His story began on a small farm in Wisconsin where he lived with his parents and older brother who owned a local shop. His mother was a very religious woman and continuously told her boys about the evils of drink and that all women, apart from herself, were "whores". She even punished Gein with scaulding hot water after he was caught masturbating in the bath.
As Gein began school, he was a target for bullies due to a small growth over his eye. None the less, he did relatively well in school and was seen as a normal young man. However, Gein's life changed dramatically after his father and brother died in 1940 due to a mysterious fire on the farm. Just five years later, Gein's mother died, leaving him alone on the farm.
Later in the early 1950's, police noticed an increase in missing person cases and in 1954, a woman called Mary Hogan suddenly disappeared. The tavern where she worked was searched by police and they found a trail of her blood, leading into the car park.
Three years later in November 1957, Bernice Worden, a local shop keep was abducted. The police believed that Gein was somehow involved in this disappearance after he purchased some suspicious items from her shop a few days before. They drove to his farm house to question him, however, Gein was no where to be found. His dimly-lit house was searched and the overwhelming stench of filth and rotting flesh clung to each room. One of the police officers went into the kitchen and felt something brush against him. He shone his torch and what was first thought to be the carcass of a deer was in fact the decapitated body of Bernice Worden. She was dangling upside down from the beams and had been decapitated, slit open and gutted. However, this was not all that was found.
Police also discovered severed heads acting as bed posts, human skin covering the chair seats and lamp shades, human skulls being used as soup bowls, a human heart inside of a saucepan on the stove, a necklace made from human lips, a belt made from nipples, a waistcoat made up of vaginas and breasts sewn together and most famously; a number of masks made from human skin. A wardrobe was also found, containing an entire outfit made from human skin; consisting of leggings, a gutted torso with breasts and a collection of masks all made from human flesh.
Gein was immediately arrested and questioned but remained silent throughout the interview. Finally, the following day, he confessed and carefully described exactly how he murdered Worden. He also told police that the other body parts found in the farmhouse did not belong to anymurder victims, as police had suspected, but simply belonged to the dug-up corpses of middle-aged woman who resembled his mother. Gein then described what he did with the bodies and how he skinned them, tanned the skin and then did as he wished with it. He denied having sex with any of the bodies and stated that "they smelt too bad". Gein also admitted to the murder of Mary Hogan, the victim missing since 1954.
Police asked Gein why he murdered and began grave-robbing. He told them that after his mother died, he wanted a sex change and created a female attire for himself so he could walk around the house and pretend to be his mother. Even though he swore the body parts came from corpses he dug up, police still believed that he was the one responsible for all of the missing person cases in the early 1950's. To prove himself, Gein told police the names of the women he had dug up. With much debate, police were finally ordered to examine the graves of these women. They found evidence to suggest that the graves had in fact been tampered with and in some cases, the body or parts of the body were missing.
During this time, Gein's farmhouse was still being searched and investigators unearthed the skeletal remains, suspected to be a missing person called Victor Travis. However, investigators were proven wrong and the remains belonged to a middle-aged women who Gein had dug up.
Gein was only convicted of the murders of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, however, he was found clearly insane and was confined to a mental hospital where he became an ideal patient. None the less, nurses stated that they felt very uneasy and uncomfortable when they found Gein staring at them.
Ten years later, Gein was found to be sane enough to stand trail and was bought into court on November 7th, 1968 due to the murders of Hogan and Worden. The judge found him not guilty due to the reason of insanity and Gein was sentenced to spend the rest of his life in a mental institution.
On July 26th, 1984, Edward Gein died at the age of 80 due to a long battle with cancer. He was buried in Plainfield Cemetery, next to his mother and not far from the graves he had robbed years before. His gravestone was continuously vandalised as souvenir seekers would chip off parts of the stone and the bulk of the stone was eventually taken in 2000. In June 2001, the gravestone was finally recovered and to this day, remains displayed inside of a museum in Wautoma, Wisconsin.
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