Rotten Mango - #15- The REAL Silence of the Lambs Killer *he wears skin (seriously) Case of Serial Killer Ed Gein

Episode Date: September 16, 2020

We've seen the movies Silence of the Lambs + Texas Chainsaw Massacre and went to bed thinking "at least it's just a movie." But what if it wasn't? What if the person the movies were inspired by was darker, more sinister, and scarier than the movies themselves?  This is the real life story those movies are inspired by. He wears dead people's skin. Seriously.   To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Rambles. Whether you're doing a dance to your favorite artist in the office parking lot, or being guided into Warrior I in the break room before your shift, whether you're running on your Peloton tread at your mom's house while she watches the baby, or counting your breaths on the subway. Peloton is for all of us, wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton is for all of us. Wherever we are, whenever we need it. Download the free Peloton app today. Peloton app available through free tier or pay to description starting at 12.99 per month. Why don't you take it away with this week's intro? I feel like you might have a good idea of how it goes.

Welcome back to today's podcast. I'm your host, Mr. Manglebutt, with my site, Ho, Stephanie Sue. Wow, that was the most enthusiastic, exciting intro that I've heard in quite some time. Welcome to this week's episode. Holy cow, I have so much shit I wanna talk about in this week's episode. You have no freaking idea.

I've got many stories I've got a gigantic story of a just a really creepy man Okay, so if you guys are here for the Edgene story the Edward Gene story that's exactly what you're gonna get you're gonna get the story that American Psycho will actually Scratch that just the movie Psycho Texas chainsaw Massacre silence of the lamps, was based off of this criminal. So if you guys don't know Psycho, the main character is Norman Bates

and he just pretty much murders a bunch of women. And a lot of it has to do with this strange, deranged loyalty towards his mom. There's a mommy and me storyline to that. So that's Psycho. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. There's a killer called Leatherface and he's called Leatherface because he wears masks made out of human skin from his victims. Texas Chainsaw Massacre. It's a whole series. I mean I think it's a billion

dollars series. Yeah they make a lot of money. Why are you looking behind me? Wait is that real or is it you talking about real case or the movie? These are the movies that are based on the real story. Yes. Now keep that in mind, leatherface. This is not too far from the truth. Yeah, and then we've also got Silence of the Lambs, who was based off of Edward Gain, and Silence of the Lambs is revolving around a character by the name of Buffalo Bill, and he murders a bunch of women for their skin, and he likes to dress up in their skin. Okay, how do you do that? Technically. I'll tell you, technically, from the little experience that I'm just getting, the no experience

that I have, but I am going to give you the lowdown on it. But first, we have to get familiar with a topic which is grave robbing because it's going to be a central theme in today's podcast. Do you know anything about body snatchin? I mean, I know that my body snatched, but do you know anything else about body snatching? Grave robbing is something actually I was really into growing up. You don't say they're incriminating yourself. Oh, okay, so it's it's actually a very trendy topic in China right now because there's a lot of books,

a lot of novel and movies about it. Okay. It's very mysterious. I mean, we're talking about that today or... Yeah, okay, so what do you know about grey robbing? Like, why do people in China rob graves? Why do people hear rob graves? I mean, just having a competition of which countries...

No, I'm curious. I'm curious. Okay, well, I mean, from what I know that there it started, gray robbing started from what it's known today was with the medical industry in like the 19th century. So a lot of medical experts needed cadavers to teach with, to experiment with, to do all of their like medical experiment on. And they were running out of it. I mean, it just was a shit show. That was around the time when all these consent forms

were being like, so all these doctors? Yeah. So all these consent things were showing up. And people were like, wait, actually, in order for you to just take someone's dead body, you have to have their family's consent. And so then they were running out of people. They were running out of bodies.

So these people would go in and try to dig up graves so that they could give it to the black market The cell the body yeah, they just sell the bodies to the doctors. So you guys rob not you guys I'm sorry to die people grave rob for the body Yeah, so there was lots of grave robbing for the physical body to get you know medical So there was lots of grey robbing for the physical body to get medical expertise done on it, I guess. Like not for that person. Like from the brief, I don't know too much about this aspect.

I know about the crime aspect. Not saying that this isn't a crime, but this is more of like a crime for a greater good and some people's eyes. But I know about that dirty crime grey robbing. There was also a case of, do you know Charlie Chaplin? Yeah. Well, this isn't really count because it didn't happen in America, but he was buried in Switzerland, right?

And these two dudes in Switzerland decided, hey, we're just going to go rob his grave because I'm sure his wife, the widow, or the widow is going to be so excited to pay us money to get Charlie Chaplin's body back. So they went to Switzerland, they dug up his body, and then they buried him in like a cornfield somewhere, and then started contacting the wife of like, hey, I'm literally, I've got your body, like what do you want? I want $600,000. You want the body back? Like, let's make a little deal. And she said no. So she was telling everyone like Charlie Chaplin, my husband, who is now dead, would have thought that this is ridiculous. He would never want me to pay this money. So she

worked with the police in order to catch the two dudes without ever giving up penny. And they were caught. And here's the crazy thing. After they were caught, the police were like, can you lead us to Charlie Chaplin's body that you had briefly just, you know, buried somewhere else for safekeeping while you were trying to get ransom. And they were just like making circles around this cornfield. They were like, what the fuck? Where did we put the body? So it took quite a time. But eventually the body was recovered and he was returned and then his wife made them put a slab of concrete on top so that it would never happen again.

Sam, that is a true story? Yeah, and there's another crazy or one in Florida that we'll get into. But anyways, what happens in China? I want to know. And also the fact that I said grave robbing, and you said, oh, you guys want the body? Like, what else would you get from the grave robbing? Oh, this is...

Oh, honey, this is a total different game you're talking about here. Okay. So, the Chinese one, they all starts with way back in the day. So, I don't think a lot of people are doing that today simply because when you die, you know, you just burn the body or, you know, there's... Okay, can you say creme, mate? Creme, yes, exactly. There's not much to rock, but back in the days, when you're rich, when you die, it's a huge ceremony. A lot of time people throw, put your jolries and a lot of valuables into the grave with you.

So we call it paid tongue. It's like, it's your belongings. I don't know the exact reason behind it. Maybe they want you to bring it to the other world to spend or to spend. To spend. Yeah, you use as your money or you wear it. So like in the afterlife, I will show up in heaven or hell depending on, do you like me or not? Yeah. And I'll just be decked out, iced out. Yeah, yeah, you can say that. Yeah.

Now that's pretty common. Like anybody who's rich, they will throw keep all your jewelry's in there. Now if you're a... ...imper, what is it? ...imper. If you're an emperor, holy shit. So, you know the famous... ...the terracotta?

Yeah, the terracotta soldiers. Oh, I took history class. What do you know about it? I know that they were just like... ...in there. Can you not expose me like that? So okay. The dynasty would make these soldiers to protect them in the afterlife. Yes. Yes. Yes. So there's a huge belief on in afterlife in you know these things. So a lot of of Emperor I can't say that word Emperor how do you say it in Mandarin?

Emperor Huangdi just say Huangdi Emperor a lot of Emperor before they die they will spend a lot of money and energy they will find a spot first so they will hire these seasoned I don't know what to call them they will use all sorts of shit to find you a spot that's the best fun shui when you die so like real estate is location yeah yeah yeah there you go. So like real estate is location. Yeah, yeah, yeah, there you go. Location. So they would find the location and then they will start digging, right? They would dig a huge, huge, huge area of land and then they will build these very

intricate rooms underground. Legend has it. There's even castles and freaking all sorts of stuff building underground and then they will build these soldiers to protect them. And that was only by one Legend has it, there's even castles and freaking all sorts of stuff building on their ground And then they will build these soldiers to protect them and that was only by one I'm I'm I'm per Yes, they will throw keep all sorts of gold treasure and everything in there So whenever the Emperor dies that seems really tempting though exactly yeah on top of that

They already thought about it. They know that people is going to come dig it, right? That's why there's also a lot of defense mechanisms embedded in there. Does that make sense? Yes. You're talking like a bank safe. Allegedly, there's like poisons in some layers. So if you dig open that layer, poisons just come out.

Some layer, there's triggers to arrows, just shoot at you. So nowadays, if you watch movies, right, there's some movies made about it. It's so crazy because they will go on there and you just see a huge castle underground and then there's just arrows shooting at you. There's rock turning to soldiers and people chasing rock turning into soldiers and then these rock soldiers chase after you say yeah yeah that's that's movie. But truth is there are a lot of things to build into it. Just to defend it So today there are still some people robbing it a few years ago. There's there was a huge group getting caught by the police for

Grave robbing. Yes, they got all the stuff that they rob from from from the grave the amount of stuff that they got They say the historical value in those is equivalent to a museum. So they were robbing like ancient graves, like not like, oh your brother is dead, like that's the goal. Okay, so nobody robs normal graves. They only rob graves from like freaking hundreds and thousands of years ago. Can you imagine? Oh my god. Like even a spoon come out of it is a fucking piece of history. Well now that you bring that up, what's the difference between a grave robber working for themselves? Yes. And like let's say one of those people who will go and like dig bones to learn about the history and then they bring it to a museum and then

it gets displayed. Technically could you say that both are grave robbing? So that's interesting because back in the days, how do I know these stuff? There was people in the name of research will dig up these graves, but the truth is they just won the treasure, right? Here's the most fascinating part to me. Today, the most story that people are writing about is individual robbers, right? So there's just two people, most of them, there are two people.

So what they do is detect team, right? One person dig and go to the bottom. The other person standing on top, pull up all the soils and he look around, making sure nobody sees them. As the bottom person start digging and bringing up some valuables and when he's done, you will pull the string, right? Yeah. To notify the top person to pull him up. Yeah. The top person, he already brought up all the treasure. They don't oh my god. Oh no. Oh no don't tell me. Don't tell me that they don't just. No they will pull him almost pull him up and they release. So he will drop to his death and then he will dump all the soil back in and just

killed other person and run away with the treasures. So that's what happens at the beginning right? And then people quickly start realizing that's really dumb. Nobody want to go down anymore, right? What? Today, what would you think would be a good solution to that? Okay, let me think with my little criminal brain, okay? Yeah. A good solution would be a lot of everyone goes down at what?

You have all sorts of people. A three people team. Mm-hmm, too many people. Too many people. So it's got to be two people sorts of people. A three people team. Too many people. Too many people. So it's got to be two people. Two people. Two people. They can still kill the person in a split of mind.

A dog. A dog watches. No. A dog digs. Families. Oh no, it's a family operation now. Yes, you have to work with your families. So that they don't kill you?

I mean, we've talked about some crazy families though. Yeah, but usually father and son. Who goes now? The son. The son goes now. No that will leave their son down there. I mean again very questionable staff but a son could leave their dad down there. A son could leave. That is really crazy. I actually heard about Chinese grave digging in a different way. In the sense that I heard that there was a market for people to dig up individual graves of, let's say like you're like looking for a young woman in her 30s, but she's dead of course. So you have to look for a corpse who died when she was in her 30s. They'll go, they'll

dig them up, and they'll bring them to a family, and now this woman will be buried with their 30-year-old unmarried son who is dead. So they don't want the son to enter the afterlife by himself. So they will dig up a dead body, and then bury it with the dead body. Okay, I don't know if that's true or not. That sounds like some...

What's that I ran around it? Airbalegian. They said it was rural areas of China. Yeah, yeah. Practice something like this. Let's talk about Edginawe. So this is really a case that's just... I don't want to say fascinating because I know it's a little weird to say that.

But it's really fascinating and how someone gets to this point and the things that he did. And maybe the mental state that he was in because I mean when you hear Edgain you kind of think of him as like the Ted Bundy's of the world the Ed Kemper's of the world the Unibombers of the world just these Insanely evil people that have hurt dozens of people serial killers. He's always categorized with serial killers Now here's a crazy thing It's up for debate. We don't really know if he's a zero killer. We do know that he is an avid grave robber. We do know that he has murdered at least one

person, but we don't know if it's one or two or three. Nobody ever thinks that it's like in the 50s or the 30s or the 40s, like all these other massive American zero killers. His main motivation in life, and you're gonna see this from the minute that he's born up until the day that he dies is the fact that he wants to worship his mom almost. He just loves his mom so much. It's a mommy issue? Yeah, but not in this sense like when you hear that and you think about zero killers or all these crazy people, you think about Okay, he loves his mom so much, his mom was probably abusive, so then he went on and he started taking his ingrat like Ed Kemper

You know how his mom was so mean that he even put her vocal cords into the dish Garbage disposal in the sink and then through darts on her decapitated head Remember that yeah, yeah, we all remember that so not in that sense of like he was just so filled with rage because of his horrendous mother It was the fact that Ed again wanted to become his mom Yeah, does that mean oh yeah, remember the grave robbing yeah, yeah, remember the how he's how I said leather face Was a based off of him and he had a a face mask made out of humans. But what kind of mentality is that? Have you ever heard such thing like that? Or did you choose the first one?

I mean, he's one of the first ones, one of the few ones. And I mean, I did a little bit of digging in the psychology aspect of it, and it's just so weird. So we're gonna get into it. Is that why he's so famous? Yeah, because I mean, it's not just that, though. I've seen a lot on Google images. I will show you them later.

If you guys have this stomach to it, if you Google like all of Edgine's house stuff, it's intense. He likes to make things out of human skin. Anyways, continuing on, he's a crafty little motherfucker. That's what he is. He spent way too much time in arts and crafts and he thought that he could just

upholster a chair with human skin and thought nobody would notice So let's get into his childhood So Ed Gain was born in Wisconsin and he was born in a not so great area to really not so great set of parents And I don't know how these individuals would be without the other partner But together his mom and his dad was just like this tornado So his dad's name was George and his mom's name was Augusta. Now George is very fascinating so this is the dad. He is the patriarch of the family but he's not really because it seems like a Augusta was in charge of everything. The dad was just the hand that smacked people. So

Augusta would say this is what's going to happen and then the dad would punish the two sons depending on what the mom wanted. So he had an older brother by the name of Henry, and they were constantly abused. I mean, it just was really intense, but not, I don't think there was ever signs of sexual abuse. I'm not really sure. I can't be certain, but it doesn't seem like it's a landmark in his childhood, right? Now George, the dad, was an orphan.

He, his entire family died from a flooding of the Mississippi rivers. So then this later caused him to just become a raging alcoholic. Like, he was just done with life. Like, life had been too hard, it had been too stressful. He had an immensely hard time keeping a job. He was a carpenter one day, then it was an insurance salesman the next day. He was kind of like a jack of all trades. So at one point Augusta, I mean she just didn't like this.

Like she was a religious woman. And she hated the fact that the man, her husband kept drinking. She hated the fact that her sons were like going to school and hanging out with these people. I mean none of it was vibing with her. She was the breadwinner. She had this grocery store that she owned

And she decided to sell it and move to a more quote-unquote righteous location So they bought a 155 acre farm Okay, yeah, and they just wanted to live in isolation. That's just pretty much what I wanted to be I mean a gusza was just a scary scary woman So people say that she was verbally abusive towards even her own husband and even in front of people, which back in the day, like that's crazy. Like you can see that in 2020 and you could be like, oh wow, they're fighting or like, wow, she's really going at it, right? But back in the day, like it was known for men of the patriarchs of the house, like you don't talk to your husband like that. So she was balls to the walls.

And George would get shrunk and he would come home and he would beat Augusta because that's the only time he had balls. Like when he was sober, he couldn't say anything to Augusta. He was like, I can't do it. Like I can't stand up for myself, you know? But then Augusta would be like, okay, you're gonna come home and you're gonna beat me when you're drunk.

Well, here's what I'm gonna do. She would get onto our hands and knees and pray to God verbally and said, God, if you're there, please kill my husband in front of him, in front of him, in front of the kids. There are two sons, Henry and Ed. That is so weird. Yeah, I would say it's an intensely toxic relationship, yes. I mean, one that just is, that's not a good home life, I don't even.

Like, can you imagine like your parents are fighting and your mom is just asking God to strike down her husband? Yeah. Which is why? I mean, listen, if Agasta were around today, I would say to her, or if George was around, I'd say to her or if George was around I'd say to her listen Is there something interfering with your happiness or preventing you from achieving your goals? Well, I was a little too smooth 70s too So if you guys don't know about better health, let me tell you about this service that I've been using for I want to say multiple years now

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Thank you, BetterHelp for partnering with us on this week's podcast. Thank you, BetterHelp. Wow, that's a really good one. Well, you really blew it away. So, I mean, yeah, toxic love. I don't know what else to say. She was, they were both really toxic.

So they moved to this farm, which is probably the last thing you should do when you're in a toxic relationship is like not have any outside contact and just be isolated completely with just this familial unit, but that's exactly what Augusta wanted because she wanted more control over her sons.

She just was on this pure war path against sinning and everything was a sin to Augusta. So they moved to this farm and she didn't want anyone to influence her son. So all they were allowed to do was leave for school and they would immediately have to come home. They could never have friends over. They could never go hang out with friends. Nothing. They would just do chores around the house. And the reason for this was because Augusta says she had to protect her kids from all the hores. The hores? The hores. Got some holes in this house. Yeah, like all the hos. Yeah. So then they'd come home from school and then I think this started when they were

in elementary school. Like she was obsessed with the fact that this was her belief that women were naturally prostitutes and instruments of the devil except Augusta herself. So she's got real big Karen energy for sure. Like she truly believed every other female out there was just a nasty dance. And she was just on the path of purity. And they're out to get her sons. Yeah. And that's what she taught her boys. And so every day that they'd come from school, they would have these afternoon Bible study sessions and she would just ingrain into their brain non-stop. Number one, the evil of drinking. Number two, women are all prostitutes, except for our gustor herself.

And she would also read them Bible verses that had to deal with death, murder, divine retribution, which is essentially supernatural punishment. What happens to you when you die? Everything all of your actions on earth are now going to be punished for in the afterlife. She would only read these verses. She would never give them a glimmer of hope. The Bible's got lots of hopeful verses, but she was like none of that, not in this. But she was so intense to the point where Ed had determined at a pretty young age that he wanted to die a virgin. Which is a really big commitment to make. So there's a lot of people, like specifically in like the Catholic church.

I believe there's Buddhism deals with this. Just complete celibacy, right? Oh, okay, okay, yeah. But it was more for his mom, less for religion, which I find to be alarming. Like, it's one thing to do it for this bigger faith that you carry, right? But it's another thing to be like, you know what, mom, you're right, like I'm never gonna find happiness

and I will die of origin because you told me to. So does he love his mom? He loves his mom. He, oh my gosh, the amount of love that he has from his mom. Even with all the abuse? Yeah, he just loved her so much. It just was weird. Yeah, so he wanted to die a virgin in order to really fully devote himself to his mom.

He was fighting this with his natural attraction to women. He was kind of in a in a in between a rock and a hard place, right? So it just was a lot for this dude. Now the mom would do a lot of crazy things. She said that if she ever saw the two sons doing anything remotely sinful, like even if she was walking across them and she saw them even thinking about something. She was like, are you thinking about a girl? Are you thinking about some whore and she would come over with some boiling water and throw it on top of that. Like, she was really, really mean. What the fuck don't they get burned? Yeah, and when I say mean, I mean abusive, right? How's the brother? The brother turns out, I don't want to say normal,

but the brother didn't really love his mom like that. Like, the brother just felt like she was abusive and he kind of wanted to get away from her. She just wasn't the best. Like he just had a very normal reaction to the abusive. Like God I can't wait to get out of here one day. Like this, the socks, right? Yeah. And their social life was very slim. Like they didn't have any friends, especially Ed, a lot of people even when he was at school, it was very difficult for him to make friends because they said that he had these strange mannerisms, like he just was very off-putting for all of these school kids. And when they were asked about it, they said, you know, he would just randomly laugh really loudly in the middle of class and we'd be like, what's

so funny? And he would say that he was laughing at his own jokes. Which, I mean, I don't feel like that's not scary. He must be really creepy laughs. Or he must just have really funny jokes. So he would just laugh and they would be very scared by this. I mean I think it's one thing for I guess maybe a popular kid to be like laughing at their own jokes or like the the what do you call it the class clown? But I guess it's another thing when like the person who never talks is just laughing in the corner all the time Yeah, I guess it would be a little bit concerning

So whenever he did try to make friends at school his mom would punish him and she would just be like You're not gonna freaking do that like you're letting sin into your life Is that what you want and he'd be like? I guess that's not what I want? And he'd be like, I guess that's not what I want. And then she'd be like, yeah, you don't want that dirty sin in your life. And he's like, I was just talking to Kevin. Like, I don't know how he's dirty sin, but okay.

So good. Why, why is the mom like that? I think she had lots of mental issues. I definitely think she had some sort of weird controlling need. Right. And she just hated the fact that Henry, her oldest son, was very similar to her father. So she gets into this marriage with George and obviously they don't like each other. And she felt like, okay, I'm only going to be happy in this marriage if I give birth

to a child. So she gets birth to Henry. And she's like, wow, I'm still miserable in this marriage. Okay, this is only going to big work if I give birth to a baby girl. So then she gives birth again, but it was another son. So a lot of people say that she almost treated him like she would treat a daughter and kind of molded him to be a lot more not so boyish, which again, I feel like just doesn't apply in 2020 terms, you get it.

But like she didn't really want him to go out and play like a little boy. She wanted him to just be next to her non-stop, like just very meek, very quiet, which is what back in the day girls were treated as, not so much these days, but back in the day, right? Interesting. So that's how she kind of wanted to raise him. And even regardless of all of this social issues that he was having and the abuse at home, he did really well in school, especially reading like he was an avid reader.

So he was doing good academically. Obviously your hokilers do really well in school, huh? Yeah, it's kind of scary. But maybe that's why they get away with it. So then the dad, George, he ends up dying at 66 years old from heart failure. And now this is when Henry and Ed, they had to pick up a bunch of odd jobs to help pay with the bills. So Ed and Henry would go around and they would essentially just be handyman, so they were described as the

neighborhood for being honest and reliable. Like they just were good dudes. Nobody was scared of them. Nobody was like, oh my god, they're gonna jib us. They're gonna scam us. They're gonna freaking, you know, do this to us. Like everyone was like, hey, call those two brothers. If you need anything, they're great. And Ed, he said, you know, more than being a handyman, I really like to be a babysitter. So he was like the town's babysitter, like the go-to babysitter.

And he really liked it because he related more to the children than he did the adults, which again, I'm like, oh my god, that's so scary. 2020, that's, yeah. But also, I mean, I'm like, oh my God, that's so scary. 2020, that's, oh, oh. Yeah. But also, I mean, just imagine growing up, and then you learn that you were actually babysat by this person. Oh, yeah.

I just don't know what that would do to all of these kids' psyches and their trauma afterwards. I'm sure there's got to be some trauma associated with it, even if you didn't hurt them or touch them or anything like that. There's just a weird fear, like an unsettling feeling, right? And so after the dad dies, Ed and his mom become even closer, like they are just inseparable. The way that people would describe it seemed as if Ed's mom was Ed's first love and only friend. Like first love, not in the creepy incestuous way, but genuinely in the way that I don't really know

how it's not incestuous and creepy, but they were trying to say it in a cute and during way when they were just all a little bit alarmed. It wasn't just a mother's son love. No, it was real deep. They were constantly together. He was in his 30s and they were just constantly be together. Every day, yeah. Hmm.

It's weird. And so, Henry the older brother, he starts dating a divorcee, and he was like, listen, I'm gonna move in with this woman, because we love each other, we're gonna get married. I don't care what you say, mom.

I know you think divorce is bad, but fuck you, I'm moving out, right? And he was trying to tell Ed, like, you need to move on with your life, like what are you doing here? You're not gonna get anything out of this farm, you're not gonna get anything out of being mommy's little bits, like get out of here and start your own life, you need to start your own family.

And he would even drop in these little hints of like, you know, mom's not as great as you think, like mom does this, mom does this, she's, she's evil, she's abusive, remember when she hit us when we were young, blah blah blah blah and Edward gets so mad at Henry. He would just be like, don't talk about mom like that. And it just seemed like that was the amount of time that he would show intense emotion. The rest of the time he was relatively shy and calm and just a reliable dude, but he would get just very very upset when his brother would

shit talk his mom. Henry ends up dying. What? Wait, who? The brother, the older brother. So four years after the dad's death, you know how I said that they were doing all these odd jobs and Henry was getting ready to move out, they decided to burn a bunch of like just random shit on their property and it's normal to do it apparently back in the day to just burn this vegetation to get rid of it and then they would start fresh and so they were burning it and then more ash caught on fire and then it just kind of got out of control so all the neighbors called the fire department they

get there in time they put out the fire and then they leave. Now immediately after they leave and it goes back to the fire department and the police department and is like, wait a minute, my brother is missing, Henry is missing. And they're like, what? So they come back out to the property and they do a massive search party and they find Henry laying face down and he had been dead for some time and he wasn't burnt. So he did not burn to death, he was not impacted by the fires. He was nowhere near the fire when it happened. It said that he died from heart failure, but people did note that he was found with bruises on his head.

He was not injured, though. There was no gunshot wound, there was no stab wounds, there was no defensive marks of a crazy fight or struggle that happened, but he had bruises on his head. So what could it be? But the police were like, well, it's probably nothing. So they had no evidence that anyone had anything to do with it and these bruises were a little bit random so they were just like, let's close the case. So the coroner actually listed the cause of death as asphyxiation as like he choked or something, right? And they never performed a proper autopsy. So he just like died. Now, tons of people suspected that this was Ed's first murder. And the inspiration was

Cain and Abel. And I don't really know if I'm pronouncing that, right? But he studied the old testament of the Bible almost every single day with his mother. Now there's a chapter called Genesis in the Bible, and the first two sons of Adam and Eve were named Cain and Abel. Now Cain was the older one, and he was a farmer, Abel was a shepherd, and Cain would go to the Lord and give him some fruit, and the Lord would say, okay, and then Abel would go to the Lord and give him flock, like some of his best animals, because he's a shepherd. And the Lord would say, thank you, Abel, for your service or something like that. Okay, he regarded Abel, but he disregarded Cain.

And this made Cain so jealous, like brimming with jealousy, that he brought about to the field, sound familiar, he brought about to the field and killed him. And the punishment was that he was to become a restless wander. I mean, it's a very poetic punishment, but people suspect maybe he was so obsessed with his mom that even though his mom and Henry didn't have an amazing relationship, that even just an inkling of that love towards Henry was love he could have been getting. Interesting. So nobody thought it was the mom who did it or... Because she ended up having a stroke afterwards.

Yeah, so she had a stroke shortly after Henry's death and it left her partially paralyzed. So he just was, yeah, Ed was like, I'm gonna devote my life to my mom now, like for real, like this is the test. And so he would sit there every day with her and just just tend to her every minute of his life. Now Augusta, was she like, oh my god, thank you so much for doing this for me. No, she was incredibly abusive while she's laying there and can't do shit for herself. And I'm saying this because of how mean she was, right? She would call him in a be- like a failure. She'd be like, you are a weak little bit. You are just like your dad, you're a failure, and you're never gonna get anywhere without me. But then you're thinking, okay, well how does Ed live with this?

You know, everyone's got a reaching point where they just tip over and they just explode and they're like, You're not the woman I thought you were like you're not the mom that I thought you were right But she was really good at handling it so she would do this for multiple days and then all of a sudden she would call him She would call him a good boy He's like 30 okay, and she would allow him to sleep in the same bed as her but they wouldn't get it on so I couldn't find any reports that suggested that their relationship was physically incestuous but she would say good boy and like come to bed yeah I talked to my dog like that so it's a little weird. Yeah. Yeah. So she would just. It's already weird when you talk to your dog like that. What do you mean? And so she would let him sleep in her bed.

It's very weird. So how did you find, are these information shared by him eventually? So a lot of it was shared by him and a lot of it was shared by neighbors, like townspeople. But he was really open, like he wasn't really someone who was trying to get away with anything after the fact. If that makes any sense. So to him that was such a great reward. Yeah, like to him that was like wow. To share a bed with mummy was his life's greatest greatest accomplishment he would think yeah uh-huh which speaking of I

want to talk about accomplishment that I recently had real quick not to tube my own horn not to just pat myself on the booty cakes okay but I have been in this struggle it has been an intense struggle of finding vitamins I I mean you can ask my fiancee. There was a point in time where I would Amazon like 20 different vitamins a day. Tell them how many bottles. Too many bottles. I am like 24 now. I need to get some vitamins, probably a multi-vitamin. There is no amount of freaking salads and green juices I can drink that will get me my full daily dosage of vitamins and I was really becoming like a little vitamin chemist

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Like can I get a straw with my drink? No, no, no like hey, right? So they go to a man by the name of Smith. Now, once they get to his property to purchase said straw, you know, Augusta gets out of the car and she witnesses Smith beating a dog to death. Yeah. Wait, so who is beating a dog? Smith, the straw dealer, the person that they're trying to buy some straw from.

So he's seen beating a dog to death. Oh, okay. Yeah, we got a lot of horrendous characters in today's story, yeah. So then while he's beating this dog to death, a woman comes out of the house and she starts yelling at Smith to stop. She's like, stop beating the dog. You're gonna kill it. You're gonna kill it.

And then he ends up killing the dog. Now on their way home, Ed realizes that his mom is really upset. So at first, of course, he's like, you know, dogs go to heaven. You know, he's like trying to make up some shit because, you know, his mom is really upset. So at first, of course, he's like, you know, dogs gonna have an, you know, he's like trying to make up some shit cause, you know, his mom's so upset, she's traumatized by this, who wouldn't be? Like you and I are both like, what the heck, you just beat up a dog to death?

And she says, wow, that's disgusting. I mean, not the dog, who cares about the dog, but did you see that woman? They're not married. What was she doing in his house? She shouldn't be see that woman? They're not married. What was she doing in his house? She shouldn't be in his house if they're not married. How does she know they're not married? She knew word on the town as Smith is an unmarried man.

So she would constantly call her Smith's harlot. She would just bring it up like they'd be having breakfast in a week and then she'd be like, Oh my God, I wonder how Smith's little hoe is doing And it was just she was so crazy She was so angry. She literally gave no forks about the doggy death Meanwhile, my dog is just passed out next to me. Has no idea what I'm talking about Yeah, Tiger you don't want to know

Okay, so she has no care about the doggy death She's just so upset that there was an unmarried relationship going on inside of that house. And so soon after, she was so angry that she had her second stroke. Yeah, and then afterwards, her health just obliterated, like it just deteriorated and she ended up dying. Now by this point, Ed Keen was 39 years old and he was completely devastated and he was alone. So up until this point, I mean we just have to notice the fact that Ed had no social

life, first of all, but he also had no relationship with women. He doesn't even know what it's like to talk to a female. He doesn't really understand it. He wouldn't even know how a relationship would work with a female. And some people actually say that they're kind of glad that maybe he didn't try to venture off into that because maybe he could have gone a different round and became a serial killer and taken out anger towards women that he later started dating because maybe they weren't reciprocating or anything like that because we've seen that happen

before. So he just was all alone all he knew was his mom all he knew in companionship and anything was his mom I mean his mom was his life So what he does immediately is that he boards up all of the rooms that his mom spent a lot of time in so her bedroom the sitting Parlor Mm-hmm such a fancy word this must be like end of the world for him. Oh, yeah So he boards up all of these rooms and he never goes inside these rooms and when they were found later it was in pristine condition and the rest of the house.

Wait, he boarded up and he never went in himself. Yeah, he just wanted to like time capsule it. Okay. And he would spend like this little back room behind the kitchen. He turned it into a bedroom and just the kitchen was where he stayed. He didn't really try, I mean, he lived in a, he looked, the house was, it seemed like a hoarder. So it just was really, really gross, kind of dirty, just all over the place, okay? And he never left the farm. He just became more isolated.

The one thing that he did started getting into was he started reading magazines. And his favorite types of magazines were about cannibals and Nazis. So there's magazines about that like subscription. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, if you thought playboy was wild, you got to get cannibals or us, you know, that shit's wild. I'm not even gonna get into the Nazi thing because I, yeah. So he would read these types of magazines. He was very into those, those were his favorite things. And sometimes he would leave the farm to go to Mary Hogan's tavern, which is just like this

bar that Mary Hogan owned. She's the owner of the bar and he would go and he would get a drink sometimes. Now people said that he was a little bit weird. So all of the other patrons at this tavern notice that Ed is a little bit anti-social. He has no social skills so he doesn't really know how to hold a conversation. He's a little bit awkward. He's really awkward but nobody thinks he would do anyone harm. He was again just known as like this reliable honest awkward mom was boy. That's how he was known in town. Now one day Mary Hogan goes missing and all that people saw was that her tavern was left with just a little bit of blood in it and Mary Hogan was never seen again. So we can suspect that something bad happened to Mary Hogan. And what people noticed is that one day when Ed was at

the tavern because he was still running running afterwards her family had still kept it going He was talking about Mary Hogan everyone's like, what do you think happened to her? What do you think happened, right? Mm-hmm and Ed said, you know, she's spending the night at my place and Everyone was like, oh God, that's just such a tasteless joke like Ed I mean, I don't know if you're too drunk or maybe you just don't have friends to tell you That's not a funny joke. Why would you joke about something like that? What's he serious? See nobody thought he'd be serious because how could little Ed hurt anyone?

He just was such a harmless person so everybody took it as just wow you really have no social skills to realize that that's not a good joke So they were just like okay, what a weirdo, right? And so then they move on. Now the town had another bit of a scare when a hardware shop owner goes missing. Her name was Bernie's Warden. And one day her store closed and the next morning was supposed to be open, but it wasn't open. And so people were like, whoa, what's going on? I mean, when there's only like one hardware store in the town everyone's gonna be like what the fuck I need my what do you buy it a hardware store? I Need my hardware, okay? I am so dumb okay? So they're like where the hell is Bernie's I need my hardware and they were thinking you know

Maybe she closed the store today because it is dear hunting season and most locals go dear hunting today because it is deer hunting season and most locals go deer hunting. Right? Wow this story is really just not 20-25s yeah. And so then her son, he is a deputy at the police department. He decides to go check up on his mom because everyone was like, hey what's up with your family story? They know it's open today. And he's like what? I mean it's supposed to be open. So he goes and he checks up on his mom and he realizes the back door of the hardware store is unlocked which again is very, very odd. So he enters the mom and he realizes the back door of the hardware store is unlocked, which again is very, very odd. So he enters the store and he finds that the cash register is open.

There's blood stains on the ground. So he starts freaking out. Now the one thing that he realizes is wait a minute, let me check her sales slips. Like did she not open at all today? Did she go missing today? Or what happened? You know, I saw her last night. And he saw that the last sales slip that she ever wrote

with this morning and it was for a sales slip for Ed Gain for a gallon of anti-freeze. So obviously Ed gets arrested the same day and they go into his barn and he's like, okay, let's search his farm because maybe Brannese is there. Maybe he's holding her captive. Maybe he's a little weirdo. And so they look and they look. And there was something called a summer kitchen outside of his house, which I guess he would cook in the kitchen is kind of like a little shut, right? And that's when they find Brniece. Completely naked. Hanging upside down with the crossbar at her ankles, ropes at her wrist, completely decapitated. They couldn't see her head anywhere. Oh my god. And all of her

organs were out. And the way that her organs were taken out was less of, um, less of like disembowelment vibes. And they said it was in the very similar fashion of how you would take out the organs of a deer. So there's a specific word for it, so when you go hunting, and maybe let's say you're setting up camp, and you shoot down a deer. You're like, this deer is going to feed me and whoever I'm camping with for the next couple of days. You have to immediately cut them down in a very almost surgical process around the chest

and take out all of their organs because the organs keeps heat in and heat causes bacteria on the meat, which causes you to get sick. So it's very, very time sensitive. You have to take out all of these organs and there's almost like a process to doing that, which is very different from a frenzied disembowelment type of vibe, right? So that's what he did to Bernice. Was he trying to... So then they go inside Ed's house, and this is where the house of horrors...

They go in and they find a shit show. I mean, I don't even, I don't know what to say. They find nine faces on the wall, like almost embedded into the wallpaper. They find a trash basket made completely out of human skin. They find chair seats that were a pulse stirred using human skin. They find leggings, like, you know, Louis Lehmann. Yeah, like leggings made out of human skin. Oh my god.

They find human skin masks. So it seemed like someone had very carefully somehow skinned, like one of those Halloween masks, you know what I mean? But real people. There was a bunch of those laying around. A bunch of those. Yeah, there was also a lamp shade. You know lamp shades like the lamp, the outside. Yeah. A lot of it's made out of fabric, but it was made out of the face skin. And you could actually still see parts of the face like the nose and like the parts where the eyes would go. Oh my god. And he made a lamp shade out of it. Why is he like that? It gets worse when you find out his motive and I'm not laughing because it's funny.

I'm laughing because my fiance's physical reaction right now. And like you guys need to know that sometimes I fiance munches on almonds while I tell a story and almost halfway through every podcast the almonds are down. They're not coming back up He's not eating them anymore, okay? And then the corset he made a corset out of someone's torso So the way that a corset works is you know those like waste trainers for back in the day I mean they still use them and it's supposed to keep women like thin looking around the waist and

The tools to a really good corset is what's called a boning. So they have like, I don't know what it's made out of. I think back in the day it was made out of real bones of animals, I think. But these days, it's just like heavy-duty wires that keep you in frame. Like it's not just fabric, that's super tight, right? And he had made a corset out of a woman's torso.

Like from using her shoulder and her waist bones and he had made a corset out of a woman's torso. Like? Like from using her shoulder and her waist bones and kept her skin, but you could get into it. So it's not like he just cut off her upper body, upper torso and kept that around, but he made it so that you could wear her. He made gloves out of human skin. And there weren't even mens so he did every finger

You know like how mittens they just have like a little ball that you put all your fingers into Yeah, no, but he was like let me get all the individual fingers. You saw pictures of him. Oh, yeah There were nine faces on his wall as decoration mm-hmm Who are these people? He made a shirt a long-sleeved shirt out of human skin and he had also sewed on breasts onto that shirt yep so what the hell is going on he's trying to wear a human skin suit exactly yeah yeah so that he could be his mom that was all his mom no it wasn't his mom. It was other middle-aged woman. Oh

Yeah, it gets worse his he made these bowls like soup bowls out of human schools So he would cut off the top part of the skull and then he would sand the skulls down Yeah part of the skull and then he would sand the skulls down. Oh my god. Yeah. Uh-huh. He was a real crafty son of a fucker. Son of a bitch. Literally. Wow. Oh. Yeah. So he made bowls out of human skull.

He also, you know how his bedpost, you know how people have bedpost. He put skulls on the bedpost. Yeah. I mean, there were real skulls. He made a belt made from human nipples a Belt. Yeah, I'm not lying. How does that work? Like like nipple attached to another nipple? That many nipples that many nipples until it all connected with like a belt buckle

What is that buckle use Yeah, so lots of Lots of nipples used on that one. He had nine vaginas in a shoe box like just nine Vaginas in a shoe box again. I'm really disgusted. I know my voice doesn't sound like I'm disgusted This is like a real oddness. I know, but I think that's why I'm almost saying it like this because it feels so unreal Like there's one thing to like saying like oh my god, then he's slash trough throat You know like that feels real but like to be like he had nine vaginas in a box like just saying it out loud It's really hard for me to really emotionally connect with what I'm even saying because like who has nine vaginas in a box

A shoe box those are his collectables. Yes, he had four noses. Like just four noses cut off from the head in a box. How do things not? Oh, he was really crafty. He was really good at like, I think he called it browning it or something or something about it,

making sure that the skin doesn't, he really was a leather shop who's like making human leather like he was really good at it. Yeah so you can you can preserve human skin like that? Yeah like he could have had a whole ass career working for like a Louis Vuitton or like an Hermes making some beautiful bags but instead he was like no I want to I want to do something with human skin. Yeah. I know that little what I was just telling you probably made you lose your appetite. Yes, a little bit. Oh, 100%. But let me tell you about something that never fails to get

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Use promo code rotten! Thank you, Daily Harvest! There's sponsoring! Today's podcast! Maybe they can sponsor some singing lessons next! Now that I just got your appetite going, I'm gonna kill it again. He had, you know how when you have those window shades, you also have the string that attaches to it and you just kind of like plop it to close it and...

Made out of here. Whoa, no you creeper. There was just like a pair of lips attached to it. A pair of lips attached to what? pair of lips attached to what like the string part of your Window shape so he pulls the lip to close the curtain. What does that even look like? Did you see the picture? I did not see this window lips. Yeah Wow, he had a whole bone fragments hanging around

They found a fridge filled with organs. They don't know. So when he's like decorating the house, he's like human. Yeah, like that was his vibe. The designer was like, so how many humans do you want to live here? He was like, yes, we can't be making jokes like this. We cannot make it. This is crazy. Yeah, it's crazy. And they found a bunch of organs inside of his fridge. They don't know if he was trying to eat them. They don't know if it was just like, oh shit, I don't know what to do with all of this because I just wanted the skin. Like, we don't really know yet.

And there was roughly counting all of like the lampshades, the chairs, and all of these things, the skulls, the soup bowls made out of skull bones. You get it. There was about roughly 15 bodies inside of his house. Now, obviously, he gets questioned because they're like, um, did you kill 15 people? Like what the fork is going on? How many people are in there? How many people are dead now?

And he said, whoa, whoa, whoa, I did not kill anyone. So for the past 12 years, since my mother has died, I made a friend at a local cemetery by the name of Gus. And he would help me dig up these graves late at night and I would just bring them home and I would do stuff with them like I would make these little things and they'd be like did you have sex with the graves? Like the police had to ask right not with the graves with the corpses right? Yeah. And he said no no they were too smelly. Like it

wasn't even like no they're dead people he was like no they were too smelly. Like it wasn't even like no, they're dead people. He was like no, they're too smelly. But he was still considered a necrophiliac because he loved dead people. So whether he sexually did anything with them is a different story, right? And he said that in the past 12 years, he made about 40 visits to different gravesites, the local three gravesites.

And he only took about maybe like 10 bodies, is what he said. Okay, what about the rest of the people in there? So there was, yes, there was like no, well okay. So the reason that he said he only took about 10 bodies is that this is, these are his words, not mine. He said it's really hard to grave dig because you need to have fresh skin in order to do the things that I'm doing.

Like if someone has been decomposing for too long, if they're just skull and bones, I can't do anything. If they also have old decomposed skin, it's not stretchy and skin needs to have moisture in order to become chair leather. So he would go after obituaries of middle-aged women who had recently passed because they also... Tiger? So he said that he would have to find these obituaries of middle-aged women who had recently passed so that they

could resemble his mom and he would take their bodies home and he would use their skin because he was making the ultimate suit. He wanted to make a mom suit. A mom suit. So that's why he had that long sleeve shirt, those leggings, those gloves, those breasts attached to the shirt. He had a plethora of vagina to choose from, I guess. Like he wasn't saving those vaginas to do sexual things to them. He was saving it as like a build your own Sims experience, you know, like build your own Barbie type of shit.

He was debating which vagina he wanted to attach to the suit. And he said that it was complete to the point where he would actually be able to go into a full body suit. So he had that mask that he would put on his head, he had the leggings, he had the shirt, he had the shirt, he had the belt, the nipple belt. Wait, so he didn't use any parts of his mom? No. And I think maybe like the rest in peace thing maybe. Or maybe it has been too long. Yeah. So then he would go into that suit and he would dance around his farm at night pretending to be small. And some days he would sleep in his skin suit.

Now, there were two bodies that were identifiable that were found. So the way that they did it is they couldn't confirm other than through Ed that these were not murder. So Ed led them to every single grave and they dug up these graves again. And they realized that the parts that he said he took from each grave were indeed missing. So we can assume that he didn't kill any of them, right? Other than Bernice and Mary Hogan.

So they find Bernice's body, like we said, hanging upside down. They later find her head in a burlap sack. And the head was, it was strange because it had nails attached all over it. And they asked him like, why it was strange because it had nails attached all over it and they asked him like why did Bernice's head have nails attached all over it and he said oh I wanted to hang her up on the wall Like just so casually like as if you bought a new painting It's like yeah, I just I mean yeah, I was gonna hang her up

her heart was in a plastic bag near his stove and her up. Her heart was in a plastic bag near his stove and Mary Hogan, the tavern owner, her face mask was in a paper bag and when I say face mask, I mean, you know how we explained face masks, right? Not hashtag skin care, okay? But like, you know, hashtag murder. And her skull was also in a box because the skull is now separate from her face mask. Keep that in mind. And at first, he admitted to shooting her until she died, and then he later denied any memories of that.

So that one's kind of up in the air, right? Let's talk about the trial. So during the initial questioning, all of his confessions to everything that he had done were actually inadmissible in court. Because Sheriff Shelley, who was the sheriff at the time, assaulted Ed during the interrogation, he grabbed his head, banged his face to a brick wall. Which he was just angry. He was just traumatized. The sheriff saw everything Ed did and I think it was a moment of just, I'm not even a sheriff anymore like this is human to human anger

Right type of moment is how people phrase it it didn't seem like sheriff Shelley had like a reputation for being like a bad cop So his initial confession was completely inadmissible Officer Shelley ended up dying at only 43 years old before the trial even happened because because first of all, he had to testify a trial. And a lot of his friends said that he was so scared to testify, there was just this fear inside of him. And they also said that he was genuinely just horrified at what he had seen inside of Ed's house of horrors. Like that was something that he couldn't get out of his brain.

So they think that, even though legally, heart attack was his cause of death, they say that he's just another victim of ed. Oh, do you want to see some photos of Ed Gaines' chair? I do. Is it bad? I mean, it's weird, because you're not going to get as grossed out as you think. And I think it's because our brain can't really understand that that's made out of human skin. And it looks like something you would see at like one of those prank stores. So like if you were to sit there

and really tell your brain, no this is a real human, then I think that you would start feeling things but if you just were to look at it, it's just nasty. Like you're just kind of like, ugh, but I'm here you go. Let me see. That's the lamp shade. That's no way. This looks unreal, can I see? Yeah. This is not real. Is this real?

Yeah. Okay. There you go. Let me show you the belt. Are these real? Yeah. Like I said, he was an arts and crafts seem other fucker. So we'll wait.

Yes. Just to follow up on your thought early, what happened to the cup? You said the cup died. Yeah, he died From the trauma. I mean, that's what his friends say like legally speaking. He died from heart failure So we can't really say that he died from trauma, right? But also I do want to say listen what happened during the court. Oh, we'll get into it Don't look up these photos just because I seem very nonchalant to them. I think it's because I've spent so many hours pouring over research that I've seen these so many times. And I think like the

first initial time, if you've got a week's stomach, don't do it. I highly advise against it. You will get the full picture without even looking at it. Like, you don't need to go and Google it. Yeah, yeah. Right. So let's talk about his formal charge. So he's formally charged for one count of murder for Bernice because I mean, they don't really know. I don't know why he wasn't tried for Mary Hogan's case, to be honest.

And he testified or he pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity, which in this case, I mean, when most killers try to testify that entire by reason of insanity thing, I'm like, I mean, when most killers try to testify that entire by reason of insanity thing, I'm like, okay, shut the fork up, sit your ass down, like you get and try it, be it's, this one I'm kind of like, huh? I mean, like you really, so what did they do? So he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and he was found mentally incompetent and he was sent immediately to a state hospital. Now he's gonna spend about nine years in that state hospital.

When finally the doctor is gonna be like, wow, he is now competent to stand trial. So Ed requests that for his trial for the murder of Brannese that he doesn't have a jury. So the judge says, okay, so it's just gonna be the judge making the shots. Like calling the shots. So he goes, he says, listen, I don't even know what happened in Brinney's death. Like, I just remember I went to a hardware store and she, you know, was like trying to sell me this gun and I was trying to practice loading the gun and I put the bullet in the gun and then the gun went off like it discharged and I don't

remember anything else. I don't even remember aiming the gun at her. I don't think it was intentional. Like, he seemed confused. He was was like I remember that I put a bullet in the gun because she told me to like look at the gun because I was gonna buy it from her and I don't remember aiming at her but I do remember the gun going off and I don't remember anything else. So that's what he said and the first trial the judge said that he was guilty and then he asked for a retrial which he said. And the first trial, the judge said that he was guilty. And then he asked for a retrial, which he got, and then the judge ruled him not guilty by reason of insanity, but he was still sent to live out the rest of his days in a state

hospital for the criminally insane. So the house. Now the house, there was a lot of debate of what to do with it. The locals hated it because it caused a lot of tourists to come from tourists. Yeah, all different areas of the state just come peep on through to be looking through the windows, you know, doing all of that. And they hated it. And so there was a lot of debate about what to do for it.

Like, are we going to sell it? Is this what's going to happen? If we sell it, do we make the new owner promise that they're going to like run down the house, right? Because these are very important. And while these decisions were made, the house burnt to the ground. Now, it was suspected to be Arson, but they never really found the person who did it. Now the car, the car is also really important.

So he had the car that he transported every grave robbery corpse from the grave to his house. And a carnival owner bought it for about $6,000 today's time and would charge kids 25 cents to look inside at the carnival. So like imagine being like, mommy, mommy, like, can I get some final cake? But also I want to see Edgine's murder car. Like what? So that car's still out there? I don't know if it's still out there, but yeah, that's what he did. Almost immediately.

Feel like somebody's probably still keeping that shit. Yeah, for sure. I don't think it's going to be one of those things where he's, they just get rid of it, right? Like to it. Yeah. So then he ends up dying at the age of 77 inside of this state hospital and he was kind of like a model patient.

Everyone said that he was really quiet, really shy, still loved to read, but nothing was really too creepy about him. Like lots of people who had been around other killers who had done crazy shit. They set that ed other than he just any time a female nurse walked by, he would look at them like very shocked and Googly eyed every time. But other than that. any time a female nurse walked by, he would look at them like very shocked and googly-eyed every time. But other than that. That's the ideal harmony. But other than that, he was relatively harmless.

So he dies at age 77, and here's the irony of it all. He gets buried, and people start finding out where he's buried, and they start going, and they start chipping off little pieces of his gravestone and then essentially the whole tombstone like you know how it says your name and stuff uh-huh. which is stolen. What? yeah they found it recently in like 2000 something in Seattle.

now? somebody stole the gravestone? yeah they just stole it. why? I don't know. maybe they were like he needs a taste of his own medicine. No. Somebody stole the gravestone? Yeah, they're just stole it. Why? I don't know. Maybe they were like, he needs a taste of his own medicine. So they just stole it. It was found all the way in Seattle later.

And then I think now- Did they found the gravestone? Yeah. I don't know who stole it, but they found the stolen gravestone. Probably selling it somewhere online, man. Yeah, honestly, I wouldn't, I wouldn't even doubt that. Now he lives in the same grave, but now it's just unmarked. And that's the story of Ed Gain, the guy who inspired

psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence of the Lands, Lothar Face, Buffalo Bill, norma vates, all of them were inspired by Ed Gain. Yeah, I mean if we had more time I could tell you about another grave robber. Tell us. Really? We got time, we got all the time in the world. Let me tell you about Carl. Okay. It's happening in Florida.

Okay, Florida. Sorry, I just feel the need to repeat Florida. Is this recent? This is not recent, but it's, it's, I mean, it's just weird. So Carl, good old freaking Carl. He was a radiologist in QS Florida. Now, he was not born and raised as a Florida man. He was German born. He lived in Germany. He had actually a very, very busy life. He was like moving from different, I think there was a war going on at the time. He moves back to Germany when everything's calm and he gets into his first marriage with a woman by the name of Doris. And they have two kids together, lovely kids, but one of the daughters ends up dying because of a throat infection.

So back in the day they didn't really have all these like antibiotics and shit, right? So she ends up passing away from a throat infection. And so then he's like, you know what, family, we're gonna pack up our bags and we're gonna move to freaking Cuba. Like, I don't wanna be here anymore, let's go to Cuba. So Doris and their now only daughter moved to Cuba with Carl.

And when they get to Cuba, he's like, you know what, family? Like, it's been nice, but I'm actually gonna move to the United States by myself and I will send you guys money, because I can't get a job as a radiologist in Cuba for some reason, like they won't hire me, but someone in Florida will. So I'm gonna go work for this hospital in Florida,

and you guys stay here in Cuba. Now what we know, what we need to know about Carl is that ever since he was a young kid, ever since he was a little boy, he has had visions of dead people like he would have dreams of dead people now one of these dead people would be an ancestor like someone in the family and she would come to Carl and be like little Carl little Carl guess what I have for you your one true love and it would always be this exotic dark-haired beauty. And I'm like, Carl, you're having some wet dreams.

That's what that is. You're not having visions of the dead, okay? It would just be like this exotic looking, which is like problematic, but whatever. Exotic dark-haired beautiful woman that was obviously not his wife Doris. And so he was like, I'm just gonna mirror my wife Doris, but whatever, I'm still looking out for my true love, you know.

So then he moves to Florida, and he's working at the hospital when all of a sudden a woman comes in, and her name is Alaina. I know, it's like the empiatories I can't. So Alaina walks into the hospital, and she came in with her mom, and she's a Cuban and American. She's, I guess what you could call exotic looking. I mean that's such a problematic description of a woman, right? And she had beautiful dark hair and she was beautiful. She was actually known as a local beauty. Like that's what people know in her eyes. Like locals were like,

oh yeah, she's really pretty. There would be like today's like Instagram famous. Yeah, she was like Instagram famous back in the day Like she was beautiful and so she was brought into the hospital with her mom because she's feeling a little bit sick And that's when Carl was like oh my god the woman of my dreams She's been in like wow, this sounds like 365 days on Netflix The woman I have been thinking about that I didn't know existed because I am married and with children but this is exactly what the visions were telling me so he's like wow I need to marry this woman so there was a lot of problems he was kind of married she was also kind of legally married at the time too so she was married to a man by the name of Louise Mesa and he actually

ended up leaving her when she suffered a miscarriage. So he was like, buy bits and move to Miami, which like, Louise, if you're listening to this, he's probably passed by now, but like, fork you. That's really aggressive. So then Elena, she ends up getting diagnosed with tuberculosis. So back in the day, this was an incredibly fatal disease. I believe even to this day, people do die from tuberculosis, but back then it was like holy shit like this is intense, right? And he did everything, Carl did everything to try to cure Elena. He was just doing the most and one of the things that he did when he would go to her house with expensive gifts, jewelry, clothing, and he would just profess his love to her every single day. He'd be like, I freaking love you Elena.

And there's no evidence that she accepted or denied. Like there was just no evidence of anything, right? And so she ends up dying in October. Uh-huh. And he pays for the funeral. He pays for the funeral? Yeah, he's like family of Elena. I would like to play for the funeral.

And they were like, okay, you sucker, whatever. So he pays for the funeral. And then he was like, I would also like to commission commission a Mousseliam on top of her grave, which is like this building that you go into and you can like What it's like a shelter over the great. I mean, it's like for rich people I don't even think rich people have it. I feel like it's for like kings and queens and like Political people. I don't know. I don't know who has a mausoleum to themselves, okay?

So he like commissioned a mini mausoleum over her grave and he would visit her every single night and he would sing her Her favorite Spanish songs. He's German by the way, so like I don't know if he speaks Spanish or if he learned or if he only knows how to sing this one song Right and then remember when I said she died in April October Well in April, about seven months later, he decides, you know what, I kind of want to dig her up. So he goes into the mausoleum and he brings in a little toy wagon that he had bought.

He digs up her body from the coffin and places her in the toy wagon and brings her home. Is she not just bones now? No, she had decomposing skin. So her bones, he decided to tie them together with piano wire because a lot of them were like getting separated from the other bones. Right? So then he also put glass eyes where her eyes were like her eye sockets.

And because her skin was decomposing so badly he replaced it with silk cloth that he had coated in wax and plastic. Wait what is he trying to do? Reconstruct her? Yeah and he filled her chest cavity because I mean like all of her organs had decomposed and stuff and they were like if they weren't he had taken out the rest. Well he decided to fill a purchased cavity with rags to keep her original shape. And what that sounds like to me is that this dude just wanted her to have boobs still. Honestly, that's what I hear when I hear that, okay.

It doesn't sound that romantic or anything. And then her hair was falling off because she was dead. I mean, she's in decomposition process. So then he collected all of the little hairs and made it into a wig and placed it back onto her head. And he dressed her up in expensive clothing with expensive jewelry that he had purchased for her and then placed her in his bed where he would live with her for the next seven years. Yeah. He would constantly use copious amounts of perfume, disinfectant, preserving agents to mask the smell. And one day, a lane assistor had caught wind of like what was going on because a neighbor had seen Carl dancing with the

lane as corpse in his living room through the window. And they were like, Oh my God, I am a woman in the window. And I'm seeing some shady shit right now. So the police came and they arrested him. That had been seven years. Now by that time, the statute of limitations at the time, I mean, I don't know how the laws are now because I don't really look up like corpse laws

on a daily basis. But if I did, I'd probably know the answer. But I don't. So the statute of limitations ran up because it had been seven years, so the police were like, we can't really do anything and they dropped the charges. And so Elena afterwards, she was studied by physicians, by pathologists, she was actually on public display at a funeral home, and 6,800 people came to see her because they wanted to see what Carl did

to Elena. So obviously, she was not even respected by the people who took her bodies afterward, right? She later was buried in a secret unmarked grave. And the general public was not really that mad at Carl. Is it because they think that Carl just really loves her? Yeah, so they thought it was kind of romantic, even though there was a little bit of evidence of Necrophilia because he had inserted a cavity to her vagina to make it to be able to do something with it, but it's not like 100% confirmed, like he didn't confirm it,

but I mean, why would you use that? So there is evidence of necrophilia, but nobody really, I guess, talked about it back when this happened, so everyone was like, that's kind of romantic. And then he decided to buy a life-size commission doll that looked exactly like Elena, and he lived with her until he was 75 years old and died. Yeah, and he had nobody else in his life. Obviously, his daughter and Doris, his first wife, aren't really that interested in what's going on over there.

So he was actually discovered on the floor of his home three weeks after his death, like nobody came looking for him. And the rumor, there's a rumor, an urban legend almost, that he had paid a ton of people to switch the two bodies. And allegedly, he actually lived with Elena's real body till he died. You think just that's love? Oh, but he also died like right next to our life sized doll body. Yeah. Well, or her alleged real doll, her real body. I don't think it's love. I think it's mental illness probably. I don't think that's love.

But he's so into her. Yeah, but you're so into me, but if I drop dead tomorrow, if I was like if I'm a ghost and I saw you Like digging me up for my grave. I mean, I'd probably like we probably get into another fight and I just you know, I'd probably like, we'd probably get into another fight. And I just, you know, I shouldn't be making jokes, but it's just so crazy. I don't even know what to say. Yeah, so call, be crazy, ed be crazy. Lots of bitches be crazy these days. Leave people alone.

I mean, back in the day, like, grey robbing was so common for medical like medical stuff that they actually had these cages like these metal cages that they actually put on top of the graves so that no one could crawl through and get the soil out. What? Yeah it looks really scary. What? Yeah. I mean have you thought about it like what do you want to happen to you when you're dead? Because I've thought about it. What's gonna happen to you? I'm just kidding. Have you thought about it? No.

Oh. I think about it and get back to you. Okay, thanks. Yeah. I think I'd like to be creameded. Okay, and I respect that. No, actually, I don't know anyone. You can do whatever you want with your body.

Honey I will be dead. Yeah but it's your choice. I know but you will be responsible for fulfilling my choices when I get. Yeah and I'll do it as you request. All right well let me think about it too and I'll get back to you. Okay. All right good talk. This is all just a really long segue and to me just trying to figure out what he wants to do with his money. This is the casual way of me bringing it up. But I hope you guys enjoyed this week's episode of Edgene, the real leather face, the real buffalo bill. Norman Bates, let me know what you think. Do you think that this is scarier than the movies? Halloween's coming up. I know everyone's gonna be watching those movies. And I hope you guys enjoyed this week's podcast. Thank you so much. Better help ritual and

for daily harvest for partnering with this week's episode and making it possible. Listen, it's very difficult to find anyone who wants to work with me while I talk about how he had nine, but I know the Sino-Shi-Box. So I really, they're the OGs, okay? We gotta show them some love. So I hope you guys enjoyed this week's podcast, and I'll see you guys next week. Bye.

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