Ed Gein

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Lore & Background

Gein was initially found unfit to stand trial and confined to a mental health facility. By 1968, he was judged competent to stand trial. He was found guilty of the murder of Worden, but was found legally insane and thus was remanded to a psychiatric institution.

Reader's Guide

Ed Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1906, the second son of George Philip Gein and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein. Augusta was fervently religious and preached that all women were promiscuous instruments of the Devil. Gein idolized and became obsessed with her. His father was a violent alcoholic who beat his sons, causing Ed's ears to ring. After his father died of heart failure in 1940, Ed and his brother Henry worked odd jobs. Henry died in 1944 during a vegetation fire; his body was found face down, and the cause was listed as asphyxiation, though biographer Harold Schechter later noted bruises on his head. Augusta suffered a stroke after Henry's death, and Gein cared for her until she died on December 29, 1945. Devastated, he boarded up her rooms and lived in squalor. He began reading about Nazi atrocities, especially Ilse Koch, who was accused of making lampshades from human skin. On November 16, 1957, Bernice Worden disappeared. Her son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, found blood stains in her hardware store. Gein had been there the night before and was expected for antifreeze. Arrested that evening, authorities searched his farm and found Worden's decapitated body hung upside down in a shed, dressed out like a deer. In his house, they discovered a wastebasket of human skin, chairs covered in skin, skulls on bedposts, bowls from skulls, a corset made from a female torso, leggings from leg skin, masks from female heads, Mary Hogan's face mask and skull, Bernice Worden's head and heart, nine vulvas in a shoebox, a belt made from female nipples, four noses, lips on a drawstring, and a lampshade from human face skin. Gein admitted to exhuming bodies from three local graveyards between 1947 and 1952, making as many as forty nocturnal visits while in a daze-like state. He confessed to stealing from nine graves and led investigators to them. Test graves were exhumed and found as he described: one casket empty, another with a few bones and his crowbar, and a third with most of the body missing but rings and some parts returned.

Did You Know?

• Gein's father was a violent alcoholic who beat his sons, causing Ed's ears to ring when hit on the head.
• After his mother Augusta died in 1945, Gein boarded up her rooms and left them untouched while the rest of the house became squalid.
• Authorities found nine vulvas in a shoebox in Gein's house, including those of two females judged to be about fifteen years old.
• Gein told investigators he made as many as forty nocturnal visits to graveyards between 1947 and 1952, but on about thirty of those visits he left the grave in good order and returned home empty-handed.
• Biographer Harold Schechter reported that Henry Gein's body had bruises on his head, though police dismissed foul play and the coroner listed asphyxiation as the cause of death.