Episode 555: Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (Part 3)

I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at a high school in upstate New York. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast. What's the answer, and what do you do if they tell you it's all in your head?

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I'm Alayna, I'm Ash, and this is morbid.

Muah.

Sorry, I don't know. That was a great addition, I liked it. What if I just responded to everything you said today with Muah? That would be....

I don't know if that would be encouraging or if it would be.

I feel like, probably not. ....lightly frightening. Later, we should pause because your mail truck just got here and your dog's going to go fucking nuts.

I think I'm in love.

I love doing that to Drew just randomly because he fucking hates it. I also hate that. I think it's so funny. I do love seeing people do it to their dogs, though. Have you seen that?

People are just like laughing, the dog's like, what the fuck, I will fight you. No, Drew will just be saying something that we have to do. And I'll be like, Okay, I think I like this little....

Oh God, that would horrify him. He hates it so much. He's like, Stop, I hate that as well. I'm with Drew.

Sometimes I'll just go up into his ear and do it, Oh, that's terrible. I'm a terrorist. He's like assault, assault and battery.

It's a lot to live with me. But he chose it, he did, he chose this little life.

Full circ.

So hey, guess what? There's a sequel to The Butcher and the Wren, called The Butcher Game. She wrote it. I read some of it. She's ready to go.

She's coming out September 17th. Mark your fucking calendars. You can pre-order it now. Pre-orders are awesome. They help me out a lot.

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I love coupons ButcherGame25 it goes through September. If you want to wait a little while to pre-order, that's cool too, man. You can still use that 25 off at Barnes Noble or get it anywhere else.

You want to get a book? Wow, this is deeply exciting. one I love books, two, I love you.

Three, I love coupons. I'm just really excited about this all. I'm also excited. I think I like this little life, I think I like this little life.

You guys have been awesome, you're just really great, you are really being kind and supportive. I appreciate you. If you're not, I'll come and find you.

Everyone's kidding.

I put out that little video and I was like, I'm actually getting kind of emotional, I'm not even kidding. She doesn't do that. You guys, you've been so kind, so supportive, so wonderful. I appreciate you.

It's because of you that this gets to keep happening. Thanks a lot, I appreciate it. Go preorder if you want to. It's long and it's gnarly.

It's everything you could ever want, party, party, but you know what is not everything that you could ever want? I know exactly what is not everything I could ever want.

Ed Gein Yeah, Ed Gein is really nothing you could ever want or need, or fathom or conceive of, really.

Exactly, I know these episodes are pretty gnarly. So, if you need a palate cleanser, you can also go over to the Re-watcher. We've been having a lot of fun over there, I love that show.

We literally laugh so hard that we get that scratchy throat kind of thing. Oh my god, that happens last week's episode, I think it's last week's.

At this point, I think, and the darkness, you should just go listen, we were crying, laughing.

Crying? If you need a little palate cleanser but you still want to hang out with us, which we hope you do, come on over to the re-watcher. It's getting funny over there, and if you've never watched the show, that's okay, exactly.

You just watch it as you go, go go, go, go, go go, there you go.

So, yeah, so if you need a palate cleanser, head on over there. But we are at the conclusion of the Gein saga. Oh, and we got through the worst of it, I would say.

This is really the wrap up, this is what happened afterwards. This is kind of where he fits in into kind of pop culture at this point. How that evolved, we told you.

I told you all the terrible stuff. The last episode, that was for sure the heaviest one, which is why we needed a little bit of a breather for this one. When we last left you, he had been found and caught, yeah.

And was not super forthcoming about what was happening. Every once in a while. He would spill his guts a little bit, but he was, he was pretty tight lipped. But that led to a lot of people speculating there was lots of cannibalism, necrophilia, talk, all these rumors.

None of them were substantiated at the time. They were just rumors because of the macabre and very ghoulish reality of that house and what they found, they weren't really going very far to find these rumors. It was just kind of naturally occurring out of this because no one had ever seen anything like this before.

And probably never did again. This is a very and I think that's why this case, and I'll talk about it later, but I think that's why this case is so enduring. It's because it's just what the fuck it's like all over the place, what the fuck?

And especially at this time and period, the 50s, this was like, what the fuck? And in the Midwest, it's like America's heartland and this tiny little town where nothing ever happens.

And everybody knew this guy, that was the other thing, it wasn't the weirdo that no one ever talked to. And no one knew anything about him. They knew everything about this guy, they grew up with him.

You babysat their kids. Stop telling me that, stop it, as these rumors of cannibalism and necrophilia are spreading like wildfire. Investigators were working very diligently in an attempt to get just a little bit of the truth, or as close to the truth as they could. From Ed himself, during his initial interrogation, he had a lot of trouble remembering things, or so, he said.

And he frequently struggled to answer questions. But in the days that followed that he was becoming a little more forthcoming, at least as far as the grave robbing was concerned. At first, they weren't getting a lot out of him about that, but he started to open up more.

Also, while he didn't seem like he was being particularly boastful or proud of what he'd done, he also didn't have any remorse. He wasn't sitting there crying and being like, I can't believe I did this, I'm so ashamed. He was by no means being prideful about it, but there was no emotion attached to it, so he was just very matter-of-fact.

He was very just This is what I did. Wow, it was just very robotic. That's interesting, yeah.

And he spoke about his quote-unquote collecting in a very matter-of-fact way, and that's what he called it his collecting. Okay, yeah.

What a fucking way to describe that. Just very detached, very like. I'm not really understanding why everyone's freaking out here. Kind of thing, strange.

Ed confirmed that, to the best of his recollections, he had taken the bodies from the cemetery and had used various organs and pieces of the bodies to make trophy items. And he explained that sometimes he would open the grave and take the entire body home, while other times he would just take parts of what he wanted and then rebury the casket in the same night. Okay?

Imagine your loved one being dissected in their casket in the middle of the night by this guy. No, that's horrifying, and then the casket is just shut, reburied and you have no idea what he took from them. And that's the thing you think about. All the people that went to go visit their loved ones, having no idea that their graves were even disturbed, that they're an incomplete set of remains.

Yeah, and what we'll find out later is like, we still don't really know who. Like, they weren't able to put everyone back to completion, that's so sad, yeah. And although they had already endured hours in the Gein house, followed by many more hours talking to Ed and considering his crimes. None of the investigators were at all prepared for any kind of explanation for why he did this. To be honest, after all, they'd seen and been through.

But based on the state of things at the Gein Farm, investigators had assumed that the explanation was that he had taken the body parts and skeletons simply as trophies to be displayed. And you know, like, just so he could look at them, like, use them as art, kind of his own weird, macabre art. That's what they were assuming, they were like, we're really not ready for any kind of explanation here. And like, none of them make sense, but we're assuming that's what it is.

But the truth was actually much more upsetting. When they asked whether he had ever worn the masks made out of human skin that was literally filleted off of people's skulls, Ed replied That I did. He just said that I did, that, I did. What the fuck?

But that wasn't the only thing that he did. Can you imagine being the person that I had to interview him? Like, sit in a room with this man and hear him very, and you look at pictures of him and he looks very like, he's like a normal fucking dude.

Like, what, I don't understand. He looks like an old man that, like, you'd be friendly to and be like, Oh, hey man, what's going on?

To be in that house and then to go back to that police station and sit down with him and talk to him again. We were saying, like, I don't know how you get over being in that house, I don't know how you get over. Talking to Ed Gein, how do you reconcile those two things together, like, how do you sit in that room and be like, you're the guy?

I don't know, like, I don't know how the human brain is capable of what it is. Sometimes, honestly, it's like, really wild. And then to think about like, he had, like, what, like, nine masks made out of women's faces that he had skinned off of their skulls.

These were recently deceased women, right? Like, that's the thing that he knew in a lot of cases. Yeah, because he would scan the obituaries, you said, right, and he would know the names.

He would have interacted with them before, and then he's wearing their faces, some with makeup on. Still, that's wild. And like, imagine being these loved ones of these women, finding out that this man was wearing your mom, your sister, your grandmother's face.

That's a nightmare around his house, that's like, beyond a nightmare. There's so many layers to it that it's just like, holy shit, you can't even consider it all, no?

But again, that was only part of his, what he kind of referred to as his ritual that he would do. He had made an entire skin suit from women's bodies and hair and would often wear the suit. And he said on warmer days, he would wear it while wandering around in and outside the house on his property.

Thinking about that, that visual, that visual, like a bright moon. This just like decomposing farm that, like nature, is reclaiming acres and acres and acres of land, like in the middle of fucking nowhere.

But that moonlight trees like reaching over. And he's walking around in a human skin suit that he made from bodies of women he murdered and dug up in the cemetery. Also, imagine and sewed together. Knowing that you lived close to him and that, like, you were just sitting. Like you think, like, what was I doing in my house? Miles away? Was I just sitting reading a book while he was wandering around his property? In dead women's skins?

It's like, Did he babysit my kid that night? It's like, did he just go home after babysitting and do that? Also, what the fuck possesses another human being to make a skin suit and walk around in it, like, what the actual fuck? And that's why you also know that you are not working with a sane human being.

No, by no means. There is a lot wrong here. Layers and layers of darkness happening here, there's not even a word for what this is. There really isn't.

It's honestly inconceivable, and it's.

No one really understood it until the man died. We still don't understand it. You can point to many things that occurred in his life and know that. It's a wild and horrifying concoction of some of the worst shit you could think of. But for it to turn into this, it's like, How did that intersection happen?

Because other people have a similar experience to what Ed had, and it's awful. It does not take away from the fact that it's fucking horrible, and it's essentially child abuse, in my opinion, like, you can't isolate your child. Oh, absolutely.

Yeah, and there was abuse. I mean, she neglected the other Henry, and she was mean, exactly. But so many other people have probably gone through similar things and don't do this, that's the thing.

I just don't know what the.

What's the thing that makes a person go that way? That's why I'm like, obviously this is us, just like thinking out loud, we don't know what we're talking about.

Is it brain chemistry? is it the straw that breaks the camel's back? It's like your unique brain chemistry. Either you go one way or you go this myriad of different ways, yeah.

I don't know when we'll know, I don't know if we'll know. It's so complex. It's not the same thing, but it's like, why do some people, like certain music and other people fucking hate that music?

Does it have something to do with some unique brain chemistry that it takes this perfect storm of trauma and abuse to turn that chemistry a certain way? Is it? I definitely think part of it is what you're exposed to, or what you expose yourself to. This is just my opinion. I think those magazines that he was reading fed whatever this darkness was.

I fully agree with that. It could possibly have changed his brain in some way. He gives a little bit of insight into some times that he personally, which obviously he's a very unreliable historian of his own life. But he points to one in particular instance which is interesting. But I do agree with you that I think he fed himself. His loneliness and his isolation was one thing, and he was isolated, felt lonely grief from his mother dying the fucked up way he was raised.

Whatever happened with Henry, his brother, which we're all still up in the air here, but kind of seems like there was something there. And then he's feeding himself. Nothing but violent, fantastical, and these aren't like.

Fiction. It's not like he's sitting there reading horror books, that's whatever. This is literally like Nazi. He's reading the worst shit. That real human beings, the atrocities that are being committed against other human beings. And he's looking at it and he's being like, that sounds interesting, something I want to try.

That's the thing that's where the road diverges. He's not just reading horror books or something like that, or being like, I like to be scared. That's fun. That's a totally different brain chemistry. But to look at the real atrocities that human beings are committing against each other and saying, well, that sounds fun.

That's when it's like, you're feeding a darkness that was already there.

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You can listen to Scamfluencers early and ad free right now on Wondery Plus. I'm Dan Taberski. In 2011, something strange began to happen at the high school in Leroy, New York. I was like, at my locker and she came up to me and she was like, stuttering, super bad.

I'm like, stop f***ing around. She's like, I can't. A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, it's like doubling and tripling, and it's all these girls with a diagnosis. The state tried to keep on the down low.

Everybody thought I was holding something back. Well, you were holding something back intentionally. Yeah, well, yeah, it's hysteria, it's all in your head, it's not physical. Oh my gosh, you're exaggerating. Is this the largest mass hysteria since the Witches of Salem?

Or is it something else entirely? Something's wrong here, something's not right. Leroy was the new dateline, and everyone was trying to solve the murder. A new limited series from Wondery and Pineapple Street Studios.

Hysterical Follow Hysterical on the Wondery app, or wherever you get your podcasts, you can binge all episodes of Hysterical early and ad-free right now by joining Wondery Plus.

Yeah, so that's what he was doing. So people around that farm just going about their business while that's happening. When asked why some of these body parts that they found in the house had been painted or embellished, some had been salted, we talked about one of the vulvas was covered in salt. Yeah, that's part of where that rumor probably came from of cannibalism. But he explained, he had simply been trying to find effective ways of preserving that.

I was gonna ask that that was my association. But in the 50s, especially when you hunt, don't you pack it in salt? Yeah, I think so, at least, well, it makes sense.

Salt is a preservative. And that's what they used to do way back when, exactly? But while Ed seemed to have no reservations about confessing to some of the most shocking crimes imaginable, he was strangely less forthcoming and cooperative. When it came to the murders of Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, Interesting Following a polygraph exam, he confessed to killing Hogan and Worden. But he did so very reluctantly, and only after it was pointed out that there was a veritable mountain of evidence pointing to his guilt. They were like, you literally can't get out of, you have to wonder. Or at least I'm wondering if that's because his religious upbringing explicitly says Thou shalt not kill, and obviously thou shalt not do all those other horrific, heinous things.

But it doesn't explicitly say all that. I feel like that packed a different kind of meaning for him, that he was a murderer. Yeah, and I think he looked at the other things as he, from the way he seemed to talk about it was. These women were dead, like, what were they doing with that? stuff like?

I need it, you know what I mean? He looked at it from a very detached. They didn't need it anymore. Why is this a problem?

Maybe it's weird to you, but it's not bad. What I did, that's fucked, like, incredibly fucked, but I think that's what it was. He was wrong for that. Sure, maybe you find me gross or weird, but like, I didn't do anything wrong. It's a dead person, like, What do you mean?

Which, like, No, that is wrong. Of course, I can make art out of their flesh. And then when it comes to murder, though, he knows that's bad, he knows that's illegal, he knows morally that's wrong. And he's preaching morals all over the place. And his mom was always screaming morals at him, which she had a very skewed fucking view of morality. And we'll get to that.

In a minute, too, we'll find another instance where it's like, Augusta, not another one. But yeah, I think you're right. Murder was something he just knew was wrong, so he knew by admitting to that, he was admitting. Also, he probably thought he was admitting in front of, technically his mom, that he had done the ultimate sin.

So as for the other crimes that he was suspected of, a spokesperson for the Crime lab indicated they had not made any determinations as of yet. Like meaning. They didn't know if he was a cannibal, they didn't know if he was a necrophiliac, the press was told. An avalanche of physical evidence has been recovered, which will take weeks and possibly months to completely evaluate and process. But based on his responses during the polygraph examinations, because they brought up the cannibalism, they brought up the necrophilia, they also brought up the several people that had gone missing.

Like we had talked about Evelyn Hartley, Georgia Weckler, all those cases that were kind of open and strange, they brought those up. And investigators, after the polygraph were reasonably confident that Gein had nothing to do with the disappearances of Evelyn Hartley, Georgia Weckler, or any of the young women who had gone missing. Over the years, I think that's a little SUS. I'm not placing all my shit on a polygraph exam, obviously, and especially one where the guy doesn't really understand that. Something like taking people's body parts from their graves and using them as soup bowls is wrong and not just gross and weird. I don't know if we can look at that polygraph the same way because his physiology is not going to react the same way to a question like that.

You know what I mean, he's not going to think he did something wrong. That's why polygraphs are so tough. This guy has a very different view of what is wrong, right, weird, strange and the like. It's just not going to have the same baseline.

There was some stuff that we talked about in part two that kind of made you question the Evelyn Hartley thing. I'm not saying he did it, I'm just saying there's things that still make me question it a little bit. And if you're just going off the polygraph exam to say we're pretty sure he didn't do it. I'm like, I don't know. And obviously not that this is a smoking gun by any means. But he had newspaper clippings of her disappearance, reports said that he did his house.

So whether he was just interested in the case, who knows? But that is interesting how a polygraph isn't going to really work the same on somebody like this. But for a time, the grave robbing and trophies were effective at quelling his anxiety about his mother dying. And it would help quiet the voices in his head, he said. So that can tell you a lot.

But after a few years, he said, they were no longer a sufficient means of coping and he was struggling. So one afternoon, he said, he stopped into Mary's tavern with a neighbor and was struck by just how much Mary Hogan resembled his mother. They do look similar, and he said it soon occurred to him, though, that while she definitely resembled her physically, he said Mary Hogan's personality was almost the polar opposite of who he believed his mother to be. And Ed fixated on Mary for a few weeks, until one morning, he said he just went to the tavern and shot her in the back of the head with a .32 caliber Mauser pistol. Wow, once he'd killed Mary, Ed loaded her body into the back of the truck and brought her back to the farm. And hung up her body in the summer kitchen, where he proceeded to mutilate her body in the same manner that he had Bernice Warden.

So Mary Hogan went through the exact same thing. That's horrible. The murder of Mary Hogan seemed, he said, to satisfy this dark need or urge that he was feeling, he said, for a few years. Wow, until the fall of 1957, when he murdered Bernice Warden. So that's very interesting, and also a very horrifying study of this guy, according to him, went years, which is interesting.

Yeah, because it doesn't happen, obviously it happens, but it doesn't happen often. But it's always one of those strange occurrences where it's like, one. Then years later, you don't do it again until years, allegedly. But I do wonder if it's because he had her around for years. I think, yeah, I think that's part of it. With each new story published about Ed Gein, the American public's fascination was just growing. This is a new thing, no one's ever seen this. To the point that guards had to be appointed to the Gein Farmstead to keep the public from entering the home, digging through the contents of the house and contaminating evidence or otherwise influencing the case.

I would not want to go there while that was an active crime scene. No, thank you. You really want to stumble upon that horror voluntarily? That's the thing. What are you doing?

Are you sure about that? But for three weeks, a full time security guard, with support from county deputies, guarded the property around the clock until crime scene technicians finally finished the excavation in early December. So psychiatrists and medical professionals had a field day with Ed Gein. They labeled him, and these are people who weren't seeing him, had never met him. Just speaking out of turn. Isn't it true that you're not supposed to diagnose somebody you've never met?

No, you're definitely not. They were labeling him a sexual psychopath, a schizophrenic, and many other terms that, at that point in 1957, the American public had never even heard of. Like, they had no idea what any of this meant. And in the meantime, Ed was being arraigned at the Washara Courthouse for the murder of Bernice Worden. Standing before Judge Herbert Bundy, Ed's attorney, William Belter, spoke on Ed's behalf and pled not guilty by reason of insanity. Given the evidence collected at the farmhouse, it was kind of hard to argue anything else.

So Judge Bundy accepted that probable cause had been found and waived the preliminary hearing and ordered that Ed be bound over for trial. So in total, the hearing took three minutes. In the week that followed his arrest, many people tried to get more information from Ed about the murders, about the items found in the home. But aside from his initial police interview, his answers were mostly, I don't know and I don't remember. Adams County Sheriff Frank Searle suspected Ed knew something about the disappearance of two local hunters a few years earlier. And Ed hoped, now that he was under arrest, that he might be a little forthcoming with some information.

But Ed had nothing to say. And now I'm like, I want to know more about that, because I'm like, that's interesting because you could see something like that happening. Two local hunters, maybe they stumbled on his property or something like that. Literally like Texas chainsaw massacre, literally like Texas chainsaw massacre. Because, as we'll find out later. And as some of you, I'm sure, know, Leatherface and that whole family is kind of loosely inspired by these events.

Yes, but yeah, he had nothing to say about that, not that he, like, he didn't even deny it, he just had nothing to say about it. What he wanted at this time, and he had been requesting it for several days, was to speak to a minister. So on, what fucking minister wanted to go talk to? Or obviously didn't want to, but had to go talk to Ed Gein?

Well, on November 22nd, Schlie finally got around to bringing one into the jail house. How do you convince that person to go do that well? So it's impossible really for us to know if anybody like who Ed had in mind when he requested a minister. But I'm willing to bet that he definitely wasn't going to ask for Reverend Kenneth Engelman. He was only 33 years old.

He looked a lot younger than 33, He was also of a different faith, he was methodist, and Ed was lutheran. Ed was pretty pleased to see him, though, like, I don't know what he wanted. I'm like, he's not the same religion as you. Maybe just to confess his sins?

Yeah, maybe it was just some kind of comfort, and afterwards after they spoke, which I was like, woah. Reverend Engelman held a press conference and he told reporters how it went. He said. Ed Gein is a man who needs help, yes, and according to Engelman, the two prayed together in Ed's cell, inside of his cell. I feel like we can do this. Bar separating us, bar separating us, girl.

But Ed began sobbing and he said he was quote sorry for himself for having gotten in trouble. And then he said, So, a reporter, So you hear that and you're like, So you're just sorry you got caught? Yeah, fuck that. It's like you weren't even trying to pretend that you were crying for something else.

That's what makes me think. He has no idea what's right and wrong, no idea or that, like, he's just detached, he's totally detached from that. Yeah, cause obviously he knows, like just the fact that he right, of course, but like, he just doesn't see it the same. Like this is not a man who is looking at things the same way that you or I am, and he's just outwardly being like.

I'm just really sad that I got in trouble, you know what the fuck? And so? Reporters asked him whether he expressed sorrow for the persons he had injured, and Engelman said No, he never did. Wow, he never expressed sorrow or remorse for any of it, which is so fucking monstrous. So beyond. And if that was your family member, you would want 5 minutes in that cell, Oh, it would be on site.

I'd be like, let's go. This would be like, Yeah, finish him, but you'd also be terrified. You'd be like, obviously, anybody who murders somebody is a monster. But Ed Gein goes so far beyond in a completely.

You can't comprehend him, and I keep saying, there's just no words. It's indescribable what he did and how he reacted to what he did. Yeah, and even he doesn't seem to fully like. He points to things that he thinks is the reason, and I think he holds those as his reasons.

And it's like, Okay, like, what? But you just think of? It's hard to, like, grasp it all at once. Because there's so much in this that you're just like, I can't conceive of this. But you just have to think of this man sitting in this house, which he's boarded off his mother's bedroom as like a shrine. And he's sitting in just like filth and surrounded by dead bodies.

Decapitated heads and body parts all day and all night, that man is closing his eyes in a bed where full, articulated skeletons are attached to the bed. I don't know what to say, there's no. This doesn't seem real. That's why, when movies were made later, yeah, cinema magic, because it's just like, that's not real.

And then you think about it and you're like, Oh my god, that's real shit. That's so inconceivable, you think of these things. He's just going to bed surrounded by death. It's one of those things where you would read it in a book or, like, see it in a movie and say, that's too much.

And you'd be like, Wow, it is real. And just the fact that he had no remorse, none, no sorrow and no remorse just for himself. Now, while the press clamored for any scrap of news, they could publish on the story. And he was called at one point, the Ghoul Slayer, which I was like, I don't know about that, silly, I don't know about that. District Attorney Earl Kyleen and Ed's attorney were locked in an increasingly public battle over how the case should proceed in the legal sense.

Having entered a plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, William Belter was pushing hard for Ed to be examined by a private psychiatrist as soon as possible. I can understand that because, he said, the defense, in order to have any evidence of value, must obtain it now. And this was all. While Ed was still willing to talk, this guy would shut down at a moment's notice. So they were like, we gotta get this going now. While he remembers it, while it's fresh, while we can at least try to get him talking.

If he goes silent, we're not going to get anything. And obviously you don't want it to benefit the defense. Because I don't think there's any chance that this guy would have walked, he just would have gone to a mental facility like a hospital. But it would also be helpful for law enforcement and the FBI just agencies to start understanding what we're looking for here. What's this profile, what's happening in this brain?

What is in his past that triggered certain things that he's done, even if just to help people who profile. Honestly, it's like, you need this. And Belter told reporters the important question is whether Ed Gein is insane now, not 3, 5 or 10 years from now, which is true. But Kyleen, on the other hand, was pushing for a speedy trial.

He just wanted to push it through now. Gein appeared before Judge Bundy a few weeks later, and this time, Kyleen had changed his stance and actually shocked spectators. When after Ed entered a second plea of not guilty by reason of insanity, the district attorney recommended that he be evaluated by psychiatrists at the Central State Hospital before proceeding with the trial. So he's now changed his tune to be like, we should have this guy looked up. I wonder how much family members have gotten up.

I wonder, too, because I doubt a lot, probably not back then. And honestly, this was a politically risky stance he took. Because, according to Schechter, most people felt hospitalization would be tantamount to him. Getting away with murder, especially in the 50's, people thought it was just going to be him getting away with it. There was no mental health awareness whatsoever. So Kyleen couldn't ignore the fact that what they'd seen at the Gein Farm was well outside the bounds of sanity. Like he was like.

I can't pretend that this is sane. What we saw, there's got to be something here. And he said, I don't know whether a person in his right mind would do that sort of thing or not. And that's what he conceded. He was like, I guess we've seen bad people do bad things, but this is kind of outside the scope of that.

So I don't know. And I'm glad he kind of went this way because he's like, I can't say whether this is sane or insane behavior. And I think a psychiatrist needs to tell us none of us can determine this. While the judge agreed and ordered the examination now, there was no question that Ed had murdered Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden. He would be punished for those crimes. But the other bodies found at the farm presented a larger problem for the district attorney.

Specifically, where were the additional victims that Ed simply refused to take responsibility for? Like, we don't even know who everybody is in this house and we need to return people back to where they were resting. Although he had already explained that the bodies and body parts discovered in the house were taken from graves. Few people in Plainfield, including some in law enforcement, found it plausible that meek little Ed Gein had the wherewithal or the strength to dig up all those bodies. A lot of people thought he killed more people. I get it, and I don't blame people for thinking that, and people in law enforcement thought that I kind of lean toward that opinion.

Besides, they reasoned, wouldn't someone have noticed if random graves had been dug up around the cemeteries in town? Like, no one noticed this because the sheer number of things and body parts and everything that was found in his house. And I was just saying earlier, you would go to your loved ones grave and visit them, because again, these are recently deceased people, exactly. And we were talking about nine masks he made, that's nine women who he skinned the faces off of.

But also what I'm thinking is he did go after recently deceased, which means recently buried, so it would be harder to determine that those were disturbed graves. That's a good point because the Earth is already disturbed recently, that's a good point, so you can look at it both ways.

I can understand why people were like, we've not noticed this. It's like, maybe not, maybe you're right, maybe that is wild to think about. Maybe he killed more people than we think, and he's just doing this.

But on the other hand, he did go after recently deceased. Their obituaries were right in the paper that week, and the dirt was already recently disturbed. So he could have just gone and put it back and it really wouldn't have looked any different. Which you also think about that, and you're like, is that why you did that?

Well, that's the thing that's pretty diabolical, and you have those I don't want to call that reasoning, but it sort of is. But that kind of logic, your brand of logical thinking, where you're planning this out. Because you know you won't get caught that way, and it's the same thing.

He went into Bernice Worden's store with ammunition in his pocket and went to the gun that he knew that ammunition went into. And knew full well that her son was going to be off that day hunting, he asked him the name of the force. So there's a lot of premeditation here as well, but there's also a lot of insanity. So it's like, that's why it is necessary to get him looked at by a psychiatrist. Because none of this makes sense, none of it correlates.

But in this case, though, the only way to be sure the bodies at the farm weren't additional murder victims was to get ED to identify the bodies at the house. And disinter the caskets and confirm that they were missing from their plots. And did they do? They tried to do that well, the thing was Washara County was in relative financial straight. Like they weren't doing great, it's not like they had all this money to throw around.

It was a small community, it wasn't, like, you know, very wealthy. And the Gein investigation and trial threatened to eat up a huge amount of the county's budget in the prosecution of the Hogan and Worden cases alone. So the idea of adding 8 to 10 at least disinterments to the price tag and the cost of processing any additional evidence. It seemed unwise. And a little from their point of view at the time, they felt it was unnecessary. Okay, also, it was the dead of winter. So the process was going to be a lot more difficult and a lot more expensive. If it was even possible to do it. Because the ground is frozen still, when Ed was arrested, Kyleen vowed to the public that he would do everything in his power to ensure that Ed would never walk the streets again.

And given his recent agreement to the psychiatric evaluation, he needed something to offset the appearance that he was going soft on the case. Now, because people in Plainfield wanted this guy gone like done, which I can't say I blame him. But he's now looking at it from an inside perspective. Seeing all the evidence that everybody's not seeing, seeing the interviews, seeing all this stuff. That's why he's gone to this like he should be evaluated. But that also opens up the possibility that he could walk the streets again. He could be let out of a psychiatric facility when he is deemed sane.

And that's terrifying, and that's the fear, because how do you reform that? And he's vowing to the public he'll never walk the streets again, but now he's saying he does need a psychiatric evaluation.

He might need to be in a hospital, so it's like, he's really teetering, which I'll give it to him. It sounds like he was going with the right moral stance of, like, I can't just posture to people, I have to be real.

I have to do the right thing. It seems like this is a matter of like, we gotta determine the sanity here.

She struck him with her motor vehicle, she had been under the influence, and then she left him there. In January 2022, local woman Karen Reed was implicated in the mysterious death of her boyfriend, Boston Police Officer John O'Keefe. It was alleged that after an innocent night out for drinks with friends, Karen and John got into a lover's quarrel en route to the next location. What happens next depends on who you ask.

Was it a crime of passion? If you believe the prosecution, it's because the evidence was so compelling. This was clearly an intentional act. And his cause of death was blunt force trauma with hypothermia. Or a corrupt police cover-up, if you believe the defense theory, however, this was all a cover-up to prevent one of their own from going down. Everyone had an opinion and after the 10-week trial, the jury could not come to a unanimous decision to end in a mistrial.

It's just a confirmation of just how complicated this case is. Law and Crime presents the most in-depth analysis to date of the sensational case in Karen. You can listen to Karen exclusively with Wondery Plus. join Wondery Plus in the Wondery App, Apple Podcasts or Spotify.

Now, surprisingly, Ed was mostly forthcoming with the identities of the women whose graves he'd opened, and by early December he'd named at least seven. However, before Kyleen and some local cemetery workers would charge in and dig up the graves, State Crime Lab chief Charles Wilson loudly protested. To this, he told Kyleen and the press We can determine scientifically if the graves have been quote-unquote molested. That's how he called it. So they needn't dig up and open the caskets.

But Kyleen answered, And I can see where he's coming from. He said. Scientific findings won't convince the people. These people in Plainfield want those graves opened. I get what he's saying, and it's true the people of Plainfield in 57 are not going to hear.

Scientifically, we can tell if they've been disturbed. They're going to be like, Fuck no, open it up. I want to see. They're not going to believe you. They want proof they've been fucked up by this.

They want to know. So. The problem, as far as Kyleen saw it, was that soil analysis and scientific testing could also take weeks or months, and it's expensive, too. And he didn't think the residents of Plainfield were going to be willing to wait that long to find out whether Ed was bullshitting them or not. So, while Kyleen and the state Crime Lab were arguing over whether or how to disinter the graves of the locals. Ed was transferred to the Central State Hospital at Waupun and instantly became the most infamous patient the hospital had ever seen.

Head psychiatrist Edward Schubert told reporters Our primary purpose is to determine the legal question of Gein's sanity. But we will do a complete workup on him and find out just why he has reacted in the way he did now. In the meantime, Ed had a theory of his own about what caused him to snap, and he finally was open about talking about it. He talked to his lawyer actually about it first, while he was being transferred to the hospital, according to ED. In 1945, he and his mother had visited a neighbor farm to purchase some straw.

And he said, While they were there, and this is really awful. Brief mention of animal cruelty trigger warning, I'll breeze over it. While they were there, they witnessed the farmer kill a puppy, Oh God, which caused a woman to come running out of the farmhouse, hysterically imploring him to stop. Of course, the scene very much upset Augusta GEiN Yeah, not because of the violence. She didn't give a shit about the puppy, but because the woman wasn't married to that farmer and shouldn't have been at his house.

Are you fucking kidding me? No, I'm not fucking kidding you.

Yeah, so she, what? And that's what you tell your kid, Miss Augusta Gein, Like, that's what you tell your kid to gather from that situation. Miss Augusta Gein watched a man violently kill a puppy. And was upset. Because a woman who got upset about it wasn't married to that farmer and shouldn't have been in his house.

Also, you don't know why the fuck she's there in the first place and also get so fucked, Augusta like, Are you kidding me? what?

Yeah, it was the farmer's immorality and wickedness, Ed claimed, or the woman's immorality and wickedness. That Ed claimed had caused his mother's second stroke and eventually her death, which led to his unbearable loneliness and drove him to violence.

What, yep?

Make it make sense. I will not. There's no way that I cannot do. Nope, yep, that's how broken that is up there. What the fuck, dude?

He said that with his whole chest, that that's what led him to do this. You have to wonder what other instances they ran into as a duo, and Augusta was like, that one's wrong, too, like, what? And you would think with that?

When you first hear the beginning of the story, you're like, Oh my God. He watched like a farmer. Like, heard a puppy like, that's fucked up and that'll like, Really, stay with you. No, it's not that. I thought you were going to say he was like, fucked up and like, got excited that that happened. Although there was something he also said. And this is really gross as well.

I'm just going to breeze over it because I think it's important to at least mention, he said. When he was like 8 years old, like really young, he walked into a shed on the farm and saw his mother and his father like, preparing. I think it was a pig, okay, which they had, like, cut open, like, it's pretty horrific. Essentially, it was like hanging, like Bernice and Mary were. And he said it excited him to watch that happen. So there is another quick little insight into that mind, and that's the thing he was so young when that happened. Did you say 8??

I think he was somewhere around that age, like, very young.

So that leads you to believe you're already something innately is fucked up in you. And you're just seeing too much. And you're being exposed to a lot of big ideas. God only knows what Augusta was saying, so that's interesting. So Ed's explanation is very obviously the delusional justifications of a very broken mind, like, No, I don't think that works. But his self-diagnosis did reveal something about his actual motive, which is from the moment Ed was born.

Augusta Gein had done everything she could to impart to him her belief that women's wickedness was responsible for all the world's problems. It was women's wickedness. Like in this story about the farmer and the dog, it wasn't the farmer, it wasn't the farmer's explosive act of unbelievable cruelty and violence. That started her into her second stroke. It was the fact that he had been in the presence of a woman to whom he was not married.

That's also just the fact that she was like, like, they're just in each other's presence. Yeah, I'm like, but you're at his house, so like, Are you wrong?

You're interpreting so much from that woman just being at his fucking house, you're at his house and she's just driving into this kid. That women are responsible for everything bad in the world. They will fuck with you, they are wicked, they are manipulative, don't trust them.

They want to ruin you, they want to take you from me. All this shit at such a young age. And what is he going to look at women like later? I'm like, Augusta.

What did you want out of this? That's what I don't get. What was the end game? It was so self-serving, I don't think there was an end game for Ed.

There was an end game for her. Yeah, that's all it was at the end of her days. She's taken care of, and who cares what happens afterwards? That's another level of evil, too, that really is.

I mean, nothing compares to what Ed did and where he went, but that's a totally different side story of evil that is evil. But also, it wasn't Augusta's relentless psychological abuse that led to his murdering Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden. But the fact that those women had so closely resembled his mother physically, but betrayed her saintliness and character to him, like that was his reason for those cause. They were like, boss bitches doing boss bitch stuff.

They were just doing their thing, William Belter told reporters. Oddly he blames the women, or he blames the woman He's talking about, the farmer one, he said. Oddly he blames the woman. If she hadn't been there, his mother wouldn't have had the stroke and he wouldn't have been left alone.

That's what he looked at it, as if that woman wasn't there. I would have just watched this farmer cruelly kill a puppy and I would have been fine. Like, that's what he's justified, that's.

Inconceivable to me, it really is. I'm so shook now. Almost immediately following his arrival at Central State Hospital in early December, Ed started a battery of tests that would take nearly a month to complete. There were some that were physical tests, like extensive examinations of his body, his blood, biological and physiological functioning.

All of these were determined to be within normal range for a 51 year old man. Physically, he was fine, okay. Despite that, Ed seemed to find the physical examinations so frustrating and so daunting. He would frequently whine like a whiner about headaches and nausea, and he would complain that he needed a wheelchair.

He was only 51. Are you kidding me? I was like you were dragging people out of their graves and bringing them home, you killed two women and you strung them up and mutilated them. And you're complaining because you might have to walk on a fucking treadmill.

Shut up, shut up Ed. Another common complaint from Ed, and this is interesting, was that he said there was a lot of offensive smells that he would smell. That the hospital, Yeah, thank you, no.

Motherfucker, what, like you lived in that house full of everything we know it was full of okay. Mary Cosby What? So I have a theory? So he would say all these offensive smells were happening that the hospital staff was like, we don't smell these like.

What are you talking about? And finally, one of the doctors was like, What does it smell like? Ed? is it cleaning products? No, he said. It smells like flesh. Don't you like that?

I can tell you 100, with 100 certainty. After performing an autopsy, I have the smell in my nose for a little while. Yeah, it sticks around, and sometimes things food will smell like it. It sticks for a minute, but that's just doing an autopsy and it goes away. Living in a place where all you smell 24 7 is the smell of flesh and decomposition.

I wonder if it was just there. He just smelled it, but he wasn't complaining when he was at home. But that's what I mean. You go smell blind while you're there, and then you leave and all of a sudden you're like, Why do I smell this everywhere? like, Do I smell like it?

Like, I would make John smell me, but while you're in there, you're just doing your thing. And I'm obviously saying in autopsies. So I'm imagining in his home, he would not really notice it because he's there all the time. But then he's going to this place that's clean and like, probably smells like cleaning products and other things like that, like clinically clean. And he doesn't like the smell of a smell, and I think it's triggering, I think that smell is stuck, because I don't know this was right after.

So I don't think that was the case for the rest of his life. That he would smell these foul smells all the time. I think it was like, maybe he was still just smelling what he was living in for the last, however many years. That's bonkers to me, I truly like.

I see what you're saying, and I definitely think that could be it because I haven't had that experience. But I fucking wonder if that guy just didn't like the smell of clean, but he said it smells like flesh, that's what he was saying. No, they literally.

A doctor said Ed, what does it smell like? and he said, it smells like flesh, what the fuck? And that man knew what that smelled like. He wasn't confusing cleaning products for that.

And you sat in your house. Did nobody say to him, Ed, you don't think your fucking house smells like flesh? Well, then I'm wondering. I'm like, this is a hospital environment. They've done, you know, they've done autopsies, they've all been through gross anatomy.

They've smelled body smells, sure, I wonder if they're like, that's it, like, you're probably smelling what you smell when you're around it.

That is, and you're coming out of that environment now, and it's stuck in your nose.

This just gets more fucked up as we go, it's real fucked up. What? And also I want you to picture being a doctor. And this guy just keeps complaining about the bad smells and you're like, Ed, what does it smell like?

And he just says, it smells like flesh. I'd be like, I gotta go, I'm retiring today. This wasn't what I wanted. Hey chief, here's my two weeks. Anybody who says it smells like flesh, it's like, What the fuck, Ed?

Now, the next step was the baseline psychological and neuropsychological exams and the doctors at Central State. They established that Ed had an IQ of 89, which would put him in the low to average category, some sources I found did say 99, which would put him more towards the average. He wasn't exceedingly low, you know, like it's not like he was like down at the bottom.

Well, and if you think about it, he left school in 8th grade. So a lot of that, like testing, is probably just like basic stuff you learn in school, exactly, and honestly. They also noted that he possessed quote, a fair amount of information, a good vocabulary, and an ability to reason abstractly. So because he read a lot. This suggested that, despite the the Weschler Adult Intelligence Test, despite what it indicated, he was likely more intelligent than he appeared, also the results of the Rorschach.

I can never say that, right? Rorschach assessment, which is the inkblot test? They were quote? Not that of a well person, but of one with insufficient ego, immaturity, conflict concerning identification, and possibly the presence of illogical thought processes. Correct? I believe that additional tests revealed things many had suspected but couldn't confirm. Ed possessed bizarre and powerful religious beliefs, he strongly identified with feminine figures, and he had a strikingly immature level of sexuality, characterized by strong feelings of guilt. Okay, so a lot of conflicting feelings happening here and things he wasn't able to understand.

Yeah, or actually, like, put a finger on, because he was so jumbled up as a kid, right? With so many different messages. When considered together, the results painted a picture of a man who was of average intelligence. Very suggestible, but emotionally dull and prone to irrational, inappropriate and aggressive responses, which is not great. No, that's kind of the worst. The earlier tests were useful in establishing a baseline, but the more in-depth testing proved more useful at identifying Ed's true motives for his very shocking behaviors. During an assessment of his social and sexual histories, Ed's rigid beliefs about morality, and more specifically, the immorality of sex, were a frequent topic with him at one point, exclaiming Morality is pretty low in Plainfield, which is what his mother would always say with regard to his victims.

Ed explained Mary Hogan was a dirty talker, operated a tavern and people said she was in some crooked business. So even just the fact that she operated a tavern that he literally went to before, he even developed any kind of hating feelings about her? Yeah, but it's okay that you're at the tavern, exactly because she's a woman and she can't own a tavern, and also she can't swear. His mother would have been horrified.

Swearing is inappropriate, of course not. Oh my God, Augusta, I know Augusta would have lost her goddamn mind now about Bernice Warden, he said. QuoTe She wooed her husband away from another girl and married him Shortly after that other girl committed suicide.

That's a quote. So this motherfucker is also just like gossiping. He's just going on rumors like he's just following the rumor mill and being like, Well, she should die then, like, you don't even know, yeah. His attitudes towards women in general were very negative, and his attitudes towards his victims were similarly negative. And reflected the belief that their deaths were a just punishment for their sins. Like, he's playing God, Yeah, he said. they were sins.

Like, they were sinful, so they should die. I took care of it, I did the correct thing. Like, that's why he just doesn't see it as like, what's the problem?

Broadly speaking, Ed seemed more or less incapable of taking any responsibility for his actions, like personal responsibility, and frequently blamed his behavior on everyone else, he said. Quote If his neighbors had shown some interest in him and would have visited, then he probably wouldn't have been so lonely and engaged in illegal acts. I don't really think all of this happened because nobody stopped by to ask you for some sugar. Yeah, I feel like this was going to happen, like.

I don't think it helped that you were so isolated, yeah, and I think that probably made you way fucking weirder than you ever would have been, exactly. But I don't think we should blame everybody else. I don't think it's the neighbors fault, I don't think so, by all accounts, everybody.

When he came into town, everybody was kind to him and nice to him and went about their business. Yeah, and I'm sure it kind of sounds like Augusta turned people away. Oh, 100. Nobody was allowed at that farm, right? For their whole life. I'm like, Blame your mom, right? She turned everybody away. You would have had friends, probably exactly.

And also, he frequently fixated on small slights and misunderstandings that had occurred throughout his lifetime. Like they were far more significant reflections about how other people felt about him. Okay, he would like very much focus on the minutia in like simplistic terms. Everyone treated him poorly, everyone took advantage of him, which is what led him to do what he did. Not him, huh? had nothing to do with him. Okay, when it came to the murders, Ed was far vaguer about it.

He frequently claimed not to remember a lot of the details of the murders, but in the case of Warden's death, he was confident it was an accident that had occurred when the gun discharged accidentally. No, though he doesn't explain how or why he physically loaded the gun with bullets he brought into the store in the first place. Got it and they were like, Can you explain that? No, so it was just an accident that you loaded the gun, the exact gun that you had the exact bullets for in your pocket. No, these are the things that you're like.

Fuck off Ed like, I see you, yeah, and you're lying, and you're lying. Trying to make it sound like this was accidental, exactly because you know that it's wrong, and you know you're going to be punished. There is no rhyme or reason to this man's.

It's increasingly frustrating. I can't imagine being part of this investigation and like the people in the hospital and everything having to do with this. Also, he claimed not to remember loading Bernice's body onto the truck or returning to the farm, but he didn't deny having killed her or mutilated her body. So he admitted that in their conclusions, the doctors at Central State determined that. Ed's social and physical isolation, along with the powerful influence of his mother, led him to develop a strong and rigid set of beliefs about himself and those around him that were rooted in religious understandings of right and wrong. Following his mother's death, he engaged in a very intense fantasy life in order to cope with the profound grief, anxiety and stress that was, by all accounts, consuming him. Which eventually required more elaborate acts to achieve the desired effect.

Hence the grave robbing. He denied ever engaging in sex with the bodies necrophilia. He said he did not do that, and he said, at no time did I even attempt or consider eating any flesh, okay?

As far as his tendency to forget details of the more emotionally charged situations, Dr Schubert suggested it was kind of a self-serving amnesia. Engaged to help him cope with the more unacceptable acts such as murder. Kind of, like what you said about, I think he just kind of, like, feigns amnesia. Because it's like a self-preservation technique that, like, his brain, is just kind of doing for him. Where he knows, those are unacceptable, so he's like, I don't remember he has housewives amnesia.

There you go. As for why he murdered Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden, Schubert stated that Ed's motivation for the actions quote is elusive and uncertain. But several factors come to mind hostility, sex, and a desire for a substitute for his mother. In the form of a replica or body that could be kept indefinitely. But in support of this theory, Schubert pointed to Ed's frequent comments about the bodies being like dolls. That's how he would refer to them, and how he was often comforted by their presence.

So when we talk about this, man went to sleep with like skeletons attached to his bedside. He was comforted by all of that. Like this is what gave him his like. That is sinister, that sinister is a perfect way to describe it.

Yeah, basically. Ed Gein's mental state and frequent delusions were the result of a complex combination of social, environmental and psychological factors. That, while useful in understanding him a little bit like at least trying to understand him. It would never adequately, or to any satisfaction, explain why he did what he did not at all. He was frequently paranoid, delusional. He experienced hallucinations to which he responded with bizarre behavior and violence, sometimes even when he didn't remember doing so. So there was a lot going on here that nobody could understand.

Based on all the test results and examinations, the medical and psychiatric staff at Central State Hospital unanimously agreed that Ed Gein easily met the legal definition of insanity and was not competent to stand trial at that time. Yeah, I mean, I can see why they felt that way. In his summary review sent to the judge along with the test results, Dr Schubert wrote Mr Gein has been suffering from a schizophrenic process of an undetermined number of years for an undetermined number of years.

As a result, although Mr. Gein might voice knowledge of the difference between right and wrong, his ability to make such judgment would be influenced by the existent mental illness. He would not be capable of fully realizing the consequence of any act because he would not be a free agent. To determine either the nature or the consequence of acts which resulted from disturbed and abnormal thinking. Because of these findings, I must recommend his commitment to Central State Hospital. Okay, now? In January 1958, a hearing was held to formally determine whether Gein was fit to stand trial. And during his testimony, Dr.

Schubert explained that Ed was a schizophrenic who had insufficient ego, was immature, lived a rather expansive fantasy life, centered about himself and had little faith in people. Yeah, sounds right on the money. Schubert believed Gein's illness had been chronic and he had been experiencing symptoms for at least the last 12 years. And because he was unable to give a chronological account of his life and the events related to his crimes, he was not able to participate in his defense, making him incompetent to stand trial. So, to the people of Plainfield, the determination seemed preposterous.

I can also understand that they were outraged that Ed appeared to be getting off with a light sentence. Especially with a lack of understanding of mental health and everything that goes along with it, especially during that time, I would also be upset. Like, you have to consider the fact that these people are not necessarily well educated and don't have all the resources about these kinds of things. And like you said, some of the things that they were talking about, like the diagnoses, these people had never heard of, never even heard the word. The American people, I'm not saying, because they're in a small town, no, literally like America. So it's like you can understand why they'd be like, I feel like this is a fucking cop out.

They were pissed, I mean, this was ghoulish, this was horrible, this was a nightmare. And these were people that because, again, a small community, people they loved and respected and knew forever. Like Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan as well, both of their places, but Bernice Worden. It was like that was an institution, that hardware store like. She was named Citizen of the Week.

You know, like she was, everybody knew her.

And people were even more outraged because they were like, we've known him our entire lives, for the most part, like everyone in that town had known him forever. And they were like, I never saw anything, and they were like, Yeah, he's odd, and they said, like, sometimes, and they referred to him as like, Simple.

They said he hardly seemed to be what they termed psychotic. Well, because now all of a sudden he's having these violent outbursts and hallucinations. We let him babysit our children, he wasn't having these violent outbursts. Do you think some of them were potentially like, put on?

Or do you think it was all the stress that he was under because that could start it, too? I can see both of those being the case, for sure. I could easily see him play, acting this whole thing and kind of manipulating everybody.

Or I can see that it's just he snapped. When you're put under stress like that and it all started coming out. But you do, I mean, as a citizen of that town and seeing him your whole life and letting him babysit your kid, he was fine. I'd be like, I don't fucking think so.

So I can understand why they're like, this sucks, but of course, on the flip side of that. In 1958, few people outside of the medical and psychiatric community even knew what schizophrenia was, much less how it could manifest. So no matter how well it was explained to them, they most likely would never believe. Ed had a very serious and extremely complicated mental illness. It was just too much to tell everybody what it was.

Nobody's going to get it because it's the first time they've ever even heard it. It's too complex and there's not, like, a ton of research. Yeah, they can't just call a town hall and be like, let me explain schizophrenia to you, and like how it manifests, why this is so complex, why these behaviors might make sense, but regardless of how the townspeople felt. Judge Bundy accepted the recommendation of Schubert and the other doctors at Central State Hospital. And Ed was sent back to the hospital where he could stay for the next 10 years.

Now, although it may have appeared as though Ed Gein was, quote unquote, evading justice by being confined to the state hospital, State Attorney General Stuart Honeck assured Wisconsinites quote upon his recovery. If that should occur, the defendant may still be brought to trial. They were like, he's not just going to be let out. If he is found to have recovered and is found to be sane, he will go on trial. So, while that was probably little comfort to the friends and families of the victims at the time, or the residents of Plainfields. That day did eventually come in February of 1968, when Ed was found to be competent to stand trial for the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan.

In recent years, Ed had become a model patient at the hospital and had shown considerable improvements since his arrival. Even to the point of holding a job at the hospital's. Lapidary, lapidary, what is that? And it's relating to stone and gems and the work involving engraving, cutting or polishing them. So like he was making rings and shit.

So he was like, I think it was more like engravings and stone and stuff. I don't want that. I mean, who does, really? But he was doing it, he was holding a job there, huh?

And a hospital sperks person, a hospital sperks person said. Quote He seems content to live day by day. We've never had the least bit of trouble with him.

Kind of not dope that he gets to be content, living day by day. kind of not dope. That's a great way to describe it. Kind of fucking shitty. I think that's a good blanket statement for what happened here.

Kind of not dope, you just get to be content after you killed two question mark, question mark people, so you know what?

Super not dope. And I'm saying, like, question mark, question mark, two, at least two. And possibly your brother, yeah, hide your content, though, it's fine, you're content to live day by day. Despite being found competent to stand trial. Schubert was emphatic that Ed Gein was still profoundly mentally ill and was unlikely to improve any more than he had in the time since he arrived.

He said Quote I doubt if Mr. Gein will ever change. And truly, with the horrific discovery, now a decade behind everyone, most people around Plainfield would just as soon have left it in the past. Like, they didn't want to relive this all over again. But Ed had spent ten years locked in a psychiatric facility without ever having stood trial for the crimes that put him in there. And as far as he was concerned, as Ed was concerned, he wanted his day in court.

He thought he was going to talk himself out of this one. Yeah, I was like, Do you really want your day in court? The day finally came on November 7th, 1968, and despite a courtroom packed with press and spectators, it was very underwhelming because Ed opted for a bench trial. The prosecutor spent just one day presenting his case to the judge, which was by then very familiar to everyone in the courtroom. And the defense spent just a few days more to present their case of not guilty by reason of insanity. It was as though everyone was simply just like, kind of going through the motions to kind of satisfy Gein's right to a fair trial. Like, we're just going to go through this.

On November 14th, 1968, Ed was found guilty of murder, after which the second phase of the trial to determine his sanity at the time of the murder began. This, too, was over in a very short amount of time, with the judge returning his conclusion that he was insane. After two days of testimony from psychiatrists at Central State Hospital, based on the findings, Ed Gein was returned to Central State Hospital. Where he would remain institutionalized until he was deemed sane and no longer posed a threat to society. Although this technically meant, like I said, it was possible that Ed could be released back into the community. And he did, in fact, petition for this in 1974, the fuck he did, that man petitioned to be let back out, kind of not dope.

Yeah, definitely not dope. Given the extent of his crimes and their effect on the community, there was no real chance of him ever being released from the hospital. I'm like, who the fuck signed that petition? So? Gein returned to Central State Hospital, where he remained until the facility was converted into a correctional facility in 1978. From there, he was transferred to Mendota State Hospital, where he spent the days working, watching TV, reading books and magazines. Just chillin, just as he had for the previous two decades.

Ed remained a model patient, never caused any problems for the staff, was never violent and never did anything really wrong in the hospital.

And Ed Gein died of respiratory failure on July 26, 1984, at the age of 77. I did not realize, for some reason, that he lived to the 80s, yeah, to the 80s, and he was 77. And he was buried in an unmarked plot in the Plainfield cemetery. Wow, I guess when you think about it. I was just so annoyed that he got to read books and watch TV. You can also do those things in prison.

I just thought that to myself, I was like, Really, what's the difference? He was just getting treated at the same time, and yeah, I don't know. But in March 1958, the Gein Farm became the property of the county.

That was in 58, by the way. We're going back for a minute. So I just said that like we were still in 1958, but in 1958. In case you were wondering what happened to the farm, it became the property of the county and the local auction company, the Farm Sales Service of Reidsburg. They were contracted to auction the property and the land off. Can you imagine having that place be your responsibility?

No, thank you, like fuck. But prior to the auction, the Farm Sales Service of Reidsburg tried to cash in on the notoriety of the case. By charging 50 cents to anyone who wanted to do a tour of the property and buildings before they were sold off. Had it been, like, cleaned up yet? I mean, as much as it could, I suppose. Not really sure what kind of crime scene cleanup they had back then, but probably wasn't that advanced.

But already exhausted and frustrated by the overwhelming attention the case was drawing, the residents of Plainfield vehemently objected to the admission fee, and a judge quickly shut down the company's attempt to quote. Make the house a museum for the morbid. And I was like, Hey, hey, we didn't ask for that, we did not want to do that. Wow. A few weeks later, the auction of the property and remaining contents of the house Remaining contents of the house, the fuck did that house contain? Whatever was left? It was held and drew more than 20,000 spectators.

What which? I can see, the morbid curiosity of wanting to see who buys this thing. I can understand just being like, what's going to happen here? I can at least understand the morbid curiosity of that wanting to see who this goes to.

I see both sides of it, but for me, I wouldn't want to touch that with a 10 foot pole. Oh, I feel like it's got such bad energy, that's the thing. I'm such an energy human.

There was an arson fire that occurred on the property a week before the auction. You trying to burn that energy into the air. Apparently. It destroyed much of the main house, and by the time the auction was held on March 23, 1958, all that remained was five old sheds and the foundation of the main house. Wow, in the end. The property and the remaining contents of the farm were all sold for less than $4,000. Which went to offsetting the significant costs of the investigation and hearings in the decades that followed. Hunters and those exploring the property surrounding what was once the Gein farm would occasionally find human bones buried on and around the property. Which is a really sinister reminder of the hideous things that had happened on that property for literally decades.

Hunters would find human bones, which I don't. I feel like there's more, he killed just two people, I feel like there's more man. Although his crimes were truly bizarre and shocking, it's possible the story of Ed Gein would have kind of faded out into history with the passage of time.

I mean, that's a long time ago, maybe. But there was a little known strange fiction writer named Robert Block that, at the time of the murders, he had been living in the Midwest. And started following the Gein case. As it unfolded in the papers, the story eventually became the basis for Block's 1959 novel, Psycho, the year after its release. Alfred Hitchcock, You might have heard of him, I think maybe. He adapted Psycho for the big screen and created one of the most iconic and enduring characters in horror cinema. Norman Bates I still need to see it. Despite being an amalgamation of a few different characters, Gein would become synonymous with the character of Norman Bates in the years that followed. And his, I mean, ghoulish, ghoulish acts would live on in horror cinema. Most notably in 1974's Texas Chainsaw Massacre, 1991's Silence of the Lambs and 2001's House of 1000 Corpses.

Oh, I didn't realize that was also, yeah, especially the name alone. You could call the Gein Farm House of 1000 corpses. Ed Gein was not the first American murderer to capture the public's imagination. But his crimes were so bizarre and so ghoulish, and so beyond anything we had ever seen before that. They definitely left a massive mark on the American psyche and inspired an interest in crime and criminal behavior. That really is what we have today.

Like this is, think about it, the psychology aspect of this case was so huge. Yeah, absolutely, that really took off, I think that. Much like the murder of the Clutter family in 1959, the discoveries at the Gein Farm kind of represent this, like shattering of a collective innocence.

It's like a pivotal shift, it really is. It's just like, oh shit, like these people live among us, this is what can happen here. And it was. These were such brutal and hideous crimes, and they happened in what was America's heartland, and they were committed by a mild-mannered handyman. And sometimes babysitter.

I wish you would stop saying that. And if they can happen in the American heartland, they can happen anywhere, and no one is ever going to be safe again. Is that where you're ending it? And that's where we're at you? Crazy girl, No. But it really was like.

This was the moment when everybody said this, no one's safe. Yeah, absolutely. Where can we go in this country? If it can happen here? it can happen anywhere. You gotta lock your doors, you gotta be watching over your shoulder. So scary. This case gives me nightmares. Ed Gein.

I think the case is so well known and it's been covered so many times. But it's like, when you really hear all the nitty gritty of it, there's a lot more to it. I learned a lot, and I've heard coverage of this before. I think I said in the beginning, not a ton. Like I've listened to a couple podcasts, but even still, I learned a lot with your coverage. I don't know if I'm better for it.

Dave was a real one. with this one, I know Dave, it was a journey.

Sorry, a poor man, but we put him through.

Voluntarily, he's here, he loves us.

Dave's listening right now, being like, not this much, shut up both of you.

Oh my god, so that's the Ed Gein case. I'll be coming at you next with something pretty morbid. There we go, that's the name of the show, that's the name of the game.

And since no one's safe again, we hope you keep listening, we hope you keep it weird. I need like an ice cream or something. Get an ice cream I need like.

I don't know I need a cocktail.

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