Childhood
Ed Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse County, Wisconsin.[2] His parents, George and Augusta Gein (nee Lehrke),[citation needed] both natives of Wisconsin, had two sons: Henry George Gein, and his younger brother, Edward Theodore Gein. George Gein was a violent alcoholic who was frequently unemployed. The elder Gein would usually come home inebriated and physically abuse his sons. Despite Augusta's deep contempt for her husband, the atrophic marriage persisted because of the family's religious belief about divorce. Augusta Gein operated a small grocery store and eventually purchased a farm on the outskirts of the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which then became the Gein family's permanent home.[3]
Augusta Gein moved to this location to prevent outsiders from influencing her sons.[3] Edward Gein left the premises only to go to school. Besides school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm.
Augusta Gein, a fervent Lutheran, drummed into her boys the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drink, and the belief that all women (herself excluded) were prostitutes, and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament dealing with death, murder, and divine retribution.[citation needed]
With a slight growth over one eye and an effeminate demeanor, the younger Gein became a target for bullies. Classmates and teachers recalled off-putting mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. To make matters worse, his mother scolded him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.
Gein tried to make his mother happy, but she was rarely pleased with her boys. She often abused them, believing that they were destined to become failures like their father. During their teens and throughout their early adulthood, the boys remained detached from people outside of their farmstead, and so had only each other for company.[3]
After his brother's death, Gein lived alone with his mother. Augusta Gein died on December 29, 1945, from a series of strokes, at which time Gein "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."[5]
Gein remained on the farm, supporting himself with earnings from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms mostly used by his mother, such as the upstairs, downstairs parlor, and living room, leaving them untouched. He lived in a small room next to the kitchen. Gein became interested in reading death-cult magazines and adventure stories, and between 1947 and 1954 made as many as 40 night time visits to three local graveyards in order to exhume a number of recently buried bodies.[4]
Arrest
Police suspected Gein's involvement in the disappearance of a hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, in Plainfield on November 16, 1957. Upon entering a shed on his property, they made the first discovery of the night: Worden's corpse. She had been decapitated, her headless body hung upside down by means of ropes at her wrists and a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was empty, the ribcage split and the body "dressed out" like that of a deer.[6] These mutilations had been performed postmortem; she had been shot at close-range with a .22-caliber rifle.
Searching the house, authorities found:[7]
- Four noses
- Bone fragments
- Nine death masks
- A bowl made from a skull
- Ten female heads with the tops sawed off
- Human skin covering several chair seats
- Pieces of salted genitalia in a box
- Skulls on his bedposts
- Organs in the refrigerator
- A pair of lips on a string,
Gein eventually admitted under questioning that he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother[8] and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skin to make his possessions. Gein's practice of putting on the tanned skins of women was described as an "insane transvestite ritual".[9] Gein denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining, "They smelled too bad."[9] During interrogation, Gein also admitted to the shooting death of Mary Hogan, who had been missing since 1954.
Shortly after his mother's death, Gein had decided he wanted a sex change. He created a "woman suit" so he could pretend to be a female.
Ed Gein was found mentally incompetent and thus unfit to stand trial at the time of his arrest, and was sent to the Central State Hospital (now the Dodge Correctional Institution) in Waupun, Wisconsin. Later, Central State Hospital was converted into a prison, and Gein was transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin. In 1968, Gein's doctors determined he was sane enough to stand trial. The trial started on November 14, 1968, lasting just one week. He was found guilty of first-degree murder by judge Robert H. Gollmar, but because he was found to be legally insane, he spent the rest of his life in a mental hospital.[11][12]


