He dug up the bodies and, after stripping them, used the remains of the mutilated bodies to construct accessories and furnishings. edge – born Edward Theodore Gein – was one of the most ruthless and bloodiest killers in the history of the United States of America, although he deviates from the common definition serial killer. Known as “the Planfield Butcher,” he was convicted of the 1968 murder of a grocery store clerk and committed other unsolved crimes.
Escaping the electric chair due to insanity, Gein spent years in prison in one psychiatric hospital because he was considered completely incapable of understanding and wanting: he was declared “crazy”. His story has inspired some legendary movies and horror stories like Psyco, Deranged and The Silence of the Lambs.
Who was Ed Gein
Ed Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Winsconsin. His parents, Augusta and George Gein, did not have a happy marriage. Indeed, it appears that Ed and Henry’s father (the couple’s eldest son) was a particularly violent man as well as a regular user alcohol. However, Augusta, a passionate and extremely submissive Lutheran, never divorced her husband.
When George Gein was out of work – he worked as a tanner, carpenter and insurance salesman with odd jobs – he forced his family to move to a Farm yard of 155 acres on the outskirts of Planfied in Wuashara County.
Ed and his older brother grew up friendless and were often laughed at by schoolmates. Every afternoon Augusta read the verses of the Old Testament to her children to save them from the innate “immorality of the world”. She instilled in them the idea that women were “all prostitutes” – except herself – and “tools in the hands of the devil” to be avoided.
During their teenage years, the two boys developed an attitude of totality devotion and enslavement towards the mother. Especially Ed who, unlike his brother, never questioned the very strict mother.
The suspicious fire
When George Gein died in the summer of 1940, Ed and Henry started odd jobs to earn a living. Ed, well regarded by the local community, often served as baby-sitter for the neighborhood kids.
On May 16, 1944, Henry died of a Fire flared up in the farm. Ed told police he “lost sight of” his brother in the flames, but was then able to pinpoint the exact location of the body. Although Henry’s lifeless body had bruises on his face and wounds on his head, investigators concluded that he died of asphyxiation, despite initial suspicions about the young Gein.
After death his brother, Ed lived alone with his beloved mother, who died of a stroke in December 1946. metamorphosis von Gein from introvert and taciturn man to “Planfield butcher”.
The arrest
On 11/16/1957 Bernice Worden, a clerk at a Planfied grocery store, has gone missing under suspicious circumstances. It was the woman’s son who alerted the authorities, found traces of blood in the store and found the cash register open. The boy then told investigators that Ed Gein went to the store the night before he disappeared and returned the next morning to buy a can of antifreeze. Investigators ordered a search of Gein’s home, based on some witness statements and after finding the last tax receipt stamped by the victim.
It was the Waushara County Deputy Sheriff who found her decapitated body by Bernice Worden in Ed Gein’s Shed. The victim was killed with a .22 caliber shot, then hung from the ceiling by the ankles and “stomached open like a deer”. The head with two nails driven into the temples was found in another room of the house. But it wasn’t the only macabre find.
Inside the home, investigators identified numerous furnishings that Gein had constructed from bone fragments skin the victim. The internal organs had been packaged and stored in the refrigerator while I genitals They were kept in a large shoebox. There were also skulls used as centerpieces and some masks worn by the killer while disguised as a woman.
The sentence
When asked for the facts, Ed Gein stated that he made approximately 40 nightly inspections of the building between 1947 and 1952 cemetery von Planfield by digging up some bodies, although in most cases he returned home empty-handed. In any case, he had been looking for women who might resemble his late mother.
That Exhumed bodies were all worked out and mutilated. The leathers were “tanned” and used to make accessories and furniture. Gein also confessed to killing another woman with three shots. Maria Hogan, disappeared in 1954. Finally, he claimed to have committed other crimes in his youth, including the murder of a 16-year-old. The investigators also accused him necrophilia but he denied ever having revolted the corpses: “They stank” was his justification.
Ed Gein was convicted of the crimes he committed but escaped Electric chair since a psychiatric report attested to total frailty. He served his sentence at what was then Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Winsconsin – where he had already spent 11 years under special surveillance – and was then transferred after the final conviction of first degree murder on November 14, 1968, in which Madison Psychiatric Hospital.
He died of respiratory failure on July 26, 1984. The car he used to transport the bodies was auctioned off and then exhibited at one show which was sharply criticized by the local authorities. The farm, on the other hand, went up in flames while “Planfield’s Butcher” was still alive. Investigators suspect arson. “It’s better this way,” Ed Gein said.
“Planfield’s Butcher”
Ed Gein’s life and the heinous crimes he committed inspired the plots of numerous films. between the films better known are “Deranged” (1974), written by Alan Ormsby and directed by Jeff Gillen, “In the light of the moon” from 2002 (later renamed Ed Gein for the US market) and “The butcher of Planfied” . (2007) directed by director Michael Feifer. A serial killer, necrophile, and body scavenger, the Butcher of Planfied has inspired some iconic characters of Hollywood horror and drama: serial killer Norman Bates (Psycho) to Buffalo Bill (“The Silence of the Lambs”).
As for the true story of Planfield’s serial killer, many doubts and suspicions remain. At trial, the neighbors reported that he had served them deer meat during a dinner. Ed Gein’s blood-curdling response: “I’ve never killed a deer.”