“I don’t know what happened then. She glanced out the window and said, ‘they are checking deer out there.’”
Then, his memory becomes vague.
“I do remember dragging her across the floor. I remember loading her body into the truck.”
Gein was referring to the hardware store delivery truck, which was missing when Worden’s son Frank arrived at the store. It was usually parked behind the store.
“Then I drove the truck into the pine trees and walked back to town. And I got my car and drove it out there and loaded her body into the back of the car. Then I drove out to my farm and took the body out of the car and hung it up by its heels in the woodshed. I thought I was dressing out a deer. It’s the only explanation that comes to my mind.”
Gein was then asked if he had killed anyone else, and he said, “Not to my knowledge.”
Unintended rage has consequences
Schley’s momentary lapse of self-control, which some later said led to Gein’s head slamming against the concrete wall - would have consequences, however.
Anything Gein said that night, even though it offered little by way of real evidence, but suggested an understanding that he needed to hide the crime, become inadmissible in court.
“Later, because of this occurrence in the jail and the testimony of psychiatrists, I suppressed the confession Gein made to Joe Wilimovsky of the Wisconsin crime lab. That Sheriff Schley's conduct was greatly regretted by Schley himself was established by many of his acquaintances,” said the judge. “Shortly before Gein's trial in 1968, Schley died of a heart attack. There were those in Waushara County who believed that worry over his being subpoenaed to testify hastened his death.”
Gein confessed to digging up graves, and a week or so later officers exhumed two caskets to determine the truth of the confession. They found the graves of both Mrs. Eleanor Adams and Mrs. Mabel Everson, buried in 1951, were empty.
Horrified at the thought of discovering more empty graves, police stopped digging.
Over the next week, officials were able to determine that the remains of at least 15 people were scattered throughout Gein’s property, including in his home, in his trash heap and in the ash pit where he burned garbage.
And if Plainfield had hopes of keeping things quiet, both Time and Life ran features on the Ed Gein story, likely inspired by Waushara County District Attorney Earl Kileen’s initial words to reporters, hinting that Gein had consumed parts of the dead.
Add necrophilia to the mix, and reporters – as well as their rabid readers – were beside themselves.
And while Gein sometimes masturbated with the vulvas he cut from the corpses, he never had sex with the dead, he said – in fact, Gein’s sex life was limited exclusively to masturbation, and he had fulfilled his mother’s desire that he remain a virgin, untouched by female flesh.
He did not, Gein said, because “they smelled too bad.”
Chapter 4: A psychiatric gold mine
Ed was taken before a judge, technically being charged with robbery. Authorities saved the murder charges born from Bernice Worden’s death, and waited for a determination of Gein’s sanity.
That is something that would never come.
On November 23, 1957, a psychologist and psychiatrist who interview Ed called him schizophrenic and said he was a “sexual psychopath.”
One psychologist might have fed Gein some memories, based on the following interaction during the evaluations to determine his sanity.
Q. “Do you have any recollection, Eddie, of taking any of those female parts, the vagina specifically, and holding it over your penis to cover the penis?”
A. “I believe that’s true.”
Q. “You recall doing that with the vaginas of the bodies of other women?”
A. “That I believe I do remember; that's right.”
Q. “Would you ever put on a pair of women's panties over your body and then put some of these vaginas over your penis?”
A. “That could be.”
Other reports say that Ed would take the excised female genitals and place them inside a pair of panties that he would then wear, giving him the illusion of femininity.
State takes over
Two days later – on Nov. 25, 1957, the state took over the Gein case, especially given the speculation that Gein had driven out of the county in order to procure new corpses, along with the knowledge that Mary Hogan, whose Bancroft tavern was in nearby Portage County, was also killed outside Waushara County.
“Developments in the case now indicate a statewide concern in ascertaining all the facts,” said Governor Thompson. “Certainly the investigation should exhaust the possibilities of additional homicides being committed.”
On December 12, 1957, Ed Gein was interviewed by Dr. Edward Schubert, a psychiatrist at Waupun’s Central State Hospital, who found that Ed had an “abnormally magnified attachment to his mother.”
Schubert sent the judge a packet declaring Gein insane, and suggested that Gein be permanently committed to the hospital. It would be the case of Schubert’s life, and he would be remembered for Gein as much as any other player in the sick, sad story. The judge received it on December 17, 1958, a few weeks before the sanity hearing was scheduled to begin.
Story of the year
At end of the year, only a few weeks after Gein’s house of horrors was discovered, his story was named the top in the state according to an Associated Press poll - ahead of the Braves winning the world championship, Sen. McCarthy dying, William Proxmire being elected senator, Mark Catlin Jr. fined for unethical conduct as an attorney, eight children dying in a Park Falls home fire, Kohler Co. found to have unfair labor practices, ex-sheriff Michael Lombardi of Waushara County charged with misconduct in office, state traffic deaths setting a record as the third highest in history, and a $2 million fire that ravaged the business district of Reedsburg.
Apparently, 1957 was also the first year Wisconsin employed daylight savings time, and that story didn’t make the list at all. The new stadium for the Green Bay Packers was also a contender, but failed to place.
Sane or insane? Experts ponder the question
At Gein’s sanity hearing, on January 6, 1958, all the evidence was brought to the Waushara County Courthouse, and psychiatrists discussed what they had learned about Gein during extensive interviews.
According to Shubert, a psychiatrist at Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane, Gein was hoping to bring the dead back to life through sheer will – again in hopes of provoking the return of his mother – and his failure left him despondent.
“There is ample reason to believe that his violation of the graves was in response to the demands of his fantasy life, which was motivated by his abnormally magnified attachment to his mother,” Shubert said.
Experts debated Bernice Worden’s gruesome death, the preserved skin, the belt of nipples, Gein’s suit of female body parts that he wore around the house, the skull bowls, the chair and lamps crudely upholstered in skin, bits of fat still hanging from them, the skulls that replaced bedposts, the shoebox full of excised female genitalia, the faces stuffed with newspaper and hung on the wall like hunting trophies.
Gein himself talked about his actions, including his grave robbing, and said that most of it happened in a fugue state of sorts.
“Once, when I was digging, I came out of the daze,” he said. He immediately put down the shovel and went home.
Waushara County Circuit Court Judge Robert Bunde found Gein to be chronically mentally ill, and best off sent to Waupun’s Central State Hospital, a facility where he could be supervised for the rest of his life.
He was sentenced to Central State for an undetermined amount of time, which kept the door open for Gein to someday be tried for the murder of Bernice Worden, if he had sufficiently recovered.
Adeline Watkins: A sad spinster craving the spotlight
Ed Gein’s mother had made clear to her son that women were the epitome of all evil, Satan with soft
skin, and Gein never dated.
Still, that didn’t stop one woman from making national news by reporting that she had dated Gein for 20 years, and that he’d even proposed.
The story, clearly false, appeared in the Minneapolis Tribune, and was picked up by other news outlets, likely eager to cash in on a new angle to the Gein story.
According to Watkins, it was on Feb. 6, 1955, when Gein allegedly asked her for her hand – “not in so many words, but I knew what he meant,” she told the newspaper, “I turned him down. Not because there was anything wrong with him. There was something wrong with me, I guess. I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to live up to what he expected of me.”
(If Gein’s “expectations” involved living in his depravity-filled house, she was likely right.)
Watkins, who described Gein as “sweet and kind,” said the two talked about books – Gein favored stories about exotic places like Africa and Asia – and murder.
“I guess we discussed every murder we had ever heard about,” she said. “Eddie told how the murderer did wrong, what mistakes he had made. I thought it was interesting.”
They also sometimes frequented the many bars between Plainfield and Wisconsin Rapids.
“I liked to drink beer sometimes,” Watkins said, “but I would almost have to drag Eddie into a tavern. He would much rather have gone to a drugstore for a milk shake.”
How sad that a seemingly normal woman would use the gruesome crimes of a sick old man to garner her 15 minutes of fame?
Aftermath
On March 20, 1958, Gein’s dilapidated white farmhouse mysteriously burned to the ground, ending plans for an auction that would have again turned Plainfield into a circus of curiosity seekers eager to purchase a piece of America’s most nightmare-inducing crimes.
“Just as well,” said Gein when learned of the news.
But some items survived, and that same year, Gein’s 1949 Ford sedan with whitewall tires was purchased for $760 by Bunny Gibbons, a Rockford, Illinois, man who made his living as a carnival sideshow operator.
At a time when sideshows were still big business, Gibbons charged 25 cents for carnival goers to see what he marketed as “the Ed Gein Ghoul Car. See the car that hauled the dead from their graves.”
The car’s first gig was the July 1958 Outagamie County Fair in Seymour, Wisconsin (best known for being home of the first hamburger), where it was hidden from view in a canvas tent.
“People want to see this kind of thing,” said Gibbons at the time.
Over two days, more than 2,000 people paid the 25-cent admission, almost earning Gibbons’ money back for his investment in one weekend.
In Plainfield, the uproar was quick.
“It doesn’t sound too good,” said Plainville village president Harold Collins. “There’s bound to be a reaction. I knew when the car sold for more than it was worth that it would be used for something like this. I don’t know what we can do about it. It might open new wounds here.”
It was later banned by some fair officials including those in Green Bay, and Gibbons – who by then had more than recouped his initial investment - was forced to tour southern Illinois venues, where the car was not quite as popular and eventually faded into obscurity.
Back to court, 10 years later
After 10 years of confinement, Shubert believed Gein had grown enough mentally and emotionally to stand trial, and he notified Wisconsin Supreme Court judge Robert Gollmar of his opinion. (Gollmar would later go on to write one of the most in-depth books about Ed Gein, simply titled “Ed Gein.”)
The trial was set to being on Nov. 7, 1968, and Gein was to be charged only with the first-degree murder of Bernice Worden.
His attorney, William Belter, who had represented Gein 10 years prior, went up against prosecutors Waushara County district attorney Howard Dutcher and Milwaukee attorney Robert E. Sutton.
Both brought psychiatrists. On Gein’s side, doctors found him both mentally and legally insane, while a state witness saw him as mentally insane but clinically sane.
Gein continued to maintain that Worden’s death was an accident. “I might have pulled the trigger, or it may have gone off by itself,” he testified, adding that he couldn’t remember the details, in part because the shooting left Worden with a trickle of blood coming out of her mouth. “From little on, whenever I see blood, I’d either faint or black out. That is why I can’t remember.”
Dr. Milton Miller of the University of Wisconsin described him as “a chronic schizophrenic who sought out the graves of women who resembled his mother “as an attempt on the part of a psychotic and lonely man to bring a form of perverted companionship into his isolated home.”
It would ultimately all be nothing but words.
He was found guilty of first-degree murder by Judge Robert H. Gollmar, who said that Gein was savvy enough about guns to have easily “put a bullet” in Bernice Worden’s head.
He also “did not check to see if she was dead or alive. He did not do what most people would have done if the shooting was accidental – run out in the street and seek the immediate aid of a doctor,” Gollmar said.
Still, so many elements suggested that Gein was truly troubled, and on January 7, 1958 – the same day Russia shot a man 18 miles into space, from where he safely parachuted back to earth - Gein was found not guilty by reason of insanity, and he was ordered to be recommitted to Central State Hospital in Waupun (now known as Dodge Correctional Facility) for an undeterminable term.
He would be somewhere where he would never again be alone.
Gein: The later years
In 1974, he applied for release from the hospital, but was ultimately refused.
According to all reports, Gein was a model prisoner, and eventually in 1978 was moved to Mendota Mental Health Hospital, a low-security facility. Gein had just turned 72.
It was here that officials realized Gein was completely oblivious of his worldwide notoriety.
“Mr. Gein has little insight concerning the possibility that society will remember him and his notoriety, and may continue to respond to him in ways that could be anxiety provoking. He feels that everyone has forgotten him and that he will be able to simply walk away from harassment should it occur. He has some unrealistic plans about going to Australia after being released, although he is not certain about how to arrange his travel plans,” said Dr. Thomas J. Malueg during a 1974 interview from Madison’s Mendota Mental Health Institute, where he was said to be a model patient. He was 77 years old and at the time of the interview, and had been institutionalized for more than 20 years.
Gein passed away on July 26, 1984, of respiratory failure and was buried next to his mother in the Plainfield Cemetery.
After sightseers continued to chip away souvenirs, Gein’s headstone was eventually stolen, only to be discovered in the hands of a Seattle heavy metal band promoter, who was selling rubbings from the stone. Recovered, the headstone became part of the Waushara County Historical Society’s permanent collection, and an open spot next to Gein’s mother is the only evidence of his grave.
For years, members of the Hill family, the neighbors of Gein who had invited him to dinner on the night he was arrested, continued to leave flowers at the site on Memorial Day.
A never ending trail of visitors
Debby Cave, a longtime employee at True Value Hardware – which was once Worden’s Hardware, where Gein killed his last victim - is often reminded of what happened in the 1950s that put quiet little Plainfield on the map.
“My mother’s sister was one of those he exhumed,” said Cave, in a 2007 issue of Isthmus, the University of Wisconsin-Madison student newspaper.
“It bothers me when I visit my mother’s grave,” added Cave, who was seven years old when Gein was arrested. “My aunt’s grave is nearby, and so is Gein’s, although his gravestone is gone.”
“People still come in asking questions,” she said, “especially the summer tourists and again in the deer season. You see them out on
the street, taking pictures of this place. I understand it’s part of history, and it’s changed now with newer and younger people here. But people for the most part don’t want to talk about it, and we’re tired of it being dredged up.”
A child remembers
While many Plainfield residents chose not to talk about Ed Gein, a boy who knew him later recalled how he felt at the time of Gein’s arrest.
“The Stevens Point Journal once carried a quote that said, ‘Edward Gein had two faces. One he showed to the neighbors. The other he showed only to the dead.’ I think he had many more faces than that. The face I saw as a kid was simply the face of a seemingly normal old man.
“Being a handyman of sorts, Gein kept the farm vehicles in running order, and at times even worked a bit on cars and trucks for other people. When in need of a used part for repairs, if it could not be found in Plainfield, he looked further down the road, sometimes coming to Wisconsin Rapids and to my father’s Standard Oil gas station, Whetstone’s Highway 73 Garage, just three miles east of Nekoosa in Saratoga.
“We had a fence that bordered the yard, running up to meet at a gate in the northeast corner where Dad’s shop was. There was also a drinking fountain at that corner, providing the perfect place for us children to hang out when someone came who might be willing to buy us a candy bar and chat for a bit. Such was the case with Ed Gein. Although I have no firsthand experience in how he interacted with adults, he seemed to like children fine.”
Notable inspirations
The story of Ed Gein was so infamous so quickly that he inspired numerous movie and literary characters beyond Robert Bloch’s Norman Bates, brought to life on screen by Anthony Perkins.
Others include:
True Crime Stories Volume 4: 12 Shocking True Crime Murder Cases (True Crime Anthology) Page 16