The House of Ed Gein

There was no electricity in the dark house so the police officers conducted their inspection with oil lamps, lanterns, and flashlights.The place looked like it had not been clean or tidied in years, there were piles of rubbish everywhere.  The few rooms that weren’t nailed off were littered with books, old papers, magazines, utensils, tin cans, cartons and a lot of other junk. What those police officers also found in that house is in the extreme.  In the house they found - two shin bones, four human noses, a quart can converted into a tom-tom by skin stretched over both top and bottom, a bowl made from the inverted half of a human skull, nine ‘death masks’ (from the well preserved skin from the faces of women), ten female heads with the tops sawn off above the eyebrows, bracelets of human skin, a purse made with a handle of human skin, sheath for a knife made in human skin, a pair of leggings made from human skin, four chairs with the seats being replaced by strips of human skin, a shoe box containing nine salted vulvas of which his mothers was painted silver, a hanging human head, a lampshade covered with human skin, a shirt made of human skin, a number of shrunken heads (Ed always joked that he had a collection of shrunken heads), two skulls for Gein’s bedposts, a pair of human lips hanging from string, Ed’s full woman body suit constructed with human skin and complete with mask and breasts, Bernice Worden’s heart in a pan on the stove, and the refrigerator which was stacked with human organs. The bodies of 15 different women had been mutilated to provide Gein’s trophies.  It is also said that sometimes Gein brought house gifts of fresh venison to his neighbours although Gein said he had never shot a deer in his life.

When police searched the farm of Ed Gein, they were shocked to see a hanging figure, apparently Mrs. Worden. As Captain Schoephoerster later described in court:

“Mrs. Worden had been completely dressed out like a deer with her head cut off at the shoulders. Gein had slit the skin on the back of her ankles and inserted a wooden rod 3 1/2 feet long, and about 4 inches in diameter, and sharpened to a point at both ends, through the cut tendons on the back of her ankles. Both hands were tied to her side with binder twine. The centre of the rod was attatched to a pulley on a block and tackle. The body was pulled up so that the feet were near the ceiling. We noticed that there was just a few drops of watery blood beneath the body on the dirt floor, and not finding the head or intestines, we thought possibly the body had been butchered at another location.”

When police searched the farm of Ed Gein, they were shocked to see a hanging figure, apparently Mrs. Worden. As Captain Schoephoerster later described in court:

“Mrs. Worden had been completely dressed out like a deer with her head cut off at the shoulders. Gein had slit the skin on the back of her ankles and inserted a wooden rod 3 1/2 feet long, and about 4 inches in diameter, and sharpened to a point at both ends, through the cut tendons on the back of her ankles. Both hands were tied to her side with binder twine. The centre of the rod was attatched to a pulley on a block and tackle. The body was pulled up so that the feet were near the ceiling. We noticed that there was just a few drops of watery blood beneath the body on the dirt floor, and not finding the head or intestines, we thought possibly the body had been butchered at another location.”

On 17 November 1957, 32-year-old sheriff Arthur Schley went to an isolated farmhouse is rural Wisconsin with a warrant to search it’s premises in regard to a missing person case. When the owner, 51-year-old Ed Gein, was not home, Sheriff Schley entered the premises and found a scene of unspeakable horror. In the darkened house hung the naked, headless torso of a woman’s body-disembowelled and hung upside down like an animal carcass. Police later identified the body as belonging to 58-year-old shopkeeper Bernice Worden-her head was discovered hidden in a burlap sack in another part of the house. Nails had been hammered into each ear and twine attached to them, so that the head could be hung on a wall. This was no ordinary crime scene.

Ed Gein was quickly arrested and at first denied an knowledge of the missing woman. A thorough search of his house the next day revealed a belt studded with nipples and parts of a face, a soup bowl made out of a hacksawed human skull, a lampshade and chairs upholstered with human skin, a patchwork shirt made of human skin with a pair of breasts, a shoebox of human noses and female genitalia, and the faces of nine women carefully preserved and mounted on a wall. The quietly spoken handyman finally revealed his secret under the pressure of police that he liked to wear the shirt of skin around the house and often put the dried-out, mummified remains of female genitalia over his crotch.