RedHanded - Bonus - Devils in The Dark: Ed Gein, The Butcher of Plainfield

Episode Date: February 28, 2022

From Audioboom Studios, it's a brand new podcast from Helen Anderson. Alongside her hilarious best friend Danni Howard they'll be exploring some of the wildest, most gruesome and totally shocking killers the world has ever seen. You'll hear from psychologists and criminal experts whilst Helen and Danni tell you all the gory details... but somewhere in the dark they'll find the laughs and the light. Devils In The Dark is available from 28th February with new episodes out every Monday, so search Devils in The Dark and click follow so you never miss an episode. See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

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If you're a fan of Red Handed, then we think you're really gonna love Devils in the Dark from Audioboom Studios. It's a brand new podcast from Helen Anderson alongside her hilarious best friend, Danny Howard. They'll be exploring some of the wildest, most gruesome and totally shocking killers the world has ever seen.

You'll hear from psychologists and criminal experts, whilst Helen and Danny tell you all the gory details. But somewhere in the dark, they'll find the laughs and the light. Devils in the Dark is available from the 28th of February with new episodes out every single Monday. So search Devils in the Dark and click

follow so you'll never miss an episode. And exclusive to Red Handed, we've got a look into their very first episode. It's a story of the butcher of Plainfield, Ed Gein. So have a listen. One set of lawmen went out in search of Gein. They found him having dinner at a neighbour's house and they arrested him. And then another set of lawmen went out to Gein's farmhouse and that's where they made these discoveries that really send shockwaves around the world.

Danny, how would you feel if you'd invited me over for dinner but I'd just shot someone in the back of the head? Do I know you've just shot someone in the back of the head. Do I know you've just shot someone in the back of the head? No, the police come in and go, we're going to take her because she's been a bad girl. Oh, right.

Well, I'd be surprised, Helen. Imagine that! You just made a nice batch of chilli, got some guacamole and some tortilla chips and then... What's that on your hand, Ed? It's a little bit, is that red? You've got red on you.

Yeah. Little do they know. But anyway, the police, they start to search his house. They couldn't get into the house, so they went around back and entered into what was called the summer kitchen, which was a little shed outside. This property didn't have any electricity,

so they were pretty much fumbling around in the dark with flashlights, but I don't think they expected to find what they did find there. One of them turned on his flashlight and beamed it around and saw this object that was hanging from the rafters, which at first they thought was some kind of gutted deer. They realised, to their incredible horror, that it was a woman's corpse that was hanging by its heels and been completely gutted.

Oh, my God. That was the body of Bernice. She'd been strung up, essentially, and she was slit from her sternum to her pelvis. So she'd essentially been butchered by Ed. It really was the most grotesque thing that these officers had ever come across. And of course, both of them just stumbled out in horror and vomited, you know, at the sight of this thing. They moved from the shed into the main house.

They discovered these incomprehensible, unspeakably awful objects that had been fashioned out of human body parts. There were chairs that were upholstered in human flesh. There was a lampshade made of human skin. They found the remains of 12 human heads, gloves made out of the skin from a corpse's fingers. There was a jar containing human noses. There was a box full of female genitalia, some of which had been painted and tied with ribbons.

There was a belt fashioned out of female nipples. There was a shade pull made of human lips. They found all types of things that belonged to people that were no longer people. Ed Skeen's farmhouse was the habitation of a literal ghoul, you know, somebody who had been living amidst these horrific relics of human dismemberment. It was a madhouse.

How do you feel about that? I don't even know. Nipple belt. What? What? Like, he had me at 12 human heads. What? And then I just cashed.

How many people? How many people's nipples? Like, how many people? Because you can only get two of one person. How many people went into that belt? I'm dead. What? Like, and that's not even the, what was a box of vaginas what that he painted and wrapped

in ribbons oh my god what why ed 12 human heads plus it's like a really sick maths question isn't it like ed has 12 human heads he also has a belt that's made of 96 nipples and a box of 24 vaginas. How many people did he kill? Does anybody know? Oh. Oh, my God. I wasn't prepared.

Danny, it doesn't stop there. Among the most hideous of all the items were human skin masks that were hanging from the wall of his bedroom, the faces of women that had been flayed from the skulls and that had been preserved. Some of them had lipstick applied to them and that had been hung on the walls as decorations.

And then, most notoriously, there was a skin suit that Ed had crafted out of the upper torso of a woman and the leggings of a woman. And apparently, as he later confessed, he would put on this skin suit and put on one of the female skin masks and caper around in his yard, pretending to be his mother. You know, you can actually Google,

and it comes up, you can see what he did. There's pictures? There's actual pictures. Right. It's horrific. I actually, like, I know deep down, I don't want to see them, but I absolutely want to see them.

I have a real issue with the way he capered around in the skin suit. Pretending to be his mum. Why? So at first I imagined him just going out and killing people, taking their bodies out of cars and stuff and using their bits to create his creations. But actually he found his victims by digging them up and stealing them from graves. Shut up. No. Two years after the death of his mother in 1947, he starts grave robbing. No. He's actually taking body parts. So what he's doing in a really grotesque way is trying to bring his mother back to life in some way, shape or form

because he was just so dependent upon her for a sense of his own identity. You know, in the old days, they used to put wire and then iron bars around graves to stop grave robbers from taking your valuables from your body. So now it's just a case of protecting your vaginas from ed gein i mean and nipples why there's yeah he wanted to rebuild his mum from he wanted to rebuild his mum from the dead body parts how does that explain the box of vaginas and the nipple belt it does not i just really feel like there's they're missing a point here i'm very distressed oh and the ribbon

oh god the ribbon i just right and where is the ribbon i imagine it like being cinched in the middle so it kind of goes in like like because i've got like almost like a corset image of like a oh i just pictured one or like through the hole heck hang it up like a bauble and whoa yeah yeah okay anyway Ed as you can probably imagine is now in custody and so the police

could search even more no nothing could have prepared them for what they are about to find no

inside a paper bag they found a severed head of a woman who had been missing from Plainfield for three years. There had been a female tavern keeper named Mary Hogan who ran this roadside tavern outside of Plainfield who had disappeared very, very mysteriously. In searching through Gein's house of horrors, the investigators opened up some receptacle and saw this face and pulled it out and realised it was Mary Hogan's, that she three years prior to killing Bernice. And he even confessed

to some of his friends at the time that he did it. But because because he was like the nice guy that was unassuming and they just thought it was a joke that he was being sarcastic, and they just overlooked it. What? I don't know. What? What? Yeah, like, so they would go, oh, Mary's gone missing. And he'd be like, oh, no, she's at the farm.

She's at the farmhouse. And they'd be like, oh, Ed. Oh, because I'm, like, envisioning that. They're like, oh, no, she's missing. And he's like, yeah, I fucking killed her. And they're all just like oh lol ed you joker because you wouldn't you'd be like a bit inappropriate like just a little warning signal although once again i'm at your house i'm having dinner you're like lol i just fucking murdered somebody and their head is in a bag and i'd be like ha ha ha helen show me.

I don't believe you. Search for Devils in the Dark on your favorite podcast app and make sure to follow so you never miss an episode. Hi, I'm Lindsey Graham, the host of Wondery Show American Scandal. We bring to life

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