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The Most INFAMOUS Killer In History _ Ed Gein · The conspiracy

• 0:00
  Speaker 1: A chill settles over the farmlands of central Wisconsin. It's
• 0:03
  Speaker 1: a kind of place where life moves slowly, where neighbors
• 0:06
  Speaker 1: nod politely on the street, and where secrets are thought
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: to be small, ordinary things. But behind the doors of
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: one weather worn farmhouse, a darkness was festering. A man
• 0:17
  Speaker 1: who seemed quiet, even harmless, carried with him obsessions two
• 0:22
  Speaker 1: grotesque for the imagination, and when the truth finally surfaced,
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: it shocked not only a town but the entire nation.
• 0:31
  Speaker 2: Crime, conspiracy, gaults, serial killers, and murder, all things that
• 0:37
  Speaker 2: I love to consume.
• 0:38
  Speaker 3: And I know you do too, You sick, twisted, beautiful,
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: intellectually minded, big.
• 0:44
  Speaker 2: Thought it switched up a little bit.
• 0:46
  Speaker 1: But yes, today, today we are talking about the.
• 0:49
  Speaker 3: Infamous ed Geen.
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  Speaker 1: He is inspired many different shows, movies, even music. But
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: who really was ed Geen? And how did he come
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  Speaker 1: to be one of the most infamous killers of all time? So,
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  Speaker 1: without further ado, let's unbuckle our stapboults, go mockfid in
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: the highway, slam on the brakes, and bust through the
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  Speaker 1: windshield into this infamous killer.
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: Together.
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  Speaker 1: At the start of the twentieth century, Wisconsin had a
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: strong rule character. Small farming communities dotted the landscape, and
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  Speaker 1: life on these farms was hard but simple. Families worked
• 1:38
  Speaker 1: their land, raised livestock and lived off what they produced,
• 1:42
  Speaker 1: a s life the good old days, if you will,
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: and this fostered a strong sense of self reliance, but
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  Speaker 1: also isolation, as they could be quite remote, and this
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: physical isolation meant that a family's home was its own
• 1:56
  Speaker 1: little world, largely hidden from the outside scrutiny and a
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: social fabric of rule. Wisconsin was tight knit yet pretty conservative,
• 2:05
  Speaker 1: and many communities were anchored by churches, modest schools, and
• 2:09
  Speaker 1: maybe a general store in the nearest village. So traditional
• 2:13
  Speaker 1: values prevailed in this part of America, and people were
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  Speaker 1: expected to be industrious, devout, and reserved in personal matters.
• 2:23
  Speaker 1: And mental health as we think of it today was
• 2:25
  Speaker 1: not openly discussed basically at all, because at the time
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  Speaker 1: there was a strong stigma around psychological troubles, and those
• 2:33
  Speaker 1: suffering from severe mental illness might be sent to distant asylums,
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  Speaker 1: but more often families just coped in private silence. In fact,
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  Speaker 1: the early nineteen hundreds were a low point in public
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  Speaker 1: attitudes toward mental illness and in Wisconsin and elsewhere, society's
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  Speaker 1: approach was often to hide away or ignore those deemed
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  Speaker 1: quote unstable unquote, and emotional issues or strange behavior within
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  Speaker 1: a family were usually kept behind closed doors, and family
• 3:02
  Speaker 1: life in these farming communities was frequently authoritarian, and fathers
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  Speaker 1: were traditionally the heads of the household, but mothers too
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  Speaker 1: could wield fierce influence over the children's upbringing, and strict
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  Speaker 1: discipline was seen as a virtue, and parents would teach
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  Speaker 1: obedience and morality as they understood it, and sometimes with
• 3:21
  Speaker 1: an iron hand, if you know what I mean, oopsh
• 3:25
  Speaker 1: and religious fundamentalism was common, especially among immigrant communities, and
• 3:30
  Speaker 1: sermons about sin and virtue filled Sunday mornings, and many
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  Speaker 1: households carry those fiery teachings into everyday life.
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  Speaker 3: So in this.
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  Speaker 1: Environment, a domineering parent who imposed rigid moral codes on
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  Speaker 1: their family wouldn't have been seen as particularly unusual, and
• 3:47
  Speaker 1: outsiders generally didn't interfere in family matters, even if things
• 3:52
  Speaker 1: were dysfunctional behind the scenes. So within this rural background
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  Speaker 1: lies the tiny village of Plainfield, Wisconsin. In the early
• 4:00
  Speaker 1: nineteen hundreds, Plainfield was a speck on the map of
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  Speaker 1: central Wisconsin, surrounded by wetlands and farms, and the population
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  Speaker 1: in nineteen hundred was only around seven hundred and twenty
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  Speaker 1: eight people, peaking at the time and then declining in
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  Speaker 1: subsequent decades, down to about five hundred and eighty people
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  Speaker 1: by nineteen twenty. But it was a kind of place
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  Speaker 1: where everyone truly knew everyone, and daily life revolved around
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  Speaker 1: basic commerce and farming, and a handful of family run
• 4:28
  Speaker 1: businesses lined main street serving the needs of local farm families,
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  Speaker 1: and an old opera house built in nineteen oh two
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  Speaker 1: doubled as a dance hall, church, bar, and even a
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  Speaker 1: movie theater over the years, illustrating how one building often
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  Speaker 1: wore many hats in a small community.
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  Speaker 3: And Wisconsin was.
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  Speaker 1: Becoming America's dairy land around this time, and there was
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  Speaker 1: a practical no frills ethos among the townsfolk and people
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  Speaker 1: worked hard during the day and looked out for their
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  Speaker 1: neighbors when they could. Yet despite the friendliness on the surface,
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  Speaker 1: Plainfield World's remoteness fostered a mind your own business mentality,
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  Speaker 1: and if a family chose to keep to themselves on
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  Speaker 1: a farm outside of town, few would pry, so it
• 5:09
  Speaker 1: was easy for someone to live a fairly reclusive life
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  Speaker 1: without drawing much attention, a very important factor for the
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  Speaker 1: story to come. But overall, early twentieth century Plainfield offered
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  Speaker 1: a picture of secluded small town America, quiet, insular and
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  Speaker 1: set in its own ways, and the stage was set
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  Speaker 1: for a future tragedy, a tragedy that would seem utterly
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  Speaker 1: inconceivable against such an unassuming rule backdrop. And little did
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  Speaker 1: those farmers and shopkeepers know that one of their own
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  Speaker 1: would become the stuff of American nightmares. So the Geen
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  Speaker 1: saga begins with two people who on the surface appeared
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  Speaker 1: unremarkable for their time, and that is George Philip Geen
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  Speaker 1: and Augusta Wilhelmine lurk So. George and Augusta were both
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  Speaker 1: children of German immigrants and were raised in Wisconsin in
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  Speaker 1: the late nineteenth century, and George, born in eighteen seventy three,
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  Speaker 1: grew into a hefty, hard working man, but one beset
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  Speaker 1: by personal demons because he had a reputation for being
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  Speaker 1: an alcoholic, and he drifted through various jobs, never able
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  Speaker 1: to hold anything steady for long, and over the years,
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  Speaker 1: George worked as a carpenter and even a tannery hand,
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  Speaker 1: but his lack of discipline and pavvy drinking kept sabotaging
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  Speaker 1: any chance of success, and he, by all means, appeared
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  Speaker 1: to be a man who would rather drown his disappointments
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  Speaker 1: in whiskey than confront them. And in contrast, Augusta born
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  Speaker 1: in eighteen seventy eight, was George's polar opposite in personality
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  Speaker 1: because Augusta came from a strict Old Lutheran family of
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  Speaker 1: Prussian Germans, and the Old Lutherans were known for their
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  Speaker 1: ultra conservative, fire and brimstone brand of faith. It's God's
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  Speaker 1: word or nothing, basically, so from our young age, Augusta
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  Speaker 1: was taught that the world is a wicked place, and
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  Speaker 1: not wicked is wicked awesome. Wicked is evil, infected with
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  Speaker 1: sin in every thought. Indeed, and this creed became the
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  Speaker 1: core of her being, and she developed a formidable, no
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  Speaker 1: nonsense character and deeply religious, proudly self righteous, and utterly
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  Speaker 1: convinced of her moral superiority. So Augusta was not necessarily
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  Speaker 1: warm or affectionate, if you.
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  Speaker 2: Catch my drift.
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  Speaker 1: Instead, she was described as domineering and obsessively pious, and
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  Speaker 1: she believed it was her God given duty to steer others,
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  Speaker 1: especially her family, away from evil, which will become extremely
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  Speaker 1: ironic as we make our way through this case. But
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  Speaker 1: George and Augusta would marry on December eleventh, nineteen hundred,
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  Speaker 1: and George would be twenty seven and Augusta would be
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  Speaker 1: twenty two, and she likely hoped marriage would offer her
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  Speaker 1: stability and children to raise in righteousness, and George, for
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  Speaker 1: his part, probably saw Augusta as a strong woman who
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  Speaker 1: could keep anchored, and in their early years together, Augusta
• 8:03
  Speaker 1: took charge of the household finances and opened a small
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  Speaker 1: grocery store in Lacrosse. By all accounts, she was the breadwinner,
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  Speaker 1: a rather unusual arrangement for nineteen hundred, and her shop
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  Speaker 1: did well enough to support the family when George couldn't,
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  Speaker 1: because remember, he's just off drinking and just being shitty
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  Speaker 1: at his jobs. And meanwhile, George's pride suffered under the
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: shadow of his wife's competence and open contempt, and Augusta
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  Speaker 1: would openly break George. Yet because of her strict Lutheran
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  Speaker 1: beliefs about marriage, divorce was unthinkable could not happen, and
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  Speaker 1: so resentment festered in their home, very healthy and in
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  Speaker 1: January nineteen oh two, the Genes welcomed their first child,
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  Speaker 1: a son named Henry George Geen and Augusta had desperately
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  Speaker 1: wanted a daughter, someone she could mold into her own
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  Speaker 1: devout image and obedient girl safe from the corruption of men,
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  Speaker 1: So the birth of a boy was a disappointment to her.
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  Speaker 2: Not a great start for this little guy.
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  Speaker 1: But still Augusta was determined to raise Henry Wright, so
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  Speaker 1: she quickly established herself as the ultimate authority over the child,
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  Speaker 1: essentially sidelining George's role as a father. And those early
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: family years were dominated by Augusta's growing control, and she
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  Speaker 1: preached and scolded, making it clear that sinn lurked around
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  Speaker 1: every single corner, just molding a extremely paranoid child, and
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  Speaker 1: George increasingly emasculated, drank even more, and grew but when inebriated,
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  Speaker 1: so domestic life became a kind of tug of war
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  Speaker 1: because there was Augusta's stern discipline on one side and
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  Speaker 1: George's drunken outbursts on the other hand. So as the
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  Speaker 1: years went by, Augusta's influence only expanded, and on August
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  Speaker 1: twenty seventh, nineteen oh six, she gave birth to a
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  Speaker 1: second son in Lacrosse, and that was Edward Theodore Geen
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  Speaker 1: known as ed the guy we're talking about today. And
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  Speaker 1: this child too was not a girl. Oh two strikes.
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  Speaker 2: She's pissed.
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  Speaker 1: So if she couldn't have a daughter, Augusta resolved that
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  Speaker 1: her sons would be kept pure at all costs. From
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  Speaker 1: the moment ed was born, Augusta's word was law in
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  Speaker 1: the Green household. Again, not a good start to this
• 10:23
  Speaker 1: little guy's life. So she would tolerate no dissent from
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  Speaker 1: George or the boys. Augusta was queen bitch of this house.
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  Speaker 1: So a stern, joyless routine was established in this household,
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  Speaker 1: and that is that the children would attend to their
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  Speaker 1: chores and Augusta would attend to their souls, basically their
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  Speaker 1: souls that were just just kicked with evil in Augusta's opinion.
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  Speaker 1: So every afternoon she set aside time to read the
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  Speaker 1: Bible to her sons, often selecting fire and Brimstone verses
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  Speaker 1: from the Old Testament or revelation about divine punishment and
• 11:00
  Speaker 1: the evils of depravity Old Testament. If if anybody's read it, man,
• 11:04
  Speaker 1: that's that shit is crazy, all right, I got it
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  Speaker 1: read to me as a kid. It's the stuff of nightmares.
• 11:11
  Speaker 1: Highly recommend New Testament, little Lighter. But she drilled into
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  Speaker 1: Henry and little ed that the world outside was filthy
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  Speaker 1: and a very immoral place. And in Augusta's eyes, nearly
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  Speaker 1: all women, herself excepted, were harlots and instruments of the
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  Speaker 1: devil out to seduce and destroy men. So just a
• 11:33
  Speaker 1: classic boy mom basically just kidding. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding. Okay,
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  Speaker 1: my sister's a boy mom. She's a great boy mom.
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  Speaker 3: I'm kidding.
• 11:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, we all know who I'm talking about, all right,
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  Speaker 1: those moms that just like never want their boys to
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  Speaker 1: like have a girlfriend or a wife or whatever. It's
• 11:47
  Speaker 1: a little weird anyway. So drinking alcohol was a damnable sin.
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  Speaker 1: Intercourse was evil, and only total obedience to God and
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  Speaker 1: to Augusta, as God's emissary could say, her family from
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  Speaker 1: hell fire. So within this fervent atmosphere, George Geen receded
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  Speaker 1: into irrelevance, and Augusta's scorn for her husband was never
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  Speaker 1: concealed either. And like we said, she openly berated him
• 12:13
  Speaker 1: as a useless drunk who was headed for hell, just
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  Speaker 1: very healthy household and just powerless to change his situation.
• 12:23
  Speaker 1: George mostly slunk into the background, nursing his bottle whiskey,
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  Speaker 1: and when he did get involved with the boys, it
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: was usually in anger, and he would furiously slap Ed's head,
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: sometimes hitting him until the boy's ears rang, which is horrible,
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  Speaker 1: and these beatings only reinforced Ed's fear of adoration of
• 12:43
  Speaker 1: his mother, because she was the one who claimed to
• 12:46
  Speaker 1: love and protect him from a sinful world, whereas his
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: father met his tears with violence. So we're getting a
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: very unhealthy attachment to the umbilical cord is growing stronger
• 12:58
  Speaker 1: between Eddie and mommy. And though she was also verbally
• 13:02
  Speaker 1: to the boys, believing them to become eventual failures just
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: like their father was in her eyes. But by the
• 13:08
  Speaker 1: time Ed was a toddler and Henry a young boy,
• 13:11
  Speaker 1: Augusta had effectively constructed an emotional fortress around her family.
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  Speaker 2: She's basically a call leader.
• 13:17
  Speaker 1: And she would even forbade the children from having any
• 13:20
  Speaker 1: friends over or just friends in general. These these kids
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  Speaker 1: were extremely secluded, and she just poured her energy into
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  Speaker 1: running the household and lecturing her sons on morality and
• 13:32
  Speaker 1: in public, Augusta was outwardly respectable. The hard working store
• 13:36
  Speaker 1: owner and farm wife, and neighbors in Lacrosse might have
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: found her rigid and holier than thou, but nothing about
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: the genes early years drew serious outside concern. Remember, everybody
• 13:47
  Speaker 1: just kind of kept to themselves and.
• 13:48
  Speaker 2: They're like, ooh, that's their problem.
• 13:51
  Speaker 1: You know, she's a bit crazy, but you know she's
• 13:53
  Speaker 1: hardworking and everything, so nobody really like turned their heads
• 13:57
  Speaker 1: behind closed doors. However, Augusta's fanaticism and George's failure created
• 14:02
  Speaker 1: a very toxic home environment, and when the stresses of
• 14:06
  Speaker 1: city life and George's drinking grew too much, Augusta sought
• 14:10
  Speaker 1: a drastic change. You know what I love about fall,
• 14:13
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• 14:16
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• 14:19
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• 16:05
  Speaker 2: Let's get back to it.
• 16:06
  Speaker 1: So it was around nineteen fifteen she relocated the family
• 16:09
  Speaker 1: to a farm on the outskirts of the tiny town
• 16:12
  Speaker 1: of Plainfield, and she deliberately chose this one hundred and
• 16:16
  Speaker 1: fifty five acre farm for its seclusion, far from any
• 16:20
  Speaker 1: immorality of larger towns. So by removing her family to
• 16:24
  Speaker 1: an isolated patch of rule land, Augusta believed she could
• 16:28
  Speaker 1: shield her sons from the corrupt influences once and for all.
• 16:33
  Speaker 1: And indeed the Green Farm would become a world onto
• 16:36
  Speaker 1: itself with Augusta its unquestioned cults.
• 16:40
  Speaker 3: Ruler at the head.
• 16:41
  Speaker 1: And George was too beaten down and often just too
• 16:45
  Speaker 1: drunk to protest the move. Plus he didn't make any
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: money like Augusta just had all the power in this relationship. Thus,
• 16:52
  Speaker 1: as the Green family headed into Ed's childhood years, Augusta's
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: grip was iron clad and the stage was set for
• 17:00
  Speaker 1: a very peculiar upbringing. So Edward or ed Gean, spent
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: his earliest years under the absolute authority of his mother,
• 17:08
  Speaker 1: as we know, and the Plainfield farmhouse was old and modest,
• 17:11
  Speaker 1: but Augusta saw it as a sanctuary from the modern
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: world sins, and for ed it became a lonely kingdom
• 17:17
  Speaker 1: of fields and dense silence, and he was rarely allowed
• 17:21
  Speaker 1: to leave the property except for school, and inside the home,
• 17:25
  Speaker 1: Augusta's presence loomed as large as ever, and every day
• 17:28
  Speaker 1: ed heard the same fiery sermons from his mother, the
• 17:32
  Speaker 1: wickedness of the world, the evils of lust, the certainty
• 17:35
  Speaker 1: of God's wrath, and she punctuated her lectures by quoting
• 17:39
  Speaker 1: scripture on murder, death and divine retribution. You know, just
• 17:44
  Speaker 1: classic nighttime bed stories, but ironically foreshadowing the darkness that
• 17:50
  Speaker 1: would later unfold. Because Ed's impressionable mind absorbed it all,
• 17:55
  Speaker 1: and he grew up literally idolizing Augusta because to him,
• 18:01
  Speaker 1: she was practically infallible, his guiding light in a world
• 18:05
  Speaker 1: full of temptations. But Augusta's love was harsh and conditional,
• 18:10
  Speaker 1: you know, as a mother's love is, and she enforced
• 18:13
  Speaker 1: discipline with a heavy hand. And in one especially traumatizing incident,
• 18:18
  Speaker 1: young Ed was caught by his mother doing something a
• 18:22
  Speaker 1: boy does when they hit puberty, if you know what
• 18:25
  Speaker 1: I mean, in the bathtub, and Augusta flew into a rage,
• 18:31
  Speaker 1: and she grabbed him by his you know what and
• 18:35
  Speaker 1: called them the curse of man, scolding him that that
• 18:39
  Speaker 1: act was a filthy abomination. And Ed was mortified and
• 18:44
  Speaker 1: learned to associate any normal urge with intense guilt and
• 18:49
  Speaker 1: fear of his mother's wrath. Again, just very healthy practices
• 18:54
  Speaker 1: going on here, and by that I mean extremely toxic.
• 18:57
  Speaker 3: So the boy's.
• 18:58
  Speaker 1: Childhood was marked by social isolation and strange influences. And
• 19:02
  Speaker 1: as a child, at around the age of seven, Ed
• 19:05
  Speaker 1: reportedly witnessed his parents or a hog in the farm's shed,
• 19:09
  Speaker 1: and disturbingly, Ed later recounted that watching this violent butchery
• 19:13
  Speaker 1: excited him so much that he experienced an involuntary release,
• 19:19
  Speaker 1: if you know what I mean, which is just not
• 19:21
  Speaker 1: cool to think about, but it happened, and This shocking
• 19:24
  Speaker 1: reaction suggests that even at a young age, Ed's psyche
• 19:28
  Speaker 1: was mixing violence and arousal in a very abnormal way,
• 19:34
  Speaker 1: and whether Augusta ever learned of this incident is unknown,
• 19:37
  Speaker 1: but it shows the seeds of Ed's pathology were quietly
• 19:40
  Speaker 1: taking root in childhood, and despite his bizarre home life,
• 19:45
  Speaker 1: Ed outwardly appeared as a shy, awkward boy, not a
• 19:49
  Speaker 1: little boy who really liked watching animals die a little
• 19:55
  Speaker 1: too much. And as if the kid didn't have it
• 19:57
  Speaker 1: hard enough growing up, a congenital both on his eyelid
• 20:01
  Speaker 1: gave him a bit of a lazy eye, and a
• 20:03
  Speaker 1: lesion on his tongue caused him to speak with a
• 20:06
  Speaker 1: slight lisp, and in nineteen fifteen Ed began attending the
• 20:09
  Speaker 1: local one room roche a Cree grade school, which had
• 20:13
  Speaker 1: just twelve students total, and this tiny schoolhouse was essentially
• 20:18
  Speaker 1: his only window to the outside world, and Ed did
• 20:21
  Speaker 1: fairly well in class. In fact, he was described as
• 20:23
  Speaker 1: a voracious reader, but socially he was a misfit and
• 20:28
  Speaker 1: his classmates would find him odd because he would sometimes
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: laugh to himself out loud, just kind of out of
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: the blue, as if hearing an inside joke that no
• 20:37
  Speaker 1: one else understood, which who.
• 20:40
  Speaker 3: Doesn't do that?
• 20:41
  Speaker 1: You know I did that sometimes, and this was likely
• 20:43
  Speaker 1: a just a coping mechanism, but it earned him some ridicule,
• 20:47
  Speaker 1: and other children would mock him for his weird, giggling
• 20:51
  Speaker 1: and effeminate mannerisms, which only isolated him further, and being
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: ostracized hurt Ed deeply. But at home he he got
• 21:00
  Speaker 1: zero sympathy, as we know, you know, mommy doesn't give
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: a shit. So if Ed ever came home crying because
• 21:07
  Speaker 1: the kids at school bullied him, Augusta and George responded
• 21:11
  Speaker 1: with scorn or even violence, so this kid could not
• 21:14
  Speaker 1: catch a break. I have sympathy for a little Ed,
• 21:18
  Speaker 1: and Augusta would chastise Ed for wanting friends among sinners,
• 21:22
  Speaker 1: and George would be violent as he usually was, and
• 21:26
  Speaker 1: as a result, Ed had no friends, and Ed learned
• 21:29
  Speaker 1: to swallow his hurt and withdraw further into himself. And
• 21:33
  Speaker 1: his only close companion was his older brother, Henry, who
• 21:36
  Speaker 1: was five years his senior, but even that bond was
• 21:40
  Speaker 1: complicated because Henry sometimes acted as another authority figure because
• 21:44
  Speaker 1: as you can imagine, Henry's going through all the same stuff,
• 21:47
  Speaker 1: and usually kids project what is projected onto them, so
• 21:53
  Speaker 1: his only outlet to let out any anger is on Ed.
• 21:57
  Speaker 1: So Ed's just getting it from every so. Lacking any
• 22:01
  Speaker 1: normal social outlets, Ed immersed himself into books and his
• 22:05
  Speaker 1: own imagination, and he particularly loved adventure stories and eventually
• 22:09
  Speaker 1: pulp magazines, which were cheap fiction magazines printed on wood
• 22:14
  Speaker 1: pulp paper, and he would happily spend time with books
• 22:17
  Speaker 1: over interacting with others. And even in these early years,
• 22:20
  Speaker 1: Augusta's grip on Ed's mind was so tight that he
• 22:23
  Speaker 1: barely dared to think for himself because he was conditioned
• 22:26
  Speaker 1: to believe that the outside world was evil and only
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: his mother was good. And Ed later said he never
• 22:33
  Speaker 1: once dated or had any interest in girls growing up,
• 22:37
  Speaker 1: because Augusta had effectively made the idea of romance or
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: any sort of quality as terrifying and repulsive to him,
• 22:46
  Speaker 1: and instead Ed focused on being the dutiful son, helping
• 22:50
  Speaker 1: with farm chores and trying, often feutally, to earn a
• 22:54
  Speaker 1: kind word from his mother. And Ed's formal education ended
• 22:59
  Speaker 1: almost as soon as it began, because after completing the
• 23:02
  Speaker 1: eighth grade, Ed would drop out of school and This
• 23:05
  Speaker 1: was not uncommon for nineteen twenties farm country boys, because
• 23:08
  Speaker 1: many boys left school to work on the farm full time,
• 23:11
  Speaker 1: or because their family saw no need for higher education,
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: and in Ed's case, he had only ever attended a
• 23:17
  Speaker 1: tiny rural school and high school was likely out of
• 23:20
  Speaker 1: the reach logistically, so by his mid teens, Ed was
• 23:24
  Speaker 1: essentially confined to the family farm twenty four seven, with
• 23:29
  Speaker 1: only occasional trips into plainfield for supplies. So he continued
• 23:33
  Speaker 1: to read, not stop on his own, maintaining a decent literacy,
• 23:38
  Speaker 1: but any chance at normal social development was completely cut off,
• 23:43
  Speaker 1: so Ed was truly just devoted to his mommy to
• 23:47
  Speaker 1: an excessive degree even for that era. And sometime in
• 23:51
  Speaker 1: their early lives, Augusta made her sons swear an oath
• 23:55
  Speaker 1: to remain virgins until death.
• 23:58
  Speaker 2: That's a big ask, mom, what do you think? That's
• 24:00
  Speaker 2: a lot?
• 24:01
  Speaker 1: And she warned Henry and Ed that any intercourse was
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: a ticket to eternal damnation and losing their chastity would
• 24:10
  Speaker 1: make them no better than their despised father in her eyes.
• 24:14
  Speaker 2: Why does she get a pass?
• 24:16
  Speaker 1: And incredibly, both boys, likely under coercion by their formidable mother,
• 24:20
  Speaker 1: pledged to obey, and Ed took this vow very very seriously,
• 24:26
  Speaker 1: further contributing to how he never pursued any romantic relationship
• 24:30
  Speaker 1: in his life. And such was Augusta's power over her
• 24:34
  Speaker 1: son's psyche. So by the end of Ed's school years
• 24:36
  Speaker 1: the family dynamics had settled into a grim routine. Augusta's
• 24:40
  Speaker 1: word was truly law. Henry and Ed labored on the
• 24:43
  Speaker 1: farm under her direction, and George spent most of the
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: time drunk and bitter on the sidelines. So Ed's worldview,
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: having had almost no healthy outside input, was essentially an
• 24:54
  Speaker 1: extension of Augustus. He did not think for himself, and
• 24:58
  Speaker 1: he genuinely believed that she taught him that outside their
• 25:02
  Speaker 1: farm lay a world full of sin, that all women,
• 25:06
  Speaker 1: asigned from Augusta, of course, were degraded creatures, and that
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: he must remain pure and obedient at all costs. Yet
• 25:13
  Speaker 1: behind Ed's compliance, dark urges and confusion were bubbling because
• 25:19
  Speaker 1: he was a teenager experiencing natural curiosities, but every impulse
• 25:24
  Speaker 1: was met with shame and repression. So this inner turmoil
• 25:28
  Speaker 1: went unnoticed and unaddressed, and to the townsfolk of Plainfield,
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Ed was mostly invisible during these years, no one could
• 25:36
  Speaker 1: have imagined that this boy so seemingly timid and insignificant
• 25:40
  Speaker 1: would later unleash horrors that defied imagination. All right, we
• 25:44
  Speaker 1: need to take a quick minute to tell you about
• 25:46
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• 25:49
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• 25:52
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• 25:57
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• 25:59
  Speaker 1: I am a blanket person. I've got that whole cozy
• 26:03
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• 26:06
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• 26:07
  Speaker 3: But this Lola blanket, It's on a whole other level.
• 26:12
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• 26:14
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• 26:23
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• 26:27
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• 26:30
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• 26:33
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• 26:35
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• 26:38
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• 26:45
  Speaker 3: And even when you wash it, it stays really nice
• 26:48
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• 26:48
  Speaker 1: I've washed this one probably ten or fifteen times already,
• 26:53
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• 26:55
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• 26:56
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• 27:02
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• 27:05
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• 27:14
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• 27:16
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• 27:19
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• 27:49
  Speaker 1: So as Edging grew into his late teens and twenties
• 27:52
  Speaker 1: the nineteen twenties and nineteen thirties, his world remained in
• 27:55
  Speaker 1: the cramped confines of the family farm and the grip
• 27:58
  Speaker 1: of his mother, of course, and its father. George Geen
• 28:01
  Speaker 1: deteriorated significantly during this period because years of alcohols caught
• 28:07
  Speaker 1: up to him, so he became weak and frequently ill,
• 28:10
  Speaker 1: and unable to contribute much to the farm, and by
• 28:13
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen thirties, George was essentially a helpless invalid,
• 28:17
  Speaker 1: entirely dependent on the family members whom he had alienated
• 28:21
  Speaker 1: with his drinking endements, and Augusta and the boys feared
• 28:24
  Speaker 1: and despised George, considering him a living embodiment of failure,
• 28:29
  Speaker 1: and he spent his days mostly in a stupor, offering
• 28:32
  Speaker 1: occasional slurred complaints.
• 28:34
  Speaker 3: But little else.
• 28:35
  Speaker 1: And in April nineteen forty, George Geen finally died officially
• 28:40
  Speaker 1: of heart failure, likely made worse by his alcoholism, at.
• 28:44
  Speaker 3: The age of sixty six.
• 28:46
  Speaker 1: And Augusta, ever unforgiving, reportedly remarked that her husband's death
• 28:51
  Speaker 1: was a result of his own weakness and that he
• 28:54
  Speaker 1: was now reaping divine punishment. I'm sure they had just
• 28:57
  Speaker 1: a wonderful marriage together. Guy was probably just hoping for death.
• 29:01
  Speaker 1: Not that he was a good guy. He was also evil,
• 29:03
  Speaker 1: but you know, just just a whole shit situation. And naturally,
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: Augusta expressed zero grief during this time because now with
• 29:12
  Speaker 1: George Gonne, the green household consisted of just Augusta and
• 29:16
  Speaker 1: her two adult sons, Henry, now nearing forty years old,
• 29:20
  Speaker 1: and Ed, who was in his mid thirties, And the
• 29:23
  Speaker 1: dynamic began to shift in subtle ways, and the brothers,
• 29:26
  Speaker 1: particularly Henry, assumed the responsibilities of keeping the farm and
• 29:30
  Speaker 1: finances afloat. So both men would take on odd jobs
• 29:33
  Speaker 1: around Plainfield to supplement their meager farm income, and they
• 29:37
  Speaker 1: did handyman work for neighbors, repairing roofs, doing carpentry manual labor,
• 29:42
  Speaker 1: and Ed in particular found his own niche, which was
• 29:45
  Speaker 1: babysitting children. Ah, I don't know about that, but Ed
• 29:50
  Speaker 1: would relate easier to children than to adults, and perhaps
• 29:54
  Speaker 1: because his own emotional development was stunted, and he felt
• 29:57
  Speaker 1: less judged by kids. The neighbors considered Ed and Henry
• 30:02
  Speaker 1: trustworthy and honest workers, and out in the community, the
• 30:05
  Speaker 1: Green Brothers gave little cause for any sort of alarm.
• 30:08
  Speaker 1: They were dependable if you needed help, and Ed's quiet
• 30:11
  Speaker 1: demeanor led many to view him as harmless. He was
• 30:14
  Speaker 1: just the shy bachelor who could fix your fence or
• 30:17
  Speaker 1: watch your children, known to be polite and somewhat childlike himself.
• 30:21
  Speaker 1: Behind closed doors, however, significant tensions were brewing between the
• 30:26
  Speaker 1: Green Brothers and their formidable mother because Henry had never
• 30:30
  Speaker 1: been as holy under Augusta's spell as Ed was, and
• 30:34
  Speaker 1: as he entered middle age, Henry began to challenge Augusta's
• 30:37
  Speaker 1: authority in ways Ed would never dare. And Henry started
• 30:41
  Speaker 1: dating a local woman, a divorced single mother of two,
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: and expressed plans.
• 30:46
  Speaker 3: Of moving in with her.
• 30:47
  Speaker 1: I'm scared because this was an open act of defiance
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: against Augusta's wishes, as she would have seen a divorced
• 30:55
  Speaker 1: woman as a living sin, as if she didn't already
• 30:58
  Speaker 1: see women in general as just deplorable creatures. And what's
• 31:03
  Speaker 1: more is Henry had the audacity to criticize Augusta in
• 31:07
  Speaker 1: front of Ed, and he told Ed that their mother
• 31:11
  Speaker 1: was overbearing, in that Ed's attachment to her was unhealthy.
• 31:15
  Speaker 1: Henry's just saying, oh, we're all thinking, isn't he? In
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: These comments shocked and hurt Ed deeply, and he reacted
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: as if Henry was uttering blasphemy because to Ed, as
• 31:25
  Speaker 1: we know, Augusta could do no wrong, and hearing his
• 31:28
  Speaker 1: brother speak ill of their sainted mother was nearly unthinkable.
• 31:32
  Speaker 1: So the relationship between the brothers started to fray, and
• 31:36
  Speaker 1: Henry's independence streak just started to grow, while Ed remained
• 31:40
  Speaker 1: ever the dutiful son, and by the early nineteen forties,
• 31:44
  Speaker 1: Henry's private attitude toward his mother was reportedly one of
• 31:47
  Speaker 1: growing resentment, and he saw Augusta as a toxic influence,
• 31:52
  Speaker 1: and he worried aloud about what would become of Ed
• 31:56
  Speaker 1: when something would happen to their mother. And Henry allegedly
• 31:59
  Speaker 1: confided to friends that he was concerned for Ed's mental state,
• 32:03
  Speaker 1: given how obsessed Ed was with Augusta, And this concern
• 32:06
  Speaker 1: turned out to be a tragic foresight, because on May sixteenth,
• 32:12
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty four, a mysterious incident occurred that would later
• 32:16
  Speaker 1: raise many eyebrows. Because the brothers would be burning brush
• 32:20
  Speaker 1: on their property, a routine task of clearing marsh vegetation.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: The fire would blaze out of control and drew the
• 32:27
  Speaker 1: attention of the Plainfield Volunteer Fire Department, and after firefighters
• 32:31
  Speaker 1: doused the flames, Henry was nowhere to be found, and
• 32:35
  Speaker 1: Ed claimed that he had lost sight of Henry in
• 32:37
  Speaker 1: the confusion, and a search party went out that night
• 32:40
  Speaker 1: and found Henry's dead body lying face down, and Henry
• 32:45
  Speaker 1: was forty three years old at the time. At at first glance,
• 32:48
  Speaker 1: it appeared he might have succumbed to heart failure while
• 32:50
  Speaker 1: fighting the fire, as there was no significant burns on
• 32:53
  Speaker 1: his body, and the local coroner listed exphyxiation from smoke
• 32:58
  Speaker 1: as the cause of death. Authorities accepted it as just
• 33:01
  Speaker 1: a tragic death. However, some details didn't add up, because,
• 33:06
  Speaker 1: according to one biographer, Henry's corpse had bruises on the
• 33:10
  Speaker 1: head that suggested he may have been struck. No autopsy
• 33:14
  Speaker 1: was performed, and given Ed's reputation as a simple, good
• 33:18
  Speaker 1: natured soul, police didn't investigate further and it wasn't until
• 33:21
  Speaker 1: years later, after Ed's crimes came to light, that people
• 33:25
  Speaker 1: looked back and wondered, did Ed Gene kill his own brother?
• 33:29
  Speaker 1: Was this mysterious fire the cover for a revenge born
• 33:34
  Speaker 1: out of Ed's devotion to Augusta and fury at Henry's descent,
• 33:38
  Speaker 1: And one criminologist later called it the Cain and Abel
• 33:43
  Speaker 1: aspect of the case. Got to go back to the
• 33:45
  Speaker 1: Old Testament to read that one, folks. But for those
• 33:48
  Speaker 1: of you who don't know, it implied that Ed removed
• 33:50
  Speaker 1: Henry to have their mother all to himself. And while
• 33:56
  Speaker 1: we'll never know for sure, the circumstances remained suspicious, to
• 34:00
  Speaker 1: say the least. At the very least, Henry's death conveniently
• 34:04
  Speaker 1: silenced the only person who openly challenged Augusta's dominance. So
• 34:09
  Speaker 1: if Henry now gone, Ed Gene was now alone with Augusta,
• 34:13
  Speaker 1: and he was in his late thirties, yet in many
• 34:16
  Speaker 1: ways still a child under his mother's thumb, and the
• 34:19
  Speaker 1: traumatic events of nineteen forty four only intensified Ed's dependence.
• 34:23
  Speaker 1: And shortly after Henry's death, Augusta suffered a paralyzing stroke,
• 34:28
  Speaker 1: and the domineering matriarch was suddenly left very weak and
• 34:32
  Speaker 1: partially incapacitated, and Ed responded with unwavering dedication, and he
• 34:37
  Speaker 1: waited on his ailing mother, hand and foot, and all
• 34:41
  Speaker 1: the resentment he might have harbored over her harsh treatment
• 34:44
  Speaker 1: was buried under an almost pathetic devotion. He rarely left
• 34:49
  Speaker 1: her side. Into the outside eyes, he appeared to be
• 34:52
  Speaker 1: the ideal dutiful son, sacrificing his own life to care
• 34:56
  Speaker 1: for his invalid mother, and for a brief period it
• 34:59
  Speaker 1: seemed Augusta appreciated Ed's loyalty.
• 35:02
  Speaker 3: But Augusta was.
• 35:03
  Speaker 1: Not one to soften easily, as we know. In an
• 35:07
  Speaker 1: incident late in nineteen forty five, illustrated that her fiery
• 35:10
  Speaker 1: judgment remained intact, and Ed recounted that he had driven Augusta,
• 35:15
  Speaker 1: still frail from her stroke, to visit a neighbor, a
• 35:18
  Speaker 1: man named Smith, to buy some straw, and while they
• 35:22
  Speaker 1: were there, Smith brutally dogged to death in front of
• 35:25
  Speaker 1: Augusta and Ed. So Augusta witnessed this horrifying act, but
• 35:29
  Speaker 1: what upset her far more was something else, and that
• 35:32
  Speaker 1: was a woman came out of Smith's house during the commotion,
• 35:37
  Speaker 1: and Augusta realized this woman was Smith's girlfriend, so they
• 35:40
  Speaker 1: were living together unmarried, and this meant this was Smith's harlot,
• 35:46
  Speaker 1: as Augusta would spit out, and she was livid, not
• 35:50
  Speaker 1: about the horrific animal cruelty, but about the immorality of
• 35:55
  Speaker 1: an unwed woman being present in a man's home. And
• 35:59
  Speaker 1: she had a second stroke soon afterwards. So her health
• 36:03
  Speaker 1: went into rapid decline after that, as if her body
• 36:06
  Speaker 1: could no longer sustain the fury and righteousness burning inside her.
• 36:11
  Speaker 1: And on December twenty ninth, nineteen forty five, Augusta Wilhelminenghein
• 36:17
  Speaker 1: died at the age of sixty seven, and for Ed,
• 36:20
  Speaker 1: the lost was cataclysmic. He was absolutely devastated, and in
• 36:26
  Speaker 1: the words of biographer Harold Schutzker, Ed had quote lost
• 36:31
  Speaker 1: his only friend and one true love, and he was absolutely.
• 36:36
  Speaker 2: Alone in the world unquote.
• 36:38
  Speaker 1: Now this dramatic phrasing isn't in exaggeration, as we know,
• 36:42
  Speaker 1: because Augusta had indeed been everything to Ed. She was
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: his mother, his mentor, his commander, and the object of
• 36:50
  Speaker 1: his twisted adoration, and Ed's entire universe revolves around pleasing her.
• 36:56
  Speaker 1: And now suddenly she was gone, very real sense the
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: now almost forty year old Ed was now an orphan.
• 37:05
  Speaker 1: Because he was he was severely stunted emotionally, and worse,
• 37:09
  Speaker 1: an orphan who had never been allowed a life outside
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: of his mother's shadow. The aftermath of Augusta's death would
• 37:16
  Speaker 1: mark the end of Ed's remaining tether to normalcy. Because
• 37:20
  Speaker 1: he had no siblings left, no friends, no spouse or lover,
• 37:25
  Speaker 1: no father, and no mother. He had nothing. The last
• 37:29
  Speaker 1: human being he truly loved in his own warped way,
• 37:34
  Speaker 1: was buried in Plainfield Cemetery, leaving edgean utterly alone on
• 37:38
  Speaker 1: that isolated farm. And this moment at the end of
• 37:41
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty five was the turning point, and the descent
• 37:45
  Speaker 1: into utter madness was about to begin. And all the
• 37:49
  Speaker 1: evil seeds that had been planted in Ed's psyche over decades,
• 37:53
  Speaker 1: the repression, the violent fantasies, the unhealthy obsession with his mother,
• 37:58
  Speaker 1: now had free reign to grow in horrific ways. So
• 38:02
  Speaker 1: after Augusta Gean's death, Ed Gaines's life slipped into eerie
• 38:06
  Speaker 1: solitude and derangement, and he remained on the family's one
• 38:10
  Speaker 1: hundred and fifty five acre Plainfield farm, but it was
• 38:13
  Speaker 1: now a tomb of memories rather than any sort of home,
• 38:17
  Speaker 1: and in an act of preservation, Ed boarded up every
• 38:20
  Speaker 1: area of the farmhouse that his mother had used, including
• 38:25
  Speaker 1: the entire upstairs, the parlor, and the living room, sealing
• 38:30
  Speaker 1: them off like a really weird shrine. And he left
• 38:34
  Speaker 1: these rooms completely untouched, frozen in time, with her furnishings
• 38:40
  Speaker 1: gathering dust, and they stayed spotlessly preserved behind those closed doors,
• 38:45
  Speaker 1: while the rest of the house just fell into squalor,
• 38:48
  Speaker 1: and Ed himself moved into a small bedroom adjacent to
• 38:51
  Speaker 1: the kitchen and basically lived in chaos amidst filth and junk,
• 38:56
  Speaker 1: never cleaning or caring for the house beyond his mother's
• 38:59
  Speaker 1: sacreds bases, and to support himself, Ed did occasional odd jobs,
• 39:04
  Speaker 1: just as before. In beginning in nineteen fifty one, he
• 39:07
  Speaker 1: even received a small government farm subsidy as part of
• 39:10
  Speaker 1: a soil conservation program, and that money helped him get
• 39:13
  Speaker 1: by without having to farm much, but he continued working
• 39:17
  Speaker 1: as a handyman for neighbors and on road crews when needed,
• 39:21
  Speaker 1: and he also sold an eighty acre parcel of land
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: that Henry had owned somewhere between nineteen forty six and
• 39:26
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty six. So outwardly, Ed's routine might have seemed
• 39:31
  Speaker 1: somewhat normal for a reclusive bachelor, but internally something had broken,
• 39:37
  Speaker 1: and with no Augusta to supervise or restrain him, Ed's
• 39:41
  Speaker 1: mind wandered down dark and unthinkable paths. And this is
• 39:45
  Speaker 1: when he became an avid consumer of pulp magazines and
• 39:49
  Speaker 1: cheap adventure books, even more so than he was as
• 39:52
  Speaker 1: a teen. And it wasn't the same content, because this
• 39:56
  Speaker 1: wasn't the innocent kind, because Ed primarily fixated on stories
• 40:00
  Speaker 1: that fed his gruesome curiosities, and he particularly loved details
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: of cannibalism, headhunters, and the German bad guy atrocities. I
• 40:13
  Speaker 1: don't know if I can say that word without YouTube
• 40:15
  Speaker 1: getting freaked out, but you know I'm talking about, okay.
• 40:18
  Speaker 1: And one of his known interest was the case of
• 40:21
  Speaker 1: Ilza Koch, the wife of a German bad guy concentration
• 40:27
  Speaker 1: camp commandment who was infamously accused of making lampshades from
• 40:32
  Speaker 1: prisoner's tattooed skin, who it's so scary, nasty, and Ed
• 40:40
  Speaker 1: read every detail of such accounts with fascination, and it's
• 40:45
  Speaker 1: haunting to note that some of Koch's alleged practices using
• 40:49
  Speaker 1: human skin for household items mirror what Ed himself would
• 40:53
  Speaker 1: do later, and he also poured over anatomy texts, and
• 40:59
  Speaker 1: at some point in the late nineteen forties, Ed gain
• 41:02
  Speaker 1: crossed a boundary that few could even fathom, and he
• 41:06
  Speaker 1: would begin robbing graves.
• 41:08
  Speaker 3: So as Ed's grotesque.
• 41:10
  Speaker 1: Activities escalated, so did the evident pathology behind them, and
• 41:15
  Speaker 1: Game later revealed an astonishing motive to investigators. He was
• 41:20
  Speaker 1: literally trying to create a quote woman's suit unquote from
• 41:25
  Speaker 1: human skin so that he could become his mother, to
• 41:29
  Speaker 1: literally crawl into her skin unquote. It's as chilling as
• 41:34
  Speaker 1: it sounds, because Ed missed Augusta so terribly and was
• 41:39
  Speaker 1: so psychologically warped that he believed he could bring some
• 41:43
  Speaker 1: aspect of her by wearing the remains of women who
• 41:47
  Speaker 1: reminded him of her, just the ultimate messed up final
• 41:52
  Speaker 1: bossed Mommy's boy. It was like a perverse form of
• 41:56
  Speaker 1: idle worship and identity theft combined. So he would stitch
• 42:01
  Speaker 1: together skin from female corpses that were already deceased because
• 42:06
  Speaker 1: he was grave robbing. He did not kill these people yet,
• 42:10
  Speaker 1: but he would stitch them together to fashion a copy
• 42:13
  Speaker 1: of a female body, including a vest like torso or
• 42:19
  Speaker 1: a corset of skin from shoulders to waist, and leggings
• 42:24
  Speaker 1: made of human leg skin and masks peeled from their faces.
• 42:29
  Speaker 1: And when he donned these horrific costumes in the privacy
• 42:33
  Speaker 1: of his home, Ed could pretend Augusta was still with him.
• 42:37
  Speaker 1: My skin is I want to I want to crawl
• 42:41
  Speaker 1: inside myself right now.
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: It's horrific to think about.
• 42:44
  Speaker 1: And this behavior goes beyond any ordinary mental illness. It
• 42:49
  Speaker 1: was uniquely deranged, and during this descent Ed also kept
• 42:54
  Speaker 1: trophies and tokens, and many of these gruesome items would
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: later be found in Ed's home, shocking the entire world.
• 43:02
  Speaker 1: But in the late nineteen forties and early nineteen fifties,
• 43:05
  Speaker 1: no one knew this lonely old Gaen place was essentially
• 43:09
  Speaker 1: a twisted morgue, and there were a few red flags
• 43:13
  Speaker 1: noticed by locals, but they were either dismissed or seen
• 43:15
  Speaker 1: as eccentricities. I guess one sixteen year old kid who
• 43:21
  Speaker 1: knew Ed, which was the son of one of the
• 43:23
  Speaker 1: family friends, recalled that Ed showed him some shrunken heads.
• 43:28
  Speaker 1: He kept at the farm, claiming they were war relics
• 43:31
  Speaker 1: sent by a cousin who served in the Pacific, but
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: in reality they were the peeled faces of women Ed
• 43:38
  Speaker 1: had exhumed, carefully treated to look like macob collections.
• 43:42
  Speaker 3: Oh my god.
• 43:43
  Speaker 1: And when this eventually came to light, the entire community
• 43:47
  Speaker 1: realized that Ed had been parading his grizzly souvenirs in
• 43:50
  Speaker 1: plain sight, but no one had believed it was anything real.
• 43:54
  Speaker 1: Of course, you don't assume your next door neighbor is
• 43:57
  Speaker 1: digging up five year dead soon, and so on her
• 44:01
  Speaker 1: into a lampshade. So by the early nineteen fifties, it
• 44:04
  Speaker 1: seems Ed's morbid obsessions were no longer satisfied by stolen
• 44:09
  Speaker 1: corpses alone. Perhaps the bodies from graves, decayed and lifeless,
• 44:13
  Speaker 1: were not enough to fulfill his ultimate fantasy, and he
• 44:17
  Speaker 1: started craving pressure corpses one that he didn't have to
• 44:22
  Speaker 1: dig up.
• 44:23
  Speaker 3: So ed Gean was.
• 44:25
  Speaker 1: On the path to murder, all while outwardly he still
• 44:28
  Speaker 1: appeared as that quiet, somewhat weird handyman living on the
• 44:32
  Speaker 1: old Geen farm. So ed Geen is officially recognized as
• 44:36
  Speaker 1: the killer of two women and those are the crimes
• 44:40
  Speaker 1: that finally exposed his full monstrosity. So Mary Hogan was
• 44:44
  Speaker 1: a divorcee in her early fifties who ran a tavern
• 44:48
  Speaker 1: in a nearby community in Bancroft to just a few
• 44:51
  Speaker 1: miles from Plainfield. And curiously, Mary bore a physical resemblance
• 44:55
  Speaker 1: to Augusta that drew Ed's attention. And on a cold
• 44:59
  Speaker 1: winter afternoon noon of December eighth, nineteen fifty four, Mary
• 45:03
  Speaker 1: Hogan vanished from her tavern, and details of her disappearance
• 45:07
  Speaker 1: are scarce, and it was as if Mary had been
• 45:10
  Speaker 1: there one minute and just gone the next. But in reality,
• 45:14
  Speaker 1: Ed Geen had shot Mary Hogan inside her own tavern,
• 45:19
  Speaker 1: and with uncanny strength or sheer determination, he hauled her
• 45:23
  Speaker 1: corp onto a sledge and dragged her body back to
• 45:26
  Speaker 1: his farm. And back at the farm, this is where
• 45:29
  Speaker 1: he would disassemble Mary and hide her different parts. And
• 45:35
  Speaker 1: when Ed's crimes were finally uncovered in nineteen fifty seven,
• 45:39
  Speaker 1: authorities found Mary Hogan's face made into a mask of
• 45:44
  Speaker 1: sorts that was just stashed away in a paper bag
• 45:48
  Speaker 1: inside of Edgean's home, as well as her skull in
• 45:52
  Speaker 1: a box in Gean's house as well, and Ed eventually
• 45:55
  Speaker 1: admitted to killing Mary Hogan, though he later said he
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: couldn't worok the details of the murder itself, So it's
• 46:02
  Speaker 1: possible that in Ed's fractured mind, he went into an
• 46:06
  Speaker 1: almost disassociated state during the act of murder, much as
• 46:10
  Speaker 1: he described being in a daze during grave robbing. But
• 46:14
  Speaker 1: whatever the case, mary Hogan's demise was Ed's alleged first
• 46:18
  Speaker 1: step from secret grave robber to active killer if he
• 46:22
  Speaker 1: didn't kill his brother, which I wouldn't put it past him.
• 46:26
  Speaker 1: Yet at the time, no one connected the mild manner
• 46:29
  Speaker 1: ed Gean to the tavern lady's disappearance, and Mary Hogan
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: became a cold case, and Ed continued about his business
• 46:36
  Speaker 1: for a few more years. And then there was missus
• 46:39
  Speaker 1: Bernice Warden, who was fifty eight and was the owner
• 46:43
  Speaker 1: of Warden's Hardware Store, and it was the main hardware
• 46:46
  Speaker 1: store in Plainfield, and she was a familiar figure in
• 46:49
  Speaker 1: the community. And on the opening day of deer hunting
• 46:51
  Speaker 1: season November sixteenth, nineteen fifty seven, Plainfield was quiet as
• 46:55
  Speaker 1: many men were in the woods hunting, and Bernice opened
• 46:59
  Speaker 1: her shop as you that morning and at around nine
• 47:02
  Speaker 1: thirty am, a witness saw the store's pickup truck driving
• 47:05
  Speaker 1: away from the rear of the building, but thought little
• 47:08
  Speaker 1: of it at the time, and the hardware store then
• 47:11
  Speaker 1: remained oddly empty the whole day, and it wasn't until
• 47:14
  Speaker 1: five pm that Bernice's son, Deputy Frank Warden, checked on
• 47:19
  Speaker 1: the store and he found a disturbing scene inside. The
• 47:22
  Speaker 1: cash register was open and bloodstains splattered the floor, and
• 47:26
  Speaker 1: Bernice was nowhere to be found, and Frank immediately suspected
• 47:30
  Speaker 1: foul play, and as a lawman, he started piece and
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: clues together on the spot, and he recalled that the
• 47:35
  Speaker 1: previous evening, Ed had been in the store and said
• 47:38
  Speaker 1: he'd be back the next morning to buy anti freeze,
• 47:41
  Speaker 1: And sure enough, the last sales receipt written by Bernice
• 47:45
  Speaker 1: that day was for a gallon of antifreeze, timestamped the
• 47:49
  Speaker 1: morning of her disappearance. Ed wasn't the smartest fella, as
• 47:53
  Speaker 1: we're seeing, so Ed, the quiet handyman who occasionally came by,
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: was suddenly the prime and only suspect in Bernice Warden's
• 48:02
  Speaker 1: apparent abduction, and that evening officers from Mushara County Sheriff's
• 48:06
  Speaker 1: department went out to look for Ed and Bernice, and
• 48:09
  Speaker 1: they ultimately found ed and arrested him, and some accounts
• 48:13
  Speaker 1: mentioned at a West Plainfield grocery store, and others mentioned
• 48:17
  Speaker 1: he was found at a neighbor's place, but we don't
• 48:19
  Speaker 1: know for sure. And then police would proceed to the
• 48:22
  Speaker 1: Gaen property, uncertain of what they would find, and it
• 48:26
  Speaker 1: was dark as the officers cautiously entered Ed's yard and outbuildings,
• 48:31
  Speaker 1: and Deputy Sheriff's Slee and others had to light their
• 48:34
  Speaker 1: way to cut through the gloom, and what they discovered
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: would forever scar them because in the shed they caught
• 48:41
  Speaker 1: a ghastly sight and it would be the body of Bernice.
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: And at the point that they found her, her head
• 48:49
  Speaker 1: had been removed and she was hanging upside down from
• 48:52
  Speaker 1: a wooden crossbar at her am essentially hung like a
• 48:56
  Speaker 1: slop deer, and her body would also be dressed out
• 49:01
  Speaker 1: like a game animal. A Bernice's cause of death would
• 49:05
  Speaker 1: be a shot with a twenty two caliber rifle. So
• 49:08
  Speaker 1: trembling but determined, the police pressed on into ed Geane's
• 49:12
  Speaker 1: House of horrors, and inside that filthy, evil farmhouse revealed
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: a scene beyond any nightmare. The search team found evidence
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: of human remains literally everywhere. It was a chamber of grotesqueries,
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: a hellish workshop littered with the fruits of Ed's macabre hobby,
• 49:35
  Speaker 1: and among the stomach churning discoveries documented by crime lab
• 49:40
  Speaker 1: technicians were human bones, countless whole bones and fragments strewn
• 49:46
  Speaker 1: about skulls. Some were affixed to Ed's bedposts like bizarre ornaments,
• 49:52
  Speaker 1: and others had their tops cut off and were.
• 49:56
  Speaker 3: Being used as soup bowls. And there were a.
• 50:00
  Speaker 1: A crazy amount of items in the home just made
• 50:03
  Speaker 1: of human skin, including waste baskets, chair seats, clothing and masks,
• 50:12
  Speaker 1: and organs and other body parts, including noses, were found
• 50:17
  Speaker 1: in paper bags, lips and other body parts had been
• 50:21
  Speaker 1: fashioned into other things you'd use in your house, like
• 50:26
  Speaker 1: a pull for a window shade. And they would find
• 50:30
  Speaker 1: Bernice's head inside the home inside of a burlap sack,
• 50:34
  Speaker 1: and her heart would be found in a plastic bag
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: right next to the stove, and it's often said Ed
• 50:40
  Speaker 1: was intending to cook or eat it, though Ed denied cannibalism,
• 50:45
  Speaker 1: even though he was extremely fascinated with cannibalism. As we know,
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: but the list is quite literally endless. And if this
• 50:53
  Speaker 1: video is probably already on the hit list for YouTube,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: but you have to look at it your I cannot
• 51:01
  Speaker 1: say these things on the internet because the sheer volume
• 51:04
  Speaker 1: of human material in that house was staggering and photos
• 51:08
  Speaker 1: were taken of everything as evidence, and then the remains
• 51:12
  Speaker 1: were decently disposed of according to officials, meaning they were
• 51:16
  Speaker 1: eventually given proper burials or incinerated to put those poor,
• 51:20
  Speaker 1: unfortunate souls to rest. So in custody, ed Geen proved
• 51:26
  Speaker 1: to be compliant and even a helpful prisoner, and once
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: the shock of his capture subsided, Gean confessed in detail
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: to how he had been obtaining most of those body parts,
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: and he calmly explained his grave robbing exploits to investigators
• 51:42
  Speaker 1: as if discussing just a normal hobby. And according to Geen,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: between nineteen forty seven and nineteen fifty two, he made
• 51:50
  Speaker 1: around forty nocturnal visits to local cemeteries in Plainfield and
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: nearby towns, and he preferred times when there was a
• 51:58
  Speaker 1: recent burial of women in middle age and those were
• 52:03
  Speaker 1: the obituaries he watched for and ed stated that on
• 52:06
  Speaker 1: many of those trips he was in a hazy, trance
• 52:09
  Speaker 1: like state, and in about thirty of those instances he
• 52:12
  Speaker 1: would wake up from the days while standing in the
• 52:15
  Speaker 1: cemetery and then head home empty handed, leaving the graves
• 52:19
  Speaker 1: in proper condition. However, in those times he didn't wake up,
• 52:24
  Speaker 1: he did carry out the act of digging up a coffin,
• 52:27
  Speaker 1: opening it and stealing the remains, and he was selective,
• 52:31
  Speaker 1: often taking only certain parts that he needed. Usually he
• 52:35
  Speaker 1: only took the head in some other parts of the body.
• 52:38
  Speaker 1: Time Magazine summarized from his confession only once an entire female.
• 52:43
  Speaker 2: Corpse, Oh my God.
• 52:45
  Speaker 1: And Gean's recollections were so specific that he was able
• 52:50
  Speaker 1: to point authorities to the exact graves he had violated,
• 52:54
  Speaker 1: and in total, Gan confessed to rating nine graves and
• 52:57
  Speaker 1: using the part from those dead corpses. Given the degraded
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: conditions of some remains, it's possible he disturbed even more
• 53:08
  Speaker 1: graves than he recalled, but nine were confirmed to investigator's satisfaction,
• 53:13
  Speaker 1: and Ed's grave ropping methodology revealed just how calculated yet
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: deranged his actions were. Because he often struck shortly after
• 53:22
  Speaker 1: the funeral, when the grave had not yet been finished,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: and Plainsfield's sandy soil made digging a lot easier, and
• 53:30
  Speaker 1: Ed had the cover of night and the isolation of
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: the cemetery to hide his crimes. And as for motive,
• 53:36
  Speaker 1: Geen told police exactly what we've covered. He was in
• 53:40
  Speaker 1: a daze longing for his mother and felt compelled to
• 53:43
  Speaker 1: go to the graveyard and dig, and he admitted that
• 53:47
  Speaker 1: after his mother's death he began fashioning his woman suit
• 53:51
  Speaker 1: to try to become her and have her close to
• 53:55
  Speaker 1: him again, just saying it like it's just no big deal,
• 53:58
  Speaker 1: like it's a actual Tuesday activity everyone does. And in
• 54:03
  Speaker 1: a way, these grave thefts were Ed's twisted form of
• 54:07
  Speaker 1: grief therapy, but obviously inexcusable, but in his mind, he
• 54:12
  Speaker 1: was using the dead to fill the void Augusta left,
• 54:15
  Speaker 1: and in the end, law enforcement concluded that Ed's capacity
• 54:18
  Speaker 1: for violence was likely focused specifically on women who resembled
• 54:23
  Speaker 1: his mother and were of his peculiar interest, and psychiatrists
• 54:28
  Speaker 1: later concurred that Geen's pathology was not that of a
• 54:31
  Speaker 1: typical serial killer driven to kill indiscriminately. Rather, he had
• 54:35
  Speaker 1: a very specific and bizarre drive stemming from his mother fixation.
• 54:40
  Speaker 1: So while Geen is often called a serial killer in
• 54:45
  Speaker 1: pop culture, technically his confirmed murders stopped at two to
• 54:51
  Speaker 1: Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden, and the rest of his
• 54:54
  Speaker 1: victims were already deceased, stolen from graves, not killed by
• 54:59
  Speaker 1: his own hand. Although I'm still convinced to kill his brother,
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: so I would make him a serial killer, but we
• 55:05
  Speaker 1: don't know that for sure.
• 55:06
  Speaker 2: So that's allegedly.
• 55:08
  Speaker 1: But families had to grapple with this devastating knowledge that
• 55:12
  Speaker 1: their loved one's body had been mutilated by Geen after burial,
• 55:17
  Speaker 1: I can't even imagine.
• 55:18
  Speaker 2: Just knowing that a family member has been stolen and.
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: Then crafted into household I owe, my, it's just so
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: it's like it's this is a long time ago, but
• 55:31
  Speaker 1: my god, it is horrific to think about. It was
• 55:36
  Speaker 1: just a final insult that horrified the community. And throughout
• 55:41
  Speaker 1: all these revelations, ed Green sat in custody with a
• 55:44
  Speaker 1: sort of mild detachment, and those who interacted with him
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: were struck by how calm he remained even as he
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: described the monstrous acts that he committed, and when asked
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: why he hadn't engaged in any sort of romantic acts
• 56:00
  Speaker 1: with the bodies. Geen gave a straightforward answer, and he
• 56:05
  Speaker 1: said they smelled too bad. Okay, it was just as
• 56:10
  Speaker 1: if he truly lacked any conventional understanding of morality or
• 56:14
  Speaker 1: the enormity of his crimes. He was more concerned with
• 56:18
  Speaker 1: practical matters like odor and an Ed's distorted mind. Wearing
• 56:23
  Speaker 1: a human skin suit and eating from skull bones were
• 56:28
  Speaker 1: part of his private, totally normal world, and he showed
• 56:32
  Speaker 1: almost no comprehension of why others were so appalled. And
• 56:36
  Speaker 1: with ed Gean's confession and the evidence from his farm,
• 56:40
  Speaker 1: the case was largely solved and what remained was to
• 56:43
  Speaker 1: see how the justice system would handle someone who had
• 56:47
  Speaker 1: committed deeds so beyond the pale, and the legal proceedings
• 56:51
  Speaker 1: would determine whether ed Geen was sane and accountable for
• 56:54
  Speaker 1: his actions, and what to do with the butcher of
• 56:57
  Speaker 1: Plainfield now that he was off the streets. So when
• 57:01
  Speaker 1: Sheriff Artsklee and other officers entered the Green farm that night,
• 57:06
  Speaker 1: they stumbled into one of the most horrific crime scenes
• 57:09
  Speaker 1: in American history as we know. And these were seasoned
• 57:12
  Speaker 1: small town cops and volunteer deputies, but nothing could have
• 57:17
  Speaker 1: prepared them for what they found in that dark farmhouse,
• 57:20
  Speaker 1: particularly the discovery of Bernice Warden's deceased body. So with
• 57:24
  Speaker 1: heavy hearts and just growing dreg the team moved through
• 57:28
  Speaker 1: the cluttered house and systemically uncovered Ed's ghastly collection. So
• 57:33
  Speaker 1: news of the House of Horrors spread rapidly and the
• 57:37
  Speaker 1: investigation expanded with assistance from state agents and crime lab personnel,
• 57:42
  Speaker 1: and every item in Gan's house was photographed and cataloged
• 57:45
  Speaker 1: as evidence, and forensic pathologists and investigators worked to identify
• 57:50
  Speaker 1: the origin of several of the body parts, and they
• 57:53
  Speaker 1: matched some to known graveyard vacancies and others to Marry
• 57:57
  Speaker 1: Hogan and Bernice Warden. As we know, but it was
• 58:00
  Speaker 1: a massive undertaking that turned the Green Farm into a
• 58:04
  Speaker 1: forensic excavation site and household tools were gathered and tested
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: and over the following days, as Ed's confessions came in,
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: local authorities had to quietly exoom several graves to verify
• 58:16
  Speaker 1: Ed's claims, and they did this under the radar to
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: avoid a media circus at the cemeteries, and the results
• 58:23
  Speaker 1: corroborated Ed's stories, and during those initial interrogations, Ed proved
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: unusually forthcoming, as we know, perhaps feeling relieved that his
• 58:33
  Speaker 1: secret life was finally out in the open, and he
• 58:36
  Speaker 1: spoke freely with investigators about the details of what he
• 58:39
  Speaker 1: had done. However, Sheriff Art Sklee, the man who led
• 58:43
  Speaker 1: the investigation, famously lost his temper at one point because
• 58:48
  Speaker 1: faced with this mild manner Ghoul calmly describing his monstrous acts,
• 58:53
  Speaker 1: Sklee snapped and he reportedly slammed Ed's head into a
• 58:57
  Speaker 1: brick wall during questioning out of rage and revulsion. Ah,
• 59:04
  Speaker 1: I kind of get it, Is it right? No? But
• 59:06
  Speaker 1: also he killed people, you know. And this resulted in
• 59:11
  Speaker 1: Gean's early statements being ruled inadmissible in court because they
• 59:15
  Speaker 1: were deemed coarse, and it also weighed heavily on Skelee's psyche,
• 59:20
  Speaker 1: and the sheriff was deeply traumatized by what he had
• 59:23
  Speaker 1: seen in that farmhouse. Of course, I can't even think.
• 59:27
  Speaker 1: You're just a small town cop and you just come
• 59:29
  Speaker 1: across this, this.
• 59:31
  Speaker 3: Like the pit of hell.
• 59:32
  Speaker 1: Basically, I don't know, it's just it's all really messed up.
• 59:36
  Speaker 1: And people who knew him said he was never the
• 59:39
  Speaker 1: same after encountering the Geen case and Tragically, Sklee died
• 59:43
  Speaker 1: of a heart attack in nineteen sixty eight at the
• 59:46
  Speaker 1: age of forty three, just before ed Geen's trial, so
• 59:50
  Speaker 1: I can only imagine that stress was a factor in that. Meanwhile,
• 59:56
  Speaker 1: as evidence was being collected, the case against ed Geen
• 59:59
  Speaker 1: for the murder Bernice Warden and the murder of Mary Hogan,
• 1:00:02
  Speaker 1: which he had confessed to, was solidifying, and the gruesome
• 1:00:06
  Speaker 1: physical evidence from his property was overwhelming, and of course
• 1:00:10
  Speaker 1: Ed's own admissions filled in the narrative of both murders,
• 1:00:13
  Speaker 1: and investigators also interrogated Gen about various unsolved cases of
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 1: missing persons in Wisconsin, fearing that perhaps his bloodlust extended
• 1:00:22
  Speaker 1: beyond Hogan and Warden, and they specifically asked about two cases,
• 1:00:27
  Speaker 1: Georgio Weckler, an eight year old girl who vanished in
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 1: nineteen forty seven, and Evelyn Hartly, a fourteen year old
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 1: babysitter who was abducted in nineteen fifty three, because both
• 1:00:37
  Speaker 1: cases had grabbed headlines and remained mysteries, and Geen was
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 1: cooperative during questioning and even took two lie detector tests
• 1:00:45
  Speaker 1: regarding these disappearances, and he denied any sort of involvement
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 1: in those or any other murders beyond Hogan and Warden,
• 1:00:53
  Speaker 1: and the polygraph results seemed to back him up, and
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 1: investigators found zero physical evidence linking Geen to those particular crimes,
• 1:01:00
  Speaker 1: which I mean, it makes sense that he's not connected
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 1: to those because he was clearly targeting women that reminded
• 1:01:06
  Speaker 1: him of his mother and every person that he desecrated.
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 1: There was evidence in the house, so I believe, without
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 1: a shadow of adult that he did not have anything
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 1: to do with those murders personally, it doesn't make sense
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 1: with his m o and obviously that's what authorities thought
• 1:01:25
  Speaker 1: as well. In the town of Plainfield was left in
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 1: a state of shock, fear, and dark fascination. Neighbors realized
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 1: with horror that the friendly man who had babysat their
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 1: children and allegedly brought them home venison meet and claimed
• 1:01:40
  Speaker 1: was from deer, though it was later suspected some of
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 1: that venison might not have been deer at all, which
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 1: is terrifying and disgusting, had been living amongst human organs
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 1: and just flesh, and many longtime residents refused to speak
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 1: of all the events at all, as if trying to
• 1:02:00
  Speaker 1: push the nightmare out of memory. And the notoriety of
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 1: ed Gean made Plainfield the reluctant focus of national attention.
• 1:02:07
  Speaker 1: In the local hardware store, the site of Warden's murder
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 1: suddenly became a true crime landmark, a sign of advertising
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 1: in anti freeze sale was ironically sitting out front when
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: curious tourists started coming by, just a stark reminder of
• 1:02:24
  Speaker 1: the innocuous errand that lured Bernice Warden to her death.
• 1:02:28
  Speaker 3: Just is so sad, sick.
• 1:02:32
  Speaker 1: I mean, like, these are people, these are people, and
• 1:02:35
  Speaker 1: they were just violated horribly. So like I understand, obviously
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 1: I have a true crime channel, but just to be
• 1:02:43
  Speaker 1: like excited about I don't.
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: Know it just it creeps me out. I don't understand that.
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 1: I never get used to telling these cases at all,
• 1:02:52
  Speaker 1: especially these kinds of cases, my lord. So as authorities
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 1: processed the genes, crime scene journalists were banging on the
• 1:02:59
  Speaker 1: door for any lurid detail they could publish. A December second,
• 1:03:03
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty seven, Life magazine ran a spread titled House
• 1:03:07
  Speaker 1: of Horror Stunts the Nation, complete with photographs of Geen's
• 1:03:11
  Speaker 1: creepy farmhouse and descriptions of the ghastly evidence and Americans
• 1:03:16
  Speaker 1: from coast to coast read about the mild mannered farmer
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 1: who had turned his home into a human slaughterhouse and
• 1:03:23
  Speaker 1: scavenge graveyards under the moonlight. In the name Ed Geen
• 1:03:27
  Speaker 1: became synonymous with a new level of depravity. And what
• 1:03:31
  Speaker 1: made it all the more chilling was that Ed was
• 1:03:34
  Speaker 1: not a gangland criminal or an urban maniac. He was
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 1: a seemingly ordinary small town neighbor. And the story just
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 1: tapped into a primal fear that unimaginable evil could be
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 1: lurking in the most mundane places. And the aftermath in
• 1:03:50
  Speaker 1: Plainfield was chaotic, and so many people came to town
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 1: that the authorities worried someone might torch Gean's house or
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 1: steal evidence. Gan's property. The house and one hundred and
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 1: ninety five acres of land was eventually boarded up and
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 1: set to be auctioned the next spring, and there were
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 1: even rumors that some entrepreneur might buy the house and
• 1:04:10
  Speaker 1: turn it into a museum or a tourist attraction, and
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 1: this idea appalled the townspeople rightfully so. In March of
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 1: nineteen fifty eight, just days before the auction, at Gean's
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 1: house mysteriously burned to the ground in an overnight fire,
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: and the fire marshals suspected arson, noting that a rubbish
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 1: fire had been started near the home by a cleanup
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 1: crew and that the flames somehow reached the house, but
• 1:04:36
  Speaker 1: nothing was proven. I genuinely think that's for the best,
• 1:04:40
  Speaker 1: to be honest, and many locals quietly felt a sense
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 1: of relief seeing the House of Horrors reduced to ashes,
• 1:04:46
  Speaker 1: including It's said Plainfield fire chief, who happened to be
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 1: Bernice Warden's sun, potentially insinuating that not everything was done
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 1: to stop the fire, and when ed Geenes, sitting in jail,
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 1: was informed that his house had burned down, he only
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 1: shrugged and said just as well. In One artifact from
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 1: Ed's life that did survive was his infamous Ford Sedan,
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 1: in the same car he had used to haul bodies,
• 1:05:12
  Speaker 1: both corpses from graves and the bodies of his murder victims,
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 1: and in a bizarre ending, the car was sold at
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 1: a public auction for seven hundred and sixty dollars to
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: a carnival side show operator named Bunny Gibbons, and Benny
• 1:05:27
  Speaker 1: then charged curiosity seekers twenty five cents admission to see
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 1: the car. At fairs, so literally people lined up to
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 1: pay a quarter to appear through the windows of the
• 1:05:37
  Speaker 1: old Ford, imagining what horrors its trunk had carried?
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: What the shit?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: But this grim exhibit just underscores how ed Gean's case
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 1: immediately embedded itself in pop culture and the public imagination,
• 1:05:51
  Speaker 1: and from an investigative standpoint, the game case was unique
• 1:05:55
  Speaker 1: in that the crime scene was the evidence because practically
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 1: every horrific aca him in Ed's house was a piece
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 1: of evidence of some crime, either murdered, grave theft, or
• 1:06:05
  Speaker 1: body mutilation, and the forensic work involved identifying the remains
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 1: and linking them to known cases. And all told, the
• 1:06:12
  Speaker 1: remains of eleven women were accounted for, and the two
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 1: gen admitted to killing and pieces from nine exhumed bodies,
• 1:06:19
  Speaker 1: and forensic pathologists also had determined the cause of death
• 1:06:22
  Speaker 1: for the two victims. Bernice Warden's forensic analysis confirmed she
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 1: died of a gunshot wound to the and Mary Hogan's
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 1: remains were less complete, but there was no evidence psych
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 1: Geen had towardtured these women at all, and their deaths
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 1: were quick, with a bullet for each and unlike many
• 1:06:41
  Speaker 1: serial killers, Ed did not seem to derive any sort
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 1: of pleasure from killing itself. Rather, it was what he
• 1:06:48
  Speaker 1: did with the bodies after death that fulfilled his warped desires.
• 1:06:52
  Speaker 1: In fact, later psychiatric evaluations noted that Ed's goal wasn't
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 1: to cause suffering, but to obtain bodies to satisfy his obsession,
• 1:07:01
  Speaker 1: and this is a key distinction in understanding Gean's psychology. Moreover,
• 1:07:06
  Speaker 1: one doctor's report mentioned that Ed felt a sense of
• 1:07:09
  Speaker 1: comfort being in the presence of these gruesome trophies, as
• 1:07:13
  Speaker 1: if they were tangible reminders of his dear mother, and
• 1:07:17
  Speaker 1: the evidence also confirmed Ed's methodical approach to his grisly craft,
• 1:07:21
  Speaker 1: and the existence of so many body parts turned into
• 1:07:25
  Speaker 1: household items was shocking to say the least. But those
• 1:07:29
  Speaker 1: rooms that were Augusta's remained pristine under a thick layer
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 1: of dust, which corroborated Ed's statement that he left those
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 1: areas untouched after her death. And one of the final
• 1:07:40
  Speaker 1: steps in the investigation was determining if ed Geen was
• 1:07:44
  Speaker 1: fit to stand trial. The sheer bizarreness of the crimes
• 1:07:48
  Speaker 1: immediately raised questions about his mental state. Was this a
• 1:07:51
  Speaker 1: sane man who had simply hidden his evil well or
• 1:07:55
  Speaker 1: a just very disturbed individual who was lost in his delusion.
• 1:07:59
  Speaker 1: And the evidence, especially the woman suit, hinted strongly a
• 1:08:03
  Speaker 1: profound mental illness or psychosis, so part of the evidence
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: collection extended beyond physical artifacts into psychological evaluation, and in
• 1:08:13
  Speaker 1: the weeks following his arrest Ed was examined by doctors
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 1: to assess his competency and sanity, which would be crucial
• 1:08:21
  Speaker 1: in the legal proceedings. And the diligent work of the
• 1:08:24
  Speaker 1: police in preserving evidence and Ed's own unhesitant confessions left
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 1: little doubt about the extent of his deeds, and by
• 1:08:31
  Speaker 1: early nineteen fifty eight, the focus was shifting from what
• 1:08:34
  Speaker 1: ed Gain had done, now horrifically clear, to why he
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 1: had done it and how the justice system should deal
• 1:08:41
  Speaker 1: with someone who had effectively become a living legend of madness. So,
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 1: within days after his arrest and many confessions, he was
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 1: formerly charged with one count of first degree murder for
• 1:08:54
  Speaker 1: Bernice Warden's death, and the murder of Mary Hogan, while acknowledged,
• 1:08:58
  Speaker 1: was put aside initially as the Warden case alone was
• 1:09:01
  Speaker 1: enough to proceed, So on November twenty first, nineteen fifty seven,
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 1: Edgeen appeared in Wshara County Court for his arrangement and
• 1:09:09
  Speaker 1: Gean stood before the judge and his attorney entered a
• 1:09:12
  Speaker 1: plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. And this
• 1:09:15
  Speaker 1: plea was not surprising because given the nature of his crimes,
• 1:09:19
  Speaker 1: the defense's strategy was clearly going to be that Ed
• 1:09:21
  Speaker 1: was insane and not criminally responsible, and in support of this,
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 1: doctors had already begun evaluating Ed and he would undergo
• 1:09:29
  Speaker 1: a psychiatric assessment soon after arrest, and the initial diagnosis
• 1:09:34
  Speaker 1: was that Edgeen was in fact mentally ill, which yeah, yeah, dude,
• 1:09:40
  Speaker 1: this I feel like he is just he needs to
• 1:09:44
  Speaker 1: go into he needs to go see doctors, and he
• 1:09:47
  Speaker 1: was actually preliminarily diagnosed with schizophrenia. In late nineteen fifty seven,
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 1: Geen was declared mentally incompetent and thus unfit for trial,
• 1:09:58
  Speaker 1: and as a result, the judge ordered him admitted to
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 1: a state facility for the criminally insane. Specifically, Edgean was
• 1:10:04
  Speaker 1: sent to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in Waupun, Wisconsin,
• 1:10:09
  Speaker 1: which was a secure psychiatric institution housed in what is
• 1:10:13
  Speaker 1: now the Dodge Correctional Institution. Sorry if I pronounced anything wrong.
• 1:10:17
  Speaker 1: In this period from nineteen fifty seven to nineteen sixty
• 1:10:20
  Speaker 1: eight essentially put any criminal trial on hold, and Edgean
• 1:10:24
  Speaker 1: lived in a mental hospital where doctors observed him, treated him,
• 1:10:27
  Speaker 1: and gradually evaluated whether he could regain competence. And the public, however,
• 1:10:32
  Speaker 1: was clamoring for answers and justice, which is completely understandable
• 1:10:37
  Speaker 1: and many people in Plainfield would have loved to see
• 1:10:40
  Speaker 1: Edgeen tried and even executed for what he did. But
• 1:10:43
  Speaker 1: American law has protections from the mentally ill, and clearly
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 1: Ed's grasp on reality was in question, and the judge's
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 1: decision to institutionalize him rather than proceed immediately with the
• 1:10:54
  Speaker 1: trial indicated that professionals truly believed Edgeen might not understand
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: the charges or be able to assess in his own defense.
• 1:11:02
  Speaker 1: At the time, Essentially, Ed was placed in limbo, not
• 1:11:07
  Speaker 1: a freeman by any means, but not yet convicted of
• 1:11:10
  Speaker 1: murder either. So for about ten years after his arrest
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: ed Geen remained in state custody at mental hospitals, during
• 1:11:18
  Speaker 1: which time he underwent treatment and periodic evaluations, and by
• 1:11:22
  Speaker 1: the late nineteen sixties, doctors concluded that Ed's condition had
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: stabilized to the point where he could participate in legal proceedings.
• 1:11:30
  Speaker 1: In other words, he was deemed mentally competent to stand
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 1: trial now, So the wheels of justice turned again and
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 1: a trial date was set. So the Geen trial began
• 1:11:40
  Speaker 1: on November seventh, nineteen sixty eight, a full eleven years
• 1:11:44
  Speaker 1: after his crimes were uncovered, and to avoid the circus
• 1:11:47
  Speaker 1: of jury trial, and due to the challenges of finding
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 1: an impartial jury given Gean's infamy, the defense requested and
• 1:11:55
  Speaker 1: the court agreed, that the trial be conducted without a jury.
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 1: Judge Robert H. Golmar would hear the case and render
• 1:12:03
  Speaker 1: the verdict himself, acting as FactFinder, and the trial was
• 1:12:07
  Speaker 1: a relatively quick affair, lasting just one week, which is crazy.
• 1:12:13
  Speaker 1: And during this trial the prosecution focused solely on the
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 1: murder of Bernice Warden, and the judge and state officials
• 1:12:19
  Speaker 1: had decided that the trying ed for Mary Hogan's murder
• 1:12:22
  Speaker 1: or any other crimes like the grave desecrations, was unnecessary
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 1: and potentially prohibitively expensive, given the outcome would likely be
• 1:12:31
  Speaker 1: the same, as Judge Golmer later wrote, due to cost consideration,
• 1:12:35
  Speaker 1: Geen was tried for only one murder, that of missus Warden,
• 1:12:39
  Speaker 1: even though he had in essence confessed to Hogan's killing
• 1:12:42
  Speaker 1: as well, when the evidence presented was overwhelming and uncontested
• 1:12:47
  Speaker 1: by the defense in terms of fact, and Dean's own
• 1:12:50
  Speaker 1: statements and the forensic evidence all made it absolutely clear
• 1:12:54
  Speaker 1: that Ed had killed Bernice Warden, and one psychiatrist testified
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 1: about an interview with Geen in which which Ed described
• 1:13:01
  Speaker 1: the shooting, and Ed claimed he hadn't planned to kill
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 1: Bernice and that he couldn't remember if it was intentional
• 1:13:07
  Speaker 1: or not, and he said he was examining a rifle
• 1:13:11
  Speaker 1: on the wall in her store. It had a bullet
• 1:13:13
  Speaker 1: in it, and the gun went off, shooting Bernice before
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 1: he realized what he was doing, and he then said
• 1:13:20
  Speaker 1: he couldn't remember anything else that morning. The story was
• 1:13:24
  Speaker 1: possibly an attempt by Ed to rationalize his actions, but
• 1:13:27
  Speaker 1: it didn't change.
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: The end result.
• 1:13:29
  Speaker 1: And he clearly did go on to butcher the body,
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 1: which is not something one does in a daze if
• 1:13:35
  Speaker 1: they're saint. But such details were more relevant to the
• 1:13:38
  Speaker 1: insanity determination than the guilt determination, and on November fourteenth,
• 1:13:43
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, Judge Golmer delivered his verdict, and he
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 1: found ed Gaan guilty of first degree murder in the
• 1:13:50
  Speaker 1: death of Bernice Warden. However, the trial was split into
• 1:13:55
  Speaker 1: two parts, one for guilt and one for sanity. Having
• 1:14:00
  Speaker 1: found him guilty of the act, the court then had
• 1:14:02
  Speaker 1: to decide whether ed was legally sane or insane at
• 1:14:06
  Speaker 1: the time of the crime, and in a second proceeding
• 1:14:09
  Speaker 1: focused on mental health, doctors for both the state and
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: defense testified to Ed's mental condition, and after hearing the
• 1:14:16
  Speaker 1: psychiatric opinions, Judge Goalmar ruled that ed Geen was not
• 1:14:19
  Speaker 1: guilty by reason of insanity. So in practical terms, this
• 1:14:23
  Speaker 1: meant Ed would not go to prison, but would instead
• 1:14:27
  Speaker 1: be committed to a secure mental hospital like he was
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 1: in for the past eleven years, already essentially for life.
• 1:14:33
  Speaker 1: Given the severity of his crimes and the unlikelihood of
• 1:14:36
  Speaker 1: any cure, so ed Geen was ordered to be returned
• 1:14:40
  Speaker 1: to Central State Hospital for the criminally Insane, where he
• 1:14:43
  Speaker 1: would remain indefinitely, and Judge Golmore's conclusion was that Geen
• 1:14:48
  Speaker 1: was insane and could not be held fully responsible for
• 1:14:52
  Speaker 1: his actions under law, and doctor Edward kellher head of
• 1:14:55
  Speaker 1: Chicago's Municipal Court Psychiatric Institute labeled Geen as Schitzoph Frennick
• 1:15:00
  Speaker 1: of an unusual sort, and he claimed his case was
• 1:15:04
  Speaker 1: unparalleled in modern history. But regardless of specific diagnosis, all
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 1: experts agreed ed was profoundly mentally ill, and the legal
• 1:15:14
  Speaker 1: standard for insanity in Wisconsin at the time asked whether
• 1:15:17
  Speaker 1: the defendant lacks substantial capacity to appreciate the wrongfulness of
• 1:15:22
  Speaker 1: his conduct or conform his conduct to the law, and
• 1:15:25
  Speaker 1: in Gean's case, the consensus was that he met the
• 1:15:28
  Speaker 1: standard and he was unable to fully comprehend or control
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 1: his bizarre compulsions. And because Edgeen was only tried for
• 1:15:36
  Speaker 1: Bernice Warden's murder, that is the only murder conviction on
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 1: his record technically, and Mary Hogan's murder was acknowledged but
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 1: never adjudicated. Unfortunately, however, in the public mind and historical record,
• 1:15:49
  Speaker 1: ed Geen is unequivocally considered responsible for Hogan's death as well,
• 1:15:54
  Speaker 1: and ed did admit it on multiple occasions as mentioned,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 1: And so with the bang of the gavel, the criminal
• 1:16:01
  Speaker 1: proceedings against ed Geen concluded, and there was no dramatic
• 1:16:05
  Speaker 1: jury sentencing or a death penalty, just to quiet end,
• 1:16:09
  Speaker 1: and ed was just to vanish into the halls of
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 1: a mental institution to live out his days under psychiatric care,
• 1:16:15
  Speaker 1: and the people of Plainfield likely felt a mixture of
• 1:16:18
  Speaker 1: relief and frustration, relief that Geen would never roam free
• 1:16:22
  Speaker 1: again and frustration that the trial was so short and
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 1: that he wasn't punished in a more retributive way. Yet practically,
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 1: Edgean's fate was sealed. He would spend the rest of
• 1:16:33
  Speaker 1: his life confined, and a small farming community he terrorized
• 1:16:36
  Speaker 1: could begin the slow process of healing and trying to
• 1:16:39
  Speaker 1: forget the name Ed Geen, though the wider world would
• 1:16:43
  Speaker 1: not let that memory fade so. After being declared unfit
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 1: for trial in nineteen fifty seven, Ed Green was committed
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 1: to Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane in while poone,
• 1:16:53
  Speaker 1: Wisconsin's surface at that wrong, and he arrived there as
• 1:16:56
  Speaker 1: one of the most notorious patients in the country. But
• 1:16:59
  Speaker 1: behind the walls of the institution, Ed quickly faded into
• 1:17:02
  Speaker 1: anonymity in a sense, and astonishingly, staff and doctors found
• 1:17:07
  Speaker 1: ed Geen to be a model patient during his years
• 1:17:10
  Speaker 1: at Central State, and the man who had once upholstered
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: chairs with human skin now spent his days in a
• 1:17:16
  Speaker 1: structured psychiatric environment and apparently adapted with ease, and according
• 1:17:21
  Speaker 1: to Harold Schechger, author of Deviant Geen was blissful and
• 1:17:25
  Speaker 1: calm the hospital and he never needed tranquilizers or special
• 1:17:29
  Speaker 1: restraints to keep him in line and a group therapy
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: in daily routines. Ed was cooperative and polite, and he
• 1:17:36
  Speaker 1: even got along well with other patients, causing no disruptions.
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: And this compliant behavior earned him a reputation among the
• 1:17:42
  Speaker 1: staff as a practically amiable inmate. And it seems that
• 1:17:48
  Speaker 1: in a twisted way, Ed actually felt at home in
• 1:17:51
  Speaker 1: this institution, which makes sense with the way he grew up,
• 1:17:55
  Speaker 1: and a forensic psychiatrist later theorized why, saying Geen had
• 1:17:59
  Speaker 1: grown up under a domineering authoritarian mother Augusta, so living
• 1:18:04
  Speaker 1: in a strict, regimented hospital with clear rules and authority
• 1:18:07
  Speaker 1: figures may have felt comfortingly familiar to him, which just
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: makes total sense to me. Essentially, the loss of freedom
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: and choice might have been a relief to Ed, and
• 1:18:18
  Speaker 1: he was back in an environment where he was told
• 1:18:21
  Speaker 1: what to do at all times, echoing his childhood and
• 1:18:24
  Speaker 1: doctor Gaale Saltz, a psychiatrist who reviewed Gen's case, pointed
• 1:18:28
  Speaker 1: out that someone like Ed raised in an oppressive home
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 1: might actually thrive under similar conditions as an adult because
• 1:18:36
  Speaker 1: it's what he's used to, and that appears to have
• 1:18:38
  Speaker 1: been the case, and nurses and aides noted that the
• 1:18:42
  Speaker 1: only thing unsettling about Ed's presence was his habit of
• 1:18:45
  Speaker 1: staring silently at female staff with a blank, intense gaze,
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 1: no thanks, and he would watch the nurses in a
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 1: way that made them very uncomfortable, perhaps an echo of
• 1:18:56
  Speaker 1: his old obsessions, and doctors could be sure if his
• 1:19:00
  Speaker 1: indicated uh romantic thoughts, violent urges, or just disassociative state
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: of daydreaming. And we all know what he does when
• 1:19:09
  Speaker 1: he daydreams, and some observed it as a nobody's home look,
• 1:19:13
  Speaker 1: possibly suggesting Ed would sometimes detach from reality, a phenomenon
• 1:19:18
  Speaker 1: consistent with certain mental illnesses or trauma responses. And despite
• 1:19:22
  Speaker 1: these eerie staring episodes, he remained non violent and passive
• 1:19:26
  Speaker 1: in the hospital setting, and during his time in Central State,
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 1: its likely Gien was periodically re evaluated to see if
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 1: his mental state had improved, and by the mid nineteen sixties,
• 1:19:36
  Speaker 1: doctors found him stable enough that he could potentially participate
• 1:19:40
  Speaker 1: in legal proceedings, and this led to nineteen sixty eight
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 1: competency ruling and trial we already covered, and notably, even
• 1:19:48
  Speaker 1: after being found not guilty by reason of insanity in
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 1: nineteen sixty eight, Ed was not released and he was
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 1: simply sent back to the institutional care, as the verdict
• 1:19:56
  Speaker 1: stipulates in indefinite commitment rather than freedom. Seventy eight, ed
• 1:20:00
  Speaker 1: Geen was moved to the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Madison, Wisconsin,
• 1:20:05
  Speaker 1: and at Mendota Ed spent the last several years of
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 1: his life, and he was about seventy two when he
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 1: transferred there, an elderly man by any standard, and reports
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 1: from Mendota indicated Ed's quiet life continued much as before,
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 1: and he was a low maintenance patient who caused no
• 1:20:23
  Speaker 1: trouble at all with the staff. And the truth is
• 1:20:25
  Speaker 1: ed Gean in his seventies seemed more like a benign,
• 1:20:29
  Speaker 1: grandfatherly figure than the ghoulish grave robber of his youth. However,
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 1: not everyone forgot his true identity, and some staff members
• 1:20:39
  Speaker 1: who had seen the case file or remembered the news
• 1:20:42
  Speaker 1: had understandable wariness around him, and as doctor noted that
• 1:20:46
  Speaker 1: while he was socially appropriate most of the time, he
• 1:20:49
  Speaker 1: had essentially no insight into the severity of his own crimes,
• 1:20:54
  Speaker 1: and Ed could discuss what he'd done in a flat,
• 1:20:56
  Speaker 1: factual way, but never truly grasp the moral enormity. So
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 1: ed Gean lived out twenty seven years in captivity after
• 1:21:04
  Speaker 1: his arrest, and as he entered his late seventies, his
• 1:21:08
  Speaker 1: health declined severely, and on July twenty sixth, nineteen eighty four,
• 1:21:12
  Speaker 1: Edgean died at the age of seventy seven due to
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 1: respiratory failure complicated by lung cancer, and he took his
• 1:21:19
  Speaker 1: last breath in the Mendota Mental Health Institute, ending the
• 1:21:22
  Speaker 1: life of one of America's most notorious criminals. And in death,
• 1:21:27
  Speaker 1: as in life, d remained a figure of fascination and revulsion,
• 1:21:32
  Speaker 1: and though by then the world had moved on to
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 1: other horrors and other stories, the question arose what to
• 1:21:39
  Speaker 1: do with Edgean's body, and in a final poetic turn,
• 1:21:43
  Speaker 1: Edgean was buried back in Plainfield, in the same cemetery
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 1: where he had stolen so many bodies years before. Specifically,
• 1:21:52
  Speaker 1: Ed was interred in the Geen family plot, beside his
• 1:21:56
  Speaker 1: mother Augusta, and his brother Henry and his father George.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: And it's a weird thought that Ed's remains now lie
• 1:22:05
  Speaker 1: in the hollowed ground he once desecrated to me at least,
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: and at his burial there was no publicized funeral and
• 1:22:14
  Speaker 1: he was just quietly laid to resk, likely to avoid
• 1:22:17
  Speaker 1: any sort of spectacle, and Ed's grave itself became a
• 1:22:20
  Speaker 1: target of vandalism over the years, as tourists and treasure
• 1:22:23
  Speaker 1: hunters chipped off pieces of his tombstone for souvenirs, and
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 1: it got so bad that in two thousand, Edgean's headstone
• 1:22:29
  Speaker 1: was stolen completely from Plainfield Cemetery and the missing tombstone
• 1:22:34
  Speaker 1: was later recovered by police near Seattle in two thousand
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 1: and one.
• 1:22:37
  Speaker 2: Which is kind of crazy.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: And after that the gravestone was placed in storage to
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: prevent any further incident. And today Edgean's grave is unmarked
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 1: a patch of earth next to his mother's marker, but
• 1:22:49
  Speaker 1: locals know the spot, and occasionally curious visitors still find
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 1: their way to the Green family plot, though the cemetery
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 1: doesn't advertise it obviously, and in death, perhaps the spirits
• 1:22:59
  Speaker 1: of those who wronged found some peace, knowing that ed
• 1:23:03
  Speaker 1: Gean could never harm another soul. In Plainfield, the little
• 1:23:07
  Speaker 1: town that endured the unimaginable, likely breathed a sigh of
• 1:23:11
  Speaker 1: relief that the Butcher of Plainfield was finally gone for good.
• 1:23:15
  Speaker 1: Yet even as ed Geen was lowered into the ground,
• 1:23:18
  Speaker 1: his story was already taking on a life of its
• 1:23:21
  Speaker 1: own in American lore and pop culture, ensuring that his
• 1:23:24
  Speaker 1: name would never be forgotten, for better or for worse.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 1: And The gruesome tale of ed Gean horrified nineteen fifties America,
• 1:23:33
  Speaker 1: but it also captivated the imagination of writers and filmmakers
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 1: as we know, and Gean's crimes directly inspired some of
• 1:23:40
  Speaker 1: the most iconic characters in horror fiction. In mere years
• 1:23:45
  Speaker 1: after Geen's nineteen fifty seven arrest, writer Robert Bloch was
• 1:23:49
  Speaker 1: living just thirty five miles away from Plainfield and followed
• 1:23:52
  Speaker 1: the local news reports, and in nineteen fifty nine he
• 1:23:55
  Speaker 1: published a novel called Psycho, featuring a disturbed murder named
• 1:24:00
  Speaker 1: Norman Bates, and Bates, a mild mannered guy with a
• 1:24:04
  Speaker 1: dead mother complex and a penchant for dressing in her clothes,
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: was heavily inspired by Geen, and Block took creative liberties.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 1: His character was younger and more explicitly schizophrenic, but the
• 1:24:17
  Speaker 1: core idea of this mother obsessed killer living in a
• 1:24:20
  Speaker 1: rural isolation came straight from The Green Case, and Alfred
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 1: Hitchcock famously adapted Psycho into a classic nineteen sixty film
• 1:24:28
  Speaker 1: of the same name, and on screen, Norman Bates, played
• 1:24:32
  Speaker 1: by Anthony Perkins, became a chilling embodiment of Ed geen archetype,
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 1: an outwardly shy and polite but harbouring deadly secrets in
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 1: the Fruit Cellar, including the preserved corpse of his own mother,
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 1: And while Psycho toned down the gore no skin suits
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 1: in that story, the psychological profile was pure Geen and
• 1:24:52
  Speaker 1: the cultural impact was huge, and Psycho shocked audiences and
• 1:24:57
  Speaker 1: essentially gave birth to a modern slasher genre, cementing Norman
• 1:25:01
  Speaker 1: Bates and by extension, At Geen into pop culture, and
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 1: a little over a decade later, another horror classic drew
• 1:25:09
  Speaker 1: from Gean's grizzly repertoire, and that was Leatherface in the
• 1:25:13
  Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Massacre in nineteen seventy four, and it's basically
• 1:25:18
  Speaker 1: Ed gained turned up to elevit as in the film
• 1:25:20
  Speaker 1: A Family of Backwoods Killers in Rule Texas Strespassers and
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: the hulking, mute leather Face character wears a mask made
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: of human skin and decorates his home with furniture made
• 1:25:32
  Speaker 1: from bones and body parts, all straight from the catalog
• 1:25:35
  Speaker 1: of Geen's real crimes, and the movie's director Toby Hooper
• 1:25:39
  Speaker 1: cited Geen as an influence and audiences immediately recognize the
• 1:25:42
  Speaker 1: parallels and leather faces, grizzly crafts and cannibalistic household take
• 1:25:47
  Speaker 1: Ed's morbid and diy tendencies to a fictional extreme, and
• 1:25:51
  Speaker 1: the Texas Chainsaw Massacre became a cult hit and made
• 1:25:55
  Speaker 1: the idea of a house filled with human remains a
• 1:25:58
  Speaker 1: staple horror scenario and a direct legacy of Gean's own
• 1:26:02
  Speaker 1: House of Horrors. And perhaps the most widely known Geen
• 1:26:06
  Speaker 1: inspired character is Buffalo Bill in Thomas Harris's novel The
• 1:26:11
  Speaker 1: Silence of the Lambs, one of my favorites to be honest,
• 1:26:14
  Speaker 1: which came out in nineteen eighty eight and in nineteen
• 1:26:17
  Speaker 1: ninety one it had a film adaptation. In Buffalo Bill
• 1:26:20
  Speaker 1: is a serial killer who murders women. It's just a
• 1:26:22
  Speaker 1: giant fictionalized retelling of ed Gean's post mortem activities, and Harris,
• 1:26:28
  Speaker 1: a meticulous researcher of real crime cases, amalgamated several murderers
• 1:26:33
  Speaker 1: to create Buffalo Bill. But ed Gean's influence is unmistakable
• 1:26:38
  Speaker 1: in Buffalo Bill's twisted goal of transforming himself into a
• 1:26:41
  Speaker 1: woman by wearing his victim's skin is lifted directly from
• 1:26:45
  Speaker 1: Gan's known goal of becoming his mother, and this film
• 1:26:48
  Speaker 1: would go on to win Academy Awards and introduced millions
• 1:26:53
  Speaker 1: to a character whose DNA can be traced back to
• 1:26:56
  Speaker 1: Plainfield's Ghoul, and many other horror movie villains and stories
• 1:27:00
  Speaker 1: have echoes of ed Geen. But beyond inspiring fictional characters,
• 1:27:05
  Speaker 1: ed Geen's story has been retold directly in various forms
• 1:27:09
  Speaker 1: of media, and true crime books were among the first
• 1:27:11
  Speaker 1: before any sort of movies, and he's had countless biographical
• 1:27:15
  Speaker 1: movies as well, and even in more recent years on Netflix,
• 1:27:19
  Speaker 1: he's mentioned multiple times.
• 1:27:20
  Speaker 3: In one of the greatest shows ever that I'm So opsec.
• 1:27:22
  Speaker 1: Canceled Fine Hunter, and Gan's case is often used in
• 1:27:26
  Speaker 1: forensic psychology discussions about the development of serial killers, and
• 1:27:30
  Speaker 1: even though Gean technically isn't a serial killer by by
• 1:27:32
  Speaker 1: count because he murdered two people only allegedly, his psychology
• 1:27:37
  Speaker 1: and methods are so extreme that he's grouped within the
• 1:27:40
  Speaker 1: popular imagination and ed Geen is also the focus of
• 1:27:44
  Speaker 1: the upcoming season of Netflix's Monster Show, releasing October third,
• 1:27:49
  Speaker 1: and the series has been a hit in past, featuring
• 1:27:52
  Speaker 1: notable monsters like Jeffrey Dahmer, which if you watch my
• 1:27:56
  Speaker 1: Dahmer video, we know how I feel about that.
• 1:27:59
  Speaker 3: So with this show.
• 1:28:00
  Speaker 1: Coming up, I think the day this video comes out,
• 1:28:03
  Speaker 1: or very close to it, I am I'm nervous to
• 1:28:06
  Speaker 1: watch it because I am I don't like the romanticizing
• 1:28:11
  Speaker 1: of serial killers.
• 1:28:12
  Speaker 3: I think I'll watch it.
• 1:28:14
  Speaker 1: But I'm you know, with a grain of salt, because
• 1:28:17
  Speaker 1: Hollywood just loves to make everything look ten times more dramatical,
• 1:28:21
  Speaker 1: though this is quite a dramatic case, or they make
• 1:28:25
  Speaker 1: the audience feel sympathy for a literal monster, but in
• 1:28:29
  Speaker 1: this case specifically, and I feel like it is like
• 1:28:33
  Speaker 1: the only case I can think of with his childhood
• 1:28:37
  Speaker 1: and everything, and this this is a case of like
• 1:28:40
  Speaker 1: almost pure nurture. I think there is some nature in there,
• 1:28:44
  Speaker 1: but his mother made him into a monster.
• 1:28:48
  Speaker 2: That's what the show is called.
• 1:28:51
  Speaker 1: And I have empathy for child ed Geen, but as
• 1:28:54
  Speaker 1: an adult, I mean I don't know. He also got
• 1:28:58
  Speaker 1: diagnosed with schizophrenia, which is in fact nature. I'm scared
• 1:29:02
  Speaker 1: to watch the show because they usually butcher it. But
• 1:29:06
  Speaker 1: now you have all the facts. So if you do
• 1:29:07
  Speaker 1: watch the show, you can be as critical as you
• 1:29:11
  Speaker 1: want to be because now you're an ed Green expert.
• 1:29:13
  Speaker 1: But if you guys really want me to watch the
• 1:29:16
  Speaker 1: show and you want some sort of deep dive on
• 1:29:19
  Speaker 1: the show and whether it's good or bad or what
• 1:29:22
  Speaker 1: it is accurate in or not accurate in, I can
• 1:29:25
  Speaker 1: totally do that. Maybe that could be interesting, actually, so
• 1:29:28
  Speaker 1: let me know down in the comments type ed Geen
• 1:29:30
  Speaker 1: show review and then I'll know, And then I'll know.
• 1:29:33
  Speaker 1: But that is the case of ed Geen. That is
• 1:29:36
  Speaker 1: the deep dive. It was a long one, you know. Again,
• 1:29:39
  Speaker 1: heart always goes out to the victims and their families.
• 1:29:43
  Speaker 1: Absolutely horrific, horrific way to have your life ended, and
• 1:29:49
  Speaker 1: even after life, to be treated like just today's piece
• 1:29:54
  Speaker 1: of shit basically. But if you have any other cases
• 1:29:56
  Speaker 1: you want me to deep dive into let me know
• 1:29:59
  Speaker 1: down below I always read the comments and until then,
• 1:30:02
  Speaker 1: I will see you next time. Okay, stay safe.
• 1:30:04
  Speaker 3: Bye,