Age, Biography and Wiki
- Age at Death: Ed Gein was 77 years old when he passed away on July 26, 1984.
- Birthdate: Born on August 27, 1906.
- Biography: Gein was raised by his mother on a farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin. His father died in 1940, and his brother Henry died in 1944. Gein's mother, a dominant figure in his life, passed away in 1945. He became infamous for his crimes involving grave robbing and murder.
Occupation | Serial Killers |
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Date of Birth | 27 August 1906 |
Age | 118 Years |
Birth Place | La Crosse, Wisconsin, U.S. |
Horoscope | Virgo |
Country | U.S |
Date of death | 26 July, 1984 |
Died Place | Mendota Mental Health Institute, Madison, Wisconsin, U.S. |
Height, Weight & Measurements
No specific details are readily available regarding Ed Gein's height or weight.
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Dating & Relationship Status
- Relationships: There is no documented information about Ed Gein's romantic relationships. His upbringing by a controlling mother kept him isolated from social interactions, particularly with women.
Gein had an older brother named Henry. Augusta, who was fervently religious and nominally Lutheran, frequently preached to her sons about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking and her belief that all women were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting verses from the Old Testament and the Book of Revelation concerning death, murder and divine retribution. Gein idolized and became obsessed with his mother.
On April 1, 1940, Gein's father died of heart failure at age 66. Gein and his brother Henry began doing odd jobs around town to help cover living expenses. The brothers were generally considered reliable and honest by the rest of the community. While both worked as handymen, Gein also frequently babysat for neighbors. He enjoyed babysitting, seeming to relate more easily to children than adults. Henry began dating a divorced mother of two and planned to move in with her. He worried about his brother's attachment to their mother and often spoke ill of her around Gein, who responded with shock and hurt.
With Henry deceased, Ed and Augusta were now alone. Augusta had a paralyzing stroke shortly after Henry's death, and Ed devoted himself to taking care of her. Sometime in 1945, he later recounted, he and his mother visited a man named Smith, who lived nearby, to purchase straw. According to Ed, Augusta witnessed Smith beating a dog. A woman inside the Smith residence came outside and yelled for him to stop, but Smith beat the dog to death. Augusta was extremely upset by this scene; however, what bothered her did not appear to be the brutality toward the dog but, rather, the presence of the woman. Augusta told Ed that the woman was not married to Smith and so had no business being there, and angrily called her "Smith's harlot". She had a second stroke soon after, and her health deteriorated rapidly. Augusta died on December 29, 1945, at the age of 67. Ed was devastated by her death; in the words of Schechter, he had "lost his only friend and one true love. And he was absolutely alone in the world."
Gein held on to the farm and earned money from odd jobs. He boarded up rooms used by his mother, including the upstairs, downstairs parlor and living room, leaving them untouched. While the rest of the house became increasingly squalid, these rooms remained pristine. Gein lived thereafter in a small room next to the kitchen. Around this time, he became interested in reading pulp magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities, specifically concerning Ilse Koch, who selected tattooed prisoners for death in order to fashion lampshades and other items from their skins. Gein received a farm subsidy from the federal government starting in 1951. He occasionally worked for the local municipal road crew and crop-threshing crews in the Plainfield area. Sometime between 1946 and 1956, he also sold an 80 acre parcel of land that Henry had owned.
Frank Worden told investigators that on the evening before his mother's disappearance, Gein had been in the store and was expected to return the next morning for a gallon of antifreeze. A sales slip for the antifreeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning that she disappeared. That evening, Gein was arrested at a West Plainfield grocery store, and the Waushara County Sheriff's Department searched the Gein farm.
These artifacts were photographed at the state crime laboratory and then "decently disposed of". When questioned, Gein told investigators that between 1947 and 1952, he had made as many as forty nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to exhume recently buried bodies while he was in a "daze-like" state. On about thirty of those visits, he said that he came out of the daze while in the cemetery, left the grave in good order and returned home emptyhanded. On the other occasions, he dug up the graves of recently buried middle-aged women he thought resembled his mother and took the bodies home, where he tanned their skins to make his paraphernalia.
Soon after his mother's death, Gein began to create a "woman suit" so that "he could become his mother—to literally crawl into her skin." He denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining: "They smelled too bad." During state crime laboratory interrogation, Gein also admitted to shooting 51-year-old Mary Hogan, a tavern owner missing since December 8, 1954, whose head was found in his house, but he later denied memory of details of her death.
A 16-year-old youth, whose parents were friends of Gein and who attended baseball games and movies with him, reported that Gein kept shrunken heads in his house, which he had described as relics sent by a cousin who had served in the Philippines during World War II. Upon investigation by the police, these were determined to be human facial skins, carefully peeled from corpses and used by Gein as masks.
In addition to the murders of Hogan and Worden, Gein was also considered regarding several other unsolved cases in Wisconsin. In November 1957, authorities confronted Gein with a list of missing persons cases that had occurred between the death of his mother and Worden. Their suspicions were further aroused after the discovery of Hogan's remains. However, lie detector tests exonerated Gein of any other murders, and his psychiatrists concluded that his violence was only directed to women who physically resembled his mother.
* Evelyn Grace Hartley, 14, went missing while babysitting a 20-month-old girl at the home of La Crosse State College professor Viggo Rasmusen on the evening of October 24, 1953, in La Crosse. That evening, her father Richard called the Rasmussen house several times after she failed to check in as planned at 8:30 p.m.; he received no answer. Concerned, he drove to the Rasmussen house to find the doors were locked, the lights and radio on and items scattered all over the house. The living room furniture had been moved around to different places, as were Evelyn's school books. Richard found her shoes in different rooms, one shoe upstairs and one downstairs. He also found his daughter's broken glasses upstairs. Richard did not find Evelyn in the house. After his arrest, Gein was questioned regarding Evelyn's disappearance, however, he denied involvement in the disappearance and passed two lie detector tests; police found no trace of Evelyn's remains during a search of Gein's property.
* In addition, Gein has also been tentatively linked to the June 1954 disappearance of neighbor James Walsh, 32; Walsh and his wife lived near Gein, who performed chores for her after her husband went missing. Gein was also investigated for potential involvement in the August 1956 disappearance of Irene Keating, 30, who was last seen in Plainfield, and in the attempted abduction of Judy Rodencal, 16, from Auroraville.
Gein died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute due to respiratory failure, secondary to lung cancer, on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77. Over the years, souvenir seekers chipped away pieces from his gravestone, until the stone itself was stolen in 2000. It was recovered in June 2001, near Seattle, Washington, and was placed in storage at the Waushara County Sheriff's Department. Gein is interred between his parents and brother in Plainfield Cemetery; his gravesite now unmarked, but not unknown.
American filmmaker, Errol Morris, and German filmmaker, Werner Herzog, attempted unsuccessfully to collaborate on a film project about Gein from 1975 to 1976. Morris claimed to have interviewed Gein several times and ended up spending almost a year in Plainfield interviewing dozens of locals. The pair planned secretly to exhume Gein's mother from her grave to test a theory, but never followed through on the scheme, and eventually ended their collaboration. The aborted project was described in a 1989 New Yorker profile of Morris.
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Net Worth and Salary
- Net Worth: Ed Gein's net worth is not definitively known, as he did not engage in any lucrative professions or businesses. He sustained himself through small jobs and government subsidies.
- Salary: There is no relevant information about his salary.
Career, Business and Investments
- Career: Gein's primary occupation was as a handyman. He also worked on small jobs for locals.
- Business and Investments: There is no evidence that Gein was involved in any businesses or investments.
George Gein worked as a carpenter, tanner and in the city fire department. He also owned a local grocery shop but soon sold the business and left the city with his family to live on a 155 acre farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became their permanent residence. Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders who could have influenced her sons.
* Victor Harold Travis, 42, a resident of Adams County, went off to hunt deer in the company of acquaintance Raymond Burgess on November 1, 1952. In the late afternoon, the pair stopped for refreshments at Mac's Bar in Plainfield for several hours. At around 7 p.m., they both left the bar, got into Burgess’ car and drove away. The hunters, along with the car Burgess was driving, were never seen again and no trace of them was ever found. Travis and Burgess had been hunting on the farm next to Gein's despite his objections on the day of their disappearance.
Social Network
Ed Gein did not have a social network presence, as he was isolated and lived during a time before widespread social media use.
A sheriff's deputy discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed on Gein's property, hung upside down by her legs with a crossbar at her ankles and ropes at her wrists. The torso was "dressed out like a deer". She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations were made after her death. Searching the house, authorities found:
Gein's story has had a lasting effect on American popular culture as evidenced by its numerous appearances in film, music and literature. The tale first came to widespread public attention in the fictionalized version presented by Robert Bloch in his 1959 suspense novel, Psycho. In addition to Alfred Hitchcock's 1960 film of Bloch's novel, Psycho, Gein's story was loosely adapted into numerous films, including Deranged (1974), In the Light of the Moon (2000) (released in the United States and Australia as Ed Gein (2001)), Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (2007), Ed Gein, the Musical (2010), and the Rob Zombie film, House of 1000 Corpses, and its sequel, The Devil's Rejects. Gein served as the inspiration for a myriad of fictional serial killers, most notably, Norman Bates (Psycho), Leatherface (The Texas Chain Saw Massacre), Buffalo Bill (The Silence of the Lambs), Garland Greene (Con Air), and the character of Dr. Oliver Thredson in the TV series American Horror Story: Asylum.
Gein's story inspired American grunge band Tad to write the song "Nipple Belt" for their 1989 album, God's Balls. Gein also inspired American thrash metal band Slayer to write the song "Dead Skin Mask" for their 1990 album, Seasons in the Abyss. Additionally, Gein was the inspiration and namesake for the song "Nothing to Gein," by American heavy metal band Mudvayne; released in 2000 on their album, L.D. 50.
The character, Patrick Bateman, in the 1991 novel American Psycho, and its 2000 film adaptation, mistakenly attributes a quote by Edmund Kemper to Gein saying, "You know what Ed Gein said about women? ... He said, 'When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part of me wants to take her out, talk to her, be real nice and sweet and treat her right ... [the other part wonders] what her head would look like on a stick'."
Education
- Education: Details about Ed Gein's formal education are not well-documented. His upbringing and isolation likely limited his educational opportunities.
In conclusion, Ed Gein's financial situation was modest, sustained by small jobs and government support. His notoriety came from his crimes rather than any financial achievements or business ventures.
Gein left the farm only to attend school. Outside of school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Gein was shy; classmates and teachers remembered him as having strange mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. Augusta punished Gein whenever he tried to make friends, according to family acquaintances. Despite his poor social development, Gein did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.
Gein admitted to stealing from nine graves and led investigators to their locations. Allan Wilimovsky of the state crime laboratory participated in opening three test graves identified by Gein. The caskets were inside wooden boxes; the top boards ran crossways (not lengthwise). The tops of the boxes were about 2 feet below the surface in sandy soil. Gein had robbed the graves soon after the funerals while the graves were not completed. The test graves were exhumed because authorities were uncertain as to whether the slight Gein was capable of single-handedly digging up a grave during a single evening. They were found as Gein described: one casket was empty; another casket was empty but contained a few bones and Gein's crowbar; and the final casket saw most of the body missing, yet Gein had returned rings and some body parts. Thus, Gein's confession was largely corroborated.
* Georgia Jean Weckler, 8, disappeared near her farm home in Fort Atkinson at approximately 3:30 p.m. on May 1, 1947. She was given a lift home from grade school in Jefferson by a neighbor who dropped Weckler off at the lane that led from U.S. Highway 12 to the Weckler farm. Weckler was last seen pausing to open the family mailbox and removing a stack of mail. Witnesses reported seeing a dark-colored, possibly black, 1936 Ford sedan with a gray plastic spotlight in the vicinity that afternoon; Gein owned a black 1937 Ford.
On November 21, 1957, Gein was arraigned on one count of first degree murder in Waushara County Court, where he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent, thus unfit for trial. He was sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane (now the Dodge Correctional Institution), a maximum-security facility in Waupun, and later transferred to the Mendota State Hospital in Madison.