Among the tall tells and slasher films, there are true situations that breed evil. Events in a person’s life and influences denied or given to an individual can mold a murderer.

Story by G. Jimenez

Edward Theodore Gein was born August 27, 1906, in La Crosse County Wisconsin. He was the second of two boys. His father was an alcoholic, unable to keep a job and his mother was a grocery store owner. Ed’s mother sold the store in 1914 and moved the family to live in isolation near Plainfield Wisconsin, cutting her boys off from the outside world. Ed’s mother capitalized on the seclusion, preaching about the immorality of the world and women being inherently evil. All the while she was stroking a fire in Ed that she did not know had been ignited. 

In 1944, after the death of Ed’s father due to his alcoholism his brother was found dead, face down on the family property. His brother’s death believed to be due to heart failure, would eventually be a speculative victim of the vicious creature Ed was becoming. Ed’s mother continued to feed his hate until her death in 1945, leaving an insatiable hunger for his animosity.  

In December of 1957 a shop owner named Bernice Worden went missing, leaving a receipt of the last purchase linked to Ed Gein. Ed’s property was searched and the findings where inexpressibly revolting. A slew of exhumed body parts used to make articles of clothing, masks, and, the re-creation of his dead mother. Also, among the carnage was the decapitated body of shop owner Bernice Worden. 

Edward was arranged on one count of First Degree Murder on November of 1957, despite admitting to the murder of Mary Hogan. He pleaded not guilty, by reason of insanity. After being diagnosed with schizophrenia, Ed Gein was sent to a State hospital for the criminally insane. It was not until a year later that Gein was fit for trial. He was found guilty by Judge a week later. However, a second trial held in regard to Gein’s Sanity found him not Guilty by reason of insanity.

Edward Gein’s notoriety earned him such fabled names as Leather face and films depicting characters’ like James Gumb from ‘Silence of the Lambs’ and Norman Bated from the horror classic, ‘Psycho’. However, while these “movie monsters” frightened us and entered our nightmare from time to time; Ed Gein was a true nightmare.