Bettmann/Getty ImagesAlso known as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Ed Gein murdered two women and robbed untold graves in 1950s Wisconsin — then turned their skins into keepsakes. Most people have seen classic horror films like Psycho (1960), The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), and The Silence of the Lambs (1991). But what many may not know is that the terrifying villains in these three movies were all based on one real-life killer: Ed Gein, the “Butcher of Plainfield.” When police entered his Plainfield, Wisconsin home in November 1957, following the disappearance of a local woman, they walked straight into a house of horrors. Not only did they find the woman they were looking for — dead, decapitated, and hung from her ankles — but they also found a number of shocking, grisly objects that Ed Gein had crafted using human body parts. Police found skulls, human organs, and gruesome pieces of furniture like lampshades made of human faces and chairs upholstered with human skin. Gein’s goal, as he later explained to police, was to create a skin suit to quasi-resurrect his dead mother with whom he’d been obsessed for years. Bettmann/Getty ImagesEd Gein leading investigators around his property in Plainfield, Wisconsin. This is the disturbing true story of Ed Gein, the murderer and grave-robber whose atrocities remain uniquely haunting to this day. Ed Gein’s Early Life With His Overbearing Mother — And His First Murder Born Edward Theodore Gein on August 27, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, Ed came of age under the influence of his religious and domineering mother, Augusta. She raised Ed and his brother Henry to believe that the world was full of evil, that women were “vessels of sin,” and that drinking and immortality were the instruments of the devil. Frantic to protect her family from the evil which she believed lurked around every corner, Augusta insisted that they move from La Crosse — a “sinkhole of filth,” she thought — to Plainfield. Even there, Augusta had the family settle outside of town since she believed that living in town would corrupt her two young sons. As a result, Ed Gein only ever left his family’s isolated farmhouse to go to school. But he failed to establish any meaningful connections with his classmates, who remembered him as socially awkward and prone to odd, unexplained fits of laughter. What’s more, Ed’s lazy eye and speech impediment made him an easy victim of bullies. Despite all this, Ed adored his mother. (His father, a timid alcoholic who died in 1940, cast a much smaller shadow over his life.) He absorbed her lessons about the world and seemed to embrace her harsh worldview. Though Henry sometimes stood up to Augusta, Ed never did. So, it’s perhaps not a surprise that Ed Gein’s first victim was likely his older brother, Henry. Bettmann/Getty ImagesEd Gein’s farmhouse, where he collected body parts for over a decade and used bones and skin to make gruesome objects. In 1944, Ed and Henry set out to clear some vegetation in their fields by burning it away. But only one of the brothers would live through the night. As they worked, their fire suddenly got out of control. And when firefighters arrived to put out the blaze, Ed told them that Henry had vanished. His body was found soon afterward, face down in the marsh, dead from asphyxiation. At the time, it seemed like a tragic accident. But accidental or not, Henry’s death meant that Ed Gein and Augusta had the farmhouse to themselves. They lived there in isolation for about a year, until Augusta’s death in 1945. Then, Ed Gein began his decade-long descent into depravity. The Horrific Crimes Of The “Butcher Of Plainfield” Bettmann/Getty ImagesThe interior of Ed Gein’s home. Though he kept some rooms pristine in memory of his mother, the rest of the house was a mess. Following Augusta’s death, Ed Gein transformed the house into something of a shrine to her memory. He boarded up rooms that she’d used, keeping them in pristine condition, and moved into a small bedroom off the kitchen. Living alone, far from town, he began to sink into his obsessions. Ed filled his days by learning about Nazi medical experiments, studying human anatomy, consuming porn — though he never attempted to date any real-life women — and reading horror novels. He also began to indulge his sick fantasies, but it took a long time for anyone to realize it. Indeed, for a full decade, no one thought much about the Gein farm outside of town. Everything changed in November 1957 when a local hardware store owner named Bernice Worden vanished, leaving nothing behind but bloodstains. Bettmann/Getty ImagesEd Gein, whose chilling true story helped inspire The Texas Chain Saw Massacre, pictured in court after his arrest. Worden, a 58-year-old widow, had last been seen at her store. Her last customer? None other than Ed Gein, who’d gone into the store to buy a gallon of antifreeze. Police went to Ed’s farmhouse to investigate — and found themselves in the middle of a waking nightmare. There, authorities found what would later inspire horror movies such as Silence of the Lambs, Psycho, and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. What Investigators Found Inside Ed Gein’s House Getty ImagesTrooper Dave Sharkey looks over some of the musical instruments found in the home of Edward Gein, 51, suspected grave robber and murderer. Also found in the house were human skulls, heads, death masks and the newly-butchered corpse of a neighboring woman. January 19, 1957. As soon as investigators stepped into Ed Gein’s house, they found Bernice Worden in the kitchen. She was dead, decapitated, and hung by her ankles from the rafters. There were also countless bones, both whole and fragmented, skulls impaled on his bedposts, and bowls and kitchen utensils made from skulls. Worse than the bones, however, were the household items that Ed Gein had made from human skin. Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesAn investigator carries a chair made of human skin out of Ed Gein’s house. Authorities found chairs upholstered in human skin, a wastebasket made of skin, leggings made from human leg skin, masks made from faces, a belt made of nipples, a pair of lips being used as a window shade drawstring, a corset made of a female torso, and a lampshade made from a human face. Along with the skin items, police found various dismembered body parts, including fingernails, four noses, and the genitals of nine different women. They also found the remains of Mary Hogan, a tavern keeper who’d gone missing in 1954. Frank Scherschel/The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty ImagesEd Gein’s bedroom, in a state of extreme disarray. Ed Gein readily admitted that he’d collected most of the remains from three local graveyards, which he’d started to visit two years after Augusta’s death. He told police he’d gone to the graveyards in a daze, looking for bodies that he thought resembled his mother. Ed also explained why. He told authorities that he had wanted to create a “woman suit” so that he could “become” his mother, and crawl into her skin. How Many People Did Ed Gein Kill? Following the police visit to Ed Gein’s house, the “Butcher of Plainfield” was arrested. He was found not guilty by reasons of insanity in 1957 and sent to the Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, where he was diagnosed with schizophrenia. Then, his farmhouse mysteriously burned to the ground. JOHN CROFT/Star Tribune via Getty ImagesEd Gein being led away from his house in handcuffs after admitting that he’d killed two women. Ten years later, Ed was deemed fit to stand trial and was convicted of the murder of Bernice Worden — but just of Bernice Worden. He was never tried for Mary Hogan’s murder because the state allegedly saw it as a waste of money. Ed was insane, they reasoned — he would spend the rest of his life in hospitals either way. But that raises a chilling question. How many people did Ed Gein kill? Until his death in 1984 at the age of 77, he only ever admitted to murdering Worden and Hogan. The other bodies — and police found as many as 40 in his home — he claimed he’d robbed from graves. As such, we may never know how many people fell victim to the Butcher of Plainfield. But it is certain that Ed Gein stands as one of history’s most disturbing serial killers. He’s also seen as the inspiration for the mother-loving Norman Bates of Psycho, The Texas Chain Saw Massacre‘s skin-wearing Leatherface, and The Silence of The Lamb‘s Buffalo Bill. Those movies have terrified generations of movie audiences. But they aren’t quite as chilling as the real-life story of Ed Gein himself. After learning about the disturbing crimes of Ed Gein, read about still-unsolved case of the Cleveland Torso Murders. Then, read up on the horrific crimes of serial killer Jeffrey Dahmer. The post The Macabre Story Of Ed Gein, The Serial Killer Who Used Human Body Parts To Make Furniture appeared first on All That's Interesting.

Known as the “Butcher of Plainfield,” Ed Gein was one of the world’s most twisted serial killers. A murderer and grave robber who used his victims’ body parts to craft furniture and clothing, Gein’s horrific crimes served as inspiration for some of the most well-known horror films of all time: The Silence of the Lambs, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Psycho. The last movie is of particular note, however, because it was not just Ed Gein who inspired the film, but his mother Augusta Wilhelmine Gein as well. Raised in a family of German Old Lutherans, Ed Gein’s mother grew up believing that every human thought and deed was infected with sin — and she passed this belief onto her son as well. She instilled in her son that sex was evil and that women were instruments of the Devil. Find A GraveAugusta Wilhelmine Gein, the mother of serial killer Ed Gein. Despite Augusta Gein’s fervently religious and overbearing nature, Ed was completely obsessed with his mother, much like Norman Bates in Psycho. And after Augusta died from a stroke, Ed was utterly devastated. Refusing to believe his mother was truly gone forever, he became chillingly determined to bring her back. In a desperate attempt to quasi-resurrect his mother, Ed turned to murdering women and stealing corpses from a nearby graveyard so he could create a “woman suit” and “become” his mother. While Ed Gein’s mother was alive, she had always hoped to protect her son from evil. But in the end, her obsession with purity and sin — and her determination to isolate her son from all that was wicked — fatefully warped her son’s perspective of the world. And she unwittingly raised a depraved killer. How Religious Fervor Turned Ed Gein’s Mother Into An Overbearing Force Born Augusta Wilhelmine Lehrke in 1878, Ed Gein’s mother grew up as one of eight children in a family of German immigrants from Prussia, who had settled in La Crosse, Wisconsin. Like many other Old Lutherans, the Lehrkes left Prussia as part of a mass exodus. It’s important to note their faith, Old Lutheran, was far more conservative than the mainstream Lutheran faith. According to their beliefs, all humans were full of sin, both in their thoughts and actions. Humans, they said, were infected with immoral motives. Because of this, they also believed that all humans deserved to burn in Hell. On December 11, 1900, around the age of 22, Augusta married a man named George Philip Gein, another child of German immigrants who had moved to Hamburg, Wisconsin with his family. Two years later, Augusta and George welcomed their first child, a son they named Henry George Gein. Find A GraveEd Gein’s mother, Augusta, and his father, George, on their wedding day. Per the New Zealand Herald, George Gein worked a series of odd jobs — taking gigs as a carpenter and a tanner — but he struggled to stick with anything for long. This was largely due to his struggles with alcoholism. His wife, meanwhile, ran a small grocery store and tried to keep the family home in order. But in time, she began to resent her husband. However, Augusta’s religious beliefs prevented her from divorcing him, so her resentment steadily grew. Soon enough, she developed a deep hatred of men in general — and dreamed of giving birth to a daughter. Augusta did not get her wish. Instead, when the couple welcomed their second child in 1906, they were presented with a second son. They named him Edward Theodore Gein. Not wanting her child to grow up to be the type of man she so loathed, Ed Gein’s mother raised him with an overbearing protectiveness that slowly warped his perception of the world. Augusta Wilhelmine Gein Isolates Her Son From The World Having grown sick of La Crosse, which Augusta considered to be a hotbed of sin, Augusta demanded that the family pack up and move to an isolated farmhouse near the rural town of Plainfield, Wisconsin in 1915. At the Gein house, away from the sinners in the city, she could raise young Ed and Henry to become the pure men she wanted them to be. The young boys were forbidden to leave the farm except to attend the nearby Roche-a-Cri grade school, which was a one-room building with only 12 students. According to a report from Radford University, Ed was known to be a voracious reader, but he struggled to fit in with the other children. He was shy and had a lazy eye, as well as a lesion on his tongue that affected his speech. Other kids at his school often shunned him, and even when he tried to make friends, Ed Gein’s mother punished him for socializing. Augusta was worried that Ed would turn out like his father — an alcoholic failure — and believed that isolating him from his peers was the way to prevent this. To make matters worse, George was physically abusive and frequently beat Ed, angered by his son’s crying over bullies at school. Bettmann/Getty Images The Gein family’s remote farmhouse, which many would later call a “house of horrors.” All the while, Augusta fostered in both Ed and Henry a deep disdain of women and a sentiment that sex was the work of the Devil. Then, when Ed was 12 years old, Augusta caught him masturbating in the bathtub. In response, she grabbed his genitals, referring to them as the “curse of man.” Just two years later, at the age of 14, Ed dropped out of school after completing the eighth grade. His mother continued to speak badly of his father, and Ed developed an increasingly intense attachment to Augusta. He believed that men were weak, and psychologists have suggested over the years that he wanted to be a woman, like his mother. As a show of devotion to her, Augusta asked her sons to remain virgins, warning them that having sex would ultimately lead them to damnation. At this point, Ed was already 21. Henry was about 25. Still, the four Geins lived in their isolated farmhouse with Augusta serving as a domineering overseer. Then, in April 1940, George Gein died after complications from pneumonia caused his lungs to be filled with fluid. Augusta showed little concern over her husband’s passing, attributing his death to his weakness and sinful nature, and frequently commenting that he had gone to Hell. JOHN CROFT/Star Tribune via Getty ImagesEd Gein being led away from his house in handcuffs after his arrest. Now, with her husband dead, Augusta had complete control over her household, and her youngest son was all but completely devoted to her. This same devotion, however, could not be said for Ed’s older brother Henry. In fact, Henry had started dating a divorced woman who had two children and began making plans to move in with her. He expressed concern over Ed and Augusta’s unhealthy relationship, a criticism which mortified Ed. Then, one day in May 1944, Henry mysteriously died. That day, Ed and Henry had been clearing excess vegetation in a nearby field by burning it away. But as Ed later told police, he lost sight of Henry while the two were fighting a runaway fire. Curiously, though, Ed led police directly to Henry’s dead body. Even more strange, Henry’s body did not show any signs of being burned. Instead, his head was severely bruised. However, Henry’s death was listed as asphyxiation by the coroner, and the police dismissed the chance of foul play, as they did not believe that Ed was a man capable of murder. Finally, at long last, the family was down to just Augusta and Ed, an aging mother and her highly devoted son. However, this would not last long. How The Death Of Ed Gein’s Mother Drove Him To Madness And Murder Shortly after Henry’s death, Ed Gein’s mother fell ill. She suffered a stroke and needed to be rushed to the hospital. With no one else to care for her, the responsibility fell on Ed to look after his mother. Around the same time that he became his mom’s caregiver, though, he began to read books about strange topics like head shrinking, grave robbing, and human anatomy. After a second stroke on December 29, 1945, Augusta Wilhelmine Gein died at the age of 67. This pushed Ed past the breaking point. He boarded up his mother’s bedroom and sitting room in the interest of preserving them. As he was consumed with overwhelming grief, Ed’s overall condition gradually began to worsen. Acquaintances noted how foul he smelled, how ragged his appearance became, and how unstable he seemed. Meanwhile, he continued to live in the same isolated farmhouse that he’d called home for most of his life, earning a living only through small odd jobs. Public DomainA newspaper clipping following the capture of Ed Gein. Then, in 1947, Ed Gein reportedly began experiencing strange visions. He later said he felt compelled to visit the graveyard where his mother was buried. There, he started digging up corpses, beginning with his mother. He twisted her head from her body with his bare hands, then attempted to shrink it in a fashion similar to what he had read about in his books. Soon enough, he was scanning obituaries of recently deceased women who resembled his mother, prowling graveyards where they were buried and stealing their body parts. As he would later tell police, he did this in the hopes of creating a “woman suit” so that he could “become” his mother. Aside from the suit he hoped to create, Ed Gein also crafted numerous pieces of furniture from the corpses, including lampshades, chairs, and bowls, which would later inspire The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Eventually, Ed also began targeting living women, killing at least two (though he’s suspected of murdering several more) and adding their body parts to his horrific home collection until he was finally arrested in 1957. He would spend the rest of his life in mental hospitals until he died in 1984. Though Ed Gein remains far more infamous than his mother today, it cannot be denied that his disturbing obsession with her helped fuel his crime spree of gruesome murders and grave robberies. And thus, when Augusta Wilhelmine Gein died, the Butcher of Plainfield was born. After reading the macabre story of Ed Gein’s mother, learn all about the Harpe Brothers, America’s first recorded serial killers. Then, see this gallery of the 23 most disturbing photos taken by serial killers. The post The Full Story Of Augusta Gein, The Violently Overbearing Mother Of Serial Killer Ed Gein appeared first on All That's Interesting.

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