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Ed Gein Unseen Confessions From The Real-Life Psycho · Weird Darkness:True crime & The unexplained

• 0:03
  Speaker 1: In November 1957, police in the small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin,
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: were searching for a missing woman named Bernice Warden. They
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: were about to make one of the most gruesome discoveries
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: in U.S. criminal history.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: One of them turned on his flashlight and beamed it
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: around and saw this object that was hanging from the rafters,
• 0:25
  Speaker 2: which at first they thought was some kind of gutted deer.
• 0:29
  Speaker 2: They realized to their incredible horror that it was a
• 0:32
  Speaker 2: woman's corpse. that was hanging by its heels.
• 0:35
  Speaker 1: The twisted killer was a quiet loner named Ed Gein.
• 0:39
  Speaker 1: Hidden inside the 51-year-old's rural farmhouse was a ghoulish treasure
• 0:44
  Speaker 1: trove of human remains.
• 0:46
  Speaker 3: There was a lampshade made of human skin. They found
• 0:50
  Speaker 3: the remains of 12 human heads, gloves made out of
• 0:54
  Speaker 3: the skin from a corpse's fingers.
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: You think of this happening, you know, now, it's doubly shocking.
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: But back then, in a small, tiny, rural community, it
• 1:06
  Speaker 4: was breathtaking.
• 1:08
  Speaker 1: America had woken up inside the nightmare of Ed Gein,
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: one of the world's most evil killers. The gruesome crimes
• 1:39
  Speaker 1: of Ed Gein horrified 50s America. When his rural home
• 1:44
  Speaker 1: was searched on 16th November 1957, the police uncovered a
• 1:50
  Speaker 1: gothic house of horrors. As well as the remains of
• 1:54
  Speaker 1: two missing local women, they found an array of human bones,
• 1:59
  Speaker 1: skulls and skin that had been fashioned into furniture and clothing.
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: The town of Plainfield was in complete shock. One of
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: the residents who remembers the effect Gein had on Plainfield
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: is Max Harrington.
• 2:14
  Speaker 5: I think shock would be the biggest thing that we
• 2:16
  Speaker 5: could use to describe the atmosphere in the community. We
• 2:20
  Speaker 5: were still pretty much a clannish community at that time
• 2:23
  Speaker 5: when a lot of the families that were here had
• 2:26
  Speaker 5: always been here. It took your breath away. It was shocking.
• 2:32
  Speaker 6: It still is.
• 2:34
  Speaker 5: People don't do things like that in small town on
• 2:37
  Speaker 5: a normal day. That's just not part of what we
• 2:39
  Speaker 5: grew up with.
• 2:41
  Speaker 1: The story of this twisted killer begins over a century ago.
• 2:46
  Speaker 1: Ed Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, on
• 2:50
  Speaker 1: the 27th of August, 1906. By the time he was
• 2:54
  Speaker 1: eight years old, his parents moved Ed and his older
• 2:58
  Speaker 1: brother Henry to Plainfield.
• 3:00
  Speaker 6: Well, the Gein family moved.
• 3:03
  Speaker 2: to Plainfield from La Crosse, Wisconsin, partly because the mother
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: of the family, the matriarch, Augusta, had decided that La
• 3:15
  Speaker 2: Crosse was a kind of Sodom and Gomorrah-like hellhole, and
• 3:22
  Speaker 2: she didn't want her children to be corrupted by all
• 3:26
  Speaker 2: the immoral influences of the big city. Needless to say,
• 3:31
  Speaker 2: La Crosse was not a particularly big city, but they
• 3:34
  Speaker 2: moved to a remote farmhouse about six miles west of,
• 3:39
  Speaker 2: you wouldn't necessarily say downtown Plainfield, because there was no
• 3:44
  Speaker 2: uptown Plainfield.
• 3:45
  Speaker 5: It's not the largest city in the state of Wisconsin,
• 3:49
  Speaker 5: but it's plenty big enough for those of us that
• 3:51
  Speaker 5: live here.
• 3:53
  Speaker 2: Plainfield was a very remote, isolated area. featureless little village.
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: A state guidebook at the time described it as totally nondescript.
• 4:06
  Speaker 2: The population was very small, never more in its history,
• 4:11
  Speaker 2: I think, than 700 or 800 people. You know, probably
• 4:15
  Speaker 2: the entire population of the village could have fit into
• 4:18
  Speaker 2: a New York City apartment building.
• 4:20
  Speaker 1: The Geens' 150-acre farm was located on the corner of
• 4:25
  Speaker 1: Archer and 2nd Avenue. Ed rarely got to leave the
• 4:29
  Speaker 1: property and socialise with other children.
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: His mother, Augusta, is a very domineering character indeed. She
• 4:38
  Speaker 3: is a devout Christian and she has some very extreme
• 4:41
  Speaker 3: ideas about sin and about morality. And she drums into
• 4:46
  Speaker 3: her sons that they're not to socialize with anybody outside
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: of the family because all of the people around them
• 4:52
  Speaker 3: in the local town are sinners, they're evil, all the
• 4:54
  Speaker 3: women are whores. And so she creates this very insular
• 4:59
  Speaker 3: family environment where they're quite isolated from the rest of
• 5:02
  Speaker 3: the community and that has a really significant impact on them.
• 5:06
  Speaker 2: Gein seemed to have been very friendless whenever he would
• 5:10
  Speaker 2: make some kind of friend. On those rare occasions, when
• 5:14
  Speaker 2: he would try to make a school friend and bring
• 5:16
  Speaker 2: home a school friend, the mother would immediately find some
• 5:20
  Speaker 2: reason to disapprove of the other child and forbid Ed
• 5:23
  Speaker 2: from ever bringing him home. So he grew up again
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: in a state of complete social isolation.
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: And Gein's relationship with his father was also far from perfect.
• 5:35
  Speaker 2: Well, the father, George, was an alcoholic. He appeared to
• 5:39
  Speaker 2: have been somewhat free in his use of physical punishment.
• 5:44
  Speaker 2: But mostly the picture that emerges of George is of,
• 5:49
  Speaker 2: you know, kind of a hapless individual who was, as
• 5:52
  Speaker 2: all three male members of the family were, under the
• 5:55
  Speaker 2: thumb of his wife. And again, who is regarded as
• 6:01
  Speaker 2: much as anything else as a sort of obstacle or
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: impediment to the household.
• 6:07
  Speaker 1: As ed entered adolescence his life became even more.
• 6:10
  Speaker 3: Insular he dropped out of school when he was around
• 6:13
  Speaker 3: about 12 or 13 to work on the family's farm
• 6:16
  Speaker 3: and he was considered to be a bit of an
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: oddball um he was quite a loner and he enjoyed
• 6:21
  Speaker 3: quite solitary pursuits so he really quite liked reading and
• 6:25
  Speaker 3: was quite a prolific reader so he was somebody who
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: didn't really fit in but worked incredibly hard to keep
• 6:32
  Speaker 3: the family farm going.
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: On April 1, 1940, Ed's father, George, died of heart failure,
• 6:39
  Speaker 1: leaving 33-year-old Ed, his brother Henry, and Augusta alone on
• 6:45
  Speaker 1: the family farm.
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: Ed's older brother, Henry, seemed to have freed himself a
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: little more emotionally and psychologically from Augusta's dominance. and even
• 6:59
  Speaker 2: apparently on a couple of occasions expressed some criticism of
• 7:04
  Speaker 2: their mother and the hold she was exerting over both
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: of them. So Ed, who at least on a conscious
• 7:12
  Speaker 2: level worshipped his mother and saw her as a kind
• 7:15
  Speaker 2: of goddess who could do no wrong, appears to have
• 7:19
  Speaker 2: been both a little shocked that Henry would find any
• 7:23
  Speaker 2: cause to criticize Augusta, and possibly built up some kind
• 7:29
  Speaker 2: of animosity toward Henry for that attitude.
• 7:34
  Speaker 1: Ed became a handyman doing odd jobs around Plainfield to
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: help with living expenses on the farm.
• 7:41
  Speaker 5: We used to see Ed occasionally. I'd see him around town,
• 7:45
  Speaker 5: and then he was always a friendly person, quiet, friendly,
• 7:51
  Speaker 5: usually had a joke to tell. He always had time
• 7:54
  Speaker 5: to say hello and ask after how you were. A
• 7:57
  Speaker 5: person who you would never suspect of anything other than
• 8:00
  Speaker 5: being a decent sort of person.
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: In May 1944, death would hit the Gein family once again,
• 8:08
  Speaker 1: but this time in more suspicious circumstances after a brush
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: fire on their farmland got out of control.
• 8:15
  Speaker 2: Ed and Henry were out there trying to put out
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: the fire and they got separated and and Ed could
• 8:23
  Speaker 2: not locate Henry, and he went and got help. But
• 8:27
  Speaker 2: then after getting this help, he led the other people
• 8:30
  Speaker 2: directly to where Henry's body lay, and there were some
• 8:34
  Speaker 2: mysterious bruises on Henry's head. Anyway, the official verdict of
• 8:39
  Speaker 2: the medical examiner was that Henry had died of a
• 8:42
  Speaker 2: heart attack while fighting this fire and had injured his
• 8:46
  Speaker 2: head when he fell and hit a rock. But afterwards,
• 8:50
  Speaker 2: when Gein's crimes were uncovered, There was a lot of
• 8:53
  Speaker 2: talk that perhaps Henry had been a victim of Ed's,
• 8:57
  Speaker 2: that Ed in fact had killed Henry partly because of
• 9:01
  Speaker 2: Henry's criticism of Augusta.
• 9:04
  Speaker 3: The impact upon their mother Augusta was phenomenal. She really
• 9:08
  Speaker 3: broke down about Henry's death and she had a stroke.
• 9:11
  Speaker 2: But of course by then, you know, the psychic bond
• 9:15
  Speaker 2: between Augusta and Ed was so incredibly intense already. Evidence
• 9:21
  Speaker 2: seems to suggest that with the other two men out
• 9:24
  Speaker 2: of the way, Ed reveled in having his mommy alone
• 9:29
  Speaker 2: to himself.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: But Gein's mother never really recovered from her stroke, and
• 9:34
  Speaker 1: their time alone only lasted for 19 months.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: Ed nursed her very, very diligently, even apparently would get
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: into bed with her on occasion and stroke her and
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: comfort her. And then she seemed to recover, but then
• 9:51
  Speaker 2: she suffered another, this time fatal, stroke.
• 9:55
  Speaker 1: Augusta Gein died on December.
• 9:57
  Speaker 6: 29, 1945.
• 10:00
  Speaker 5: 1945.
• 10:00
  Speaker 1: 39-year-old Ed was completely devastated.
• 10:04
  Speaker 3: Because his mother was so domineering, I think she really
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: did stunt his development, and he almost got stuck at
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: a kind of teenage, adolescent phase in his life, so...
• 10:16
  Speaker 3: Looking at how he behaved at the funeral, he was
• 10:18
  Speaker 3: in his 30s at this time and he was reported
• 10:20
  Speaker 3: to be wailing like a small child. So he hasn't
• 10:23
  Speaker 3: got that kind of emotional control that's associated with 30-something men.
• 10:28
  Speaker 2: The death of his mother left him completely, completely isolated.
• 10:33
  Speaker 2: You know, living in this increasingly ramshackle, dilapidated farmhouse that
• 10:39
  Speaker 2: he ceased to take care of whatsoever. Augusta was his
• 10:43
  Speaker 2: only real human contact. So it was at that point,
• 10:47
  Speaker 2: you know, that Gein embarked on these various outrages that
• 10:52
  Speaker 2: would ultimately make him this notorious figure in American crime.
• 10:57
  Speaker 1: Alone and isolated from the rest of society, Gein spiraled
• 11:01
  Speaker 1: out of control. Over the next 12 years, he became
• 11:05
  Speaker 1: obsessed with recreating the world he'd shared with his mother.
• 11:09
  Speaker 1: it would lead him to a series of dark and
• 11:12
  Speaker 1: disturbing crimes that would eventually culminate in murder.
• 11:20
  Speaker 5: One of my summer jobs when I was a student
• 11:23
  Speaker 5: in high school was mowing the cemetery. And two of
• 11:29
  Speaker 5: my buddies and I, that was about a four-day job
• 11:32
  Speaker 5: for us to mow that. And we would see Ed
• 11:35
  Speaker 5: out there on occasion. He'd come out, and if he
• 11:37
  Speaker 5: saw us working, he'd always come over and say hello.
• 11:41
  Speaker 5: And again, sometimes have this little story to tell. And
• 11:45
  Speaker 5: he was very good about stopping to see his mother's grave.
• 11:48
  Speaker 2: I think neighbors saw him as an odd, very meek,
• 11:53
  Speaker 2: somewhat simple-minded person, but one who was always willing to
• 11:58
  Speaker 2: pitch in when some farm work needed to be done
• 12:01
  Speaker 2: or Some chore needed to be run for them. But they,
• 12:06
  Speaker 2: of course, had no sense of the life that he
• 12:09
  Speaker 2: was pursuing inside that incredibly creepy, dismal world of his
• 12:14
  Speaker 2: own farm.
• 12:16
  Speaker 1: It was a world that 51-year-old Gein had managed to
• 12:20
  Speaker 1: keep hidden away until the winter of 1957. November 16th, 1957,
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: was the first.
• 12:23
  Speaker 6: Day of deer hunting season that year.
• 12:30
  Speaker 2: And it was a day when basically the entire male
• 12:33
  Speaker 2: population of the town would have been out.
• 12:36
  Speaker 6: In the woods hunting deer, as Ed knew.
• 12:39
  Speaker 2: Ed drove into town to the Warden Hardware Store. The
• 12:44
  Speaker 2: Warden Hardware Store was owned by a woman named Bernice Warden.
• 12:49
  Speaker 6: I knew Mrs. Warden quite well.
• 12:51
  Speaker 5: She and her family ran the hardware store here for
• 12:54
  Speaker 5: many years, and almost everybody in the community knew Mrs.
• 12:56
  Speaker 4: Warden.
• 12:57
  Speaker 2: Ed had kind of been hanging around the store for
• 13:00
  Speaker 2: a couple of weeks previously. He had developed something of
• 13:04
  Speaker 2: an obsession with Bernie Swarton.
• 13:06
  Speaker 3: He would talk to her, he would ask her out,
• 13:08
  Speaker 3: and it was quite clear that she really wasn't that
• 13:11
  Speaker 3: interested in him.
• 13:13
  Speaker 2: Ed came in, asked to buy half a gallon of antifreeze,
• 13:17
  Speaker 2: which Bernie Swarton poured out for him and wrote out
• 13:20
  Speaker 2: a receipt. He went back out to his truck, then
• 13:23
  Speaker 2: came back inside, and asked her to see a rifle
• 13:27
  Speaker 2: that was in the window. When Bernie Swarden turned her
• 13:30
  Speaker 2: back to him, he shot her in the back of
• 13:32
  Speaker 2: the head and then loaded her corpse in his truck
• 13:36
  Speaker 2: and drove back to his farm.
• 13:38
  Speaker 1: Dean had murdered the 58-year-old woman in broad daylight.
• 13:43
  Speaker 5: It was deer season, so deer season is like a
• 13:45
  Speaker 5: ghost out around here. Everybody, in those days especially, everybody
• 13:49
  Speaker 5: was out hunting. And she wasn't even missed for quite a,
• 13:52
  Speaker 5: for some hours. And when someone reported that she wasn't
• 13:57
  Speaker 5: at the store, well, that was her son, of course.
• 14:00
  Speaker 2: Later that day, Frank Warden returned from the woods and
• 14:05
  Speaker 2: found the store empty. His mother wasn't there. He was
• 14:09
  Speaker 2: very perplexed by that. And then he saw a trail
• 14:12
  Speaker 2: of blood across the floor of the hardware store and
• 14:15
  Speaker 2: not only realized that some foul play had occurred, but
• 14:19
  Speaker 2: immediately suspected Ed Gein. because Gein had been kind of
• 14:23
  Speaker 2: bothering his mother for the past few weeks.
• 14:25
  Speaker 1: And there was one piece of evidence that confirmed Frank
• 14:28
  Speaker 1: Warden's suspicions to the police.
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: When they went to search the place, they found the
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: receipt for the antifreeze that was in Ed's name. And
• 14:39
  Speaker 4: they just worked backwards, saying that he was probably the
• 14:43
  Speaker 4: last person to see her alive, but they didn't suspect
• 14:47
  Speaker 4: that he was as deranged.
• 14:49
  Speaker 6: As he was.
• 14:50
  Speaker 2: One set of lawmen went out in search of Gein.
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: They found him having dinner at a neighbor's house, and
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: they arrested him. And then another set of lawmen went
• 14:59
  Speaker 2: out to Gein's farmhouse, and that's where they made these
• 15:03
  Speaker 2: discoveries that really sent shockwaves around the world.
• 15:09
  Speaker 1: On a dark winter's night, officers from the Plainfield Police
• 15:13
  Speaker 1: Department began to search the Gein farm for Bernice Wharton.
• 15:17
  Speaker 6: They couldn't get into the house.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: So they went around back and entered into what was
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: called the summer kitchen, which was a little shed outside.
• 15:27
  Speaker 3: This property didn't have any electricity, so they were pretty
• 15:30
  Speaker 3: much fumbling around in the dark with flashlights. But I
• 15:34
  Speaker 3: don't think they expected to find what they did find there.
• 15:37
  Speaker 2: One of them turned on his flashlight and beamed it
• 15:40
  Speaker 2: around and saw this object that was hanging from the rafters,
• 15:45
  Speaker 2: which at first they thought was some kind of gutted deer.
• 15:49
  Speaker 2: Although it didn't look like a deer, they realized to
• 15:52
  Speaker 2: their incredible horror that it was a woman's corpse that
• 15:56
  Speaker 2: was hanging by its heels and been completely gutted.
• 16:00
  Speaker 3: She'd been strung up, essentially, and she was slit from
• 16:04
  Speaker 3: her sternum to her pelvis. So she'd essentially been butchered
• 16:10
  Speaker 3: by Ed. It really was the most grotesque thing that
• 16:14
  Speaker 3: these officers had ever come across.
• 16:16
  Speaker 2: And they realized they had found the body of the
• 16:18
  Speaker 2: Burnish warden. And, of course, both of them just stumbled
• 16:22
  Speaker 2: out in horror and vomited, you know, at the sight
• 16:25
  Speaker 2: of this thing.
• 16:27
  Speaker 1: When the news spread across the town, the residents of
• 16:30
  Speaker 1: Plainfield were in complete shock.
• 16:33
  Speaker 5: When I heard of this arrest, I couldn't believe it.
• 16:37
  Speaker 5: I was sure they had the wrong person because it
• 16:39
  Speaker 5: just didn't seem like anything that they were telling us
• 16:43
  Speaker 5: was the Ed that we all knew. Yeah, it was
• 16:48
  Speaker 5: a Saturday night. We were at a dance and the
• 16:51
  Speaker 5: story went through there and everybody said, I don't believe it.
• 16:55
  Speaker 6: But it was true.
• 16:58
  Speaker 1: After finding the butchered body of Bernice Wharton in a
• 17:02
  Speaker 1: shed at Ed Gein's farm, the police officers moved their
• 17:06
  Speaker 1: search into the main house.
• 17:08
  Speaker 3: He boarded up some areas of the family's home to
• 17:11
  Speaker 3: maintain the rooms as his mother had left them. And
• 17:15
  Speaker 3: in other parts of the property... He just started hoarding things.
• 17:18
  Speaker 3: You know, you would have trash and rubbish filled up,
• 17:21
  Speaker 3: and it really became a complete hovel.
• 17:25
  Speaker 2: He'd reverse the normal process of trash disposal, you know,
• 17:29
  Speaker 2: and instead of taking all his garbage to the dump,
• 17:32
  Speaker 2: would go to the dump and bring it into his house.
• 17:35
  Speaker 2: It was just this incredible chaos of trash and garbage.
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: But there was more than just household waste.
• 17:42
  Speaker 6: Amid all that wreckage, they discovered.
• 17:45
  Speaker 2: These incomprehensible, unspeakably awful objects that had been fashioned out
• 17:52
  Speaker 2: of human body parts. There were chairs that were upholstered.
• 17:55
  Speaker 6: In human flesh.
• 17:57
  Speaker 3: There was a lampshade made of human skin. They found
• 18:00
  Speaker 3: that the remains of 12 human heads, gloves made out
• 18:04
  Speaker 3: of the skin from a corpse's fingers.
• 18:07
  Speaker 2: There was a jar containing human noses. There was a
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: box full of female genitalia, some of which had been painted.
• 18:16
  Speaker 2: and tied with ribbons. There was a belt fashioned out
• 18:20
  Speaker 2: of female nipples. There was a shade pull made of
• 18:24
  Speaker 2: human lips.
• 18:25
  Speaker 4: They found all types of things that belonged to people
• 18:29
  Speaker 4: that were no longer people. And it was shocking. I mean,
• 18:33
  Speaker 4: you think of this happening, you know, now, it's still
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: very shocking. But back then, in a small, tiny rural community,
• 18:42
  Speaker 4: it was absolutely shocking. It was breathtaking.
• 18:46
  Speaker 2: Ed Skeen's farmhouse was the habitation of a literal ghoul.
• 18:51
  Speaker 2: You know, somebody who had been living amidst these horrific
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: relics of human dismemberment.
• 18:58
  Speaker 6: It was a madhouse.
• 18:59
  Speaker 1: Skeen's fascination with death and corpses had been growing ever
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: since his mother had died 12 years previously.
• 19:08
  Speaker 3: Ed had always enjoyed reading. It was quite a solitary pursuit,
• 19:12
  Speaker 3: so that's not particularly surprising, but After the death of
• 19:14
  Speaker 3: his mother and his brother, he started to read an
• 19:17
  Speaker 3: awful lot more, and his tastes in literature really did
• 19:21
  Speaker 3: span quite a wide spectrum. He read pornographic magazines, he
• 19:26
  Speaker 3: read medical textbooks, and he developed a particular interest in
• 19:30
  Speaker 3: Ilse Koch, who worked at one of the Nazi concentration
• 19:34
  Speaker 3: camps and collected patches of skin of the prisoners who
• 19:38
  Speaker 3: were detained there. And I think all of this was
• 19:42
  Speaker 3: fuelling a very active imagination. So he's developing these obsessions
• 19:47
  Speaker 3: and these interests and he's quite skilled as a farmhand
• 19:50
  Speaker 3: at this point in time. He knows how to slaughter animals.
• 19:53
  Speaker 3: He knows how to prepare carcasses. He's from a community
• 19:56
  Speaker 3: that's very much into its hunting and its fishing. So
• 19:59
  Speaker 3: at some point, reality and fantasy are going to collide.
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: As the search of the farmhouse progressed, officers found that
• 20:07
  Speaker 1: the grotesque collection of body parts became even more disturbing.
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: Among the most hideous of all the items were human
• 20:16
  Speaker 2: skin masks that were hanging from the wall of his bedroom,
• 20:20
  Speaker 2: the faces of women that had been flayed from the
• 20:23
  Speaker 2: skulls and that had been preserved. Some of them had
• 20:27
  Speaker 2: lipstick applied to them and that had been hung on
• 20:29
  Speaker 2: the walls as decorations. And then, most notoriously, there was
• 20:35
  Speaker 2: a skin suit that Ed had crafted out of the
• 20:40
  Speaker 2: upper torso of a woman and the leggings of a woman.
• 20:43
  Speaker 2: And apparently, as he later confessed, he would put on
• 20:47
  Speaker 2: this skin suit and put on one of the female
• 20:50
  Speaker 2: skin masks and caper around in his yard, pretending to
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: be his mother.
• 20:57
  Speaker 1: Skeen's macabre collection had been acquired from the very same
• 21:01
  Speaker 1: cemetery where his mother's body lay.
• 21:05
  Speaker 3: Two years after the death of his mother in 1947,
• 21:08
  Speaker 3: he starts grave robbing. So he's going into a local
• 21:13
  Speaker 3: burial ground, he's digging up bodies, and he's taking things
• 21:17
  Speaker 3: from the bodies. Now, he's not taking jewellery or items
• 21:21
  Speaker 3: of any value, he's actually taking body parts. It really
• 21:24
  Speaker 3: is an absolute house of horrors, so... What started off
• 21:28
  Speaker 3: as an interest, which was confined to the pages of
• 21:31
  Speaker 3: a book, has now become a reality behind the doors
• 21:34
  Speaker 3: of this rather bizarre house. So what he's doing in
• 21:37
  Speaker 3: a really grotesque way is trying to bring his mother
• 21:41
  Speaker 3: back to life in some way, shape or form, because
• 21:43
  Speaker 3: he was just so dependent upon her for a sense
• 21:46
  Speaker 3: of his own identity.
• 21:48
  Speaker 1: And the search wasn't over yet. Officers would soon discover
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: inside a paper bag in Gein's home the severed head
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: of a woman who'd been missing from Plainfield for over
• 22:00
  Speaker 1: two years.
• 22:02
  Speaker 3: I think that the real tipping point for Ed Gein
• 22:04
  Speaker 3: was when his mother and his brother died because even
• 22:08
  Speaker 3: though this family was very intense and rather extreme in
• 22:11
  Speaker 3: its beliefs, it was still a check on his behaviour.
• 22:14
  Speaker 3: There was still that informal surveillance over him And I
• 22:18
  Speaker 3: think that kept him contained. But once he was on
• 22:21
  Speaker 3: his own, he was free to ruminate and fantasize, and
• 22:25
  Speaker 3: his behavior was only going to escalate.
• 22:27
  Speaker 2: You know, it's like some crack opened up, you know,
• 22:31
  Speaker 2: in the civilized part of his head, and all this weird,
• 22:34
  Speaker 2: archaic stuff going back to the days, you know, when
• 22:38
  Speaker 2: our species did engage in these bizarre, unspeakable rituals, you know,
• 22:45
  Speaker 2: flooded out and took possession of him.
• 22:48
  Speaker 1: With Gein in custody, officers continued to scour his home,
• 22:52
  Speaker 1: and they were about to make another startling discovery, a
• 22:56
  Speaker 1: local woman who'd been missing for almost three years.
• 23:00
  Speaker 2: There had been a female tavern keeper named Mary Hogan
• 23:04
  Speaker 2: who ran this roadside tavern outside of Plainfield.
• 23:08
  Speaker 6: Who had disappeared very, very mysteriously.
• 23:11
  Speaker 5: In those days, we had 18-year-old bars where teenagers could
• 23:14
  Speaker 5: go and have beer in. And she ran one of those.
• 23:19
  Speaker 5: It was kind of a modest place, to be very kind.
• 23:25
  Speaker 5: But she disappeared before I was old enough to frequent
• 23:29
  Speaker 5: those establishments.
• 23:30
  Speaker 3: When she went missing, he'd said some rather bizarre things.
• 23:34
  Speaker 3: He said to one of the townspeople, Oh, she's not missing.
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: She's up at the house. But because he was a
• 23:39
  Speaker 3: bit of a misfit and because he was a bit weird,
• 23:42
  Speaker 3: people didn't really take what he said very seriously at all.
• 23:45
  Speaker 2: So.
• 23:45
  Speaker 3: So that one was allowed to slip under the radar
• 23:48
  Speaker 3: until this grisly discovery a few years later.
• 23:51
  Speaker 2: In searching through Gein's house of horrors, the investigators opened
• 23:57
  Speaker 2: up some receptacle and saw this face and pulled it
• 24:03
  Speaker 2: out and realized it was Mary Hogan's, that she had
• 24:06
  Speaker 2: been another one of these victims.
• 24:09
  Speaker 1: Gein had murdered Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954, three
• 24:14
  Speaker 1: years previous to killing Bernice Worden.
• 24:18
  Speaker 2: I think there was some sense in which he associated
• 24:22
  Speaker 2: her with his mother. You know, she almost seemed to
• 24:26
  Speaker 2: be like the shadow side of his mother. And I
• 24:30
  Speaker 2: think in killing her, again, he was both enacting some
• 24:33
  Speaker 2: kind of homicidal rage toward his mother... But I think
• 24:37
  Speaker 2: also there were times when he just ran out of
• 24:40
  Speaker 2: suitable female corpses and had to make his own.
• 24:45
  Speaker 1: Back at the local police station, it was time for
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Ed Gein to start talking.
• 24:51
  Speaker 3: Well, for the first day after his arrest, I think
• 24:54
  Speaker 3: Ed felt like a bit of a fish out of water.
• 24:56
  Speaker 3: He didn't quite know how to react, but he did
• 24:59
  Speaker 3: start talking after about 24 hours and The first thing
• 25:02
  Speaker 3: he said was that he wanted an apple pie with
• 25:05
  Speaker 3: a slice of cheese on it. And that really does
• 25:08
  Speaker 3: show the emotional immaturity of this guy. And when you've
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: got somebody whose development stops at a particular point, they
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: don't develop those complex emotions that enable them to empathize
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: with other people or just think through the consequences of
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: their actions. So what you've got here is a teenage
• 25:26
  Speaker 3: boy in a man's body, and he was capable of
• 25:28
  Speaker 3: some really terrible things.
• 25:30
  Speaker 2: He was subjected to a very lengthy interrogation. He freely
• 25:33
  Speaker 2: confessed to the murders of Bernie Swarton and Mary Hogan.
• 25:37
  Speaker 2: When the police first broke into Gein's house and discovered
• 25:41
  Speaker 2: this crazy mass of body parts, their first assumption was
• 25:45
  Speaker 2: Gein was a serial killer. It was only during his
• 25:48
  Speaker 2: interrogation that he revealed that they were taken from the
• 25:54
  Speaker 2: corpses he had dug up from these local cemeteries. And people,
• 25:58
  Speaker 2: in a way, had a harder time believing that. and
• 26:00
  Speaker 2: that he was a serial killer. That seemed like totally
• 26:04
  Speaker 2: beyond the bounds of belief for a whole variety of reasons.
• 26:07
  Speaker 7: Human bodies are traditionally buried six feet underground. That's a
• 26:11
  Speaker 7: lot of digging, that's a lot of work to get
• 26:13
  Speaker 7: to them through packed earth. He'd need spades, picks. He'd
• 26:19
  Speaker 7: need to be strong and he'd need, one assumes, to
• 26:22
  Speaker 7: do it at night because he'd need to be undisturbed.
• 26:25
  Speaker 2: I'm not sure he did recognise that what he was
• 26:28
  Speaker 2: doing was wrong, you know. There are some necrophiles who think, well,
• 26:32
  Speaker 2: I wasn't really hurting anybody, you know, they were dead anyway.
• 26:37
  Speaker 1: Gein confessed to investigators that between 1947 and 1952, he'd
• 26:43
  Speaker 1: regularly visited the local cemetery after dark.
• 26:47
  Speaker 2: He would often follow the local newspapers and read the obituaries,
• 26:51
  Speaker 2: and when some middle-aged or elderly woman who bore some
• 26:56
  Speaker 2: vague resemblance to.
• 26:57
  Speaker 6: His departed mother.
• 26:59
  Speaker 2: died and was buried, he would apparently go out to
• 27:02
  Speaker 2: the cemetery at night while the soil was still fresh
• 27:05
  Speaker 2: and easily dug up and exhume these coffins and remove
• 27:11
  Speaker 2: the bodies and sometimes take the entire corpse back to
• 27:14
  Speaker 2: his farmhouse, sometimes just take parts of the corpse back
• 27:17
  Speaker 2: to the farmhouse and leave the rest there.
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: Investigators decided to dig up some of the graves to
• 27:23
  Speaker 1: see if Gein was telling the truth.
• 27:26
  Speaker 2: When they uncovered them, they discovered that the coffins had
• 27:29
  Speaker 2: been broken into and the bodies were missing or, you know,
• 27:34
  Speaker 2: there were just parts of the skeleton remaining there.
• 27:37
  Speaker 3: He admitted to grave robbing nine corpses, but the maths
• 27:41
  Speaker 3: didn't quite add up because the police had found 12
• 27:44
  Speaker 3: human heads in Gein's property and he'd only admitted to
• 27:49
  Speaker 3: 11 offences against separate people, so... So the numbers never
• 27:54
  Speaker 3: really added up properly, so there's always been questions over that.
• 27:57
  Speaker 7: Ed Gein's crimes were in the late 50s, 1957. The
• 28:03
  Speaker 7: state of forensic science in those days was far less.
• 28:08
  Speaker 6: Than we have now.
• 28:10
  Speaker 7: Things like DNA simply didn't exist as a tool, so
• 28:15
  Speaker 7: identification could potentially be very difficult and I would suspect
• 28:19
  Speaker 7: in certainly some of the body parts simply impossible.
• 28:22
  Speaker 1: There was no doubt that Gein specifically targeted females. All
• 28:27
  Speaker 1: the graves he desecrated belonged to women.
• 28:30
  Speaker 2: I think he was both trying to rebuild his mother,
• 28:35
  Speaker 2: but I also think that he was taking revenge on
• 28:38
  Speaker 2: his mother. That kind of love and hate of mommy
• 28:43
  Speaker 2: were manifested both by his attempting to bring her back
• 28:48
  Speaker 2: from the dead, but also perpetrating... you know, these atrocities
• 28:53
  Speaker 2: on the corpses of female bodies.
• 28:56
  Speaker 1: It's been reported that Gein did in fact try to
• 28:59
  Speaker 1: return Augusta to the family home after her funeral.
• 29:03
  Speaker 2: There's some indication that he initially tried to exhume his
• 29:06
  Speaker 2: mother's corpse. You know, apparently Ed missed the presence of
• 29:10
  Speaker 2: his mother so much. You know, he wanted to bring
• 29:14
  Speaker 2: her back and somehow in his madness, you know, reconstitute
• 29:19
  Speaker 2: her in his household. He couldn't get to his mother's
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: grave because the soil in that part of Wisconsin is
• 29:27
  Speaker 2: very sandy, and many coffins are buried within concrete vaults
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: to prevent the sand from collapsing on them. And that
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: was apparently true of Augusta Gein.
• 29:40
  Speaker 1: In November 1957, Ed Gein was charged with the murder
• 29:44
  Speaker 1: of Bernice Warden. The media descended on the tiny town
• 29:49
  Speaker 1: of Plainfield, Wisconsin.
• 29:51
  Speaker 7: What kind of a man did you know?
• 29:54
  Speaker 6: Well, a nice man, just like anybody else.
• 30:06
  Speaker 3: Well, the cultural context of the Gein case is quite
• 30:09
  Speaker 3: an interesting one, because I think this was one of
• 30:13
  Speaker 3: the first cases that gathered an awful lot of attention.
• 30:16
  Speaker 3: There was a media circus that developed around this, because
• 30:20
  Speaker 3: nothing like this had ever really happened before. It was
• 30:23
  Speaker 3: something completely new.
• 30:24
  Speaker 2: It spread very quickly through the local newspapers and newspapers.
• 30:28
  Speaker 2: You know, and then through the Associated Press and so
• 30:31
  Speaker 2: on to the national media, you know, Plainfield, which, you know,
• 30:36
  Speaker 2: always existed from the time of its founding and happy obscurity,
• 30:41
  Speaker 2: you know, suddenly found itself to be the center of
• 30:45
  Speaker 2: national and even international attention.
• 30:48
  Speaker 5: It was just an exasperating time, and then we were
• 30:53
  Speaker 5: inundated by nosy Nellies that... all thought that, boy, I've
• 30:57
  Speaker 5: got to go drive by that old farmhouse. And then
• 31:01
  Speaker 5: we became a, I don't like to use the word chaotic,
• 31:04
  Speaker 5: but a very unsettled community for a while.
• 31:08
  Speaker 2: Plainfield was suddenly famous, and famous for the most horrifying
• 31:13
  Speaker 2: of reasons. You know, that it was the home of
• 31:16
  Speaker 2: America's most notorious psychopath.
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: The entire community was stunned. For the previous decade, they'd
• 31:24
  Speaker 1: been living in the same town as a real-life bogeyman.
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: It would now be down to the courts to decide
• 31:31
  Speaker 1: whether or not Ed Gein was insane. On November 21, 1957,
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: the 51-year-old pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity at
• 31:45
  Speaker 1: his arraignment at Washara County Court. and it was declared
• 31:49
  Speaker 1: that he was unfit to stand trial.
• 31:50
  Speaker 2: There were indications that Ed was clinically psychotic, that he
• 31:56
  Speaker 2: had hallucinations, that he heard voices, or the trees.
• 32:01
  Speaker 6: Would start talking to him.
• 32:03
  Speaker 2: Most serial murderers are not psychotic, but Ed seemed to
• 32:07
  Speaker 2: have the symptoms of some form of psychosis.
• 32:11
  Speaker 1: Gein was sent to the Central State Hospital for the
• 32:13
  Speaker 1: Criminally Insane in Warpen, Wisconsin, which is now a maximum
• 32:18
  Speaker 1: security prison. 70 miles away in Plainfield, the community was
• 32:23
  Speaker 1: trying to get back on its feet, but the shadow
• 32:26
  Speaker 1: of Ed Gein lingered over the town.
• 32:29
  Speaker 3: In 1958, the property that Gein had lived in was
• 32:32
  Speaker 3: due to be auctioned off, and I think the last
• 32:35
  Speaker 3: thing that local people wanted was for this to become
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: some kind of shrine, some kind of, attraction for people
• 32:41
  Speaker 3: who were morbidly fascinated so a few days before the
• 32:45
  Speaker 3: auction the property was burned to the ground essentially a.
• 32:49
  Speaker 5: Lot of talk of arson the um they had been
• 32:55
  Speaker 5: cleaning up around there had been burning trash up around
• 32:58
  Speaker 5: the uh that that particular day too so then that
• 33:02
  Speaker 5: was Or anyway, that was an excuse of a possible
• 33:06
  Speaker 5: cause that maybe the wind got something in the evening
• 33:09
  Speaker 5: and got some live embers in there. A lot of
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: the neighbors weren't too happy with having talk of it
• 33:15
  Speaker 5: being turned into a museum of sorts. But there were
• 33:22
  Speaker 5: a lot of stories. Anyway, it's gone. People still kept coming, though,
• 33:27
  Speaker 5: even after the house was gone. for a year still
• 33:30
  Speaker 5: had people coming to drive by the empty lot where
• 33:33
  Speaker 5: the house used to stand.
• 33:35
  Speaker 1: In March 1958, the car which Gein used to transport
• 33:39
  Speaker 1: the bodies of his victims was bought at an auction
• 33:42
  Speaker 1: for over $ 700 by a carnival operator who charged fascinated
• 33:47
  Speaker 1: Americans 25 cents for a photograph at a macabre sideshow.
• 33:52
  Speaker 3: I think what we're seeing here is the rise of
• 33:54
  Speaker 3: the serial killer consumer culture. People are fascinated in these
• 33:59
  Speaker 3: kind of cases and some criminologists refer to this as
• 34:03
  Speaker 3: wound culture, that we're essentially drawn to the trauma and
• 34:06
  Speaker 3: the suffering of other people and we're drawn to the
• 34:09
  Speaker 3: artefacts that exist around these cases.
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: Gein remained in the Central State Hospital for 11 years
• 34:17
  Speaker 1: until doctors determined that he was finally fit to stand
• 34:20
  Speaker 1: trial for the first-degree murder of Bernice Warden. The hearing
• 34:25
  Speaker 1: lasted for a week, and on November the 14th, 1968,
• 34:29
  Speaker 1: Judge Robert Golmar had reached a verdict.
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: He was tried and found guilty of the murder of
• 34:35
  Speaker 2: Bernie Swarton, but then he was judged insane and stuck
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: back in the mental institution.
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: I think that was possibly somewhere where he may have
• 34:42
  Speaker 3: thrived because he had structure, he had a routine, he
• 34:46
  Speaker 3: had people watching over him and looking after his needs.
• 34:50
  Speaker 1: Forensic psychologist Dr. Helen Morrison interviewed Gein during his time
• 34:55
  Speaker 1: in hospital.
• 34:56
  Speaker 4: I was working at that time as a staff psychiatrist
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: and I was covering all the units. And when I
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: was asked to go over to see this person, I
• 35:10
  Speaker 4: went over to see it and I saw Ed Gein.
• 35:13
  Speaker 4: He was not at all coherent. He was such a
• 35:17
  Speaker 4: little person. that I found it hard to picture him
• 35:23
  Speaker 4: as the person who committed all these homicides. He lived
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: there very peacefully. He never caused any problems, never had
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: any type of behavioral thing, no type of, I guess
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: you could say, consequence for bad behavior.
• 35:42
  Speaker 1: Gein's quiet nature in hospital was in stark contrast to
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: the monster Helen had heard so much about.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: I received a letter from one of his neighbours who
• 35:52
  Speaker 4: used to be a friend of his. She was a
• 35:55
  Speaker 4: little girl and she remembers going over to his house
• 36:00
  Speaker 4: and he would serve soup and everything. What turned out,
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: the soup bowls were the skulls of many of his
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: victims and people never knew it.
• 36:10
  Speaker 1: On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein died of lung cancer,
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: aged 77. He was buried next to his mother on
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the Gein family plot at the same cemetery which he
• 36:23
  Speaker 1: so often desecrated during his career of horror. Gein has
• 36:28
  Speaker 1: left a lasting impact on the small community where he
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: committed his ghoulish crimes.
• 36:34
  Speaker 5: We really wouldn't care to have that be our claim
• 36:37
  Speaker 5: to fame. We've turned out lots of doctors and architects
• 36:43
  Speaker 5: and some really good people out of our schools here.
• 36:45
  Speaker 5: We're very proud of them. We'd rather be known for
• 36:48
  Speaker 5: a tremendously good population than to be credited for only
• 36:56
  Speaker 5: one issue.
• 36:59
  Speaker 1: But just like the carnival operators of the 1950s, people
• 37:03
  Speaker 1: continue to try and get their hands on grisly souvenirs
• 37:07
  Speaker 1: related to Gein.
• 37:09
  Speaker 3: In the year 2000, somebody was found to be selling
• 37:12
  Speaker 3: parts of the gravestone that had been erected at Ed
• 37:17
  Speaker 3: Gein's grave. For people who are fans of the serial
• 37:20
  Speaker 3: killer cult, this was just the gift that kept on giving.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: They keep putting up headstones, and the headstones keep disappearing.
• 37:27
  Speaker 2: There's a whole category of collectible that has come to
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: be known as murderabilia, and Gein relics are particularly prized.
• 37:38
  Speaker 2: among people who collect that kind of morbid relic.
• 37:42
  Speaker 1: Over 60 years since the horrific crimes, Gein has grown
• 37:46
  Speaker 1: into a notorious figure in American folklore, a killer of
• 37:50
  Speaker 1: almost mythic proportions.
• 37:52
  Speaker 7: The two things that are fascinating about Ed Gein is
• 37:56
  Speaker 7: the fact that he only, as far as we know,
• 38:00
  Speaker 7: murdered two people, which is a lot less than many
• 38:03
  Speaker 7: infamous killers, but he's had such a huge legacy in.
• 38:09
  Speaker 6: Films, books, music.
• 38:11
  Speaker 7: He seems to have become a sort of pop culture murderer.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: At the time the Gein crimes were being revealed in
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: the press, there was a writer of.
• 38:22
  Speaker 6: Pulp horror named Robert Block.
• 38:25
  Speaker 2: Who had moved to Wisconsin to be with his wife's family.
• 38:29
  Speaker 2: And at some point when Gein was being interviewed by
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: various psychiatrists, all these headlines in the papers revealed were
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: trumpeting the fact that Gein had been motivated by these deranged,
• 38:41
  Speaker 2: Oedipal conflicts, you know, that he was this desperately sick
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: mama's boy, you know, who was perpetrating these atrocities on
• 38:51
  Speaker 2: middle-aged women, you know, who reminded him of his mother.
• 38:55
  Speaker 2: And this caught the attention of Robert Bloch, who decided
• 38:58
  Speaker 2: this could potentially make the basis of a good horror novel,
• 39:02
  Speaker 2: and that became the book Psycho. In the book Psycho,
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: Norman Bates actually, after he's arrested, compares himself at the
• 39:09
  Speaker 2: end of the book to Ed Gein. So the connection
• 39:12
  Speaker 2: is made very, very explicit there in the book.
• 39:15
  Speaker 6: Anyway, Psycho, as.
• 39:16
  Speaker 2: We know, became turned into one of the great classic
• 39:20
  Speaker 2: horror movies of American cinema. You know, if you look
• 39:23
  Speaker 2: at horror movies before then, there were all these Eastern
• 39:27
  Speaker 2: European monsters, Frankenstein and Dracula and the Wolfman, you know,
• 39:32
  Speaker 2: or else they were aliens from outer space. You know,
• 39:36
  Speaker 2: with Psycho, Psycho establishes and, you know, again establishes, you know,
• 39:41
  Speaker 2: this quintessentially American figure of horror. the ordinary middle American
• 39:47
  Speaker 2: guy who turns out to be this monster in disguise.
• 39:51
  Speaker 2: And then, of course, Gein becomes the basis for Tobey
• 39:53
  Speaker 2: Hooper's Texas Chancellor Massacre, and later on for Thomas Harris'
• 39:59
  Speaker 2: character Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs. You know,
• 40:02
  Speaker 2: so Gein has this very, very direct influence on American
• 40:06
  Speaker 2: horror cinema.
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: But Gein's crimes were not fictional, they were very real,
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: and he remains one of the most infamous murderers in
• 40:14
  Speaker 1: US history.
• 40:16
  Speaker 2: We think of Gein as this notorious American serial murderer,
• 40:22
  Speaker 2: but in many ways he doesn't really fit that profile.
• 40:26
  Speaker 2: You know, for example, he wasn't a sexual sadist in
• 40:30
  Speaker 2: the way John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy were, or
• 40:33
  Speaker 2: Jeffrey Dahmer. You know, he wasn't driven by that particular profile.
• 40:38
  Speaker 2: form of deviance.
• 40:39
  Speaker 3: I think he was brought up in a vacuum that
• 40:42
  Speaker 3: created the conditions for someone who would go on to
• 40:45
  Speaker 3: do evil things. So whilst most people are shocked and
• 40:50
  Speaker 3: repulsed and absolutely horrified at some of the things he's
• 40:56
  Speaker 3: done because he didn't have that filter and that check
• 40:59
  Speaker 3: on his behavior he was able to escalate to a
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: level of evil I think.
• 41:04
  Speaker 4: Evil is something that You know, professionally, people don't believe
• 41:09
  Speaker 4: in evil, but I truly believe that he was evil.
• 41:14
  Speaker 4: I think there are people who would like to say
• 41:17
  Speaker 4: that the devil got into him and made him do
• 41:21
  Speaker 4: these awful things, but I think he was born evil.
• 41:25
  Speaker 5: The Ed I knew was not an evil person. He
• 41:28
  Speaker 5: did things that normal people do not do. And there's
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: just no doubt about that. And to kill two people
• 41:36
  Speaker 5: is certainly not a person who you would really like
• 41:40
  Speaker 5: to invite to your neighborhood party. But, yeah, there was
• 41:48
  Speaker 5: something in his head that didn't click right.
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: Ed Gein's crimes are the stuff of genuine nightmares. The
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: man with an unhealthy obsession with his mother brazenly murdered
• 42:00
  Speaker 1: two women and kept a bizarre collection of gruesome keepsakes
• 42:05
  Speaker 1: inside his house of horrors. He truly deserves to be
• 42:08
  Speaker 1: remembered as one of the world's most evil killers.