Murder With My Husband - 290. Ed Gein's House of Horrors

Episode Date: October 13, 2025

On this episode, Garrett and Payton dive into the case of Ed Gein. A killer who’s murders where so disturbing that it’s effects still linger today. Links - Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/murderwithmyhusband NEW MERCH LINK: https://mwmhshop.com Discount Codes: https://mailchi.mp/c6f48670aeac/oh-no-media-discount-codes Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/themwmh Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/murderwithmyhusband/ Watch on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@murderwithmyhusband Listen on Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/into-the-dark/id1662304327 Listen on spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/36SDVKB2MEWpFGVs9kRgQ7?si=f5224c9fd99542a7 Case Sources - Deviant by Harold Schecter Biography.com - https://www.biography.com/crime/ed-gein-inspired-horror-movies Britannica.com - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ed-Gein Marca.com - https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/tv-shows/2023/08/24/64e76afdca4741cd5e8b4585.html Medium.com - https://medium.com/tftunderworld/ed-gein-the-sadistic-monster-that-inspired-the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-b1a6fcb6fc79 Collider.com - https://collider.com/ed-gein-horror-movies/ Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Bates_(Psycho) Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You're listening to an Ono Media podcast. Hey, everyone, welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my husband. I'm Peyton Morland. And I'm Garrett Morland. And he's the husband. And I'm the husband. Well, it's spooky season, and we have a special guest on the show.

Everyone watching, say hi to Mr. Skelly. And if you're not watching, Mr. Skelly is with us on set today. It is a, it's not a real person. Don't worry, everybody. It's a skeleton that we got. The whole bottom of him is currently duct tape because he was leaking his insides. Sand everywhere. So we duct taped him.

He's good to go. Muck-on-life. I came downstairs at nighttime. That would be a little freaky. Yeah, Loki, he's really big. Daisy is really pissed off. She does not like this skeleton. She's very jealous.

But she needs to get over it. Hope everyone is having a great Monday. Spooky season. Then we have November. Then we have December. Then we have 2012. And then at one point, at some point, we all get old and we die, you know? Life just kind of flashes before your eyes.

We love you guys. We hope you're doing great. For my 10 seconds, something I've always wanted to do. And I say I'm going to do it every year that it never happens is I've always wanted to be that house that gives out, you know, like big candy bars. But then every year it comes and then Peyton and I realize we haven't bought candy yet. And then we go to the store a day before and we buy some candy. And I don't know. it would be cool to do like huge candy bars or something crazy what do you think babe yeah you don't

really care about that i mean did you did you not trick or treat when you were younger no i did oh it was just always snowing oh i guess that's oh in idaho yeah i guess that's true i never really experienced that growing up i was in my snow i had my snowsuit over my costume yeah i never really thought about that that sucks if you live somewhere where it snows i am sorry How does that work, actually? If you live somewhere where it's dumping snow and hollet, you just don't tricketry, I assume. I mean. And everyone just hangs out inside, right?

We would go, like, even if it's snowing, but I guess if it's a full-blown storm, no, you wouldn't go. If there was snow on the ground, we would still go. Oh, okay. Anyways, I don't know. I've always wanted to get big candy bars, so maybe I'll end up doing that. I'll keep you guys posted on Instagram or something. Other than that, it sounds like we have a pretty wild case today. You guys should all know this.

I only know what it is, what it's going to be about, because Peyton mentioned it to me yesterday. And apparently there's a new Netflix documentary that came out about it as well. Documentary. What? Oh, was it like a... It's like a reenactment? Okay. Got it.

You can take it away from here, baby. All right, you guys, if you don't know what we're covering, Netflix just dropped its third monster. series on Ed Gein. Ed Gein is a prolific killer. I don't know if he can be qualified as a serial killer, but he definitely, his name is brought up often when people talk about serial killers because they believe he's one of the very first

most disturbing killers that we have documented and he influenced a lot of American culture once people learned about his life. Again, Netflix just dropped the new Monsters series based on Ed Gein. And I'm just going to give my quick thoughts on it before we start. So that way I don't have to do it throughout. It is definitely not a documentary and it is definitely not an accurate depiction of the Ed Gein case. So we will be covering Ed Gein and I, if you are watching the series,

we'll go through and kind of tell you what's different from the series. I do still think it's a good series. It's just not Ed Gein case. I do love that they tie in the influence that he had on American culture. And one of the things I think they went for the most was how monsters influence monsters all the way to the point where there's even a scene where Ed actually looks right at the camera, kind of breaks the third wall, and says, am I the monster or are you the monster because you can't stop watching so basically like oh that's freaky so basically he's saying like people who are fast because he was influenced by uh world war two and adolf hitler and the Nazis that's kind of what pushed him in so they're saying like that influenced him which then

influenced directors to make movies based on ed gine that we then watched and became obsessed with and now we're all obsessed with so but i still think they could have done that theme while sticking more to the facts of the case because it just like I said is really messy in terms of the actual story when you're using actual names but I digress it's a disturbing watch but yeah definitely not an accurate representation that being said Gary do you know anything about eggine the only thing I know is that he would wear okay yep can I not say it no you can that he'd wear people's faces yeah how do you know that because i said it yes because you said it when you were talking to somebody the other day yeah um that's about the only thing i know okay let's get

into today's episode our sources for this episode are deviant by harold schecter biography dot com britannica com, marca.com, medium.com, and call it her.com. All right, let's face it. Every day, doing this show feels kind of like spooky season to us. When you're constantly talking about the worst products of mankind, it is easy to feel like the world is just one big horror film. But the man we are talking about today might be in a league of his own. He's a son, so twisted, he gives new means, to the term mama's boy. He's a man so deranged that his biography feels more like a legend meant to scare children to sleep. He's a monster so disturbed that he inspired not one but several well-known horror films. But today's subject was no storybook myth. He was a human, just like the

rest of us who somewhere along the journey lost his way. Ed was a handyman. He was a farmer, he even dabbled in babysitting. He was a seemingly average, though odd, man, blending in with the rest of society. And honestly, that might be the most horrifying part of it all. So let me set the scene. It is 1954 in central Wisconsin in the area of Plainfield, to be exact. And I just need to say Plainfield is a quiet, desolate area even for the 50s. So it is definitely like out in the middle of nowhere in the 50s. The roads are lined with picturesque farmland, silos sprouting from the rolling hills, cattle grazing in the pastures. Outside of the one main street in Plainfield, there is really not a lot to do. There is a hardware store, a gas station, a bank. They do have a

couple churches scattered around the area. One weekly newspaper delivering the mundane updates of Plainfield and a tavern or two where people go to spread news. and gossip, especially after a long day on the farm, which is what most people there do. Now, one of the popular locations is called Mary Hogan's Tavern. It is located in a little stretch seven miles or so outside of Plainfield Village called Pine Grove. And Mary's Tavern is often bustling with people just looking to blow off steam. It honestly doesn't look like much from the outside. It looks more like a roadside warehouse than like an inviting tavern that a bunch of people go to hang out. But it's what's inside that counts. And Mary Hogan was actually the face of that bar. So it was named after her. She was a portly woman with a thick German accent, a foul mouth, and a pretty shady past. The facts about Mary's past honestly may have been rumors since not too much is really known. about her. Some said she was divorced twice, which in the 50s is a big no-no. Some said she had

connections to the mob. Some said that she had worked in the big city as a madam before moving out to the middle of nowhere to tend a bar. But on a cold December afternoon in 1954, the rumors whispered about Mary Hogan would take on an entire new meaning. So it's a few weeks before Christmas, Wednesday, December 8th. A farmer named Seymour Lester strolls into Mary's bar in the middle of the day, just like he usually does. He slaps his hat down on the counter and sighs as he waits for Mary to pour him a beer. He's used to being the only one alone here this early in the day, but today does seem unusually quiet, and Mary isn't even there to say hello. So he's looking around, looking for someone, an employee, and that's when he peers over the bar. And he sees a pool of

blood on the floor. So he's not going to waste another second in that place. It's a pretty large pool of blood. He decides to get out of there. He races to the nearest farmhouse up the road and calls not the police, but he calls the town chairman of Pine Grove first, which just screams small town. Yeah, that's funny. And then after that, he calls. He calls, He calls the sheriff's. Yep, he calls the sheriff's office. Now, before long, Mary's Tavern is swarming with deputies, taking a closer look at this pool of blood. And that's when they find their first real piece of evidence. There is a 32 caliber cartridge on the ground next to that patch of blood. What Seymour didn't stick around to notice was that there was also a trail of blood leading out the back door. of the tavern and into the parking lot. So over the next several days, the tavern goes from a local hangout

to a full-blown crime scene. The state crime lab comes in to search for fingerprints and other clues. Police go door to door, farm to farm, questioning people in the area. Now, on December 8, 1995, so this is a whole year later, Mary Hogan's case is no closer to closure

than it was a year ago. And then another year goes by and nearly another, and still, no one knows where Mary went. There's no clues, no substantial leads until November of 1957, when another crime leads police down a path that will forever change Plainfield and its legacy. So now I'm going to introduce you to another woman named Bernice Warden. Now, unlike a lot of the locals, Bernice wasn't born in Plainfield. was actually originally from Illinois. She moved to Plainfield when she was a young girl, though. So this was the place that she always thought as home. Now, when she was in her 20s, Bernice married another local named Leon Warden. They bought and ran a little hardware store in town. And over the

years, they had two children, a boy and a girl named Frank and Miriam. By 1957, though, things had really changed for their family. The kids were now adults. Frank was a police. least officer in Plainfield and Miriam was a mother of her own kids and their father Leon had passed away over two decades prior. So now Bernice ran the hardware store in town, mostly on her own, sometimes with the help of her son. And because of the way she handled herself, everyone in town had a lot of respect and admiration for Bernice. They knew she was a family woman with good Methodist values. Again, religion was very important in this small town in the 50s. Bernice loved the simple pleasures in life, like spending time with her grandkids, going fishing out on the lake.

In fact, people in Plainfield seemed to like Bernice so much that they actually gave her the Citizen of the Week award in the summer of 1956. Citizen of the week, okay. And I do want to point out that she was the first woman to ever get it. Okay, cool. But on the morning of November 16th, 1957, again, this is years after that first murder. Bernice's story would meet a tragic end. That day was a special one for the people of Plainfield because it was the start of hunting season.

And I want to note that almost every one of the men in Plainfield was in the woods on the opening day of hunting season this day. So many of the shops in town were actually closed because of this. But 58-year-old Bernice knew the men might need supplies from her hardware store. so she did open her doors like usual that morning. But later in the day, the man working across the street at the local gas station noticed something strange. Bernice's shop seemed quieter than usual, so he walked over and checked the front door. It was locked. Maybe Bernice had decided to close up for the day since all the men were hunting.

There was also one thing that seemed unusual. Bernice had left the lights on inside the hardware store. Now, word of this gets back to Bernice's son, Frank, the adult son, later that day. And around 5 p.m., he stops by the store to check on his mom. Now, remember, he is a deputy sheriff, so he knows pretty immediately that something is off here. Not only is his mother not at the store like she should be, the cash register inside is wide. open. Though it doesn't seem like anything is stolen. And he notices blood stains on the floor. So by 7 p.m., the main streets flooded once again with cop cars, all invested in now Bernice Warden's

disappearance. Was this the same person who had killed Mary Hogan? That's all they can think. But there's one thing different between Bernice's case and Mary's case. And that is inside the shop, there was actually a sale receipt for antifreece. It was made out earlier that day to another local man in town. A well-known kind of weird oddball named Ed Gein. Okay. So this is how police go. Was this the last person to visit? And now Bernice is missing. This is how they initially And he is from this small town. He was mostly raised there, yes. Okay.

He wasn't born there, but he was mostly raised there. Got it. With the RBC Avion Visa, you can book any airline, any flight, any time. So start ticking off your travel list. Grand Canyon? Grand. Great barrier reef? Great. Galapagos?

Galapago? Switch and get up to 55,000 avion points that never expire. Your idea of never missing out happens here. Conditions apply. visit rbc.com slash avion so before i get into what police do once they you know catch this lead of ed they're not necessarily thinking he's the murderer but he's the last one there's a receipt there so they're going to look into it but before i go there we need to understand the man inside the monster we need to know who ed gine himself is before i tell you the details of this story because his history and past

actually influences his crimes pretty heavily. So Ed was born on August 27th, 1906 in La Crosse, Wisconsin. This is about 90 miles away from Plainfield, okay? And his childhood was pretty rough from the start. His mother, Augusta, and his paternal grandparents were all German immigrants who would come to America to start a new life. Now, Augusta found her way through religion in America, while Ed's father, George, found his way through the bottle. Alcohol. Augusta was incredibly devout, okay? I'm saying strictest of the strict. She read the Bible to Ed and his

older brother, Henry, who was six years older than him, basically daily. And a And at a very early age, Augusta instilled in her two boys the idea that all women were corrupt, that they were whores, that they were sent to earth with no goals other than to tempt man with sin. Sounds like an amazing person. So she basically is sex is horrible. You will never, ever, ever be intimate with a woman because they are evil. they are of the devil and even saying like the only time I ever slept with your father was when I was trying to make you guys other than that sex is evil like she was just very this is not religious this is mental illness yeah I wasn't say why like what well she's using the excuse as

of Christianity but it's obviously not Christianity so um this doesn't change when the family finally moves to Plainfield in 1914. Now, I do want to know that the reason they move is because she starts to tell George Ed and his brother Henry that this also small town in Wisconsin that's 90 miles away from Plainfield where they're going to move is starting to turn into Sodom and Gomorrah. And she's talking like, oh, it's a huge, like it's this big city and everyone's sinning and we can't raise our kids here. And there's like 50 people. Yeah, it's still a small town. It's just not as small as Plainfield. So they end up moving to Plainfield in 1914. And they settled on a 159 acre plot of farmland that's on the rim of town. Now, they lived in a two-story L-shaped white frame farmhouse. Okay, just think of like a creepy haunted farmhouse in any scary movie. It's equipped with a barn, a chicken coop, and an equipment shed. It was quiet. It was very remote. their nearest neighbors were about a quarter mile down the road

and Plainfield Village, which is where Bernice Warden would one day open that hardware store, was about six miles away. So they're about six miles out of town, if you will. But Augusta liked keeping the family away from the rest of Plainfield and the sinners in it. She did not trust anyone with her boys. It was Augusta Gein against the world. Okay.

Even her husband, George, had a hard time finding his place in the family. Augusta judged her husband very harshly. She berated him. She destroyed his confidence as a man. She was the disciplinarian in this home. And as a result, he spent his evenings after working as a carpenter and a tanner over at the pub. He would go there. He would forget about his life.

He would procrastinate returning home, which meant that Edgian, and his brother Henry really didn't see their father much. And when they did, he was kind of a shell of a man, although that was better than him coming home drunk because that allegedly meant Ed, Henry, and Auguster were going to catch a beating from their drunk husband slash father, which is also maybe why Augusta kept her son so close to the point where Ed didn't even go to school until he was eight years old. And as you can imagine, Ed had a really hard time fitting in with other kids who had by now kind of hung out with other kids and honed their social skills. So while Ed was smart and his grades were good, making friends was not his strong suit.

But I'm not saying he was mean. He was just odd. And if Ed did ever make a friend, Augusta shut it down really fast. When he would run home to tell his mother about some boy that offered his ball on the playground, Augusta would make up lies about the little boy being like, I know his parents. are sinful, they are not people of God, and then wouldn't let Ed play. She, like, possessed? Like, why, like, there's zero rhyme or reason to be doing this. And mentally ill. I would, I mean, I think she just is so far gone in this. Okay. And this continued in pretty intense ways, all because Augusta had a really intense connection

with Ed Gein from the time he was little, and Ed didn't really know any better. In his mind, his mother was nearly equivalent to God. Like he held her on this pedestal. He thought she was the perfect woman, this perfect Christian woman. Was the name of it sexual? Allegedly. Okay. So I'm going to, I'm going to say probably.

Most people do believe so. The show does somewhat insinuate it. But there's never been confirmation. That's also hard. It's so far back then that like we'll probably never have confirmation. No. Um, but I would, I would say probably. Okay. So because of this intense mama's boy connection, like he thought his mom was God.

Mm-hmm. He thought that she was something to be feared and loved simultaneously. But even if Ed wanted to make friends, it wouldn't have been easy for him because of how socially behind he was. His classmates did see him as odd. He would sometimes laugh at inappropriate times. Like he didn't always catch on. Um, he had a lazy eye.

he had a speech impediment, not to mention an interesting lopsided grin that he would kind of wear. But the more he was picked on, the more he realized that his mother was right about these other kids and maybe about the world as a whole. Like the more he was shut out from the society, the more he believed his mom and turned into her. So Ed dropped out of school just a few years after he began. At 14 years old, he finished the eighth grade and then just went to work on his parents' farm, while also picking up other small jobs around town, like a handyman, a babysitter. But even once he and Henry reached adulthood, neither of them were converted to society enough

to be able to move out of their parents' farmhouse. So despite the emotional and physical torment at home, they stuck around through their 20s and then into their 30s. But a lot changed for the Gein family in 1940s. when Ed was around 34 years old. So by that point, years of drinking had taken a toll on 66-year-old George Gein and after years of wasting away,

he died on April 4th, 1940. Now, his death seemed to bring a sense of relief for the family more than anything else. It was no secret that George had been treated as a burden on the family for years. He wasn't working. He was wasting the family's money away on booze. Between that and the abuse,

he would inflict when he was drunk, Ed claims he was happy to step into the role of man of the house after his father's passing. This was a role that Augusta actually pushed on him more than his older brother Henry because her and Henry's relationship wasn't like her and Ed's. So that means he needs to step it up financially. So for the first time in 1942, the 36-year-old Ed traveled away from home to see if he could join the army. Only they, they, Again, this is 42, World War II. They rejected him because of a growth on his left eyelid, which made his vision kind of bad. So he was sent back to Plainfield with his tell between his legs, ready to continue the variety of jobs he'd been doing at home his whole life.

So babysitting did seem to be one of Ed's favorites. Again, if you've watched the show, this is an entirely different babysitting story than what they show. Now that he was an adult and no longer appear, Ed actually loved kids because he was. very childish in his own ways. They seemed to accept him a lot more than the rest of the community. But there was something about Ed's immaturity and just like stunted growth that really bugged his older brother Henry. Ed was an unhealthy mama's boy. But since the passing of their father, it appeared much worse. Ed was seeing Augusta as more faultless than ever constantly defending, standing up for her. Maybe because she was the only parent left. Ed

did everything for her to a fault. And Ed had always looked up to Henry, but when Henry brought this issue up with Ed, like, hey, your relationship with mom is unhealthy. We got to get out of here. This isn't normal. Ed took it as full blown criticism on like his existence. Like this is his security and safety. And it seemed to fester from there. And then in 1944, something happens that made people for the first time ever look at Ed Gein a little bit different. in town. So that may, a fire breaks out on the Gein's property. And again, the way this is shown on the show, there's no evidence of that, just suspicion, but they make it seem factual on the show. So at first, this fire was controlled. It was Ed's way of burning the marsh to get rid of

dead brush. But before long, according to him, the fire gets out of hand. Henry, who is still living at the farm and helping his little brother, him and Ed gets separated, according to Ed, in the smoke and flames. Ed said it wasn't until he put out the fire that he even realized Henry was missing. He goes into town and asks for help from a few locals, including a deputy sheriff. They all returned to the family's farm that night and help Ed look for his missing brother. But something happened during that search. So he goes and gets all these people and then they get back to the farm and Ed literally leads this group of people to exactly where his brother is lying on the ground. Okay.

Okay. Got it. So he leads the search party straight to the brother. And when they find Henry, his clothes are covered in dirt and soot, but his like body doesn't look burned at all. He does have a few bruises on his head. At this point, he is definitely dead. So when they confront Ed. But he's not burned. No. So they confront Ed. They're like, well, okay. And I want to mention Henry is 43 years old at this point, still living at home under his mom's rule. And they're like, how did you, like, you walked straight to him. He looks at them and says, quote, funny how that works. Again, he's odd. Everyone just kind of has a little bit of sympathy for him because he's so odd and because of his home life. But the response just like weird, like people were like, what? So the autopsy reported that Henry likely died of asphyxiation from the smoke and maybe had hit his head when he passed out on the ground.

Some said that wasn't surprising. Henry was said to have a bad heart. There were a few who felt like based on Ed's response in just their home situation that maybe this wasn't an accident, that Ed might have been responsible for his brother's death, maybe because he was critical of his relationship with Augusta or was threatening to leave. Unfortunately, that relationship between Ed and his mother wasn't long for this world either. because despite the cold-hearted woman, many believed Augusta to be, she supposedly had a really hard time coping after Henry's death. And in 1945, less than a year later, she began suffering from a series of strokes. Wow.

During which Ed becomes her full-time caregiver. So this mother that he loves, this relationship is very unhealthy, he begins doting on her. No matter how much he did for her, though, he couldn't restore. her health, and in December of 1945, she dies after a second stroke at the age of 67. So now Ed Gein, who has never lived on his own, we're not even sure he can be a functioning adult, is all alone, all his family is dead, he has no friends, and he's living alone at this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with time on his hands. So he kind of begins 40 years old now. He's kind of going into town. He's, you know, a little odd. And he ends up spending a lot of time at Mary Hogan's

Tavern. This is the first victim that we covered. So he spent countless nights there sitting in the corner watching the rest of Plainfield's community laugh and hang out. It probably brought Ed back to his school days. Only this time he couldn't run home and cry to his mother and say, hey, these people aren't including me and just her be like, well, the rest of the world is sinners. So, So, I mean, Ed did play nice, though. Many people said he was a good neighbor. Like, despite the fact that he had lost his entire family, he would help out if someone needed a hand hauling grain or repairing a fence.

But there were some signs that Ed had been deteriorating since his mother's passing. Both he and his family's farmhouse looked quite run down from the outside. It was pretty obvious that Ed was not showering or bathing. He wasn't shaving. the home from the outside looks like it's falling into despair. And Ed's lurking around town had become more noticeable by people. They were like, what is he always doing here? Especially around 1957, when he seemed to develop an obsession with a local businesswoman,

a 58-year-old grandmother that actually bore a bit of resemblance to Augusta, his now dead mother. this woman, 58-year-old, Bernice Warden, the second victim. Okay, here we go. So that year, 50-year-old Ed had been making an unusual amount of trips to the- question. Real quick, were they, was the town not completely freaked out that someone just got killed in a small town and nobody knows who it is? Yes, they were, but they didn't have any clues because the first murder had absolutely no clues. They didn't. know where to start. That's just freaky. Like you're in a town that's extremely small. Someone gets

murdered and you're just supposed to, all right, let's just go on. Years go by. Yeah. Yeah. It's extremely scary. But keep in mind, they hadn't found her body. It was just the pool of blood. So. Yeah. So that's even missing. That's even creepy. Yeah. Yeah. Check out the big stars, big series, and blockbuster movies. Streaming on Paramount Plus. Cue the music. Like NCIS, Tony and Z. Eva. We'd like to make up our own rules. Tulsa King. We want to take out the competition.

The substance. This balance is not working. And the naked gun. That was awesome. Now that's a mountain of entertainment. Paramountow. Stop leaving savings behind at the pump. Get up to 7 cents per liter in value every time you fill up at Petro Canada.

That's 3 cents per liter in instant savings plus 20% more points when you link an eligible RBC card to your Petro. points find out more at rbc.com slash petro dash canada conditions apply so anyways a 50 year old ed 50 years old has been making an unusual amount of trips to the warden's hardware store and not always to buy something instead it was almost like he would go in and start like annoying bernice i don't know if like just kind of like making conversation with her but maybe flirting but you know how when little kids like have a crush they're kind of mean yeah it was was almost like that. He would go in and ask this older woman who bore a resemblance to his

dead mother, ask her to go out to the movies with him, ask her to go ice skating. Bernice was polite, but pretty stern with Ed, typically turning him down with excuses, which again is vastly different than what they show on the show. Now, it wasn't clear if Ed was asking her because he was romantically interested or if it was because she was one of the few people in town who kind of gave him the time of day even when she didn't need something from him. I feel like a lot of these shows that do

like fictional reenactments. Yes, I do reenactments of serial killers. They always make the killer I think they do it on purpose but they always try to make the killer

a little likable or they try to make you feel bad for the killer. And I find that really interesting because they've killed people and I just don't know the cause behind trying to make us feel like we should like them. So I was actually having this discourse on my Twitch stream the other day because I was saying this Monsters series that has done very infamous coverings of killers that's on Netflix that is very popular has gotten into some heat for doing this for like. number one, not just dramatizing a story, but like literally changing a story and changing facts that sometimes make you feel bad for the killer. It's not like it's a Harry Potter book and they're changing the movie.

Like this is a real life event that happened that was tragic. I'm not sure why we're doing that. A lot of the time it's not even about like the story I'm telling you has given you more background on these victims than the show even did. And not only that, they changed the victim's characters to be people they weren't even. So it's like that is so disrespectful to like portray a victim as someone they weren't in a show where you're people. Not everyone is a true crime fan. And I would say it's the minority who even know the facts of Ed Gein's case.

And so this is the only exposure they're going to get to Ed Gein's case. And that's what I mean by people will and they do go, oh, I mean like, This is what happened. Well, people start to, what's the word? Empathized. Yeah, empathize, but they start to reason with, well, maybe this makes sense. Maybe it made sense why they killed them. I kind of get, you know.

So, and I also said this, mental illness or a study of someone's psyche might be an explanation for the bad things they did. is definitely not an excuse or reason reason and we need to like walk that line a little more safely because when you start when you learn about someone's history and it does it is sucky you can't em like you can't make it an excuse for their behavior because there are lots of people when we start justifying things that's where we get into trouble so it might be an explanation um which there's an explanation for everything but that doesn't doesn't make everything excusable. Yeah.

I just find it interesting. And we can keep going. I was just the most distraught about the fact that, like, for instance, I'm telling you about Ed's relationship with Bernice right now and that he had this fascination with her. In the show, they have a full-blown sexual relationship. And they show her as this older woman who was kind of the town lady who becomes obsessed with Ed. And then his dead mom tells him that she has STDs.

And so he kills her. And like Bernice didn't have, you know what I mean? So it's just like the portrayal of the victim. Mm-hmm. Anyways. So Bernice's kids, they find it creepy that Ed had taken such an interest in their older mother. So you can imagine what was going through Frank Warden's mind when his mother's missing. And Ed Gein's name is on the receipt the day his mother did.

disappeared. So it was alarming to say the least. That and the fact that just the day before he had spoken to Ed, who asked in point blank if he was planning to go hunting with the other men in town on opening day tomorrow. Now, Frank was thinking maybe Ed had been planning some attack against his mother for a while. And that's why he wanted to know if Frank would be gone. And he knew the first day of hunting season, all the men would be off in the woods. I mean, this is what's running through Frank's mind when his mother's missing and he sees the receipt. Now, upon hearing his name, a few detectives begin looking around town for Ed. They want to talk to him. Some of them had gotten wind that Ed might be at a neighbor's home, the Hills having dinner with them and their kids. So when police arrived,

they find Ed sitting in the driveway with the Hill's son and he was actually about to give him a ride into town. So they knock on the window, Ed rolls it down, and seemed rather confused as to why officers were even there. They asked him if you would come down to the station and answer a few questions. And without any fight at all, Ed gets out of the vehicle and walks into the back of the squad car. As the officers asked Ed to run through his day, he says something pretty strange. He immediately goes, I'm being framed.

And when the officers are like, what for? He says, for Bernice Warden, followed by, she's dead, isn't she? Now, at this point, no one knew for sure whether Benitez. Bernice was alive or missing or had been murdered. Obviously, Ed Gein just cleared this right up for police. So later that evening, and this is probably the most infamous part of this case, later that evening at around 8 p.m., two officers just to go over to Ed Gein's property, while he's obviously not there, to see if there's any sign of Bernice.

This is the rundown farm that people had been kind of noticing from the outside. So they go through and the second the door opens, they are hit in the face with this horrific smell. Now, it is completely dark inside. So they use their flashlights to peek around. And this is when they notice there is trash and junk everywhere inside this house. And you just have to look at the pictures. I can't even put into words the state of this home. It is horrific. Like absolutely horrific. There is rotting food. There is newspapers all over the place. There's tools. There's garbage all over the place. But that is not all. Police are walking through. It smells horrific. It is, there are flies. There's everything. They are going through and they're just seeing odd things

in the home. They see this chair and they realize that the center of the chair is. been cut out and replaced with like what looks like leather. Oh, no. But they start to realize, like, I think that's skin. Like, is that a pig skin? Oh, my gosh. What is this? So they see this chair and they're like, okay, this is very weird.

Then they notice that the draw strings to the blinds in the house, like the cord. Yeah. Is made of human lips. Holy shit. Like tons of lips. No way, dude. Yes. That's when they find a.

Oh my gosh. They find a lamp shade. So like the cover of a lamp that is like stitched together and they figure out that that is also human body that has been turned into a lampshade. They go into where he sleeps and on the bedposts. Like think of an old bed of his bed. There are actual human skulls like sitting on top of the bedposts. First of all, how is he getting this many? Like what's how? Hello? I will get there. This is insane. There's only two women missing. We'll get there. Okay. Oh.

What? Was he going to graves? Yes? Oh my gosh. Okay. You can keep going. So it wasn't even really about the murder. It was about his fascination with dead body.

Okay. Because he didn't even really murder that many people. Which I will say is absolutely horrible. But if I were to make a scale, I would, would say killing somebody is probably worse. A hundred percent. I mean, he obviously killed two people,

so he's, I mean, he's still complete, I mean. Mentally ill. That's what I was saying. Like, no,

get out of here. But, okay. Yes, he obviously does kill. I was just curious if it was more killings or if it was dead people.

I can't believe you caught on to that. I mean, it's illegal. There's a reason that it's, you can't defy a box. That's disgusting. Yeah, there's a reason it's illegal.

It's absolutely disgusting and it's horrid and it's, I can't believe people would ever do that. Okay, So they see these skulls. Okay. You just have to imagine the cops in this tiny town this long ago. What is going on? Okay.

I just am going to go into there's shoeboxes sitting in the house. And when they open the shoe boxes, it is full of women's noses. Like he cut off the noses and kept them in the shoebox. It gets worse. There's also a shoebox full of vaginas. just like collected vaginas that have been cut off there are pants like pants that he could put on made from the skin of human legs so he like cut off the skin and then sewed it together so he could wear pants of legs there is a belt that's just completely made of nipples like a full belt that he could wear that's just cut off nipples holy it doesn't even like there's this is uncomprehendable And he's living alone, baby. He's in his 50s.

He's alone in this. He's odd. Like, it's just so disturbing. You can't even wrap your mind around something like this. No, like he's from hell. So the list goes on and on. Okay, I haven't even told you everything. But everyone knew Ed Gein was different.

But this is a nightmare beyond what any of them could have imagined. This is a house of horrors. And just when they thought it couldn't get worse. one of the detectives felt something grayed his back. So he turns around to look. And this is in like the shed. There is a body hanging upside down from the ceiling from its heels. So think like a bar.

Each foot is attached and it's upside down hanging from the ceiling. There's no head on the body. So it's missing a head. And then also this body has been eviscerated. It has been cut from its chest all the way down to in between its. legs. He was skinning him basically. Yeah, it's cut open. Think of like a pig hanging in a meat house. That is what a human body is doing. It doesn't take them long. It probably smells. I cannot even imagine the smell. Well, police are absolutely like, I mean, if you saw an image of this, like, it is absolutely scary. Oh, every one of them probably needed to go to therapy for 50 years. And when they like notice the body, it's actually. it's missing a head but it's actually fresh enough

that they realize this is most likely Bernie Swarden that he had cut her head off cut her all the way open and then hung her upside down like in a meat factory so police officers are going outside

to vomit others are just trying to take in what they're seeing there's a bag behind one of the doors in the kitchen he reaches down picks it up there's a clump of human hair inside

he pulls it out and it's a woman's head hanging from a bag inside the kitchen. It's unbelievable. But it's not Bernice Warden's head. It is Mary Hogan's, the woman who had gone missing from her tavern years before the head is just sitting here. Now, I do want to note that there is a human heart sitting in a frying pan on the stove. And you cannot tell me he wasn't eating these. Yes. So it's alleged. He never said he was. There's never any factual evidence. He 100% was. But why else is there a human heart in a frying pan?

Yeah. Why else are we collecting bonoses and human body parts? He 100% is eating these. I mean, it's just safe to say that like his house is essentially a human body just like strewn about cut up everywhere. Like it just doesn't even make sense. I'm a big. I very much understand. How being raised can affect who you are, what happens, different traumas, different things. Huge, huge believer, comprehend all of it, understand it, therapy, so on and so forth. This is next level. Yeah, so. Like, this is leaps and bounds beyond what I thought was possible. Yes.

So, like I said, he was raised in a horrific setting. No one should ever be put through isolation. I mean, what he was put through. we take an example of like the Mendez brothers or something right there's yeah anyways so there might be an explanation for why ed gine was odd yeah why he might be unhealthy why he might struggle with mental illness this is beyond that no there's no explanation for this is beyond that this is sick this is not you can't even attribute it like you might be able to find some explanation there's also like no internet it's like how do you like oh we'll get there okay okay

So this news quickly makes its way back to the station where Ed Gein is currently being questioned. And to say these officers are shocked, they probably didn't even believe it. Like when they get the news that this is what they're discovering at his house, they're probably like, what? So from what I can tell, Ed Gein was never suspected of having anything to do with Mary Hogan's disappearance. So to find both her and Bernice Warden's inside pieces of them inside Ed Gein's house is mind boggling. All of these officers knew Ed, okay? It's not like this was a stranger. This is a small town.

He was the quirky oddball neighbor. Never in a million years did they expect his house to be an example of mutilation and murder. But looking back now, there might have been signs. Some people around town who'd hired Ed for a job remembered him making an odd statement after Mary disappeared. One of them had made a comment to Ed something like, if you had spent more time courting Mary, she'd be cooking for you right now instead of missing. To which Ed replied, she's not missing. She's down at the house right now. So he's so mentally ill that he's like

kind of not even keeping, like he's not even catching on to what people are saying. Apparently he would reuse this statement on other people. Now of course, everyone just thought Ed was making some weird joke. Now it's clear he wasn't kidding. And he was willing to say even more when police pressed him down at the station. So now we're going to have straight out of Ed's mouth. He had just one request before he started talking to them about his house. He wanted some apple pie with a slice of cheese. Now, when Ed was asked how the murder of Bernice Warden went down, he said this. He walked into Bernice's store that day and had her refill a jug of antifreeze.

He left, but then immediately went back because he forgot something. He wanted to see one of the guns she had on display. He was thinking of buying a new model. While Bernice had her back to Ed, he took a bullet out of his overalls, loaded the gun that she had just taken off the wall to show him and pulled the trigger. He also claimed, I don't know, though, my memory is a bit foggy. He said he recalled vaguely then dragging her body across the floor to the back of his truck.

He also remembered taking her back to his house, stringing her up, her body up like that. But then he's like, I don't know. Details are a little foggy. I don't even know if he, like, actually feels bad. Like, I think the lot, not the logic. The side of him that grew up and people saying, hey, don't kill people. Hey, don't this. Which is what he kind of comprehensive.

a hens, but I don't think he actually, like, thinks he did anything wrong. No, I don't think he's even really capable of understanding. Like, yeah, I don't think he knows. I truly don't think he knows. I think when we're talking about the insanity defense, this is the perfect case for the insanity defense. Yeah. You're still responsible for what you did, but it looks different. During the confession, he also admitted to killing Mary Hogan.

He said the events were really similarly. He just went in. She was alone and he killed her. but clearly there was a lot more to the story because police had found over 40 different body parts inside of Ed's home and so they're like Ed there's not just two women inside your home we found a lot of things so can you tell us about the schools can you tell us about the nipple belt he tells them something none of them anticipated and Garrett guessed oh I didn't murder those people I just took them out of the the cemetery he's like I didn't do that I just I just dug them up out of the cemetery he said he been reading obituaries looking for women who kind of matched his mother. Like, that's who he was burglarizing. He would watch to see women around his mother's age who died. And then he would go that night and dig their freshly buried bodies up and then take the body home. And sometimes he

wouldn't even take it home. Sometimes he would mutilate it right there in the grave and then bury it back and leave. Now, unfortunately... Which is so weird that it's almost like half respectful. To confirm Ed's stories, police obviously would later go dig these graves up. It's the truth. So after spending nine hours, nine hours getting the full confession from Ed, because that's, like, you have to have an explanation for everything they found and it took nine hours. He was taken to the county jailhouse where he would await next steps. Ed was formally charged with first degree murder for Bernice Warden, but interestingly not for Mary Hogan because of costing. in resources and a bunch of... Yeah, I mean, he was going to be in jail for life,

so it probably didn't matter at that point. But they don't charge him with that. It obviously doesn't take long for Ed to lawyer up and enter a plea, not guilty by reason of insanity. The next step was to see if Ed was fit to stand trial. The judge ordered a 30-day observation period at the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. It was there.

The doctors and officials would try to get answers to an even bigger question. They're watching to see if he's sane enough to stand trial, but also why kill? Like, why did he do this? Because this is obviously there's no motive. So what is the motive? It didn't take long for police to realize both Mary Hogan and Bernice Wharton were of similar stature and somewhat close in age. And they both bore an eerie resemblance to Ed's mother Augusta. Through his time in the state hospital, doctors dug into an even deeper issue. The fact that Ed Gein seemed to have an edipus complex

which meant feelings of attraction for his mother and feelings of hatred for his father. Yeah, and you, I mean, we kind of talked about it, or I mentioned that at the beginning. Yeah, can that happen without them being sexually active. But considering everything that I've heard in this case, there's no doubt in my mind that the mom wasn't grooming, abusing, so on and so forth. Allegedly. Allegedly. I mean, it's 2025. This was in the 50s. Who's suing us?

Yeah, who's suing us. His doctors there also determined he was, quote, a very suggestible person who appeared emotionally dull, has rather rigid moral concepts, which he expects others to follow, and tends to project blame for his own inadequacies on others. But if Ed loved his mother so much, Why would he target women like her?

Now, this is where, like, behavioral psychology really starts to take a turn. Ed Gein was huge for the BAU, okay? Because the idea was that they come up with was that Ed developed obsessive or even conflicting attachments towards his mother that ran deeper than just love. It became mental illness. Remember, Augusta had a strict hold over Ed, controlled all. of his life. She also, at least emotionally abused him in many ways. And since that's the case, Ed may have experienced both unconscious desire and frustration towards Augusta that led to some very dark and destructive behavior, which he took out on women that resembled her, but also

why he wanted to wear them. Because he loved them, but he hated them. So after that 30-day assessment doctors gave him an official diagnosis back then, schizophrenia. They deemed him unfit to stand trial. It was a huge blow to the victim's families who would not get to see Ed Gein have his day in court. Instead, he was admitted to Central State Hospital indefinitely for treatment. Which I 100% understand, but I honestly think it's the first case that I've heard in a long time on this podcast where I'm like, they are actually insane. Yeah. Like they're insane. Like, he wasn't in the same world we were in. Like, he doesn't...

He's in the limeriality. Yes, yes. So a lot of people in the plain-filled area were actually outraged with this decision. I mean, this is huge for a town. It was huge for the nation. I mean, Ed Gein is a known name. And some of them decided to take revenge on what little was left of the Geena estate. In March, 1958, five months after Ed was committed his home, the farm home was supposed to be put up for auction.

How anyone... No, burn it down to the ground. Instead, it mysteriously caught fire in the middle of the night. Honestly, that's the better decision there. By the time the fire department arrived, the place was not worth saving. The only, which actually, there is a lot of Ed gain memorabilia out there that, like, the police collected and stuff, but most of the house was burned down. So all we have is pictures.

When Ed heard about the news in the hospital, his response was, quote, just as well. Like, he had, this place was his, if you could see the end. side of his brain, it was out in this home and he could have cared less that it burned down. I don't think he has this any comprehension about anything. A decade later in January of 1968, circumstances changed for Ed. His doctor decided that he was now a little bit better after spending 10 years in the hospital and no longer unfit to stand trial. So on November 7th of that year, Ed's trial for the murder of Bernice Warden began.

His defense attorney argued that the trial be conducted with just a decision. judge, no jury. The whole thing lasted about a week. The results were rather disappointing. The judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity still. Yeah, I mean, he's not just going to get better. This guy is insane. So he wasn't going to go to prison. He was going to go back to the Central State Hospital. And that's where Ed lived out the rest of his days. In 1984, at the age of 77, he died at the institution from cancer and respiratory problems. He was buried next to his mother. Now, all the families buried together, so many people went on to hurt his grave that he no longer has a tombstone. Oh.

It's just an empty plot because, obviously. And while Ed Gein might have been dead, his horrific story lives on. And this is where the show, like I said, I found it fascinating that they kind of tied these two things together. But Ed Gein, this horrific story goes on to be in more. mortalized in the horror film genre. He became the inspiration behind one of the most iconic villains to date, which I don't think Garrett knows this. Norman Bates in the movie Psycho is based on Ed Gien.

Norman Bates has this obsession with his mother. He's a mama's boy, very unhealthy. It's based off him. It's based off Ed Gein. And he influenced other legendary monsters like Leather Face in the Texas Chainsaw Masker. No, I don't think so at all. I was going to say, um. Silence of us.

the lambs? Yes. Yes. Yes. Thank you. Buffalo Bill. Yep. In Silence of the Lambs. And maybe because of that, Ed Gein's story feels more like a fever dream because it's been like portrayed in three really big war movies. And he changed, this changed the horror genre. Before Ed Gein, the horror genre was vampires, Frankenstein, monsters. Ed Gein turned the horror genre into human monsters. That's when the humans began to be the monsters. That's covered in the show. He was a nightmare so dark that it seems hard to imagine this actually happened in real life. So I want you to take this time to let it sink in. Remember,

there are real monsters out there lurking in the real world. Monsters so evil that they inspire fiction. And the scariest ones can blend in seamlessly with the rest of society. They babysit your kids. they fix your roof. They offer you a ride into town. So be careful. Because if there is one thing we can take away from Ed Gein's case, it is that the most terrifying monsters are the ones that look and act just like us. And so Ed Gein is lumped in. With all of these serial killers, he killed two people, though. So the infamous name of Ed Gein is actually just

alarming. And that is the case of Ed Gein. Insane. I didn't I mean, until we started getting into it and then I realized that it was graves. I was like, wait, he didn't kill. I mean, killing two people is crazy. But.

You think of him as this infamous serial killer. I thought it was going to be like he killed 60 people and he skinned everything. Like, I had no idea. His name is looped in with Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer. I mean, who they've killed a lot of people. I think it's just the horror of the reality of him and his inner mind and his world and his backstory and is bringing up that kind of lumps him in with these people. Yeah, disgusting. Crazy. Honestly, crazy. So again, he did a good job, babe. Thank you. I wanted to stick to the facts again. I do think as a fictionalized work of art, the show is good, but I just want everyone to remember that this show is fiction. It really doesn't

fall. I mean, yes, the obsession with World War II and Nazis was real. He did have these magazines that would show the experiments Nazis did, and that's kind of like what inspired his work in his home. But just take everything with a grain of salt. This is the factual story. There are real victims who are not portrayed correctly on that show. And that is my only hang up with it. But yeah, that was the covering of Ed Gein. If you want to go watch the show now, like I said, it is a, like I do think the production's good.

I think the music is good. I think the set is good. But yeah, now Garrett knows the monster Ed Gein. And that is it for today's episode. I love it. And I hate it. Goodbye. Thank you.