- 2 days ago
- #edgein
- #graverobber
- #bodysnatcher
Ed Gein was arrested for the murder of a hardware store owner, but when the police entered his home to search for her. They found more than what they bargained for.....
#edgein #graverobber #bodysnatcher
#edgein #graverobber #bodysnatcher
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LearningTranscript
00:00Hello and welcome to the Dark Mystery Lounge.
00:03This month is one of my favorite months out of the year.
00:05October is always a lovely mix of natural beauty as the leaves change colors
00:10and spooky season for those of us that are fans of Halloween.
00:14Finally busting out those decorations of pumpkins, bats, black cats, and fake spiderwebs.
00:19Or if you aren't a fan of dusting, those cobwebs that build up naturally or fondly in style.
00:24One of my favorite things to do around this time of year is to watch classic horror movies,
00:28which leads to our first case for October.
00:31He received several nicknames, the Butcher of Plainfield, the Plainfield Ghoul, and the original Leatherface.
00:37But we simply know him as Ed Gein.
00:39Even though he was never a serial killer, he did leave his mark in history.
00:43So let's go ahead and take a look at this bizarre case.
00:50Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, to George and Augusta Gein.
00:57He was the baby of the family.
00:59His brother, Henry, was born in 1901.
01:01George was an abusive alcoholic who was unable to keep a job.
01:05He worked as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman.
01:08Augusta, who was an extremely religious Lutheran, would sit her boys down and preach to them about the immoralities of the world,
01:15that drinking was evil, women were naturally promiscuous, and that women were the instruments of the devil, apart from herself, of course.
01:22She devoted every afternoon to read to them from the Bible.
01:26Her favorites were in the Old Testament and the Book of Revelations, concerning death, murder, and divine retribution.
01:32She hated her husband because of his alcoholism.
01:35During his time in La Crosse, George managed to own a local grocery store, but he soon sold the business,
01:41buying a 155-acre farm in the town of Plainfield, which became the Gein family's permanent residence.
01:47This was perfect for Augusta, because she wanted to isolate her sons from any evil influences.
01:53The only time the boys left the farm was to go to school, but their mother would discourage them from making any friends, punishing him if they tried.
02:00For Ed, that was easy.
02:02He was shy, and he was considered to have odd mannerisms that would make other kids stay away from him,
02:07like random bits of laughter, as if he was laughing at his own personal jokes.
02:12Even though Ed had poor social skills, he did pretty well in school, especially reading.
02:16He loved to read.
02:17He graduated the 8th grade, and then dropped out of school to work on the family farm.
02:27On April 1st, 1940, Ed's father, George, died from heart failure due to his alcoholism.
02:33He was 66 years old.
02:35Henry and Ed began doing odd jobs around town to support the family.
02:39The Gein brothers were generally considered reliable and honest by residents of the community.
02:44They both worked as handymen.
02:46Ed would frequently babysit for neighbors.
02:48He enjoyed babysitting.
02:49He felt like he could relate to the kids more easily than adults.
02:53Henry began dating a divorced mother of two and planned on moving in with her.
02:57He worried about Ed's attachment to their mother and often spoke ill of her around Ed, who responded with shock and hurt.
03:04Ed loved his mother dearly and didn't like it when anyone else said anything negative about her.
03:09On May 16th, 1944, the brothers were burning away marsh vegetation on the property when the fire got out of control.
03:17Firefighters came out and put out the blades.
03:19Once they were gone, Ed noticed that his brother was missing.
03:22The police conducted a search party and found Henry lying on the ground.
03:26It appeared that he had been dead for quite some time.
03:28There were bruises on his head, but no burn marks on him.
03:31Police dismissed any foul play and thought that he might have had a heart attack.
03:36The county coroner officially listed asphyxiation as his cause of death.
03:40Ed finally got to have his wish to be alone with his mother.
03:44But soon after, his mother suffered a stroke which partially paralyzed her.
03:48Ed devoted himself to taking care of her.
03:50Sometime in 1945, Ed later recounted he and his mother visited a man named Smith who lived nearby to purchase straw.
03:58According to Ed, Augusta witnessed Smith beating a dog.
04:01A woman inside the Smith home came outside and yelled for him to stop, but Smith beat the dog to death.
04:07Augusta was extremely upset by the scene.
04:09However, what bothered her did not appear to be the brutality towards the dog, but rather the presence of the woman.
04:16Augusta told Ed that the woman was not married to Smith and had no business being there, and angrily called her Smith's harlot.
04:24Soon after, she suffered a second stroke and died on December 29, 1945, at the age of 67.
04:31Ed was completely crushed by his mother's death, feeling like he was all alone in the world.
04:36The only person he ever truly loved was gone.
04:38While continuing to work his odd jobs, Ed decided to board up parts of the house that were used by his mother, boarding up her bedroom, downstairs parlor, and living room.
04:53Ed lived thereafter in a small room next to the kitchen.
04:57When he wasn't working, Ed would enjoy reading pulp magazines and adventure stories, particularly those involving cannibals and Nazi atrocities.
05:06From 1951, he began receiving farm subsidies from the federal government.
05:11Occasionally, he worked as part of a crop threshing crew, or municipality crew, in the locality.
05:17During these years, he also sold 80 acres of land, which was owned by his brother.
05:22November 16, 1957, was the first day of deer hunting season, so all the men in the community were out in the woods.
05:29It looked like a ghost town.
05:30Ed drove into town to Warden's hardware store, owned by Bernice Warden.
05:34He would hang out at the hardware store a lot because he was obsessed with Bernice.
05:38He had even asked her out at one point, and she turned him down.
05:42On this particular day, November 16, he asked to buy a half-gallon of antifreeze.
05:47Bernice wrote a receipt.
05:48He went back out to his truck, then returned to inquire about a rifle he saw on the window.
05:53When she turned her back to retrieve the rifle, Ed pulled out a rifle of his own and shot Bernice in the back of the head, loaded her body into his truck, and drove back out to his farm.
06:02Later that day, Bernice's son, Deputy Sheriff Frank Warden, came by the store only to find it empty, but then he saw a trail of blood.
06:10He automatically suspected Ed because he had been harassing his mother.
06:14He reported his suspicions to investigators, and his suspicions were confirmed when he saw the last receipt that was written was for Ed Gein.
06:22Two sets of officers went out. The first one arrested Ed at his neighbor's house while having dinner. The other one went out to the farmhouse.
06:30They were unable to go through the front door, so they went around back to a small shed.
06:34In the dark and with no electricity, all the police had were flashlights.
06:38They found the decapitated body of Bernice Warden hanging upside down, cut open from her pelvis to sternum.
06:44The cops ran outside in complete shock, vomiting at the sight. The search continued on into the house. Some parts were completely trashed. Others were still clean.
06:54Among the mess of the house, they found several items.
06:57A wastebasket made of human skin.
06:59Whole bones and bone fragments.
07:01Skulls on his bedpost.
07:02Human skin covering several chair seats.
07:05Female skulls, some with the tops sewn off.
07:07Skulls made from skull top.
07:09A corset made from a female torso, skinned from shoulder to waist.
07:13Leggings made from human leg skin.
07:15Masks made from the skin of female head.
07:18A collection of female genitalia.
07:20Some painted, and a couple of them came from young girls.
07:23A belt made from female human nipples.
07:26Four noses in a jar.
07:27A pair of lips on a window shade drawstring.
07:30A lampshade made from the skin of human faces.
07:33And skin from female hands made into gloves.
07:35On top of all of this, they found Bernice Warden's head in a burlap sack.
07:40And her heart in a plastic bag.
07:42On top of a potbelly stove.
07:44They also found the head of a woman who had been missing for almost three years.
07:47Mary Hogan.
07:48The owner of a local tavern.
07:50Mary disappeared under suspicious circumstances on December 8th, 1954.
07:55One of the most eerie things is one of the rooms that was clean was his mother's room.
08:00Which was left untouched since her death.
08:02It was almost like a shrine to his mother.
08:04Back at the police station, Ed hadn't said a word.
08:07After about 24 hours of silence, he finally started talking.
08:10He requested a slice of apple pie with cheddar cheese on top.
08:14They got him the pie, and after he finished it, he started telling the police everything he knew.
08:18He freely confessed to the murder of Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan.
08:22The other body parts came from grave robbing, which started back in 1947.
08:26He would read in the newspaper in the obituary section, if the woman appeared to be middle-aged or older and looked similar to his mother, he would go out into the dead of night and dig up the body, or sometimes just a part while the soil was still fresh and loose.
08:41He would repeat this over and over again from 1947 to 1952.
08:45He even tried to dig up his mother, but her plot was very sandy, so her coffin had to be put in a concrete liner.
08:52He also confessed that he would put on the skin suit that he made with the leggings and would walk around the house pretending to be his mother.
09:00Ed denied having sex with the bodies he exhumed, explaining they smelled too bad.
09:05Police went out to the cemetery to see if Ed's story was true.
09:08Sure enough, it was.
09:09On November 21st, 1957, Ed was arraigned on one count of first-degree murder in Washerwood County Court.
09:21He pled not guilty by reason of insanity.
09:23Ed was diagnosed with schizophrenia and was found mentally incompetent, thus unfit for trial.
09:28He was sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane.
09:31Eleven years later, doctors determined that he was fit to stand trial.
09:35The trial began on November 7th, 1968.
09:38The psychiatrist testified that Ed had told him that he did not know whether the killing of Bernice Wharton was intentional or accidental.
09:46He claims that he was examining a gun and it went off, killing Bernice.
09:50He didn't remember anything after that.
09:52At the request of the defense, Ed's trial was held without a jury.
09:55The judge found him guilty of murder, but then a second trial was held to determine Ed's sanity.
10:00He was deemed insane and sent back to the Central State Hospital to live out the rest of his life.
10:05He was never tried for the murder of Mary Hogan because he couldn't remember any details.
10:15Ed's house and property were scheduled to be auctioned on March 30th, 1958, but on March 20th, a mysterious fire broke out, burning the house to the ground.
10:25Arson was suspected, but the cause of the fire was never officially determined.
10:29When Ed learned of the incident, he shrugged and said, just as well.
10:32His car was sold at public auction for $760 to carnival sideshow operator Bonnie Gibbon.
10:39Gibbon charged carnival goers $0.25 admission to see it.
10:43Ed died of lung cancer on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77, at the Mendota Mental Health Institute.
10:51He was buried at the Plainfield Cemetery in between his brother and his mother that he loved so much.
10:56Over time, visitors would chip away at Ed's headstone as a weird souvenir, until someone stole the whole headstone in 2000.
11:03It was recovered in June 2001, near Seattle, Washington.
11:07It was placed in storage at Weshawar County Sheriff's Department, where it sits to this day.
11:12Even though his grave is unmarked, it's not forgotten.
11:15Visitors to this day still leave flowers, pumpkins, toys, and other items.
11:19There's no doubt that Ed Gein has been a macabre muse for horror novels and horror movies.
11:30While he was alive and long after he passed, we've seen characters like Norman Bates in Psycho,
11:35Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs,
11:40and Odin Stripwood in House of a Thousand Corpses and Double Tree Jacks.
11:44Heck, even the band Marilyn Manson, their second bassist, went by the stage name Gidget Gein.
11:49Lots of books, movies, and songs that were made about Ed himself have been made throughout the year.
11:54The town of Plainsville has quieted back down, but there are still tourists that pop up every now and then
12:00to take a look at the empty lot that Ed used to call home,
12:03and to visit the cemetery that he desecrated but now is his final resting place.
12:08He never did reach that serial killer status.
12:10Remember, the magic number is three.
12:12But just from the grave robbing and what he did to those women and girls,
12:16leaves a far more gruesome impression than any serial killer.
12:22Ed and his family definitely put the diss in dysfunctional.
12:26His mother isolating her sons and scaring them with almost a cult-like grip.
12:30It seems like early on, Ed showed signs of mental issues.
12:34Then being left alone after his mother died was just a recipe for disaster.
12:38I know that he was mentioned in that Netflix series about Jeffrey Dahmer.
12:42Even though they both dealt with dead bodies and did some sick things to their victims,
12:47Jeffrey knew what he was doing was wrong.
12:49And Ed was in his own little world, unaware that he did anything wrong.
12:53Ed was truly insane.
12:55Jeff was sick, but not insane.
12:57Plus, it only took a slice of pie with cheese on top to get him to talk.
13:01It shows you where Ed's level of maturity was.
13:03If you enjoyed this video, don't forget to smash that like button.
13:07And if you really like what I do, subscribe, will ya?
13:10Thank you for hanging out with me in the Dark Mystery Lounge.
13:13This is Phoenix, signing out.
13:14Have a good evening, and stay safe.
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