Edward Gein was born on August 17th 1906 to parents George and Augusta. His brother Henry was seven years older. The family started off life in La Crosse, Wisconsin where Augusta ran a grocery business. In 1914 they moved to Plainfield, Wisconsin, on the outskirts of town they brought a 160 acre farm.

Ed lived a lonely life on the farm with an alcoholic father, a domineering religious mother and a weak older brother. His mother taught the boys that sex and women were sinful and proceeded to raise them under a strict moral code. Although Augusta tried hard to keep the boys on the farm, they managed to attend school, Ed was a quiet boy with no friends, he was an average student who loved to read.

In 1940 his father dropped down dead of a heart attack. The two boys were now even more under the control of Augusta and took to managing the farm. On May 16th 1944 the brothers were tackling a bush fire, they got separated and Ed later went for help to find Henry. Surprisingly he led the search party directly to Henry’s body which was laying on a part of ground untouched by the fire, with bruises to the back of his head. The county coroner recorded the cause of death as Asphyxiation.

Eddie was alone with his mother now on the farm, but only a year later Augusta suffered a stroke and became bedridden. Her ever dutiful son did his best to look after her, even though she continued to dominate him and accuse him of being a failure. On December 29th 1945 Augusta died. Ed was 39 years old and all alone in the world. He remained emotionally attached to his mother while the farmhouse fell into disrepair. He began to spend even more time alone reading books on Nazi atrocities and the human anatomy.

He boarded up Augusta’s bedroom, drawing room and other parts of the house and lived in only two rooms downstairs. With the government handing out tax relief to farmers Ed had no need to continue with the farm and went on to do odd jobs for people around town. He was known as “Weird Eddie” to the town’s folk.

At some point in time Ed’s fascination with the female anatomy grew too strong for him to ignore and he started to read the obituaries in the local paper. His visits to the local cemeteries became frequent as he dug up the fresh bodies of women from around the area. He took the bodies home, where he dissected them and flayed the skin. Ed used the skin to create a shirt, which he wore at night time and cavorted around the farm.

In December 1954 Mary Hogan aged 54 disappeared from the local tavern she ran in Plainfield. Ed made jokes that Mary was staying over at his house. Although they felt the jokes were sick, no one would ever suspect that he could hurt anyone.

On November 16th 1957 Bernice Worden aged 58, a local widow who ran the hardware store disappeared. Her son Frank the sheriff’s deputy drove by to see her, and discovered a trail of blood in the store and a missing cash register. The last receipt she had written out had been for half a gallon of Antifreeze for Ed Gein. Frank Worden and the sheriff took a drive out to the Gein residence where they were to discover a gruesome sight. Bernice Worden’s body was found hanging upside down in the woodshed. She had been decapitated and sliced open.

On November 17th Ed Gein was taken into custody and police officers began to search the farm and surrounding area. What they discovered could only be described as “A house of horror’s” The remains of 10 women were found. There was a seat upholstered in human skin. A belt fashioned out of nipples, a box of human noses, a soup bowl made from a skullcap. and finally a bloodied sack containing the severed head of Bernice Worden.

During interviews Gein admitted to killing Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden but insisted that the remaining body parts were from graves he had dug up. In December 1957 Time and Life magazines published the story and Ed quickly became a legend. Jokes were to pass around, soon to be known as “Geiners”. Ed went on to receive extensive psychological testing and the outcome described him as a schizophrenic and a sexual predator. Deemed unfit to stand trial he was sent to the Central State Hospital in Waupen, Wisconsin.

The town of Plainfield went on to become a tourist attraction with people driving through to catch a glimpse of the farm. When the company handling the Gein estate started to charge an admittance fee local residents were in uproar. On the morning of March 20th 1958 the fire department were called out to the Gein farm. The house burnt to the ground and arson was suspected.

Ed Gein spent the next 10 years in the mental institution, on January 22nd 1968 the courts finally decided he was ready to stand trial. After only 1 week the judge found him guilty of first degree murder, but criminally insane. He was returned to the central state hospital. He remained there until 1978 when he was moved to the Mendota mental health institute. After a battle with cancer, Ed died on July 26th 1984.