such, and there was absolutely no evidence to support these claims. Given the fact that Eddie ended up freely admitting to all sorts of hideous crimes, it doesn't add up. But what the town of Plainfield didn't know was that the most ghastly crime of Ed Gein's endeavors, hadn't been discovered yet........a confession that Eddie himself would make days after his arrest........... Ed Gein was a graverobber. As the authorities hauled out load after load of body parts from Geins farmhouse, the question arose that if he didn't murder all of these people, (and there was no evidence that he did) where did they come from? The answer was simple. Eddie smiled and said, "The cemetery." He freely admitted to disturbing eleven graves in three area cemeteries, and taking all or parts of the bodies home from each gravesite. After supplying authorities with a detailed list of names and sites, it was decided to exhume three of them to see if he was telling the truth. As horrible as Gein's crimes were, no one could believe this shy little man had been hauling their dead loved ones out of the cemetery and taking them home. Finally, three graves were exhumed and lo and behold, they were all three empty and one casket contained Geins crowbar. Ed Gein was infact, in every sense of the word, a ghoul. Out of all of the horrible facts that emerged from Geins farm, the most horrible of all, was that the authorities didn't have a search warrant when they entered Eddies house and all of the evidence was unusable in court. The only crime Ed Gein would be charged with, was the death of Bernice Worden. After intensive interogation, and countless interviews with specialists, it was determined that Ed Gein was not competant to stand trial due to mental illness, and would spend the rest of his life (unless deemed competant) in Central State Hospital in Wisconsin. Some people in Plainfield believed that 'ol Eddie Gein was a sly fox and had just gotten away with crimes far worse then murder. Some even thought that Ed Gein was a very clever character and had outsmarted the states best law enforcement officials. Ed Geins farmhouse burned to the ground shortly after, and it was believed but never proven, that angry local townspeople had set the blaze. Ten years later, in 1968, after receiving a letter from Geins doctor saying he was now compentant to stand trial, On January 22, 1968, Ed Gein was led into the Wautoma County Courthouse, and charged with the murder of Bernice Worden. After a lengthy and costly trial, Ed Gein was found guilty of first degree murder and not guilty by reason of insanity in the same day. He was sent back to Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. He was on his way back home. On July 26th, 1984, Ed Gein died of respiratory failure at the age of seventy-eight, in Mendota State Hospital in Madison Wisconsin. But Ed Gein's legacy lives on to this day. Countless horror movies have taken bits and pieces of his life to create such films as Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Deranged and Silence Of The Lambs. But none of them come close to matching the true life horror that is Ed Gein. Based on the book "Deviant" by Harold Schechter And the book "Edward Gein" by Judge Robert Gollmar |
| Only here will you find the 100% TRUE and ACCURATE facts about Ed Gein's life. |