Background
- Edward Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin.
- His father was an alcoholic and his mother was extremely religious.
- He had an older brother named Henry.
- The Gein's lived on a farm at the outskirts of town.
- The house was ran by Edward's mother's extreme religious teachings about lust and carnal desire.
- When his father died in 1940, Edward rebelled against his mother by ignoring her teachings.
- He lost both his brother (in a house fire) and mother (to multiple strokes) within two years.
What he did
Edward had an obsession with his mother, which prevented him from going out and dating women
- Because she pushed for suppression of desire
He searched cemeteries for female corpses who resembled his mother
- He dug them up, cut off their body parts, and would place them back into their grave
- The corpses skin and flesh were used to create a "woman suit", socks, lampshades
Killed two women: Mary Hogan (1954) and Bernice Worden (1957)
- Both bodies were found/recovered in 1957 during an investigation of Gein's property
- Gein would practice taxidermy and necrophilia on the corpses
Murders
Mary Hogan
- Mary Hogan, a tavern worker, disappeared on December 8, 1954
- When her body was found, she had been shot with a 32. mauser pistol
- Her head had been found in a paper bag and her face on a skull cap
Bernice Worden
- Store clerk, Bernice Worden, disappeared in Plainfield, Wisconsin on November 16, 1957
- Edward Gein was suspected to be involved
- When police arrived on the property and entered the shed, they found a woman's body
- Worden was decapitated, hung upside down with cross bars at her ankles and ropes on her wrists
- The body had been cut straight down the middle and completely emptied
- All of this occurred after her death from a gunshot wound (like Hogan)
Trial
Edward Gein was found mentally incompetent to stand or attend a trial at the time of his arrest.
- He was sent to Central State Hospital (now Dodge Correction Institute) in Waupun, Wisconsin
- The hospital soon converted into a prison, so Gein was moved to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin
In 1968, the doctors declared Edward Gein to be sane enough to finally have his trial.
- The court found him not guilty by reason of insanity
- Edward spent the rest of his life in the hospital
He died on July 26, 1984 of respiratory and heart failure.
Organized or Disorganized?
I believe Edward Gein is an organized killer because:
- He planned the robbing of graves
- Used skin, flesh, and body parts to create furniture, bowls, and his woman suit
- He killed Hogan and Worden in similar ways
- He also sought out middle-aged women who closely resembled his mother
Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda
The cops could have prevented the grave robbing and murders if they had investigated just a little more.
When the farmhouse burned down (after Edward's father died), Henry (Edward's brother) died from asphyxiation
- But, there was evidence that Henry had suffered trauma to the head
The cops should have investigated Edward further, possibly pinning him for the death of his brother.
I would have taken it upon myself to further investigate him, maybe we could have seen that Gein wasn't mentally stable and possibly killed his brother before the fire even occurred.
Tendencies
Edward's tendencies developed from the abuse and strict nature of his mother, she was the leading factor in his murders and strange behaviors. This can be classified as "nurtured killer" tendencies. Gein had a close relationship with his mother and tried to fill the void with something similar when she died. It can be said that people have a tendency to do the same thing.
