He focused much of his initial investigation exclusively on Gein, who was quickly located and apprehended at a neighbor's house. The woman's son, Frank Worden, was a deputy sheriff and he was immediately suspicious of the reclusive Gein. The cash register was gone and there was a trail of blood leading all the way out the back door. The Plainfield hardware store she worked in was empty. The Horrors Uncovered Inside Ed Gein's Houseīernice Worden was reported missing on Nov. One of these was Mary Hogan, who owned the Pine Grove tavern - one of the only establishments Ed Gein regularly visited. Numerous people had simply vanished without a trace. At the same time, Gein fostered a disconcerting curiosity for anatomy which he initially sated by amassing numerous books on the subject.Ĭoincidentally, this stage of Gein's psychological development and quality of life and environment occurred at the same time that several Plainfield residents went missing. Piles of household items, furniture, and nondescript items collected dust and grew from small piles to undeniable mounds. The rest of Ed Gein's house, meanwhile, was utterly neglected. He kept his mother's room spotless and untouched, presumably in an effort to repress the fact that she'd died. Living alone in the sizable house once inhabited by his parents and older brother, Ed Gein started to go off the rails. The Butcher Of Plainfield's Grisly Murders Begin This is when Ed Gein's legacy as one of the most psychologically unhinged, dangerous, and macabre serial killers of the 20th century began in earnest. Only one year later, however, Augusta Gein died. He was entirely devoted to his mother and tended to her every concern. Gein never left the house for social gatherings nor dated anyone. This aspect of Gein's disturbed persona was most notably explored in Alfred Hitchcock's Psycho. Ed Gein's house was now comprised of an aging, puritanical mother who shamed her adult son about the dangers of carnal desires and a grown man whose fears, anxieties, and devotions forced him to stay and endure this environment. Regardless of how Henry's death happened, Gein now had his mother to himself. It was only after Gein's future crimes were discovered by the law and the world at large that true crime obsessives and amateur sleuths began wondering what really happened that day. Gein and Henry were burning brush on the family farm and the blaze apparently grew to uncontrollable proportions, ultimately leaving Henry dead. In 1944, however, a supposed accident shrank the Gein family even further. The two brothers worked a variety of odd jobs to make ends meet and support their mother lest her wrath be turned against them. Gein and his brother were attempting to pick up the slack left by their admittedly complacent father after he passed away. In 1940, when Ed was 34 years old and still lived at home, his father died. Though Gein had likely already been shaped and molded in terms of repressive behavior and unnatural rejection of normal urges, his mental health issues wouldn't truly take shape until both of his parents died. This would be Ed Gein's house until for decades and the place where he would commit his ghastly crimes. Gein was only nine when they moved onto the desolate farmland and he rarely left for any reason besides school. She'd regularly preach about sin, carnal desire, and lust to the two young boys while their father nodded off in a booze-induced trance.Īugusta relocated the Gein family to Plainfield in 1915. Though Ed grew up alongside his older brother, Henry, no amount of sibling companionship could sway the tides of an overly puritanical matriarch who routinely mocked and shamed her children.Īugusta ruled the home with an iron fist ideologically founded on her stern, conservative outlook on life. The bright lighting in the side ground floor window is part of the illumination for the on-site crime lab.Īugusta, meanwhile, was a complete religious fanatic. Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images Curiosity-seekers peer through a window into the house of serial killer Ed Gein in Plainfield, Wisconsin.
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