Ed Gein

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He served as a model for many of the greatest villains to ever ravage across the silver screen: Norman Bates, LEATHERFACE, and the crazed killer, Buffalo Bill from "Silence of the Lambs". He deeds went on to influence the storytelling of such films as "Maniac", "Three on a Meathook", and "Deranged".


ED GEIN

"I had a compulsion to do it."

Born at the turn of the century into the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein lived a repressive and solitary life on his family homestead with a weak, ineffectual brother and domineering mother who taught him from an early age that sex was a sinful thing. Eddie ran the family's 160-acre farm on the outskirts of Plainfield until his brother Henry died in 1944 and his mother in 1945. When she died her son was a thirty-nine-year-old bachelor, still emotionally enslaved to the woman who had tyrannized his life. The rest of the house, however, soon degenerated into a madman's shambles. Thanks to federal subsidies, Gein no ...

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On other occasions, Gein took only the body parts that particularly interested him. He was especially fascinated by the excised female genitalia, which he would fondle and play with, sometimes stuffing them into a pair of women's panties, which he would then wear around the house. Not surprisingly, he quickly became a recluse in the community, discouraging any visitors from coming near his by now neglected and decaying farm.

Gein's fascination with the female body eventually led him to seek out fresher samples. His victims, usually women of his mother's age, included 54-year old Mary Hogan, who disappeared from the tavern she ran in December 1954, and Bernice Worden, a woman in ...

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