Welcome to Day One of Blogtober. Each day from October 19 to October 31, I will be posting a spooky and creepy TRUE story of horror and gore. Countless late nights and days of research, writing, and editing. I hope you enjoy the premiere blog of Blogtober. In this blog, we talk about Edward Gein. Who is he, you ask? Read below!
“When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants to be real nice and sweet, and the other part wonders what her head would look like on a stick” -- Ed Gein EndFragment
********* WARNING: IF YOU ARE TRIGGERED BY GRUESOME DETAILS OF A TRUE MURDER, VIEW DISCRETION IS ADVISED**********
Edward Gein was born in La Cross County, Wisconsin on August 27, 1906. He was the second of two boys to George Phillip Gein and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein. Edward had an older brother named Henry George Gein. Augusta despised her husband. He was an alcoholic who couldn’t hold down a job. George owned a grocery store for a few years but sold the business. The family left the city to live in isolation on a 155-acre farm in the town of Plainfield, WI which became the Gein’s family residence. Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders who could influence her sons. Edward left the farm only to go to school. Besides going to school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm.
Augusta was a very religious Lutheran. She preached to her sons about the innate immortality of the world, the evil of drinking and her belief that all women except herself were naturally prostitutes and instruments of the devil. Se reserved time every afternoon to read to her boys from the Bible, choosing the graphic verses from the old testaments concerning death, murder and divine retribution.
Edward was a shy boy. His classmates and teachers remember him as have strange mannerisms, such as random laughter. His mother punished him whenever he tried to make friends. On April 1, 1940, Edwards father passed away of heart failure caused by alcoholism, he was only sixty-six years old. Henry and Edward began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. The brothers were generally described as reliable and honest by the community. Ed frequently babysat for neighbors. He seemed to relate more easily to children than adults. Henry began dating a divorced single mother of two and planned to move in with her.
On May 16, 1944, Henry and Ed were burning away marsh vegetation on the property when the fire got out of control and the local fire company was called. The fire was extinguished by the end of the day. Edward then reported his brother missing. His body was found later face down. Apparently, he was dead for some time. It appears that the cause of death was heart failure. It was later reported that Henry had bad bruises on his head. Some suspected that Edward killed his brother, possible and likely that Henry’s death was the ‘Cain and Able’ of this case. Soon after Henry’s death, Augusta had a paralyzing stroke. Edward devoted himself to taking care of his mother. Sometime in 1945, Edward and Augusta went to visit a man named Smith to purchase straw. According to Edward, Augusta witnessed Smith beating a dog. A woman inside the Smith home came outside and yelled at Smith to stop. Smith beat the dog to death. It was not said what prompted or triggered Smith to beat the dog. Augusta was extremely upset at the scene. She wasn’t upset at the animal brutality towards the dog, but the fact that there was a woman not married to Smith in his home. Augusta called her Smith’s harlot. Soon after, Augusta had a second Stroke and her health deteriorated rapidly. On December 29, 1945, Augusta passed away at the age of 67.
Edward held onto the farm and earned money from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms that his mother used, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor, and living room. While the rest of the house became neglected, these rooms remained pristine. Around this time, Edward became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories, particularly ones involving cannibals, and the Nazi atrocities.
On the morning of November 16, 1957, Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, disappeared, A Plainfield resident reported that the hardware stores truck had been driven to the rear of the building around 9:30 am. The hardware store was closed for the entire day. Bernice Worden son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, entered the store around 5:00 pm and found the register open and found blood on the floor. Frank Worden told investigators that Edward Gein had been in the store the evening before his mother’s disappearance and that he would be back the next day to pick up a gallon of antifreeze. The sales slip for the antifreeze was the last receipt written by Bernice Worden on the morning she disappeared. On the evening of the same day, Edward was arrested at a West Plainfield grocery store. The Waushara County Sheriffs Department searched the Gein farm. A deputy discovered Worden’s decapitated body in a shed on Gein’s property, hung upside down by her legs and a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists. Her torso was ‘dressed like a deer’. She was shot with a .22 caliber rifle and the mutilations were made after she had died.
Police also found at the Gein residence:
- Whole human bones and fragments
- Wastebasket made of human skin
- Human skin covering chair seats
- Skulls on bedposts
- Female skulls, with some of the tops sawn off
- Bowls made from human skulls
- A corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist
- Leggings made from human legs skin (took the term ‘leggings’ quite literally)
- Masks made from the skin of female heads
- Mary Hogan’s facemask in a paper bag
- Mary Hogan’s skull in a box
- Bernice Worden’s heart in a plastic bag in front of Gein’s potbellied stove
- Nine vulvae in a shoe box
- A young girls dress and the vulvas of two females judged to have been fifteen years old
- A belt made of human nipples
- Four noses
- A pair of lips on a window shade drawstring
- A lampshade made from the skin of a human face
- Fingerprints made from female fingers
Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952 he made as many as 40 nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a ‘daze- like’ state. On some occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his paraphernalia. Soon after his mother’s death, Gein began to create a ‘woman suit’ so that ‘he could be with his mother’— to literally crawl into her skin. Gein admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since 1954, whose head was found in his house, but later denied details about her death.
It was reported as a sixteen-year-old youth, Edward kept shrunken heads in his house. Upon further investigation, there were determined to be facial skins carefully peeled from corpses and used by Gein a mask’s. On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder in Waushara County Court where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Gein was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent and unfit for trial. He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, a maximum security facility in Waupun WI, later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison WI. In 1968 doctors determined Gein was mentally able to confer with a council’ and participated in his defense. The trial began on November 7, 1968, and lasted a week. A psychiatrist testified that Gein had told him that he didn’t know whether the killing of Bernice Worden was intentional or accidental. Gein testified that while he examined a gun in Worden’s store, the gun went off, killing Worden. Gein also testified that after trying to load a bullet into a rifle, it discharged. He said he did not aim the rifle at Worden and didn’t remember anything else that happened that morning.
On November 14, 1968, Gein was found guilty by Judge Robert H. Gollmar. A second trial dealt with Gein’s sanity. Gollmar ruled Gein ‘guilty by reason of insanity’ and ordered him committed to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he spent the rest of his life. Ed Gein died at the Mendota Health Institute due to respiratory failure, secondary to lung cancer on July 26, 1984. Souvenir seekers chipped pieces from his gravestone until the stone was stolen in 2000. It was later recovered in June 2001 and placed in storage at a Waushara County Sheriffs Department. Edward is buried with his family, but his grave is unmarked.
Thank you all so much for reading the first official blog of Blogtober. Tune in tomorrow 10/20/18 at 9:00 pm for an unsolved murder so dark, its black!