Edward Theodore Gein was regarded as an odd fellow amongst his neighbors within the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Edward was raised into a family of four with parents, Augusta Wilhelmine Gein and George Philip, and his brother Henry George Gein. It was the upbringing he faced with this family that contributed to his oddities and later his infamy. Edward’s crimes would stir the small community of Plainfield, and the rest of the nation for years to come, inspiring film characters such as Leatherface from the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise, Norman Bates from the film Psycho, and Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs.
In 1879, George Gein’s family left their home in Coon Valley, Wisconsin to complete a list of errands. George’s family did not return due to the high waters of the Mississippi River that day. His family had died and at the age of only three years, George Philip Gein was left orphaned. George was taken in by his mother’s parents and raised on their farm nearby. Little is known about George Gein besides his inability to hold a steady job and his apparent alcoholism that would prove crippling to him later. George Gein held himself in low regard due to his many failures and was never truly content with his upbringing, which contributed to his reliance on the bottle. His future wife Augusta would bring about quite the opposite impression.
Augusta Wilhelmine Gein was a highly conservative women in the sense of religion. She was born into an industrious family with a stern patriarch who demanded nothing but the strictest of religious values and work ethic. Augusta was highly and perhaps overly religious as was taught by her family. She held herself in high regard and was a rather determined and a vicious looking woman based upon her confidence. She had adopted the personality of her father possible in part by the beatings she received from him. Augusta never doubted her faith and was fanatically repulsed by the amount of sin present in the modern world. Augusta took life so seriously in fact that she, unfitting for the time, was doing plenty if not all of the work present in her home life.
What the two saw in each other was seemingly respective to the needs of their lives at the time. On George’s behalf he would be marrying into a large family. Augusta’s many cousins and other family members, plus the close relationship they held was as appealing to George as Augusta herself. George was impressed by her personality as it was the opposite of his own. She was a determined worker and her confidence alone could shatter his if manifested into a physical form somehow. Augusta saw in George a tall and well built man whose mannerism was respectable and humble. Later in life, neighbors would take him for a retired preacher of some sort. Yes, George was so well mannered and soft spoken that Augusta would have had no way of knowing of his alcoholism or his terrible self pity, or even his crippling inability to hold a working position. The two became officially wed on December 4, 1899 and lived together in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
Augusta assumed the head role of the household as George’s personality worsened in reliability. Augusta herself worsened as well. Her overbearing personality and the fierceness of her intolerance towards anything displeasing to her or her beliefs were amplified following her marriage to her weakling of a husband. George would often spend most of his shabby earnings at taverns and that hardly meant he worked at all. Augusta was the strongest of the home despite her husband’s build and it clear to her that she was superior.
Augusta felt alone in the presence of her insufferable partner, and decided that perhaps a child would alleviate some of this empty feeling. Augusta dreaded the thought of sexual relations despite the support of it in the name of procreation in the Bible. It was repulsive to her and worse to even allow George into her bed. The world was already disgusting enough without the affair she partook in with her husband that night. On January 17, 1902, the Gein family’s first son, Henry George Gein, was born.
Augusta became the proprietor of a meat and grocery market in La Crosse thanks to two of her brothers, both of whom were business owners in the town. Originally it was George that was the proprietor following the loss of another job around 1909, but Augusta took over in 1911 due to his inability. Augusta now had control over both their business and home life. Prior to this Augusta had decided to bear another child. She felt a detachment to Henry due to his gender. She had been hoping for a daughter to mold in her image and keep as perfect as she was herself.
It was August 27, 1906 when Augusta gave life to Edward Theodore Gein. Augusta, despite her distress to hearing that she’d given birth to another boy, swore to raise him unlike the wretched men of the world. Edward Theodore Gein would be pure. Edward would not be vulgur or sex driven or lazy like his father. This was her sacred promise.
To Edward his mother was a goddess. Augusta Wilhelmine Gein was a woman of pure good and nothing short of perfect. He was never good enough for her despite his efforts and she certainly made him feel that way. She would on occasion belittle him for his errors because she of course knew she would never make mistakes like her son was prone to. Edward knew of nothing that was flawed in his mother and perhaps he thought that absolutely nothing was wrong in her at all. She was certainly one to enforce her goodness as well. To her it was all about saving her son from the evils of the outside world and the sins that could damn him to eternal hellfire come his life’s end. It was this goodness that Edward saw in his mother that would only succeed in determining what evils he would commit come time.
The hard labor of Augusta Gein in that meat shop would pay off in 1914, when after a prior move, they relocated to a one-hundred-ninety-five acre plot of land in the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. In this time of male households and disciplinarians, the land was deeded to Augusta Gein. Augusta was the home keeper and not much different to before she was the main worker of the land. Augusta particularly liked the land for its isolated spot in the town. This suited well for her promise to keep her little Edward away from the evil world. She of course could not do this completely as she needed to send him to school. It was at school that Edward discovered just how strange he was. He could not fit in with the other kids as he could not relate to their conversations. They would talk about local gossip or their chores meanwhile Edward hardly knew anything beyond his home or how to act with children his age. Edward was teased about his softness, and his sensitivity. Even partly on his appearance in reference to a growth on his eyelid. The teasing Edward endured from his classmates on top of their impure talks reinforced the ideas of his mother. The ideas that the world was nothing more than a hard and cruel place filled with evil people and eviler outlets for sin.
George’s alcoholism had all but reached its peak by the time Edward and his brother Henry were teenagers. Their father was only good for sitting around and maybe abusing Augusta and themselves. Not only George, but it seemed Augusta worsened as well as her ability to ask more of the boys only increased with their age. For the boys, they were forced into isolation from girls of any sort despite any attempts at socialization. They had no power over their mother’s will.
On April 4, 1940, the funeral service for George Philip Gein was held. The man suffered a long and miserable life. One of orphanage and lacking in love from anyone. Hardly even the grandparents that raised him seem to care. His hideous emotional wounds both given by fate and pressed on by his own deeds had finally run him into the ground by the age of sixty-three, dying at sixty-six. The depressing manner of his existence did not cease with its end, as with his death came no mourning. For known to his family he was nothing but a drunk, and a husk of a working man. Not even that. Perhaps he was nothing more than something that existed. He was a burden in his final years of life and that burden was lifted only by his passing. It was a relief to the family that would survive him.
Edward and Henry Gein were fully grown men by this time. In 1942 Edward was thirty-six and had already been doing work of all sorts for neighbors as a handyman. Neighbors regarded him as a helpful guy. He was a little odd but he was reliable and hardly said no to a request for help. Not only was he finding his place in the community but he found a slight bit of comfort socially. As an adult he could converse and play with children with his own mannerism without much worry for judgement. After all he was a local helper. Edward’s relationship with his brother Henry was good as well, as the brothers would hunt and fish and do chores with each other often. The had their share of disagreements as any pair of sibling would but one in particular was of interest. Henry would sometimes criticize their mother. Edward’s beloved mother Augusta Wilhelmine Gein.
Henry George Gein would die on a Tuesday. Tuesday, May 16, 1944, the two brothers were fighting a fire on their land. When Henry went around it to control the blaze, Edward would lose track of him. Edward, after putting the fire out, searched and searched but allegedly could not find his brother. After he gathered a search party including the Sheriff, he took them back to the marsh where the fire was and somehow led them directly to Henry’s body. He was questioned about the nature of the fire and it’s told that Henry set it to burn dry grass. He would also be questioned upon how he led them to the body but he brushed it off as coincidence. With no clear indications of foul play despite bruising on Henry’s head (presumed to be from falling and hitting his head), his death was ruled to be caused by asphyxiation. Henry was forty-three years old.
Edward now had his beloved mother to himself and it was up to him to care for her in her old age. He sought her approval even now and hoped to gain it following an incident where she suffered a stroke. Despite all his best efforts in maintaining their land and performing all the necessary chores and running all the essential errands, there was no sense of gratitude from Augusta. On December 29, 1945 Augusta would suffer her second stroke and die the same day at age sixty-seven. Augusta Wilhelmine Gein was to the end her strong pent up self. She sought no pity from a single soul and continued to will nothing but utmost perfection from herself and anyone who may have mattered. Ironically the actions of her son, her one and only caretaker, were never acknowledged by her. Despite this her memory would not flee from Edward. Edward was deeply hurt by the loss of his mother. He had lost the only person in his life that he wanted to please. It was the beginning of the end for Eddie, and he would see that he wasn’t alone.
The Gein’s home would show obvious signs of decay in the years to come. Eddie took no real care for the home and it was shown both inside and out. His life was not one of joy anymore as his only real friend had departed him. People were kind to Edward but this did not make up for the emptiness he felt without his mother. His homelife was disgusting now. Trash littered the floors, dishes were left unwashed, and Edward himself even lacked bathing himself for times. He was still a neighbor though. He maintained the kindness he showed to his fellow men and women and did the duties of neighborhood handyman as somewhat usual. He even at the very least kept himself occupied with stories and magazines on his off time. Edward had acquired a taste for adventure stories. The stories were even pornographic in some instances. His magazines included nazi women, and tales from the regime. There were plenty of true crime magazines and murder mystery stories and gruesome detailings of fictional and non fictional works of inhumane individuals. There were even stories of people who created things out of human skin and bones. Men who put women to cruel and unusual uses were among the stories as well. It appeared as though these stories fulfilled the deepest desires of Edward. The satisfaction of a woman was nothing that his mother would have allowed him to have.
Gein would sometimes travel to a tavern a ways away from Plainfield. It wasn’t that he was fond of drinking but he had a fascination with the woman who ran the place. Mary Hogan was her name, and she was a rather large woman in stature. She was in nature nothing like Edward’s mother. This woman in fact seemed full of impurities and vulgarity. She was fierce but not nearly in the way of determination that Augusta gave. It was odd to him and he wished to observe it. On a particularly quiet day in the tavern, a farmer would walk in to find no one and nothing but a puddle of blood on ground. The date was December 8, 1954. Mary Hogan had been declared missing. Eddie was teased by one of hims employers in Plainfield about her disappearance since his fascination with her was known. It was talk that implied the possibility of Edward marrying Mary and her being at home safe as opposed to missing. In response to this, Edward replied that she was indeed back home, and not missing at all. Of course this was not something to weird for Edward to say. Eddie was an odd fellow after all. It was known by all the townspeople. Eddie could say the craziest things because he always did.
Edward was still the local dependable and kindly odd fellow. He would sometimes have children and teenagers over at his house to play cards, talk, or even go small game hunting with. During one of the visits, a teenage boy played a game of cards with Edward while his little brother played with a hole puncher and some paper. The little brother had run out of paper and asked Edward where he could get some more. Edward directed him to his bedroom. When the young boy turned the corner he saw three old heads. The boys weren’t allowed back afterwards but nothing much came of the incident. On another occasion Edward had actually shown a boy the heads first hand, presenting them as gifts from a cousin who fought in the Philippines. Another time, Edward offered to trade land with a family with a much smaller estate. When the couple visited Edward’s home, the wife asked if one of the room’s was where he kept his shrunken heads. Edward would correct her and tell her where they were actually located. He would be teased about the heads on other days as well, since some people either didn’t believe he actually had heads, or that the heads really were gifts. No one was ever surprised by the tales anyway. The heads became a joke in Plainfield.
Edward’s increasingly odd nature, and the progressive running down of his house was enough to creep out the local youngsters. His home had become the local haunted house. It was the kind of place that kids started to avoid and express their fear of. The adults of the town saw it as nothing more than childish imagination and exaggerated perceptions of the reality at hand. Edward was of course nothing more than the local handyman and odd fellow. Perhaps if they all saw the house at night. Nights where they could see a ghastly figure. A naked old woman with gray hair, loose flesh, and the face of death. On night, a woman named Eleanor may or may not have begun to know the true horror of his home. It is implied that the woman may have already been a corpse as Edward began his work on her naked body.
November 16, 1957 was an empty day for the town of Plainfield. Many of the townsfolk were off hunting for winter game. Recently Eddie had been paying a visit to Worden’s, a hardware shop named after owner Leon Worden. Currently it was being maintained by Leon’s daughter Bernice Worden and his business partner Frank Conover due to his passing. Frank had married Bernice but was absent in the store today for he was hunting like many of the townspeople. Eddie paid another visit on this day to Bernice’s dismay. Edward was becoming somewhat of a nuisance as he was coming by more and more often. He came by sometimes pestering her to go and try the roller skating rink among other activities. Of course Bernice would not express her annoyance as the Gein family had been good customers for quite a long time. Edward was there to purchase some antifreeze. Bernice obliged and watched him leave with his jar of antifreeze, only for him to return only moments later. He talked to her about trading in his .22 short Marlin rifle for a new one that could fire more variations of the .22 round. He asked to examine one of the .22 rifles in the store’s gun rack and was allowed to handle it. While Edward examined the rifle, Bernice proceeded to the front windows to observe her son-in-law’s new vehicle. Behind her, Edward began to see the woman as worthy of holy punishment. She was the very opposite of his mother Augusta just like Mary Hogan. She was evil. Edward had reached into the pocket of his overalls and pulled out a .22 shell and loaded the rifle.
Frank Worden would eventually return to the store and find blood, and a partial trail that would imply that a body was dragged out. When police arrived, Frank immediately indicated a primary suspect. Edward Gein. It was because of Edward’s repeated visits and pestering that made Frank so sure that he was responsible for whatever had happened to Bernice there in his store. When questioned by police about Bernice’s disappearance, Edward wasn’t home but at another family’s home having a meal with them. Something peculiar about the questioning was Edward’s wording. He specifically implied that Bernice Worden was dead despite being told this himself. It was from there that police knew they had their suspect and a home search was conducted.
The doors to Ed’s home were locked so police decided they’d check the shed first at least. There was no lights in the shed so entering it was just walking into a black enclosure. An officer felt something brush against him and shone his flashlight upon it. He observed the hanging body of a woman. Her genitalia had been removed along with much of her insides. She was split open from the groin up, hanging from a rod in her achilles tendons strung up to the rafters along with her hands. The body was missing it’s head. Elsewhere in a sack, was the head of Bernice Worden. Within the home was an even more extensive display of horror and gore. Another head would be found inside. The head of Mary Hogan. The long missing object of Edward’s fascination with wicked women. Mary Hogan had bared a resemblance to Augusta Gein but was the opposite of her values. Surely Edward took to her the same way he had just done to Bernice. They were both women worthy of punishment for their evil. Also in the home were peculiar looking bowls. The bowls were the tops of human skulls. Chairs had cover made of human skin, skulls decorated his bed posts, the rumored shrunken heads were real heads of the long deceased, even a belt made of female human nipples was found. There were female lips attached to curtains, several vulvae in a container, fingernails, leggings made of actual female legs, a corset of a woman’s torso, and face masks of dead women. Among the filth of Edward’s home was the flesh and bones of dead women.
Eddie would say that not all of the parts were from murdered victims. He even stated that Bernice Worden’s killing was an accident, and that he was in a “daze” when it happened. Gein admitted to making visits to cemeteries starting in 1947, taking whatever he wanted from the body, and then returning the grave to its former state. Every person he took from was newly dead. He had known many of them while they were alive, possibly even Eleanor. Every woman he dug up was in their middle age or older, characteristic of his mother when she died. The fascination and respect he still had for his mother was apparent, in that her room was boarded up and clean as it had been left the day she died. It was in fact untouched since that day. He would later deny ever touching her grave in his excavations. Perhaps out of simple love and respect. But in that respect it seemed he made efforts to become her using the flesh of others. He denied ever committing sexual acts with the cadavers and only confessed to ever killing two women, denying sex acts with them as well. Edward would testify that the only sexual acts he ever experienced was masturbation. When pushed for details, the reason he never acted with the dead bodies was because of the smell. It was less that he saw the sexual acts with bodies as disturbing but more like it was simply not hygenic.
The press flocked to Plainfield, Wisconsin for the biggest story of the time. The things that were discovered in Edward Gein’s home were unheard of in America except in fiction. The spectacular nature of the crimes were nothing to be ignored. There was a disgust, yet a fascination with the killings and the grave robberies that ignited the interest of America. The people of Plainfield, Wisconsin felt the most bewildered by the events, considering the perceived nature of the man they knew before. Edward Gein was not the man they could ever suspect of ever harming a person much less killing them. Ed Gein was a meek and frail man and this was seen by all of America when images of him were shown on television. No one could imagine the person they saw as a killer or a grave robber. Even less was their ability to see him as a taxidermist and tailor of human material.
Further interrogations, evidence, and polygraph tests would eliminate Ed Gein from a suspect list for disappearances of people recent to the time of Mary Hogan’s killing. His cooperation and meekness showed off a sense of sincerity. He was also a subject of sympathy due to his upbringing and what people saw as a man victimized by his own mind. Tests showed Ed to be of average IQ and thus one of the best defenses for him on top of the knowledge of his rough upbringing was insanity. Edward agreed to the insanity defense proposed by his attorney. The defense was successful as he was declared unfit for trial for being a schizophrenic. Experts voted two to one in this opinion and was declared insane formally in trial. Edward Gein was sent to Central State Hospital by the judge overseeing his case until he can stand trial.
More press attention was brought to Plainfield by an auction held at the Gein estate. This angered the locals enough to have them appeal to a judge to stop it. The auction took place on a different date with no admission charge. Ed Gein’s home would later be burned, undoubtedly due to arson. In the process this got rid of any remaining rumors of hidden horrors within the home. Edward Gein was not angered by the burning of his home. He figured it might as well be gone as he knew he’d never be returning to it. The evidence against him was just too overwhelming and he had already made a plea as it was.
A revelation in Eddie was made in his first one month stay. He made a self diagnosis of his situation. He suddenly felt he knew exactly why he was the way he was. He felt he knew exactly why he’d been doing what he has. His words were picked up as quickly by the press. Quicker than Edward Gein found himself in his hospital stay. Before his mother died, they had visited the home of a man they had done business with before. When they pulled up the man of the house was beating a puppy to death in the yard while a woman in the back cried for him to stop. Augusta regarded the woman as a harlot and her presence at the home upset her more than the beating of the puppy. It’s up to question whether or not the puppy being beat distressed Augusta at all. Ed says that if the woman in the back had not been there, then his mother would not have been so upset, and she wouldn't have died so soon. Ed in this statement is as seen prior, blaming others for his actions. Perhaps his mother is responsible for the monster he is and perhaps not. Perhaps it was the harlot.
A decade passes and Edward says to the Governor-elect at the time John Reynolds that he is happy in the hospital. He says he’s treated well. In 1974 Ed would petition for his release, saying he has a desire to go and visit places. Despite some professional opinions that his restrictive environment may be bad for his state as opposed to beneficial, his petition is denied.
In 1984, the senile Edward Theodore Gein, died of respiratory failure, leaving behind a legacy of madness, morbid curiosity, and violent creativity, along with a new politics targeting violent media depictions in hopes to reduce behavior such as his. Politics that ignores the true story of Edward Gein.
In reading the biography of Edward Theodore Gein, I learned that even the most fictional of ideas are not impossible in reality. I knew that people were capable of extreme acts of violence and absurdity, but the story of the Gein family is truly one of unfortunate crossing fate. God dealt this family a hand that was destined to cause collapse. What I mean really is that the coming about of Edward’s actions seems fictional in itself. The combination of an overbearing and over zealous motherly figure, and a drunk, lazy, abusive father was a major contribution to the man’s madness. It went beyond that even. His parents had even experienced hardships of their own. One was raised in the presence of a religious and authoritarian father. The other was orphaned as a toddler, and raised without the love or affection necessary to live a healthy life. The insufferable upbringings of Ed Gein’s parents were projected onto him mostly by Augusta, his mother, and it caused him to value her more than himself, and stop at nothing to fulfill the image she had for him. I do not believe that Edward Gein in himself is a cold blooded killer. I believe he was victim to his own form of torment. The relationship that he had with his mother was tainted by her restivie and borderline abusive behavior, belittling him to nothing more than a clay mold for her to shape. Ed Gein, despite the horrific nature of his crimes is, in my eyes, another victim to the poor morality and rational ability of some of our world’s inhabitants. This man deserved more than he had. Perhaps then these atrocities could have been avoided.