Edward Theodore Gein (; August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984), also known as the Butcher of Plainfield and the Plainfield Ghoul, was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety in 1957 after authorities discovered that he stole corpses from local graveyards and fashioned keepsakes from their bones and skin. He also confessed to killing two women: tavern owner Mary Hogan in 1954 and hardware store owner Bernice Worden in 1957.
Gein was initially found unfit to stand trial and confined to a mental health facility. By 1968 he was judged competent to stand trial. He was found guilty of the murder of Worden, but was found legally insane and thus was remanded to a psychiatric institution.
Early life
Childhood
Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, on August 27, 1906, the second of two sons to George Philip Gein (1873–1940) and Augusta Wilhelmine Gein (née Lehrke; 1878–1945), both of German descent. Gein's only sibling was 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 evils 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.
In La Crosse, Gein's father worked as a carpenter, tanner, and firefighter. He also owned a local grocery store but soon sold the business and left the city with his family to live on a farm in the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became their permanent residence. Gein's father was known to be a violent alcoholic who regularly beat both of his sons. This caused Ed's ears to ring when his father beat him on the head. Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders who could have influenced her sons. Apparently, Henry had been dead for some time, and it appeared that the cause of death was heart failure, since he had not been burned or injured otherwise. Augusta told Gein that the woman was not married to Smith and so had no business being there, angrily calling her "Smith's harlot." She suffered a second stroke soon after, and her health deteriorated rapidly.
In 1951, Gein started receiving a farm subsidy from the federal government. He occasionally worked for the local municipal road crew and crop-threshing crews in the Plainfield area. Sometime between 1946 and 1956, he sold an parcel of land that Henry had owned.
Crimes
Confirmed
On the morning of November 16, 1957, 58-year-old Plainfield hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared. The hardware store's truck was seen driving out from the rear of the building at around 9:30a.m. The store saw few customers the entire day; some area residents believed that this was because of deer hunting season.
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 Bernice Worden on the morning that she disappeared. That evening, Gein was arrested at a West Plainfield