00:00:07
-In November 1957, police in the small town
of Plainfield, Wisconsin, were searching for a missing
woman named Bernice Worden.
00:00:17
They were about to make one of the most
gruesome discoveries in U.S. criminal history.
00:00:23
-One of them turned down his
flashlight and beamed it around and saw this object that was
hanging from the rafters,
00:00:30
which at first they thought
was some kind of gutted deer. They realized,
to their incredible horror,
00:00:35
that it was a woman's corpse
that was hanging by its heels. -The twisted killer was
a quiet loner named Ed Gein.
00:00:43
Hidden inside the 51-year-old's
rural farmhouse was a ghoulish treasure
trove of human remains.
00:00:51
-There was a lampshade
made of human skin. They found the remains
of 12 human heads,
00:00:57
gloves made out of the skin
from a corpse's fingers. -You think of this happening,
you know, now,
00:01:04
it would still be shocking. But back then, in a small,
tiny rural community, it was breathtaking.
00:01:12
-America had woken up inside
the nightmare of Ed Gein, one of the world's
most evil killers.
00:01:19
♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪ The gruesome crimes of Ed Gein
horrified '50s America. When his rural home was searched
on the 16 November 1957,
00:01:52
the police uncovered
a gothic house of horrors. As well as the remains
of two missing local women,
00:02:00
they found an array
of human bones, skulls, and skin that had been fashioned
into furniture and clothing.
00:02:09
The town of Plainfield
was in complete shock. One of the residents
who remembers the effect
00:02:15
Gein had on Plainfield
is Max Harrington. -I think shock would be the
biggest thing that we could use
00:02:21
to describe the atmosphere
in the community. And we were still pretty much
clannish community at that time
00:02:27
when a lot of the families that
were here had always been here. It took your breath away,
you know, you just --
00:02:34
you know, it was shocking. It still is. People don't do things like that
in a small town on a normal day.
00:02:42
That's just not part
of what we grew up with. -The story
of this twisted killer begins over a century ago.
00:02:50
Ed Gein was born
in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, on 27 August 1906. By the time he was 8 years old,
his parents moved Ed
00:03:01
and his older brother, Henry,
to Plainfield. -Well, the Gein family
moved to Plainfield
00:03:08
from La Crosse, Wisconsin, partly because of
the mother of the family, the matriarch, Augusta,
00:03:18
had decided that La Crosse was a kind of Sodom-
and-Gomorrah-like hellhole. And she didn't want her children
to be corrupted
00:03:30
by all the immoral influences
of the big city. Needless to say, La Crosse
was not a particularly big city,
00:03:37
but they moved to
a remote farmhouse about six miles west of, you wouldn't necessarily say,
"downtown Plainfield,"
00:03:47
because there was
no uptown Plainfield. -It's not the largest city
in the state of Wisconsin,
00:03:53
but it's plenty big enough
for those of us that live here. -Plainfield was a very remote,
isolated,
00:04:01
featureless little village. A state guidebook at the time described it
as totally nondescript.
00:04:10
The population was very small,
never more, in it's history, I think, than 700 or 800 people.
00:04:18
You know, probably the entire
population of the village could have fit into a New York
City apartment building.
00:04:25
-The Gein's 150-acre farm
was located on the corner of Archer and 2nd Avenue. Ed rarely got to leave
the property
00:04:34
and socialize
with other children. -His mother, Augusta, is a very
domineering character, indeed.
00:04:41
She is a devout Christian and
she has some very extreme ideas about sin and about morality.
00:04:48
And she drums into her sons
that they're not to socialize with anybody
outside of the family
00:04:54
because all of the people
around them in the local town are sinners, they're evil,
all the women are whores.
00:05:00
And so she creates this very
insular family environment where they're quite isolated
from the rest of the community.
00:05:07
And that has a really
significant impact on them. -Gein seemed to have been
very friendless.
00:05:13
Whenever he would make
some kind of friend on those rare occasions, when he would try
to make a school friend
00:05:20
and bring home a school friend, the mother would immediately
find some reason to disapprove of the other child
00:05:26
and forbid Ed from
ever bringing him home. So he grew up again in a state
of complete social isolation.
00:05:34
-And Gein's relationship
with his father was also far from perfect. -Well, the father, George,
was an alcoholic.
00:05:42
He appeared to have been
somewhat free in his use of physical punishment. But mostly the picture
that emerges of George is of,
00:05:53
you know, kind of
a hapless individual, who was, as all three male
members of the family were,
00:05:59
under the thumb of his wife, and again, who was regarded,
as much as anything else,
00:06:06
as sort of obstacle
or impediment to the household. -As Ed entered adolescence, his
life became even more insular.
00:06:15
-He dropped out of school when
he was around about 12 or 13 to work on the family's farm.
00:06:20
And he was considered
to be a bit of an oddball. He was quite a loner. And he enjoyed
quite solitary pursuits.
00:06:27
So, he really
quite liked reading and was quite a prolific reader. So, he was somebody
who didn't really fit in,
00:06:34
but worked incredibly hard
to keep the family farm going. -On April 1, 1940, Ed's father,
George, died of heart failure,
00:06:44
leaving 33-year-old Ed,
his brother, Henry, and Augusta alone
on the family farm.
00:06:50
-Ed's older brother, Henry,
seemed to have freed himself a little more emotionally
00:06:58
and psychologically
from Augusta's dominance. And even, apparently,
on a couple of occasions,
00:07:05
expressed some criticism
of their mother and the hold she was
exerting over both of them.
00:07:13
So, Ed, who, at least
on a conscious level, worshipped his mother, and saw her as a kind of goddess
who could do no wrong,
00:07:22
appears to have been both
a little shocked, you know, that Henry would find
any cause to criticize Augusta,
00:07:30
and possibly built up some kind
of animosity toward Henry for that attitude. -Ed became a handyman
doing odd jobs around Plainfield
00:07:42
to help with living
expenses on the farm. -We used to see Ed occasionally. I'd see him around town, and he
was always a friendly person,
00:07:53
quiet, friendly,
usually had a joke to tell. He always had time
to say hello and asked after how you were,
00:08:01
a person you would
never expect of anything other than being
a decent sort of person.
00:08:07
-In May 1944, death would hit
the Gein family once again, but this time, in more
suspicious circumstances,
00:08:16
after a brush fire on their
farmland got out of control. -Ed and Henry were out there
trying to put out the fire
00:08:24
and they got separated
and Ed could not locate Henry. And he went and got help, but
then after getting this help,
00:08:32
he led the other people directly
to where Henry's body lay. And there was some mysterious
bruises on Henry's head.
00:08:42
The official verdict
of the medical examiner was that Henry had died
of a heart attack
00:08:48
while fighting this fire
and had injured his head when he fell and hit a rock. But afterwards when Gein's
crimes were uncovered,
00:08:56
there was a lot of talk that perhaps Henry
had been a victim of Ed's. That Ed, in fact,
had killed Henry partly
00:09:04
because of Henry's
criticism of Augusta. -The impact upon their mother,
Augusta, was phenomenal.
00:09:12
She really broke down
about Henry's death, and she had a stroke. But of course, by then,
you know,
00:09:18
the psychic bond
between Augusta and Ed was so incredibly
intense already, evidence seems to suggest
00:09:26
that with the other two men
out of the way, Ed reveled in having
his mommy alone to himself.
00:09:35
-But Gein's mother never really
recovered from her stroke and their time alone
only lasted for 19 months.
00:09:42
-Ed nursed her
very, very diligently, even apparently, would get
into bed with her on occasion
00:09:49
and stroke her and comfort her. And then she seemed to recover,
but then she suffered another,
00:09:57
this time fatal, stroke. -August Gein died
on December 29, 1945. 39-year-old Ed was
completely devastated.
00:10:10
-'Cause his mother
was so domineering, I think she really did
stunt his development,
00:10:14
and he almost got stuck at a kind of teenage
adolescent phase in his life. So, looking at how he behaved
at the funeral,
00:10:22
he was in his 30s at this time, and he was reported to be
wailing like a small child.
00:10:26
So he hasn't got that kind of
emotional control that's associated
with 30-something men.
00:10:32
-The death of his mother
left him completely, completely isolated. You know, living in this
increasingly ramshackle,
00:10:41
dilapidated farmhouse that he ceased
to take care of whatsoever. Augusta was his only
real human contact.
00:10:49
So it was at that point,
you know, that Gein embarked on
these various, outrageous,
00:10:56
that would ultimately make him this notorious figure
in American crime. -Alone and isolated from
the rest of society,
00:11:04
Gein spiraled out of control. Over the next 12 years, he became obsessed
with re-creating
00:11:11
the world he shared
with his mother. It would lead him to a series
of dark and disturbing crimes
00:11:17
that would eventually
culminate in murder. -One of my summer jobs when I
was a student in high school
00:11:28
was mowing the cemetery. And two of my buddies and I,
that was about a four-day job
00:11:36
for us to mow that. And we would see Ed
out there on occasion. He'd come out,
and if he saw us working,
00:11:42
he'd always come over
and say hello, and, again, sometimes have
this little story to tell.
00:11:48
And he was very good
about stopping and see his mother's grave. -I think neighbors saw him
as an odd, very meek,
00:11:57
somewhat simple-minded person, but one who is always
willing to pitch in when some farmwork
needed to be done
00:12:06
or some chore
needed to be run for them. But they, of course,
had no sense of the life
00:12:13
that he was pursuing inside that incredibly creepy,
dismal world of his own farm.
00:12:21
-It was a world
that 51-year-old Gein had managed to keep hidden away
until the winter of 1957.
00:12:28
-November 16, 1957, was
the first day of deer-hunting season that year, and it was
a day when, basically,
00:12:36
the entire male population
of the town would have been out in the woods
hunting deer, as Ed knew.
00:12:43
Ed drove into town
to the Worden Hardware Store. The Worden Hardware Store
was owned by a woman
00:12:52
named Bernice Worden. -I knew Mrs. Worden quite well. She and her family ran
the hardware store here
00:12:57
for many years, almost everybody in
the community knew Mrs. Worden. -Ed had kind of been
hanging around the store
00:13:04
for a couple weeks previously. He had developed something of an
obsession with Bernice Worden.
00:13:10
-He would talk to her,
he would ask her out, and it was quite clear that she really wasn't
that interested in him.
00:13:17
-Ed came in, asked to buy
half a gallon of antifreeze, which Bernice Worden
poured out for him
00:13:24
and wrote out a receipt. He went back out to his truck
then came back inside and asked her to see a rifle
that was in the window.
00:13:32
When Bernice Worden
turned her back to him, he shot her in
the back of the head and then loaded her corpse
in his truck,
00:13:40
and drove back to his farm. -Gein had murdered
the 58-year-old woman in broad daylight.
00:13:47
-It was deer season,
so deer season, it's, like,
a ghost town around here. Everybody --
in those days, especially,
00:13:52
everybody was out hunting. And she wasn't even missed
for quite some hours. And then someone reported
that she wasn't at the store,
00:14:01
well, that was her son,
of course. -Later that day, Frank Worden
returned from the woods
00:14:09
and found the store empty. His mother wasn't there.
He was very perplexed by that.
00:14:14
And then he saw a trail of blood across the floor
of the hardware store. And not only realized, you know,
00:14:21
that some foul play
had occurred, but immediately suspected
Ed Gein, because Gein had been
kind of bothering his mother
00:14:28
for the past few weeks. -And there was one piece
of evidence that confirmed Frank Worden's suspicions
to the police.
00:14:35
-When they went to search
the place, they found the receipt
for the antifreeze that was in Ed's name.
00:14:43
And they just worked backwards, saying that he was probably the
last person to see her alive.
00:14:50
But they didn't suspect that
he was as deranged as he was. -One set of lawmen went out
in search of Gein.
00:14:57
They found him having dinner
at a neighbor's house, and they arrested him. And then another set of lawmen
went out to Gein's farmhouse.
00:15:06
And that's where they made
these discoveries that really sent shockwaves
around the world.
00:15:13
-On a dark winter's night, officers from
the Plainfield Police Department began to search the Gein farm
for Bernice Worden.
00:15:21
-They couldn't get into the
house, so they went around back, and entered into what was called
the "summer kitchen,"
00:15:29
which was a little shed outside. -This property didn't have
any electricity, so they were
pretty much fumbling around
00:15:35
in the dark with flashlights. But I don't think
they expected to find what they did find there.
00:15:42
-One of them turned down his
flashlight and beamed it around and saw this object that was
hanging from the rafters,
00:15:49
which at first they thought
was some kind of gutted deer -- although it didn't look
like a deer.
00:15:55
They realized, to their
incredible horror, that it was a woman's corpse
that was hanging by its heels,
00:16:02
and been completely gutted. -She'd been strung up,
essentially, and she was slit from
her sternum to her pelvis.
00:16:12
So, she'd essentially
been butchered by Ed. It really was
the most grotesque thing
00:16:18
that these officers
had ever come across. -And they realized
they had found the body
00:16:22
of Bernice Worden. And, of course, both of them
just stumbled out in horror and vomited, you know,
at the sight of this thing.
00:16:31
-When the news spread
across the town, the residents of Plainfield
were in complete shock.
00:16:37
-When I heard of his arrest,
I couldn't believe it, I was sure they had
the wrong person
00:16:43
because it just didn't
seem like anything that they were telling us was the Ed that we all knew.
00:16:52
And that was a Saturday night,
we were at a dance, and the story
went through there,
00:16:57
and everybody said,
"I don't believe it." But it was true. -After finding the butchered
body of Bernice Worden
00:17:06
in a shed at Ed Gein's farm, the police officers move their
search into the main house.
00:17:12
-He boarded up some areas
of the family's home to maintain the rooms
as his mother had left them.
00:17:19
And in other parts
of the property, he just started hoarding things. You know, you would have trash
and rubbish build up,
00:17:26
and it really became
a complete hovel. -He had reversed the normal
process of trash disposal.
00:17:33
You know, and instead of taking
all his garbage to the dump, would go to the dump
and bring it into his house.
00:17:39
It was just this incredible
chaos of trash and garbage. -But there was more than
just household waste.
00:17:46
-The middle of that wreckage, they discovered
these incomprehensible, unspeakably awful objects
00:17:55
that had been fashioned
out of human body parts. There were chairs that
we upholstered in human flesh.
00:18:01
-There was a lampshade
made of human skin. They found the remains
of 12 human heads,
00:18:07
gloves made out of the skin
from a corpse's fingers. -There was a jar
containing human noses.
00:18:14
There was a box full
of female genitalia, some of which had been painted,
and tied with ribbons.
00:18:22
There was a belt fashioned
out of female nipples. There was a shade pull
made of human lips.
00:18:29
-They found all types of things
that belonged to people that were no longer people,
and it was shocking.
00:18:37
I mean,
you think of this happening, you know, now,
it would still be shocking. But back then, in a small,
tiny rural community,
00:18:46
it was absolutely --
it was breathtaking. -Ed Gein's farmhouse was the
habitation of a literal ghoul.
00:18:56
You know, somebody who had been
living amidst these horrific relics
of human dismemberment.
00:19:02
It was a madhouse. -Gein's fascination with death
and corpses had been growing ever since his mother had died
12 years previously.
00:19:13
-Ed had always enjoyed reading. It was quite a solitary pursuit, so that's not
particularly surprising.
00:19:17
But after the death of his
mother and his brother, he started to read
an awful lot more,
00:19:22
and his taste in literature really did span
quite a wide spectrum. He read pornographic magazines.
00:19:30
He read medical textbooks. And he developed a particular
interest in Ilsa Koch, who worked at one of the
Nazi concentration camps
00:19:39
and collected patches
of skin of the prisoners who were detained there. And I think all of this
00:19:46
was fueling
a very active imagination. So, he's developing these
obsessions and these interests,
00:19:53
and he's quite skilled as a
farmhand at this point and time. He knows how
to slaughter animals.
00:19:57
He knows how
to prepare carcasses. He's from a community
that's very much into its hunting
and its fishing.
00:20:03
So, at some point, reality and
fantasy are going to collide. -As the search of the farmhouse
progressed, officers found
00:20:11
that the grotesque
collection of body parts became even more disturbing. -Among the most hideous of all
the items were human skin masks
00:20:22
that were hanging from
the wall of his bedroom, the faces of women that had
been filleted from the skulls
00:20:28
and that had been preserved. Some of them had lipstick
applied to them and that had been hung
on the walls as decorations.
00:20:36
And then, most notoriously,
there was a skin suit that Ed had crafted out
of the upper torso of a woman
00:20:46
and the leggings of a woman. And apparently,
as he later confessed, he would put on this skin suit,
00:20:53
and put on one of
the female skin mask, and caper around in his yard,
pretending to be his mother.
00:21:02
-Gein's macabre collection
had been acquired from the very same cemetery
where his mother's body lay.
00:21:09
-Two years after the death
of his mother, in 1947, he starts grave-robbing. So he's going into
a local burial ground,
00:21:18
he's digging up bodies, and he's taking things
from the bodies. Now, he's not taking jewelry
or items of any value.
00:21:26
He's actually taking body parts. It really is
an absolute house of horrors. So, what started off
as an interest,
00:21:33
which was confined
to the pages of a book, has now become a reality behind the doors of this
rather bizarre house.
00:21:40
So what he's doing,
in a really grotesque way, is trying to bring his mother back to life in some way,
shape, or form
00:21:47
because he was just
so dependent upon her for a sense of his own identity. -And the search wasn't over yet.
00:21:54
Officers would soon discover, inside a paper bag
in Gein's home, the severed head of a woman
00:22:02
who'd been missing
from Plainfield for over two years. -I think that the real
tipping point for Ed Gein
00:22:09
was when his mother
and his brother died. Because even though this family
was very intense
00:22:14
and rather extreme
in its beliefs, it was still a check
on his behavior. There was still that informal
surveillance over him.
00:22:22
And I think
that kept him contained. But once he was on his own, he was free to ruminate
and fantasize,
00:22:29
and his behavior was
only going to escalate. -You know, it's, like,
some crack opened up, you know,
00:22:35
in the civilized part
of his head, and all this weird,
archaic stuff going back to the days,
00:22:42
you know, when our species
did engage in these bizarre, unspeakable rituals, you know, flooded out
and took possession of him.
00:22:52
-With Gein in custody, officers
continued to scour his home and they were about to make
another startling discovery --
00:23:00
a local woman, who'd been
missing for almost three years. -There had been a female
tavern keeper named Mary Hogan,
00:23:08
who ran this roadside tavern
outside of Plainfield, who had disappeared
very, very mysteriously.
00:23:15
-In those days,
we had 18-year-old bars where teenagers
could go and have beer. And she ran one of those.
00:23:23
It was kind of a modest place,
to be very kind, but she disappeared before I was old enough to frequent
those establishments.
00:23:34
-When she went missing, he'd
said some rather bizarre things. He said to one
of the townspeople,
00:23:40
"Oh, she's not missing.
She's up at the house." But because he was
a bit of a misfit
00:23:44
and because he was a bit weird, people didn't really take what
he said very seriously at all.
00:23:49
So that one was allowed
to slip under the radar, until this grizzly discovery
a few years later.
00:23:55
-In searching through
Gein's house of horrors, the investigators
opened up some receptacle
00:24:04
and saw this face
and pulled it out and realized
it was Mary Hogan's, that she had been another
one of these victims.
00:24:13
-Gein had murdered Mary Hogan
on December 8, 1954, three years previous
to killing Bernice Worden.
00:24:22
-I think there was some sense in which he associated her
with his mother. You know, she almost seemed
to be, like,
00:24:31
the shadow side of his mother. And I think, in killing her,
again, he was both enacting
00:24:37
some kind of homicidal rage
toward his mother, but I think, also,
there were times
00:24:42
when he just ran out
of suitable female corpses and had to make his own. -Back at
the local police station,
00:24:51
it was time for Ed Gein
to start talking. -Well, for the first day
after his arrest,
00:24:57
I think Ed felt like
a bit of a fish out of water. He didn't quite know
how to react.
00:25:03
But he did start talking
after about 24 hours. And the first thing he said was
that he wanted an apple pie
00:25:09
with a slice of cheese on it. And that really does show the emotional immaturity
of this guy.
00:25:15
And when you got somebody
whose development stops at a particular point, they don't develop
those complex emotions
00:25:22
that enable them to empathize
with other people or to think through the
consequences of their actions.
00:25:28
So what you've got here is
a teenage boy in a man's body, and he was capable
of some really terrible things.
00:25:34
-And he was subjected to
a very lengthy interrogation. He freely confessed to
the murders of Bernice Worden
00:25:40
and Mary Hogan. When the police first broke
into Gein's house and discovered this
crazy mass of body parts,
00:25:48
their first assumption
was Gein was a serial killer. It was only during his
interrogation that he revealed
00:25:55
that they were taken
from the corpses he had dug up
from the local cemetery. And people, in a way,
had a hard time believing that
00:26:04
than that he was
a serial killer. That seemed, like, totally
beyond the bounds of belief
00:26:09
for a whole variety of reasons. -Human bodies are traditionally
buried six-feet underground.
00:26:15
That's a lot of digging. That's a lot of work to get
to them through packed earth.
00:26:20
He'd need spades, picks. He'd need to be strong
and he'd need, one assumes, to do it at night
00:26:27
because he'd need to be
undisturbed. -I'm not sure he did recognize that what he was doing
was wrong.
00:26:33
You know, there are some
necrophiles who think, "Well, I wasn't really
hurting anybody.
00:26:38
You know, they're dead anyway." -Gein confessed to investigators
that between 1947 and 1952,
00:26:47
he'd regularly visited
the local cemetery after dark. -He would often follow
the local newspapers
00:26:53
and read the obituaries. And when some middle-aged
or elderly woman, who bore some vague resemblance
to his departed mother,
00:27:03
died and was buried, he would apparently go out
to the cemetery at night, while the soil was still fresh,
00:27:10
and easily dug up
and exhumed these coffins and remove the bodies and sometimes take the entire
corpse back to his farmhouse,
00:27:19
sometimes just take
parts of the corpse back to the farmhouse
and leave the rest there.
00:27:24
-Investigators decided to dig up
some of the graves to see if Gein
was telling the truth.
00:27:30
-When they uncovered them, they discovered that the coffins
had been broken into
00:27:35
and the bodies were missing or, you know, there were just parts
of the skeleton remaining there.
00:27:41
-He admitted to grave-robbing
nine corpses, but the maths
didn't quite add up because the police had found 12
human heads in Gein's property,
00:27:51
and he'd only admitted to 11 offenses
against separate people. So the numbers never
really added up properly.
00:27:59
So there's always been
questions over that. -Ed Gein's crimes were
in the late '50s -- 1957.
00:28:07
The state of forensic science,
in those days, was far less than we have now. Things like DNA simply
didn't exist as a tool.
00:28:19
So identification could
potentially be very difficult and I would suspect in, certainly, some of the body
parts, simply impossible.
00:28:26
-There was no doubt that Gein
specifically targeted females. All the graves he desecrated
belonged to women.
00:28:34
-I think he was both trying
to rebuild his mother, but I also think that he was
taking revenge on his mother.
00:28:44
That kind of love and hate
of Mommy were manifested, both by his attempting
to bring her back from the dead,
00:28:54
but also perpetrating, you know, these atrocities
on the corpses of female bodies.
00:29:00
-It's been reported
that Gein did, in fact, try to return Augusta to the
family home after her funeral.
00:29:07
-There's some indication
that he initially tried to exhume his mother's corpse. You know, apparently,
Ed missed the presence
00:29:14
of his mother so much, you know, he wanted
to bring her back, and somehow in his madness,
00:29:22
you know reconstitute her
in his household. He couldn't get to his mother's
grave because the soil
00:29:30
in that part of Wisconsin
is very sandy and many coffins are buried
within concrete vaults
00:29:37
to prevent the sand
from collapsing on them. And that was apparently true
of Augusta Gein.
00:29:44
-In November 1957, Ed Gein was charged with
the murder of Bernice Worden. The media descended on the tiny
town of Plainfield, Wisconsin.
00:30:10
-Well, the cultural context
of the Gein case is quite an interesting one, because I think this was
one of the first cases
00:30:18
that gathered an awful
lot of attention. There was a media circus
that developed around this
00:30:23
because nothing like this
had ever really happened before. It was something completely new.
00:30:28
-It spread very quickly
through the local newspapers. And you know, and then through
the Associated Press
00:30:35
and so on to the national media. You know, Plainfield, which,
you know, had always existed
00:30:42
from the time of its founding
in happy obscurity, you know, suddenly found itself
to be the center of national
00:30:50
and even international
attention. -It was just
an exasperating time. And then we were inundated
by nosy Nelly's
00:30:59
that all thought that, "Boy, I got to go drive
by that old farmhouse." And then we became, I don't like
to use the word chaotic,
00:31:08
but a very unsettled
community for a while. -Plainfield was suddenly famous and famous for the most
horrifying of reasons.
00:31:18
You know, that it was the home of America's
most notorious psychopath. -The entire community
was stunned.
00:31:26
For the previous decade, they'd
been living in the same town as a real-life bogeyman.
00:31:33
It would now be down
to the courts to decide whether or not
Ed Gein was insane. On November 21, 1957,
the 51-year-old pleaded
00:31:46
not guilty by reason of insanity at his arraignment
at Waushara County Court. And it was declared that
he was unfit to stand trial.
00:31:56
-Their indication that Ed
was clinically psychotic, that he had hallucinations,
that he heard voices,
00:32:05
or the trees would start
talking to him. Most serial murderers
are not psychotic, but Ed seemed
00:32:11
to have the symptoms
of some form of psychosis. -Gein was sent to
the Central State Hospital
00:32:17
for the Criminally Insane
in Waupun, Wisconsin, which is now
a maximum-security prison.
00:32:24
70 miles away in Plainfield, the community was trying
to get back on its feet, but the shadow of Ed Gein
lingered over the town.
00:32:33
-In 1958, the property
that Gein had lived in was due to be auctioned off. And I think the last thing that
local people wanted was for this
00:32:41
to become some kind of shrine, some kind of attraction for people
who were morbidly fascinated.
00:32:47
So a few days
before the auction, the property was burned
to the ground, essentially.
00:32:53
-A lot of talk of arson. They had been cleaning up around
there and had been burning
00:33:01
trash up around
that particular day, too. So then, that was --
or anyway, that was an excuse
of a possible cause,
00:33:11
that maybe the wind
got something in the evening and got some live embers
in there.
00:33:17
A lot of the neighbors weren't
too happy with having talk of it being turned into a museum
of sorts.
00:33:23
But there was a lot of stories. Anyway, it's gone. People still kept coming,
though,
00:33:31
even after the house was gone. For years, still had people
coming to drive by the empty lot
00:33:37
where the house used to stand. -In March 1958, the car
which Gein used to transport
00:33:43
the bodies of his victims was bought at an auction
for over $700 by a carnival operator,
00:33:50
who charged fascinated Americans
25 cents for a photograph at a macabre sideshow.
00:33:56
-I think what we're seeing here
is the rise of the serial killer
consumer culture.
00:34:01
People are fascinated
in these kind of cases. And some criminologists refer
to this as "wound culture,"
00:34:08
that we're essentially
drawn to the trauma and the suffering
of other people and we're drawn to the artifacts
that exist around these cases.
00:34:17
-Gein remained in the Central
State Hospital for 11 years, until doctors determined that he
was finally fit to stand trial
00:34:25
for the first-degree murder
of Bernice Worden. The hearing lasted for a week,
and on November 14, 1968,
00:34:34
Judge Robert Gollmar
had reached a verdict. -He was tried and found guilty
of the murder of Bernice Worden.
00:34:40
But then he was judged insane
and stuck back in the mental institution. -I think that was possibly
somewhere he may have thrived
00:34:47
'cause he had structure,
he had a routine, he had people watching over him
and looking after his needs.
00:34:54
-Forensic psychologist
Dr. Helen Morrison interviewed Gein
during his time in hospital.
00:35:01
-I was working at that time
as a staff psychiatrist, and I was covering
all the units.
00:35:08
And when I was asked to go over
to see this person, I went over to see it,
and I saw Ed Gein.
00:35:17
He was not at all coherent. He was such a little person that
I found it hard to picture him
00:35:27
as the person who'd committed
all these homicides. He lived there very peacefully.
00:35:33
He never caused any problems, never had any type
of behavioral thing, no type of,
00:35:41
I guess you could say,
consequence for bad behavior. -Gein's quiet nature in hospital
was in stark contrast
00:35:50
to the monster
Helen had heard so much about. -I received a letter
from one of his neighbors,
00:35:55
who used to be a friend of his. She was a little girl. And she remembers
going over to his house
00:36:04
and he would serve soup
and everything. Well, it turned out
the soup bowls were the skulls of many
of his victims,
00:36:12
and people never knew it. -On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein
died of lung cancer, age 77.
00:36:22
He was buried next to his mother
on the Gein family plot, at the same cemetery
which he so often desecrated
00:36:29
during his career of horror. Gein has left a lasting impact
on the small community
00:36:35
where he committed
his ghoulish crimes. -We really wouldn't care to have
that be our claim to fame.
00:36:41
You know, we've turned out
lots of doctors and architects and some really good people
out of our schools here.
00:36:49
We're very proud of them. We'd rather be known for
a tremendously good population
00:36:56
than to be credited
for only one issue. -But just like the carnival
operators of the 1950s,
00:37:07
people continue to try
and get their hands on grizzly souvenirs
related to Gein.
00:37:13
-In the year 2000,
somebody was found to be selling parts
of the gravestone that had been erected
at Gein's grave.
00:37:22
For people who are fans
of the serial-killer cult, this was just the gift
that kept on giving.
00:37:28
-Well, they keep
putting up headstones and the headstones
keep disappearing. There's a whole category
of collectible
00:37:34
that has come to be known
as "murderabilia," and Gein relics are particularly
prized among people
00:37:43
who collect
that kind of morbid relic. -Over 60 years since
the horrific crimes,
00:37:49
Gein has grown into a notorious
figure in American folklore, a killer of almost
mythic proportions.
00:37:56
-The two things that are
fascinating about Ed Gein is the fact that he only,
as far as we know,
00:38:04
murdered two people, which is a lot less
than many infamous killers, but he's had such a huge legacy
in films, books, music.
00:38:16
He seems to have become
a sort of pop-culture murderer. -At the time the Gein crimes
were being revealed
00:38:24
in the press, there was a writer of pulp
horror named Robert Bloch, who had moved to Wisconsin
to be with his wife's family.
00:38:33
And at some point, when Gein
was being interviewed by various psychiatrists, all these headlines
in the papers
00:38:40
were trumpeting the fact
that Gein had been motivated by these deranged,
oedipal conflicts.
00:38:48
You know, that he was this
desperately sick mama's boy, you know, who was perpetrating
these atrocities
00:38:55
on middle-aged women, you know, who reminded him
of his mother. And this caught the attention
of Robert Bloch,
00:39:02
who decided this could
potentially make the basis of a good horror novel, and that became
the book "Psycho."
00:39:08
In the book "Psycho,"
Norman Bates, actually, after he's arrested, compares himself at the end
of the book to Ed Gein.
00:39:15
So, the connection is made very,
very explicit there in the book. Anyway, "Psycho," as we know,
turned into one of the great,
00:39:24
classic horror movies
of American cinema. You know, if you look at
horror movies before then,
00:39:30
there were all these
Eastern European monsters, Frankenstein and Dracula
and the Wolf Man,
00:39:36
you know, or else they were
aliens from outer space. You know, with "Psycho,"
"Psycho" establishes
00:39:43
and, you know, Ed Gein
establishes, you know, this quintessentially
American figure of horror,
00:39:49
the ordinary,
middle-American guy who turns out to be
this monster in disguise. And then, of course,
Gein becomes the basis
00:39:57
for Tobe Hooper's "Texas
Chainsaw Massacre," and later on
for Thomas Harris' character,
00:40:03
Buffalo Bill,
in "Silence of the Lambs." You know, so Gein has this very,
very direct influence
00:40:09
on American horror cinema. -But Gein's crimes
were not fictional. They were very real.
00:40:16
And he remains one
of the most infamous murderers in U.S. history. -We think of Gein
00:40:22
as this notorious
American serial murderer. But in many ways, he doesn't
really fit that profile.
00:40:30
You know, for example, he wasn't
a sexual sadist in the way John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy
were, or Jeffrey Dahmer.
00:40:38
You know, he wasn't driven by that particular form
of deviance. -Well, I think he was
brought up in a vacuum
00:40:46
that created the conditions for someone who would go on
to do evil things. So whilst most people
are shocked and repulsed
00:40:55
and absolutely horrified
at some of the things he's done, because he didn't have
that filter
00:41:03
and that check on his behavior, he was able to escalate
to a level of evil, I think.
00:41:08
-Evil is something that,
you know, professionally, people don't believe in evil.
00:41:14
But I truly believe
that he was evil. I think there are people
who would like to say
00:41:21
that the devil got into him and made him
do these awful things, but I think he was born evil.
00:41:30
-The Ed I knew
was not an evil person. He did things that
normal people do not do
00:41:36
and there's no doubt about that. And to kill two people
is certainly not the person
00:41:43
who you would really like
to invite to your neighborhood party. But, yeah, he was --
00:41:51
there was something in his head
that didn't click right. -Ed Gein's crimes are the stuff
of genuine nightmares.
00:42:00
The man with an unhealthy
obsession with his mother brazenly murdered two women and kept a bizarre collection
00:42:07
of gruesome keepsakes inside his house of horrors. He truly deserves to be
remembered as one of the world's
00:42:14
most evil killers. ♪♪ ♪♪ ♪♪