Ed Gein: Monster, Murderer, and the Real Story Behind Hollywood’s Nightmares

[00:00:01] Edward Theodore Gein. He's a quiet, polite man. The kind of guy that neighbours would say is a bit odd, never a threat. The thing is, he would turn out to be one of the most infamous serial killers who inspired fiction in some of the most notorious horror movies. Yes! Didn't he like inspire Texas Chainsaw Massacre? Henry's body is laid on the scorched earth, but seemed like it was untouched by fire. There were no burns on his skin and his clothes,

[00:00:31] were intact. The coroner ruled the death by asphyxiation, but Henry had some odd bruises on his head. So what we're saying is, we think that Gein murdered him. And the officers secure a warrant to head to his farm. It's still night at this point, so it's dark and it's cold. The barn door is slightly ajar. He steps inside first and he bumps into something swinging. He flicks on his torch and freezes. It's a body hanging there, headless.

[00:01:01] In the middle of the kitchen, they hear rats scurrying around and along the countertops. The worst is yet to come, Kyle, because lurking in the shadows are secrets far darker than anyone could have imagined. This is too much like a horror movie already. I can see it.

[00:01:45] Welcome to The Compendium, an assembly of fascinating things. A weekly variety podcast that gives you just enough information to stand your ground at any social gathering. We explore stories from the darker corners of true crime, the hidden gems of history and the jaw-dropping deeds of extraordinary people. I'm your ringmaster for this week, Adam Cox. And I am Kyle Reesey, your resident circus census taker for this week. A census taker? Surely we don't need that.

[00:02:14] No, we do. I have to count all the clowns coming out of the car. And how many are there? Well, I can only count up to five famously. Okay. And there's a hell of a lot more than five. That's all I can tell. You have two hands. Surely you can have two lots of five at least. Yeah, but that's math I can't even do, man. That's math I just can't do. So guys, if you are new to the show and you want to support us, then the absolute best way to do that and enjoy exclusive perks is to join our Patreon.

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[00:03:06] One of my absolute favourites. And it gets like one of the worst number of downloads. I think we need to change the title to that one. People vote with their downloads, Kyle. Yeah. But it's such an amazing story. I think, wasn't there in there, at one point he was having to fax his stories to his editor because he was so scared that someone was going to steal his fax machine that he chained it around his leg. And it was apparently sending it from a public bathroom somewhere because they had an Ethernet port for him to plug into in order to send the fax. What, in the bathroom?

[00:03:35] In the public toilet. I don't remember that at all. Oh, I know it was ages ago, but it's one of my favourite stories of all time. And I've tried to republish it and promote it and people just don't give a shit about it. It's because of the title. JT Leroy. We need to change that. People are like, why do I care about that? They used to be like, fax boy! I don't know if that's better, but, you know, think about it. Okay. So yeah, that is our back catalogue of classic compendium episodes, all waiting for you on our Patreon.

[00:04:01] Yes. And as a special thank you, our certified Freak Tier members now receive an exclusive compendium keychain. All you need to do is just DM us your address and we'll send one straight to your door so we can always be there dangling near your crotch. Do you know what? We still need some merch with that. We need to get that out for Christmas. I have been contacted by a merch company. Ah. So we could just have like crotch emblazoned on it. Don't know if that's going to like catch on, but yeah, let's go for it.

[00:04:29] It might do. And also we still need other words for crotch, right? We've got cloth. But that's all we have so far. Yeah. There's gusset. We need our listeners to write in. What is the term that Joey uses when Chandler is like struggling to find a good idea for a Valentine's Day present? And he's like, just grab a pair of panties and take out. And he says that word. Crotchless panties. Yeah, but he says something else, right? He doesn't call it crotchless. Yeah, I think he does.

[00:04:56] Oh, does he? I'm sure you used like a different word, not like gusset or something else. No. No. God, we're gross. And lastly, guys, please follow us on your favourite podcasting app and leave us a review. I promise you, your support really does help others keep finding our show and we can continue to tell these amazing stories. Okay, so enough of the housekeeping, Kyle. It's time to dive headfirst into today's story.

[00:05:22] So today on the compendium, we are diving into an assembly of obsessive fixation, human skin suits and an IKEA collection you won't find in a catalogue anytime soon. What? So are we doing like Silence of the Lambs? That's the only thing I can think of when it comes to skin suits. Yeah, you're on the money. You're close to it anyway. I mean, this is not the first time that we've talked about wearing skin.

[00:05:48] Do you remember, I think it was the Chernobyl episode when the guys were so overcome with radiation poisoning, like the skin on their legs would just come off like socks. Gross. And I think also actually in the Miracle of the Andes episode, a similar vibe, because they didn't have any shoes, right? To handle the snow. What some of them were doing is they were taking the skin off of some of the corpses they were lying around and they were using those as insulation for socks and stuff. Yeah, well, I guess there's two very different stories there.

[00:06:16] This one is a lot more sadistic, I'd say. Okay, I'm living for it. Actually, yeah. No. Yes. Let's go. Okay, so today our story is set in Plainfield, Wisconsin, which has a population of around 700 people. So it's not exactly the kind of place you'd expect a nightmare to unfold. Yet here lives Edward Theodore Gein. He's a quiet, polite man. The kind of guy that neighbors would say is a bit odd, never a threat.

[00:06:44] But the thing is, he would turn out to be one of the most infamous serial killers who inspired fiction and some of the most notorious horror movies. Yes. Didn't he like inspire Texas Chainsaw Massacre? I think also, what's that one with that weird guy who's really obsessed with his mum? Psycho. Psycho. Who was the guy? Was it Norman Bates? Norman Bates, yeah, yeah. Yes. Oh. Yeah, so you pretty much just named the three movies that he did inspire. No, I named three. Oh, you mentioned about Silence of the Lambs. He inspired that as well.

[00:07:14] Oh, interesting. I had no idea. But to be fair, I don't know a huge amount about Edgar. The only thing I know about him is from the quote from American Psycho, where Patrick Bateman, he's like in the bar somewhere. And he's like, did you know, like what Ed Gein said about women? And then Van Patten was like, what, Ed Gein? What, who is he? He's like, he's the maitre d' of like the canal bar. Because, of course, the main theme of the show is about mistaken identity. So that runs through it.

[00:07:41] But like Bateman goes, no, serial killer, Wisconsin, 1950. And then Van Patten is like, so what did Ed say? And then Bateman goes, when I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. Part of me wants to take her home, treat her real nice, talk to her real good, treat her sweet, you know, all those things. And then Van Patten is like, what does the other part think? And then Bateman goes, what a head would look like on a stick. Which is pretty gruesome. It is. But that's all I know about him. And of course, the fact that he was a serial killer.

[00:08:10] So actually, I'm really excited today to find out a bit more about how he inspired three of probably the greatest horror movies. Because they all seem so different from each other. So how does parts of his life inspire three very different movies? Well, we're going to get into that. But first thing, I think his name is actually Ed Gein, not Ed Gein. Oh, did I say Ed Gein? Yeah. Is it Ed Gein or Ed Gein? Ed Gein. It's kind of a weird title. What are your sources on that, Adam?

[00:08:38] Well, the other podcasts I've listened to in my research and documentaries, they all pronounce it Gein. Is there a possibility that they could be wrong? They could be. It might be Gein. But I'm pretty sure it's Gein. It is a weird name. Gein or Gein. Yeah. We're going to probably end up calling him both names. Well, I'm just going to call him what I know. Gein. Okay, fine. So we're going to find out why he obviously inspired those movies. But what we're also going to find out is how his childhood shaped him. So there's the whole sort of story of nature versus nurture and all that sort of stuff.

[00:09:08] Well, in Gein's case, he had a domineering mother who preached the innate sin of women and a drunken father who vanished too soon. Okay. Yeah. So yeah, that's interesting. So a domineering mother. A very domineering mother. But the thing is, did his upbringing set him on his murderous path? I mean, very often it does. So buckle up because today on the compendium, we're telling the story of Ed Gein, the original

[00:09:35] monster and more commonly known as the Butcher of Plainfield. So if you are just the slightest bit squeamish, then this is your friendly public service announcement to maybe try another one of our episodes. Oh, should I go now then? No, because like me, you're morbidly curious. And so you're in for a treat. Okay. Let's do this, Adam. Okay. So it's the morning of November the 16th, 1957. We are in Plainfield, Wisconsin. It doesn't actually feel like a town, to be honest.

[00:10:05] It feels more like a scatter of farms that are stitched together by a single street. There's about 700 people who live there. Everyone knows everyone. So news travels fast in this town. It's also the kind of place where you leave your doors probably unlocked because, yeah, you know everyone. It feels pretty safe in the grand scheme of things. It's not South Africa. Yeah. So whilst a small town, it has all the basics like a grocery store, a hardware store, a barber shop, a post office. So yeah, everything you kind of need.

[00:10:31] The town has seen its fair share of harsh winters, cyclones even, and even a violent lynch mob back in 1853. But none of that, not even the storms, would leave a scar as deep as what one man did in the mid-20th century. And his name is Ed Gein. So it's the first day of deer season. And by dawn, the woods are full of hunters. Most of the men are out in the countryside with rifles slung over their shoulders. It's one of the days where the town is eerily quiet, more so than usual.

[00:11:01] On the outskirts of Plainfield, there's Ed Gein. And he's finishing his breakfast inside a filthy, crumbling farmhouse. The air is thick. It's sour. It stinks. It hits the back of your throat if you were to go in. But for Ed Gein, he barely notices. He's living in his own filth, essentially. Yeah, he's been living in it. You get used to it. Yeah. He pulls on a jacket. He props on his deer hunting cap and he steps outside. He's about five foot seven, around 140 pounds. He's got a big forehead, floppy ears.

[00:11:30] He's got this kind of weird, distant look in his eyes. And so locals say, like, yeah, he's an odd guy. He's a bit of a character, but he's harmless. Sounds like you're describing Beavis from Beavis and Butthead. A little bit, yeah. Oh, God, that forehead. Unfortunate. Okay, so he has put on his hunting cap. He's heading out for the day. Is he going deer hunting? He's not, actually. He's getting into his car and he's driving into town. He heads over to Warden's Hardware Store and it's on the east side of town.

[00:11:59] There's a woman, Bernice Warden, who, you know, the store is named after. She's the owner. She's behind the counter. She's 58 years old. She's tough as nails and she loves fishing. Her son, Frank, he's Plainfield's deputy sheriff and he is out hunting today. Okay, with the rest of the town. With the rest of the town. So it's just Bernice at the store. So Ed takes a visit. He's known Bernice for years. He's always been asking her out. He's going to like the roller skate rink, the movies, go dancing. But she never says yes.

[00:12:29] I mean, she's 58 years old. Is he comparable in age? He's in his, I think, either 30s or 40s at this point. Oh, so he's really chasing after an older, more experienced woman. Yes. Oh, interesting. And we'll get on to perhaps why he's taking a sudden shine. It's because he wants to be the deputy sheriff's new stepdaddy. That isn't it. Anyway, so he's been, you know, trying his luck, trying to go on a date with her for quite a while. She's never said yes, but he keeps trying.

[00:12:58] He sometimes brushes it off as a joke. Maybe, I don't know, to explain how to get. Yeah, maybe that's it. But today he goes to the store and he wants some antifreeze. So he pours it into a glass jug. He pays, he thanks her politely and he heads out the store. But then he heads back into the shop just a few minutes later. To ask her out on a date. Well, he actually asks her, could he see one of the rifles on the wall? Or that. Yeah. Bernice turns around and she's about to grab it.

[00:13:24] And as she does, Ed lifts a rifle of his own, which he's holding in his hand. He quietly cocks it. He slides a shell from his pocket and he pulls the trigger whilst Bernice is looking away from him. So right in the back of her head or her back. I can't remember which. Does he do this to kill her? Is she dead? Well, she collapses behind the counter and she is dead. Shit. I thought he liked her. But to be fair, some people have very different ways of showing their interest. Shit, that's dark. Yeah, she's out of there.

[00:13:54] Ed checks to make sure she's not moving. Then as cool as anything, he just locks up the store. He doesn't want to be disturbed. He tips over the cash register because he wants to make it look like it's a robbery that's gone wrong. And then he drags Bernice's body out the back of the store, leaving a clear trail of blood, essentially, all the way to his truck, which he then loads her into. And then he drives off. This is too much like a horror movie already. I can see it. And he doesn't clear up the blood. No, he's got to get out of there. Well, he's definitely going to be busted.

[00:14:24] It's 40 minutes later and he's back at his farmhouse. And he hangs up Bernice's body in the barn. This is where it's going to get a bit gory. Right. He first decapitates Bernice. Shit. Then with a butcher's precision, he slices her open from collarbone to pubic bone. God. He removes her genitals and her rectum. Oh, why her rectum? He's basically just gutting her out, which is probably not the right terminology.

[00:14:53] But he's draining her body full of blood and washes out the body and then hooks it back up to then dry like a piece of meat. But you very specifically said he's removed her anus. And that's the kind of thing you do when you're preparing a chicken and you don't eat the anus bit. Is he going to eat her? No. Oh, say more stuff. Okay. So he's hung Bernice up to dry. Later that day, it's around 5 p.m. And Frank Warden, Bernice's son, he heads back to the store, obviously, to go see his mom, check in on her.

[00:15:22] But then he sees that the store's lights are on, but the door is locked, which doesn't make sense. And there's no sign of his mother. So he grabs his spare key and he steps inside. And he sees straight away that there's blood on the floor and a lot of it. And it's leading out the back. Straight away, he calls the sheriff and says, I think Ed Gein did this. Oh, so he's making that assumption pretty damn quickly. What makes him think it was Ed Gein? He doesn't mince his words to the sheriff.

[00:15:50] He says, Ed was acting strange yesterday, asking where I'd be during Unden's season. Okay. So perhaps trying to sense his whereabouts. Yeah, yeah. He's always been weirdly obsessed with his mom, constantly asking her out. Okay, number two. Yeah. And then number three, probably the proof that he was there that day, is that there's a receipt for antifreeze with Ed's name on it. Is it on like on account? I'm not sure. I don't know how they did receipts back then, but maybe that's how they just wrote it out as a receipt to say, yeah, you bought antifreeze.

[00:16:20] But either way, he's left that receipt there. And so kind of a bit of a rookie mistake because he probably should have taken that with him. Meanwhile, just outside of town, a teenager named Bob Hill and his sister Darlene, they basically break down just in front of Ed's place, his farmhouse. And so they go to Ed and say, can he help push the car or get them to the gas station? Ed agrees to help them out. But the thing is, he's covered in blood at this point, which he invites them inside while he's washing up.

[00:16:49] And it stinks in there. Yeah. And the brother and sister, they're uncomfortable because they're like, what is all that blood that's on you? And he's like, well, I've been dressing a deer, which kind of makes sense. It's deer season. He could have just killed a deer that day. And they're going, ah, that explains the smell. Possibly. We'll get into what his place looked like later. Yeah. Stinks of ass in here. Oh, there's a bucket of human anus that's just there in the corner. So yeah. So that's how he kind of covers it up, at least at that point in time. So he gives them a lift

[00:17:17] and he helps Bob install a new battery into his car. And he then accepts an invite to dinner at his family's house to say thank you. Sure. It's kind of like the all-American kind of small community thing to do. Like everyone knows each other. Stay for dinner. Yeah. Not have us for dinner. Stay for dinner. Yeah. So Ed stays for dinner and it gets to about 7 p.m. when the door bursts open and a guy called Jim Roman comes in and he basically announces Bernice Warden's missing and there's blood all over the hardware store.

[00:17:47] And so Ed, he barely reacts, to be honest. He keeps, I guess, trying to keep cool. Maybe obviously not let on that he obviously knows what's happened. He's just chewing on his chicken anus. I think they probably have potatoes or something. Chewing on his potato anus. So Bob, one of the teenagers, he basically says, oh, he wants to join the search, does his bit. And he asks Ed for a lift to get him into town or somewhere wherever they've got the search going. So Ed agrees to do that and they go outside. Meanwhile, Irene, the mum,

[00:18:17] she goes back to running the store when two state troopers walk in and they ask for Ed Gein. She points them around the back and say, yeah, they're just on the driveway. And they see Ed there and they start asking him questions. Straight away, Ed fumbles through a story contradicting himself multiple times. What does he say? I don't know what he's necessarily told at that point, but I'm guessing they've asked where his whereabouts were and he's obviously said this, that and the other, which perhaps don't add up. But then he blurts out, somebody framed me. And they're like,

[00:18:46] oh, for what? Well, you jumped to that pretty quick, didn't you? Yeah. And then he goes, oh, for Mrs. Warden, she's dead, right? But the thing is, no one knew that for a fact yet and no one really knew where Bernice was. Yeah, exactly. Like, oh, no one said anything about anyone being dead. Exactly. So you might as well have just been wearing a t-shirt that said, I did it. So I need to ask a clarifying question about the timeline here. Are we at the point where he's about to get busted or are we at the beginning of his killing spree? Don't want to spoil it yet. Oh, God. It feels like he's going to be busted

[00:19:16] and then all of the horrors are just going to come to light. Keep listening. You'll see. So Ed Gein, he's arrested because he sounds dodgy as, well, as dodgy as they come. And the officers then secure a warrant to head to his farm to then start, obviously, looking around. It's still night at this point. So it's dark and it's cold and there's snow on the ground. Oh, they're going to bump into a lot of anuses. Well, the barn door is slightly ajar and there's a guy called Captain Arthur Schley, I think his name is.

[00:19:45] He steps inside first and he bumps into something swinging. He flicks on his torch and freezes. It's a body hanging there, headless. So that is Benice. Yeah. Although they don't know that yet because without a head. But we know that. That's Benice. That's right. So they obviously are inspecting the carcass because that's the way I think you can call it at this point because the flesh has been sliced, the blood drained and Schley, he stumbles backward and he's vomiting into the snow

[00:20:14] because he just didn't expect to see this. No, who does? His colleague has the same reaction really and so both of them sit on the hood of their car and just smoke in silence trying to process what they've just seen. Okay. You forget that there are other times to smoke as well, not just after sex. Do you know what I mean? Yeah, with a coffee. Yeah. When you see a dead body. See a dead body, chilling out on your car with your police partner. Okay, so there's other times. It's good to know. Yeah, I think they're just trying

[00:20:43] to obviously settle their nerves, compose themselves and probably brace themselves for what they're about to have to go and I don't know, what are they going to find next? But what are they going to do? Surely they just go and call the police and get the FBI in. Well, they return to the barn and they examine the body which of course they don't know is Benice at this point because it's strung up like a deer carcass. And she's missing her head. Yeah, insides are gone, her head is missing. And they're like, I can't recognise his body. But the thing is, the worst is yet to come, Kyle, because they haven't even

[00:21:12] stepped foot into the farmhouse. And in there, lurking in the shadows, are secrets far darker than anyone could have imagined. Okay. So what do you make of that? Well, you haven't said anything. What you just said is like there's going to be some big shit in there. Was it like buckets and buckets and buckets of anuses? Clearly, I'm not going to let that go throughout the whole episode. Yeah, I'm kind of just blanking over that now. What do you mean? What do I make of that? You tell me what's next. All right. Well, so far, all we know is that Ed has killed Benice.

[00:21:42] We have no idea why yet. It seems premeditated, of course. He may have had a weird obsession with Benice because of how Frank suspects him straight away. Yeah. And when the police find Ed, he sounds guilty straight away. And so he's perhaps not the most intelligent. And why has he been doing all this? Well, to find out why this has happened, we have to go back to the very beginning when Ed was just a twinkle in his father's eye. A sick and twisted twinkle, but a twinkle nonetheless. Okay. So just to clarify,

[00:22:11] we are pretty much at the point in the story where he gets busted and now we're going right back to the beginning. That's right. Okay. This is so good. What a brilliant setup. So we're going to start with his father. His father is called George Gein and he was orphaned at three when his family's wagon got caught in a flash flood and his mum, dad and his baby sister were all taken by the flood and were drowned in seconds. When he, as a three-year-old, he was just, he was just fine. He was found days later. I don't know if he was staying with someone else because after that,

[00:22:41] he then went to stay with his grandparents. He had quite a quiet childhood or so it seemed, but throughout life, it's said that George was a bit of a loser, just a guy who failed to keep jobs and turned to heavy drinking. But his trauma from his childhood probably really stuck with him because when he got drunk, he'd swing between feeling self-pity, feeling worthless and then basically blaming life for his bad luck and everything else. Yeah. Shame. But at 24, there is a glimpse of happiness for George.

[00:23:10] He meets a 19-year-old woman called Augusta. Now, Augusta couldn't be further from George. They say that opposites attract, but when you hear about Augusta, their relationship doesn't really make sense. Go on. She comes from a strict, rigid family, one of many who immigrated from Germany in 1870. Hence the name. Yeah. She's described as thick-set. Not my words for the record. What does that mean, thick-set? I guess just a, quite a sturdy, won't fall over in the wind. Oh, okay. Yeah.

[00:23:40] Like she's got good working girl legs. She knows how to pick up pails of milk. I can only imagine. Yeah. Yeah. You know a good working girl set of legs where they're like sturdy. Yeah. Good German sturdy legs. I think the thing is the family were born into hard work, so very physical labor and also like a really devout Lutheran Christians. Sure. Okay. Her father enforced this really strict upbringing with regular beatings. And so that all kind of

[00:24:09] rubbed off on Augusta in terms of how she would then become to be. She was outraged by any hint of loose morals, especially from women. So if she caught another woman showing a glimpse of an ankle, she was a whore. Of course. It's the time. Because like the 20s came around and then it was like all of a sudden a little bit more socially acceptable to start showing a bit more leg. So like... Like a calf. No, no. Got up to the knees. Ooh. Right? Ooh. A bit of knee now. Bit of knee action. And then like to really accentuate

[00:24:38] the knees, women of the 20s started putting rouge on their knees. Like a little bit of red rouge. Hence why from the song Chicago, gonna rouge my knees. I don't know the lyrics, but it's one of the lyrics that are in there where they say rouge my knees and that is basically putting makeup on your knees. Is that because they were all dirty from all the blowjobs they were giving? Adam, this is why me and you are together. It's the very first thing I thought. I was like,

[00:25:07] oh, dirty bitches. Chicago is set in a prison. Yeah. That is not red rouge on their knees. It's blood. It's bruises from all the blowjobs they've been giving to the guards. Yeah, that's the alternative cut I think that we've seen. Get me in that woman's prison! So Augusta, she was this right, domineering, self-righteous woman, so hardly the life of any party. And yet George fell in love or at least was drawn to her.

[00:25:36] Maybe she pushed him and gave him more structure, something he was lacking in life. Or maybe she was really good at wrapping her legs around his neck and just squeezing with those good German sturdy working woman legs. No, she definitely didn't do that. Okay. You'll see why. But maybe George's self-worth and being a bit of a pushover was enough for Augusta. She could control him or influence him. Maybe no one else could even stand to be in Augusta's

[00:26:05] presence long enough. And so she felt superior to everyone essentially. So one thing led to another and they married on December 11th, 1900. George worked periodically as a carpenter, a tanner, a farmer, but struggled with alcohol abuse which increasingly worsened over the years. Augusta, being the woman she was, she belittled George, calling him a lazy dog. Once Augusta learned that George was spending his wages at a bar, she basically blew the roof off because her disappointment

[00:26:35] snapped in full-blown contempt. George would react by withdrawing, giving Augusta hours and even days of icy silence. So the two just don't really seem like they're made for each other. Possibly. Possibly. So Augusta had enough of him and she would actually pray on her knees begging for God to take her husband's life. And was her knees ruched? What is wrong with me? I don't know. But anyway, of course, divorce was not an option

[00:27:04] being a devout Christian and with God not listening to Augusta's prayers and striking George down in his pride, the next best option, of course, was a fix-it baby. Yes! We have problems. Let's have a baby. Yeah, exactly. But it's weird that it's coming from Augusta. Well, I think she still wanted to be a mother, perhaps, but the thing is she loathed sex. Not just premarital, any kind of sex disgusted her. Really? Is it from a religious point of view

[00:27:34] or did she have something medically wrong with her? I think it's this religious point of view and also she, you know, she didn't like women showing themselves off, fornicating, all sorts of things. She just did not agree with it. Sure. So she let George do his duty. They mated, is the best way as I could describe it. And that couldn't have been easy for George because I just imagine Augusta there with her arms crossed and a right face on. And so how could anyone give her the best moves? I just imagine,

[00:28:04] yeah, it'd be really awkward. They aren't married. They have had sex. I don't know if they have or if they have begrudgingly done it. She was probably at least just doing what she felt like she needed to do to keep George happy because otherwise surely George wouldn't have stayed with her, right? Maybe initially but then she's praying for him to die so I don't know how much sex she's giving him. No, interesting. Okay, so they've essentially mated. Yep, George manages to do the deed and nine months later on January 17th,

[00:28:33] 1902, their son Henry is born. But George was a lousy parent and still couldn't hold a job and Augusta forced him into a business and a grocery. He basically sets up a grocery and a meat store under his name but he really sucks at keeping it running so Augusta basically takes over everything. Right. The bookkeeping, the management, all of it. She even changed the sign to list herself as the owner and relegated George to being basically a clerk. So yeah, she... Ooh, demeaning. She loved the power I guess you could say and just kind of

[00:29:03] taking over. But at the same time they are trying to raise the family together. They have a household to maintain. If your husband's a bit of a deadbeat and he is not really doing what he needs to do, you kind of had it coming, George. You had it coming. Yeah. The other thing is Augusta at this point in time doesn't really have much of a bond with her new son Henry. She blamed it on him being a boy and she desperately wanted a girl. So yeah, she's kind of

[00:29:32] providing for her son but she's not that warm or hasn't warmed to him that much yet. So to keep Augusta happy George agreed to have another child and on August the 27th 1906 Edward Theodore Gein arrived and Augusta wasn't best pleased because it was another boy. God, okay. It's not what she had planned but there was a slight change in her attitude. The night she held her newborn son she vowed that he'd be different not like those lustful foul-mouthed men who defiled

[00:30:02] women's bodies. She wanted to protect his innocence and later Edward speak of his mother with tears in his eyes how she was this pure goodness that shaped him. So basically he worships his mum. He remembered one day she gave him coins for town or going into town and he dropped them and came home in tears and she scolded him which cut him really deep and says to him you're a dreadful child only a mother could love you and those words echoed in his mind. So you've got this real

[00:30:31] horrible verbal abuse yet he idolises his mother. Yeah that's strange and that's quite a dark thing to also comprehend in some of her mind as well. It almost feels like a bit of Stockholm Syndrome going on there. She is completely in control of him. She's not very nice to him at times. I'm sure she's also very nice to him at other times as well but that sounds like quite a cruel thing but for him to hear those words from her you are only someone that a mother could love.

[00:31:00] Maybe she's a smother. A smother. And maybe this is her way of guaranteeing that her little precious boy never gets married. It's interesting you say that I bet you that's what's going to happen with my sister and her son. She loves her son so much that she up until disturbingly until he was like 10, 11 she was like Matthew you're going to marry mummy aren't you? I wouldn't be surprised if she still says that today. I think 10 or 11 that's probably okay.

[00:31:30] Is it? When he's 18. If you're still saying it's probably not okay. Calling him while he's on a date. Time to cut the umbilical cord. Yeah you could say that I think and one of his earliest memories was when he was a toddler at the top of the stairs and he slipped and he was certain he was just going to fall but his mother saved him basically reached out and like pulled him back to safety and from that moment he saw her as this god-like protector against the world's dangers. I mean that's very normal for people to have that view of their parents

[00:31:59] anyway. Yeah. It's the sad reality when you start turning to a teenager and then you realize actually my parents are just big kids do you know what I mean that also don't have their shit together. He hasn't had the chance to realize that at this moment in time. Yeah. So I get it it's weird how that transitions from your parents being almost god-like to then just being regular people then to being quite weak and frail. Yeah but I think it's interesting I don't think he ever really grew out of that though. Well he continued to idolize his mum for

[00:32:29] his whole life. For his entire life yeah. One of the things that Augusta would do and I think this also kind of made him behave in the way that he was because she kind of led a very strict household Augusta would read to her boys daily from the bible and she'd gather them at the kitchen table and read from the old testament and revelation passages about death murder and god's wrath. And Ed soaked it all in. He was absorbing all of this information and I guess this very strict

[00:32:59] religious household and the way that he was told to treat women or not go near women sets him on this sort of slightly dark path. Yeah you kind of alluded to this earlier on that a lot of the things that happened to him in his childhood really influenced him as an adult. He's sitting here absorbing all these really dark like brutal passages from the bible revelations and probably Genesis and probably because of her really super conservative upbringing these are the things that are actually

[00:33:27] formulating who he is going to be for us like yeah sure a lot of things that happened to us in our childhood they influence us but as we then go out into the world we have other experiences coming in that continue to refine us. Yeah. What I'm getting from you here is that that's not really happening he is set by the time he's a teenager based on his upbringing. Yeah pretty much all these experiences as a kid and a teenager young adult are really formative and yeah he doesn't have much of a

[00:33:57] an outside influence as we'll begin to learn. Another memory that was key to Ed's development is a bit of a haunting memory one that will kind of mirror what happened with Bernice. So at his parents grocery store he watched animals be led into a forbidden back room and one day when no one was looking he slipped inside and he peered through a crack and a hog was hung upside down from the ceiling by a chain and his father had held it steady while his mother slit its belly and pulled back the flaps and eased out the

[00:34:27] glistening ropes of its bowels and into a metal tub. Adam don't make that sound poetic all right that was gruesome. I'm building an image. You painted it but you didn't need to make it sound like that. So he watched this and what was he fascinated by it? Well yeah he sees his mother and his father in these aprons they're splattered with blood and she turned around to him and because she caught him watching Oh I can imagine that him turning around and going pointing the finger going you get out of here. Pretty much and years later he'd

[00:34:57] say he never forgot that moment and quite clearly the way that his parents were butchering that hog is kind of what he would go on to do. After a while Augusta decided to move the family to Plainfield. She felt like the family needed a fresh start away from all the temptation of a city and she bought the farm herself in her name not her husband's and she wanted to yeah have a bit more of a country life a bit more of a pure life for her and her sons.

[00:35:26] Growing up teachers would remember Ed as odd especially like this laughing that he would do he would just burst out laughing like he was telling himself his own private jokes. Or like hysterically like a madman. I don't know if it was like a maniacal laughter but it was just I guess he would be laughing and people would turn around and go like what's so funny who are you talking to? I mean I do that all the time I'll be like I said this one thing was one time so funny. Maybe maybe he's recording that. He would crack these jokes which would make everyone like go oh that's

[00:35:55] disgusting I guess a dark twisted sense of humour. Yeah that's it I wouldn't say dark I'd say twisted. He would often mimic other kids mannerisms I guess to fit in or to try and form a bond with them but he kind of did it creepily and would just make everyone like we just don't want to go near him sort of thing. Right okay so he's not making fun of them he's genuinely doing this because he's like okay how are these people acting if I act like them then I could be one of them. I think so. Is that where that's rooted in? I think he wanted to

[00:36:24] try and befriend some of them because he'd rush home afterwards when he like does strike up a bit of a connection and he would tell his mum the good news about the fact that he's finally made a friend but then she would reel off all the reasons why that kid was no good like the boy's family had a bad reputation or there were rumours that the father's past was I don't know he was a criminal or the mother had questionable virtue is what she used to say. So the next day he would then avoid that person at school because he was terrified of her wrath. That's awful.

[00:36:54] This poor kid who really majorly feels like an outsider is already struggling socially doesn't really have someone in his life to kind of help him adapt in society in an unhealthy way and then boom he makes a friend only for his mum to just do that to him. Yeah I guess that's the thing every time he gets somewhere with this he's kind of pulled back into this isolated family. Augusta's my sister. She just wants to keep poor Ed just all

[00:37:24] to herself for the rest of her life. That's what she wants. Yeah and it wasn't easy because kids would often pick on him sometimes because of the way he behaved. He seemed more feminine than other boys. He also had a lazy eye from some growth on his eyelid and so kids would pick on him and would make him cry and so that only reinforced the stuff his mother would say about these kids and I guess that just made him closer with his mum because it was like yeah mum's right. Now the boys are out of school and are men now and they're working on the farm.

[00:37:54] It's probably important to note that at this point Henry, Ed's brother, he's pretty normal to be fair all things considered. He still had the same kind of lectures and everything else about the Bible and whatever and wasn't really allowed to make friends but somehow he kind of broke free of that. He didn't just listen to his mother. Exactly like he has allowed the other experiences from outside of the home to kind of infiltrate his psyche and how he is and who he is etc and he's probably adjusted.

[00:38:23] I guess if he didn't do that then he might have ended up a little bit like Ed. Yeah, exactly. But as they get older Augusta goes into overdrive about the wickedness of women. She makes them promise to stay pure and she even says if your lust gets too strong it's better to spill your seed on the ground than sin with a woman. What do I just dare on the carpet? Yeah, just jerk off into the dirt. I don't know. I just imagine her coming out and then rubbing his nose in it. I imagine that's what she would do. I'd just have that

[00:38:53] vision in my head. Well, do you know what? You're not far off this because Shut up. Once Augusta caught Ed in the bath with a National Geographic magazine. Look at the knobs on it! That's a reference from Friends, just in case people don't know where Joey is giggling at a pig that he sees in the National Geographic magazine and he's commenting on the knobs on it. Yeah, well I don't know if he's looking at pigs at this point. Or he's probably looking at some kind of traditional

[00:39:21] African tribesmen or something like that. Quite possibly. But the thing is that's what we did when we were kids, right? When there's no porn, there's no internet, where do you get your porn from? For me, it was the Argos catalogue. Yeah, that's right. It's usually a lingerie catalogue. Yeah. Some lacy fronts over there. Sometimes if you were lucky, you would walk into the woods and you might find a porno magazine and then you would just use that and clearly some kids left it in there and they come and they look at it. You're not supposed to steal it. You're supposed to

[00:39:51] leave it there once you've done what you've done with it. Do you stamp it? At a library? Yeah. You just come on it. Yeah. And that's your stamp. And then sometimes if you were lucky, one of your mates would distribute a VHS tape around all your mates and they would all watch it. But the problem was after like the hundredth time that's been around the circuit, you'd get to the real good bit. But because that bit's been rewound and played and rewound and played, the video progressively just gets worse and worse and worse and worse

[00:40:21] up until the bit that's good like the money shots and then you can't see anything. You're like, oh, there's a point of this. That was an insight into your childhood, wasn't it? Well, you've never had a shared VHS tape that's gone around with porn on it. I've never had a shared one, no. Okay, I'll tell you what I'm going to do. I'm going to record some porn on a VHS and I'm going to be like, have my backpack with me and we'll be like in town and I'll be like, hey Adam, I've got something for you. And you'll be like, what is it? And I'll open up

[00:40:51] my backpack and you'll be like, oh. And I'm like, you've got to keep this safe. Don't show anyone. If your parents find it, just like tell them that it's your graduation video. And you'll be like, yeah, okay. And then I'll let you go home and I'll set up the VHS and then you can watch the weird porn. I'll make sure like to grab the VHS and like scribble out a little bit where it gets good so you get the full experience. Do you know what I mean? Where it's progressively getting worse and worse. Adam, I'd like a thank you. Thank you, Kyle.

[00:41:23] Awkward. What were we talking about now? I've come out you've forgotten. Ed. Oh yeah, that's right. He was diddling with himself. To a National Geographic. I think so. But the thing I was trying to get to was Augusta had grabbed his genitals and said, you know, this is the curse of man. So she basically stopped him in his tracks. But she encouraged this. No, she said... In the floor, not the bar. Yeah, but don't have any inspiration from the

[00:41:53] National Geographic. Yeah, I guess so. God. Yeah, you've got to rely on your mind. But like, if I'm not exposed to the things that I can fantasize about, then how am I supposed to know what to fantasize about? It will just be pigs and farm animals. just be pigs. Yeah. I hope, this is the thing, I hope Ed Guy's not doing this because he doesn't allow room for new things to come in. So if he is wanking over a pig, he's going to continue wanking over a pig. I think that's the least of our concern right now. Possibly. I don't know what's

[00:42:23] coming next, but possibly. So by 1937, George, Ed's father, was a shell of a man. He was so ill, he needed round-the-clock care, actually. Three years later, in 1940, George died at the age of 66. Heart failure brought on by alcoholism. The family actually felt relief. The burden of caring for him was over. So it wasn't an easy life, I don't think. But farm life didn't actually get any easier because they had to work extra hard day and night just to kind of keep things

[00:42:52] ticking over. The house was starting to fall apart. They didn't have indoor plumbing, electricity, they just relied on oil lamps, and they had an outhouse. So quite a poor family, really. The brothers took odd jobs in Plainfield. Ed worked as a handyman and believe or not, a babysitter. Kids loved him. Kids love me. Well, he did like magic tricks. He would like hold snowball fights in the winter. Give them

[00:43:21] his national geography. Look at the knobs on it! But I think from his perspective, he felt like he understood children better than adults. And so to the townspeople, maybe a bit odd, but harmless because he's just having fun with kids. But that sounds very weird. So after the dad's death, Henry was far more outgoing. He was able to break free a bit. He wasn't always tied to the farm. He took jobs on the railroads as a contractor.

[00:43:50] He led crews in the field. He lived in a world unlike Ed who barely left home. And the thing is, even though I say that, both of them still lived at home into their 40s. So pretty late that they weren't settling down with a woman or a family or anything like that, they were still with their mum. It sounds like Henry probably is doing this because he needs to be the man of the house, right? He's stepping up. Ed Gein, I think, is a different reason. Yeah, I think so. The two of them, they got along mostly, but they would fight over the fact that

[00:44:20] Henry would say, well, why are you kind of weirdly close with mum? What's going on? Like I do? Sort of thing. So to make matters worse, Henry fell in love with a divorced mother of two. Henry, despite being in his 40s, managed to have girlfriends outside of the home. He had planned to move in with his girlfriend, but of course, that was the exact kind of woman that Augusta

[00:44:50] tried to warn her boys of, a divorced woman, of course. Yeah, sadly, two kids, no. Yeah, and so that is something that Ed and Henry would fight about, but sadly for Henry, Henry died at the age of 44. Oh. That day, the brothers were fighting a fire on their property. Supposedly, it was started on purpose to encourage fresh vegetation to grow there, but the fire got out of control and started taking over, heading towards the house.

[00:45:20] So Ed, he says that he escaped the flames by retreating into a nearby marsh, but he lost Henry along the way. So Ed went to gather a search party, including the town sheriff. They returned to this burned patch of land, and coincidentally, Ed led them straight to Henry's body, which was pretty convenient considering he had trouble tracking his brother down, and all of a sudden, he just goes to a spot and is like, oh, there's Henry. Henry's body is laid on the scorched earth, but seemed like it was untouched

[00:45:50] by fire. There were no burns on his skin and his clothes were intact. So the coroner ruled the death by asphyxiation from the smoke, which may have been the case, but they seemed to discard the fact that Henry had some odd bruises on his head as if he had been hit. Yeah, so what we're saying is we think that Mr. Eddie Gein murdered him. He's been storing him somewhere. He's gone ahead and set this fire or this fire has happened. And then he's like, this is a great cover. Let me move this body. Well,

[00:46:20] the death was ruled an accident at the time. No one suspected foul play. They just think that maybe he got his injuries on his head from when he fell. But I think later on questions did arise because what really happened here, could Ed have killed his brother, especially when there was a lot of tension at that time that he's about to move out and, you know, Henry would always question him about his relationship with his mother. So, yeah, people suspect that this was Ed's first murder. Wow. Okay, his first

[00:46:50] murder was his brother. How much do you want to bet his second murder is his mum? I'm not going to bet that. Okay. After Henry died, Augusta's health took a turn. She often felt faint and one day she was so sick, Ed drove her to the hospital and after a long exam, the doctors said that she had had a stroke, though Ed stayed by her side every hour he was allowed. When she was well enough to go home, he carried her across the threshold into her bed and he tended to her every day and night, giving her whatever she needed,

[00:47:19] food to eat, he would bathe her, he would dress her, it was terrible to see her so helpless in his eyes, she was his world. By mid 1945, Augusta was able to walk again but just barely and true to form she would always push Ed away whenever he tried to help. In the winter of 1945 she ordered Ed to buy a straw for the farm but she didn't trust him to handle the deal alone so she went with him because she was controlling. They arrived to find a man beating

[00:47:49] a dog with a stick and the dog died on the spot. And so this man's girlfriend rushes out upset over the dog trying to plead with him to stop and Augusta is furious but not because of the violence towards the dog. She was pissed that this weak man was living in sin with that woman and the sight of that woman intervening just thought she was some harlot and that stayed with her for days. Wow. That really got to her which is crazy. I just think for

[00:48:18] someone to be so angered and emotional over someone just living their life. Yeah for sure. That's cruel. And this anger that she felt towards this woman apparently triggered her second stroke. Ed rushed her to the hospital again but on December 29th 1945 Augusta died at the age of 67. I just wish that would happen to more people. More hateful people out there who get so angry at other people living their life that they get themselves in such a

[00:48:48] tizzy that they have a stroke and die. Do you know what I mean? That would help out a lot of people. It would help out the entire gay community. It would help out the trans community. It would help out all the marginalized people. Everyone. Just all the people who have got so much hate. Just get yourself in such a tizzy that you have a stroke and die. Bye. Yeah. You probably would cut a third of the world. At Augusta's funeral Ed wept in

[00:49:17] uncontrollable grief. No one from Plainfield really turned up except for him. So Ed was deeply upset. He had lost his only friend really. The townspeople watched over him afterwards and just recognizing just how emotional he would become whenever he would speak about his mother. He still helped out in Plainfield but Ed stopped shaving and bathing. His neighbors complained that he stank. He became more reclusive and he even closed off the entire second floor of his house. Which is where Augusta

[00:49:47] stayed. Almost keeping it like a shrine. Like a shrine yeah I was gonna say. So poor kid he's really crumbling. Like unfortunately it is Augusta's doing. Like she has not prepared him for a life without her. That's true actually. That's a good way of putting it. So Ed moved into the dining room off the kitchen. He only really used two or three rooms in the house. So the rest of it sort of fell into decay. Dirty dishes would pile up. They were never washed. There was rubbish all over the floors. He leased a few acres to a neighbour for income. He did a few odd jobs. Handyman

[00:50:16] work. He would thresh wheat each season. Like chopping down wheat. Yeah. So when he would get with all the other farmers I guess they would you know a group of men would do it together. Tackle the work. They would be out there in the fields during the day and then after their shift they would come home and the wives would basically cook dinner for them. But the men would play jokes on him. They would steal his tools. Hide his boots. The wives often felt sorry for him despite that he was creepy. They still gave him food.

[00:50:46] This poor guy he doesn't have a brother. He's lost his father. He's now lost his mother. He's on his own in this world. He's trying to get by. Clearly he wasn't always in this state that he was in. So why would that not command at least a little bit of dignity and respect towards him? And that's what these women are seeing. It's just cruel that these guys are doing that. Yeah, they're showing sympathy. Although I think they are a little bit freaked out because he would just stare at them. I know like he's got these weird social kind of issues. It's a polite

[00:51:16] way of putting it, yeah. Do you think a part of him is maybe on the spectrum? If he was around today, would he have been diagnosed with some kind of aspergius or autism? Because he seems to really struggle with connecting with certain people. Quite possibly. They do say that he had mental health issues, which make a lot more sense when you hear about what he did. Okay, interesting. In his spare time, he dove into true crime magazines. Murder and lust became his favourite topics. He would recount grizzly tales at odd moments and making

[00:51:46] odd comments towards women about some of the stories that he would read. And despite all these interactions with people, he basically still longed for his mother and kept himself to himself. One thing would get him out of the house though, and that would be to venture to town to Mary Hoggan's tavern. So Mary was an interesting woman. She was about 50, described as heavyset as well. Oh my god, I'm getting the pattern here. So this is two women that he's gone after, the first one with Bernice and now Mary. They're both in their

[00:52:16] 50s. He's looking for a mother. Yeah, he's seeing something in these women. He definitely is, isn't he? Yeah. Interesting. So what does he, so he goes to see Mary. Yeah, she's 14 stone, she has a German accent and she swore like a trooper. Okay, so in a way a lot like his mother, except for the potty mouth. Yeah. Rumor has it she was twice divorced and used to run a brothel in Chicago. Ooh, cherry on the top there. Yeah, although I wasn't able to corroborate that, which is

[00:52:46] really annoying because I kept looking for different resources and only one or two mentioned that. But like you say, Mary reminded Ed a lot about his mother, but at the same point, she was everything Ed's mother would hate in a woman, yet she had a resemblance of Augusta that Ed couldn't shake. So Ed would visit her tavern perhaps to find comfort to be around someone that reminded him of his mother and people would actually believe that Ed had a crush on her. So it's not clear whether there was a romantic element to this, that he

[00:53:15] did fancy Mary, or whether he just liked to spend time with her because that helped him cope with losing his mother. Oh, interesting. Yeah, exactly. But that all ended on December the 8th, 1954, Oh, fuck me. He's going to shoot her, isn't he? Well, I was going to say a man walked into Mary's empty bar. Oh, no, wait, that bit is true. A man did walk into Mary's empty bar and froze because on the floor was a massive pool of blood. Oh, shit. And there's shell casings that lay nearby and there's a drag

[00:53:45] mark trail out of the door into the parking lot, suggesting that whoever had been killed there, their body had been taken. And Mary, of course, was missing and she was likely the victim of this attack. Okay, interesting. The thing is, no leads ever really emerged about what happened to Mary. She just vanished without a trace and I guess it kind of went quiet after this incident which allowed Ed to get back to normal life and then allowed him to then marry. Normal life killing women. Yeah.

[00:54:15] Interestingly, locals would say to Ed, had he tried to pursue Mary harder, she could have been safe because could have been living with him and he'd smile darkly and go, she's at my house right now. And they'd laugh off thinking, oh, it's just his weird humour. Silly old Ed being creepy again. Yeah. Not realising he's being 100% honest. I mean, do you know what? Sometimes the truth is easily disguised inside a joke. I do it all the time. Yeah, exactly. So let's return to the night of November the 16th,

[00:54:44] 1957, where we started this episode. Deputy Sheriff Schley and his partner has just found a woman's decapitated body, hung up with their insides stripped out in Ed's barn. They've just vomited from what they had witnessed and they're just having a minute, they're having a cigarette just to compose themselves. Sex and a cigarette. And of course they call for backup because once others arrive, they decide that they need to make their way into the main house where things are about to get much worse. Yeah. So as we know already, most of

[00:55:14] Gein's house upstairs and much of the ground floor is boarded off. Yeah. So it's been preserved exactly as it had been when Augusta was alive. Dust layered every surface, but what was worse was the smell. It stank. There was an overpowering mix of rubbish, feces, and rotten food. And yeah, apologies if you're eating or having a snack right now, but you may want to just pop that bit of food down whilst I continue. Oh, Jesus. Better start anuses. So several of the men

[00:55:44] were looking around the house and then some of them actually do run outside to vomit some more because it's that bad. In the middle of the kitchen, they hear rats scurrying around and along the countertops and in the corners of the room. The kitchen feels claustrophobic. There's mounds of trash and junk piled everywhere. It's like hoarders central, albeit nothing of any value, just rubbish. A bit like that woman from Friends who has that filthy apartment that Ross dates. I would live in her apartment. Really? She's got Mitzi! Yeah, well, no,

[00:56:13] it was a rat. No, but Mitzi was also there, right? Yeah, but what they killed was a rat. At least the rats are dying. So the windows are so grimy, if it was daytime, light would barely make it through. Empty cans of pork and beans lay everywhere. Ed heated them on the stove and ate them right from the can but then would just not throw the tins away. Sure, I get it. You get it? Yeah. Okay. On a shelf sat a coffee tin stuffed with chewing gum because who knows when you might need that again. So like you'd chew it and then put it in a tin.

[00:56:43] I was collecting like toenail collections. Yeah, it's weird though, isn't it? Some other items include three old radios though there was no electricity to use them, a placard reading in case of fire called 505. There was no phone either. A gas mask, empty pill bottles labelled for Augusta, a container of cheap cereal toys and crackerjack boxes, a rubber ball, a basin of sand, boxes old, magazines, out-of-date calendars, tubs of broken dishes, ropes and clothing from when Ed and Henry

[00:57:12] were our kids. Yeah, sounds like a lot of historical items that you've listed there like from his childhood as well and growing up and items belonging to his mum. Interesting. So it's almost like he's just left it exactly as it was at one moment in time and then what's just gathered on top of it is just more and more rubbish. More and more stuff. But the reason I kind of list some of these mundane things is because you see these when you walk into the room which makes it a lot more difficult to then pick out the odd items

[00:57:42] but then when you start to look like more closely at things you go, what the fuck is that? What? Get to the things now. Right now. So they see two sets of dentures which okay, maybe they're Ed's or his mums but then they see three bowls which look a bit odd. One still held some soup that Ed had been eating out of except they weren't bowls made from China instead they were made from skulls that had the cranium sawn off just above the temple. Shit. Okay.

[00:58:12] He's making something. Yeah. At the kitchen table stood three chairs the seat padding had been replaced from this old wicker weave now it was upholstered in human skin. No! Tanned and leathered or light leather. Oh! Human skin! Human skin. Okay, so straight away if this is what you're opening with what else has he tanned and skinned and upholstered? Well, we shall continue. Fuck me.

[00:58:42] Underneath the cushions were studded with white blobs of human fat that dripped and congealed during the crude tanning process. By the kitchen door a robe made of horse hide was draped on a hook but then the police gave it a kick and shone their torches and a small paper bag hidden beneath and inside that lay a lump of hair and desiccated skin. Rank. Among the piles of trash police found a lampshade made of human skin again and this lampshade

[00:59:12] was stretched and then there was wire that was used to shut the eyes make the noses flattened and then the lips were sealed. Oh my god do you know what another thing has inspired? What? Doctor Who's Cassandra. Yeah that was a giant piece of skin. Yeah. Although that was living. Yeah that's true. Gross. They found scraps of skin turned into leather bracelets and a knife holster. A waste basket was woven from wire and skin again. So this is

[00:59:41] really sick that someone could come up with all these creations. In some way he's quite crafty really but it's so creepy this is the kind of stuff that you don't want to see on a German store market at Christmas. Fuck me. Yes. Or or is it? I don't think it is. I've been to enough fucking German markets to realise that I don't want to go back to another German market unless I have something different to show. What about like one of the sausage? That's what I mean

[01:00:11] every year we go there's always the same stuff. There's always soaps, there's always churros and the grape food and the mulled wine, Christmas ornaments always the same stuff. Overpriced Christmas ornaments. Exactly. Like when we were in Austria wasn't it like we went into this Christmas shop and it was like 40 euros for one bauble. No thank you I'm sick and tired of it. Just once I'd like to see a human flesh lamp. Yeah maybe you will now. What else have they got in this house Adam? So some

[01:00:41] other ornaments include a jar full of noses and a box full of vulva which is the plural of vulva. Gross. So fannies. Yeah. How many? Well I don't know there was I guess more than one. How big is the jar? Pickle jar or like a small like pesto jar? Well this is a box so it's a little box that contained these vulva. Jesus. One had been painted and I'm trying to remember why but I can't remember exactly

[01:01:11] because it either was it turned bad and it'd gone green so he painted it silver either that or it's a novelty bauble. Moving on I can't imagine putting that on your Christmas tree for for the sake. What is that? What is that? Now I'm joking I'm joking because it's really awful and that's the only way to deal with it. It is this is the only way but I need to understand as a man who what? It's only touched one fanny. Technically I'm a platinum

[01:01:41] gay because A. Never touched a fanny. I was born by a c-section and I very rarely look at fannies. That's not a condition for this but okay. So I'm a platinum gay purebred gay but when you take a vagina off of a body does anything else come out or is it just like the face bit? I don't know and I don't know if I want to talk about that. I just need to know what's in this jar.

[01:02:10] Well there's a jar of noses and a box of vulvae and so it's enough that will fit in a box. That's all I know. Noses and vaginas. Oh those go together. So moving into Gein's bedroom above the bed was a clothesline which was hung with soiled handkerchiefs. Oh god. On the floor looked to be another skull shaped bowl except this wasn't for eating out of this was Ed's makeshift chamber pot. Ew. Books lay piled nearby and across the room a

[01:02:40] rocking chair had been covered and stitched in flesh yet again. More trash and rats of course and then officers were walking through the carpet and like they were kicking up clouds of green mold and a sudden blast of stench would like knock them back and then they'd have to flee the room. Along the walls there was a broken accordion, a violin missing its strings and four spotless firearms which apparently was the only clean items that Gein would clean. Wow. So that's the only thing he's cleaning. Yeah.

[01:03:10] The bed had a bare moldy mattress that was stained yellow. There were threadbare sheets bunched at the end and then the bedposts were made complete with human skulls which were fixed by a nail to the back to the head. God and he's sleeping with that. That's rank. In a corner lay his unwashed clothes. The window blind had a pull handle carved from human lips. Oh and they found a belt strap which was made of 15 stitched nipples stitched together by the areolas.

[01:03:41] Which I don't feel like they're big enough to make a belt. I guess he's stretching them? I guess so. I mean I once saw my mum's nipples and they were massive. They were really shockingly big. Yeah. Anyway. I don't look at boobs very often. Boobs or fatties or anything. You're platinum gay apparently. Then they came across what was left of Mary Hogan the woman who looked a lot like

[01:04:10] Augusta and who was thought to have been killed and kidnapped but there was no leads. So Mary Hogan's face had been lifted off the skull and preserved and transformed into a grisly ghoulish mask. But sadly Mary was not the only person Ed would make a mask of because Ed had crafted a full on bodysuit made out of two separate middle-aged women that Ed later admitted that he would put on that bodysuit along with

[01:04:40] this skin mask to become his mother. No! It's honestly it's just so much easier to kidnap Mary alive bring her back to your house and make her pretend to be your mum. It's the easiest thing Mary gets to live sure she's a prisoner but she gets to live. I don't think that's what he wanted. He wanted to become his mother. Oh shit really? In fact there were rumours that sometimes if you crept up to Ed's farm you'd see dead

[01:05:10] Augusta dancing naked in the moonlight but maybe that's not a ghost at all it was Ed dressed in a suit made of stitched human flesh. So yeah that now explains what Ed was likely going to be doing with Bernice's corpse. Jesus these poor women and I know like we laughed about it but also and it's because these things are so synonymous with these slasher horror movies right? There's so much ingrained in the zeitgeist and

[01:05:40] the culture that we also actually forget that all of those films like The Silence of the Lambs, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Psycho, they're all inspired by actual real events. These things pretty much happened and they inspired this really grotesque art. And so you've got I think all the victims here yeah we're joking about it a little bit just to kind of deal with the absurdity and the horror but all these victims there were someone's mum someone's what do we know much about these victims? We will actually

[01:06:09] we will get on to find out a little bit more because yeah the excavation of Ed's house dragged on until 5am the next morning and because there was just so much to go to get through. So what are they doing? Are they taking all this stuff out of the house? They're taking it for evidence and everything like that it's being photographed but then it's quickly being disposed of which prevents any further forensic investigation in later years to identify who some of these victims were. You know the police never knew who all those body parts necessarily belong to.

[01:06:38] Meanwhile Gein sat in a jail cell and he refused to confess. At 2.30am the sheriff that discovered Benice's body and went into the farmhouse he threw Ed against the wall and smashed his face into the bricks demanding to know everything that happened but Gein he denied everything. And so over 12 hours of interrogation and without a lawyer Ed held his silence. It was only the next day did he admit to Benice Warden's murder claiming he had blacked out and then

[01:07:08] two days later after another interrogation he did admit to Mary Hogan's murder again saying that he blacked out and wasn't conscious of what he was doing. Wow. But all the other victims he denies killing them instead he said he was grave robbing. Oh Jesus so he exhumed them essentially. Is that true? Well the police don't buy this at first they just think he's trying to get out of further punishment so even though he's a little bit weird they thought that he perhaps was he couldn't be

[01:07:38] that insane and had the mental competence to recognize that grave robbing probably would hold a lesser sentence than more murders. But at the same time like considering the number of body parts they found just counting the noses that they had sounds like quite a lot of people where was the alarm when those people went missing and it doesn't sound like there was. There wasn't because the local gravekeeper and the mortician they insisted that they've never seen any disturbed graves or anything like that because they would know about it really.

[01:08:08] But Ed claimed that he would only go after graves which had recent victims which were a lot easier to dig up essentially he could then take the body parts and then put everything back in order which he said was apple pie order which seems like a very weird saying to describe putting bodies back. So Ed is not a wasteful man and he would admit that he would put body parts back that he didn't need. Like what? Well I guess if he only needs an arm he'll take the arm and then won't take the rest of the body.

[01:08:38] Yeah he's quite So it depends on projects he's working on right? I guess so yeah. Jesus. Overall he said he made about 40 trips in his time to the graveyard and sometimes he would black out whilst digging them up and then he would come to and then realise oh what am I doing? I'm just going to go home and then he put everything back. He's trying to say that he wasn't in control of this impulse something else was acting on his behalf. That's what he's saying yeah. Interesting because the thing is that we watched a long time ago Bates Motel and he

[01:09:08] did a few things like that right? The mum would come outside and he'd dug this massive hole. He would also go into these trances as well wouldn't he? Yeah I don't know if they ever proved that happened but this is what he at the police says happened. The police eventually exhumed two caskets either because they took what Ed was saying seriously or they wanted to prove that he was lying but Ed's story checked out the bodies had been disturbed and parts of them were missing and that was enough to confirm Gein's story and they didn't need

[01:09:37] to go digging up any more graves essentially. So on November the 21st 1957 Ed Gein was brought into court accused only of Bernice Warden's murder. He pled not guilty by reason of insanity which was hardly a shock but then a month later after endless interviews and tests psychiatrists diagnosed him with schizophrenia and the judge agreed he wasn't well enough to stand trial. So Ed sent off to a central state hospital for the criminally insane and that became his final home.

[01:10:07] Really? So he pretty much died there? Yeah. Yeah he would go on to spend about 30 to 40 years. Shit that's a long time. Yeah. So he was round about in his 40s now right? So he lived right up until he was 80. Yeah I think he died in 1984. Wow. Yeah of lung cancer. God. So yeah he spent the rest of his life in this institute. During his early evaluations Ed blamed the way he had become

[01:10:37] down to the day that his mother watched that dog being beaten and then she had that fatal stroke. And so the local paper couldn't resist the headline that Gein diagnoses his own case blames dog. Well I mean very often you simplify headlines down to bare bones right? And that's what they did in this case. I mean yeah technically that's what he said in a roundabout way. So in the weeks that followed police argued over how many graves he had robbed and the worst truth slipped out that he'd stitched together a human skin suit to become his mother which the

[01:11:07] reporters jumped on and they were asking Ed if he ever tried to dig his mother up. He actually said that he you know looked into that but she had a concrete sealed casket and was out of reach. She knew that he would try. She was like the one thing that I want when I die. I don't want my son coming after me. Jesus. Ed does claim that he regularly heard his mother's voice in his head and after her death started to smell rotten flesh everywhere which was likely because his place

[01:11:37] stank of Ron Fresh. Yeah yeah. No that's you Ben. Reporters also asked if he had ever slept with any of the dead but he denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed because he's like ew gross they smell too bad. That's where he draws the line. Oh interesting. Wow. He said he would start seeing people's faces in leaves upon the ground. You're haunting him that's why. Yeah and the reason he dissected women's bodies was because he believed his mother's teaching that most women are sinful

[01:12:06] creatures and so he kind of then just experimented and kind of I don't know maybe because he was not allowed to be with women essentially kind of made him that morbidly curious about the woman's body. We also learned that Ed's morbid fascination about creating skin furniture could have been influenced by some of the hobbies he found himself obsessed about because Ed used to read about the Nazi war atrocities and he fixated on two female figures. One of them was Irma Gris who was

[01:12:36] named the hyena of Auschwitz and then there was Isla Koch the witch of Birkenwald. So what are they going to do with furniture made of skin? Well one of them Koch in particular she tortured and murdered prisoners and then harvest their skin for lampshades furniture and book bindings. Eesh that is that is dark book bindings. Yeah so whether that's where you got the inspiration from you know you can see all these things kind of pieced together there and go okay well that's how you

[01:13:05] become the person you were. Yeah. As weird as that is. Yeah. Interestingly just days before a planned auction the Gein farmhouse was burnt down. Some said that traumatized officers or angry neighbors basically torched the place. Sure why wouldn't you? I mean they have like Lutherians living amongst them of course they're going to look at that and go that's a devil house. Yeah. Burn it down. And I don't think anyone wanted it to become like a shrine or anything like that. No. And especially like poor Augusta. I mean I have very

[01:13:35] little sympathy for her at this point but she was a very religious woman and that's what he's turned her house into. Yeah that's true actually. Awful. Didn't think of it like that. So Gein's own car was sold to a carnival sideshow operator and they turned it into a morbid attraction branded the Ed Gein ghoul car and they charged 25 cents admission to see the very vehicle he used to haul bodies from grave sites. God. But after a brief run I think it was shut down because obviously that's gross. I. Adam.

[01:14:05] This is 1950s or whatever. That's not why they shut things down back then. Why do they not do that? I don't know. Taxes? The taxes man. The taxes. On November the 7th 1968 doctors eventually declared Ed fit for trial in the courtroom. He repeated his blacked out defense for killing his victims claiming the rifle fired itself during a testing session. Given the meticulous cleanup and mutilation that followed few believed him and without a jury the judge found him not

[01:14:35] guilty by reason of insanity again. Wow. So he sent straight back to the asylum and whilst alive Ed admitted nine grave exhumations between 1947 and 1954 and only confirmed the two murders of Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden which is odd because Ed is sort of known as a notorious serial killer but actually we only know that he killed two people and the rest were just dug up. Of course. You're so right there.

[01:15:04] He's like considered one of the most notorious serial killers ever and it's just assumed that he's killed these people but you're right. We didn't talk about any other murders other than those two. Yeah and I guess like to be considered a serial killer do you just need to do it twice? Because technically he did kill more than one with the same motive. I don't think I've got the headspace to really think about that. And then he may have killed his brother as well we don't know that. True but he was nagging at him for living at home and loving mum too much. Yeah experts do believe

[01:15:33] that Ed may have killed six to eight people overall. There were reports of people going missing in Plainfield before Ed's arrest and they were never found and so it's plausible that maybe some of them was because of Ed. Supposedly he had periods where he blacked out so maybe he forgot about these other murders. Ed spent the rest of his days in the asylum and that's when yeah he died of lung cancer in 1984 at the age of 77. Wow crazy. What even crazier

[01:16:03] they buried him in Plainfield Cemetery with his mum but ironically beside the very graves he once robbed. So if you're like a relative of someone he's dug up you'd be pissed at that right? Yeah yeah they're probably long gone. Maybe he did have an unmarked grave because I guess they didn't want people digging him up. No of course yeah because someone like him who becomes so notorious they will become almost a shrine so yeah I get that but he's in that cemetery somewhere. Yeah. But we know where

[01:16:32] his mum is. I guess so. Now some have commented whether Ed was transgender or at least some kind of dysmorphia about his identity and I think this largely comes from his infatuation with his mother and wanting to dress up as her or be her but there's no credible evidence that Ed Gein was ever transgender. I mean one the word probably didn't exist at that point. Exactly. I mean the word didn't exist. Yeah I'm not saying the feeling didn't exist. But it's dangerous because you don't want to draw that association

[01:17:02] with some of the things that he did with a community that is struggling as it is. Yeah and that's kind of the reason I bring it up but just because there are people wanting to understand well if he wanted to become his mother and dress up in these female skin suits did he have some kind of identity disorder. I think what most people can surmise from this is that he had this necrophilia and psychosis which wasn't a gender identity or anything like that and then the fact that he had schizophrenia and he had these weird

[01:17:30] fetish urges that you know the cross-dressing is just an aside part of things so I don't think there's... Yeah it's one factor out of a lot of weird things going on in his life and in his mind. Yeah and I think it all became from this obsessive fixation on his mother not anything down to transgender identity. Sure. And finally as we said earlier he's inspired these movies and some of the biggest horror movies like Psycho like Silence of the Lambs like

[01:18:00] Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Exactly because in Psycho the guy there he's obsessed with his mum he doesn't kill or dress up as his mum but he does kill his mum doesn't he? I've not seen it. Oh. I know what it's about. Is it Alfred Hitchcock who did Psycho? Yeah I'm aware of it I've not watched it. Hitchcock actually admitted that there was some connection but denied getting ideas from Ed which is interesting and then just over a decade later of when Psycho was released there's Leatherface from Texas Chainsaw Massacre where he's you know

[01:18:29] wielding a chainsaw and he's got a stitched skin mask and also it's got a farmhouse setting. Yeah. And then Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs he crafted a woman's suit who was literally walking in Ed's footsteps and so finally this story is worthy enough to be included in Ryan Murphy's anthology series Monsters. Now he gave us the Dharma TV show The Menendez Brothers and now Ed Gein is his sort of third part of his anthology series. Shut up! Yeah.

[01:18:58] And that's why you've done this episode? Very soon if not this week or the one just gone. But we're recording this ages like way before. Yes. Oh. You haven't told me when this is going to be released. No one knows yet. It's October. Okay. So that's why I say it's either the week before or week after. Okay. When you go Kyle the episode needs to drop. Yeah. I'm going to be like I'll move some things around. Exactly. I'll make some room for the vagina chats. Yes exactly. So Ed Gein he's going to be played by Charlie Hannum. Who's that? Best known for

[01:19:28] Queer as Folk and Sons of Anarchy. The blonde one. From Queer as... The English version. Oh I don't recognize him but he does have a... Big forehead? No. He's got a lovely forehead. He reminds me of... Who's Bane? Tom Hardy. He reminds you of Tom Hardy. You know what I think? Yeah a little bit. He's cute. So the show is titled Monster. The original monster. Sheldon's mum from the Big Bang Theory. Oh brilliant.

[01:19:57] She's playing Augusta. Young Sheldon or older mum? Oh the Big Bang Theory not Sheldon show. Brilliant. So she was in Roseanne as well. Yeah. And she's going to do an amazing job because just that kind of mum figure who's just a bit of a bitch. I thought another person that would do really well as the mum would be the one who played I can't remember the actress's name who played Norman Bates' mother in Bates Motel. Oh yeah. She would have been quite good as well right? Yeah that's true actually. Yeah and even Alfred Hitchcock not himself

[01:20:27] but someone playing Alfred Hitchcock is going to be in the show as well. So it kind of I guess is going to cover the production of Psycho to some level after the event so we'll have to see how that pans out. If it's anything like the other shows it should be good. And so yeah that is the story of Ed Gein the butcher of Plainfield. Wow I don't like that name butcher of Plainfield. Ed Gein stands on its own as this notorious figure you know but what is really surprising

[01:20:57] that I just didn't know is that it's only proven that he's killed two people but the rest were grave robbers. Yeah and that's what I think a very it's a big misconception a lot of people until they learn about this story and yeah I mean there were a lot of bodies that he definitely exhumed. Sure and don't get me wrong it's horrific what you've described but isn't there a part of you which I've never felt before that almost has a little bit of sympathy towards him for his upbringing

[01:21:26] what he went through his psychological issues as well. and really yes he's killed two people that is horrendous but I don't get the sense that he is a Jeffrey Dahmer. Do you understand what I'm trying to get at there? An element of sympathy for him to a degree I think so. And I'm very careful with what I'm saying there because it's a little bit of both it's a little bit from here and a little bit from there but there is an element of sympathy. I think it's more of a case of in my opinion

[01:21:55] his mother Augusta who is almost a monster in herself and the way that she is. I get the sense that it's her influence on him and maybe from a different home different background he could have been brought up in a different way he may have killed don't know that might be inherent in him but I don't think he stood a chance and I think we can at least sympathize with him or have some understanding of the way he become I don't sympathize with what he did but I can just have some understanding of how he got there

[01:22:24] yeah for sure so this is interesting and I have a new perspective on it still horrifying but it's rounded now not interested in some skin furniture? oh definitely not no but I will be happy to see some of those at the German market where I will complain about the price I will not buy any fritters or any sausages but I will have a mug full of mulled wine yeah I can't get that back in my hand luggage on Ryanair

[01:22:55] what the lamp yeah the lamp that's not going to fit shall we run the outro? let's run the outro for this week Adam and that brings us to the end of another fascinating foray into the compendium an assembly of fascinating things if today's episode has sparked your curiosity then please do us a favour and follow us on your favourite podcasting app as we say every week it truly makes the world the difference and helps other people find the show and for our dedicated freaks out there don't forget next week's episode

[01:23:25] is already waiting for you on our Patreon completely free to access and if you want even more then join our certified freaks tier to unlock our entire archive and delve into exclusive content and get sneak peeks of what's coming next we'd love you to be part of our growing community we drop new episodes every Tuesday so until then remember a mother's love can guide her children or drive them to kill see you next week see you next week you