Serial killer Ed Geen (1906–1984) from the American town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, was the inspiration for villains in several horror films, including Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, and Norman Bates from Psycho.

Gein's mother, Augusta, suffered from psychosis. She became a single mother in 1940 after the death of her alcoholic husband, George, by heart attack. After the death of his brother Henry in 1944, as some argue, not without the help of Ed himself, his mother became everything to him. Her world revolved around him, and she became the center of his existence. After her death at the end of 1945, Gin, who at that time was 39 years old, was left alone for the first time in his life.

Ed Geen, who was later diagnosed with schizophrenia, yearned for his mother. Perhaps in hopes of becoming his mother, he dressed like a woman and ransacked graves, digging up the bodies of women who reminded him of his mother. He later turned to murder.

He dismembered women and used their body parts to make furniture, other household items and clothing. Here are 10 gruesome items Ed Geen made from the corpses of women he killed or dug up in local cemeteries.

10. Clip for curtains from women's lips

Geen confessed to killing only two women, local bar owner Mary Hogan and hardware store owner Bernice Worden. But there is reason to believe that as many as seven women became his victims.

The exact number is difficult to determine, because Gin "diluted" the bodies of his victims with corpses stolen from neighboring cemeteries, among which was 51-year-old Eleanor Adams. He was also suspected of the disappearance of two children, eight-year-old Georgia Weckler and 15-year-old Evelyn Hartley.

When Bernice Warden disappeared without a trace from her own hardware store in Plainfield, her son Frank, the town's deputy sheriff, suspected that Ed was involved. And he was right. Captain Lloyd Shoefoester and Sheriff Art Schley found Bernice's body at Gin's house.

Her decapitated corpse, which was hung like a deer carcass, was discovered in a courtyard building. In a nearby box were her head and intestines, and nails protruding from her ears. Bernice's heart was found in Gbna's house. The police immediately searched the premises and, among other horrors, they found a curtain clip made from a woman's lips.

9. Lampshade made of human skin.

To find something to do, Gin began to read a lot. However, his "library" can not be called anything other than strange. It contained articles about cannibalism, headhunting, dried heads, and Nazi lampshades made from human skin.

Gin also studied Grey's Anatomy (a popular English textbook on human anatomy, considered a classic). Perhaps it was this tutorial that inspired Gin to create unique "designer" interior items. In his house, next to the chair where he liked to read books, there was a lamp, the lampshade of which was made of human skin.

8. Chairs upholstered in human skin.

Gin was reluctant to part with the body parts of his victims. He tried to use the bodies of his victims to the maximum. He kept the organs in his refrigerator and appears to have consumed them after cooking them on the stove or in the oven. Some say that sometimes he invited acquaintances to his creepy dinners. Among the gruesome finds police found at Gin's home were several chairs upholstered in the skin of his victims.

7. Bowls, tableware and ashtrays.

Some serial killers are obsessed with the skulls of their victims. For example, Richard Ramirez (known as the "Night Stalker") liked to smoke them. Gin used skulls stolen from nearby cemeteries as makeshift soup bowls and ashtrays. He also made forks and spoons from bones.

6. Masks.

Gin, who used female body parts as clothing, made sure that his hideous costumes were complemented by masks made from the faces of dead women.

The masks looked very realistic. They consisted of the victim's face, including hair, ears, nose, lips, chins, and jaws. The only thing missing was his eyeballs, Ed "used" his when he wore the masks.

5. Corset and belt.

As a boy, Gin exhibited an effeminate demeanor that caused him to be bullied by his classmates. After the death of his mother, he tried more and more to become a woman, perhaps in an attempt to "resurrect" his mother in this way.

Although he claimed to abstain from necrophilia because the women's corpses "smelled badly", he "tried on" the victims' skin to make clothes. One such piece was a corset, made to slim his waist and make him look more feminine. But he also had several other gruesome pieces of women's clothing in his wardrobe, including a nipple strap.

4. Wall carpet and other artifacts.

Mountains of strange artifacts were scattered throughout Gin's house. Among them was a wastebasket made from human skin, a skull on the head of the bed, a collection of noses, a box of vaginas, and the head of victim Mary Hogan in a bag. Gin also made a wall hanging from various body parts.

There were other equally disgusting things. A corset made from the skin of the victims helped him transform into a person of the opposite sex. Determined to be as human as possible, Gin skinned dead women's legs and used them as leggings.

3. Vest.

In Geen's time, psychological support, hormone therapy, breast augmentation, and sex reassignment surgery were not available, and gender dysphoria was not recognized as such. Consequently, in order to pretend to be a woman, Gin had to improvise.

In addition to the masks, corset and leggings, Gin used a "women's" vest. Made from the upper body of a woman, the vest included a woman's breasts, which is why it is referred to in some sources as a "chest vest". This thing gave him a feminine look, at least he believed in it.

2. Dress.
Gin made a grotesque dress from the skin of his victims, which he wore when he pretended to be a woman. His love for such dresses became the inspiration for many horror films about atrocities similar to those committed by Gin himself.

1. Accessories.

Gin's wardrobe also contained many accessories, such as an apron made from the skin of his victims. Too strange even for Gin, this piece of clothing was a collection of mismatched pieces of leather sewn together with large, thick stitches, similar to those used by mortuary workers after performing an autopsy.

The nipple is present in the upper left part of the apron (but the breast itself is missing). Parts of the face - eyes, nose and upper lip– sewn together at the bottom left. A pair of ears are sewn in where pockets should be, above them is part of another face. On the lower right side is the right breast with the nipple.

Gin's other possessions included a pair of human skin gloves (the stitches on which follow the contours of the fingers), a pair of leather pants, and a necklace of five tongues strung on a string.

Full name Edward Theodore Gin(Eng. Edward Theodore Gein; August 27, La Crosse, Wisconsin, USA - July 26, Madison, Wisconsin, USA) - American serial killer, necrophiliac and corpse snatcher. One of the most notorious serial killers in US history. His image has widely penetrated the popular culture of the second half of the 20th century (films and literature).

Edward Geen was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin on August 27, 1906. Parents - George Philip Geen (August 4, 1873 - April 1, 1940) and Augusta Wilhelmina Lerke (July 21, 1878 - December 29, 1945). Mother was the daughter of Prussian emigrants. Edward had an older brother, Henry George Geen (January 17, 1901 – May 16, 1944). Augusta and George met when they were 19 and 24 respectively and married on December 4, 1899. The parents' marriage did not work out from the very beginning. Father was an alcoholic, systematically left without work (he worked either as an insurance agent, then as a carpenter, then as a tanner), because of which the entire household, in fact, kept on one Augusta, who had a small grocery store. Despite the fact that the mother despised the father, they did not dissolve the marriage because of religious beliefs. Augusta grew up in a devout Lutheran family, whose members were ardent opponents of everything related to sex, because of which she saw everything only dirt, sin and lust. Mother forbade Edward and Henry to communicate with other children, constantly forced them to do hard work on the farm and let them go only to school. She constantly read the Bible to her sons, and called the city of La Crosse a "hell hole" and convinced the children that the whole world was mired in sin and depravity, and that all women except her were whores. In 1913, Augusta decided that life near La Crosse was too pernicious for her children, and the Gins, having saved up money, bought a small dairy farm about forty miles east of La Crosse, but in 1914, for unknown reasons, they sold it and bought another, in the vicinity of Plainfield.

At school, Ed was very shy and had no friends, as his mother severely punished him for all his attempts to make friends with anyone. According to the book Deviant about Gin, he had a small skin growth on his left eyelid, which was the object of ridicule from classmates, and also became the reason why Edward, having received a summons to the army in 1942, did not pass a medical examination. Later, some of his former classmates recalled that Ed had a number of oddities. In particular, the boy could laugh at any moment for no reason, as if he had heard some kind of joke. Despite the hard social development, Edward studied quite well and did especially well in reading lessons. When Gin was 10 years old, he had an orgasm while watching his mother and father slaughter a pig. One day, Augusta saw him masturbating, and scalded him with boiling water as punishment. Despite this, Ed considered his mother a saint, although Augusta was rarely pleased with her sons, believing that they would grow up to be the same losers as their father. As teenagers, Edward and Henry very rarely went outside the farm, and their social circle was limited to their own family.

Shortly after Henry's death, Augustus had a stroke and was bedridden. Ed courted her around the clock, but she was still unhappy. She constantly yelled at her son, calling him a weakling and a loser. From time to time she let him lie in bed with her during the night. In 1945, Augusta recovered from a stroke. She and Edward went to their neighbor named Smith to buy straw from him. August was shocked when she saw that he was cohabiting with a woman, after which she was grabbed new blow, which finally undermined her health, and she died on December 29, 1945 at the age of 67. Ed, now all alone on the farm, began reading anatomy books, stories of Nazi atrocities during World War II, various information about the exhumation, he also liked to read the local newspaper, especially the obituaries section. The neighbors didn't think Gin was crazy, just a "slightly weird" harmless eccentric and left him to babysit the kids, to whom Gin sometimes recounted what he had read on subjects he was obsessed with. Gin soon began visiting cemeteries, digging up and dismembering corpses. Often he was guided by information gleaned from obituaries in the local press. He especially liked [ ] break fresh graves women, although later during the investigation he swore that he had not performed any sexual manipulations with corpses, since, according to him, "they smelled too bad." Some parts of the corpses Gin took home, and soon he had a kind of collection of skulls and severed heads, which he hung on the walls. Gin also made himself a suit made of women's leather, which he wore at home.

Local children, who looked into the windows of Gin's house, talked about what they saw human heads hanging on the walls. Edward just laughed and said that his brother served during the war somewhere in the South Seas and sent him these heads as a gift. Nevertheless, rumors spread around the town about strange objects in Gin's house, while he himself smiled and nodded without malice when asked about the severed heads that he supposedly keeps at home.

The police decided to search Gin's house and immediately found the disembowelled and mutilated corpse of Bernice Warden in Gin's shed. The corpse was mutilated and hung like a deer carcass. There was a terrible stench in Ed Gin's house. Masks made of human skin and severed heads were hung on the walls, a whole wardrobe was also found, made in a handicraft way from tanned human skin: two pairs of pants, a vest, a suit, as well as a chair made of human skin, a belt from female nipples, a bowl of soup made from a skull. The refrigerator was filled to the brim with human organs, and a heart was found in one of the pots. Gin later confessed to digging up the bodies of middle-aged women who reminded him of his mother from graves.

During many hours of interrogation, Geen confessed to the murder of two women - Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan, although he finally confessed to the murder of the latter only a few months later, after a polygraph interrogation.

While the trial of Gin was going on, local boys began to throw stones at the windows of the "horror house", and the townspeople considered the farm a symbol of evil and debauchery, so they avoided it. The authorities decided to sell the estate at auction. People protested but could do nothing about it. On the night of March 20, 1958, Gin's house mysteriously burned to the ground. There is a version that it was arson, but the perpetrators were never found. When Gin, imprisoned at the Central State Hospital, found out about the incident, he said: "That's right." The Gin plot was acquired by real estate dealer Edmine Shi. Within a month, he destroyed the ashes and the nearby undergrowth of 60,000 trees.

Ed Geen's car, which he drove on the day of the murder to Bernice Worden, was put up for auction. 14 people competed for this lot, and the Ford was sold for a lot of money at that time, $760. The buyer was Bunny Gibbons, the organizer of the Seymour Fair, where a Ford appeared as an attraction called Ed Gin's Ghoul Car. Over 2,000 people paid 25 cents each to see the car on the first two days of the show. Making money on Gin's notoriety was greeted with outrage by the townspeople of Plainfield. At the Washington Fair in Slinger, Wisconsin, the car was shown for four hours, after which the sheriff arrived and closed the ride. After that, Wisconsin authorities banned the display of the car. Offended businessmen went to the south of Illinois, in the hope of understanding . Gin's burial itself remained in its original place, but without any identification marks.

Gin is still a suspect to this day. three cases unsolved disappearances. In all three cases, no direct evidence of the death of the missing was found.

Wisconsin wolf. (online version*)


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After the end of the Second World War in the state of Wisconsin, USA, there were several cases of missing people.

The chain of these dramatic and, as the police believed, related incidents began on May 1, 1947, when 8-year-old Georgia Weckler, who had come from school, left her house to take a walk. The Weckler family lived on a farm located in a relatively deserted place, a real "bear corner" in American terms, and therefore the girl's parents had no reason to be afraid of bad neighbors or strangers. The latter in these parts generally come across infrequently. Georgia's mother, looking out of the window several times, could see her daughter on the lawn in front of the forest at a distance of less than half a kilometer from the house. But when it came time to call Georgia home, it turned out that she could not be found.
As a result of a large-scale search in the territory of Jefferson County, carried out with the involvement of a large number of volunteers and police, an area of ​​\u200b\u200babout 25 square kilometers was carefully examined. The police believed that the girl, walking, could not go beyond it. Even if she was attacked by a large wild animal, such as a wolf, her remains must have been within this zone. But since no trace of the disappeared girl was found, it remained to be assumed that Georgia Weckler was abducted and taken outside the search area.
In the place where the girl was last seen, the police found vague prints of the wheels of the car on the ground. After determining the wheelbase, the detectives decided that these prints could have been left by a Ford pickup truck, a vehicle very common among local farmers due to its practicality.
The next disappearance occurred two years later and had a much more tragic character.
Evelyn Hartley, a serious and responsible 15-year-old girl beyond her years, in 1949 worked as a nanny in one of the houses of the town of La Crosse, located on the very border of the states of Wisconsin and Minnesota. Her father, knowing the phone number of the house where she worked, once took to calling her and was extremely surprised when no one picked up the phone. He arrived at the house and was even more surprised when he saw that the house was closed and obviously empty. Walking around the house and looking into the windows of the first floor, to his considerable horror, he noticed on the floor of one of the rooms ... his daughter's shoe and her glasses. Hoping that the daughter was still in the house and might need help, the father, without calling the police, broke the basement window and entered the building. But he did not find his daughter there. The house is really really empty.
Inspecting the building and the surrounding area, the police found traces of blood in the backyard. An indistinct, bloody handprint was left on the wall of a nearby building. In the house itself, traces were found indicating a struggle that had taken place in it. The police managed to reconstruct the sequence of events, which apparently developed as follows: the intruder entered the house through the basement window, where Evelyn Hartley descended, apparently noticing him. The fight started in the basement, then moved to the rooms on the first floor. There was no doubt that the girl desperately resisted: this was indicated not only by her lost glasses and shoes, but also by overturned pieces of furniture, as well as a tablecloth torn off the table. In the end, the criminal managed to get the upper hand; alive or dead, he took his victim out of the house.
Analyzing the circumstances of this incident, the police made two important conclusions: a) the offender certainly had a car in which he drove up to the house and took the girl away and b) he was most likely a local resident, well known to Evelyn Hartley. The fact that the girl, having witnessed the attacker entering the house, did not make an attempt to call the police or run away, but went to the basement to reason with him, seemed very eloquent to the police. The thief seemed to Evelyn so harmless that the girl was not afraid to enter into negotiations with him and was sure that she would be able to negotiate. But she completely misjudged the situation. The detectives came to the conclusion that the purpose of the criminal's entry into the house was by no means theft - since the attacker did not take any of the things - but the girl herself. Thus, by descending into the basement, Evelyn, in a sense, made her opponent's task easier by falling right into his hands.
Three days later, some of Evelyn Hartley's bloody belongings were found on the side of the highway at the exit of La Crosse. The police could not collect any more materials on the case of the kidnapping of Evelyn Hartley.
It remains to add that the places of disappearances of Georgia Weckler and Marilyn Hartley were separated by almost 200 km. Nothing united the disappeared, except for the very fact of their mysterious disappearance. The missing were never found; as of January 2008, their fates remain unknown and search cases initiated for the missing continue to remain open.
In November 1952, hunters Victor Travis and Ray Bargess disappeared with their car. The men were last seen buying beer in one of the shops in the town of Plainfield. Despite large-scale searches no trace of these people could be found.
Two years later, on December 8, 1954, Mary Hogan disappeared, the owner of a small pub in the town of Pine Grove, located next to Plainfield. On the floor of her pub, a cartridge case from a 22-caliber (5.59 mm) cartridge was found, traces of blood indicated that the body was being dragged. They led from the bar to the back door of the pub and on to the car park, where they ended. The pub was not robbed; the perpetrator did not even take any of the alcohol, which seemed quite strange. It was natural to assume that the murdered (or wounded) Mary Hogan was taken away by car, but by whom and why this was done remained a mystery.
All these crimes, although they were separated by significant intervals of time and at first glance had little in common, nevertheless could well be explained by the actions of one and the same person. The geography of the places where people disappeared was striking: all the settlements mentioned - Pine Grove, La Crosse, Plainfield - although they were separated by considerable distances, were located in relatively sparsely populated areas in which the appearance of strangers or cars usually does not goes unnoticed by residents. Meanwhile, in none of the above-mentioned criminal episodes in the stories of witnesses and neighbors did they ever appear. The fact that every time the criminal (or is it criminals?) remained unnoticed, in fact only meant that he did not attract attention to himself; in other words, he was well known to the inhabitants and seemed absolutely harmless.
In 1957, deer hunting season in Wisconsin opened on November 16th. It was a very busy day for the county sheriff's office - its employees had to check hunting licenses and documents for weapons from a large number of people who wanted to hunt on the first day of the season.
Frank Warden, one of the Plainfield County sheriff's deputies, was released only in the evening and stopped by his mother's hardware store around 9:00 pm. He planned to pick up his mother - Bernice Warden - and drive her home in his car. Much to his amazement, the deputy sheriff found the store empty.




rice. 1: Bernice Warden and her hardware store in Plainfield, photographed from various angles. In the lower right photo, you can see the porch through which the criminal carried the body of the woman he had killed to his car.

For some reason, the front door turned out to be locked from the inside, and the back exit leading to the cargo porch, on the contrary, was open. When Frank Warden entered the store through it, he found some confusion and blood on the floor. In addition, the cash register has disappeared. The latter circumstance suggested a quite obvious idea of ​​a robbery.


rice. Figure 2: Bernice Worden's shop environment, photographed by a forensic scientist from the Coroner's District Office on the morning of November 17, 1957. In the second photo, Bernice Warden's blood can be seen in the lower left corner, where she was shot the night before.

Frank immediately called his direct superior, County Sheriff Arthur Schley, and reported the incident.
While waiting for the sheriff's arrival, Frank Warden began a systematic inspection of the store. On the floor behind the counter, next to a small stain that looked very much like blood, he noticed a crumpled piece of paper that turned out to be a receipt for a purchase, not completely filled out by his mother's hand. Apparently, at the time of the attack, Bernice Warden was entering the result of the last transaction on the receipt. Such was the sale of a liter bottle of antifreeze. And with a high degree of probability m. to assume that it was the last buyer who attacked the saleswoman.
When the county sheriff, accompanied by another of his assistants, A. Fritz, drove up to the hardware store, Frank Worden was sure that he could already name the person who attacked his mother. In any case, he well remembered that the night before one of the regular customers of the store, a local fool Edward Gein, was interested in the price of a liter bottle of antifreeze. In addition, he tried to persuade Bernice Warden to set up a date with him. Bernice was ironic about her awkward and stupid suitor, who was known throughout the neighborhood as a generally good and good-natured man, but clearly not getting along with his head.
After a tour of the store and a short meeting with assistants, Arthur Schley recognized Frank Worden's arguments as quite logical and agreed to visit Gein in order to check his alibi.
Edward Theodor Gein lived all alone on an isolated farm six miles from Plainfield, at that time a very small town of less than seven hundred inhabitants. Gein owned 195 acres of land, not a lot by American standards. The soil was bad - clay and sand - so neither Gein's parents nor he himself managed to get rich. But under President Eisenhower, the federal program for the conservation of agricultural land provided Gein with a wonderful opportunity to abandon the tedious and unpromising work in the field and live on state rent. He, of course, did just that. Own free time Eddie devoted himself to traveling around the area, looking for an opportunity to earn extra money, or taking him to all sorts of local eateries; although Gein hardly drank, he liked to be in company, to listen to what people had to say. A typical single man, a bean, as they are called in Russia.
Gein's farm had no sewerage and running water, electricity was generated by an old diesel generator. Late in the evening of November 16, 1957, she was plunged into darkness and looked extremely unfriendly.
After making sure that no one was on the farm, the sheriff and deputies decided to go around Gein's neighbors. Everyone knew perfectly well that despite their short stature and apparent defenselessness Eddie was a very strong man, able to perform the most difficult and exhausting work better than many recognized local strongmen. The surrounding farmers often provided Gein with work and it could well turn out that he was at that moment with one of them. There was no way Ed Gein could go hunting: it was no secret that he never hunted because he was afraid of the sight of blood. In general, Gein's compassion and kindness were known to many who knew him; some of the farmers even invited Edward to sit with their young children during the harvest season.
The decision to look for Gein at the neighbors turned out to be extremely productive. Even before 23.00, his old Ford was found in the yard of one of the neighboring farms. Ed Gein, after a hearty dinner, slept peacefully in the cab of the car. He looked really shocked when the sheriff pushed him, and Frank Warden grabbed his collar and yelled in his ear: "Moron! Where did you take my mother ?!"
Ed Gein was visibly frightened and houndedly silent. From that moment on, he did not utter a word for more than 30 hours; he didn’t ask for food or drink, he didn’t even stutter about the need to go to the toilet ... In fact, it’s not difficult to understand why he was so stubbornly silent: with an inappropriate phrase, Gein was afraid to provoke extrajudicial reprisal of those around him.
The owners of the farm told the sheriff that Ed Gein showed up a little after 21:00, had dinner and went to bed in the car; they did not notice anything suspicious in his behavior.
Although Frank Warden yelled at Gein, accusing him of kidnapping his mother, in fact, there were no serious grounds to connect her disappearance with Edward at that time. Intuition and a couple of coincidences still seemed unconvincing and, as a minimum, insufficient to advance such a serious accusation. In common sense, Sheriff Art Schley announced that Ed Gein was being held on suspicion of stealing a cash register. The sheriff ordered that his assistant, Arnold Fritz, take the detainee to the county sheriff's office and put him there under lock and key until the morning. For obvious reasons, Schley did not want to leave Frank Warden alone with the detainee, and therefore it was Fritz who was appointed the escort. The sheriff himself, accompanied by Worden, decided to go to Gein's farm and look for the cash register there.
If only the sheriff could have guessed what they would see at the Ed Gein farm, he would never have taken Frank Worden with him on this trip!
The outbuildings of the farm consisted of a fairly large wooden two-story house, a barn (which had been empty for many years), a tool shed, a chicken coop, and a summer kitchen attached to the house.


rice. 3: Edward Hein's house and attached summer kitchen.

Having briefly examined the shed, the chicken coop, the barn and not finding anything suspicious there, Schley and Warden entered the residential building. On its first floor there was a large living room, two bedrooms (the door to one of them was not only locked, but also sealed with sealing wax; this moment was explained later) and a kitchen. The door to the stairs leading to the second floor was boarded up with nails.
As soon as they crossed the threshold of the house, Shley and Worden smelled a disgusting mixture of smells. The stench of sour food was clearly felt in the stagnant air of the cold house, dirty laundry and decaying flesh. Art Schley later admitted that when he entered Gein's house, he immediately thought of the rats that had died under the floor and behind the baseboards after being poisoned. It was a common occurrence for houses in countryside. The sheriff walked around the house, partly lit by the uneven moonlight, and periodically turned on the flashlight, examining the dark corners.
The cash register was nowhere to be seen.
Entering the kitchen, the sheriff and his deputy stopped at the threshold. Their attention was immediately drawn to the body suspended in the middle of the room by ropes. At first, each of them decided that he saw the carcass of a deer in front of him, but as soon as he illuminated it with a lantern, it became clear that in front of them was a naked female body. And gutted and headless. A second later, Frank Warden identified his mother, Bernice, in the suspended body.


rice. 4: The decapitated body of Bernice Worden hanging in the kitchen of Edward Gein's house. The killer cut off his victim's head, cut open the stomach and removed the intestines. In order to bleed the body as much as possible, he tied his hands with his hands up. The latter clearly indicated the killer's intention to ensure the best preservation of the soft tissues of the corpse and later served as one of the evidence of Gein's cannibalism.

But what they saw was by no means the only terrible discovery they made in those moments. In the light of a hand torch, Schley and Worden noticed blackened dumplings in a tureen that stood on the kitchen table. Upon closer examination, it became clear that these were not dumplings at all, but decayed and partially mummified human noses. There were four...
The sheriff took his shocked deputy out of the house and put him in the car. Through police communication, he turned to the sheriffs of neighboring counties and the state police department for help.
By the time sheriff and police cars began to arrive at Edward Gein's farm, Schley had managed to start the diesel generator. Under the electric light, Ed's home took on a look even more frightening and repulsive than in the moonlight.


rice. 5: living room and kitchen in Edward Gein's house. If in the living room the owner was still trying to maintain at least some appearance of order, then real ruin reigned in the rest of the house and the buildings of the farm. Ed Gein clearly didn't bother with the fight for cleanliness and order.

In the living room, they hung on the walls, like deer heads or other hunting trophies, masks made from real human faces. There were nine such masks in total; during their lifetime they all belonged to women. Clothes made of roughly tanned human skin were laid out on the furniture in the living room: a waistcoat, two trousers, a jacket with sleeves, bracelets and belts. The halos of large nipples clearly appeared on the jacket, from which m. conclude that this skin also once belonged to women's bodies.
By two o'clock in the morning on November 17, 1957, a large force of law enforcement officers had already gathered on the farm of Edward Gein. Photographers and forensic doctors from the coroner's office arrived, the district attorney, invited witnesses appeared. A thorough search began for many hours, as it progressed, more and more nightmarish details of the madness in which the "quiet fool" Edward Gein was (and apparently for a long time!) Became apparent.


rice. 6: Some of the finds made during the search of Gein's house: one of the masks made from a human face; carved from female body labia; a jar with another human face, the tenth in a row, found on the mezzanine.

For almost a day, experts from the central crime laboratory in Madison preserved and removed various organic tissues and human organs in special vessels from Gein's house.


rice. 7: Human remains prepared for removal from Gein's house. Loading one of the containers with human organs into the crime lab van.

The main results of this search were the following conclusions:
1) Inspection of the sealed bedroom and five rooms on the second floor unequivocally testified that these premises were closed a very long time ago, most likely many years ago and have not been visited by anyone since then. In the bedroom there were items of women's toilet; with confidence m. consider that it belonged to Edward's mother, Augusta Gein, who died in December 1945. Gein's entire life was concentrated in the living room, kitchen and second bedroom on the ground floor. enclosed spaces did not contain any evidence of the commission of any crimes by the owner of the house;
2) The attention of criminalists was attracted by books, as well as clippings from newspapers and magazines found in the house. All publications touched on three topics that undoubtedly greatly interested the one who collected them: a) the crimes of the Nazis in concentration camps; b) female anatomy; c) crimes related to the dismemberment of corpses, the removal of scalps, etc. things. The last category included books about pirates of the Caribbean and American Indians. There was no other literature in the house of Edward Gein. From the way in which the clippings were worn, one could conclude that they had all been subjected to careful study;
3) The sequence of Ed Gein's manipulation of Bernice Worden's body has been restored. The woman was shot in the head with a .22 caliber pistol. The criminal brought the corpse in the back of his "pickup truck" along with the cash register and transferred his prey to the barn. There, on the locksmith's table, Gein separated the woman's head from the body and carried it to his bedroom, where he hid it in the bed between two mattresses.


rice. 8: The head of Bernice Worden was found in Edward Gein's bed between the mattresses.
From the body of a woman, the offender removed the intestines and the heart, which was found in a saucepan on the kitchen table. This gave grounds to suspect that Edward Gein had used human meat into food. The very body of Bernice Worden was transferred by the offender to the kitchen and hung by the ankles and wrists from the ceiling. Gein left the cash register in the shed. Obviously, he intended to deal with it later. In any case, the money compartment was not broken into and $ 42 remained in it - proceeds last day hardware store work by Bernice Warden;
4) On the walls of the living room, like hunting trophies, nine masks made of women's faces were hung. Some still have traces of cosmetics. In addition to masks on the walls, another one was found - the tenth in a row - placed in a glass jar, covered with plastic wrap; this jar was in a bag on the mezzanine. In the same bag, in addition to the jar with the mask, some individual fragments of human bodies were also packed;
5) In addition to the mentioned bag, two shoeboxes were found, in which there were fragments of female genital organs in a state of rather strong putrefactive decomposition; besides this, four pairs of human lips were strung with a garland on a harsh thread, just as they do with mushrooms when drying;
6) The attention of forensic scientists was attracted by another gloomy find: in Gein's kitchen there was a skull, sawn above the superciliary arches. Traces of food remained inside the detached skullcap; it was obvious that Gein was using her like a plate. The skull, which served as an element of the table set, involuntarily strengthened the idea of ​​​​the possible cannibalism of the criminal.
Gein was picked up from the La Crosse sheriff's office and transported to a jail in Wautoma, Jailhouse County.



rice. 9: Gein in the first days after the arrest. The photographs below are curious: on the left is a frame from the first recording on the film, there he is still stupidly silent and clearly does not know how to behave in front of the lens. His condition can be understood - before Ed seriously loomed the prospect of landing on the electric chair. The lower right photograph is a still from a film reel of an investigative experiment conducted on Gein's farm. By this time, the prisoner had already recovered from the shock - the tape shows how he talks at ease with the policemen accompanying him, answers the questions of the prosecutor. After Gein was seated from the police car, reporters rushed to her to take photographs. Annoyed by the attention of the press, Ed covered himself from reporters with a glove ...

The policemen, replacing each other, tried to talk to the arrested person. It turned out quite unexpectedly: after a thirty-hour interrogation, one of the police officers threw in the hearts of Gein: "You are a petty thief!" He started up and unexpectedly replied: "No, I'm not a thief! I took the cash register just to see how it works!" The simplicity of what he heard amazed those present.
On the same day - November 19 - Edward Gein pleaded guilty to the murder of Bernice Worden. He said that he does not remember details well, because this sometimes happens to him: he finds numbness, the environment becomes unclear, and he does things about which he can say little later. He himself admitted that this state is the essence of demonic possession - and only prayer helped from it. But on the day Mrs. Warden was killed, prayer did not help, and Gein said that he remembered how he shot a woman and transferred her body to a truck. Why he did this, the offender could not explain.
Gein began to be asked about the rest of the bodies, because his house was full different fragments human bodies! And then he again struck the police: Gein swore that he did not kill anyone but Bernice Worden, and everything that was found in his house belonged to bodies ... dug up in county cemeteries. By this time, the detectives already knew that reading the obituary section in local newspapers was one of the criminal's passions: a variety of witnesses claimed that Ed Gein often read such notes aloud in local saloons. The interrogators did not believe Gein and he offered the police to drive with him to local cemeteries so that he could show the graves that he was digging up.
Edward claimed to have dug up women's bodies the very night after burial, before they had time to undergo severe decomposition. He swore that he did not kill anyone except Bernice Warden, did not perform any sexual manipulations with bodies, did not eat human meat. All his assurances were perceived with skepticism for the time being, but after Gein made a trip with the assistant prosecutor and the police to the surrounding cemeteries and on four of them, without the slightest hesitation, showed nine female burials, from which he allegedly retrieved the bodies, to him listened. The County of La Crosse, on the proposal of District Attorney Earl Cailin, sent a request to the Governor of Wisconsin to authorize a mass opening of graves in order to verify the claims of Edward Gein. In view of the obvious strong public outcry, the case took on an almost political character, and such an event required coordination at the highest level.


rice. 10: Attorney Earl Cailin.

Since Gein reported only nine cases of excavation of graves, the origin of the fragments of other bodies found in his house remained unclear. According to the most rough and favorable estimates for Gein, it turned out that at least 15 human bodies were dismembered in his house (9 - masks of women's faces on the walls of the living room, the tenth - in a jar hidden in a bag on the antesols, four noses and four pairs of lips - this is at least four more bodies, the fifteenth is Bernice Warden). Did this mean that the criminal killed the rest of the people, or did he really forget how he got the bodies? The answer to this question seemed to be received when one of the ten masks made from human faces was identified ... Mary Hogan, the same bar owner who disappeared without a trace on December 8, 1954.
Forensics had little doubt that she had been murdered (blood was found on the floor of her bar). And it was most likely Gein who did this, although he devoutly claimed that he did not do this. After a long fruitless interrogation, the offender was offered a polygraph test. He agreed and the lie detector convincingly showed that Gein was responsible for the death of Mary Hogan. When Eddie was told about the results of the check, he thought for a while, and then confessed that he really committed this crime. But at the same time, he continued with incredible persistence to repeat that he did not copulate with female corpses and did not eat human meat.
So, by November 23, 1957, it became clear that the murder of Bernice Worden was by no means the first committed by Edward Gein.
All nine graves indicated by Edward Gein appeared before 1953. And in December next year the necrophiliac committed the murder of Mary Hogan. Did this mean that he stopped digging graves because he switched to killing? The absence of skeletons and any large fragments of the bodies of women removed from the graves in the house, Ed Gein explained by the fact that he buried all the remains he did not need during the night. This statement could not be considered absolutely reliable until the State Governor authorized the opening of the graves, but at least it somehow explained the absence of bodies in the necrophiliac's house. But if, after 1953, Gein switched to murder, how did he dispose of the bodies in this case? After all, the excavated graves were no longer at his disposal ... The answer suggested itself - Gein dug out new graves. And obviously not in a cemetery.
Guided by these considerations, on November 22, the police began to dig up a piece of land that belonged to Gein. The work was done colossal, and its result was the discovery on November 29 of a large skeleton. The circumference of the skull of the found skeleton exceeded the size of all the masks of human faces in the Gein house. Without waiting for the official announcement of the conclusion of the forensic experts, the detectives offered their version to the press: since in last years only two men disappeared in these places - Travis and Bargess - and the anthropometric characteristics of the found skeleton corresponded to the second one (Burgess was above average height), then Gein is guilty of the death of both this man and his companion. There was another indirect consideration that strengthened the detectives in their opinion about the correctness of the conclusions made: one of the teeth of an unknown skull had a gold crown, and in the description of Bargess's special signs, there was just a mention of a gold crown on the tooth. But if Eddie really killed him, then other disappearances of people in the area are most likely connected precisely with Gein.
The prematurity of such a statement was clearly manifested two days later, when the head of the forensic laboratory, Charles Wilson, announced the official conclusion of the study of the found skeleton.


rice. Figure 11: Madison crime lab director Charles Wilson.
It turned out that the find had nothing to do with Victor Travis: the remains found belonged to a woman. When Gein himself was asked whose skeleton he buried in the garden, the necrophiliac only smiled and stated that he did not take everyone to the cemetery, he found a corner for some in his own garden. The skeleton, he said, belonged to one of the bodies dug up in the cemetery.
Gein was not believed, and in the first days of December a new large interrogation of the criminal was carried out using a lie detector. This time the range of questions put to him was much broader than that at the first interrogation. Gein was asked about his cannibalism, and about the purposes of manipulating the bodies, and about the possible copulation with corpses, etc. things. The meaning of the answers received then will be explained below, but for now it is worth noting that Gein successfully passed the second polygraph test; his answers and explanations were considered reliable and the police no longer formally accused him of being involved in the disappearances of people in 1947-52.
After a week of hesitation, the Governor of the state signed a decree authorizing, in fact, a mass opening of graves in order to verify information about the possible abuse of the bodies of the deceased. The County Attorney officially notified relatives of those women whose ashes were supposed to be disturbed about the upcoming events, and after that, silence about the progress of the investigation became simply meaningless. If in the first days after Gein's arrest, only neighbors stared at the fuss of the police in the criminal's house, then after November 25, a real pilgrimage began to his farm. Gein hit the national news bulletins, Plainfield and La Crosse were flooded with reporters not only from America, but also from Europe and even from Australia. Onlookers and journalists stood behind the police fence around the clock, hoping to witness the birth of a new sensation.
And of course, everyone - visitors and local residents, policemen and psychiatrists, men and women, children and adults - had the same question on their lips, which sounded constantly in those days in various interpretations: what kind of person should be in order to decide for this?! And really, what did Ed Gein have to be like to dig up women's bodies from graves, skin them and bury them back in?
Edward Theodor Gein was born on August 27, 1906. He was youngest child in the family of George and Augusta Gein; older brother Henry was born on January 4, 1902. The Gein family could hardly be called prosperous - a strong, imperious wife kept both her husband and children in "hedgehogs". Attempts to run a family business were unsuccessful: in the period 1909-13. George and Augusta tried to sell meat and groceries in La Crosse, but after suffering losses, they sold the store and moved to a farm 40 miles from the town. The whole subsequent life of this family was entirely connected with this farm. Edward's father gradually became an alcoholic and turned under the yoke of a tough, uncompromising wife into a quiet alcoholic. Attempts to live by farm labor were of little effect due to poor soil; from the second half of the 30s, the brothers began to be hired as farm laborers to more prosperous neighbors. August Gein was a Lutheran, and this set the whole family somewhat apart from the rest of the neighborhood. When the brothers became hired workers, the feeling of alienation only increased. The eldest of the brothers - Henry - was very burdened by this. He generally seemed more developed than Edward, and felt the abnormality of the increasingly obvious separation of the family from the outside world more sharply. The brothers never married; everyone who knew this family agreed that the reason for this was the completely unusual hatred of women, manifested with or without reason by Augusta Hein. For her, everything related to women, gender and sex was definitely vicious and lecherous. And if Edward looked at his mother with admiration and listened to her words without reasoning, then Henry allowed himself to challenge her judgments. After the death of George Gein, which followed on April 1, 1940, peace in the family not only did not come, but, on the contrary, completely crumbled. In the period 1940-44. Henry several times left home to work quite far and for a long time, it seemed unbearable for him to be under the same roof with a domestic tyrant in the face of his own mother. Most likely, some scandals took place in the family itself behind closed doors; now we can talk about it only in a hypothetical form.
These family dramas, hidden from the world, were believed by most of the Geins' neighbors to have led to the first death: in 1944, Henry died under circumstances that have not been fully clarified. According to Edward's stories, the brothers were burning last year's grass in a field when the fire got out of control and engulfed Henry. Edward claimed to have lost sight of his brother and rushed off for help, but when he managed to gather several farmers and they arrived in the field, the fire had already died out. The farmers scattered in different directions in search of Henry, and Edward went straight to the other end of the field and immediately stumbled upon the body. The corpse did not appear badly burned, and it was not clear why the man who was at the edge of the field could not retreat from the fire. The farmers who arrived on that day on May 16, 1944 to help Edward Gein later said that Henry's face seemed to bear signs of beatings, but there was no objective evidence of this and it may well be that these rumors were born under the influence of exposure of Edward's subsequent crimes. Ed himself never pleaded guilty to the death of his older brother. It was officially recognized that Henry Gein died on May 16, 1944 as a result of an accident.
In January 1945, Edward Gein's mother, Augusta, suffered an apoplexy. It seemed that the woman had no chance to survive. But the care of an affectionate and attentive son restored the woman's strength - by the summer of 1945 she got out of bed and again became an unbending Augusta without feelings and emotions. Unfortunately for Ed, already on December 29, 1945, the second blow occurred and Augusta Hein died.


rice. 12: Grave of Augusta Hein.
Already in 1957, Edward's neighbors remembered that none of them had come to Augusta's funeral; Why are there neighbors, no one came at all! Already by this moment, Gein, in fact, turned out to be excluded from the community of people equal to him - he became an outcast, a person truly alien to everyone.
Subsequently, Edward Gein said that it was on the day of Augusta's funeral that he sealed the door of her bedroom and nailed the stairs leading to the second floor of the house. It was a very symbolic move - Edward cut off from himself his past, in which he was a "mama's boy", "weak" and "half-wit". It was on the first of January 1946 that he finally became Edward Theodor Gein.
He was never weak-minded in the everyday sense of the word. All people who knew him personally agreed that he had an unusual sense of humor; not that contagiously funny, but not devoid of caustic irony and originality. Left all alone, Ed seemed to reach out to people: in 1949, he bought a used Ford car, in which he traveled a lot on the roads of the state, talking and getting to know a wide variety of people, spending evenings off work in local saloons. He never became the center of the company, but sometimes he could amuse those present with some curious story on historical themes. Usually these were stories about the atrocities of pirates in the seas of the Caribbean, or stories about the horrors of Nazi concentration camps. In the very theme of these stories, many saw some special black humor; at that time, no one could have guessed that the true spirit of Gein was actually revealed in them; these interests, perhaps, exhausted all of Edward's personal life.

Ed Geen's case is unique in some ways. Despite a more than modest "track record" - only 2 proven victims, Gin is considered one of the most terrible maniacs in US history. His "style" inspired the masters of the horror genre to create several films, each of which, having looked once, is unlikely to be forgotten. It was Gin who became the prototype of the charming Norman Bates from Psycho, his features are also guessed in Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs, as well as in the maniac from Texas Massacre. How did Gin earn his fame? We remember today together with Daria Alexandrova.

Sissy

In the family everything was run by the mother, Augusta. Father, a weak-willed alcoholic, was constantly out of work, all household chores and worries fell on the shoulders of a single woman. The Gins, in addition to Eddie, also had an older son, Henry. Augusta was a pious lady, even fanatical. The Holy Scripture was her desk book, where she looked for answers to all questions, and she considered it the best textbook for her children. And although the sons attended a regular school, Augusta did not allow the boys to communicate with other children and demanded to immediately return home after school. It is possible that if Augusta had not been a fanatic, she would have divorced her husband, but for religious reasons this was completely unacceptable.

Ed Gin

Since childhood, Eddie's mother taught Eddie that women are vicious, disgusting, depraved and sinful, and sex is dirty. Finding her son once engaged in masturbation, Augusta scalded him with boiling water. The idea was firmly entrenched in the boy’s head that all the women of the world, except for his mother, of course, were whores and devils. Augusta insisted that the family move from the city of La Crosse, which she considered a nest of vice and debauchery, to the creepy wilderness and hole - the tiny settlement of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Less than 1,000 people lived in this village. Of course, everyone knew each other, and were in sight.

Mother inspired Gin that sex is dirty, and all women are vicious


The gins settled in Plainfield, where they bought a dairy farm. The family lived closed, the sons left the house only to go to school. Only after the death of his father from cardiac arrest in 1940 did the situation change: Henry and Ed had to take care of August and the budget. The brothers were interrupted by odd jobs - basically, they helped local residents in petty work. Ed was often asked to babysit.

Henry's life gradually began to improve - he got a girlfriend and was going to finally move out from his mother. Henry was worried about his younger brother: Augusta's influence on Ed was too great, his mother completely suppressed his personality and masculine nature. Once, returning home from a girlfriend, he found Edward sleeping in bed with his mother - she periodically allowed him to do this. For Ed, criticizing his mother was akin to blasphemy. His brother's admonitions offended him.

Ed sometimes slept with his mother in the same bed - so she "rewarded" him


And in May 1944, Henry died suddenly: together with Ed, they burned swamp grass on the farm, but the flame got out of control. Henry's body was then found at some distance from the fire, it was practically not burned. Ed claimed to have lost sight of his brother for a while and then found him already dead. One of the investigators drew attention to the bruises that remained on Henry's body, but they did not conduct an autopsy and did not open a case against Ed.

anatomy lessons

At the end of December 1945, a terrible thing happened: Augusta died of a heart attack. Ed couldn't imagine anything worse. At his mother's funeral, he wept bitterly, "like a little boy," as one of his neighbors later recalled.


Still from Hitchcock's Psycho: Norman Bates dressed as his mother

Ed was left all alone. Reading was his only pastime. True, the library, which the police then studied, was specific: basically, books on the anatomy of the female body, read to holes by them. And although Ed never lived with a woman and, most likely, did not have sexual contact, bodies interested him.

Gin's library consisted mainly of books on female anatomy.


From theory, he soon moved to practice. Ed studied the obituary page in the local newspaper and went to the cemetery at night to dig up the bodies. He brought them home and cut them up, hanging them on hooks, like animal carcasses. Ed sewed something like leggings from the bottom of the bodies, and a vest from the top. In addition, he cut out their genitals and applied to his, presenting himself as a woman. During a search, the police found a shoe box full of cut off noses, as well as a belt made from nipples and skulls that Gin used as bowls. One of the chairs in the house was upholstered in human skin. Women's faces were hung on the walls - only 9 pieces. They were cut, carefully processed and preserved throughout the technology.

American Horror Story

It is not known exactly how many victims on Gin's account (investigators believed that there could be up to 10) - he himself confessed to two murders. In 1954, he dealt with a local resident Mary Hogan, the owner of a small tavern. Mary was, as they say, a “boy-woman”: she cursed worse than a sailor, she ran all the affairs herself, talked loudly and laughed. The psychologists who worked with Gin suggested that the woman's domineering nature might have reminded him of the mother he missed so desperately and painfully. Gin wanted to "bring back" his mother, so he killed Mary and brought her body home. The locals were discussing the disappearance of the owner of the tavern, and Gin half-jokingly said that she came to visit him, but she stayed. Neighbors, who considered him a silly man, but still adequate, did not pay attention to this.

Human skin suit, nipple belt - Gin's trophies


The second victim was the owner of a small hardware store, 58-year-old Bernice Worden. She disappeared on November 16, 1957. Sheriff Arthur Schley, who was investigating a missing person case, found a check in the name of Gin on the floor of the shop in a pool of blood. Schley did not find Ed at home, but, having a search warrant, went inside. Passing through the dark kitchen deep into the dwelling, he stumbled upon a real carcass. The headless body was hung on a hook from the ceiling. The sheriff called for help, and several detectives were soon searching Gin's house. At the same time, these terrible finds were made - clothes and accessories made of leather, collections of noses, genitals and lips. The body of the murdered Mrs Warden was identified by her son Frank. Bernice's head was also in the house - Gin hammered nails into her ears and threaded a string, apparently intending to hang the "trophy" on the wall.


Gin's house

Interrogating witnesses and neighbors later, it turned out that Gin's house was notorious among local boys, who once hit a glass with a stone and looked inside. They saw some skulls and asked Ed about them. He laughed and made up a story about a brother who served as a sailor somewhere in the South and allegedly sent these heads to him as a gift.

Gin was arrested and interrogated. He confessed to two murders, and also to digging up the bodies of those women who reminded him of dear Augusta. Psychiatrists admitted that Gin suffers from a mental disorder and cannot stand trial. They also suggested that Ed believed that he was doing the will of God and resurrecting the dead.

In 1958, he was sent for compulsory treatment to the prison hospital in Wapan, a high-security institution for insane criminals. Then, however, he was transferred to the Menthod Institute of Mental Health in Madison.

Gin might think he was doing "God's will"


At the same time, the Plainfield authorities were thinking about what to do with Gin's creepy house. It was decided to put it up for sale. However, in March 1958, the dwelling burned to the ground - probably arson. The culprits were not found, and hardly looked for. Probably, this was done by one of the local residents, who were not at all attracted by the prospect of existing in the neighborhood of the "House of Horrors".

After 10 years, when the doctors decided that Gin had sufficiently returned to normal, he was put on trial. He was found guilty of murder in the first degree, but due to the fact that he committed the crime, being insane, he was again sent to the hospital.

One of the nurses who worked with Gin once said: "If all our patients were like him, we would have no problems at all."

Date of death:

Ed, who was now completely alone on the farm, began to voraciously read anatomy books, stories about Nazi atrocities during World War II, various information about exhumations, he also liked to read the local newspaper, especially the obituaries section. The neighbors didn't think Gein was crazy, just a "slightly weird" harmless eccentric and left him to babysit the kids, to whom Gein sometimes recounted what he had read on topics he was obsessed with. Gein soon moves from theory to practice - he begins to visit cemeteries at night, dig up corpses and butcher them. He is often guided by information gleaned from obituaries in the local press, he especially enjoyed tearing up the fresh graves of women, although later in the investigation he swore that he had not performed any sexual manipulations with the corpses: “they smelled too bad,” Gein said. Hein took some parts of the corpses home, and soon he had a kind of collection of skulls and severed heads, which he hung on the walls. Gein also made himself a suit of women's leather, which he wore at home.

Even the stories about the strange things that happened on his farm did not bother anyone. Local children who looked into the windows of Gein's house spoke of seeing human heads hung on the walls. Edward just laughed and said that his brother served during the war somewhere in the South Seas and sent him these heads as a gift. Nevertheless, rumors spread around the town about strange objects in Gein's house, while he himself smiled and nodded without malice when asked about the severed heads that he supposedly keeps at home. Nobody thought it could be real.

1947-1956

In 1947, an eight-year-old girl was found murdered in the district. Gein is believed to have committed the murder. The only piece of evidence the police found was tire marks from a car that later turned out to be Gein's. Gein's involvement has not been proven.

In 1952, two tourists disappeared after stopping to have a small picnic near Gein's house. Their bodies have not been found so far. Gein's involvement in the crime has not been proven, although he was suspected of their murder.

In 1953, a fifteen-year-old girl was found murdered. Gein's involvement has also not been proven, but some elements of the coincidence with the first murder are clearly visible.

In 1954, Gein kills Mary Hogan, the owner of a local tavern. Gein managed to quietly transfer fat woman to your home across the city. He dismembered her and kept her at home. Mary was declared missing. Gein joked that she stopped by to stay at his house. Mary disappeared from the motel, leaving only pools of blood behind, so Ed's jokes about the missing woman seemed tasteless to everyone. Nobody took him seriously.

Arrest. Court. Death.

On November 16, 1957, the owner of a hardware store, 58-year-old widow Bernice Warden, disappears without a trace. In the afternoon, her son Frank Warden returned from hunting and stopped at the store. He saw that his mother was not at home, and the front and back doors were left unlocked. Frank discovered something that scared him terribly - a trail of blood stretching from the shop window to the back door. After a quick search of the premises, Frank found a crumpled receipt in the name of Edward Gein.

The police decide to search Gein's house, and immediately make the first terrible discovery - the disembowelled and mutilated corpse of Bernice Warden in Gein's barn. The corpse was disfigured and hung like a deer carcass. Much more terrible finds were waiting for the police in the house of Ed Gein, where there was a terrible stench. Masks made of human skin and severed heads were hung on the walls, a whole wardrobe was also found, made in a handicraft way from tanned human skin: two pairs of trousers, a vest, a suit made of human skin, a chair upholstered in leather, a belt from female nipples, a plate for soup, made from a skull. But that was not all. The refrigerator was filled to the brim with human organs, and a heart was found in one of the pans. Gein later admitted to digging up the bodies of middle-aged women who reminded him of his mother from graves.

During many hours of interrogation, Gein confessed to the murder of two women - Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan (However, Gein confessed to the murder of Hogan only a few months later). His trial began.

While Gein's trial was going on, local boys began throwing stones at the windows of the House of Horrors. The townspeople considered the farm a symbol of evil and debauchery and avoided it at all costs. The authorities decided to sell the estate at auction. People protested but could do nothing about it. On the night of March 20, 1958, Gein's house mysteriously burned to the ground. There is a version that it was arson, but the perpetrators were never found. When Gein, imprisoned at the Central State Hospital, learned about the incident, he said only three words: "That's right."

The Gein property was purchased by Edmine Shi, a real estate broker. Within a month, he destroyed the ashes and the nearby undergrowth of 60,000 trees.

Ed Gein's car, which he drove on the day of the murder of Bernice Warden, was sold at an auction. 14 people fought for this lot, and, in the end, Ford left for big money at that time of $ 760. The buyer chose to remain anonymous. It is possible that the buyer was the organizer of the fair in Seymour, where a Ford car appeared as an attraction called "Ed Gein's Ghoul Car."

More than 2,000 people paid 25 cents to see the car on the first two days of the show.

Profiting from Gein's notoriety was met with outrage by the townspeople of Plainfield. At the Washington Fair in Slinger, Wisconsin, the car was shown for four hours, after which the sheriff arrived and closed the ride. After that, Wisconsin authorities banned the display of the car. Offended businessmen went to the south of Illinois, in the hope of understanding. The further fate of the car is unknown.

In accordance with the verdict of the court, Gein was declared insane and committed to compulsory treatment in a maximum security hospital for the insane criminals (now Dodge Correctional Institution) in Wapan, but was later transferred to the Menthod Institute of Mental Health in Madison. In 1968, the doctors decided Gein was sane enough to stand trial again. A new trial began on November 14, 1968, and lasted a week. Judge Robert Gollmarp found Gein guilty of premeditated murder, but since Gein was legally insane, he spent the rest of his life in a psychiatric hospital, where he died on July 26, 1984 from cardiac arrest caused by cancer, after which he was buried in Planfield City Cemetery. For a long time, the tombstone of his grave was destroyed due to souvenir hunters, and in 2000, most of the tombstone was completely stolen. In 2001, the gravestone was restored.

In popular culture

In literature

To the cinema

  • A version of the retelling of the life of Edward Gein as the most brutal serial killer in the history of America is made in the film "Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield" and in the film "In the Light of the Moon".
  • Elements of the biography of Ed Gein are included in famous films - such as Psycho, The Silence of the Lambs, the Texas Chainsaw Massacre franchise.
  • Ed Gein is mentioned in the Criminal Minds series about serial maniacs, several episodes are based on the plot of his life.
  • The character in the 4th episode of the 1st season of the cartoon Super Prison! »
  • Ed Gein is mentioned in the movie "American Psycho"
  • Ed Gein is mentioned in the television series Bones. Season 8 Episode 5 "The Method in the Madness"
  • Ed Gein, partly inspired the character Zachary Quinto in American Horror Story: Asylum

In music

  • Song " Nothing to Gein", the Mudvayne group tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " Nipple Belt”, by the Tad group, tells the story of Ed Gein.
  • Song " Edward Gein”, by the Fibonaccis group, tells the story of Ed Gein.
  • Song " Dead Skin Mask”, The Slayer group tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " Ballad of Ed Gein”- the Swamp Zombies group tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " Ed Gein”- the Killdozer group tells the story of Ed Gein.
  • Song " Ed Gein"- the Macabre group tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " Plainfield"- the group "Church of Misery" tells the story of Ed Gein.
  • Song " Sex Is Bad Eddie"- The Tenth Stage is about Ed Gein.
  • Song " skinned”- the group“ Blind Melon ”narrates about Ed Gein.
  • Song " The Geins"- the group" Macabre Minstrels "tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " Torn"- the Maladiction group tells about Ed Gein.
  • Song " young god"Swans" also talks about the life of Ed Gein.
  • Gein is an American darkstep drum & bass band from Milwaukee.
  • Song " Ed Gein”- the group“ Billy the Kid ”narrates about Ed Gein.
  • The musical group "Ed Gein", playing in the genre of grindcore, mathcore, hardcore

Links

  • Ed Gein

Categories:

  • Personalities in alphabetical order
  • August 27
  • Born in 1906
  • Born in La Crosse
  • Deceased July 26
  • Deceased in 1984
  • Deceased in Madison
  • Serial killers alphabetically
  • American serial killers
  • Necrophiles
  • The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
  • Died from respiratory failure
  • Died of heart failure

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