REAL-LIFE ‘boogeyman’ Ed Gein – who inspired some of America’s most famous horror movies – got away with robbing graves for years by checking obituaries and digging through fresh soil.
The stomach-churning story of the man who inspired Psycho is the subject of the new Netflix series Monster: The Ed Gein Story.
He was convicted of killing two women and admitted to digging up other bodies from a local graveyard[/caption]
Human skulls and other body parts were discovered amongst junk in Gein’s home[/caption]
Charlie Hunnam as Ed Gein in an episode of the Netflix series, Monster, out now[/caption]
Gein’s twisted double life came to light in 1957 when sheriffs searched his secluded farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, where he lived alone after the death of his mother.
They were searching for missing hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, who was discovered hanging upside down from the rafters in his woodshed.
And if that wasn’t grisly enough, they further found human skulls and other body parts, some of which were used to decorate furniture and make household objects.
The severed head of Mary Hogan, a 51-year-old tavern owner who disappeared three years prior, was also located in a box in Gein’s trash-filled house.
Ahead of the Netflix series, which airs today, The U.S. Sun spoke to true crime author Harold Schechter, who first brought the story to the nation’s attention with his book, Deviant.
It was first released in 1989 after Schechter spent months researching the topic, and he visited Plainfield to speak with locals and those close to the victims.
After his arrest, Gein admitted to robbing nine graves, but during his interviews with police, he claimed he may have robbed as many as 40 after his mom’s death in 1945.
Asked how he could have gone years without being detected, writer Schechter told The U.S. Sun, “Gein would read the obituaries. When the woman was buried, he would go there that night. In the middle of the night.
GRAVE-ROBBING SPREE
“The soil hadn’t set, so it was very easy to dig up, remove the corpse, or some portion of the corpse, and then rebury it.
“And so, yeah, there wasn’t any sense if the grave had been disturbed. I mean, even the guy who was in charge of the cemetery, when Gein finally confessed to these acts, refused to believe it, because he had never seen anything.”
Schechter said when the crimes first came to light, the community in Plainfield felt “violated” and many close to the victims did not want to speak about Gein’s unforgivable acts.
“It was incredibly traumatic to the survivors. When I went there [to Plainfield], there were still family members around, and outsiders were not particularly welcome.
“I met neighbors of Gein’s. In fact, I had lunch at the home of the woman, at whose house 30 years earlier, Ed Gein had been having dinner when he was arrested.
“I spoke to a young man who had been Gein’s nearest neighbor and had been inside his house when he was a kid.
“I spoke to the judge who presided at his trial. I spoke to psychiatrists who had treated him. I did a lot of first-hand research.
“It was interesting. There was kind of a generational divide [in Plainfield].
“Because members of the older generation who were most directly affected, and who knew Gein, were very reluctant to bring it up, stir up those old memories. There was still a lot of sensitivity about it.
“The younger generation found it kind of more interesting that, you know, one of their native sons had become so infamous.
SCHIZOPHRENIC EPISODES
“Just reading psychiatric records, and court records, and so on and so forth. I hadn’t realized that Gein would periodically suffer these episodes, schizophrenic episodes.
“They were during the 12-year period between his mother’s death and the discovery of the horrors in his farmhouse.
“He would have occasional visual hallucinations, auditory hallucinations, olfactory hallucinations, but they were sporadic.
“He was functioning in the community, and nobody suspected there was anything seriously wrong with him.
“I don’t think he committed the grave robberies while he was necessarily suffering a schizophrenic break with reality.”
Gein was found guilty of first-degree murder but was deemed not guilty by reason of insanity.
As a result, he was committed to psychiatric institutions for the rest of his life instead of serving a prison sentence.
He died at age 77 from respiratory failure in July 1984.
Schechter said he doesn’t see Gein as a “serial killer” in the traditional sense, but more a “necrophiliac killer,” although he didn’t get sexual gratification.
He says that through researching for his book, he also learned a lot about his relationship with his mom, Augusta, that “warped his psychology and led to his crimes.”
MOMMY DEAREST
Gein was believed to have been consumed by his love/hate relationship with his domineering mother, and some theorized that he was trying to bring her back to life with his horrific constructions.
He had an extremely isolated childhood, and his religious, strict mom told Gein that women were either saints or whores.
Gein was banned from socializing with many local children growing up, and when he became an adult, he was a loner, only doing odd jobs for neighbors to make ends meet.
It has been reported that he rarely went on dates, and his childhood had stunted his development.
Augusta died in 1945 after Gein had spent a year trying to nurse her back to health from a stroke.
Schechter believes he would have tried to dig up her grave to steal her corpse, but it was too difficult due to the type of soil.
The author admits he has “very complicated feelings” about the Netflix series, which is directed by Ryan Murphy and stars British actor Charlie Hunnam as Gein.
“Initially, when I heard about it, [I was] kind of expecting that Ryan Murphy or someone would reach out to me, which nobody ever did,” he said.
“I’ll be watching the series very closely because there are certain things in my book which I have a sense of proprietorship over.
“A lot of it’s obviously in the public record, but there are things in my book that are not in the public record.”
Who was Ed Gein?
ED Gein is the real-life serial killer whose disgusting crimes gave birth to some of cinema’s darkest horror villains.
Here is a look at the twisted life of the so-called Butcher of Plainfield.
- Gein is a killer and grave robber from Wisconsin who earned the chilling nicknames “The Butcher of Plainfield” and “The Plainfield Ghoul” for his horror crimes
- His entire life was warped by his obsessive devotion to his mother, Augusta. When she died in 1945, he spiraled into a total breakdown, turning parts of their house into shrines to her.
- Gein infamously dug up corpses from local graveyards and used the remains to craft unbelievably grotesque items
- Authorities found his horrifying “creations,” including a “woman suit” he wore, face masks made of human skin, a chair padded with skin, and a belt made of human nipples
- Gein admitted to killing two women who strikingly resembled his late mother: tavern owner Mary Hogan (54, disappeared 1954) and hardware store owner Bernice Worden (58, killed 1957)
- When police raided his farmhouse, they found Bernice Worden’s gutted, decapitated body hanging from the ceiling.
- Gein was later diagnosed with schizophrenia and found legally insane at the time of the murders. He spent the rest of his days in mental health institutions.
- He would go on to inspire movies like Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs
He added. “Gein has become a mythic figure. There are all these psycho-killers in our past; Billy the Kid, Jesse James, those guys were real serial killers.
“And they’ve all been glamorized and romanticized and sensationalized. Anybody is free in that sense to do whatever they want with the Gein story.”
Schechter feels the Netflix series will be a “big hit” and predicts the people of Plainfield may even want to cash in.
“They may want to start selling Ed Gein t-shirts and Ed Gein merchandise for all the tourists who are bound to flock to the place.”
Gein’s farmhouse in Plainfield was destroyed by a fire on March 20, 1958, and officials suspected arson.
It was burned to the ground just days before it was set to be auctioned off.
Many believe it was gutted to prevent it from becoming a morbid tourist destination, a concern of many locals at the time who wanted to distance themselves from the Gein story.
Schechter went on, “What fascinated me about Gein was that he was kind of like a fairytale or supernatural monster come to life.
“In every neighborhood, in every community, kids tell stories about some monster who lives in a creepy house off the beaten path.
“When I was growing up in the Bronx, even in our sixth-floor apartment building, there was an old lady who lived on the top floor in a corner apartment, and we used to tell stories about her being a cannibal, witch, and so on.
“She turned out, as these people always do, to be a harmless old person. In the Gein case, it turned out to be true.”
Serial killer Ed Gein lived in a remote farmhouse in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in the mid-1900s[/caption]
The serial killer’s story is being retold in Monster: The Ed Gein Story[/caption]
