The Real Leather Face Edward Theodore Gein

Edward Theodore Gein (August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and body snatcher. His crimes, committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, gathered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumedcorpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin. Gein confessed to killing two women – tavern owner Mary Hogan on December 8, 1954, and a Plainfield hardware store owner, Bernice Worden, on November 16, 1957. Initially found unfit for trial, after confinement in a mental health facility, in 1968 Gein was found guilty but legally insane of the murder of Worden and was confined in psychiatric institutions. He died at Mendota Mental Health Institute of cancer-induced liver and respiratory failure on July 26, 1984. He is buried in the Plainfield Cemetery, in a now-unmarked grave.

Edward Theodore Gein was born in La Crosse County, Wisconsin, USA, on August 27, 1906, the second of two boys of George Philip (August 4, 1873 – April 1, 1940) and Augusta Wilhelmine (née Lehrke) Gein (July 21, 1878 – December 29, 1945.) Gein had an older brother, Henry George Gein (January 17, 1901 – May 16, 1944). Augusta despised her husband, an alcoholic who was unable to keep a job; he had worked at various times as a carpenter, tanner, and insurance salesman. Augusta owned a local grocery shop and sold the location in 1914 for a farm to purposely live in isolation near Plainfield, Wisconsin, which became the Gein family's permanent residence.

Augusta took advantage of the farm's isolation by turning away outsiders from influencing her sons. Edward left the farm only to attend school. Outside of school, he spent most of his time doing chores on the farm. Augusta was a fervent Lutheran. She preached to her boys about the innate immorality of the world, the evil of drinking, and the belief that all women were naturally prostitutes and instruments of thedevil. She reserved time every afternoon to read to them from the Bible, usually selecting graphic verses from the Old Testament concerning death, murder, and divine retribution.

Edward was shy, and classmates and teachers remembered him as having strange mannerisms, such as seemingly random laughter, as if he were laughing at his own personal jokes. To make matters worse, his mother punished him whenever he tried to make friends. Despite his poor social development, he did fairly well in school, particularly in reading.

Crimes.

On November 16, 1957, Plain field hardware store owner Bernice Worden disappeared. When Worden's son told investigators that Gein had been in the store the evening before her disappearance, saying he would return the next morning for a gallon of anti-freeze, the police began to suspect Gein. A sales slip for a gallon of anti-freeze was the last receipt written by Worden on the morning she disappeared. Upon searching Gein's property, investigators discovered Worden's decapitated body in a shed, hung upside down by ropes at her wrists, with a crossbar at her ankles. The torso was "dressed out like a deer". She had been shot with a .22-caliber rifle, and the mutilations were made after her death.