Topics
- Childhood
- Adult life
- Murders/Creations
- How it was solved
- How to use this new knowledge to solve cases in class
- Sources
Childhood
Ed Gein was born in LaCrosse, Wisconsin, but soon after his family moved to Plainfield.
His father worker as a tanner and carpenter when he wasn't working on the farm. Occasionally he became violent (when he was drunk). He died in 1940.
His mother, while operating a small grocery store, was the dominant parent. She was extremely religious and regularly told her sons to never partake in premarital sex. Suffered from strokes and died in 1945.
Born in 1901, Henry was the eldest son. He died in 1944.
Adult life
After his parents and his older brother died, he started trying to learn as much as he could about the female anatomy. He became very interested in the Nazi's medical experiments done on the Jews in concentration camps in WWII.
Eventually, Ed moved to digging up female corpses and dissecting them, keeping some parts: heads, sex organs, livers, hearts and intestines. He was especially interested in the female genitalia and he would sometimes fondle or play with them.
Murders/Creations
While Gein had been linked to 10 different missing persons cases, he was only convicted of two murders; that of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan.
Gein would use the skin and bones of his victims to create household objects such as lamps, chairs, shoes, bags, etc. But other times he would wear the skin of his victims, sometimes putting someone else's face over his own.
Solved
Bernice Worden's son went to his mother's hardware store and found a small pool of blood and a trail leading to the back door. He found a receipt showing an Edward Gein had been the last customer and immediately had officials search Gein's property. The eventually found the body of Worden (she'd been hung upside down by her wrists and ankles, gutted like a deer, and decapitated) in his house along with her head and the head of Mary Hogan (missing since 1954) in his refrigerator.
Use
Sources
"Murder Victims." Ed Gein. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
"Edward Theodore Gein A.K.A." Crime Museum. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
"Ed Gein's Childhood | Twisted Minds - a Website about Serial Killers." Serial Killers News. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.
"Posts about Henry Gein on I Hope to Be Remembered for My Atrocities!" I Hope to Be Remembered for My Atrocities. N.p., n.d. Web. 10 Mar. 2017.