True Crime With Caledonian Kitty

(An officer gathering evidence from a room in Ed Gein's house. Picture credit: allthatsinteresting.com)

Continued from part two...

Please be aware that I will be sharing some graphic details and pictures in this post.

Once the police managed to get a hold of Ed Gein, they took him into custody and began the painstaking task of searching the farmhouse which was in darkness. Still relying on their flashlights, it was no easy task as the place was cluttered beyond belief and the smell was awful.

You can imagine the constant dread they must have felt after seeing the mutilated body of Bernice Worden in the woodshed after he had shot her with a .22 caliber gun, it was a wonder what they were going to see next. What they were entering was a world that none of them had ever known before, a nightmare beyond nightmares and all in the dark with just the flashlights to guide the way. 

It was a nightmare, everywhere they turned there was body parts, skin on lampshades, on chairs, nipples on a belt, noses, a face of a woman who had gone missing three years earlier (Mary Hogan) in a paper bag, Bernice Worden's head was found in a shoebox. It was one horrific discovery after another. I have listed what the police had found below:

- Bernice Worden's mutilated body in the woodshed

- 4 noses

- Bits of human bones and fragments strewn about the floor and on the walls

- 9 masks of human skin

- Bowls made of human skulls

- 9 female heads with the tops sawed off 

- Human skin covering chair seats

- Mary Hogan's head in a paper bag (she had also been shot with the .22 caliber gun and had gone missing three years before)

- Bernice Worden's head in a shoebox

- 9 vulvas in a shoebox

- 9 human skulls on his bed posts

- Human organs in his refrigerator 

- A pair of lips on a drawstring for a windowshade

- A belt made from women's nipples

- Gloves made from human skin

- A lampshade made from human skin

- A corset made from a woman's torso

- A vest made from women's breasts

(Some of the gruesome finds from Ed Gein's house. Picture credit: viralnova.com)

During this horrendous search the police came across a door which was boarded up, they managed to get it down and found a room which was spotless, it was dusty, smelled of damp and the walls were discoloured but it was the tidiest room in the house, this was Augustas's room. Ed had preserved it and left it untouched. 

Back at the police station, Ed agreed to talk to the police as long as they gave him some apple pie with cheddar cheese on top. After he finished eating this strange combination, he confessed to the killings of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, He didn't confess to killing his brother. He told investigators that he had been stalking graveyards from 1947 to 1952 and had visited a total of 40 times but only 10 out of those occasions did he steal a corpse. He said when he dug up the bodies he was in a daze, sometimes he would come out of it and leave the cemeteries, other times he would proceed on and take the bodies with him. The police checked his story by exhuming two graves and found them to be empty which confirmed to them that he was telling the truth about that.

The news of Ed's crimes spread like wild fire and everyone in Plainfield was in horror and in shock, the world's media all arrived and nobody could believe what had happened. Robert Bloch wrote Psycho about a man who was controlled by his mother and his book was almost completed by the time Ed Gein's crimes were discovered. Bloch said ''I discovered how closely the imaginary character I'd created resembled the real Ed Gein both in overt act and apparent motivation.''

Ed was deemed legally insane and unfit to stand trial (he diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia). His first confession was thrown out due to the sheriff (who was present at the questioning) physically assaulting Ed by bashing his head against a wall. The sheriff, Art Schley suffered a heart attack at the age of 43 just shorty after tesifying at Ed's trial. Some people believe that he never got over the horror of the case.

Ed was sent to a psychiatric hospital, whilst he was there an auction of the farmhouse and some of his belongings was due to take place but a mysterious fire destroyed the property and all that was inside. The only thing that was left was his car which was sold to a fun fair owner by the name of Bunny Gibbons. Bunny took the car all over America and charged people to see it. When Ed was told that the farmhouse was gone because of the fire he said ''Just as well.'' 

In 1968 he was deemed fit enough to stand trial and was found guilty of first degree murder and was sent back to the Psychiatric Hospital to live out the rest of his days. He was said to have been a polite, model prisoner but sometimes when there was a full moon he would sit and ramble in a really creepy, disturbing way about what he wanted to do to women. The majority of the time he kept himself to himself.

Ed died on the 26th of July 1984 of respiratory and heart failure, he was 77 years old. In another strange turn of events, he was buried next to his mother in Plainfield Cemetery just a few feet away from his victims. Henry, Ed, Augusta and George's graves are all side by side. Ed's stone was stolen and the thief put chips of the stone up on Ebay, the police managed to track him down and the stone was recovered and placed in a museum. The grave is now unmarked but there are always flowers, notes and tributes left by horror and true crime fans.

(Ed Gein's unmarked grave in between Henry and Augusta. Picture credit: death2ur.com)

For the people who lived in the town, a lot of them moved away and they had no sympathy for him when he died, They were disgusted by the murders but also by what he had done with the deceased bodies and they were glad when the farmhouse was burned down because they were concerned that Palinfield was going to having a stampede of tourists wanting to visit the house.

So who did burn down the farmhouse? Nobody knows to this day.

What's also interesting about the Ed Gein case is that he was never offically classed as a serial killer although some people think of him as one. If he had been charged with Henry's death that would have been three murders (that we know of) that he committed thus giving him the title of serial killer. 

RIP to Mary Hogan, Bernice Worden and Henry Gein.

Thank you for checking out my latest case, see you in the next one x

Further reading & sources:

- Deviant: True Story of Ed Gein By Harold Schechter
- Ed Gein | History
- Ed Gein | Bernice Worden | History
- Ed Gein | Wikipedia
- The Ed Gein House
- Ed Gein | Murderpedia
- Ed Gein Docu
- Ed Gein | Movie

(The Gein Farmhouse: Picture credit: allthatsinteresting.com) 

Continued from part one...

As I mentioned in part one, please be aware that I will be sharing some disturbing details. 

With no sign of Henry as the night wore on, Augusta sought the police and a search around the local area took place. In a strange twist of events, Ed told some of the police officers to follow him and he led the police to his brother's body. Henry was lying on the ground untouched by the fire but with brusing to his forehead. It was obvious some kind of struggle had taken place and Henry had suffered injuries to his head but the police decided not to pursue Ed on the matter and declared that Henry had died due to smoke inhalation.

It's a mystery why the police didn't press on with this further but it was reported by other people who lived in the town at that time, that everyone thought that it was just another tragedy that happened and that the Gein family had already been through enough having lost George just a few years before.

Henry was buried in Plainfield Cemetery a couple of plots away from George and no more was mentioned of his death. 

Ed and Augusta continued to live in the farmhouse and their strange, unhealthy bond seemed to be stronger than ever although it was a very distructive relationship. Augusta constantly belittled Ed and he had a love/hate relationship with her. No matter what she said or did he worshipped her and only wanted to please her.

Some time later, Augusta's health began to fail and she suffered a series of strokes. Ed was worried sick, he could not live without his mother, she was all he knew. He did everything he could for her but she passed away on the 29th of December 1945. Ed was beside himself and cried like a baby at her funeral. Despite the way she treated him and the lack of love towards him, all he wanted to do was make her happy and make her love him. 

Suddenly, here he was alone in this big old farmhouse not knowing what to do or how to look after himself. Some of the locals felt sorry for him and continued to give him odd jobs to do as well as having him over for dinner and sometimes he would babysit their children. He never let anyone come inside of his house. That's one of the things that some people don't know about Ed Gein, people actually liked him, they thought he was eccentric and had a strange way about him but they thought he was gentle and they trusted him.

As time went on, Ed became more and more isolated and being in the farmhouse alone haunted him, everything reminded him of his mother and he could still hear her voice in his mind. He boarded up her bedroom which was left tidy and untouched. He also boarded up the downstairs parlor and livingroom as these were areas that his mother used a lot. He lived on tins of pork and beans and slept in a small room next to the kitchen. The kitchen and room soon became cluttered and filthy.

It wasn't long before there was no electricity and there was a problem with the plumbing at the house, it's a wonder how Ed managed to get through the winter weather in these conditions. He lost himself in books and enjoyed reading about death cults, adventures and human anatomy. 

He became obsessed with dead bodies and believed that he had the power to bring people back from the dead, he fantasized about exhuming a body and also about becoming a woman. 

Ed told investigators later on that he started visiting local cemeteries late at night in 1947. He would read the obituaries in the local newspaper and find out who was having a funeral on a certain day and if they were female and around his mother's age. He would sneak in to the graveyard late at night with a shovel and dig for hours until he retrieved the body from the coffin where he would put it in the back of his Ford Sedan and go back to his farmhouse. 

There, the body would be laid on a table and Ed would try and perform some sort of ritual to bring them back from the dead. He would then dismember the body and preserve the parts. There's still speculation to this day if he did or did not eat human flesh but he did say that he didn't have sexual intercourse with the bodies as ''they smelled really bad''. 

It makes you wonder, the horrible thought that if the bodies didn't give off an odour, would he have done that? it's something that one does not dare to think about. 

If you thought the story of Ed Gein was disturbing enough so far, it's about to get even worse. He continued his routine of searching the obituaries and digging up corpses which was sickening enough but the way he treated the bodies afterwards was a horror in itself beyond anyone's nightmares. Ed liked to make furniture out of people's remains. I will include the list of gruesome finds that the police documented in a moment but first I want to move onto the horrific murder of Bernice Worden which took place in 1957. Bernice owned a hardware store in Plainfield and always got on so well with Ed. She was well known and liked in the town and when her shop was closed on the 16th of November, everyone was wondering what was going on. 

Bernice's son went to the shop to find the cash register opened and some blood. When the police arrived he told them that Ed Gein had been in the shop the night before asking about anti-freeze. Ed said he would be back in the morning and there was a receipt with his details next to the cash register. Bernice's son had always felt uncomfortable around Ed Gein, especially the way he looked at his mother, there was something not quite right about him. The police were in two minds at first, thinking how could this possibly be connected to harmless Ed Gein but when they saw the receipt they thought that they'd better check it out. 

When the police arrived at Ed's farmhouse it was pitch black because of the lack of electricity so they had to rely on flashlights. They went to the wood shed behind the house and whilst they were trying to concentrate on where they were walking, one of the officers felt something against his shoulder, he moved the flashlight towards the object and to his absolute horror, there was Bernice Worden's body hanging upside down, gutted and her head had been decapitated. One can not imagine how those officers must have felt that night, stood there on that isolated farm, in the darkness with just the flashlights and this horrific sight of this poor woman's remains before them. 

It was time to find Ed Gein as soon as possible and get inside that house, what was this monster hiding in there?

Continued in part three...

Ed Gein: Picture credit: mentalfloss.com) 

I've lost count of how many times I've had requests from readers to write about Ed Gein. It's a case I've always been interested in but I thought that everyone already knew the story. What I found out was, that a lot of people just know bits and pieces of his story but not the whole story. 

Here is a man who inspired the iconic characters of three of my favourite movies, The Silence Of The Lambs (Buffalo Bill), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (Leatherface) and Psycho (Norman Bates). It makes sense that I should write about him and this is where the true crime community and the horror community meet. Ed Gein's crimes were so shocking that if you combined the characters he inspired, Buffalo Bill, Leatherface and Norman Bates, you would still be nowhere near as horrifying as Ed Gein was. 

And yet, through my research of him I found myself having a strange mix of emotions, there was a feeling of disgust at the things he had done but also a feeling of sadness, I was feeling sadness because of the way his mother treated him and I will go into all of that as we delve further. 

First of all before you get settled in and taken on this journey with me into the life and crimes of Ed Gein, I just want to remind you that you can find me on the following social media platforms and if you're interested in reading my weekly personal posts or want to buy me a coffee and help support my blog, you can do so here 

And just a quick note, I will be sharing some gruesome details so please be warned.

Let's begin...

Ed Gein is a name that many horror and true crime fans are familiar with. He's usually described as this insane character who made furniture out of dead bodies that he stole from his local graveyard. That is true but it's not the only part of the story of Ed Gein. He has been the inspiration for a few horror characters and the start of it all came from Robert Bloch's book Psycho which was later made into a classic horror movie directed by the legendary Alfred Hitchcock 

Through Psycho and then The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Ed Gein's macabre legacy grew, people wanted to know more about this man who inspired such characters and movies, then came along the incredible, The Silence Of The Lambs and Ted Levine's fantastic and shocking performance of Buffalo Bill, a character that was based on six killers including Ed Gein. 

So who was Ed Gein? Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse County to parents Augusta and George, he also had an older brother, Henry. Augusta ran a small grocery store whilst George was often unemployed due to his alcoholism. George could never hold down a job and this frustrated Augusta. The marriage was not a happy one but because of their religious beliefs they thought it would be a sin to divorce and so they carried on.

Augusta ruled the household with an iron fist and both the boys and George lived in fear of her. When Ed was around 8 years old, Augusta sold the grocery store and moved the family out to an isolated farmhouse just ouside the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin (USA). She chose this location because she didn't want her boys to have any outside influences affecting their view of the world. She wanted them to share her beliefs that all women (except for herself) were prostitutes and were devilish. The only time the boys were allowed to see other members of the public was when they attended school.

Ed was described as an average student at school but had a strange manner about him. He acted quite effeminate and would randomly burst into laughter at strange times, this drew attention from some of the school bullies and Ed had to endure some of their taunts and negative comments. At 14 he dropped out of school and worked full time on the farm. Augusta would force her boys to sit and listen to her preach the bible to them every afternoon. She abused the boys and George, she told the boys they would never amount to anything, that they would end up just like their father.

When Ed was working on the farm, he would sit by himself quietly reading books. Ed so desperately wanted to be like the other kids and be more sociable but every time Ed wanted to make a new friend, Augusta would punish him. It was a recipe for disaster the four of them living in that isolated farmhouse, it was unhealthy and Augusta was the ultimate control freak.

George's drinking continued and got worse, he ended up having a heart attack and passed away in 1940 and so it was left for the boys to be the men of the house and surprisingly, Augusta allowed both Henry and Ed to do little odd jobs for some of the townfolk in Plainfield. Ed was described by the locals as being ''odd but harmless''. Ed was a very hard worker and would go above and beyond what was asked of him, he was also very polite and a lot of the people in the town actually liked him.

Despite the boys working hard and bringing money into the farmhouse, Augusta was her usual overbearing self and Henry was starting to have his own ideas. Augusta must have felt that she had enough control over the boys to allow them to work in the town and have it not affect them but Henry was starting to see a little piece of what life was like outside of the farmhouse and away from his mother's controlling ways.

Ed continued to be devoted to his mother, even when she wasn't around him he could hear her voice in his head. Sometimes he would look at women in the street and imagine what his mother would say about them. Henry became close to a single mother and began a relationship with her. He knew his mother would never approve but that didn't stop him continuing the relationship and one day whilst he and Ed were working on the farm they were talking about Augusta and Henry told him that he was going to move out to be with his girlfriend. Ed was shocked and that emotion soon turned to anger when Henry began to speak of how Augusta was a control freak who was lying about the outside world. Ed wouldn't have anyone speaking ill of his mother like that.

Things were tense between the two brothers and on the 16th of May 1944, a mysterious bush fire occured near the farmhouse, Henry and Ed went out to tackle the flames and as the hours ticked by, the smoke from the now extinguished fire was drifting into the air like little grey clouds as darkness began to fall. Ed returned to the house but Henry was nowhere to be seen.

Continued in part two...

(Yours truly, not an infamous murderer, just a true crime blogger and hopefully, one day...a published true crime author. Come find me on Instagram & my weekly personal posts on Ko-fi) 

I wanted to do something a little different for this week's post especially as I am still working on my latest case. My latest case is one that I want to really delve into and it may be a long one in three or four parts, so I thought whilst you are waiting for that one, I would post this one which I find is quite an interesting topic.