7: Ed Gein

In 1957, Ed Gein's gruesome crimes of murder, grave robbing, and corpse abuse shocked the the tiny town of Plainfield, Wisconsin as well as the rest of the world, giving rise to a cottage industry of horror franchises, and serving as a grim reminder of how deep isolation, illness, and an unshakable Oedipus complex can drive some to commit some of the most depraved acts. Take a whirl in the time machine to learn more about the world in which Gein lived and operated, and perhaps separate a little bit of the fact from the fiction his story continues to inspire more than 65 years later.

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Additional Music:
"Aquarium" Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com)
Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 4.0 License
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

"Infinite Peace" Kevin MacLeod (freePD.com)

Resource Links:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ed_Gein

Credits:
Main Theme Music -- Ken Dickson
Main Graphics -- Nathaniel Dickson

Allison Dickson: 0:00

This week I took my time machine back to the year 1957, and I found a bad guy. And even if you somehow haven't heard of this one, you have undoubtedly encountered the various fictional characters. His wicked deeds inspired Norman Bates, leatherface, hannibal Lecter, that and way more. As we talk about the horrific life and times of the Plainfield Ghoul Ed Gein and consider this your warning, this show's tenure, I have a feeling, not necessarily because there's an inordinate amount of villains here compared to others though, trust me, there are some big ones but because there's just something so alluring to me about that juxtaposition between the shiny post-war veneer of opulence and optimism we've all heard about or perhaps lived through, and the darkness that lay just below it, a fertile breeding ground of cultural questions that would soon be answered quite fervently in the decades that followed. And in many ways those questions are still being answered today, as some try their hardest to steer the boat of our civilization back in that direction. Beholden to this, time of human history is the great signifier of everything we, the people, could be. Beholden to it like thirsty people lost in a desert, transfixed on this vision of a beautiful oasis that was only ever a mirage for most, of a beautiful oasis that was only ever a mirage for most. It undoubtedly was a mirage too for Ed Gein, but I'll get back to him in a moment because you know what time it is. That's right, kids, it's time to take a spin on our shiny, atomic-powered zeitgeist zeppelin, complete with some space age modifications befitting the times, like fins and bubble windows and a fancy cocktail bar, of course. And we're going to head on over to 1957, which is when authorities discovered Ed Gein's sinister hobbies and mind any sightings of Sputnik on the way, the first space satellite launched by our main Cold War rival, russia, in September of this very year. That event would officially kick off the space race between our two countries and would carry us all the way to the moon a decade later.

Allison Dickson: 2:53

1957 also marks the first introduction of the electric wristwatch. That took me approximately five takes to get right, by the way. No more winding necessary, thanks to the Hamilton 500. And Hamilton is still around making pretty snazzy timepieces to this very day. Not a sponsor, I'm just a watch nerd. Another piece of necessary tech of the times also went electric that year the typewriter. You remember those right? Did you know there were once electric trolley cars in New York City. Well, there weren't anymore after April 6th of 1957.

Allison Dickson: 3:32

And in other transportation news, president Dwight D Eisenhower would become the first president to fly in a helicopter on July 12th, and Ohio badass eventual astronaut and Senator, john Glenn would set a transcontinental speed record, flying across the United States from California to New York, traveling 726 miles per hour on average and arriving in three hours and 23 minutes. That is an excellent flight time. By 1962, he would be the first American to orbit Earth from outer space. And the next time you find yourself wondering when people officially stopped thinking cigarettes were good for you. In 1957, surgeon General Leroy Burney would officially link smoking with lung cancer. So if your mom told you it was okay to smoke cigarettes when she was pregnant with you in the 1970s, you can go ahead and correct her on that.

Allison Dickson: 4:29

In January, three B-52 bombers set a record for an around the world flight that took 45 hours and 19 minutes. No word on whether they encountered a love shack on that journey, though, but it's a good thing they didn't fly over a certain part of the USSR, because a day after those B-52s took flight, russia performed an atmospheric nuclear test. Remember, it's the atomic age, and boy were we making those mushroom clouds, along with our fears of nuclear annihilation, soar. The UK tested its first hydrogen bomb on May 15th of this year near Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean. Russia would also launch its first intercontinental ballistic missile. A lot of this nuclear testing and, let's face it, penis measuring wouldn't start winding down for at least another decade, and many of the icons of the 1960s were just getting going.

Allison Dickson: 5:25

In 1957. Martin Luther King Jr founded the Southern Christian Leadership Council at Ebenezer Church in Atlanta, and future president John F Kennedy, then a senator, would win the Pulitzer Prize for his book Profiles in Courage. A book of stories about eight US senators throughout history who defied party expectations to do what they felt was right, despite suffering criticism from their contemporaries, could be drawn from these stories today. The Kennedy family in 1990 established the Profiles in Courage Award to continue to honor those who've made difficult choices and sacrifices that changed the course of history. Gabrielle Giffords, john Lewis and the peacemakers of Northern Ireland are among past recipients.

Allison Dickson: 6:20

But peace was a very tenuous thing in 1957. We were well into the Cold War at this point, and the USSR and its good buddy communism drove us to the heights of the Red Scare. President Eisenhower was hell-bent on stopping communism from spreading both here and abroad. Congress accepted the Eisenhower Doctrine on January 30th, which allowed the US to offer aid to Arab countries fighting commies. And of course, congress was up to all sorts of doings throughout this decade, with its various hearings and blacklistings of leftist Americans. These efforts, led by the infamous Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, resulted in a lot of arrests and ruined lives, and many of their actions would be considered downright illegal today.

Allison Dickson: 7:13

But by this point in history, mccarthy's popularity had taken a steep dive. After he was formally censured by his peers a few years prior and several Supreme Court decisions reversed the convictions of communists, he would eventually leave office and succumb to alcohol and morphine addiction. Mccarthy would die on May 2, 1957, in Bethesda Naval Hospital, and his seat would go to a Democrat. As of now, in 2024, mccarthy is the last Republican to have ever held Wisconsin's class one Senate seat. Voters, it would seem, have very long memories. Anyway, that whole red scare thing will end up being discussed on this show at some point.

Allison Dickson: 7:58

Mccarthy, j Edgar Hoover, alan Dulles these heavy hitting vintage villains are prime for the plucking. In May of 57, public schools would desegregate after the Brown v Board of Education decision by September 4, the governor of Arkansas would call the National Guard to protect nine Black students entering Little Rock Central High School. And that was but one of many incidents that would erupt as America came to terms yet again with its troubled history with civil rights of black citizens. President Eisenhower would soon send in troops to enforce the law and support the students, but the mobs would not relent and those students were ultimately forced to withdraw. We had a very long way to go.

Allison Dickson: 8:42

And finally, let's get a look at the entertainment landscape of 1957. It was a hot time to be an author and a playwright. Dr Seuss's the Cat in the Hat published this year, as did Jack Kerouac's On the Road. Tennessee Williams was at his height around this time. His play Orpheus Descending would premiere in New York City this year. Another big shot playwright of that era, samuel Beckett, released his play Endgame in London, and my Fair Lady would take home a Tony Award for Best Musical TV sitcom Leave it to Beaver debuted in October of 57, and I think when many of us imagine the 1950s, that show is one of the first to pop up in our minds, maybe along with the Jetsons. I watched it and countless other shows from that era and reruns as a kid in the 1980s, the Donna Reed Show. I Love Lucy, dennis the Menace.

Allison Dickson: 9:38

Anyway, the big Oscar winners of 1957 were Around the World in 80 Days for Best Picture, ingrid Bergman as Best Actress for Anastasia and Yul Brynner for the King and I for Best Use of Yellowface. Oh wait, I mean Best Actor. God, I hated that movie. James Dean was nominated posthumously for his role in Giant. He died in a 1955 car crash just as the film had wrapped shooting and the once very in-demand young actor would go on to have a couple more releases. After his death, elvis Presley would have his seventh and final appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, where he'd scandalized the nation with his swiveling hips, the year prior during his rendition of Hound Dog, and then, a few months after that, he would release one of his biggest hits. All Shook Up.

Allison Dickson: 10:30

The Sidney Lumet-directed film 12 Angry Men premiered on April 10th. It's a great movie, but try to think of it as 12 angry men do all the things juries aren't allowed to do but wish they could. Another favorite, the Bridge on the River Kwai, also released this year, similar to my mention in the Patty Hearst episode of Penn and Teller meeting for the first time in 1974, only far more consequential. On July 6th of 1957, john Lennon and Paul McCartney would meet for the very first time as Lennon's group, the Quarrymen, performed a concert in Liverpool. And if you're wondering what, you might have heard on the radio bopping down the road in your turquoise 57 Chevy Bel Air. Paul Anka's Diana was number one on the charts in the latter half of the year, and Elvis Presley's Jailhouse Rock and Jerry Lee Lewis's Great Balls of Fire would be bringing down the house as well.

Allison Dickson: 11:28

And in baseball because you know I love a good baseball, mention Milwaukee Brave. Hank Aaron would win National League MVP that year. And, folks, I could probably hang out in the Zeitgeist Zeppelin for the entirety of this episode. There is so much I left out in the interest of time and I'll probably be back in this very year again, so I have to save a few things. And also, one of the biggest events of 1957 is the very one this episode is centered around.

Allison Dickson: 11:58

And, as Ed Gein himself might have once said, this skin suit isn't going to sew itself. Have once said this skin suit isn't going to sew itself. Just kidding, he probably didn't say that. But let's dive into the nitty and oh so gritty of that story, shall we?

Allison Dickson: 12:19

In examining the pantheon of serial killers who have risen to a level of fame and notoriety that you can immediately name off their crimes when you hear their names, ed Gein isn't going to rank as near the top as Ted Bundy or John Wayne Gacy, but he's frequently listed on the heavy hitter list for most true crime enthusiasts. The only problem is Ed Gein is still listed as only a suspected serial killer, and at the time he was apprehended, the language to describe such a thing as serial murder was only just in its infancy, though he's considered a suspect in around seven unsolved murders in Wisconsin, and I'll mention those a little later here. Gein confessed to only two murders and he was convicted for one. It was the investigation of the murder of local hardware store owner Bernice Worden that led police to discover the horror show in Gein's Plainfield Wisconsin home, where he lived most of his life. But even if he didn't do a lot of actual murdering, gein inspires a similar or deeper level of distaste as a serial killer, especially when you consider the taboo nature of his main interests, which included grave robbing, possible cannibalism and the sorts of arts and crafts with human body parts that we now take for granted every year when we visit a spirit Halloween store. But I'm getting ahead of myself, so let's start back at the beginning of the man's life. By the way, big shout out again to author Harold Schechter, whose book Deviant, the Shocking True Story of the Original Psycho, is a main source for this piece.

Allison Dickson: 13:56

Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, wisconsin, a medium-sized city situated right along the Mississippi River and the Minnesota border. He had an older brother named Henry, and was described as a timid and mostly passive man who worked an assortment of odd jobs that he struggled to keep due to his alcoholism, and ardently religious in the German old Lutheran tradition, which tends to hold that everything human beings do and think is riddled with sin and evil. Mind you, this is a splinter off the mainstream Lutheran faith and far more conservative and not fun. It also makes me wonder if, in addition to being the inspiration for Norman Bates' mother in Psycho, if she was living in Stephen King's head when he wrote Carrie, or perhaps that preacher woman, sylvia Pitson from his first Dark Tower book a deeper cut for you SK fans out there.

Allison Dickson: 15:11

But Augusta Wilhelmina Lerka married George Philip Gein at the age of 22. They were both from German immigrant families who'd settled in La Crosse in Hamburg, wisconsin respectively. Two years into that marriage, augusta gave birth to her first son, henry George Gein. While George struggled with steady employment, augusta ran a grocery store in order to keep the family afloat. This, I suspect, is where a lot of her resentments toward her husband and men in general grew. Already a woman of strict temperance and tradition, she no doubt loathed the fact that she had to be the breadwinner while also mothering a young son, as well as a husband who seemed barely able to care for himself. This resentment eventually grew into a hatred of all men, and when she became pregnant with her second child a few years later, she wished for a daughter, but it was not to be.

Allison Dickson: 16:11

With the birth of Edward, her goal then morphed into raising sons that would not turn out like the drunken, sinful men she so hated. So she wrapped them up tight in the bonds of her religion, intent on making herself the moral center of their universe. Augusta preached to her sons daily, drilling into their heads her views on the immoral ways of the world, and particularly women, whom she believed to be instruments of the devil, filling them in with evil carnal desires. From the Bible she would pluck sermons from the Old Testament and revelations, those old bangers like Sodom and Gomorrah or the seven seals or other stories of holy retribution against the wicked.

Allison Dickson: 16:55

In 1915, augusta finally demanded George move them away from La Crosse, wanting her sons far from the influences she deemed evil People. In other words, they used the proceeds from the sale of her grocery business to purchase a 155-acre farm in Plainfield, which is about 100 miles west of Green Bay. The isolation was very extreme here. At first I assumed it had probably filled out a little more since 1957, and perhaps it has, but the last census in 2022 measured the population at a sparse 934, so it's still quite rural up in those parts. Anyway, this move away from a real human population and her refusal to let the boys leave the farm except to attend a one-room school right down the road really allowed her to fill her son's heads with her fearsome brand of religion, as well as keep out any outsiders who might have had any different influence on them. Keep out any outsiders who might have had any different influence on them. As a result, the Gein boys didn't have any friends, and in fact Ed was punished if he even tried. But making friends was never going to be easy for Ed.

Allison Dickson: 18:10

By the time he was living in Plainfield, around that tender age of nine or ten, when it can be hard for even normal kids to bloom socially, the damage from his mother's abuse was evident. He was painfully shy and his teachers remembered him talking and laughing to himself. Complicating things also were some physical maladies, and particularly a lazy eye and a lesion on his tongue that affected his speech, which made him an even bigger target for bullies. And despite being considered an otherwise decent student and voracious reader, ed would eventually drop out of school around the eighth grade and he had no real refuge from this oppressive home life. His father wasn't only an ineffective drunk, he could also be physically abusive when on a bender, which I think only made Ed fall deeper into his mother's stern and protective orbit. Furthermore, he seemed to have little consolation from his brother, henry, who was five years his senior. Perhaps that age difference is why Augusta's religion didn't quite sink in with him the same way it did with Ed. Augusta's religion didn't quite sink in with him the same way it did with Ed, assuming it didn't really pick up until after Ed was born. In fact, henry seemed to resent their mother quite a bit and eventually grew to hate her. This very likely played a role in where he eventually ended up, but more on that.

Allison Dickson: 19:34

Momentarily the shape of the Gein family changed from quartet to trio on April 1st 1940, when Ed's father died of either pneumonia or heart failure Accounts vary on this, but his lungs filled with fluid seems to be the main thread, and that's a common component of either malady. By this point Ed was 34 years old and Henry was closing in on 40. Both still lived at home. They took on an assortment of jobs in order to keep up with expenses. While they worked as handymen, ed seemed happiest when babysitting the neighbors. There wasn't any indication that he was inappropriate with the kids, but after a lifetime of infantilization from old Ma he had the more childlike mind and seemed to relate better to them. Perhaps the biggest effect George's death had on the two men was they were getting outside the farm a little more out of necessity and Henry especially began to get a different perspective on the relationship his brother had with their mother. He also reportedly began to date a divorced mother of one or two kids again, accounts vary on the number of kids and they wanted to move in together. One account I came across seemed to suggest that Henry even wanted Ed to come with him and attempted to get him to see Augusta's sickness and break free of her. The only problem was Ed adored his mother Anyone else seeing that chilling Norman Bates stare in their heads, or is it just me? And any criticism of her did not go over well with him. So on May 16th 1944, the Gein trio would officially become a ghastly duo.

Allison Dickson: 21:26

During a pretty standard burning away of brush on the property, the wind got hold of the fire and it blew a little out of control. In summoning the fire department. Control in summoning the fire department. It took most of the day to get that fire tamped down. And not long after the firefighters went home that evening a call came in to the local police. Ed Gein was reporting his brother missing. He worried that perhaps Henry had been caught up in the blaze and a search party arrived lanterns ready to go looking for the 43-year-old. Arrived lanterns ready to go looking for the 43-year-old.

Allison Dickson: 21:59

But here's where it gets weird. Despite reporting him missing, ed was able to lead searchers almost directly to Henry's body lying face down, no sign of having been burned by the fire. Though they thought maybe he died of heart failure, the coroner would list his cause of death as asphyxiation. No one bothered to order an autopsy, however, and no formal investigation was conducted, with no one believing Ed capable of murder. It would not be until much later, in 1957, when Ed was being interrogated for the murder of Bernice Worden and his entire life was being put under a microscope, that investigators began to suspect. A Cain and Abel scenario might have unfolded that day. Sadly, we'll never know for sure, but I do find it interesting that Harold Schechter's book noted the presence of bruising on Henry's head. It just wasn't enough to arouse the suspicions of police back in 1944.

Allison Dickson: 23:01

Many debate it to this day, with some asserting that Henry's death doesn't match Ed's MO. Of those we know Ed killed or removed from their graves, they were all women and they were all mutilated. That said, ed's own testimony regarding his deeds reveals he regularly fell into what he called dazes when he did these things, and it's quite possible that ugly words between Henry and Ed that day about their mother precipitated one of these lethal dissociations. People also argue that it wouldn't be until Augusta's death that Ed became fixated on his macabre hobby. But there's no way to verify that claim either.

Allison Dickson: 23:43

First of all, this idea that killers never deviate from their MOs and routines is mostly a myth. They might have a preferred way of doing things, but that doesn't necessarily mean they're autonomous murder machines with only one setting. As you'll soon see, there was nothing particularly ordered about the way Ed Gein did anything, quite the opposite, in fact. But if Ed hadn't killed previous to Henry's death, and if this was more of a crime of passion, then of course this scene would not resemble any of his later work. It's far too easy to imagine Henry lobbing one too many yo mama jokes at him and Ed hauling off and hitting him in the head before wandering off in a daze. But, as I said, we'll never really know for sure, and this is all conjecture. But what we can say for sure is that Augusta Gein did not take well to losing one of her sons, because shortly after Henry's death she suffered a paralyzing stroke that left her in need of serious care, of which Ed was more than willing to provide.

Allison Dickson: 24:51

Gein would later recount a bizarre incident from some time in 1945, when he and Augusta visited a man named Smith, from whom they intended to buy some straw. For whatever reason, smith began to beat up on his dog right in front of them and a woman in Smith's house ran out to tell him to stop it. Augusta was extremely distraught from this incident, but not for the reason you might think. She didn't give a damn about the poor dog being beaten to death. She was instead incensed because the woman in Smith's home wasn't his wife. The pinnacle of human sin. She shouted at the woman, calling her Smith's harlot. Soon after, on December 29th, augusta would suffer a second stroke and die Devastated by this loss and left completely without friends, family or the ability to make new ones, at least in the way we would understand.

Allison Dickson: 25:50

Things with Ed turned decidedly horrific. I've been playing it light with all the descriptions, but from this point on, if you're squeamish or have any sensitive ears nearby, it's going to get bad. With Ed all alone on that desolate farm, his mother nothing more than a voice in his head, at least for the time being, he boarded up areas of the home his mother most frequented her bedroom and several other rooms upstairs and the living room downstairs. He wanted them perfectly preserved as she left him. She had been a very fastidious housekeeper. The rest of the house the three rooms that Ed chose to live in did not receive such meticulous treatment. One might even be moved to calling it a complete shitshow. It was a hoarder's nest. He started taking a keen interest in pulp magazines involving cannibalism and Nazi experiments. In particular, he seemed fascinated by German war criminal Ilse Koch, whose husband was a commandant at the Buchenwald concentration camp. Though she wasn't an officer herself, she was a prominent figure known for selecting prisoners with tattoos for death so that she can fashion their skins into lampshades and other items. Ed also put his voracious reading skills to use on medical encyclopedias and the study of human anatomy, particularly female anatomy, as well as techniques on opening graves, shrinking heads and taxidermy. When Ed wasn't morphing into an uber-ghoul, he maintained the house and farm with the help of a federal subsidy, as well as working on local road crews and selling off parcels of the land as necessary.

Allison Dickson: 27:36

And that solitary life went on for Ed Gein for more than a decade. You can imagine what all he must have got up to in that time. And actually you won't need to imagine it, because I'll be listing it out in excruciating detail here in a bit, but it would take an extraordinary slip in judgment for cops to finally take notice of what was happening out on that farm. On November 16, 1957, bernice Worden, a 58-year-old hardware store owner, disappeared. Worden was a well-known figure in Plainfield, having run the shop since her husband's death in 1931. It was the first day of deer hunting season and the town was emptier than usual that day, though witnesses would report that the hardware store's truck was seen leaving the rear of the building around 9 30 that morning, perhaps in order to make folks believe Bernice was out on business that day. It wouldn't be until five o'clock that evening that Warden's son, frank, who also happened to be a sheriff's deputy, would drop by his mother's store to find the cash register empty and a trail of blood on the floor leading out the back of the building. He would also find a sales slip for antifreeze listed as the last purchase made in the store that morning. This was quickly linked to Gein, who had been spotted in the store the night before, saying he would be back in the morning to pick up some antifreeze. Deputies fanned out to go check out the Gein place and ask him some questions, only he wasn't home just yet. They would have to try again.

Allison Dickson: 29:11

Later that day, and while poking around one of the sheds on the property, the Washara County Sheriff, arthur Schley, looked inside and saw something that would turn his entire world on its axis. A headless body that would soon be identified as belonging to Bernice Worden was hanging by its ankles, a rod driven straight through them, the organs removed and placed in a nearby bucket. Worden's head would be located in a burlap sack nearby. Her heart would be found in a bag near the stove inside. Later the coroner would determine she was shot by a .22 caliber rifle and that all the mutilations had been done post-mortem. The sight would traumatize Arthur Schley so deeply that he would later assault Gein at the police station during his interrogation by slamming his head repeatedly into a brick wall. Because of this, gein's confession was ruled inadmissible. Arthur Schley would die of heart failure about a decade later, unharmed, only 43 years old. Those who knew him best say he was never the same. After experiencing the horror of Gein's crimes, and because Gein would not be ruled competent to stand trial for another 10 years, schley would die just before he was able to testify in the trial or endure cross-examination about the

Allison Dickson: 30:33

assault. Once Ed was arrested. The police conducted a full search of the property, and this is where I'm going to warn you again, because it really is about to get bad. In addition to finding Bernice Worden's body in the shed, they also found the head of another woman who'd gone missing three years prior, mary Hogan, a local tavern owner. Gein also confessed to this murder and it would be the last of the two murders he would admit to, claiming the rest of his gruesome hoard was sourced from the graves he robbed at the local cemeteries. You might find some claims online that the first grave Gein dug up was that of his mother, but Harold Schechter put that to rest in his book and there is nothing to suggest that Augusta left her earthly prison. But here's a list of the rest of the items that were found in Ed Gein's ghastly bachelor pad Whole human bones and

Allison Dickson: 31:30

fragments. A wastebasket made of human skin, human skin covering several chairs, skulls on his bedposts, female skulls with some of the tops sawn off. Bowls made from human skulls, a corset made from a human torso skin from shoulders to waist. Leggings made from human skin. Masks made from the skin of female heads mounted at eye level on the walls. Authorities, by the way, claimed. These masks looked so natural, complete with lipstick and makeup, that you'd be able to recognize the women if you knew them. There was Mary Hogan's face mask found in a paper bag and Mary Hogan's skull in a box. Nine vulva were found in a shoe box, a young girl's dress and the vulvas of two females judged to have been about 15 years old, a belt made from female human nipples, four noses, a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring, a lampshade made from the skin of a human face, fingernails from female fingers and a female human nipple doorbell and with the grave

Allison Dickson: 32:48

robbing. Gein admitted to breaking into nine graves, mostly targeting those who'd been freshly buried, like a day or two, and belonging to plump older women who resembled his mother. Investigators were able to corroborate three of these graves were indeed disturbed, the caskets broken open and either found completely empty, partially empty or containing the grave robbing tools belonging to Gein. In some cases he'd return the parts of the bodies or the jewelry because he felt remorse. They didn't open all nine of the claimed sites, believing three was enough to get the idea, and I'm sure they would have needed family permission and it would have cost a whole lot of money, and we'll soon find. That cost was a big part of the way that this case was conducted. That cost was a big part of the way that this case was

Allison Dickson: 33:39

conducted. Gein told police that after his mother died, his goal had become to construct a woman's suit out of the parts of other women so that he could quote slip into her skin. He would make nightly visits to the cemetery while in one of his dazes and would sometimes slip out of those dazes and stop what he was doing, returning home empty handed. Gein also claimed most of his grave robbing occurred between the years of 1947 and 1952. When asked whether he performed necrophilia on them, gein himself said he was not interested in having sex with corpses because they smelled too bad. But I have to think he probably tried at least once before coming to that conclusion. But once the parts he harvested were properly tanned and preserved, gein would reportedly engage in the world's most disturbing form of cosplay Death mask, skin shirt that included women's breasts, a preserved vulva placed over his own genitals. Look, we all remember the Buffalo Bill scene from Silence of the Lambs, right? Well, there you go. Sorry to break it to you, but Thomas Harris's art was merely imitating life, at least in this

Allison Dickson: 34:49

instance. Given that Gein claimed to have ended his grave robbing in 1952 and that he is known to have murdered Mary Hogan in 1954, it seems to indicate a desire to step up to fresher victims. You'll recall I mentioned at the top of this episode that Gein was only a suspected serial killer, but I think that's only the case because this happened in the 1950s. Jump ahead a few decades and I'm sure they could have done a lot more to link Gein to far more murders with more forensic tools. While Gein did take several polygraph tests that exonerated him in the sense that the police didn't continue their investigations not that polygraph tests are legitimate tools for truth gathering several of the body parts in his house belonged to young women that couldn't be accounted for, and there were several people, including young women, who went missing in the Plainfield area during the years Gein was most active and whose bodies were never found or officially identified on the property. So I'll leave it to you to decide on that, but I think a man as lonely and disturbed as Ed Gein almost certainly found more ways to entertain himself than we can only begin to fathom. So what ultimately became of the Plainfield Ghoul? Well, as stated

Allison Dickson: 36:13

before. Gein was found incompetent to stand trial after his 1957 arraignment and was institutionalized in the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, now known as the Dodge Correctional Institution in Wappen, wisconsin. He would eventually be transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison, diagnosed with schizophrenia. He would not be found competent until 1968. After a one-week trial where he claimed he'd accidentally discharged the firearm that killed Bernice Worden, he was found guilty by a judge. His defense had requested no jury. There would be a separate trial dealing specifically with Ed Gein's sanity, something that reminded me a whole lot of the trials around Jeffrey Dahmer. Now that I think about it, the same judge would find Gein not guilty by reason of insanity and he would be returned to spend the rest of his life in the mental hospital. While Gein admitted to the murder of Mary Hogan, he was only tried for one

Allison Dickson: 37:14

murder. Again, due to the prohibitive costs involved, gein's property, including the house and the acreage upon which it sat, was scheduled to be auctioned off in 1958, but on the morning of March 20th the house burned to the ground. Some suspected it was inadvertently caused by cleaning crews burning garbage nearby the day before, but there was no evidence those fires had spread Arson was a likely culprit. Due to the locals' fears, the house would become a gruesome tourist attraction. And given that Bernice Worden's son, frank, was also a member of the fire department in addition to being a sheriff's deputy, the investigation was just not given much priority. The investigation was just not given much priority. And while I think that sounds both convenient and just upon learning the fate of his home, gein merely shrugged and said just as well. Gein's Ford sedan, however, which he used to haul around his graveyard finds, was sold at auction for $760. That's about $8,000 in today's bucks to a carnival sideshow operator who charged people a quarter apiece to have a look at

Allison Dickson: 38:26

it. Ed Gein would go on to live a good while longer, finally dying from lung cancer on July 26, 1984 at the age of 77. 26th 1984, at the age of 77. He would be buried in a plot alongside his parents and brother in the same Plainfield Cemetery he regularly plundered. There was once a stone marking his grave, but over the years visitors would chip off pieces of it for souvenirs. But in 2000, the stone was stolen. A year later it would turn up in Seattle Washington, which is the most Seattle thing I have ever heard and I used to live out there. The stone is now in storage at the Washara County Sheriff's

Allison Dickson: 39:08

Department. And that's the gruesome, ghastly and honestly really damn sad story of Ed Gein, a story that would so horrify the nation. It would inspire an industry to devote itself to the shocking and the macabre in a whole new way. Robert Bloch's novel Psycho would be adapted by Alfred Hitchcock into the iconic film that changed the culture around moviegoing. I already mentioned the Silence of the Lambs and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, but Gein's story also inspired Rob Zombie's films House of 1000 Corpses and the Devil's Rejects. At one point in the mid-1970s, documentary wizards Errol Morris and Werner Herzog tried to get a film about Gein off the ground. Morris had apparently spent a lot of hours interviewing Gein. Ultimately, the two parted ways on the project before it could come to fruition, but you can read about it in a 1989 New Yorker article that I'll try to include here in the show

Allison Dickson: 40:08

notes. The whole story and the way it managed to catch a tailwind in the zeitgeist that continues to keep it alive in people's minds all the way out here in 2024, really brings to mind the discussions currently being had in the true crime community about how we consume these kinds of stories, these real life horrors and tragedies, and render them down into simple entertainment. Is it exploitive, insensitive Gauche? Perhaps, but when someone's actions defy comprehension to the level that Ed Gein's did, especially at a time in history when we were working so hard to tell ourselves that we were a good, upstanding, just and victorious nation that had beat the Nazis and were working on beating the commies, and still on the precipice of that long, embarrassing slog through Vietnam, it's easy to see how a culture with the taste slapped fresh out of its mouth by something so grisly can immediately jump to books and movies to process something that already feels so unreal. We just weren't ready to talk about what the story of the Gein family was really trying to tell us about the importance of not isolating ourselves and our kids, of not filling their heads with fear while holding them down with an iron boot to their necks. Augusta Gein didn't see her sons as individuals and future adults. She saw them as possessions to be molded in her image. And Ed came to see people much the same way and used crude tools and a mind warped by decades of cruelty. He came to mistake for love. He molded them into what he needed to be his mother, without whom his life made absolutely no sense. And that's going to do it for this particularly harrowing trip through

Allison Dickson: 42:09

time. I think I'm going to need a palate cleanser for the next episode. You might have noticed we're on a bi-weekly schedule for the show right now and that's probably going to hold for a bit as I continue to play catch up on other projects vying for my time. But if you have questions about this episode or any of the previous ones, please reach out to me at vintagevillainspod at gmailcom or over on the Vintage Villains Soiree group over on Facebook or over on the Vintage Villains Soiree group over on Facebook. I'm also hanging out over on Instagram and of course, there's always the Patreon, which is a great way to support the show for a few bucks a month, and it gets you in for quarterly drawings for free merch and YouTube live events as they happen. I'm planning a big one right now involving an infamous case you all know, but probably not as well as you think, and if you're on the groups, you already know what I'm talking

Allison Dickson: 43:03

about. I also wanted to mention if you need transcripts for the show. You can find them over on my website at Warped Cortex Media. You'll find all the links for that and more in the show notes. You'll also find a link for the merch store, which is running a big 25% off sale right now in celebration of CrimeCon coming up at the end of May. If you're going, I'll be there hanging out. Look for the giant, awkward-looking woman handing out stickers and begging you to like her. In the meantime, get out there and make good history, and I'll see you again soon in another century.

Vintage Villains

7: Ed Gein

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