Into The World Of Ed Gein: Serial Killer Who Robbed Graves, Made Items From Body Parts

A man from sleepy Wisconsin in the US, Ed Gein emerged as a person of interest for the police all of a sudden in 1957 after a hardware store owner went missing.

Ed Gein emerged as a person of interest for the police all of a sudden in 1957 after a hardware store owner went missing. ( Image Source :Getty Images )

What strikes us often about some of the most macabre, blood curdling crime cases, as we read about them, are the startling similarities they have with many of the terrifying thrillers we watched in theatres or OTT. And when we talk about real inspiring reel, there’s hardly a better case in point than the sensational Ed Gein murders.

The Man Behind The Movie

A bone-chilling thriller about Norman Bates, a small-town motel owner holding dark secrets, ‘Psycho’, and especially that shower scene, still gives us the chills.

But did you know that this celebrated psychological-thriller by master story-teller Alfred Hitchcock was inspired by some horrific events that came to light just three years prior to its theatrical release?

A man from sleepy Wisconsin in the US, who would barely stand out in a quiet country crowd, Gein emerged as a person of interest for the police all of a sudden in 1957 after a hardware store owner by the name of Bernice Worden went missing.

After learning that the missing store owner had been last seen with Gein, the sleuths fetched up at his farm. 

When Skeletons Tumbled Out Of Gein Closet

After nosing about the place for a while, they found the rotting remains of the missing hardware store owner at Gein’s farm. The woman was found to be hung upside down from her ankles, a report claimed citing police records.

Upon autopsy, she was deemed to have been shot and decapitated. 

A subsequent sweep of his house saw many more skeletons tumbling out of the Gein closet, as the sleuths determined that he dug up graves and robbed them of body parts which he used to make ‘household items’.

It came to be known that the stolen body parts, which had been laid to rest at the graves, were also used to make clothing and masks.

According to a report, Gein would skin and chop the bodies that he stole from graves and use them to shape stuffed artworks, much as a taxidermist would.

Further, according to the report, during a search of his house, the detectives stumbled upon human skulls and organs lying about the place. They also found furniture pieces, resembling lampshades, made of human faces and chairs embellished with human skin.

While digging for the missing hardware store owner, the sleuths also stumbled upon the severed head of Mary Hogan, the owner of a local watering hole who had been reported missing since 1954.

While he would later confess to the brutal killings of these two missing women, Gein pled not guilty on grounds of insanity. In what may have given Hitchcock the idea of embodying in the character of Norman Bates the split personality of a jealous mother, who would unleash a murderous knife assault on any woman her son fell for, Gein revealed that both the women he killed bore a close resemblance to his mother. That, however, was as close as he would ever get to giving away his motive for the double homicide.

The man from La Crosse, Wisconsin, reportedly confided in the police later that he was working at creating a skin suit shaped after his dead mother.

In 1958, a fire burned down his house along with all the horrific secrets that it held. The exact cause of the fire remains unknown even to this day.

Trial With Punishment

Determined to be mentally unfit to stand trial in 1957, Gein was committed to a number of psychiatric institutions. 

While the closing scene of ‘Psycho’ famously had the mother in Norman Bates claiming her son’s innocence, saying that he wouldn’t even “hurt a fly”, Gein was determined in 1968, after a significant time away at mental institutions, to be fit to plead his defence in court.

He was hence put on trial.

Gein was, however, tried for one murder — that of the hardware store owner Worden. The court held him guilty of killing Worden for financial reasons, according to reports.

But, with the court holding him to be mentally unsound or ‘insane’ at the time of commission of the crime, Gein was ordered back to a mental asylum or institution where he stayed for the remainder of his life.

Gein died in the mental asylum in 1984.

The Ed Gein Tapes

A documentary series came out in 2019, attempting to throw some light into the mind of the cold-blooded killer through some previously unreleased interview tapes with the police.

According to an article in The Independent, Dr. Louis Scheslinger, a professor of psychology at the City University of New York, said in one of the episodes of the docu-series titled ‘Psycho: The Lost Tapes of Ed Gein’, “When you want to understand this kind of psychopathology that is so strong and so deviant, it’s not just a result of poor parenting. There are so many people that are brought up in all of these bizarre sorts of ways. Almost none of them go out and do what Gein did.”

In the series, the psycho killer was shown to be bewildered at the nature of the crimes he committed.

As the director of the docu-series, James Buddy Day, summed it up succinctly over the phone with The Independent, “The idea that you can talk to a serial killer, and that serial killer will have this tremendous insight into who they are and why they’re doing things has permeated films and TV. But the reality is that almost every serial killer that you are going to speak to has very little insight into why they do what they do.”

While Ed Gein may no longer be a threat to anyone, his story and his grisly crimes are guaranteed to make you go numb with cold terror.