Ed Gein, The Butcher Of Plainfield

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Ed Gein was, as I’m sure y’all already know. He was a body snatcher and killer from Plainfield, Wisconsin.

Ed’s father had not what we would call a good man, nor was he even a halfway decent role model from his sons. Dude drank to excess, and physically mistreated his family. Though Ed had an older brother, Henry, he had always been extremely close to his mama, Augusta Gein. Mama was strict – well, that’s putting it lightly. Augusta was overbearing, demanding, demeaning, a religious zealot, and some say she could be physically abusive as well. For instance, there’s one story of August pushing little Eddie down a flight of stairs as a child. When he got a bit older, Ed was not allowed to leave the family farm unless it was for school; it’s said that mama had punished the young man for attempting to make friends, and girls were strictly forbidden.

When Ed’s father passed away of heart issues brought on by alcoholism in 1940, Ed and Henry began to take on odd jobs such as babysitting. Ed had been known as an odd duck, but generally harmless. Eventually brother Henry found himself a girl and got hitched; at this point Ed became even more obsessively close with his Mama.

Ed’s first murder was likely his big brother, Henry, on May 16th of 1944. The brothers were burning vegetation on the the property of the farm in which they lived when the fire became uncontrollable. Ed waited several hours to report his brother missing. Henry was found dead, but it’s noted that he had multiple bruises on his body and head. The question is, why in the world would the man want his only sibling dead? Henry had been very concerned about his brother’s obsessive attachment to their mother, he found it unhealthy. Maybe a fight broke out about that, who knows?

*Henry’s grave. I searched for a photo of the man, but no dice.*

Augusta Gein passed away on a stroke on December 29th of 1945, and the man was now exceedingly lonesome. Around this time Ed began to partake in his new hobby: body snatching. He would dig up fresh corpses from a local cemetery, bring them back to the farm, skin the bodies, and construct all sorts of things from their remains.

Eventually body snatching hadn’t been enough to satiate Ed’s urges, so he escalated to murdering humans.

In 1954 Ed murdered a tavern owner named Mary Hogan; the killer shot her right there in her store, loaded up her corpse, and dragged Mary back to his farm.

Two years later, in 1957, he took the life of a hardware store owner named Bernice Warden. This was Ed’s downfall; Bernice’s son had been a deputy, and people had witnessed Ed hanging around the store so it was decided that Ed’s farm deserved a good searching.

Investigators found filthy living conditions, and so many atrocities. Skulls used for bowls, nipple belts, body suits made of skin, furniture upholstered with human skin, and so much more.

In the shed, they found the body of Bernice. She had been decapitated; both Bernice and Mary’s heads were found inside Ed’s house. Bernice’s remains were hanging upside down, and cut in the way one would dress a deer. I’ll add those truly gruesome and fully unedited photos below.

The people of Plainview were outraged, disgusted at what had gone down in their small town. In March of 1958 the townspeople set fire to the farm. Though they could have made a tourist attraction of it, to this very day they don’t take kindly to strangers stopping by to see the property where the Gein farm once stood.

*The remains of the farm after the arson*

To shorten this part down, Ed confessed to killing both women. When asked if he’d had sex with any of the corpses, our killer stated that he had not because their stench had been too awful. Ed was sent to a mental health facility for the rest of his life. The killer passed away at Mendota Mental Health Institute of cancer on July 26th of 1984. He had lived to be 77.

Ed is buried with his family in a local cemetery, but you know. He’s famous, and people kept stealing Ed’s headstone. Last I heard, his grave is now unmarked.