Ed Gein

Edward Theodore Gein (1906-1984)

"Gein" redirects here. For other uses, see Gein (disambiguation).

Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), was one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history. The particularly bizarre and morbid nature of his crimes shocked the world, even though it may never be known if he committed more than two murders. Besides the death of his brother in 1944 under mysterious circumstances, six people disappeared from the Wisconsin towns of La Crosse and Plainfield between 1947 and 1957. Gein was conclusively linked to only two, though it is suspected there were more.

Childhood

Ed Gein was born to Augusta T. Lehrke (1878–1945) and George P. Gein (1873–1940) on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin. His parents, both natives of Wisconsin, had married on July 7, 1900, and their marriage produced Ed and his older brother, Henry G. Gein (1901–1944). Gein's father was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. Gein and his brother rejected their violent, aimless father, as did Augusta, who treated her husband like a nonentity. Despite her deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted. Divorce was not an option due to the family's religious beliefs. Augusta operated the small family grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of another small town, Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent home.

Augusta decided to move to this desolate location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons. Gein only left the premises to go to school and Augusta blocked any attempt he made to pursue friendships. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta, who was a Lutheran and fanatically religious, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink, and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were whores. According to Augusta, the only acceptable form of sex was solely for procreation. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder and divine retribution.

At the age of ten, Gein experienced an ejaculation upon viewing his mother and father slaughtering a hog in a nearby shed. When Gein reached puberty, Augusta became increasingly strict, once dousing him in scalding water after she caught him masturbating in the bathtub, grabbing his genitals and calling them the "curse of man".

With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the young Gein became a target for bullies. He was also notorious for a permanent lopsided grin that was displayed even during serious conversations. Classmates and teachers recall other off-putting mannerisms such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal joke. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.

Deaths of family members

By the time George died in 1940, Henry had begun to reject Augusta's view of the world. He had even taken to bad-mouthing her within earshot of his mortified brother. In March 1944, the brothers found themselves in the middle of a brush fire on the farm. When Ed ran to get the police, he told them he had lost sight of Henry, but then led them directly to his brother's corpse. Although there was evidence Henry had suffered blunt trauma to the head, the local county coroner decided he died of asphyxiation while fighting the fire.

Gein then lived alone with his mother. Less than two years later, on December 29, 1945, Augusta died from a series of strokes, leaving her grief-stricken son alone on the isolated farmstead.

Arrest

Police investigating the disappearance of a store clerk, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 17, 1957, suspected Gein to be involved. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made their first horrific discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, and was hanging upside down by the ankles and had been split open down the torso like a deer. The mutilations had been performed post-mortem; she had been shot at close-range from a .22-caliber rifle.

Searching the house, authorities found:

• severed heads acting as bedposts in the bedroom;
• skin used to make lampshades and upholster chair seats;
• skulls made into soup bowls;
• a human heart (it is disputed where the heart was found; the deputies' reports all claim that the heart was in a saucepan on the stove, with some crime scene photographers claiming it was in a paper bag);
• a face mask made out of real facial skin found in a paper bag;
• a necklace of human lips;
• a waistcoat, called a "mammary vest," made up of a vagina and breasts stitched together;
• and other items fashioned from the parts of human bodies, including a belt made from nipples.

Above all, Gein's most infamous creation was an entire wardrobe fabricated of human skin consisting of leggings, a gutted torso (including breasts) and an array of tanned, dead-skin masks that looked leathery and almost mummified.

Gein eventually admitted under questioning that he would dig up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and take the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his macabre possessions. One writer describes Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women as an "insane transvestite ritual."[1] Gein also participated in a stunted form of necrophilia, achieving sexual pleasure by playing with the mutilated sexual organs of corpses. Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad." During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, a local tavern employee who had been missing since 1954.

Shortly after his mother's death, Gein decided he wanted a sex change, although it is a matter of some debate whether or not he was transgendered; by most accounts, he created his "woman suit" so he could pretend to be his mother, not merely change gender.

Harold Schechter, a leading expert on serial killers, wrote a best-selling book about the Gein case called Deviant. In this book, Schechter mentions that Plainfield sheriff Art Schley physically assaulted Gein during questioning by banging Gein's head and face into a brick wall; because of this, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible. Schley died of a heart attack at the age of 43 shortly before Gein's trial. Many who knew him said he was so traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and the fear of having to testify (notably about assaulting Gein) that it led to his early death. One of his friends said, "He was a victim of Ed Gein as surely as if he had butchered him."

Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial; he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and spent the rest of his life in the hospital.

While Gein was in detention, his house burned to the ground. Arson was suspected. In 1958, Gein's car, which he used to haul the bodies of his victims, was sold at public auction for a then-considerable sum of $760 to an enterprising carnival sideshow operator named Bunny Gibbons. Gibbons called his attraction the "Ed Gein Ghoul Car" and charged carnival-goers 25 cents admission to see it.

Death

On July 26, 1984, he died of cancer. He was buried in Plainfield cemetery next to his mother, not far from the graves that he had robbed years earlier. The gravesite was frequently vandalised over the years; souvenir seekers would chip off pieces of his gravestone before the bulk of it was stolen in 2000. The gravestone was recovered in June 2001 near Seattle and is presently displayed in a Wautoma, Wisconsin museum.

Popular culture

Films

• Ed Gein's crimes became widely known after Robert Bloch's novel Psycho was released in 1959, followed a year later by Alfred Hitchcock's seminal film adaptation; Gein was widely believed to be the basis for main character Norman Bates (Bloch later denied this in an interview). Also, the crimes largely inspired Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and Alan Ormsby's Deranged, as well as parts of Thomas Harris' novel The Silence of the Lambs (in the form of the character Buffalo Bill).
• Gein's story was adapted into its own movie called In the Light of the Moon, later to be retitled Ed Gein for the US market. It starred Steve Railsback as Gein and Carrie Snodgress as Augusta.
• A movie released in 2003, House of 1000 Corpses, directed by Rob Zombie, contains a scene in which the character Captain Spaulding recreates Gein's crimes as part of his amusement park ride. The films Maniac and American Psycho also referenced Gein's crimes.

Music

• The Bloodhound Gang released a song called "Mama Say," which had the line "I'm in your face like Ed Gein."
• Bands Swamp Zombies, Killdozer, Slayer, Mudvayne, Macabre, The Fibonaccis and Dahmer have composed songs about Ed Gein called "The Ballad of Ed Gein", "Ed Gein", "Dead Skin Mask","Nothing To Gein", "Ed Gein," "Old Mean Ed Gein," and "Edward Gein," respectively.
• There is a grindcore band by the name of Ed Gein.
• Hailing from Redditch in the UK, the unsigned band "Ed Gein and the Skinners" were made popular with their most widely received number "Make Me Into a Handbag, Baby!"
• In 1995, the alternative rock band Blind Melon released the song "Skinned," which is sung from the point of view of Gein.
• In the 1980s, there was a New York City-based punk rock band named "Ed Gein's Car".
• There is an instrumental psychobilly/surf punk band in the US by the name Ed Gein and the Graverobbers.
• Swedish death metal band Deranged took its name from the eponymous film.
• From First to Last's song "Ride The Wings of Pestilence" contains reference to Ed Gein's crimes.
• Dir en grey references him in the song JESSICA
• Dead Skin Mask named themselves after one of Ed's pastimes, creating masks out of dead human flesh, as well as the Slayer Song "Dead Skin Mask"
• Gidget Gein, a former bassist for the band Marilyn Manson derived his last name from Ed Gein.
• There is a track on John 5's album "Songs for Sanity" titled "Gein with Envy", obviously named after the killer.
• The title track on Swans' EP Young God was supposedly written as if it were from Ed Gein's perspective.
• His last name is mentioned as one of the disembodied brain in the book Krokodil Tears by Jack Yeovil as part of the Dark Future series
• Korn's Jonathan Davis said that if he could meet anyone at all, it would be Ed Gein.
• Showbread reference both Ed Gein and the film The Texas Chainsaw Massacre in their song "Welcome To Plainfield Tobe Hooper".
• Alternative metal band Mudvayne's first album "L.D. 50" includes the single entitled "Nothing to Gein" dedicated to Ed Gein and his life
• American horror-core band, Macabre, included a track called Ed Gein on their 1987 EP, "Grim Reality"
• Ed Gein- thrash/metal/grindcore band who, in 2002, wrote a track called "Leatherface" describing Ed Gein's necrophilia, cannibalisim, and the act of slicing a woman up and hanging her off meat hooks.
• Drum and Bass DJ's "Gein" (consisting of ButcherGEIN [Weston Means], AbelGEIN [Adam Darby], and SaintGEIN [Ronny Eremija]) named themselves after the famed serial killer. Hailing from Milwaukee, Wisconsin "Gein" has put together a mix CD series titled Skinsuit Sessions, so named after Gein's possessions.

Computers

• Harvester, a 1996 adventure game, involves "Gein Memorial School" that is named after Gein.
• There is a Deathrow OpenVMS cluster. One of the nodes is named after him, gein.vistech.net
• In the computer game Silent Hill 4 The Room a character named Jasper Gein has the second name Gein as well; he stutters and is involved in a religious cult, moving forth with his own religious needs of fullfillment by murdering a number of people in a serial like manner.

Other

• In the Japanese manga Rurouni Kenshin, there is a minor character named simply "Gein", who makes life-sized dolls out of flesh salvaged from corpses. In a creator's notes section in Volume 24, creator Nobuhiro Watsuki notes that the character was indeed inspired by Edward Gein. (Though he incorrectly references him as "Edgar" Gein.)
• Saul, John (Author) 'In the Dark of the Night'. A lampshade made of human skin belonging to Edward Gein is referenced in this novel.

See also

• 1930 US Census with the Gein family in Plainfield, Wisconsin

External links

• The Ed Gein Information and Discussion Board
• Ed Gein Paintings and Artwork
• Crime Library Article about Ed Gein
• Find A Grave Entry
• Find A Grave: Gein family