To those of us who watched the movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre the image of the killer with a disfigured face was indeed scary. His modus operandi of killing and gutting people was a nightmare. I was shocked to find out that there was a real life killer from whom this film character was born.
Edward Gein was a serial killer who lived in Wisconsin. Born in 1906 he was the younger, with an older brother Henry. Their father was an alcoholic and had worked many jobs including that of a tanner. The family never enjoyed peace and soon relocated to an isolated 155 acre farm in Plainfield. His mother Augusta was a faithful Lutheran and a religious lady. She made sure that her boys had less contact with people. She often told them that women were instruments of evil.
As a child Ed was rather shy and only went out of the large farm to school. He had shown some interest in reading. In 1940 their father died leaving them with very little income. The boys began to do odd jobs to survive. Ed used to babysit: something he liked as he could relate to children and not adults. He was deeply attached to his mother. His brother Henry began dating a divorced woman. In 1944 Henry and Edward were clearing a large patch of land on the farm by burning the vegetation, when the fire got out of control. The fire engines rushed to the farm, and found that Henry was dead. Some speculated that Henry had been killed by his brother Ed, though the death was affiliated to a heart failure. Had Ed killed Henry like the Old Testament story of Cain and Abel?
After the death of her elder boy, Augusta had a stroke which left her paralyzed. Edward devoted his life looking after her. In 1945 Ed was propelled into loneliness when his mother died. In the book the Deviant the author describes that Ed had lost his only friend in the world. Ed was unable to maintain the farm house; he also began reading cult magazines and was fascinated by Nazi torture tactics. Perhaps it was this stage in life that “opened’ his mind into a highway of murder. He then sold 80 acres of farm land.
In 1957 the local grocery store owner Bernice Worden was missing. Her son the Deputy Sheriff suspected Ed Gein, as he was the last visitor to the store the evening before the disappearance. When police raided the farm in Plainfield they were horrified to find the decapitated body of Bernice strung on a beam, like a deer is strung after being hunted. Upon entering the house the police were shocked to find the following: skulls, masks made of female skin, a basket made out of a skull, the heart of Bernice in a plastic bag, nine vaginas in a shoe box and a belt made of female nipples. The police had never seen such an eerie collection at a crime scene, until then.
From 1947-1952 the lonely man had begun visiting graveyards and stealing corpses. He selected middle aged women who resembled his late mother. Using the tanning skills he had observed from his father Edward would cut the women’s skin and make his “art collection”. He confessed to police that he created a ‘woman suit” using female skin to enter his “mother’s world”.
In 1957 Ed Gein was taken to court, but found mentally unfit to stand trial. He was sent to a maximum security facility for the criminally insane. By 1968 it was decided that he was able to stand trial. He was assigned to a state mental hospital. During this time his farm house burnt down, and some said it was deliberately set on fire. The “Butcher of Plainfield” died of lung cancer aged 77 years. He was buried between his parents grave. In 1990 the band Slayer did a song ‘Dead skin Mask’ on the famous crimes of Ed. The once lonely farm boy, spiraled into a demented world by the loss of his beloved mother became a cruel monster.