00:00Police explored what few leads they had.
00:03Ed Gein was never questioned.
00:05No one considered him a suspect.
00:07Welcome to WatchMojo.
00:09And today, we're disputing myths and looking at obscure details
00:13that shaped the true story of one of America's most notorious killers, Ed Gein.
00:19Don't mean nothing by it.
00:23Just wanted to welcome her to town is all.
00:27Not officially a serial killer.
00:30The so-called Butcher of Plainfield inspired some of the most twisted ideas
00:34about serial killers long before the term was coined.
00:38When the police first broke into Gein's house and discovered this crazy mass of body parts,
00:44their first assumption was Gein was a serial killer.
00:47When it was, the criteria described someone who was confirmed to have committed at least three murders.
00:52Ed Gein was convicted of murdering hardware store owner Bernice Worden
00:56and confessed to also killing bar owner Mary Hogan.
00:59He freely confessed to the murders of Bernie Worden and Mary Hogan.
01:03Thus, he did not meet the legal definition of a serial killer until the FBI lowered the victim count threshold to two in 2008.
01:12Even then, criminology generally upholds the three-victim rule.
01:16Gein has, in fact, been linked to many more possible homicides, but with only two victims confirmed.
01:22The popular term for him is just speculation.
01:26We think of Gein as this notorious American serial murderer, but in many ways he doesn't really fit that profile.
01:36A community man.
01:38Gein had a very sheltered and troubled youth, but was a distinct personality around the tight-knit town of Plainfield, Wisconsin.
01:45His schoolmates recalled him having an eccentric sense of humor that he often kept to himself.
01:50And he was considered to be a bit of an oddball.
01:53He was quite a loner, and he enjoyed quite solitary pursuits.
01:57He would have random laughing fits over thoughts of jokes he wouldn't share.
02:01Gein became more social after the loss of his family, working as a handyman and a babysitter.
02:07Gein was a little girl, and she remembers going over to his house, and he would serve soup and everything.
02:16What turned out the soup bowls were the skulls of many of his victims.
02:20His reputation as a meek but friendly neighbor runs counter to the popular assumption that he spent his whole life in some form of isolation.
02:28But given his disturbing quirks and the fates of some associates, there are always signs of a neighbor being less friendly than his presentation.
02:37I'd see him around town, and then he was always a friendly person, quiet, friendly.
02:45Usually had a joke to tell.
02:47Adeline Watkins.
02:49Eddie?
02:52Not even the aforementioned tight-knit community knew much about Gein's love life.
02:57Following his arrest in 1957, the Minneapolis Tribune published a piece on 50-year-old Adeline Watkins and a 20-year romance with Gein.
03:07She later clarified to the Stevens Point Journal that she only knew the man for that long.
03:12The supposed couple dated for about seven months, breaking up in 54, following a declined proposal.
03:19You sure are one, Mr. Gein.
03:21Statements from other community members contradict this by describing Gein as an introverted bachelor.
03:27It's speculated that Watkins exaggerated the nature of a platonic friendship for attention.
03:32Whether Gein ever got that close with anyone, it's clear that nobody understood the darker qualities of this sweet, polite man.
03:41Eddie Gein was, at one time, an acquaintance of mine.
03:44Home life.
03:46Edward Theodore Gein was the second son of George and Augusta.
03:50His father, a laborer and one-time grocery owner, drank heavily and abused his family.
03:55Four years after George's death, his elder son Henry died under mysterious circumstances.
04:01Death would hit the Gein family once again, but this time in more suspicious circumstances,
04:07after a brush fire on their farmland got out of control.
04:11Ed's relationship with his mother is much more infamous, but some details seem hard to believe.
04:18Augusta was oppressively religious and forbade Ed from associating with girls.
04:24As close as he became with his mother, her death in 1945 ostensibly triggered his breakdown.
04:30Because his mother was so domineering, I think she really did stunt his development,
04:34and he almost got stuck at a kind of teenage-adolescent phase in his life.
04:39He even targeted women who resembled Augusta to make a woman's suit for himself.
04:44Robert Block couldn't have made up something that disturbing,
04:47but modeled Norman Bates' parental issues more closely after Gein's than we'd care to know.
04:53Well, a boy's best friend is his mother.
04:55Influences.
04:56The most influential killers often get their ideas from somewhere else.
05:01After his mother's death, Ed Gein began collecting macabre newspaper clippings,
05:06artifacts, and literature.
05:07Adeline Watkins claimed that she bonded with him over their mutual interest in true crime stories.
05:13Gein most notably favored Nazi materials, likely leading to an interest in Ilse Koch.
05:19And he developed a particular interest in Ilse Koch,
05:23who worked at one of the Nazi concentration camps and collected patches of skin.
05:28The so-called witch of Buchenwald was the wife of a concentration camp commandant,
05:33and is believed to have collected prisoners' skin to make lampshades.
05:37The parallels with Gein's methods are undeniable.
05:47Their variations and twisted creativity suggest that the butcher of Plainfield
05:52drew heavily on horrendous history.
05:54Of course, his acting on these influences is entirely his responsibility.
06:06MO Myths
06:07Ed Gein's crimes were heinous enough without urban legends.
06:12Rumors of cannibalism and certain other desecrations of bodies go all the way back to his arrest.
06:18While admitting to collecting and tanning dead bodies, Gein explicitly denied sexual activity on the grounds that he was repulsed by the smell.
06:26The common misconception resurged after the release of the Texas Chainsaw Massacre,
06:31along with the myth that Leatherface's inspiration used a chainsaw.
06:37He didn't even use a knife, as Psycho suggested.
06:41Both of Gein's confirmed victims were killed by gunshot.
06:44It's unlikely that he was much more sadistic than that if he committed other murders,
06:48but the unconfirmed crimes are also key to understanding this subject.
06:53He's grown into a notorious figure in American folklore.
06:57A killer of almost mythic proportions.
07:00Suspected victims
07:01It's popularly speculated that Gein's first victim was his brother, Henry,
07:06who officially died of asphyxiation during a fire in 1944.
07:10Skeptics note bruises on Henry's head and Ed's intensifying attachment to their mother.
07:15Anyway, the official verdict of the medical examiner was that Henry had died of a heart attack
07:21while fighting this fire and had injured his head.
07:25Gein was also cleared of kidnapping teenager Evelyn Hartley while visiting her town in 1953.
07:31There's less attention paid to other missing persons,
07:34like eight-year-old Georgia Weckler and hunters Raymond Burgess and Victor Travis.
07:40Gein also did chores for the wife of neighbor James Walsh after his disappearance.
07:44True crime enthusiasts think these unsolved cases could point to Gein as a prolific serial killer,
07:50despite psychiatric assessments that he only targeted women who resembled his mother.
07:55Of course, the at least nine cadavers found in Gein's home were also victims.
08:00What became of Gein's property?
08:05The farmhouse to which Ed Gein was so twistedly attached is as much a part of his legacy as his acts.
08:11But not many know the dramatic fates of this site of his downfall or the 1949 Ford sedan he used in his crimes.
08:20Four months after Gein's conviction, his property was set for auction when a fire of mysterious origin destroyed the house.
08:26A mysterious fire broke out one morning in Gein's farmhouse and completely obliterated it
08:33before it can be turned into a kind of tourist attraction.
08:36The fire chief who allowed this to happen was the son of Bernice Worden.
08:41Carnival owner Bunny Gibbons then claimed fame by buying Gein's sedan for a showcase.
08:47The Ed Gein ghoul car was perhaps the first of many capitalizations on the killer's legacy for entertainment.
08:53No one knows what ultimately became of the car itself.
08:57Place your bids on the ghoul car.
09:00Forgotten Adaptations.
09:02In 1959, Robert Block published a novel about a mild-mannered motel owner who dresses as his dead mother to commit murder.
09:09Psycho was quickly adapted into one of the most significant horror films ever, notably influencing John Carpenter's Halloween,
09:24The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and The Silence of the Lambs.
09:27But Ed Gein has inspired many more low-profile films, including Three on a Meat Hook, Deranged, and Ed Gein, The Musical.
09:39Werner Herzog and Errol Morris collaborated on an ultimately unproduced biopic.
09:45And Slayer, Blind Melon, Cannibal Corpse, and Volbeat all have songs about Gein.
09:50The scale of the killer's direct pop culture impact alone is greater than anyone can keep up with.
09:55The controversy surrounding this is just as substantial.
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10:16Returned to the scene of the crime.
10:21Ed Gein died of cancer in 1984 at age 77.
10:25He was buried beside his family at Plainfield Cemetery, which he claimed to have visited around 40 times to rob graves.
10:32The irony continued with visitors vandalizing and taking pieces of his headstone until it was stolen entirely in 2000.
10:39In the year 2000, somebody was found to be selling parts of the gravestone that had been erected at Ed Gein's grave.
10:49It was later recovered and stored away to avoid further damage.
10:52It was eventually recovered and is currently being kept in storage at the Washara County Sheriff's Department.
10:59Gein's unmarked final resting place can be easily spotted between those of Brother Henry and Mother Augusta.
11:05Other than this impact on pop culture, the only artifacts of his existence that haven't been lost are his twisted upholstery.
11:14As impossible as it can be to know enough facts to define someone's life, truth and speculation are getting hard to define with Gein.
11:23Only a mother could love you.
11:24What details about Ed Gein and other killers haunt you?
11:29Testify in the comments below.
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