American Serial Killer Ed Gein aka Leatherface

Edward Theodore Gein was born in Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1906. His parents were George and Augusta Gein and he had a younger brother named Henry George. And that's the where the normalcy ends. Nothing else about Gein sounds even remotely like an ideal upbringing.

Augusta Gein could only be described as a religious zealot. She firmly believed that all women were evil and wicked and she hated all men. The only reason she stayed married to George was because of her deep religious convictions about the evils of divorce. Augusta raised both of her sons on a steady diet of the most gruesome Old Testament Bible verses she could find and made sure that both of them understood just how evil women could be.

Edward and his brother, Henry, both attended school. Henry was a meek, effeminate child and was often the target for the school bullies. He had few friends, if any, because his mother punished him whenever he started getting close to someone and his teachers remember that he always seemed somewhat distant and would often start laughing at some internal joke.

The family patriarch, George Gein, died in 1940 after a series of heart attacks and the boys started picking up odd jobs to help their mother with expenses. They had reputations as reliable, good workers all around town and one of Ed Gein's first jobs was as a babysitter for some of the little children in the neighborhood. A job he particularly enjoyed.

As the boys grew older, Henry began to realize that his mother's views weren't quite right. And he also noticed that his brother Ed was developing an unhealthy attachment to their mother. Henry began bringing this to Ed's attention, openly letting him know that he disagreed with their mother on a lot her beliefs.

On May 16, 1944 Ed and Henry were working together on the farm. They had decided to burn off some marsh that day and as they were tending the fire, the brothers became separated. Ed extinguished the fire and, after a fruitless search, he contacted the police.

A search party was quickly formed and Ed led them directly to Henry's body, which was found lying on the ground in an area that had not been touched by the fire. There were several bruises about Henry's head but with no reason to suspect foul play the coroner ruled the death was a result of asphyxiation.

Did Henry Gein somehow trip, bump his head and suffocate in all the smoke from the marsh fire? Or was he the first victim of soon-to-be serial killer, Ed Gein?

Augusta Gein was not, by any stretch of the imagination, the world's best mother. She verbally, physically and mentally abused her children. The boys could never do anything to please her, no matter how hard they tried and they were constantly criticized, berated, and beaten. Living in poverty after their father died the boys were essentially prisoners in their own home, held captive by a lunatic who professed to be saving them from the evils of women while beating them and brainwashing them with gruesome Bible stories. Who knows what might have happened had Henry survived?

After the death of his brother, Edward was left alone in the house with only his mother for company and his unhealthy attachment only deepened.

Augusta died from a stroke on December 29, 1945 and Edward was devastated. According to him, he had lost the only woman he would ever love and he was now alone in the world.

Ed Gein boarded up his mother's bedroom, leaving it exactly as it had been when she was alive. He also boarded up all the other rooms in the house including the upstairs bedrooms, the living room and the parlor. The only rooms left were the kitchen and a small room off to the side and those are the room in which Edward Gein lived while committing his horrible crimes.

At the time of his mother's death, Gein had a relatively good reputation in the town. He did odd jobs and was always reliable. He didn't have many friends but, at the time, no one really thought poorly of him. The townspeople called him 'Weird Eddie" and he was a loner. But he wasn't feared.

But all that began to change after Augusta passed away. Without his anchor, Gein began to drift.

Gein had spent his entire life hearing about the evils of women and now, alone in the world, with no one to berate him, he became interested in learning more about these supposedly evil creatures. He was particularly interested in their anatomy.

Gein started buying anatomy books, medical encyclopedias and even horror novels and 'gentleman's' magazines. As his obsession grew, he also became interested in the atrocities that were committed by the Nazis and read everything he could find on their medical experiments.

Profiling experts today know that serial killers don't just start out killing innocent victims. They generally go through a gradual progression that begins early in life. As they mature, their behavior begins to mutate from the seemingly innocent to the somewhat questionable and finally to the horrendous. Had some of today's profilers been witness to Gein's behavior after the death of his mother, they may have been able to predict what was about to happen.

But hindsight is always 20/20.

At this point, it's almost easy to disengage from this horror story. We're so conditioned to the gore we see on TV crime shows and the hideous acts of torture and mutilation we see in the theater that the story of Ed Gein reads just like a dime-store horror novel. It's just a story, right?

Wrong! Ed Gein was real. And Ed Gein was a monster! Remember, Ed Gein lived in a town, a community of other people, probably similar to your own community. And no one suspected a thing.

Gein had learned everything he could from books and magazines and if he wanted to learn more he was going to have to take the next step. And that next step led him into the local cemetery.

Lucky for them, Gein's first real victims, if you don't count his brother, were already dead. He began digging up the freshly buried bodies of women. But not just any women. They had to have resembled his mother when they were alive.

Gein took these bodies home to his remote farm and there he would dissect them to learn more about the female anatomy. He kept some of the body parts including heads, livers, hearts, intestines and female organs. Then he would remove the skin and either drape it over a dressmaker's dummy to dry or wear it himself while he danced around the farm.

It was during this stage of his serial killer progression that Gein removed himself from the community and became a recluse. It's not hard to imagine why he discouraged visitors and shied away from people when he did venture into town.

By this time too, the family farm had pretty much fallen into decay and children of the town all thought the house was probably haunted.

Eventually, Gein grew bored with his already dead victims and decided to move on to real, live human beings. In December of 1954, Mary Hogan, age 54, disappeared from the tavern she owned. She was the approximate age of Gein's mother and resembled her in appearance. But it wasn't until 3 years later that Gein was finally found out.

On November 16, 1957, Mrs. Bernice Worden, also in her 50s and resembling Gein's mother, disappeared from the local hardware store that she ran. Her son Frank, one of the local deputies, learned of her disappearance and started investigating.

As it turned out, Gein had been in the hardware store the day before and promised to return the next day to purchase some anti-freeze. The receipt for his purchase was found on the counter the morning of Mrs. Worden's disappearance.

Frank put two and two together - 'Weird Eddie' had just been in the store and now his mother was missing.

Frank Worden decided it was time to visit the Gein Farm.

Even Stephen King would have a hard time describing the grisly scene that greeted Frank Worden. The body of his own mother, Bernice Worden, was found in the woodshed. Mrs. Worden was found hanging upside down from a meat hook attached to the ceiling. Her torso had been cut open and her intestines were found in a box on the floor, while her heart was sitting on a plate in the kitchen. Her head had been removed.

But the madness doesn't stop there. Scattered throughout the house and farm detectives found 10 well-preserved human heads, the skin from the upper torso of a woman, a chair upholstered in human skin, soup bowls made of human skulls, lampshades made of human flesh, a table that had human shinbones for legs, and belts and bracelets and clothing made of human skin that Gein had tanned like leather and then stitched together. Gein's own bed had human skulls on the bedposts and a human head hung on the wall. The refrigerator was full of human organs.

Remember that most of his victims resembled his mother? After his arrest, Gein confessed that he enjoyed dressing up in the garments made from his victim's skin so he could pretend he was his mother.

When all was said and done, the body count came to 15.

Gein spent 10 years in a mental hospital and was finally determined to be competent to stand trial. He was tried for the murders of Hogan and Worden and was found to be criminally insane at the time of the murders. Sentenced again to a mental institution, Gein died in 1978 at the age of 74 while living in the geriatric wing of the Mendota Mental Health Institute. Cause of death was heart failure brought on by respiratory distress.

There's disagreement over whether or not Edward Gein was a true serial killer. To be classified as a serial killer at least 3 victims are required and Gein only admitted to 2. The other bodies found on the farm were bodies that Gein dug up from the area cemeteries, so he wasn't responsible for their deaths.

During his confession and subsequent interviews, Gein vehemently denied any sexual activity with his victims, stating that they all 'smelled too bad.' And it's believed that he was telling the truth because, reportedly, he confessed after only a few hours of interrogation when someone brought him a piece of apple pie with cheese.

Gein was a model prisoner and was characterized as being meek, and mild, and easy to get along with, even likable.

When it was originally released in 1974, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was the scariest horror movie ever shown on the big screen. The advance publicity all screamed - "t's True! What happened is real! Now the movie that's just as real!" and at that time, people actually walked out of the movie theater during the previews.

By today's standards The Texas Chainsaw Massacre is almost a G-rated movie. But die-hard horror movie aficionados still rave about the special effects, the musical score and yes, even the acting in this cult classic.

But how True is it? Is The Texas Chainsaw Massacre really a documentary based on the life and times of Ed Gein?

Leatherface, the chainsaw weilding mama's boy in The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, really is based on Ed Gein. But there is a little bit of poetic license involved. Gein did have human faces hanging on his walls and he did stitch even more faces together so he could use them for masks. And you've already read about all the other atrocities that were found in his home.

But Gein didn't use a chainsaw. At least, not in the way that Leatherface did. Gein never really set out on a murderous rampage and he certainly never would have been interested in a couple of scrawny, cute teenage girls. He didn't kill just for the sake of killing. His victims all resembled his plus-size, fifty-ish mother so he could continue with his obsession.

The Texas Chainsaw Massacre was written and directed by Tobe Hooper and some believe it's based on the actual facts of the Gein case. Not quite, though.

As a young boy, Hooper was visiting relatives in Wisconsin at the time the murders were all over the news and he heard all the gruesome details. These stories filled young Hooper's imagination and became the source of many nightmares. Hearing these horrible details at such a young age actually mentally scarred Hooper and he blocked the event from his mind. Only after he'd created Leatherface did Hooper realize that Gein and his murders were the source material for his monster.

Edward Gein made a terrific impact on American history. Never before had such gruesome crimes been uncovered and reported. And by news media all over the nation. It's easy to see how this sensational story could become the basis for The Bogey Man.

Leatherface was the first character to make it to the Silver Screen. But right behind him came Norman Bates of 'Psycho' fame. Norman only killed his mother and Janet Leigh and he didn't dress up in human skin. But he was a mama's boy, that's for sure and the idea for his character is loosely based on the Gein story.

And then along came Buffalo Bill, a true serial killer in The Silence Of The Lambs. Buffalo Bill did have several victims and who can foget that famous line - "It rubs the lotion on its skin, or else it gets the hose again?"

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