Mama's gonna make all of your nightmares come true, Mama's gonna put all of her fears into you
This day in history: November 16, 1957 - Ed Gein’s private life is revealed.
Bernice Worden had disappeared.
After a day of deer hunting, her son Frank had gone to the hardware store she ran but found the doors locked. Entering with his own key he found a pool of blood, but not his mother or the cash register. The Sheriff’s Department was summoned and began to investigate, and was soon informed by hunters that a local man named Ed Gein had been seen driving the Worden truck away from the store.
Gein was well known to the town as an odd and lonely, but seemingly harmless person. He lived alone in a rambling house on a two-hundred acre farm. His father had died in 1940 and his brother Henry just four years later; Ed was left with his fanatically religious and domineering mother, whom he doted on, until she suffered a series of strokes and passed away on December 29, 1945. He was traumatized by her loss and kept mostly to himself thereafter, performing odd jobs and babysitting to get by.
The Sheriff’s men located Gein and simply asked how he had spent his day; Ed gave conflicting stories and then abruptly claimed he had been framed for Worden’s murder. Now fearing the worst, the authorities went to Ed’s property and came across an open woodshed. Shining their flashlights around they discovered Bernice Worden - she had been decapitated, sliced open, and gutted; her corpse hung upside down from the rafters of the shed, suspended by a crossbar at her ankles and ropes on her wrists.
The men called in reinforcements and they began to search the house, cataloguing the horrors inside: Worden’s heart was in a pan on the stove, a nearby bowl was fashioned from a human skull, lampshades and chair upholstery were crafted from skin. Detectives found a belt made of nipples, a box of excised vaginas, a window shade pull made of severed lips, a carton of noses. Skulls decorated Gein’s bedposts, and a vest, complete with breasts, had been made from the skin of a woman’s torso. The peeled face of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner who had disappeared three years prior, was found in a bag; the faces of several other women, dried and stuffed with newspaper, were mounted on the wall.
Gein was questioned (and physically assaulted by Sheriff Art Schley), and eventually confessed to the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan; although suspected of others he never admitted to them. The other specimens in the house came from corpses he removed from the cemetery. He would steal the bodies of women who reminded him of his mother, making decorations and clothes from their remains; on some nights he would even wear his “costume” and pretend to be a woman.
Gein was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a mental hospital. In 1968 doctors deemed him healthy enough for trial and he was found guilty of murder, but because he had been insane at the time of the murders Gein was sentenced to remain at the hospital. He died on July 26, 1984, and was buried next to his mother.
Sheriff Schley died of a heart attack in December 1968, at age 43. Those close to him said he was so deeply affected by Gein's crimes and the stress of testifying that it led to an early death.
Sources: Deranged, Minneapolis Tribune, TruTV Crime Library, Wiki
Bernice Worden had disappeared.
After a day of deer hunting, her son Frank had gone to the hardware store she ran but found the doors locked. Entering with his own key he found a pool of blood, but not his mother or the cash register. The Sheriff’s Department was summoned and began to investigate, and was soon informed by hunters that a local man named Ed Gein had been seen driving the Worden truck away from the store.
Gein was well known to the town as an odd and lonely, but seemingly harmless person. He lived alone in a rambling house on a two-hundred acre farm. His father had died in 1940 and his brother Henry just four years later; Ed was left with his fanatically religious and domineering mother, whom he doted on, until she suffered a series of strokes and passed away on December 29, 1945. He was traumatized by her loss and kept mostly to himself thereafter, performing odd jobs and babysitting to get by.
The Sheriff’s men located Gein and simply asked how he had spent his day; Ed gave conflicting stories and then abruptly claimed he had been framed for Worden’s murder. Now fearing the worst, the authorities went to Ed’s property and came across an open woodshed. Shining their flashlights around they discovered Bernice Worden - she had been decapitated, sliced open, and gutted; her corpse hung upside down from the rafters of the shed, suspended by a crossbar at her ankles and ropes on her wrists.
The men called in reinforcements and they began to search the house, cataloguing the horrors inside: Worden’s heart was in a pan on the stove, a nearby bowl was fashioned from a human skull, lampshades and chair upholstery were crafted from skin. Detectives found a belt made of nipples, a box of excised vaginas, a window shade pull made of severed lips, a carton of noses. Skulls decorated Gein’s bedposts, and a vest, complete with breasts, had been made from the skin of a woman’s torso. The peeled face of Mary Hogan, a tavern owner who had disappeared three years prior, was found in a bag; the faces of several other women, dried and stuffed with newspaper, were mounted on the wall.
Gein was questioned (and physically assaulted by Sheriff Art Schley), and eventually confessed to the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan; although suspected of others he never admitted to them. The other specimens in the house came from corpses he removed from the cemetery. He would steal the bodies of women who reminded him of his mother, making decorations and clothes from their remains; on some nights he would even wear his “costume” and pretend to be a woman.
Gein was found incompetent to stand trial and sent to a mental hospital. In 1968 doctors deemed him healthy enough for trial and he was found guilty of murder, but because he had been insane at the time of the murders Gein was sentenced to remain at the hospital. He died on July 26, 1984, and was buried next to his mother.
Sheriff Schley died of a heart attack in December 1968, at age 43. Those close to him said he was so deeply affected by Gein's crimes and the stress of testifying that it led to an early death.
Sources: Deranged, Minneapolis Tribune, TruTV Crime Library, Wiki