When Ed Gein was arrested for murdering a local shopkeeper in 1957, the roughly 700 residents of Plainfield, Wisconsin, were not surprised.
Shocked, yes, but Gein had always been an oddball in their eyes. Shock quickly turned to horror after authorities uncovered a series of nightmares from Gein’s dilapidated family home.
He’s been called the Butcher of Plainfield, the Plainfield Ghoul, and the Grandfather of Gore, so you can imagine that what they found was truly horrifying.
Join us as we dish out the gruesome details of Ed Gein’s gory life!
Edward (Ed) Theodore Gein was born 119 years ago on August 27, 1906, to a religious fanatic mother, Augusta, and George, a violent alcoholic. He’s a Virgo, by the way.
Ed’s mother fanatically believed in the true immorality of the world, the innate unchaste and evil nature of all women, and unsurprisingly, given George’s nature, that drinking only led to sin.
Augusta made time every afternoon to educate Ed and his elder brother Henry on all the sins of the world, reading them the darkest and most murderous passages from the Book of Revelation and the Old Testament.
Ed grew up idolizing his mother, and her teachings on sin were deeply ingrained in his young mind. Lust, murder, and Augusta became Ed’s world.
Henry was so worried about Ed’s obsession with their mother that he confronted her multiple times. Augusta’s abusive temperament held out, and Henry’s concerns were left ignored.
The family moved from their hometown of La Crosse, Wisconsin, to a 55-acre (63-hectare) farm outside of Plainfield around 1915. Visitors were turned away, and the brothers only left the farm to attend school.
At school, Ed was remembered by his teachers and classmates as an odd kid with strange habits who would burst out into laughter at the jokes inside his head.
All attempts by Ed to make friends at school were met with punishment at the hands of his mother. By the time he reached adulthood, his mother had carved him into the perfect son: timid, gentle, wary of strangers, and utterly devoted to her.
As his father aged, Ed took on odd jobs as a handyman and farmhand. He was known to be honest and reliable, and developed an interest in babysitting, seeming to get along better with children than with adults.
In 1940, George Gein died, and looking after their mother and the farm fell to Ed and Henry.
Around the time Ed’s father died, Henry was planning on moving in with a woman he was dating. His warnings to Ed of the dangers of his devotion to his mother continued, much to Ed’s displeasure.
Henry died in 1944 under suspicious circumstances, supposedly during a fire on the farm. Ed actually reported Henry missing, but then led the police to his brother’s corpse.
Many suspect Henry was Ed’s first kill. The time of death was off, and there was reported bruising around the head, yet Henry’s death was deemed natural.
Death came in threes, and Ed’s mother passed away in 1945 after suffering two strokes. Ed’s isolation began.
Over the following years, Ed descended into a state of mania. He boarded up any room that his mother used, allowing the rest of the house to fall into decay, and lived in just one small room.
In his seclusion, Ed found comfort in pulp fiction magazines, especially those with stories about cannibals and Nazi war crimes. Some believe he learned of Ilse Koch, the Nazi who was accused of sewing lampshades out of the skin of prisoners.
On November 16, 1957, Bernice Worden disappeared. Her son Frank, a deputy sheriff, found her hardware store deserted, the cash register empty, and blood stains spattered across the floor.
Ed was the last person known to see Worden, and given his nature, he was the primary suspect. The police arrested him the same evening and sent a team to search the Gein farm.
What the police discovered shocked the nation: Bernice Worden’s lifeless body strung upside down from the rafters like the carcass of an animal, disemboweled, beheaded, with her heart removed. She had been fatally shot with a .22 calibre rifle, and gutted after her death.
The reason for Worden’s dismemberment became clear when police searched the rest of the house and found a collection of household items, clothing, and masks, all made from human skin and bones.
Ed Gein’s gory gallery included a belt made from human nipples, a corset and leggings made from human skin, a human-face lampshade, a bed with human skulls on the bedposts, bowls fashioned from human skulls, and several death masks sewn from intricately skinned women’s faces.
Authorities also found items crafted from the remains of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner whom Ed later admitted to having murdered in 1954.
It turned out that after his mother’s death, Ed had begun to make a woman-skin suit, to become his own mother and “literally crawl into her skin.”
Between 1947 and 1952, Ed visited graveyards at night and dug up recently deceased middle-aged women who resembled his mother, from which he fashioned most of his morbid collection.
At the court hearing on November 21, 1957, Ed was found unfit for trial after he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. Diagnosed with schizophrenia, he was sent to a maximum-security facility for the criminally insane in Wisconsin.
In 1968, it was decided that Ed was finally fit to stand trial, during which he was found guilty of the murder of Bernice Warden. Despite admitting to Mary Hogan’s murder, he was only tried for Warden’s due to “prohibitive costs.”
Ed was also deemed insane at the time of the murder, and his insanity negated his guilt. He remained in the Wisconsin asylum until the late 70s, when his health declined and he was moved to another health institute.
On July 26, 1984, Ed died a simple death of lung cancer and respiratory illness and was buried near Plainfield.
Ironically, Ed’s grave was not left undisturbed. Horror enthusiasts flocked to it, chipping off pieces of his gravestone. Then, in 2000, Ed’s gravestone was stolen by suspected occult groups. It was found abandoned a year later, but Ed’s grave remains unmarked.
On October 3, 2025, the third season of the Monster Series, Monster: The Ed Gein Story, premiered on Netflix, following on from Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story and Monster: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story.
Ed Gein’s life served as the inspiration for fictional serial killers and monsters in many horror films, including Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chainsaw Massacre), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), and Dr. Oliver Thredson (American Horror Story).
To the outside world, Ed Gein led a seemingly ordinary life. He had a conservative religious upbringing, doted on his mother, and worked odd jobs around the community.
He appeared to be a regular guy, if a little bit odd.
He was also a serial killer who liked to craft clothing and furniture from human remains, some of which came from women he murdered.
Who knows what dark secrets the people you know keep?