Ed Gein - The Butcher of Plainfield
An American murderer, suspected serial killer and body snatcher. This is a wild story...
Childhood
Edward Gein was born in La Crosse, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1906.
He was the second of two boys of George Gein and Augusta Gein.
Augusta, who was very religious and nominally Lutheran frequently preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking and her belief that all women were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil.
She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting verses from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation concerning death, murder and divine retribution.
Gein idolized and became obsessed with her.
Augusta hated her husband, an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job; he had worked at various times as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman.
During his time in La Crosse, Gein's father owned a local grocery shop, but he soon sold the business and left the city with his family to live in isolation on a 155-acre (63-hectare) farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin which became their permanent home.
Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders who could have influenced her sons.
Deaths in immediate family
On April 1, 1940, Gein's father died of heart failure at age 66.
Ed and his brother Henry began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses.
The brothers were considered reliable and honest by the rest of the community.
While both worked as handymen Ed also frequently babysat for neighbors.
He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults.
Henry began dating a divorced mother of two and planned to move in with her; he worried about his brother's attachment to their mother and often spoke ill of her around Ed, who responded with shock and hurt.
On May 16, 1944, Ed was burning away marsh vegetation on the property.
The fire got out of control drawing the attention of the local fire department.
By the end of the day the fire having been extinguished and the firefighters gone.
Ed reported his brother missing.
With lanterns and flashlights, a search party searched for 43-year-old Henry, whose dead body was found lying face down.
Apparently he had been dead for some time and it appeared that the cause of death was heart failure since he had not been burned or injured otherwise.
Work
Gein held on to the farm and earned money from odd jobs.
He boarded up rooms used by his mother including the upstairs, downstairs parlor and living room, leaving them untouched.
While the rest of the house became increasingly messy these rooms remained pristine.
Gein lived in a small room next to the kitchen.
Around this time, he became interested in reading pulp magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities.
Specifically concerning Ilse Koch, who selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins. This will be relevant later in the story.
Gein received a farm subsidy from the federal government starting in 1951.
He occasionally worked for the local municipal road crew and crop-threshing crews in the Plainfield area. Sometime between 1946 and 1956, he also sold an 80-acre parcel of land that Henry had owned.
Confirmed Crimes
On the morning of November 16, 1957, 58-year-old Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared.
The hardware store's truck was seen driving out from the rear of the building at around 9:30 a.m. The hardware store saw few customers the entire day; some area residents believed that this was because of deer hunting season.
Worden's son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, entered the store around 5:00 p.m. to find the cash register open and blood stains on the floor.
Frank Worden told investigators that on the evening before his mother's disappearance, Gein had been in the store and was to have returned the next morning for a gallon of antifreeze.
A sales slip for the antifreeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning that she disappeared.
That evening Gein was arrested at a West Plainfield grocery store and the Waushara County Sheriff's Department searched the Gein farm.
A sheriff's deputy discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed on Gein's property, hung upside down by her legs with a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists. The torso was "dressed out like a deer".
She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle and the mutilations were made after her death. Searching the house, authorities found:
Whole human bones and fragments
A wastebasket made of human skin
Human skin covering several chairs
Skulls on his bedposts
Female skulls, some with the tops sawn off
Bowls made from human skulls
A corset made from a female torso skinned from shoulders to waist
Leggings made from human leg skin
Masks made from the skin of female heads
Mary Hogan's face mask in a paper bag
Mary Hogan's skull in a box
Bernice Worden's entire head in a burlap sack
Bernice Worden's heart "in a plastic bag in front of Gein's potbelly stove"
These artifacts were photographed at the state crime laboratory and then "decently disposed of".
When questioned Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952 he had made as many as forty nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state.
On about thirty of those visits he said that he came out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order and returned home empty handed.
On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.
Gein admitted to stealing from nine graves and led investigators to their locations. Allan Wilimovsky of the state crime laboratory participated in opening three test graves identified by Gein.
The caskets were inside wooden boxes; the top boards ran crossways (not lengthwise). The tops of the boxes were about two feet (61 centimeters) below the surface in sandy soil.
Gein had robbed the graves soon after the funerals while the graves were not completed.
The test graves were exhumed because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave during a single evening; they were found as Gein described: one casket was empty; another casket contained Gein's crowbar; and the final casket saw most of the body missing, yet Gein had returned rings and some body parts.
Soon after his mother's death Gein began to create a "woman suit" so that "he could become his mother—to literally crawl into her skin".
He denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining: "They smelled too bad."
During state crime laboratory interrogation Gein also admitted to shooting 51-year-old Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since December 8, 1954, whose head was found in his house, but he later denied memory of details of her death.
During questioning, Sheriff Art Schley reportedly assaulted Gein by banging his head and face into a brick wall. As a result, Gein's initial confession was ruled inadmissible.
Schley died of heart failure in 1968 at age 43, before Gein's trial.
Many who knew Schley said he was traumatized by the horror of Gein's crimes and this, along with the fear of having to testify (especially about assaulting Gein), caused his death.
Suspected
In addition to the murders of Hogan and Worden, Gein was also considered a suspect in several other unsolved cases in Wisconsin.
In November 1957 authorities confronted Gein with a list of missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and Worden.
Their suspicions were further aroused after the discovery of Hogan's remains. However, lie detector tests seemingly exonerated Gein of any other murders, and his psychiatrists concluded that his violence was only directed to women who physically resembled his mother.
Georgia Jean Weckler, age 8, disappeared near her farm home in Fort Atkinson at approximately 3:30 p.m. on May 1, 1947. She was given a lift home from grade school in Jefferson by a neighbor who dropped Weckler off at the lane that led from U.S. Highway 12 to the Weckler farm.
Weckler was last seen pausing to open the family mailbox and removing a stack of mail. She was never seen again. Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored, possibly black, 1936 Ford sedan with a gray plastic spotlight in the vicinity that afternoon; Gein owned a black 1937 Ford.
Evelyn Grace Hartley, age 15, went missing while babysitting a 20-month-old girl at the home of La Crosse State College professor Viggo Rasmusen on the evening of October 24, 1953, in La Crosse. That evening her father Richard called the Rasmussen house several times after she failed to check in as planned at 8:30 p.m. He received no answer. Concerned, he drove to the Rasmussen house to find the doors were locked, the lights and radio on and items scattered all over the house. The living room furniture had been moved around to different places, as were Evelyn's school books. Richard found her shoes in different rooms, one shoe upstairs and one downstairs. He also found his daughter's broken glasses upstairs. Richard did not find Evelyn in the house. After his arrest, Gein was questioned regarding Evelyn's disappearance, however, he denied involvement in the disappearance and passed two lie detector tests; police found no trace of Evelyn's remains during a search of Gein's property.
Victor Harold Travis, age 43, a resident of Adams County, went off to hunt deer in the company of 43-year-old acquaintance Raymond Burgess, a resident of Milwaukee, on November 1, 1952. In the late afternoon the pair stopped for refreshments at Mac's Bar in Plainfield for several hours. At around 7 p.m. they both left the bar, got into Burgess’ car and drove away. The hunters, along with the car Burgess was driving, were never seen again and no trace of them was ever found. Travis and Burgess had been hunting on the farm next to Gein's despite his objections on the day of their disappearance.
In addition, Gein has also been tentatively linked to the June 1954 disappearance of neighbor James Walsh, age 32; Walsh and his wife lived near Gein, who performed chores for her after her husband went missing. Gein was also investigated for potential involvement in the August 1956 disappearance of Irene Keating, age 30, who was last seen in Plainfield, and in the attempted abduction of Judy Rodencal, age 16, from Auroraville.
On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity.
He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent, thus unfit for trial.
He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison.
Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute due to respiratory failure secondary to lung cancer on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77.
Over the years, souvenir seekers chipped pieces from his gravestone at the Plainfield Cemetery, until the stone itself was stolen in 2000.
It was recovered in June 2001, near Seattle, Washington, and was placed in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department.
The gravesite itself is now unmarked, but not unknown; Gein is interred between his parents and brother in the cemetery.
What a wild story. Had you heard this one before?