Silence of the Lambs
Buffalo Bill
The Texas Chainsaw Massacre
Leatherface
Gloves made of human skin
Gein was a reclusive hermit. Never leaving his home and devoting all of his energy towards his religious zealot mother. After her death in 1945, he became obsessively depraved. He was never able to get passed his mother’s death and filled the void of her absence by trolling cemeteries for fresh graves. He would exhume the corpses and mutilate their bodies, often keeping body parts as trophies. Gein’s depravity reached an all time high when he decided he wanted to be his mother and began fashioning a ”woman suit” of tanned human flesh. Gein admitted to the shooting death of Mary Worden and Bernice Worden. He was found to be mentally unfit to stand trial and was sent to Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. He was later transferred to Mendota State Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin where he lived until his death in 1984 from respiratory and heart failure.
The Ed Gein Influence on Pop Culture Ed Gein’s story is one that reaches the darkest depths of human fear, one that must be retold. He was the inspiration for many films including: Deranged, Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre and The Silence of the Lambs. The music world was also influenced by this real life psycho. Heavy metal band Slayer’s song “Dead Skin mask” is an example. Blind Melon satirized Gein’s mutilations in the song “Skinned” and there was even a musical written about Ed Gein (Ed Gein: The Musical) which premiered in 2010 in Mesasha, Wisconsin.
On November 16, 1957 the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin was rocked by the horrific discovery made by police at the home of Edward Gein. Police arrived at his residence to investigate the disappearance of Bernice Worden, a local hardware store owner. Upon searching his property they discovered her decapitated corpse, trussed upside down with ropes and a crossbar at her ankles. Her abdominal cavity had been gutted and dressed like that of a deer. It was discovered that Bernice was shot with a .22 caliber rifle and all mutilations were performed postmortem. The horrifying discoveries increased as police continued to search the Gein residence:
Ed Gein
The Butcher of Plainfield.