Last Podcast On The Left - Episode 173: Ed Gein Part II - A Living Rainbow

Episode Date: May 6, 2015

In part two of three about the original Psycho, Ed Gein, we cover his first lady murder with tavern owner Mary Hogan and the various graveyard antics that eventually resulted in midnight reveries while wearing homemade mammary vests, among other things.

There's no place to escape to. This is the last talk. On the left. That's when the cannibalism started. What was that? Queen's an important woman, you see. She's the crown jewel of the entire monarchy. You betcha, eh? And I was like, the queen is an 80-year-old retarded lizard who does nothing and serves no purpose. Alright, we want to start this thing up, Marcus.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Alright, welcome to the show. I'm Ben Kizzle. That's Marcus Parks. Oh, yeah. Oh, it's cold outside. Where's my, where's my perco? I can't seem to find it. Well, I guess I'll have to use Old Mary. Yeah. Oh, I forgot to put a zipper on this. I'm going to have to make a zipper with these teeth. Ah, good and warm. But my arms are cold. Oh, well, better go back to Old Mary. Oh, a bit of snug, a bit snug. That's a bit snug.

It's not good if you're sewing something. It sounds like a boot walking through slush. That tends to mean that you're sewing up human flesh. And of course, we're talking about Ed Gein, part two. Oh, yeah. So we left off Ed Gein last time at his mother's funeral. A man that is absolutely devastated at the funeral. But as far as the people at Plainfield are concerned, following the funeral, Ed's just fine. Not a whole lot of change in his outward behavior. Still busy in himself with handiwork around town. Still babysitting kids.

He's just, um, he's a little weird, you know? Some of our Ed is a little weird. Yeah, just a little bit off. I don't know what it is about him. He's a bit of an on-ball. Augusta is dead. Oh, yeah. But I also want to go back over a bit, overview two again about Ed Gein. The more and more I read about it, it's so interesting kind of how mundane it all was when it comes to Ed Gein. People are looking for him to be this sort of like homicidal maniac because we're going to go through the details of his crimes.

And he wasn't. It's like everyone's wish he was a mother rapist. That's what bothered the people at Plainfield most when all of this stuff came out. When it came out that, you know, he had a box with, you know, more noses than heads in his apartment. You know, when it came out that he had got one of the local leaders of business, they expected him to be just this horrible monster when in reality it was just old Ed, the head like the, and, you know, they do the interviews with people in Plainfield after they caught him. And it's just all these old man goes, oh, you know, it's normal guy, bit odd. I mean, for normal guy.

For Plainfield, Wisconsin, being quiet, being humble, that's normal. Everyone's crazy behind those bizarre eyes of a lot of the Wisconsin, that a lot of Wisconsinites have. Unlike a Richard Ramirez type who wanted to be like the night prowler. He wanted to brand himself as something spectacular. Ed Gean didn't think he was doing anything that wrong. No, because he probably had three uncles that had shoes made out of human feet. I'm sure he did. Who knows? You don't know what they have in each other's in these farmhouses.

They're all out there diddling cows, putting dress on them saying, oh, at least we're married. Exactly. You put a cow in a dress. You get yourself a wife. Well, there were the only people that were really uncomfortable in Ed's presence, of course, were women. Right. You know, and while he was never inappropriate with women, he was one of those guys that tended to ogle him a little bit. They talk about how when all the men would gather up, whenever all the men were working together, they'd go and eat at lunch at somebody's house. The Ed would just kind of sit there after everyone else is done and just stare at the women in the kitchen until they noticed him.

And which point he would just fucking pick up and leave immediately. And the thing that also disconcerted a lot of the people is that he started switching out his belts for a measuring rope. You know, like you do for like, like, Taylor's half, which is really weird because he would just always go up to him and he's like, hey, you want to play soft limbo? He said what? And then he just wraps the thing around her tits and just goes like, oh, limbo. Right. 49 inches. That's interesting. And of course he was always fish-hooking the gals with his finger, putting them in her mouth and holding them up like they were a big tuna.

And be like, take a picture. Look at the size of this one I got. This is the one that didn't get away. You should have seen the one that did. Say he's in the boat. Anyways, out-killer. So he perfected what feminists now call the male gaze. He was very good at the male gaze, just stare until they get creeped out. Except for, there was also another story when he first got arrested that came out about a man who felt very uncomfortable by Ed Gein, a 300-pound Nina Barber who owns a, is that how you pronounce that, Nina? Nina Wisconsin. Yeah, they make a lot of manhole covers. Very successful town. That's sad.

300-pound Nina Barber who owns a farm near Slayer Ed Gein's house said the recluse pinched him on the belly once and said he'd be just about right for roasting. The Barber also revealed that though he didn't think too much of the remark at the time, he definitely noticed that Ed had a peculiar look in his eye. Yeah, the headline from that story, and that was a headline story. The entire story was about that. The headline was, 300-pound man recalls pension remark by Gein. I mean, you know, that's kind of a funny little remark. I mean, obviously in hindsight you realize how creepy it is. I'm surprised Gein didn't want to make him a couch. That's kind of nice.

Well, he was a man, and Gein worked exclusively in the medium of middle-aged women. To be honest, if I had a nickel for how many times I've been pinched and told me, and told how good I'd be for roasting, I'd have like 45 cents. That's a lot. One such woman, one such middle-aged woman in particular, was the owner of the local tavern, Mary Hogan. Now, Mary Hogan seems like a 60-year-old version of Jackie. Yes, Jackie Zabrowski from the round table. And Henry's sister, loud, foul-mouthed, drunk all the time, checkered past,

or at least rumored to have a checkered past, supposedly been divorced twice, scandalous in the 50s, and she had connections to the Chicago mob, and had worked in Chicago, specifically Cicero, as a madam. Mary Hogan, strong name for a strong gal. That's right. Yeah, exactly. She was rated to Hulk Hogan, and she was the one that gave him his patented body. Oh, I love that body. Also, in order to be a Chicago mobster's wife, you have to be able to at least drink nine beers and eat two Chicago buckets of pierogies, which are technically bathtubs.

Make the meatballs right as well. So for Ed, at this point, it's been about eight years since the death of his mother. And in the interim, he started to lose his grip on reality just a little bit. Now, this is my question. In terms of these next couple of details, I think there's still a lot to debate about whether or not Ed Gein was actually nuts or not. Really? Or if he was just really—I know he was—yes, obviously, he wasn't together. I mean, he's not going to be a fucking radiologist any time soon.

Right, right. But he definitely made up some details, I think. But this stuff's really interesting, because he began to see—he said that he would walk outside of his house. And basically, during those eight years of isolation, he went totally insane. Yeah. And he said that he saw vultures in the trees staring at him and shit like that. Hundreds of vultures dripping with blood and entrails. You ever been to Plainfield? That's all they got over there.

They got a bunch of vultures staring down at little Ed Geins. It looks like the pigeons are getting together again. So do we feed them, Brad? No, no, no, no. George, you know what we got to feed them is all these dead rats. Got to. That's all Plainfield has, is vultures and dead rats and Ed Gein's ghost. But he said he would also see faces in leaves, and they would start like, we're just like, not helping somebody's attitude. Well, to be fair, this is before television really picked up.

There was a couple of basic channels. You had your one, twos and threes. This was before HD. He was just trying to entertain himself. And really, to be in the mind of Ed Gein, that's a hell of a television show. Creepy. And I wish they didn't make Channel 4, the thing called Haunted Dreams made of broken glass and spider's legs. And he also was addicted to. I love that. He loved watching that show.

So the other things that he had reported that he started to hear at this time is that he started to hear his mother's voice as he was falling asleep at night. And he never exactly said what his mother's voice was telling him because, of course, every time he started to talk about his mother, he started blubbering like a fucking child. Ed, you think about cutting out their pussies? It's a fun idea. It's a good idea. No, mom, I don't want to cut out the pussies, mom.

I think you should. And as your mother, I command you to cut out their pussies. Alright, I already have nine. Have you ever noticed how sometimes a woman's arms and her legs kind of, they look like violin bows. Make some of those. That'd be pretty fucking righteous. He's talking with the, what's your name, Napoleon? Ah, it's funny.

His guy's funny and he says all this fucked up stuff and I'm laughing. He's eating me out. Things have really changed a lot for me up here, Ed. Yeah, I'm happy mom again has a good time in heaven. There's no doubt about that. And she still encourages crafts, even postmortem. Oh, yeah, big arts and crafts woman. Yeah, she was.

So Mary Hogan, of course, Ed's got his mother screaming in his ears. He's falling asleep at night. And Mary Hogan, she was the exact type of woman that Ed's mother warned him against. But conversely, she was also a lot like Augusta herself. Both very firm women, no nonsense business owners. Both had thick German accents. And thick German bodies. Oh yes.

Most importantly, Augusta and Mary Hogan looked a great deal alike. And this nothing got Ed Gein's fucking basement boiler churning harder than Mary Hogan. Absolutely. Yeah. And this duality caused like a kind of short circuit in Ed's brains because the two were virtual mirror images of each other because he saw his mother as the personification of good impurity in this world. She was dead, the other one, Mary Hogan, evil and lusty, but alive.

But that was the problem. Yeah. And that live part. Yes. Yeah. You got to change that mustache for sure. Right. Got a little bit of a mustache.

Most likely. Yeah. Got to. I think it's more like potential for mustache because got a big open upper lip dying for a mustache. And I also find this interesting because the psychologists at the time when they were working with Ed, they're basically saying that he had this sort of, again, this duality of like mindset that both like he was obsessed with his mother.

He loved his mother to the point of probably ejaculating in his pants and also hated her viscerally and wanted to kill her. And I also think it's got a lot to do with the sort of, there's a complex that goes on with sort of stereotypical male thinking between like Madonna horror thinking and thinking a woman is either a total filth or an angel and she's either a saint or somebody who needs to be made into a tuxedo. Yes. That's right.

So despite Ed's conflict, despite the conflicting thoughts that he had in his head, Mary had always been very nice to him. She was always very friendly towards him, but Ed didn't have his mother to guide him. Ed didn't have his mother to tell him, get away from her. You might because before, uh, Eddie, he never went out when his mother was still alive. He never went to out to have a couple of beers after a long day's work. Uh, so he didn't have his mother to tell him to get away from her immediately. Get out of there.

This woman is sent. She is filth. Get away with her, she will bring you down and rent your world asunder. And he had a bit of a crush on Mary and the sexual feelings that Ed had for Mary Hogan would be what would push him over the edge because his mother has his mother told him again and again, women were sin and his mother's word was law. Mary had to go. So on December 8th, 1954, Ed put a 32 caliber bullet in the Mary's head as she closed up

shop, loaded her body into his truck, took her back to the gene homestead. And when asked what he did with the body, Ed said he strung her up in the summer kitchen, cut up the body, saved some of the parts and burn the ones that he didn't want. Very Native American of him, yes, except they used all the parts. So I think he, you know, he should think about that poor Mary Hogan. I know. Like, I mean, this is really like you just feel for her so much because she was just a body tavern owner in small town, Wisconsin.

She would have been a good friend. She's staring at somebody like Ed, who is this fucking gaunt, weird skeleton man who she's probably just being nice to because he's hanging around just staring at her all day long talking about how man, her boobies must hold a lot of wine if they're made into wine sacks. That's funny, Ed. Yeah, she was just being a good bartender. Like there's that like that regular weirdo who's always lonely that comes to a bar.

She was just being a good bartender. She got killed for it. Well, yeah, that's me. That's what I've been doing. Oh, just going to a bar and being a lonely weirdo. Yeah, but I'm not, I'm not staring. Yeah, you know, I'm writing in my journal with a gigantic quill. That's very scary.

It's very scary. Looking at chicks breasts as if they're bags of Franzia. That's not right. That's not right, Henry. I'm surprised he used a gun. I really, he seems like a knife guy to me. Oh, no, no, no. In fact, and like killing, right?

He hated it. Well, he was, he had no problem killing small critters like raccoons, possums, things like that, but he couldn't stand the sight of blood. He would faint in fact at the sight of blood. And if you say like, okay, there's these, you know, that, that's kind of a discrepancy. If he butchered these women, but he always maintained that when he was in these sorts of, when he actually killed these women, that he was in a daze, that he doesn't remember killing or field dressing Mary Hogan at all.

And that's a part of why I think his claim, his confessions are dubious, because he, he always brought that up. Every single time they wanted him to go into the grizzly details, he'd be like, I don't remember that. I don't know. I was in a bit of a daze. Meanwhile, the pompom full of food, which we'll talk about because he was just obsessed with food.

And they kept bringing him pie and, and fried chicken and every single thing that a Wisconsin mother does to make her son well insulated against the winter. Well, of course he loved the food. He had been eating nothing but pork and beans for literally a decade. I'm not fucking lying there. That is all he would do. He would just go to a Louise Hill store, load up on pork and beans, go home, heat up the pork and beans on the little range oven that he had, and then just eat it straight out of

the can, and then throw the can on the floor of his house. Pork and beans, pork and beans. Love some good pork and beans. I think he was eating right. I love, I will eat pork and beans for dinner any time. Tooty house. It's really just the vessel that he was using to eat him in that was the problem. Yeah.

I think it was the skull, which is the thing is like, if here's a way to debase pork and beans anymore, it's just eat it out of a human skull, or does it elevate it? I'm not really sure anymore because my brain is fried. And so again, so Ed is a product killer, not a process killer. Yes. His whole point is that he wants to get to these bodies, but he also barely understands why he wants to get to these bodies. And I think with Mary Hogan specifically, it was just way too much.

He saw her. She was too perfect. I mean, she had that, she had that rock and rectangle body with the head, like a turtle with a wig on it. And she, that was exactly what he wanted. Oh, I love that. A gal with a turtle head with a little blonde wig. Snap at me, baby.

And you know, cause it's kind of like, um, seeing that, that prize, prize, like, like for me, a batoo of Berkshire pork, all riddled with fat and delicious. And yeah, it's, it's like maybe tucked away in a, in a, in a hidden refrigerator. And then I know that it's over there and maybe it's like $200 of a piece of it. And I'll just splurge and I'll get it or I'll break into store at night and I'll fucking steal it because it's haunting my dreams. That's what Mary Hogan was to him. Well, you want to pay for it.

You don't want to be a thief. He just had a great life. You know, when people hallucinate in the desert and they begin to see the things that they desire everywhere he went, sees all couches, belts, jackets. I mean, this guy really had a fun imagination. Yeah, he did. So coincidentally, at around the same time that Mary Hogan disappeared, four other people had gone missing in this area of Wisconsin, right?

Which is a lot because again, there are not many people in playing field at this time. Not many there now. Yeah, it's a lot. But Mary's disappearance was lumped in with these other four and nobody of course suspected harmless old Ed, who had actually been drinking at Mary's the night of her disappearance. The cops went out and said, hey, Ed, you know, were you at Mary's last night? Like, yeah, I was there. And he's like, well, did you see anything weird now?

Yeah. All right. See you later. See you, Ed. Because also he was really gaunt and really scrawny. But so they were like, that's what we'll see later on, too, is that no one believed that he could even commit these crimes because he was so skinny and weak. But actually he had what we were talking about last last episode, he had that farmer strength.

Yeah. So he just flopped Mary over like she was aside of beef because that's what she was. And dragged her in the car like it was zippity-dippity because he had them. He had them. Hey, bail enhance. Deceptively strong. And as a side note, Ed would be completely cleared of any involvement with any of the other disappearances.

It was like there was some sort of weird vortex going on in Wisconsin in 1954. But not long after, I mean, shit, we joked earlier about Ed making the Mary Hogan jokes. He actually did make Mary Hogan jokes. Because one of the men who employed Ed from time to time, a one Mr. Elmo Eweek. No, that's a classic name. Elmo Eweek. Elmo. Now that'll get you elected mayor in 90% of municipalities in Wisconsin.

Elmo's a strong name. It sounds like he's born with four strands of hair and never got more than that. Yeah. Yeah. Why do you need more than that, Henry? You know, you have to ask yourself that. Well, one day Elmo, he was teasing Ed about Mary. He said, Eddie, if you spent more time courting Mary, she'd be cooking for you instead of

missing. And Ed just, right. He rolled his eyes, scrunched up his nose and he said, she's not missing. She's down at the house right now. And for a while, keep Eddie around more and for a while, this was Ed's favorite joke. Like you ever get that joke that you just want to tell to every single person. Absolutely. And it's when he was in the company of others and the subject of Bernice came up as it often

did in playing field at the time, Ed would, I mean, he get that little grin on his face and he just say, he's at the farm right now. I went and got her in my pickup truck and took her home. I got her pussy on my cock right now. This is great. That beard that I put her, I, I have her whole vagina inside of my whitey tighties. You know, he's a little bit, he's, he's not my favorite comedian. He's a little blue for me, but he, but you can't deny.

He's funny. You can't deny it. He has just, he's got a humor. He lasts a little bit too long in himself, but that's kind of gets a little, a little creepy there. But you know, and his joke, it'd be met with nervous laughter. Just people like, Oh Ed, you know, he's just, you know, he's got his own sense of humor. He's a bit of an oddball.

A bit of an oddball. An oddball. It's like when a special needs a younger brother says he's going to be the head coach of the Green Bay Packers. Which is a personal story for me. My little brother still might do it. He might. He's not dead yet.

Yeah. I just talked to him about it. So next year, look out. Packer fans. You got a new head coach coming. So nobody, you know, suspected at all after Ed's jokes, just how much truth they'd find in his statement. When years later, Mary Hogan's head would be found in a brown paper bag in Ed's kitchen.

Years later. Years later. Okay. So that is three years later. What's on the head? After three years, what do you got? All the meat's gone. Right?

It's just a skull at that point. He had preserved all of them. Yeah. I went, I put a bunch of pictures up of his crime scene photos last night on the last podcast Facebook page. And if you notice, it's, they become brown, sort of like a George Hamilton or Kris Jenner. Sure. Perfectly like suntanned.

So Ed, you know, you think he's lonely. You think no one's after Mary Hogan, the only person that ever talked to him was gone forever. Not true. Ed did have a very, admittedly very small circle of friends and they were all teenagers or children, but a little after Mary Hogan's disappearance, a rumor started to circulate around Plainfield. His best friend was a teenager named Bobby Hill. And Bobby was said to be Ed's only friend, only actual friend.

And Bobby had told his parents a disturbing little story. Bob, he hung out with Ed quite a bit. They hunted rabbits. They went to high school football games together. And Bobby was also one of the very few people to ever go inside Ed's house. And on one occasion, Ed allegedly brought a pair of preserved human heads to show to Bobby. And when Bob asked where he got him, Ed said that a cousin of his had picked him up in

the Philippines during the war and it brought him back for Ed to have. All right. But it's just so weird, Ed, that then why are you wearing one? That's what they do in the South Seas. Just having fun in the South Seas. How else you're going to eat your soup if you're not wearing a full human head? I don't know. We eat soup a lot.

You're funny. Gosh, gee willikers. You want to go play some jacks outside? So Bobby Hill is just a teenager. He's hanging out with Ed's about what, 42 years old at this point, maybe a little bit older, 44 or something like that? He is, yeah, yeah, he's getting, he's definitely in his 40s. Right.

Right. I think a little Bobby was trying to seduce Ed. It's very possible. I'm going to put it on Bobby. I had a friend, when I was a small child, I had a friend who was in his 40s. Yeah. Yeah. Clayton.

Okay. Do you have any repressed memories you want to bring up? Not at all. Clayton was a good guy. I have to say this every, no, he was a piece of shit, but he did not molest me. He didn't. He didn't make you play find the rope with him. That's amazing.

I'm not sure he didn't play him. He didn't play the game. Kiss the Clayton with you. I'm a hundred percent sure. I saw my first porno at the age of five. I knew what sex was. I knew what was weird and what wasn't from Clayton, but no, it was, it was not from Clayton. It was not from Clayton.

So at no point did he want you to do the old chew the bubblegum between my legs. No, all I'm saying is that I know what Bobby Hill is all about. All right. I would have been friends with Ed. I would have been friends with the odd ball. What does that say about us, Henry? We're normal. Oh, okay.

No, you guys are like a couple of my closest friends. Yeah. So I think we're like Ed technically like Ed funny or versions. We're funny about it. We're being funny. So is he in his way. He was a goof. He was a goof.

Yeah. I do like the ideas of Bob and Eddie hanging out and it's just cause it's, it's true. It's like Bob as Bobby is this like 1950s, like Jude and Cleaver, like, oh, well, then sure is, then sure is pretty funny, Eddie and Eddie is this bent old fucking pervert. It's like while he's talking to Bobby, he's got his dick through a severed vagina in his pants. Right. They're hanging out.

Other sitting there talking about the baseball game and talking about how it's like, I heard they run out of malt at the malt shop. They're going to have to change the sign and he's like, yeah, that is pretty funny. Meanwhile, he's got like calm inside of a hollowed out woman's feet inside of his fucking garage, just doing different things just cause your friends doesn't mean you have to have the same passions. You know, that's very important to remember. So Bob told his parents about the heads.

They weren't concerned or even surprised. They believed him. You know, people talk about rape culture and I can understand why they say such things, but really it's just the culture of corpses in Wisconsin. Just the comfort of bones. Oh yeah. Okay. And at no point was this a red flag that the man might be doing something completely deplorable.

No, they just said, they just said it's just the sort of thing that oddball is going to have in his house. It's not. It's really not. And also it's very funny how liberally they use the term oddball in every single documentary and interview about him. I watched the old school A&E bio biography special about Ed Gein. It's real good.

It was pretty good. There was a lot of the vintage like interviews from back in the day when the day he was caught and everyone, every single one of them is like, it was a bit of an oddball. He was, how'd I put it? Martha, how'd you put it? It was an oddball. I mean, it is a bit of an oddball. Jerry Lewis is an oddball.

You know, Harry Carey, he was kind of an oddball. And despite Ed being an oddball, the Hills welcomed him into the home without reservation. And in fact, they invited Ed over to dinner from time to time. In fact, Ed would be watching I Love Lucy after a meal of pork chops with macaroni and pickles at the Hills house on the night of his capture hours after he field dressed his second victim and beheaded her in his cellar. Eddie, I hope, I hope everybody likes my meal. I serve this to people, basically, it's in order to make people fat.

Oh, yeah, I don't know, it's pork and beans. He did a lot of work. He was a hard worker all day and he got rewarded with pork and pickles. But I also don't understand about like, to me, the concept of oddball and the fact that this was their baseline oddball in Plainfield should have made Plainfield like a liberal mecca. Yeah, I mean, just like a normal run on the little oddball, people should have just been showing up there after the crime and just being like, this is where our freak flag can

fly and just have like, like have the LGBT community come in and claim it. I mean, I guarantee you, the person that they thought was like the strangest guy in Plainfield was the only one who didn't vote for Barry Goldwater. They're like, Barry down the street, he's a commie. No, he's the one gay man who made suits in town. He was like, who had his oldest friend living with him in his cabin. Oh, that was just, that was normal for Wisconsin. Back in the day, everyone just allowed those things to happen.

Oh yeah. Well, there was, there was one woman who came over to Eddie's house one day because Ed, he had this big house and in a moment, I'd say in a moment of near sanity, he decided he needed to get the fuck out of there. And so he talked to a local young couple and he told him, he's like, Hey, why don't we switch houses? You've got this small house. My mom's dead.

My brother's dead. My father's dead. Why don't you guys come out? You can live in my house. I can live in your house. It's just a fair swap. So the woman, you know, the wife, she's like, you know, this, you know, this kind of this sounds pretty good.

He's got that big house out there. So her and the husband came over and took a little tour and they described, this is disgusting. They described the kitchen floor as slippery with grease. And this is before Airbnb even existed. Oh yeah. This is a great reality show. They do those. You couldn't leave a one star review if you wanted to know, don't yelp about the geek

house. Have some class. Don't leave the review on Airbnb. This is a great reality show. They do the house swap show. Oh yeah. So you can imagine if you went up with with Ed Gein's home, how exciting that would be.

And yeah, you end up in a house that used to be a former like, Oh, look, it was a fire house. Isn't that funny? And there's this pole slide. Oh, there's big doors. It's like, Oh, that's kind of weird. Yeah. And you end up in the other house and it's just full of cut up tits.

Oh, weird. It's a, it's a fixer upper. Yeah. And there was even, there was a dead rat on the floor of his kitchen that he had shot with a 22. And he looked over, he's like, Oh, you know, this place is just, I'm going to get around and clean it at one day. Well, that is classic.

Yeah. And he, the woman actually asked him, it's like, Hey Ed, do you know, you keep your heads, is that the room where you keep your shrunken heads? And he just said, No, they're in this other room over there. And the woman said, Oh, you know, people were always kidding with that about things like that. It's two and a half bedrooms, two and a half baths. The other half of the other bathroom is just chock full of lady knees.

I put them over my knees. Yeah, that's good, you know, he actually dated a woman very briefly. One woman, his entire life. She was named Adeline Walkins and papers would later describe her as quote severely plain. Hmm. And the, how does one be extremely plain, severely plain? Like that's aggressively plain, offensively plain.

She was also the most charismatic woman in playing fields. So that'll tell you a little bit about the town. I think that's adorable. Yeah. Of course, Ed's going to be with a playing gal, you know, she's got the khaki pants, the button down shirt, perfect for each other. Let's just say she would be the perfect canvas. Yes.

Yes. So the pair, their date, their first date, they went into a matinee of it's a wonderful life. And isn't it? And sat next to each other, speechless the entire time. Good date. It is very nice, very respectful of the movie in the cinema and on the next date, she started, they finally started talking and she and Ed said, you know, yeah, you know, my mother's,

my mother's passed on and Adeline, she confessed she couldn't stand living with her widowed mother. Said she was a huge pain. Yes. And that is, that is God and of course, Ed just into the courtship right then and there. This is a very similar story though to when Rocky Belboa began dating his wife in the movies. Oh, Adrian.

Adrian. They didn't speak very much at all in the beginning. And that is another severely plain woman. Yes. And he is sort of crazy because of the boxer brain and the lack of intelligence. I just want to put this out there then again, if anybody out there feels lonely and you feel like you won't find that somebody, you can. Ed Gein did, BTK was married.

All these people found love. Yeah. At one point or another. I mean, they threw it all away with the bad fascination with death and murder and the murder. Yeah. I mean, threw away a lot. Right.

Yeah. They didn't turn into something constructive like a podcast. Oh, very good. Oh yeah. And speaking of constructive and speaking of filling your ample amounts of spare time, your days upon hours upon weeks of doing nothing at all, Ed liked to spend his spare time besides his obvious hobbies with reading. And in fact, his reading comprehension, his IQ was actually pegged as normal bright because

his reading comprehension was huge and he was a voracious reader, but his reading habits did tend towards the macabre. When they went into his house, they found stacks of detective magazines which outlined brutal crimes and they found adventure books which detailed all sorts of South Seas exploits, particularly those involving headhunters. But his favorite stories were about the Nazis. He obsessed over concentration camp guards, specifically ones like Ilse Koch. She was the bitch of Buchenwald.

Now in order to be called singularly the bitch of Buchenwald, you got to be pretty mean. Oh. You have to be the meanest one. I want to see his television show, forget reading rainbow, was that LeVar Burton that hosted that thing? Yeah. Yeah. I never learned nothing.

If I would have had Ed Gean's book club, that would have been great. Yeah. The Ed Gean book club with Eddie Gean live from Plainfield, Wisconsin. What I like about this book here is it's got this cover of this woman real thick in me. Real wide in the chest and she's got a Nazi hat on and I like the angles of it. Hey mom. You should read it. Hey mom, can I get one of these Nazi books?

Yeah, your father has them upstairs. Ilse, she was accused of collecting human heads and using the skin of her victims for lampshades and book bindings and also delighted in reading books about exhumations and necrophilia like the stories of 19th century aristocrats who robbed graves with their own sexual purposes. And I also have an example of one of those stories from Harold Schechter's Deviant which is very interesting about the story of a young man named Victor Artisan who was born in 1872 at the age of 28 after having pursued his perverse activities for more than nine years was caught and convicted when his neighbors complained to the police of a terrible stench

emanating from his house. The source of this odor turned out to be the cadaver of a three and a half year old girl that Artisan had brought home from the graveyard a week before and until the body had reached such an advanced state of decay that he no longer ventured to touch it but formed cuddling us on believing in words of the physician who has examined him that this sort of caress could wake the dead. So he wouldn't touch it but he ate it out? Yeah.

Ah, man. All right. But you know what? All of this stuff, all of this stuff, he did it. Like he actually, I mean he read this stuff and he followed through and in fact he would say later that we're about to get into his graveyard antics but much like this guy, this necrophiliac, Ed believed that he had the power to raise the dead through sheer willpower. Right.

In fact with every body he exhumed he tried just that thing but of course after he failed with that it was on to the anatomy. He had an extensive collection of anatomy books, his favorite was a second hand copy of Grey's Anatomy that he picked up on one of his visits to Wisconsin Springs. You know that one, Ben? Yeah, it's in Wisconsin. Cool. Yeah.

It's got the spring. But one... It's not a place where big people go to burn in the sun? No, no, Wisconsin Springs. It's not about springs you think like water reservoirs and it's just springs, mattress springs. Yeah. That's what they specialized in.

Bungie Bungie Bungie. Great. Fun Town. This is fun. Yeah. Well one story that really caught his eye was the true tale of Christine Jorgensen which was also a big inspiration for another of my favorite pop culture icons, Ed Wood. Christine Jorgensen was America's first look at the world of sexual reassignment surgery

and Ed since he was a little boy he'd always wondered what it was like to be a little girl to the...to a point of obsession. Never dare tell anyone but he always...he wanted to be a woman. That was one of his deep desires was to be a woman. It's probably why he kept the weight down. You've got to keep my figure. We talk about this a lot with a lot of serial killers. If there was a way for him to have talked to somebody about these feelings and again

this is 1950s, nobody wants to talk about sexual reassignment surgery especially at this point it's just like what they do for it is they put a hook on the inside of your own dick and then they basically have you...they feed it through your urethra until it comes out of your asshole and then they pull it through. So they...no one wants to talk about this. So it feels like when you're a little socially mixed up in a bit of an oddball and you want to be a lady, a part of what you get in your head is I just make a suit out of one. Right, right, right, right, right.

It's like if you want to be a businessman you go to...you go to...you go to...whatever. Joseph A. Bank. You kill a businessman and you wear his suit. You wear the business dress for the job you want. I want to be a businessman, well you gotta go skin one and then you get to be him. Yeah, okay. Just you showing up in a job interview just covered with bloody loose skin. I'm a businessman.

Lancaster. It's so nice to meet you. Stuxen Man. Stuxen Man. Barry Goldstein? Is that your skin? I'm Barry...yes I'm Barry. Oh, I meant to say Barry.

Barry Sanderson. What was the name? Oh. Sugar. So and he would... He would and that's this is actually a very sad I mean, it's a lot of different things came together, you know First of all, he was schizophrenic highly schizophrenic second of all the horrible

Abuse that his mother put him through over the years and third of all his desire to actually become a woman All these three things came together and we joke, but it is true The only solution he could find was to go to the graveyard and dig up middle-aged women and Make suits out of them right and this is what he said about how his graveyard antics began After my mother died, I began to have strange visions. I developed an uncontrollable desire to see a woman's body I began to visit cemeteries at night when the moon was full Had an antimine worked up and a lunatic asylum told me once outpatients went wild at this time of the month I began to watch the papers for obituaries of women

The night after they were buried I would go to the cemetery and open up their graves And then I just start dancin' You gotta dance And it was alright cause this is late is not a what a night A what a night No problem So over a five-year period starting in 1947 two years after his mother died Ed made as many as 40 midnight visits to three local cemeteries

Mainfield Hancock and Spiritland Robbing graves at least nine times Leaving the graves afterwards as Ed would say in apple pie order I don't know I leave my apple pies looking like a bit of a mess Exactly they all look like the American pie apple pie after the boy had sex with it This is the least of his crimes though obviously killing Mary Hogan is the worst one Well killing Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden And Bernice yeah so at this point he's just a grave robber

And again I still have a very difficult time understanding the human concern for the flesh after we're gone The squeamishness You're just looking at where this crime happened and when it happened When these people heard this information come out that he was grave robbing And he was desecrating these corpses People just literally couldn't understand it I was watching interviews with some of these old people that were dealing with it at the time And they were literally just like he did what?

What? Yeah I just I don't know even what? What? He did he had the nipple nipple? Because most of the time this is the first time an 80 year old Wisconsinite has said the word nipple Absolutely Yeah

And now he has to say nipple belt Right And put it on and everything Yeah and a lot of people were more concerned with the grave robbing than they were with the murders Right The murders they could understand murder There had been murder was and death was not an odd part of life in Wisconsin especially in the 1950s Yeah this is extremely it was the great dead heart of Wisconsin for fuck's sake

People would die for no reason you'd die I mean and death was also a big part of American life at the time They're not too far out of the dust bowl They're not too far out of the depression people starving to death You know so death was accepted But digging up their relatives and making suits out of them too much for them to handle Definitely outside the box A lot of work too I mean he would have to do this over a period of what eight hours or so Dig up a grave take out the body

And in fact when And redo it In fact when he was first questioned investigators didn't believe him when he said that he had dug these out of the graveyard Because like they said like Henry said he was a small scrawny guy and the soil was very sandy in plain field So if you tried to dig up a grave just more and more sand would start coming in And they thought that it was an impossible task for one guy even if he was strong I would love to see I mean Ed Gean Ed how'd you get those traps How'd you get that strong back

Well he was surprised at just how many muscles you can build just digging up old fat women And snapping their caskets open and dragging their bodies out And then hauling the bodies up towards the ceiling and gutting them like they're a deer Well you know what we're gonna we're gonna go with Billy Blanks' Taibo That's the video we're gonna be pushing right now I see faces in the leaves and they laugh at me and tell me I can't do it But I said oh it's too late already did Okay Ed Gean's exercise routine part one we're gonna shelve it for now

All the corpses were middle aged all of them were newly dead And in some cases they were women that Ed actually knew Well he was dog in the obituaries while he was reading the obituaries to try to pick in his perfect ones Each one that basically fit the same amount of water distribution as Augusta Augusta He was also severely conflicted basically it's what he said He went on about 40 times to do it but only built up the nerve to do it about nine times He would go freak out come back to his house

Again he was very conflicted in what he was trying to chase some form of satisfaction From anything in life which is a human compulsion You have to feel satisfied you have to feel like you're happy and you're doing something He had nothing and so this was the only thing that sort of scratched the void and it's just pretty gross If you do dig up a cemetery one out of four times you're in it that's bad I would say zero out of four times He would also say much like he said about the murders is that he would be in a daze while he was doing it He said it was some sort of force something that he couldn't really control

And he said in fact there were a couple times that he snapped out of his daze in the middle of robbing a grave And he would stop he would bury the he would put the grave back up he would bury the grave back bury the coffin back And then go back home and sometimes he would take a full body and then he would get back to the house He would take the parts that he needed for his projects and then he'd go back to the graveyard And he'd replace body parts that he didn't want which is his again his perverted way of being respectful He felt that when he was doing that he was because he would feel really bad He would go back and leave parts again because he was like I didn't need these Don't want to be a greedy guess

So hopefully it wasn't like 90% of the way through the grave robbing when he you know snapped out of it No don't let me snap out of it now I'm almost done It's kind of like taking a bunch of mushrooms and then two hours in realizing you were supposed to be at work Oh no So Edd's moonlight excursions most of the time didn't get as far as the cemetery Because during most full moons he wouldn't get any further than his front yard And for such occasions Edd had the infamous what cops refer to as the mammary vest What's that Marcus?

You know when it's getting technically the mammary vest for him was so much better than like a wedding tux Because a wedding tux you can really only wear once Oh absolutely And this is something that he made to last the torso was tanned skin from the upper body of a middle aged woman Complete with breasts and he had attached straps to it so he could fasten it tight to his body I'm going to say this and I don't want to be gross You know me I'm a tasteful person I want to be gross I saw some pictures of the mammary vest and I got to say

Those are some pretty rockin boobies They're pretty awesome Whoever was the 50 year old woman who took him from him was stacked like a viral It's got to be so he chose right? Yeah well yeah I mean he wanted to look good Yeah yeah for sure This is my other question So he's got the titty vest on also which I'm a little upset that he went and got one because I'm forced to wear one

On my body He put the titty vest on pulled up the lady leggings made out of lady Put the arm pieces on had the gloves on Stuck some hair in his head And then what did he do? He danced around in the moonlight With the drum that he made of his own that was made from human skin He had a human jaw bone and he'd bang on it and he'd hoot and he'd holler

And he just had the time of his life What do you want him to do? Henry go ask a boy out to the city Hawkins dance? What's he supposed to do? He's covered in another human being's flesh You want him to go get a job at an AM bank? I feel like that's what he wanted to do Only he could have lived normal like that If only the people of Plainfield could have been a little less judgmental

Well, you can judge him a little bit Yeah, they can judge him a little bit He had also face masks that he had made out of He had nine masks made out of human faces Every single one came from the face of a woman whose grave he robbed Five were for wearing Four were for showing Ed, your face, your skin looks amazing

Your eyes are so beautiful I got it from this woman named Estelle What's your secret? What is creepy? The creepiest factor about wearing someone else's face on your face Is the stick in the tongue out through the other person's face You got some stamps? Gotta hate it when you do that

That's just the fucking grossest sound in the world The tongue and then the nose being inside the other nose The whole thing, I'm gonna go with the whole thing The creepiest thing is the whole thing Can you imagine just walking up and seeing him do it? Him going like, oh, I'm a lady Oh, I'm a lady Talking about a little

Oh, you're just looking for some wheat to make some bread? I gotta say, I'm plum embarrassed The strangest thing happened, I went to the gene house To try to get some pork and beans And then when I got there, all I saw was unbridled joy It was amazing I gotta say, Martha, a part of me wanted to throw up And a part of me wanted to be like, that's beautiful

He's a living rainbow Head gene, the living rainbow So five of these were for wearer And four were stuffed with newspapers and hung on the wall Some of the faces were almost mummified Others had been treated with oil and were fairly well preserved Some, however, were regularly kept in lipstick And were said to be almost lifelike

And that right there, the lipstick on the face mask That's a Texas Chainsaw Massacre detail right there Because if you guys didn't know We actually haven't really said this much Is that Ed Gein was the inspiration for Psycho He was the inspiration for the Texas Chainsaw Massacre He was the inspiration for Buffalo Bill In Silence of the Labs

Ed Gein really could be said is one of the most important pop culture icons Of the 20th century, of course, of the mid-20th century And especially in the world of horror If Ed Gein wouldn't have existed The world of horror movies, as we know it, would not exist And in fact, American cinema probably wouldn't exist In the form that we know it He was the awkward Elvis Presley of wearing somebody else's tits

And of course Adam Sandler's great movie, Click That was also based on the notebook Which people didn't know was an original working title For Nicholas Sparks' notebook was the notebook Parentheses made from human skin Made from human skin I did not know that That is great to learn

And what follows now is as far as the Peace de resistance of the woman suit that Ed had This is from the Confessions of Ed Gein Do you have any recollection of taking any female body parts? Vagina specifically, and holding it over your penis To cover your penis? I believe that's true Would you ever put on a pair of women's panties

Over your body, and then put some of these vaginas Over your penis? That could be, yeah, that could be Have you ever used the facial skins you took as masks Placing them over your face? That I did And would you wear those faces over a prolonged time? Not too long, I used to have other things to do

Taste close I'm deeply in the middle of Mass Effect 3 Trying to get that done And then I'm really perfecting my apple pie recipe And then I'm also, I'm making a hat Just a bunch of hands There's a fun little hat on the hands It's a project I'm working on

Did he ever wear their butts, Mr. Gein? No, no, never their butts I'm not filthy Well, in fact, speaking to him thinking things were filthy He never or said, and I believe him on this one He said that he never had sexual relations with the bodies Because he said they smelled too bad I disagree with him on that one

Oh, the dead women's, the dead middle aged women Smell too bad to fuck? No, that he didn't do it Of course he had sex with these bodies He was wearing their skin But it wasn't as prerogative to have sex It wasn't, I mean technically, yes He is a necrophiliac

But I don't believe that he ever penetrated any orifices What's more penetrated than wearing a person You're inside their skin Technically not penetrating the orifice Now we're getting into semantics here You're getting all lawyer-y I mean, lawyer-y, I'm just saying If he didn't have sex with these corpses

I would almost be disappointed in him This is what everybody's saying This is why everyone, no one, everybody feels like you, man They all feel like it I actually truly believe also that he did not fuck them I think that's how much of a fucking weird dork he was That he didn't fuck them I think that if he fucked them

That would make him even more of like a jock I'm saying he fully, he fully fucked them He was wearing them He was inside of a Russian doll I mean, technically, Ben, as far as the definition of necrophilia goes The psychological definition of necrophilia, DSM-4 Yes, Ben, you are correct Thank you, Marcus

But in the real world, in layman's terms Out of the hoity-toity ivory tower of academia I'm gonna put it this way When I wear a leather jacket, do I feel like I'm fucking a cow? No, I don't But I'm eating a hamburger Do I feel like, yes, I do feel like I'm eating a cow That's a bad, that's a bad, I do sometimes feel like I'm fucking a cow

That's fine, that's fine I'm just saying, when you're using them like they're the herd of buffalo They stop being potential girlfriends And they start becoming rolls of fabric Alright, okay It was only just a matter of time before we started turning them into tents And eventually weapons Yup, selling them at Gander Mountain

The human tent made by Ed Gein And Ed, when asked why he chose women in particular He said The hair, longer hair seemed to have more value to me Needed it for my materials And he also took this from the headhunter books that he had In which longer hair was seen to be of more value Did he so with the hair?

He was also killing mommy That's also the other thing too, he was doing mommy And he doesn't want to talk about that He had a hard time dealing with that And never understood that He never made the connection He rotted away in an institution for the criminally insane for so long He rotted, he thrived

Yeah, he loved it Yeah, he did great That was the best time of his life Yeah Was living in that hospital Yeah, the second half of his life, I mean his sunset years I mean, it's not often that the second half of life is better than the first half But Ed Gein

You should be so lucky Yup, and this behavior would carry on for years Before Ed or some might say his mother chose the next victim Well actually, you know, before we start the next thing We've been having so much goddamn fun talking about old Eddie Gein We've made the episode way too long Oh, okay So we're gonna make this a three-parter

And I'm gonna tell you this guys, we're just getting to the good shit Yeah, yeah We're just getting to the good shit, I'm so excited now Yeah, we're just now getting to the fucking proverbial blood and guts As a fan of fashion Mary, it was on the last podcast page a lot Told me a thing that was really funny You're gonna like the next episode so much

You're gonna be making some Bloomer Puddin Oh, I can't wait That's what her father used to cast kids Used to called making a woman fucking moist What's wrong with you? Moist, Bloomer Puddin I gotta say, it's really odd how many weird personal connections we have to Ed Gein I guess it's just because we know so many people from Wisconsin

But it seems like everybody has an Ed Gein story Doug, the guitarist and the cowman, the band that I'm in Album coming out May 29th Good luck Yeah His grandparents were married in Wisconsin the day that Ed Gein was caught My girlfriend, her father, used to drive by Bernice Warden's hardware store Once a week on the way to Sheboygan, Wisconsin

And his college friend actually treated Ed Gein at Central State Hospital Wow, look at that It's so weird, and I have a tattoo of Ed Gein around my butthole with the butthole as his mouth Isn't that great, and the little hat there on top of your butthole That's the hair Oh, nice Well guys, head on out to cavecomedyradio.com Slash last podcast on the left to get your last podcast on the left t-shirt

It's $25 domestic, $40 international Go to iTunes, rate and review That really helps us out We were almost in the top 20 comedy podcast to iTunes yesterday So your rates, your reviews really help us to get Let's get in the fucking top 20, man And I would say fucking Heil Gein, man Heil, sweet, sweet, Gein, I'm gonna leave you guys, I'm gonna also read a Geiner real quick

Yeah Why do they have to keep the heat on in Ed Gein's house? Why? So the furniture wouldn't get goosebumps That is funny Hey, hey, why do they let Ed out of prison on New Year's Eve? Why? Why?

So he can dig up a date! Oh, I got it, that's very good Thanks so much for supporting all the shows here on CCR Also top at Roundtable, page 7, and Sex and Other Human Activities This would be a good one to talk about in Sex and Other Human Activities Actually, we already have Yeah, it's one of the other activities Yeah

I was gonna say hi to V and to Chris I miss you guys in Atlanta Yes, hail yourselves, everyone Oh, and by the way, to listener out there in Indiana Kevin Cleveland is indeed my cousin Oh And stop calling him a liar Uh-oh

We got a feud Hail Satan, you've always been good to me And we're gonna make a lot of money this year, Satan Yeah, you'll see, you'll see, Satan You'll see Make it to the Stalations, everyone Oh, yeah, Magus Stalations Yeah, yeah

Can't forget that one Help me I love you Alright, well I love all of you Is this a cry for help now? I love all of you, and some of you more specifically I love you the most

Alright, someone just messaged Henry something else For more shows like the one you just listened to Go to cavecomedyradio.com