RedHanded - Ed Gein: America’s Real-Life Psycho | #417

Episode Date: September 18, 2025

We’re finally diving into the case of infamous bodysnatcher, human-skin-furniture-maker, and OG mummy’s boy...Ed Gein. A shy bachelor who terrorised a tiny Wisconsin town with his nightmarish farmhouse of horrors in the 1950s, Ed Gein inspired some of the creepiest characters in scary-movie history: from Psycho’s Norman Bates to Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs. And with the third season of Ryan Murphy’s Monsters turning the Netflix spotlight on Gein, what better time for us to explore the twisted true story behind it all? Here’s everything you need to know about the terrifying ‘Butcher of Plainfield’.Exclusive bonus content:Wondery - Ad-free & ShortHandPatreon - Ad-free & Bonus EpisodesFollow us on social media:YouTubeTikTokInstagramVisit our website:WebsiteSources available on redhandedpodcast.comSee 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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Please contact Connects Ontario at 1-866-531-2,600, to speak to an advisor free of charge. BetMGM operates pursuant to an operating agreement with iGaming Ontario. I'm Saruti. I'm Hannah. And welcome to Red-Handed, where it's September. Mm-hmm. Which means it's almost October. Which is our most favorite month of the year?

And we couldn't wait. No. No waiting here. Why should we wait? Because we figured we'd kick off spooky season early this year. I'll tell you what else kicks off spooky season early. Target in Los Angeles, California. Oh, I bet. Influencer land, my friend.

It was wall-to-wall, pumpkin skeletons, the whole thing. I was like, it is the middle of August. This is wild. Oh, wow. I thought they did like Thanksgiving. Oh no, Thanksgiving's after. Yeah, so Darcy was like, look, all of the influencers are getting their October content done now

so they can go on holiday. But yes. See, this is why it's good that you have American friends who can explain things. Yeah. So yes, we are kicking off spooky season early because you guys deserve it. So grab yourself something disgusting

like one of those pumpkin spice lattes that everybody insists on. drinking which just sounds fucking rank and let's get into it but you might also not want to drink or eat or consume anything during this episode because it's quite grizzly and we have of course pushed this episode squeezed it into september because the subject of this particularly grizzly episode is of course the latest mega wrongan who's going to be given the dubious a list hunk treatment in Netflix's controversial anthology series

Monsters. Now this isn't an ad or a sponsored episode or anything. We tried, they ignored us. We did. But we figured since throbber of my heart, Charlie Hunnam, will be bringing to life

none other than Edward Theodore Gein, and no doubt every single fucker in the world will be talking about it. It was time to finally dig this case up. he is fit though and he

oh Charlie Hunnam yeah he is disgustingly even in Green Street where he's doing an absolutely fucking awful accent is he going to be

fit in monsters if anyone can do it it's Charlie I also feel like they try and make them fit don't they look at what's his face Jeffrey

thing is a look I'm not meaning to sound creepy but I don't think Geoffrey or was the ugliest of serial killers anyway. Yeah, no, you're in love with him, we know that. I'm just saying, like, I'm just saying he wasn't the most unattractive of serial killers.

And obviously, what was the next one? Oh, and then the Menendez brothers, like, not my cup of tea, but sure, like, whatever. Ed Gein. Ed Geenie Gein. I mean, Charlie, I can see Charlie in him. I can see Charlie in him. Yeah. So maybe they've just done excellent casting. We'll see. It's out in a couple of weeks. I actually am going to watch it. I haven't watched any of the others.

I'm going to watch it. I tried to watch Dharma, but it was so fucking bleak. It was just relentlessly bleak. Oh, I was just like, no, God, fucking misery. But I loved the Menendez Brothers one. I thought it was great. I thought it was just really, really well done. It was really well done. I don't know. People didn't love it. Whatever. Like, I enjoyed it.

Yeah. I am going to give this one a go. But the thing is, like, even if Netflix weren't making this series on Ed Gein, he's already, like, influenced pop culture more than, I would say, more than any other killer. Oh, very, very much so. Because Ed Gein was the inspiration for Norman Bates in Psycho, Leather Face in the Texas Chainsawater Massacre and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Labs.

Tick, tick, tick. And I recently watched Psycho in a cemetery in Hollywood and it was fucking great. Like everyone pretends they've read 1984. Oh, I have. Everyone pretends they've seen Psycho. Oh, I've seen Psycho. I haven't read the weird book it was based on. Yeah.

Yeah. That I haven't done. But what I will say is if you like Psycho, I would highly recommend Bates Motel, the like TV series that was made. Stars that guy who's in like The Good Doctor and Vera Faramiga who is Mrs. Warren. What's her name? Lorraine, Lorraine Warren in The Cundering. It's so fucking good. I need to, one of my promises I've made to myself is I'm going to start watching TV again and stop staring into the abyss.

So I will try. I also, I went with my friend Melissa who's not only not a horror film person, just not a, scary culture person or even really that much of a film person so she was worried about it and I was like you'll be fine you're not actually going to be scared but what was quite nice about watching it in the darken a cemetery is like loads of people were walking past

you had no idea if they're a ghosts or not and she said that she really appreciated the recap at the end when did we stop doing that in films like at the end of Psycho that's just like I think he's a policeman or a sheriff or something who just goes through the whole story top to bottom in case you missed anything and she was like

yes bring that back Love that, a dying art. So yes, if anybody's looking for spooky things to watch, yes, let's all watch the Netflix. Charlie Hunnam, homage to Ed Gein, but again, not sponsored. Once it's out, we'll talk about it on Under the Duve. For now, let's get on with the true story of Ed Gein.

The shy little bachelor who horrified a small 50s rural Midwest community with a farmhouse of terrors and an edipus complex the size of Wisconsin. Because it is absolutely a story worth telling and, quite frankly, totally unbelievable. The butchery, the body snatching, and of course the nipple belts make it genuinely read like a bad Hollywood script of a crazed, far-fetched boogeyman. But we can guarantee whatever Ryan Murphy throws at us all, the truth is undoubtedly far more sickening than fiction.

So let's get started and head all the way back to November 1915. The tiny village of Plainfield was barely a speck on the map. Also sounds so fake. Sounds like shit Hollywood movie. We'll call it Plainfield. And Plainfield may have sounded made up, but it was populated with about 700 people. Most of them were farmers.

There were labourers, blue collar workers, that type of thing, just trying to get by in what was politely known as sand country. And not so politely known as Wisconsin. Wisconsin's great dead heart. Poetic, though. I do have to say that name obviously is because they were all suffering, and I understand that. But I love how Gothic it is. Very, very, very Gothic.

I love that kind of 50s Americana, Gothic-American-S stuff. I love it. American Gothic. Exactly. That's the phrase I was looking for, American Gothic. Love it. Wisconsin was the kind of place where everyone knew everyone and gossip traveled a whole lot faster. than the tractors lumbering around.

And on Saturday the 16th of November that year, Plainfield streets were even deader than usual. It was the first weekend of deer hunting season, which meant pretty much every bloke in the town and a lot of the ladies too were out in the woods with their rifles. By mid-afternoon, people were wondering why the local hardware store was shut and why its owner, 58-year-old widow, Bernice Warden,

hadn't been seen all day. When Benice's son Frank returned from a hard day's hunting at around 5pm to find locals murmuring about her absence, he let himself in to find a troubling scene. The cash register was wide open. There was a pool of blood on the floor. And there was no sign whatsoever for his mum. It all looked incredibly suspicious. And so local authorities immediately leapt into action to investigate Mrs. Warden's

disappearance. One resident reported seeing the store's pickup van driving away at about 9.30 a.m. that morning. And while they weren't quite sure who was actually driving, they said that they could tell it was a man behind the wheel. And investigators soon found the truck abandoned in a lover's lane just east of the village. Its floor and front seat splattered with blood. It was clear whatever had happened to Bernice Warden was not looking good. But her son Frank, who also just so happened to be a special deputy sheriff,

had a lead. The evening before his mum had vanished, a local man had come into the family shop, chatted for a while, and said he would return the next morning to buy antifreeze. The 51-year-old man was known around Plainfield as various things, a mama's boy and the village oddball

to name just a couple. He lived alone in a large, ramshackle farmhouse a few miles outside of town. His father, brother and mother, all having died in recent years. The locals had always thought of this man as timid and a bit strange, but ultimately harmless. The kind of guy you wouldn't exactly go to for sparkling conversation, but could rely upon to help you plow snow. Or in a very 50s mindset, I thought, babysit your kids. You wouldn't get many people in this day and age being like, oh, village odd, want to look after the kids?

Yeah, I think it was just a time where nobody really believed that that happened. Or like everyone was just... Naive. No, I mean, yes. Everyone was just Bob. Bob Broberg. Just a nation full of bobs.

Yes, yes, yes, yes. You're right. So yes, eyes on the odd ball. And the last thing that Bernie's warden had written that morning that she vanished. was a receipt for half a gallon of antifreeze in the name of Sedetown Oddball, Ed Gein. So, Plainfield Sheriff Art Shelley sent out two patrolmen to track Ed down. And he turned up in the first place that they looked, which is always nice.

A small grocery store run by local couple Irene and Lester Hill, who Gein occasionally did odd jobs for. The Hill's teenage kids, Bobby and Darlene, had shown up at Gein's farm that very afternoon to ask for a ride back to their place after their car battery had died and Gein had apparently emerged from his abode soaked in blood but he claimed it was from

gutting a deer, not killing people and it was hunting season after all. What the kids didn't know however was that Ed Gein never went deer hunting like literally everyone else in Plainfield. He'd always said that he couldn't stand the gore.

Regardless Ed had cleaned himself up and then given the kids are lift home, accepted a plate of pork shops at their folks' place, and now was about to drive 16-year-old Bobby into town to check out the exciting rumours about Bernice Warden going missing. And this is where the officers spotted him. They approached Ed as he sat in his truck and quizzed him about his day. After giving a fumbling story that contradicted itself more than once,

Ed ultimately blurted out that someone had framed him for Mrs. Warden's murder. which, since no body had been found yet, was what you may call a dead giveaway. Arresting Ed Gein then and there, the police had a gut feeling that they had their man. But they didn't know the half of it yet. While Ed Gein was being shuffled into a cell at the local jail, Sheriff R. Shelley and Captain Lloyd Schofister

went out to search Gein's farmhouse. A spooky place on the edge of town With no electricity or running water Armed with only torches The men made their way first To a dank musty woodshed Attached to the side of the house The Ed Gein rather grandly called

His Summer Kitchen Feeling something brush against his back Shelley swung round With his torch beam cutting through the pitch black And what he saw illuminated Was beyond his wildest nightmare A woman's naked, decapitated body glowed stark white in the darkness, suspended upside down from the rafters by a bar that had been driven through the ankles.

The torso had been split open from neck to pelvis, gutted and dressed out like a deer. Shelley knew instantly that it was Bernice Warden, which I do have to wonder how he knew immediately it was Bernice. There's some sort of affair between the sheriff. I don't know, but he knew. And then, poor old Art Shelley stumbled outside and chucked up his own guts in the snow. Later, Shelley would shakily tell reporters that what he saw was horrible beyond belief. Little did he know, however, things were about to get a whole lot of fucking worse.

It's a very true detective, isn't it? It really is. It really, really just feels. And it's only going to get more so, like, very unbelievable. quite frankly it just feels like this small town this weird creepy outcast who lives in this weird little farmhouse

out on the edge of the town he hasn't got any electricity he never speaks to anybody everyone calls him the odd ball they go to his summer kitchen and there's a fucking gutted woman's body hanging from the rafters and like everything we're about to tell you

about what they found in the house is probably not even the half of it it's just so unbelievable really truly Ed Gein stands out beyond compare in the world of serial killers. And I'm not going to delve too much into his motivations yet, but really, truly, in every sense is very unusual. So, what did they find?

After busting down the doors of the Gein Farmhouse, investigators were met with a hoarder's paradise. The place was absolutely filthy, years of rubbish food scraps and dead rodents lay rotting in piles. but trust us a few rat turds would be the least of the investigator's worries buckle up for the gnarliest house inventory you'll ever be unlucky enough to hear first off they found beneath warden's intact head stuffed in a burlap sack with crude hooks shoved through her ear canals as if intended to be hung up like a trophy on the wall

a single gunshot wound pierced the back of benice's skull her heart was also found in a bag near the pot-belly stove while the rest of her internal organs had been shoved in newspaper and bundled up in an old suit in another sack found behind the pantry door Lloyd Schofister pulled out by the hair a perfectly preserved mask made from the skinned face of all women and coming back to just how much this feels like some sort of weird almost campy small-town Hollywood B movie

Incredibly, Schofaster pulls out this mask, looks at it, and recognises the face staring back at him. He's like, I know her. It was local tavern owner, Mary Hogan, who'd mysteriously vanished three years earlier. I mean, that's some very impressive embalming. Three years and he can still recognise who it is. Bernice and Mary weren't the only ladies to be found at the scene.

Ed Gein had decorated his entire filth-strewn home with vile furniture and trinkets made from assorted human body parts from at least 15 different women. And the more of the investigators looked, the more gruesome discoveries they made. There were waste baskets, chairs and lampshades, all upholstered with stretched out flesh. The lamps, the one everyone remembers. There was a homemade knife with a handle carved from bone And a sheath fashioned out of You guessed it, more human skin

There was even a collection of several female skulls Some mounted on Ed Gein's bedposts While others had the top soren off And had been made into makeshift soup bowls So when you go to Target to buy your skull mug He was the OG, he invented it And put a pumpkin spice latte in it And have yourself a happy Halloween.

Yeah, it truly is just, there's no word for it. Ghoulish, deranged, demented. It doesn't feel like it's enough. What do you think is the correlation between really liking doing fucked up shit to human bodies and being a hoarder because they always are a disorganized mind? Good point, yeah. You're listening to an episode of Shorthand, our weekly show for Wondry Plus subscribers. Listen exclusively and ad-free every Tuesday on Wondry Plus through Apple Podcasts and Spotify or in the Wondry app.

The American Dream, the idea that success and contentment come from hard work and sacrifice. But if history's taught us anything, it's that there's a dark side to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. American criminal explores that idea in detail, unpacking the stories that define eras, revealed corruption or expose the monsters we fear most, even in ourselves. Like the Menendez brothers, who made headlines for murdering their parents for money, revenge, or self-defense. Or Sante Kimes, whose greed took her from insurance fraudster to cold-blooded killer. American criminal covers gangsters, jewel thieves, crypto-fraudsters, political assassins, sex cults, and murderers. Whatever the case, whoever the criminal, you don't know the whole story until now.

Subscribe to American Criminal wherever you get your podcasts or at Americancriminal.com. We've been doing this for a long time. And Ed Gein is also unusual in that he is an extreme gaze that is also quite mainstream. But it still never ceases to shock me, the kind of things they found in that house. And as somebody who is currently trying to interior decorate a house, I'm feeling quite overwhelmed by all of the paint choices and I'm still trying to pick the exact shade of navy I want the living room in.

You have to give it to Ed Gein for the extreme amounts of detail he went to. The macabre interior decor didn't end there. The police found a pair of real human lips that had been used as a drawstring pull for a window blind. This is what makes me feel like he enjoyed the thought process

of where to use these body parts. It's not just like they find a bunch of rotting corpses in the house. He has fucking arts and crafts them in two things. It's just mind-blowing. He looked at those lips and he's like, I know what to do with these. Yeah. Someone should have taught him how to knit. Yeah.

Later on in life, as we'll talk about when he ends up in a psychiatric facility, he just gets into like carpet making and like rock polishing. He's just a very handy man. Listen, the devil does make. make work for idle hands. Yes. Oh God. All of this is going on and it just got worse because even more disturbing than all of the deranged

fucking homewheres he's created. Ed Gein also apparently had a passion for corpse couture. One gruesome accessory that the police found was a belt made entirely from female nipples. On Edgine's bedroom wall hung four more human face masks seemingly belonging to women aged in their 50s or above. Some even had lipstick on, their chalky faces dabbed with oil to retain moisture.

Five other face masks have been kept in various bags around the house, and the police uncovered, the tanned and preserved upper torso of a woman with shoulder straps sewn on. It was dubbed the mammary vest, and, you know, to complete the look, Ed Gein also had a pair of leggings, stitched together from real human leg skin. And there's more. Under Gein's bed, police found a shoebox containing nine vulvers.

One of which was extremely fresh and had been sprinkled with salt in a bit to preserve it. Wouldn't that just dissolve it like a slug? I don't know. Probably not. He knows what he's doing. Yeah. He's been around the block. he's got a shoebox full and another one was daubed in metallic silver

paint and embellished with a long red ribbon two of the vulvers in the box were judged to have come from girls aged about 15 investigators theorised that Ed Gein may have attached these vulvers over his own genitals hence the red ribbon

yes so you can probably tell if you have seen the silence of the lambs where this is going. The vile culmination of all of these ghastly treasures was a so-called woman suit.

Edgene hadn't just defiled these women's bodies. He had been dressing up in them. And we're going to get back to the psychology of that situation later on. Don't you worry. But for now, while we warm our brains up, we're going to continue

with the House of Horrors. Curiously, several rooms of the house had been boarded up with planks and nails. When investigators saw this, they braced themselves for whatever fresh hell they might find. Because if Gein had kept such grizzly trophies out in the open, what would he have kept hidden away? But when they finally got inside, they were stunned. In stark contrast to the filth and squalor everywhere else, these rooms were kept pristine.

A neatly made bed, plain furniture, a Bible on the bedside table. All of it coated in a thick, uniform layer of dust, as if no one had set foot inside these rooms for years. It turned out that these were the quarters of Ed Gein's late mother, Augusta, preserved exactly as she'd left them since her death 12 years before, like a sacred shrine. It would prove to be a vital clue in unlocking the secrets of Ed Gein's twisted mind

because in the now-famous words of Norman Bates, a boy's best friend is his mother. But for now, the investigators didn't have the answers, all the famous quotes, they only had questions. First off, did they have a serial killer on their hands? It seems quite fucking obvious that yes, they did. But secondly, how the hell had little Eddie Gein, the quiet mama's boy with a lopsided grin,

become the monster now sitting in a police cell? To try and answer that, we need to go even further back in time. To 1906, in fact, when Edward Gein came kicking and screaming into the world. Born to George and Augusta Gein in the city of La Crosse, Wisconsin, he wasn't exactly welcomed as a bundle of joy. With an older son named Henry, Augusta reportedly prayed night and day to be blessed with a little girl so that she could have a female companion.

So when Eddie came out, with an unfortunate extra appendage between his legs, let's just say Augusta was not happy. She swore that her son would not grow up to be like the others of his sex, which we suppose turned out to be true, because little Eddie was certainly one in a billion. Augusta was a physically imposing woman of large stature. She was also a total religious zealot. The daughter of strict German immigrants

who followed the old Lutheran tradition of basically believing everything and everyone was sinful, Augusta took those extreme beliefs and cranked the dial up to 11. She thought sex was filthy and evil and relentlessly preached her her husband and young sons about the flagrant immorality of the world around them. According to Augusta, the city of La Crosse was Wisconsin's answer to Sodom and Gomorrah,

full of scarlet women and worthlessly about men, with her own husband, George, very much included in that line-up. And George Gein didn't really help himself. He was a weak, self-pitying alcoholic, viewed by even his own family, as a complete non-entity. Which I do think is worse than anything anyone could say, just not just non. Yeah. That was until he had a drink, or 15, at which point he would take out his rage on his kids through vicious beatings. But despite this, as biographer Harold Schechter put it, Augusta was a, quote, domestic tyrant and George her shiftless subordinate,

who she constantly berated for not being man enough. The marriage was a total nightmare, with the boys caught helplessly in the middle and constantly compared to the failure of their father. Augusta shifted between coddling and bullying Ed, despairing that only a mother could love you whenever he failed to meet her impossible standards, like being a girl, a sentiment that Ed seems to have taken very literally.

In 1914, Augusta finally moved the family out of La Crosse and onto 155-acre farm, just west of Plainfield Village. She was hopeful that it would prove to be a more, wholesome homestead. Needless to say, however, she was disappointed, declaring that these country bumpkins had even lower moral standards than the city slickers she'd left behind. But, taking advantage of the farm's rural location, Augusta completely separated her sons from the community and amped up her religious fervour in the process. And the isolated Gein household became, quote,

a breeding ground for psychopathology and an intubation place for madness. to quote author Schachter once more Augusta would read to the boys every day from the Old Testament chiefly the book of Revelation with her favourite bits being about how women were whores working for the devil In Plainfield little Ed and Henry were only allowed to leave the farm to attend the tiny local school where their mother obviously forbade them from making friends

not that the other kids were particularly interested in hanging out with young Eddie they were too busy teasing him for being extraordinarily different. A growth on his left eyelid gave him the appearance of a lazy eye while a lesion on his tongue gave him a slight speech impediment. And just as his mother had wanted, Ed wasn't like the other boys, with slightly feminine manners and a tendency to cry easily, not to mention his odd habit of laughing randomly to himself, inappropriate moments.

It's very Ed Kemper, isn't it? My God. He's just fucked in everything. every sense. I do feel sorry for him at this age. Like his childhood is about as bad as it can get. Obviously, we're going to go in to talk more about the abuse that he suffers. But what chance did he have? His mum is like constantly screaming at him about sex and about, you know, going to hell and about how everyone's a whore and a fucking piece of shit. And his dad either ignores him or gets hammered and beats him up. And he's also so completely isolated from all of the other kids, because they're the only other people he basically sees. And even if he wanted to make a

friend, his mum, like, forbids him from, like, making friends and shouts at him if there is even a mention of a bond forming outside of the household. And when he comes home crying that he's being bullied, his dad beats him up for that. So, like, there is no winning whatsoever. Other than an interest in reading, Ed Gein was an unremarkable student who dropped out of school at 14, going from the classroom to work solely on the family farm. And yeah, that's interesting because I think when you hear the story

of Edgene, particularly when you see pictures of him, I think it's easy to think that he's a bit of a simpleton, like that's what everyone in the town thinks of him. But actually, when we say Unremarkable student, he was like, bang, average. He wasn't particularly stupid, and he was actually a very, very good reader.

He's just like lacks any sort of confidence, probably not helped by the speech impediment. And he just severely lack social skills, which like, yeah, shocker. And once he left school, his contact with the outside world diminished even further, and his sexual development was, unsurprisingly, stunted. One formative memory, Edward later described, was witnessing his mother slaughter a hog when he was seven years old,

which apparently caused him to ejaculate. Sondro Chiquotillo, he's all of them, you want. Yeah, that's what, it's just like build a, oh my God, it's awful, but it's like how he build his woman suit from various bits of women. He is a serial killer built from various bits of serial killer. I saw a TikTok this morning of this comedian just saying like, she overheard someone being like, I just, I can't go to work today, like just like the state of the world is just like, it's just too much for me.

Like I just, I can't do it. And she went out to her. And she's, um, oh, when I was seven, I looked through a whole. from the attic down into a room in my house, and I watched my father ejaculate. And then the girl who's complaining is like, what? And she was, oh, sorry, I thought you were just taking on everything

that was nothing the fuck to do with you. Fuck it hell. All right, Edgene. Oh, God. Anybody listening to this who was like, well, actually, us calling him a serial killer, because spoilers, we'll get on to this later. I know he's suspected of lots and lots more murders,

but he's only ever proven to have killed two. just so everybody knows, the FBI have changed their definition and now two kills will get your serial killer status. Which I don't think is right. Well, I think it is because it's not about just like

if you've killed two people at all. It's about the behavior. So if you've killed two people, you've had a cooling off period, you've planned the kills in a specific way you've collected trophies. It's the like the psychopathology around being a serial killer.

They're saying you don't need to wait until they get to kill three before you say they're a serial killer because they're showing the patterns of being a serial killer. No, I understand. I just think like... So that's why I agree. I'm not sure you can fully exhibit all of those patterns with just two. I think you can.

Ed Gein definitely fucking does. And in the Gein household, sex was condemned as a filthy sin. And we're not just talking about extramarital sex. Nope. Augusta made Ed and Henry promise her that they would stay virgins for the rest of their. lives. And despite once grabbing his genitals when she caught 12-year-old Ed wanking in the bath and despairing that they were the curse of man, Augusta ended up advising the lads that if their lusts were to become uncontrollable, it was better for them to commit the sin of

Onan, which is like we were talking about earlier, discarding your seed, old timely shorthand for masturbation, then it was better to do that than it was to lie with an actual woman. Can I just clarify We were talking about that When we were recording a shorthand Not just generally in life I mean I do talk about it generally in life Yeah

I think this particular Vignette Taken from Ed's pretty fucked up life Shows us that Augusta is clearly I think very very possessive Over her sons Particularly Ed Because as we'll go on to see

He's much more receptive to it Than Henry is Telling them to remain virgins for their entire lives, even in religious circles, is pretty extreme. She's not just saying, like, don't fuck about before you get married. She's like, never have sex. And I think it's absolutely motivated by her desire to keep Ed and Henry, her two sons, loyal to her and her alone.

If they, like, go out into the wider world, fall in love with other women, get married, move out, those women, their wives, would absolutely overtake Augusta, terms of her son's priorities and affections. And I think Augusta cannot stand the idea of that happening. I think she's absolutely terrified by the idea of being abandoned as she would put it by them. She exhibits like the perfect encapsulation of like toxic motherhood. This never ever leave me. I am everything. Even that phrase she says, only a mother could love you. She's like hammering that into them. No one else will love you like I love you. Don't ever leave.

me. Now, as for the question, and because this is a question that gets thrown around a lot in the case of Ed Gein, of whether Augusta sexually abused her sons or not, or at least whether she sexually abused Ed. I don't think from the evidence we have, it's clear whether that happened. Ed never talks about it, but I think that there is a high chance that Augusta did do something. Because I think take her attitude towards wanking, for example, her mentality to it is do it if you must, if it keeps you away from all those horrish women out there. Translation, she knew her boys would have urges and that it was better for them to be wanking in her home alone

than to have them out there forming bonds with like flesh and blood women who would steal them away from her. Again, I don't have evidence for this, I don't have proof, but I could absolutely see Augusta taking it a step further and perhaps crossing that kind of unimaginable line and abusing her own sons. or at least Ed, and rationalising it as, like, her ridding them of their wicked desires and that it would be okay because she was their mum and she wouldn't corrupt them like all of those other women.

And again, crucially, it would keep them loyal to her. I agree with you, but I also would say that even if she didn't do that, she is still abusing them by imprinting these incredibly negative and, like, world-warping attitudes. because like, we're only here to have sex. That's literally the only reason we exist. So by forbidding anything to do with it so thoroughly, it's going to fuck you up.

That's why priests are the way they are. Like I would say that that's abuse as well. Oh, absolutely abuse. I think it's that question of did she physically sexually abuse them? And like I said, yeah, we don't have the answer for that. But I strongly suspect that something like that did happen and she was able to rationalise it away. on April Fool's Day in 1940

George Gein died of heart failure age 66 after years of heavy drinking hard times and domestic misery left him broken in body and soul the remaining Geans were actually relieved to be rid of their so-called patriarch Augusta had always ruled the roost but now it was just more official even World War II couldn't separate Augusta from her sons Henry was too old to be called up for military service while Ed's droopy eye meant that he failed as physical.

Now in their 30s, the brothers started picking up odd jobs around Plainfield to support their mum and were generally considered hardworking and reliable by other citizens. Ed liked babysitting the neighbour's kids, finding it easier to relate to them than adults. But meanwhile, cracks were starting to form in Henry and Ed's sibling bond. While Ed had always obeyed Augusta's rules,

Henry was more independent and more likely to increasingly question her fanatical values. He even started dating a local divorcee and occasionally tried to coax his little brother not to be as unfailingly attached to their mother. Something that shocked Ed to the core. Ed worshipped the very ground that Augusta walked on, so the idea of criticising her was like blasted. for me. And I think

it says something that even in a World War II landscape where literally all the men are at the front or dead, he still is not just having a look is quite something. So like Kane and Abel, the Gein brothers weren't

exactly a picture of harmony. And soon things would go quite literally up in smoke. In May 1944, the fire department was called out to an out of control marsh fire down at the Geen Farm. Ed reported his brother Henry missing, claiming that he'd lost sight of him in the thick smoke. Strangely, Ed ended up leading

responders right to an area of land where Henry's lifeless body was lying face down in the charred grass. When someone pointed out the coincidence, Ed shrug saying, funny how that works. And it was also strange that Henry's body, despite being found on charred ground, showed absolutely no signs of burning. Now, of course, it was assumed that he'd succumbed to smoke inhalation or exhaustion while fighting the blaze, which, like, totally makes sense but doesn't explain necessarily why his body wasn't burned after he was dead.

So they just put it down to him having basically collapsed of heart failure or smoke inhalation and died, like many other farmers before him. And so the death was ruled as accidental with no need for an official inquest. But here's the thing. Several officers at the time noted that Henry Gein had suspicious bruising on the back of his head. Senior investigators however brushed it off, because honestly the idea of Meek Simpleton, Eddie Gein, having had anything to do with foul play, was laughable. In light of later events?

Yeah, I'm not so sure about that. Now at last, Ed was finally left alone with his beloved mother just the way he liked it. but another lightning strike was about to hit the Gein family soon after Henry's death Augusta suffered a stroke and was left paralysed it was up to Ed just like Norman Bates to nurse her night and day and honestly it was pretty much the happiest time of his life

finally it was just him and mother and the formidable Augusta was weaker softer more pliable to his attentions than she'd ever been before He took joy in reading the Bible to her, soaking up every bit of this quality time together. But this paradise would be all too short-lived. In 1945, Ed drove Augusta over to a neighbouring farm to purchase straw from a guy called Smith. But when he got there, it was clear that a domestic drama was kicking off. While a woman in a robe begged him not to, Smith dragged a puppy.

out onto the porch and beat it to death for yapping too loudly. Oh my God. Yeah, and that was Augusta's reaction too. She went pale, horrified and outraged by the scene before her. Was she upset about the dog?

Uh, guess again. Augusta's real problem was with the fact that the half-dressed sobbing woman wasn't Smith's wife. Ranting and raving at the indignity of him flaunting his harlot in broad daylight,

Augusta suffered a second massive stroke. that ended up finishing her off. But at least she died doing the thing she loved, being a massive bitch and judging everyone. With his mum's death, Ed Gein's entire world fell apart. He had lost his only friend and one true love. Ed was reduced to a snotty, tearful mess at Augusta's funeral, sobbing like a little boy, even though by this point he was pushing 40.

psychiatrist George Aunt pinpoints this as a pivotal moment in Ed Gein's life when his one link with sanity finally fell away and when I first read that I was like one link with sanity it struck me as weird because I wouldn't say his connection with Augusta was based in anything that was sane

but when you go on to hear the rest of this story I understand what a psychiatrist George Aunt is talking about here because it's very clear that although she is incredibly abusive and creates the total destruction of mind that Edgien then suffers with for the rest of his life. She also is the only thing keeping him grounded in reality. Yeah, she's the only thing that is external to him.

And once she's gone, he is in absolute free fall. That's what happens when we're allowed to bang around inside our own heads. Although to the outside world, it looked like things hadn't changed that. While Gein did start looking more unkempt and didn't smell too great either, people figured that it was just normal for a lifelong mummy's boy adjusting to fending for himself. He also let the farm go to seed, joining local road and crop threshing crews around Plainfield. Gein was known as a solid and reliable worker, if a bit of a chucklehead.

He had a reputation as a mild-mannered simpleton, with several people referring to him as a Casper milk toast. type. Named after the meek, wussy comic strip character created by Wisconsinite cartoonist H.T. Webster. So basically, he wasn't going to hurt anyone. I didn't know that's where the term milk toast came from

as well. Is it that or is it more chicken and egg? Like... I don't know. Good question. Is he called milk toast because he is that? Okay, I just looked at that. And no, Caspar Milktoast Was the chicken or the egg, I don't know?

He came first. And then the term milk toast came from this cartoon. So that's pretty interesting. That is interesting. There you go. But while Gein's male colleagues saw him as a joke, their wives clocked something else. Whenever they and their daughters brought some food out for the crew,

Ed's intense stare would make them squirm in their aprons. Former resident, Lena Tricky, said that there was something in his eyes she just didn't like. still curse that damn feminine empathy because the women couldn't help but feel sorry for Gein Augusta may not have been exactly liked around town or mourned by anybody because after all she'd spent years sneering at them all

but everybody knew just how much her son had adored her so they pushed aside their unease and resolved to show Ed Gein's small kindnesses to fill the hole from his mother's loss like making him an extra batch of holiday cookies and yeah I guess let that be a lesson to all of us if your gut says don't feed the widow maybe just don't feed the widow

Ed's favourite topic of conversation whilst working in the fields was violence, murder and all things gore despite telling people that he didn't like to hunt because there was too much blood he would also constantly bring up high profile homicide cases out of nowhere pointing out dumb mistakes infamous killers had made his colleagues brushed all of this

off as a weird quirk, much like his chosen reading material, pulp magazines and adventure stories that luridly retold the exploits of South Sea cannibals, tribal headhunters, and Nazi atrocities. Gein was especially obsessed with Iltshire Cock, the bitch of Buchenwald, who selected tattooed prisoners for death at Nazi concentration camps to fashion lampshades and other trinkets from their skin. Another prominent fixation was Christina Yorgend.

the very first person to undergo gender reassignment surgery in the US. Back in the 1950s, her story was treated like a sideshow curiosity, and Ed droned on about it constantly to anybody who would listen. Strangely enough, Ed Gein's oddball reputation acted like a shield, because the weirder he was, the less anyone took him seriously. For example, when local tavernkeeper Mary Hogan vanished in late, 1954, Ed would grin and say that she wasn't missing at all. She was down at his place right now. It was such classic Gein nonsense that the stock response became, oh yeah, sure, Eddie,

of course she is. Even when Bobby Hill, the teenager said to be the closest thing to a friend that Ed Gein had, claimed that he'd seen shrunken heads at the Gein farmhouse, everyone just rolled their eyes. Apparently, Gein had told Bobby that they were relics sent from a colour who had served in the Philippines during the war, which was exactly the kind of creepy, exotic junk that Ed Gein loved. But little did anybody know. These weren't just the tall tales of an eccentric loner. They were warnings,

a clue to the very real evil, quietly brewing behind the splintered doors of the spooky old farmhouse on the edge of town. Fast forward to 1957 after the discovery of Gein's House of Horrors. Gein sat in the state crime lab, polygraph wires sneaking from his chest and fingers. Detectives knew what they'd seen, a farmhouse littered with body parts, the grim handiwork of someone who must have butchered at least 15 women. What they needed now was for Gein to spill the beans about his unidentified victims. But what Gein came out with shook the investigators to their core.

Other than Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan, all the other corpses found in his house came from six feet under. That's right. Ed Gein was a grave robber. Gein told investigators between 1947 and 1952 he made up to 40 night-time jaunts to the three local graveyards to exhume recently buried women.

Judge Robert H. Goulmar, who'd later be appointed to the Gein case, noted that these crimes were considered shocking but not serious crimes from a legal perspective. And perhaps with that in mind, Ed Gein was all too willing to tell all of the gory details. Gein revealed that he would search the obituary pages for women in their 50s and above who had recently died, finding out when and where they were to be laid to rest. because he didn't intend to let them rest for long. Inspired by his reading about resurrectionists, professional body snatchers who sought out freshly buried cadavers

for anatomists in 18th and 19th century Britain, Gein snuck into cemeteries late at night to hunt his own unusual prey. While he said he went into a days-like state on these occasions, Gein claimed that he snapped out of it on about 30 of those nocturnal visits and put the grave back in order before leaving empty-handed

with his tail between his legs like a good boy. But what about those other times? Well, let's just say he was more like a dog with multiple bones. Gein claimed he removed several whole bodies or occasionally just the parts that interested him the most, the heads and sexual organs. He named nine women, including a Mrs. Adams,

Mrs. Everson, Mrs. Bergstrom, Mrs. Sherman, and Mrs. Sparks from the Plainfield Cemetery, a Mrs. Beggs from Spiritland Cemetery in the nearby town of Olmond, and a Mrs. Foster from Hancock Cemetery. Keep in mind that parts from at least 15 women were found at his place. So, even for all his apparent willingness to spill his guts, Ed Gein still held quite a lot back. There was a healthy dose of scepticism around town about Gein's body-snatching claims. People doubted that a man of his slight stature was up to the grueling task of exhuming a grave all on his own in a single night, let alone that he'd done it on multiple occasions without people

seeing him. Gein just shrugged that he was never disturbed, except for when a canoodling couple came by and he simply ducked into a grave out of sight. It became clear to investigators though if the public were to believe that all these bodies had come from graveyards and not been murder victims then they were going to have to prove it

which meant they were going to have to carry out their own exhumations. First up was the grave of Eleanor Adams the 52-year-old mother who died in the summer of 1951 and whose burial plot was eerily just yards from Augusta Geans. Almost instantly, doubts about Gein's ability to carry out the gruesome job evaporated. While the hole was dug six feet deep,

the top of the wooden box housing the casket was just two feet down in sandy soil secured with nails that could easily be prized open. And it had clearly been tampered with. The wooden slats were put back the wrong way. And when they opened up the casket, they were met with a chilling sight, Mrs. Adams' body was gone, but a crowbar lay nestled in the satin lining. And when it came to Mabel Everson's grave, investigators didn't even have to open the coffin. Placed on top of the outer wooden box was a collection of grizzly odds and ends,

a dental plate, a scrap of clothing with a label attached, and a gold wedding ring. This fit deans bizarre claim that he returned some valuables out of remorse. After this, the DA's office announced that they wouldn't be opening any more graves. They had verified Ed Gein's six-story as much as they needed to. All right, very quick break, because I know you are gagging to get back to this particular episode. But we have to tell you a little bit about what's going on on Patreon this week. Certainly. Well, this week we have Under the Duvei where I explain how hypnosis works badly. but it works.

It does work. And I will tell you how I came off the pill and now the back knee's back. We also have a little chat about Russell Brand and contemplate the composition of the soul and whether it even fucking matters. And then I do a little review on a throwback dating TV show

that I watched on Channel 4 called Perfect Match where I literally couldn't believe A, that people were smoking in clubs because it's that old and then all the horrific things that were coming out of people's mouths. And you can listen to all of that over on Patreon, and you can watch it, too, under the duvet is every week. We release it every Wednesday morning.

And also on Patreon, you can get Red-Handed, totally ad-free. And we also do monthly bonus episodes. And you can find all of that at patreon.com forward slash red-handed. Today is the worst day of Abby's life. The 17-year-old cradles her newborn son in her arms. They all saw how much I loved him. They didn't have to take him from me. Between 1945 and the early 1970s, families ship their pregnant teenage daughters to maternity homes

and force them to secretly place their babies for adoption. In hidden corners across America, it's still happening. My parents had me locked up in the godparent home against my will. They worked with them to manipulate me and to steal my son away from me. The godparent home is the brainchild of controversial preacher Jerry Falwell, the father of the modern evangelical right and the founder of Liberty University. Where powerful men, emboldened by their faith, determine who gets to be a parent and who must give their child away. Follow Liberty Lost on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

After his arrest, Gein was subjected to a month-long psychiatric evaluation. Only for the men in white coats to come back with the least surprising diagnosis imaginable. Crippling, industrial strength, mummy issues. He was a walking-talking Oedipus complex. Yep, the classic Freudian theory where little boys secretly fancy their mums and see their dads as romantic rivals.

Dr. E. F. Schubert concluded that Gein's midnight corpse runs were most likely a response to the demands of his fantasy life, which was motivated by his abnormally magnified attachment to his mother. It's likely that Gein really wanted to dig up his own mother's corpse, but was unable to do so. And we don't mean emotionally, although judging by how pristine Ed kept Augusta's room, that's possible. But it was well known that Augusta had splashed out on a swanky concrete vault for her own coffin.

and Eleanor Adams' tempting wooden-cased grave was right next door, practically gift-wrapped. It does make you wonder if she knew. Oh, yeah. Why is she getting buried in concrete? Good question. That can't have been the cheapest thing in the world, and she's not a wealthy woman. I don't think it's that common for people to insist on being buried in concrete. If we compare Ed Gein to other killers, there is always the theory that they kill victims,

who in some way resemble their true target, and in a similar manner, perhaps here Gein was motivated by finding a substitute for his mother in the form of a replica or body that could be kept indefinitely. A substitute that he could hold on to and control who would never leave him. Just in case we hadn't done enough serial killer bingo, just chucked Janice Nelson in there while you can. Genis. Genis, yep. New one, made him up.

In his confessions, Ed Gein even referred to the corpses as dull. suggesting that he found a strange, twisted comfort in their presence. So maybe, Ed Gein didn't just want to remember his dearly departed mother. He wanted to rebuild her, one stolen vulva at a time. Which brings us onto the infamous woman's suit. And yes, suit is the correct word. Because Gein himself shockingly revealed that on moonlit nights, he would climb into it, skinless.

leggings, mammary vests, face mask and all, and prance around wearing it. And I don't know. Obviously, there's a lot of theories that he's using this to like bring his mother back in a way. And yes, I can buy that. I don't think it's not to do with that. But I think wearing the full body suit goes beyond, well, beyond anything. But I think it goes beyond the idea of Gein just wanting to replicate his mum. It feels like Gein indulging in the fantasy of being a woman.

Perhaps it stemmed from his mother's deep desire for a baby girl. Maybe he's trying to give his mum exactly what she always wanted. Maybe Gein wanted to live up to that dream for Augusta. But it also definitely feels sexual. The spray-painted preserved volvers that it's suspected that he definitely wore because of the little red ribbons and he's tying it to himself. It feels sexual. because that feels like a big step to take.

I mean, is it a big step to take when you've already made a mammary suit? I don't know, but it definitely feels sexual. I don't know. Is there a touch here of autogynophilia, which is parapheria where a man is sexually aroused by the thought of being a female? Kind of feels hard to argue with that.

And under interrogation, Gein also admitted to fantasising in his younger years about removing his own penis, but he said he couldn't go through with it. Where's the eunuchmaker when you need him? Yeah, it does seem like the sexual side of things is quite unavoidable and undeniable. So it begs the question, if Gein's crimes were so rooted in Oedipal's sexual dysfunction,

was he also a necrophile? Most psychiatrists believe that there was absolutely a heavy sexual bent to his corpse mutilations, even if he didn't go all the way. One even diagnosed him as a sexual psychopath, while Gein himself admitted being around bodies turned him on. But he swore that he never had sex with the corpses that he dug up because they smelled too bad. Given everything else he did,

we're going to take that one with a pinch of salt. But if he was telling the truth, maybe the smell and the decay is what eventually put him off grave robbing altogether and onto the pursuit of fresh bodies, escalating his offending to murdering them himself. I could buy it Yeah I also think the whole

Oh on 30 of those 40 occasions Where I tried to go grave robbing I just like Change my mind and I didn't do it No I think it's because the bodies were too decayed For what he wanted to do with them Now under interrogation At the Crime Lab in Madison

Ed Gein eventually fessed up To killing Mary Hogan The 51 year old tavernkeeper Who'd vanished three years before At the time Back in December 1954 Police found a spent 32-caliber shell next to a big old smear of dried blood on the floor of Mary's bar.

But they had absolutely no tangible leads. Now, cornered by the overwhelming physical evidence from the farm, Gein ultimately admitted to being alone with Mary at closing time and fatally shooting her before loading up her body in his pickup and taking her back to his farm to mutilate. He claimed to have carved up Mary's corpse in his summer kitchen, burning the bits he didn't want in his pot-belly stove and then dumping the ashes around his farm.

Later, he led police to an ash heap on the grounds where bone fragments were found. Gein also ultimately confessed to the murder and mutilation of Bernice Warden. He hinted at trying to have sex with her body, but it didn't work. What else he got up to with Bernice Warden before the police found her hanging from the rafters in his summer kitchen is a mystery. although in a chilling detail the autopsy noted that the souls of her feet were blackened by dirt and grime had Ed Gein propped her up but he tried to dance with her like a macab prom date

we'll never know because Gein never gave us the answers to that wouldn't it be embarrassing if you just had dirty feet and then it became like this big speculation point after your death I feel like I quite consistently have dirty feet because I would much rather be barefoot in any given situation Yeah, I do like walking around barefoot in the garden and then I'll go get a massage and I'll be like, oh, my feet dirty? Let's stick with that, though, because unlike his grave robbing antics, which he spoke of freely and almost eagerly, to quote the police,

Gein was weirdly tight-lipped and cagy about the two murders that he was accused of. He often claimed memory lapses and fuzzy recollections, shrugging with a non-committal reply, like, I might have done something, but not to my knowledge. In fact, while he took responsibility for Bernice Warden's death, he actually spun it as a total accident. According to him, he was apparently fiddling with a rifle in her store when it went off by mistake.

And what shot Bernice in the back of the head? He claimed he blacked out from the sight of blood and didn't recall what came next. In reality, the evidence suggested that Gein slit Bernice's throat after shooting her, like a hunter's post-kill flourish. Since that type of bullet wound alone wouldn't explain the huge pool of blood that was found at the scene. All of this points to a paradox in Edgien's personality

that has puzzled genealogists for years. Psychiatrists call him extremely suggestible, likely to agree with any leading questions during interrogation. And that seemed to be true on the surface. On the confession tapes, he can be heard saying things like, that must be right. I guess so. And that could be, whenever an interview tossed out a new idea.

But once the talk turned to the murder details, the stuff that carried heavier sentences, Ed clamped up tighter than a coffin lid. It even made Judge Robert H. Goulmer doubt his simpleton act, writing in his 1982 book that in his opinion, Gein was one smart cookie. And there was an unmistakable fixation revealed through Ed Gein's murders. Like the middle-aged women whose graves he raided, Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden may have shared a physical resemblance with his beloved mother Augusta, but in life their traits completely clashed with hers.

Mary Hogan, known around town as Bloody Mary, was a bawdy, tough-talking German immigrant with a mouth like a sailor and a loose reputation. She was everything Augusta wasn't. Yet, for some reason, Gein was obsessed with her. Despite not being that much of a drinker, he haunted her bar religiously and stared at her. after she vanished Gein's co-workers even teased that if he'd spent more time courting Mary

she'd be cooking for him instead of missing Harold Schechter says that Ed saw in Mary a grotesque dark mirror of his mother sparking a deep sense of injustice essentially why should she live and Augusta die and yeah maybe I can see that point

but it does make me question why then the obsession with Mary while Augusta is still alive. It feels to me maybe more like Mary represented something else, perhaps. I think maybe it's highly likely that Augusta gave Ed kind of this like Madonna Hall complex and also clearly a fixation with older women. Maybe he saw in Mary this sort of sexually open version of what Augusta could have been, a woman who resembled Augusta physically in age and stature and things like that

but maybe because Ed fantasized about his mother sexually which again I don't have proof for but I think it's probably not a huge leap to say that he could never really have Augusta in that way maybe with Mary being sexually promiscuous more open being a drinker the polar opposite of Augusta he saw her as somebody he could finally have in that way I don't know complicated well I think because it's not just Madonna whore, it's Mother Madonna whore, there's three. So I could see it both ways. I could see it that all women are the same and all women are my mother. Or he's like looking for very

specific characteristics, but also maybe they just weren't that many kicking about. Also very possible. The case of Bernice Warden though was tougher to understand. A 58 year old widow, she was a devout Methodist, successful businesswoman, an all-round respected citizen. Gein actually seemed smitten with her. He'd made odd remarks about how nice and plump she looked to his co-workers. And her son Frank reported that Gein had even been pestering her to go roller-skating with him at a nearby rink. And obviously, she had politely declined. And for the record, if the weirdo wants to go roller skating, you should also not go.

Yet, during interrogation, Gein spun bizarre tales about how he had heard Warden stole her late husband from another girl, who then killed herself, so Bernice deserved to die. In his warped mind, Bernice Warden was another twisted opposite of a saintly mum, perhaps. And regardless for how many heinous confessions he made, Gein never seemed to take responsibility for his own crimes. Echoing Augusta from beyond the grave, he claimed that morality in Plainfield is pretty low. He slammed his neighbours for taking advantage of him.

According to Gein, it was just his bad luck that his family moved to a locality. where people were just not as friendly as they should have been when he was a boy. And just like his mummy dearest, Ed had his very own sick moral code. And no matter what, it was always someone else's fault. Ed Gein might have felt that he wasn't responsible for the nightmares that unfolded inside his farmhouse. But would a judge agree? On the 21st of November 1957, Gein was arraigned for the first-degree murder of Bernice Warden. With overwhelming physical evidence, his guilt was obvious.

But first, a sanity hearing had to establish whether he was considered fit to stand trial. After a month of intense psychological evaluation, the answer was a resounding no. Ed Gein received an official diagnosis of schizophrenia in January 1958, with experts testifying that he suffered from chronic hallucinations and delusions. Gien reportedly believed he was God's instrument, with the power to raise the dead. He had even visited his mother's grave multiple times, trying unsuccessfully to bring her back to life with his sheer willpower. He told investigators he felt possessed by an evil spirit controlling his actions,

and the unanimous psychiatric verdict was that Gine had been, and still was, a mentally sick individual who could not be held responsible for his actions. And so Ed Gein was duly committed to Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. A maximum security facility in Warpan, Wisconsin. His own take on his fate? This is what Ed had to say. I'm glad it came out this way. I think it's better for me.

I mean, yeah. He's right. He does really well in hospital. He does really well. Everyone's just like, he's the perfect inmate. He doesn't cause a fuss. He's very calm. They didn't even have to mention.

medicate him, and he just starts rock polishing and making rugs. Wait till they tell him about Lego. So, Ed Gein was locked up, but the community was still reeling from the aftershocks. Suddenly, Plainfield was on the map, not in a good way. Co-eds from Wisconsin colleges kept trying to host rages at the so-called Gould's House, with full-time guards required to keep them out. reporters from all over the world swarmed to this tiny Midwestern town

hungry for stories and suddenly everyone had a tale or rumour to offer up to the hacks take Adeline Watkins who claimed that she dated Gein for 20 years and even came close to marrying him leading to the admittedly excellent almost wedgean

headline congratulations whoever wrote that well done Considering what we know about Ed Gein's isolated bachelorhood, Adeline's story was tough to swallow. And Watkins herself later took it all back, claiming reporters had manipulated her into saying that they had been sweethearts. Then there was a guy who claimed that he was Gein's childhood best friend and spent loads of time hanging out with him on the farm. Again, total bullshit. Since we know full well that Augusta wouldn't let her sons mix normally with other children.

Most of these near-miss stories were just overheated imaginations, fueled by a relentless media machine, eager to milk the story dry no matter how bollocks it was. And so the spooky legend of the butcher of Plainfield took on a life of its own. Embellished stories of necrophilia and cannibalism became part and parcel of the Gein myth, despite never being fully confirmed with evidence.

Take the cannibalism claims. Bernice Warden's heart was actually found in a bag near Gein's pot-belly stove, but somehow that morphed into stories of it simmering in a saucepan on the hob. A grim factoid that was repeated as gospel. There was even a documented spike of locals complaining to doctors of suffering gastrointestinal symptoms convinced that they'd eaten human flesh after accepting venison meat from Gein over the years. Another pop-up from Janice Nelson there. And of course the myth-making around Gein culminated in jokes and dark rhymes galore. often led by Plainfield's quick-witted kids.

These included festive classics like, deck the halls with limbs of molly. And the limerick, there once was a man named Ed who wouldn't take a woman to bed. When he wanted a diddle, he cut out the middle and hung the rest in the shed.

Which for a limerick, where you can't get that much in, that's basically the whole thing. That is. That's all you need to know. Thank you so much for listening to this episode of Red Handers. Yeah.

No, it's just, it really just like soaks into the very earth of Plainfield, this story. And, you know, how could it not? And it spread even further than Plainfield. It actually seems to have soaked into the whole state. Because in the taverns of rural Wisconsin, it became common to hear someone order, and this, this is just too much. A gean beer, which is a lot of body but no head. Who wants a beer with no head on it? Someone who just wants to order a gean beer because it's funny.

And you know, we're red-handed are partial to a bit of gallows humour, so allow us to share some of our favourite guineers. We did not make these up. We found them from the good folks down in Wisconsin. What did they find in Ed Gein's cookie jar, Hannah? Do you want me to read the answer, or do you want to tell the punchline? I'll just tell you the punchline. Ladies' fingers.

Isn't it lady fingers? Lady fingers. Why do they keep the heat on at Ed Gein's house? Because they were really rich The furniture might get goosebumps What did Ed Gein have in his sewing box? Belly buttons Ah

He probably did, you know Why wouldn't anyone play cards with Ed Gein? This one's not so good Something to do with suits, skin suits No, he might, oh, that's better, that would be better He might come up with a good hand Oh, gross How come there are no mice around Ed Gein's place?

Because they're blind so their smell is too good and they're like, oh no, disgusting. So much more vulgar. I got really stuck on three blind mice. Too many pussies. Oh, God, okay. And last but not least, what did the sign say in Ed Gein's window? Body shop. That would also be better.

Wooms for rent. Okay. They ran our steam after the limerick, didn't they? So, with Ed Gein firmly cemented in the serial killer hole of fame, fears grew that the sight of his crimes might become a grim pilgrimage spot for murder junkies. There were even rumours that a wealthy entrepreneur planned to turn it into a tourist attraction and call it a house of horrors. So instead, an auction was scheduled to sell off Gein's possessions on Palm Sunday, 1958.

Those hoping to take gruesome souvenirs home, though, would be disappointed, because all of them had been photographed by the state lab and then decently disposed of back in 1957. Still, though, thousands were expected to attend, until the farmhouse mysteriously burned down in the middle of the night, just ten days before the auction was due to take place. With Bernice Warden's son Frank, now the local fire chief, not much effort was made to uncover the causes of said fire

so it was left undetermined as for the locals they were just glad to see the back of the place when Ed Gein was told of the news he simply shrugged and said just as well 2,000 people showed up for the sale of what was left

anyway with Gein's car notably fetching $760 which is the equivalent of 8.3,000 in today's money and that handsome son was paid by a side show operator called Bunny Gibbons who charged carnival goers

25 cents to have a look at the kill. 25 cents a gander. Why the fuck not? And in 1968 there would be a new twist in the bloody saga of Ed Gein. After a decade in a psychiatric hospital, Gein's doctors

considered him to be mentally able to now confer with counsel and participate in his defence. In other words, it was time for Ed Gein to face the music in court. The jury-less bench trial began on the 7th of November, 1968, and to cut costs, Gein was only tried for Mrs. Warden's murder. And why you might think it'd be an open and shut case,

there were actually some unexpected snags. Gein's defence team submitted a motion for his confessions to be struck from the record. Why? Because, it turned out that after Gein refused to talk for the first 30 hours of his incarceration, Sheriff R. Shelley came in and beat the ever-loving shit out of Ed Gein, slamming his head against a wall until the other officers had to drag him off. He was definitely having an affair with Burmast.

In a further blow, the defence claimed that even the physical evidence found at Gein's farmhouse should be declared inadmissible because the police didn't have a warrant when they'd searched the place. This was potentially massive. If these motions went through, the planefields, would be able to stroll right out of that courtroom. Judge Goulmar agreed to strike the initial confessions, but overruled the motion for the physical evidence to be withheld, and after a nine-day trial, Ed Gein was found guilty of first-degree murder.

He was, however, declared legally insane and sentenced to remain in a psychiatric facility for life. At least, officially. Judge Goulmer later wrote, I still have nagging doubts about whether he was insane or very cleverly, giving the appearance of insanity. Whatever it was, Gein was described as a model patient throughout his long incarceration,

spending most of his time quietly reading or daydreaming in his room, rarely socialising with other patients. Although in a spooky twist, some staff claim that he still spotted hints of the monster within. Supervisor Darrell's stretch later recalled how on the full moon

Gein would get a glint in his eye and rambling coherently about what he'd like to do to women, only to seemingly return to normal when it was all over. And while Gein petitioned for release in 1974, his claims of renewed sanity was swiftly shut down and he remained locked up for the rest of his life. Now this whole thing is a bit of a talking point, obviously, in the Ed Gein case. Was he mad or was he bad?

As we told you, he was diagnosed with schizophrenia at the time. But looking back on the diagnosis, there are a lot of people that now believe that doesn't fit. Schizophrenia in the 50s was, firstly, not viewed as a psychiatric condition, as it is today, but rather one purely formed of attachment. And look, it totally makes sense why they would label him with that given his upbringing. But if we look at Ed's behaviour, it comes across much more like schizotipal personality disorder,

which does sit on the schizophrenia spectrum, but is much less severe. it's characterized by odd behaviour being socially withdrawn magical thinking and yes delusions but to a lesser degree than was schizophrenia so while ed definitely had delusions and magical thinking around maybe being able to bring his mother back from the dead he doesn't seem to have had visions or hallucinations to the extent that one would expect to see from someone who was living with unmedicated untreated undiagnosed schizophrenia and like we said when he was in the psychiatric facility he was always said to be calm, completely rule-abaying, the model patient, and that was all with no medication whatsoever. I think what Ed Gein probably needed was just to be in that hospital, to have some structure.

His mother, as I said, as monstrous as she was, had given him that structure while she'd been alive. And once she was gone and isolated Ed Gein had just fallen further into his own dark thoughts and been completely lost. Gein only ever had two confirmed murders on his rap sheet but people have been wondering for years if there were more unsurprisingly he's been linked to pretty much every Wisconsin cold case there is but many psychiatrists insist that Gein only targeted older women who reminded him of his mum

which considerably narrowed down the potential victim pool however that doesn't mean there are no troubling loose ends in the Gein's story for a start where the hell did those underage girls' body parts come from so perhaps Ed Gein officially killed two women and then desecrated at least 15 bodies but there really is no telling if there were even more victims hidden in the shadows by the late 1970s time was running out for the so-called butcher of Plainfield he was senile and suffering from lung cancer

and so Gein was transferred to the Mendoza Mental Health Institute in Madison. He breathed his last breath on the 26th of July 1984 and was fittingly reunited with his beloved mother inside the family plot at the Plainfield Cemetery. No. Absolutely not. That's not fitting, that's perverse. I hate that.

And it just gets worse because, as you can imagine, Ed Gein's grave swiftly became an edgy pilgrimage place for true crime fans to tip their hats to the granddaddy of body horror. Get a job. I know. Have you heard about Lego? That's what they should tell people. As they approach Ed Gein's grave, they'd be like, listen.

Don't do this. There's this thing called Lego, which you could just spend a lot of your time doing it. They're doing fucking creepy tombstone Lego because these people were not just going there. They were chipping off chunks of his tombstone. The stone itself was actually stolen in its entirety. in June 2000, triggering a mini satanic panic as media outlets reported that devil worshippers were to blame. And when it randomly turned up in Seattle a year later,

it was promptly put into storage. Thankfully, it was never replaced. But still to this day, sick freaks, still leave flowers and letters in its place. So yeah, that brings us to the end of this particularly troubling episode. And if you're planning to Netflix and show with Old Ed next month.

At least you can now watch it safe in the knowledge that you now know the true story behind the script. I want to read those letters, people reading in their grade. What could you possibly have to say? Yeah.

What's happening? I don't know. I do not understand what the fuck is going on. But there we go. There we fucking go. Why not? Why the fuck not?

Loads of reasons. Yeah, I know. So many reasons. Why not? But also for these people, kind of none. It would seem. So, yeah, don't go do any of those things.

Just watch the Netflix show again. It's not sponsored. I don't know why I keep saying. Yeah, right. Fuck off. Just so conditioned. Take this out. I know, I know.

So yeah, that's it, guys. Early Halloweeny case. And it's come to an end now. Goodbye. Goodbye. To listen to Shorthand every week, start your seven-day free trial with Wondry Plus and listen on Apple Podcasts, Spotify or in the Wondry app.

You know those creepy stories that give you goosebumps? The ones that make you really question what's real? Well, what if I told you that some of the strangest, darkest, and most mysterious stories are not found in haunted houses or abandoned forests, but instead in hospital rooms and doctor's offices? Hi, I'm Mr. Ballin, the host of, of Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries. And each week on my podcast, you can expect to hear stories about bizarre illnesses

no one can explain, miraculous recoveries that shouldn't have happened, and cases so baffling they stumped even the best doctors. So if you crave totally true and thoroughly twisted horror stories and mysteries, Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries should be your new go-to weekly show. Listen to Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcasts. You can listen early and ad-free right now by joining. joining Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Spotify or Apple Podcasts.