Episode 553: Ed Gein: The Butcher of Plainfield (Part 1)

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And this is morbid.

Morbid, This is morbid today. Yeah, we're hitting a biggie today. Whoa, we're hitting a biggie, and it's going to be real morbid, and it's going to be real morbid. For about three episodes.

Fantastic. Well, we're doing Ed Gein. Yeah, we're doing Ed Gein, guys. As you know, from clicking on this episode, I've only ever really heard this covered, probably on like, maybe like two other shows.

Really, yeah, because it's covered on every podcast. Well, I don't listen to, like, a lot of true crime just because we do it a lot. Yeah, not because I don't, you know, appreciate.

Yeah, exactly, um, but yeah, I'm hesitantly excited to hear your coverage. Yeah, I mean, this is. This is definitely one of those that, like I said, has been covered everywhere, like that's.

I think that's why we just like, waited a little while, and also because it's like, a, it's gnarly, it's a heavy story, it's a sad story, it's an awful story.

It's a gruesome story, it's all those things. And I knew it was going to be a multi-parter. So you got to, like, you know, you got to place those in the right spots, yeah.

But you know what, the time has come and you guys have asked for this episode for a long time. So it's time to cover. The man who, you know, is the inspiration behind some of the most iconic horror characters, Multiple.

Psycho is based after him. Oh, Norman Bates, that's Ed Gein shit.

I forgot that also confession I still haven't seen it. We got to make you watch Psycho.

Oh, no, I want to, actually. Yeah, we're going to have, we're going to do that on screen. yeah, we'll do it, you know. Silence of the Lambs, Texas chainsaw massacre. All of those things were, at least in part, inspired a little bit by this case.

Okay, I forgot that silence of the lambs was at least little. Bits and pieces are taken, you know, for characters, or for the stories, for sure, and I mean, I see why.

It's a very strange and unsettling case. Like this guy isn't prolific when it comes to murdering people, and prolific by standards of, like, how many people he murdered, yeah.

Uh, but he's prolific in many other ways, many other not good ways, depraved ways. Yeah, and he also is a murderer. He committed horrible murders.

Yeah, maybe of his own family, who knows? Shoot and we will get into it.

Um, but yeah, so let's start off with just talking about who Ed Gein is. Okie Doke. Let's go right into his pretty horrific childhood. Oh, good, love that.

Uh, so. Edward Theodore Gein was born August 27th, 1906, in La Crosse, Wisconsin, 1906. Also, I know I hate that I like both of those names, Edward and Theodore, yeah.

I mean, they're great names, they are, that's the thing like they're, they're very. these are just like names that are so palatable they are.

You know, it's okay, not anymore. it's okay if you like them, uh? But he was the second of two boys born to George and the pretty infamous Augusta Gein. That name also pops off.

Augusta Gein, Augusta Gein, I would not fuck with her, mostly because I know a lot about her at this point. Like, just like the little tidbits.

Cause I've just been like leaking out the latest stuff every now and then. I need to say something. Let me tell you about Augusta, but Augusta? GEIN Well, you know, I say she's infamous. Only because she seems to have definitely played a role in twisting Ed Gein's mind into something that was kind of beyond repair.

Yeah, for sure. Um, it's sad, it's really sad, like it's, it's horrific how she treated her children.

I feel like this is very much a nurture versus nature. Yeah, I mean, he flipped a bit. So who's to say, you know, like, cause I always it's it's so hard to like.

That's a hard debate, I feel like you can never pinpoint for sure. But we always say, and like, it's pretty clear in studies and such, that, like nurture has plays a role, it just plays a role. Like, it's, it's not always the that's, that's the cause, and nature is not always that's the cause.

It's a mixture of both I feel like is always the one that's the the ticking time bomb. Yeah, I feel like in in every case, it's probably like some combo of both, and it's just a matter of how much.

Yeah, which one is weighing more than the other one? You're right, exactly. And here I would say nurture was definitely the higher one on the scale.

Yeah, always the way. It's cause we have to remember, like kids minds are so easily molded because they are just open to whatever. And like, their caregivers are the ones that are going to be the ones that have the most influence over what they think, what they believe, how they feel about themselves, how they feel about the world around them. It is very easy to turn a kid into just whatever kind of robotic, scary human you want to turn them into.

It's terrifying if you really go for it, and it sounds like Augusta really went for it. She had an agenda here. Um, and obviously something's wrong.

Something's wrong with Ed Gein, something's big wrong, something's wrong with Ed Gein on a cellular level there, because the things he did are just far beyond the scope of any imagination. And like we say, a lot of people have shitty childhoods, and a lot of people have shitty parents, and a lot of people have caregivers that put shit into their mind. And somehow they are able to break out of it someday, or at least be able to manage enough to not murder people. And, you know, decorate their house with remains. If you can manage not to do that, I would say that's best.

I, I would say, you're, you're really, you're doing well, you're doing what you can, cause also that's not fucking easy, no?

So for real, good job, good job. You're like, like, cause if you, you know, like traumas, trauma, especially childhood trauma, like, I can't imagine, like the, you know. There's certain levels, but it's like, at the high level of childhood trauma. I can't imagine having to come out of that and become a functioning adult. Oh, I'm 27 and I'm still working on it, so, you know, well done.

If you're working through it right now, well done. if you have plans to work through it, well done. If you have worked through it, good job on all those good job guys. Um, but George and Augusta had wed in December 1899..

And, according to crime writer Harold Schrecker, Schrechter, Excuse me, that's hard to say, that is hard to say. It's Schechter, Schechter.

There it is. It's kind of fun to say. Harold Schechter, Uh, he said. Quote. Their marriage had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare. That's a writer, though.

That sentence is metal as fuck, but the reality is sad and horrible. A lacerating nightmare. Yup, that'd be a really good banning, had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare.

What a description. You gave me everything I needed. It's so elegant it is, and it gave me everything I needed to know about that marriage.

You do, I know, like, a particularly lacerating nightmare. Got it, got it? That's not a marriage I'd like to be a part of. No, definitely not.

So it's sad already. You're like, Oh fuck, hmm. So even by early 20th century standards for marriage, which was definitely not like, let's get married, cause we love each other. Romance, romance, romance. It was really like you got to be practical with your marriage, basically.

It's like, for the best of the of the family kind of thing. George and Augusta's marriage made little sense, even by those standards. Like to those around them, people were like, You sure, you really want to do that? George had suffered a lifetime of hardship and, as a result, he had no faith in religion, no faith in God. He was not into that.

He'd had developed cripplingly low self-esteem, he had a tendency to judge himself so harshly, like everything was his fault. He believed, wow, he would put everything on himself. And I think he had also been kind of taught that, like, I think he had also grown up in a place where he was the scapegoat.

That's sad, um. Augusta, on the other hand, was, I'll give it to her this. She was a hard worker. Like, if she Augusta is a hard worker, she's just she's going to be a hard worker.

She was industrious, and she was also. She had a strong work ethic, very rigid sense of morality, and that came from her being a deeply religious woman. Um, she was also a stern disciplinarian, she was self-righteous, domineering, and inflexible.

Oh, fun, great qualities in a human. And she is also someone who, quote, never doubted for a moment the absolute correctness of her beliefs. Or her right to impose them. By whatever means, on the other people around her, by whatever means, that's the part that really got me, she sounds like a fucking nightmare, to be honest.

Like, if you're like, you believe what you believe, if you think you have a right to impose those beliefs by whatever means necessary on people who don't want that, that's fucked up. Also, what does that mean? By whatever means necessary, isn't it very ominous? It's got a very ominous tone to it.

It truly does, and again, she was, I'll give it to her. She was a hard worker and she probably could have thrived as a business owner if she had just become a business owner and not decided to delve into the realm of being a mother, yeah, she doesn't very, she doesn't sound very motherly.

Yeah, there's not a lot of nurturing happening here by conventional standards. Uh, I again open a business. She would have killed it, but she did not.

Um, there wasn't really a honeymoon phase for the Geens. I don't think. no, I didn't. I didn't really see that coming down the pike. Yeah, it's. It's not like, oh, the honeymoon phase is over. And now she shows who she is.

No, like, there it's, you know, again, a marriage of practicality, and I don't even really know how practical it was. Nobody's really sure why this happened. To be quite honest, that's sad, That's like, really sad, cause I feel like we say this so much. But you think about like, walking down the aisle, taking baths, the whole nine.

And just for what? for a lacerating nightmare that sucks? yeah, for a particularly lacerating nightmare, yeah.

So her, I mean, she had already kind of shown George who she was, that she was, you know, very religious, very strict, very all this. But her true personality really revealed itself pretty quickly. After they got married, she was like, Well, here it goes, that's so rough that, like, it was already pretty rough before they got married. And then he's like, all in, and it's like, Hmm, but wait, there's more. And George, like I said, he had crippling low self-esteem.

He had zero self-worth, self-worth. I mean, he was already kind of a shadow of a guy at that point, and he became even more of a shadow. Yeah, like this is not going to help, yeah.

He just withdrew into himself. Unfortunately, he began drinking very heavily, Alcoholism shortly followed. Things got so bad at one point. Because it was a constant house of like, according to all the sources, we could find that it was a constant house of the two of. Even before kids. Them just being miserable with each other and, like George, just kind of retreating into himself, drinking and kind of isolating and her berating him. So it was just that kind of awful environment of just neither one of them are doing well with each other.

And not something you would ever want to bring kids into. No, but back then, obviously, I know it was like, not as easy to not have kids, of course. But if you could have a perfect world here, if you could choose, like just black and white, probably don't.

But at one point, George snapped and hit Augusta. Oh, that's not the answer, Bud silence is not the answer. And Schechter wrote that afterwards quote she would draw herself to her knees and pray fervently for her husband's death. What?

Like, outwardly, I don't think God is like, down with that, like I don't think God is down with you hitting people either. I think this is none of this is really, this is awful.

Yeah, it's not great. So, not surprisingly, I would say Augusta's views on sex as a whole were extreme. Even for those among us who consider themselves the most pious, I would say that her views are a little scary. Oh, no.

Um, sex before marriage was just out of the fucking question. I mean, unquestionably a sin you will die for and burn in the pits of hell. Like, don't, do not pass, go, do not collect $500 like you death bye, wow.

Um, but even within marriage, sex between husband and wife, and only husband and wife, of course, always was unpleasant and just a responsibility necessary to procreate.

Like, something, fuck, we just have to do it, and it's only to have kids, that's it. It reminds me in Gilmore Girls of Lane Kim and her mom, Mrs. Kim, when Lane's getting married and she's trying to like.

Explain to Lane, you know, the wedding night? and Lane's like, No, no, no, I got it, and she's like, No, let me explain it to you. And she says, If you're lucky, you only have to do it once, like me, and Lane's just like, Ah, if you're lucky, that's so sad.

If you're lucky, you only have to do it once. Oh my God. And I was like, Oh my, that's that's stuck with me, which like, Oh, Mrs Kim, oh, but like, just one, just one time, and then never again.

Fuck that, sorry. And that was Augusta's view on it, just like, do it to have kids, that's it.

And out of religious obligation to have kids. Wow, so this is all like, not great, this is wild, this is so dark.

Yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet. I'm like, this is so dark and then I just sip my poppy and I'm just like, Oof, just wait until part two.

Oh, good one. But because, you know, Augusta seems like she's a little intolerant of anything and is certainly anything less than perfection. She also kept an immaculate home, immaculate, which like good for her, like good for you.

Keeping an immaculate home, I suppose, that's tough to do, especially, you know, when you're living in 1906 without a swiffer, without a swiffer, I feel like it's really dusty in 1906..

Yeah, it's really dusty, but she kept it. But that was part of her like obsession with perfection, too. It wasn't like she just liked her home clean. It was like all is lost.

Well, and there's that whole phrase I'm sure she lived by. Cleanliness is next to godliness. Yeah, I think you had it right, yeah.

I think we said the same thing I think you said next to Godliness, which I think is right. I think it's close to, yeah, I said, like, down the block or something from it.

It's in the it's in a nearby county to godliness, I think. But. But like, given that giving her obsession with perfection, her intolerance for essentially anything, her attitudes towards sex, it's pretty unclear. Besides religious obligation, why she would have thought children was her path in life. I think just because you're so hostile. Quote unquote. And I think it was like social expectation. It was also 1906..

Not a lot of ways to prevent that from happening, I suppose. Except that they were having sex only to have kids, right? So that was the agenda here, so I think it was a religious and social obligation, for sure.

But it certainly wasn't out of love for the need to nurture another living thing. Doesn't sound like it, but whatever the case, Henry Gein was born in January 1902. This is Ed's older brother, okay?

And was followed four years later by Ed. Now, in the early years of Ed and Henry's lives, George struggled to keep the family afloat. He was working, you know, just whatever jobs he could find to provide even the most essential of needs. It was tough times.

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After a few years, he went into business for himself, and he opened a small meat and grocery shop in 1909. Which is like, Okay, George, but George had no business sense, no experience whatsoever, definitely not experience owning a business of that kind or any kind of that. So the store just started falling downhill, went into financial problems. Oh, no. And Augusta's solution to this issue was just push her husband aside and take over the operation of the store. She put him in the position of a clerk.

She said, You're, you're nice to people, she said, demoted. And then, while this, you know, this didn't do anything to improve their domestic relationship, I imagine if you already hate each other, working together is not the answer. Probably not great.

And especially her demoting him and just taking it over. But one thing about Augusta, She's going to get it done, she's going to get work done, she's going to do it.

Her work ethic and determination were exactly what was needed for this store, and she did turn things around in a very short period of time. And she ended up managing them into a place where they were financially sustainable. Nice, all right.

Okay, Augusta again, it feels like this is where Augusta would have thrived. She, you know, she didn't enjoy domestic life, I think, out of again, social and religious obligation. She felt like that was her duty and that was what she was supposed to do. But I think if she could have opened her mind a little bit, she would have been a great businesswoman. And then just demote him to go take care of the kid.

Exactly like, hopefully he's got his drinking under wraps, because again, she, that's the other thing. It's like, we also have George falling into the shadows here, and you know, his alcoholism is kind of taking things over and ends up fucking with his health later. Yeah, I'm sure.

Like, you know, it's, and obviously, you know, he did hit her. So it's like, this is just not a great situation for anybody. It's just like, Damn man, oh man, it's all bad.

It's all bad, it's all bad. And again, just become a business owner. And then the world would have been one less. ED GEIN You know, that's always something to strive for.

But although things in the business were doing well, you know, finally at home, things were definitely not not great. Following Henry's birth, Augusta struggled to bond with him when he was little, and that's, and seemed almost resentful of his presence. And I wondered quickly, I was like, could this be undiagnosed postpartum? And I do wonder if that played a role in here. But when you read a little more into it, it doesn't feel like it has the hallmarks of that kind of situation. It feels like, again, this wasn't the path she was planning to take, like out of a want to take it.

Yes, it was more out of a expectation, yeah, and then it's also, I think, what happened. I think if she had had, she really wanted a girl, yeah.

And I'll explain why in a second. But I think if she had had a girl, she would have been a little more bonded, okay? Or what she saw as bonded in her own head. You know what I mean, like, not a conventional bond. I don't think, because I don't think. I just don't know if she was capable of that kind of thing, to be honest, but because it was a boy, she really wasn't happy.

She had always maintained a, I mean, bottom of the barrel opinion of men like, they're all bad, they're all horrible. And again, she wanted a girl, so she was very disappointed when she had a boy.

I'm wondering about, like, what her upbringing was like? Yeah, she grew up in, she was raised in Germany. Oh, wow, yeah.

So there's not a lot known about her upbringing, but you know, who knows, yeah, but she saw. So when she got pregnant for a second time, she saw that as an opportunity to get what she wanted. And then she got another boy, yeah.

So she was equally disappointed. But, Schechter writes quote Augusta was not the kind to give in to despair, and she took the swaddled newborn in her arms and made a sacred vow. This one would not grow up to be like the rest of them, This one, she promised, would be different, okay?

Which sounds like that that could have the whisper of a promise, you know, sounds pretty all right. Like it's a little okay, like you're just like, Oh, okay, are you you like?

Love him into being a good man, you know, like, is that that? No? And also like, him and his brother are not that far apart, so why can't they both be good ones, exactly?

I don't understand because Henry was like, neglected and abandoned by her, like, just totally, yeah, I don't want anything to do with you.

And then, I think, so, I think. She looked at Henry as like, That's the mistake, I didn't want that. Then she has another child. She's like, Well, that's also a mistake, but she's like, I guess I should try to fix this one.

Like, make it what I want, fix. Both Girl and Ed became something like a pet to Augusta. And again, this is not to say that she treated him with kindness and compassion, and love and nurturing.

Like, cause? Unfortunately, some people don't do that to their pets. No, she just focused a lot of time on him, mostly bad attention, and the way that she saw it was. If I can't have a girl, I can't have the or even the child I want in any way. Because she just did not see these children as the ones she wanted, she figured, you know what? At least Ed, I can shape him into being at least something resembling what I want.

If not physically, at least in character. Oh, no, so for years, Augusta would berate Ed at every opportunity and cause her her main plan here. And this is what makes me think this is more, just like Augusta is an asshole, yeah.

Because it's like she had a plan here, and her plan was to break Ed completely so that she could. He would literally just worship her and he, she could control his every thought. Yeah, that's so fucked up and that's fucked up.

Like, that's not just to think that way is so maniacal in your own kid, yeah.

And he would, she would tell him that he was stupid, tell him you did pointed out. Every mistake he made would humiliate him. Any slip up he made was a big deal, and she would just make him feel the lowest of the low.

That's really sad. And would always remind him, Only a mother could love you, so she literally told him, No one will ever love you, only your mother could love you. I mean, and it's like, and it's literally like, you are such a fucking waste that only I could love you.

So, like, don't even bother. I can't imagine treating number one anybody this way, but I can't imagine treating a child this way. A child and your child, yeah, only a mother can love you.

Can you imagine, like, hearing your mom say those words like, That's really fucked up, that's so fucked up. And that's, as we know, going to do some damage. That is very traumatizing.

And again, her whole idea was to make him fear her, respect her, and worship her, and worship her. Yeah, big time, and that is so diabolical.

It is, that's exactly it, it's so fucked up. So, while she would never be capable of recognizing it, her very abrasive personality and I mean, self-righteousness had left her feeling isolated from everyone around her. Like, she wasn't going to admit that, but she was, she was isolated.

I mean, who would want to hang out with a woman like that? She sucked to be around, yeah, and George loathed being around her and did everything he could to stay away from her. Or just avoid catching her ire, like any of her attention.

This is so sad. And again, in ED, she saw an opportunity not to build a lasting relationship through trust and love and nurturing and compassion, but to manipulate and twist him into who? Someone who would love her un-fucking-conditionally, with no matter what, and would desperately seek her approval and praise. That was the other part of the equation was she needed him to desperately need her praise and approval, because nobody else really did. It sounds like.

And some, and in all of that together, would mean he would never leave her, and that was her whole idea is, you will never leave me. And that's not why you have children. No, you want to send them off into the world.

Yeah, and you want to hope that they come back out of their own volition to be with you. So this is unhealthy and with few other influences to contradict any of this abuse. It didn't take long for Ed to become totally reliant on her for all social, emotional, any of his needs. He relied on her for everything, every move he made.

And years later, whenever anyone would ask about his mother, he would literally become tearfully sentimental and would say she was like nobody else in the world. Wow, like he was when she died, even he was like she was everything, because he had. She had just ingrained that she'd beaten it into him. It's literally like a it's wild.

Also, what a way to word that. Yeah, cause, cause, I think she might've. She was like no one else in the world, she was unique. When Ed was seven years old, Augusta decided the family could make more money farming than they would operating the store.

So she sold off the business and relocated the family to a small farm outside Camp Douglas, which is about 40 minutes outside La Crosse. And, you know, while it was true that she did believe there was going to be a good future in farming, it was like, you know, it was that time. It felt like it was a good move. She did have another motive for this. It was to get her family, particularly her youngest. Her young and impressionable and baby Ed, away from the urban and what she believed to be evil landscape of La Crosse.

But for unknown reasons, the farm outside Camp Douglas didn't work out. And then, less than a year later, they moved again. So in 1914, they ended up settling on a 195 acre farm. Bitch, I wish. And it was in Plainfield, which is a pretty small, really rural community on the other side of the state.

And to be honest, their farmstead, when compared to everyone else's, was very sprawling. It was a two story, it was huge, and like there was a two story home. There was like a bunch of outbuildings, a large barn. There was like all kinds of stuff.

Um, and the property was actually purchased and owned by Augusta, not George. And back then, that's like, virtually unheard of, exactly unheard of.

It's real estate and business, anything would like. This is why it was strictly in the domain of men at that time. And again, Augusta really had the chops to be a thriving business woman if she had just changed her fucking tune. But if fleeing urban moral decay truly was her intention, she couldn't have picked a more appropriate location. To be honest. Like it was the right move. Their nearest neighbors were like a quarter mile away.

Damn, and the house was surrounded on all sides by meadowland trees, fields, like it was total isolation, and Augusta liked it. That's a lot to bring a child like kids into, though.

Like, kids don't need to be isolated, isolation is tough, that is a tough thing. And she was isolating. Because, she said the religious and moral standards of Plainfields were scandalously low, she had determined right after getting there.

According to Augusta, I'm sure they were probably like some of the most religious people ever. And she's like, not enough, literally. In reality, Plainfield, the people there were as hardworking and God-fearing as most of the other rural Midwestern communities of the time.

I had a feeling. But looking down on them allowed Augusta to feel morally superior, which is what she lived for, right? Uh? In fact, she not only deemed the town to be of low moral character, but also concluded that the churches there were a lot in Plainfields were insufficient to provide moral and religious guidance. For Ed in particular, and she said, Nope, there I'm going to take the responsibility on of providing religious instruction to him.

Oh goodie, yeah. Now, in their new home, she continued to dominate Ed's life, I mean, occupying every moment of his time, nitpicking at everything he did. In fact, the only time Ed had any break was the hours that he was at school. But there he kind of faced a different set of problems.

So he was living in constant stress and abuse and manipulation, all kinds of things, obviously at home. So nobody can really tell what kind of student he would have been if he wasn't going through all that he did. Like, So I guess so, I mean, things were what they were. So he did struggle in the classroom, but he was an avid reader, okay?

He was a very good reader. Um, living an isolated life on the farm like you were pointing at, and being completely cut off from peers and potential friends by his mother. Ed was incredibly lonely and like had and like socially inept. You feel weird being like, that's so sad as the kid that Ed Gein was lonely.

Yeah, it's like, it's like we always say the kid, feel bad for the kid, cause that's really fucked. Yeah, and on the off chance that he did make any kind of like bleeding connection with someone from school, just like a friend. The relationship was immediately cut off because when Augusta found out about it, she would be like, they're from an awful family.

No way, like you are, not to speak to them. They're evil, she would literally cast them out as evil, like they're a demon in a child's body.

You are not to talk to them. What the fuck so terrify that kid to be like, Oh fuck, like, I can't tell where these demons are in kid bodies.

Oh my God, yeah. To go that far, I can't imagine not wanting my child to make friends, to have any friends.

Like, what? yeah? And the isolation and loneliness made him seem odd to other kids at school. Obviously. And even when he tried to like, imitate their normal social behaviors, he would come off as like, really robotic and like, sometimes inappropriate.

Like, he just didn't know how to do it, and he had a congenital lazy eye. Oh no, and he also had a growth on his tongue that impeded his speech. Sometimes. Oh, no.

So he would often get picked on. Yeah, of course. Decades later, when he underwent a series of psychological testing for his crimes, his IQ was determined to be very average. Wow, so he was not like below.

He was not high above, he was just average, so he was struggling. Strictly from a social standpoint, from social, and just, yeah, and like an emotional kind of situation.

But um, he only made it as far as eighth grade, and he graduated eighth grade at 16, and then he stopped school. Oh wow, and to work on the farm sixteen, eighth grade? Yeah, exactly.

So things at school might've been bad for Ed, but they were definitely no better at home at this point. Um, while the idea of owning a farm made sense to Augusta at the time, uh, she and her husband had no farming experience. I was, I was wondering, Yeah.

And they didn't have the money to hire someone who did, or pay for the machinery that, you know, would make the work less arduous and terrible. So instead, they just worked all day just to produce enough food to feed themselves, and nothing more to really show for their work. And things only got worse by the time Ed and Henry reached their teenage years, cause now they were spending the majority of their time working on the farm. But their father's heavy drinking had finally caught up to him. And, in addition to being, you know, to him, having significantly decreased productivity because of this, he was getting sicker.

He started exhibiting signs of psychological decline as well. Oh, wow, uh. With no additional money to hire help, there was really nothing they could do except take all of George's slack on the three of them. So Augusta, Henry and Ed are just working to the bone now, not in school, and completely cut off from the outside world.

At this point, Ed was isolated on the farm with only his brother and his mother. And his brother is, like, kind of ambivalent to him right now. Like they're, they're, like they're fine, like they're not mean to each other, they're not. But like, I think Henry was struggling in his own way.

And Henry had a much different view of Augusta than Ed had. Yeah, and we find out later that Ed had no idea. Ed did not know how Henry felt. He thought that this just we all love mom.

We all worship Mom, like, See, and that leads you to believe, too. Cause I know we were having, like, the nature versus nurture discussion that, like, something in that nature is off. Yeah, because for Henry to see that like this is. And also having like the exact same experience as Ed, like, mostly, I know she kind of, like, picked on Ed more well, I think that's that's where the thing bends a little.

That's the fork in the road. Is she kind of just abandoned Henry, right? Like she didn't want anything to do with him, but he saw her for what she was?

But he so, he saw that and he was angry because he was being treated as nothing and probably berated and abused and whatever like. But Ed was the he certainly got abused, he certainly got berated. But it was an obsessive kind of, like, I'm molding him to be what I want him to be. But Henry was just isolated completely from her and so I think the way that he saw it was like, like, I hate her.

I don't like her, I obey her because I'm scared of her. And he will eventually tell Ed this and we'll see where that leads. But see, even I feel like that's still such a nature thing, like in like that small capacity. Because with him, like Henry, undergoing all those same circumstances like that. We were just saying, like, you could see him turning out fucked up, too, like the fact that he was abandoned and she treated him so shitty, exactly.

So there's so interesting. Yeah, there's something off in both ways, for sure, but yeah, he just we'll find out when he. But. But in this, in these moments, Ed was thinking that Henry is in the same boat, right? Like he's not. He's not understanding that. Like, this is a different scenario.

Right, so, it's interesting what happens when he finds that out. Oh, good now. And also also his parents are just completely unstable in every way.

Imaginable, so he doesn't have a lot to go to. So, to cope, he would retreat into books and fantasy a lot. And as he grew older, those fantasies increasingly included included women. He was being told constantly that women are evil.

Women are morally bankrupt, women are disgusting, women will ruin you. Like, he was literally like it was hammered into his head, but he's a human.

Like, he's a and he's a young boy at this point, like, it's just natural. And giving her, given her feelings about sex in general, and the wickedness and immorality of the locals. Augusta swiftly and strongly addressed her son's growing interest in women. He was like, Oh, this is not going to, this is not going to work, so he. She focused nearly all of her ire on the corrupting influence of modern women. She just started hammering the shit in.

That was like the main thing of all her religious teachings to him now, cause she saw that he started. Just like liking girls, yeah, like having a crush or something.

Or just being like, Wow, she's pretty, right? like? And she was like, Nope, can't have that. I'm the only woman for you. It's like, Oh, wow.

Okay.

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 around, She's like, I can't.

A mystery illness, bizarre symptoms and spreading fast, 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, yeah, well, yeah, no, it's hysteria.

It's all in your head, it's not physical. You're, 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.

Now, despite having literally no experience with basically no experience with modern women, whatever she believed modern women to be. Augusta had seen enough in the newspapers and magazines to know that they were morally bankrupt. And no son of hers was ever going to sink as low. As to associate with women, Oh, I'm sorry, I'm not going to associate. Whenever the subject came up, mostly because she would bring it up, cause she was obsessed about it, she would immediately reach for her Bible and begin quoting Scripture. And, according to Schechter, she would take both of her boys by the hand and make them swear to her that they would keep themselves uncontaminated by women.

If their lusts became too pressing to resist, she would say. Even the sin of Onan Onan, I think, was preferable to the vileness of fornication. Dave looked it up, and it's a passage from Genesis where it basically says that Onan or Onan, I don't know. He pissed off God because he, quote, spilled his seed on the ground instead of into his wife. No, I'm leaving. So masturbation we're talking about, she's saying, they're both sins. Fornication and masturbation are both sins.

But she's saying masturbation is preferable, but she's saying I'd rather you whack it than touch disgusting women. And she told Ed in order to show he loved her, he had to stay a virgin or he didn't love his mother. Oh, that is on so many levels. Fizzity, fizzity fucked.

And this is like, a 17, 18 year old boy, Oh God, that she's sitting there saying you have to stay a virgin or you do not love me. That is putrid, that is, that's rancid.

That is rancid. Oh my god, yeah, so not great, uh. And it should go without saying that, you know? Given the dire circumstances on the farm, the just unending isolation and the overwhelmingly negative and twisted influence of his mother, uh, the Gein family stood no chance of getting any better at this point.

Yeah, it doesn't sound like it. Not great. So by the late 1930s, I. And this is just like depressing. It's like after a lifetime of misery, abuse, heavy alcoholism and just seeing a shadow of yourself. George Gein's health had declined to the point where he was barely able to get out of bed and he could not leave the house.

Wow, so finally, on April 1st, 1940, George Gein died from heart failure at age 66. Much to the relief of his wife and children, who were sick of picking up, you know, the slack of the farm while also taking care of him. Oh, yeah, okay.

I hope his next life was better, I hope so, I hope. Something like, Damn what a. That's a rough cause. It sounds like he had a rough life leading up to, like childhood and everything. It just never got better.

So for the last several years of his life, George's family had basically viewed him as a burden at that point. Which is, I know it's all depressing, um, but now that they were free of that burden, all it kind of did was free them up to work more. Yeah, uh. And at the same time, the American military entered World War II the following year. And still eligible for the draft, Ed was called to nearby Milwaukee for the exams that would see if he was eligible for military service.

Um, had he'd been deemed eligible and sent to Europe, the Gein farm and Augusta's life probably would have crumbled into ruins, to be honest. Yeah, uh. But fortunately for her, the army rejected Ed because of a growth on his left eyelid, which caused the lid to droop and slightly impaired his vision. A little bit, oh, okay.

His mother was very relieved, so he was not eligible for military service. Without their father to care for, Ed and Henry began taking odd jobs around Plainfield in order to help support their mother and keep the farm running. Yeah, and uh. Although, like he had only gone to school until eighth grade and had struggled, he was Ed Gein was very adept at, like, manual labor.

Obviously he had done a ton at the farm, he learned a lot. Yeah, um, so he had no trouble finding work around town, like installing windows, you know, do fixing roofs? Like doing these little odd jobs, like other small tasks, handyman stuff. He was known as like a local handyman.

Okay, you could call Ed and he'll fix that shit. Wow, he's good at it. What a thought.

Um, and surprising. Oh, there's another shot here. So surprisingly, he also had no trouble finding work as a babysitter. What a fucking thought, yep.

Many of the families in and around Plainfield hired him as a babysitter. Can you imagine growing up as a child that Ed Gein? babysat? you? said, That man? babysat my ass, babysat my ass. what?

And I mean, like, that sounds ghoulish, mortifying, that sounds ghoulish. That is a ball or two truths and a lie, though.

That is a ball or two truths and a lie. You win, you fucking win that game, you better use that, don't lose that.

Don't, uh, maybe do lose that, though. Honestly, honestly, you don't want to think about that. But honestly, thinking about, like the awful, hideous, rancid acts he is going to commit later in his life, that shit. That is rightfully shocking to think of him as a babysitter. Uh, yeah.

But when you really think about this, it makes a little bit of sense. Because poor quall Ed Gein is stunted. I don't know where he's stunted, but he's stunted. Of course, that boy has no social skills to to even consider he feels very weird around his peers.

He doesn't know how to act, he feels judged, he's terrified. He's always feeling the eyes of everybody else on him. But with kids, he feels like I can just hang with them.

Like, he's literally, I think these and these kids, all they care about is that you're being nice. Well, and it was probably a way for him to, like, have fun, because he never had fun in his childhood. These kids probably helped him have fun. And it's like, all these kids care about is that you're nice and you're playing with me, they don't care that you're weird.

And he was nice to them and he was nice and he played with them from everything I could find. Nobody had problems with their kids with him when he was, like, of that age, right?

That's fucking crazy, like a teenager kind of thing. Like there was no reports of anything weird happening, no reports of him. Like hurting a child or not being anything, but a very decent babysitter. That people kept hiring over and over again, that's so interesting.

And I think it's partially because, like he, he probably related better because they had the social skills that he had, which is none to see. That's really sad, like you don't need to act a certain way around kids, they just care that you're funny and you hang out, right?

You know, so when you think of it that way, you're like, okay, like, maybe I can see. Cause it was shocking to me that, like, people kept hiring him. I was like, Is everyone all right in Plainfield? But I get it.

I mean, he seems, by all reports, that, and how would they ever fucking know? Well, that's the thing, how are you supposed to know? And at this point, it doesn't seem like he's showing any quote unquote signs of what he's going to become. It seems like at this point, he's a weird kid.

He's just a weird, odd, shy like, painfully shy, shy kid. Yeah, which is probably endearing to people that he was shy. He wasn't like this scary thing, right?

So it's like, again, if he's being good with the kids, how would these people have any other idea that he could become this monster?

But now the time working outside of the home and away from Augusta proved to be positive for Ed and Henry, but it was Henry who, like, really benefited from the whole thing. Ed had always been a little defiant when it came to his mother's strict rules. Cause, again, different situation between the two of them. And he always had a very tumultuous relationship with her.

Yeah, so Ed kind of reluctantly left his mother's side to go do these jobs, like he was not happy to be away from her. Interesting, yeah.

But Henry thrived when he was away from the farm. Oh, I'm sure he was probably like, Thrive, let's live, baby, yeah.

Like, he was like, See you. later, he was like, Yolo, see ya. And again, this distance. And finally, breaking away from what I can only imagine is a completely stifling and suffocating environment on that farm. I'm sure it was fucking awful.

Oh yeah, this gave Henry a little more perspective on Ed's relationship with Augusta. Like, even more so. He was able to see like, something's wrong here. Yeah, he had always found it a little more than strange their relationship.

But I think he really like, was like, wait a second. And the brothers, really, it was the only thing they never saw eye to eye on. They were always pretty, pretty decent with each other. Wow, because, again, while Ed held their mother in the highest esteem. It came as a shock to him when he learned that Henry fucking loathed her and obeyed her out of pure fear.

Wow. He was shocked and he was angry. He was like, What do you mean? you don't love her? like, What do you mean?

You loathe her, What are you talking about? and he was like, Fuck her, like, Are you kidding me? Have you looked at our life, sir?

What so? They disagreed vehemently on their opinions about their mother, and this was the first time they'd ever like, come to this at one point.

But Ed loved his brother very deeply, according to him, and after the passing of their father. He was kind of the only other person that Ed had in his life. And he was the only one in his life who didn't dominate and consume him, right?

So it's like, this is a very different relationship. But I almost think that he didn't even know how to handle that, he didn't know what to do with it. Yeah, I mean, that makes sense that he wouldn't know.

If Henry was Ed's last connection, that even somewhat approximated some kind of love and support or anything like that, which it sounds like he might've been, that connection came to an end. On May 16th, 1944, a fire broke out on the Gein Farm. According to Ed, he and Henry had been burning some grass and vegetation near the marshland on the property when the fire escaped control.

Okay, and they needed to call for volunteer firefighters to help put out the fire. Now, despite Ed's explanation, there's always been a little confusion about how this fire started, whether it was intentional or not, and how it got so far out of control. But whatever the cause. When the firefighters got there pretty quickly and were able to get the fire extinguished. But when the smoke cleared, Henry was nowhere. What? and so they gathered a search party to look for Henry.

And Ed seemed to lead the search. He first told them, I don't know where Henry is, like, I have no idea. Then he led the search team directly to Henry, Okay?

Who was found laying face down, dead from what later was going to be determined to be a heart attack, a heart attack. There's also reports that it's asphyxiation that he died of. Okay, but I saw more heart attack than asphyxiation.

What members of the search team and volunteer firefighters couldn't understand was how Henry had seemed to have died as a result of the fire. Yet neither his body nor his clothes showed any signs of smoke or fire damage. Also, there were bruises on his head that could not be explained. What and when. The fire investigators mentioned all this to Ed, Ed's reply was, and I quote, funny how that works.

What funny how what works? it doesn't work actually. Ed I think Henry is Ed's first murder.

You think so, and I think he killed him because he could not handle what he had found out about his mother. Wow, or I think that, Augusta said something that led that Ed's twisted mind took as Kill him, What the fuck?

And I think it's kill him, be alone with mom. Oh, I really hate that a lot. I think it's a little mixture of all of those things. And how do you think he did it?

That he ended up with bruises and a heart attack. I think he probably beat him over the head with something or hit him in the head with something. Didn't do like a typical autopsy, they didn't do any autopsy. Oh, there was no autopsy.

So they said, This looks weird, let's not do anything about it. They were like, Yeah, weird, cool, cool, cool, yep.

So I think that his brother, Henry is his first. Yeah, that's strange, and just the response of, like, funny, how that works and led them right to him. Yeah, like, too weird.

So what the fuck, right? And he was far away from the fire, yeah.

What exactly? It doesn't make sense. No one wanted to investigate this, No.

Hello, No. Do you think they were scared of this family? I don't even think so. I think they were just it's the Forties.

They were just like, Eh, whatever, just put on their, they put on their fedora and walked away. Oh, no, not the fedora. So I think, when Henry after Henry died, Ed's last tie to reality was severed. Essentially, yeah, and he was now left alone on the farm with Augusta.

With Big Mama, which, to be honest, is probably likely how she would have preferred it all along, so she was probably fine with that. Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Ed's life was upended again. Because just a few months later, his mother, who he had always saw as indestructible, began complaining that she was feeling sick and faint. He rushed her to the nearest hospital and they learned Augusta had suffered a stroke and she would need to be on bed rest for the foreseeable future.

He was at the hospital and home on the farm, just doting on her wherever she was. Refused to leave her bedside. Spend his days waiting on her, and his evenings reading to her from the Bible, like he was forever watch next to her. That's sad, it is sad.

By the fall of 1945, she appeared to be making some pretty significant improvements actually, and had even begun to walk around a little bit. That's good with Ed's help, and so he, it seemed to boost his spirits. He thought she was going to, you know, she was going to make a comeback.

Yeah, but unfortunately, those spirits were crushed in late December when Augusta had a second stroke, and this time it was much more severe. Yeah, so Ed got his mother rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.

Augusta Gein died December 29th, 1945, at the age of 67 years old. Wow, young, I know a life full of hatred will do that to you.

That'll do it. And Ed boarded up Augusta's bedroom and kept it as a museum enshrined to her.

Got to do what you got to do, a la Norman Bates.

Now, yeah, now. In the span of five years, Ed had lost the three people who were his entire world, his entire world. Yeah, that's it.

That's the farthest reach he had, but when his mom died, it unmoored him. That's a different kind of solitude, that's a different kind, like he's been alone his whole life, in my opinion.

For sure, he has, but but this is I can't like psychologically. None of us can understand what was happening here because the damage that had already been done to that. That psyche, like, there's a vacancy within that psyche. Yeah, wow.

Yeah, and again, like no matter what happened, for as long as he knew, Augusta was the driving force in his life. Like, he, what, what do you do like? You relied on? she made sure you relied on her for every fucking part of your being?

Yeah, and when she's gone, that's the thing she did. I'm like, Did you think of that, Augusta, that when you're gone, what the fuck is he going to do? Well, No, I think it was a very self-serving.

It is, that's the thing. It was a very short sighted way of doing things. It's like, because when you're gone, man, I know, and I think that's it.

She's like, You know, my problem when I'm gone, well, that's exactly it, that's whatever, and it's like, That's so fucked up. Like, because what the fuck did you leave the world here?

Like, I can tell you, you left Ed, fucking Gein, that's where you left, like Jesus. But now, without her. There on the farm, he was, like you said, a totally different kind of alone.

And he had none of the skills necessary to deal with the grief, right? Because you need to, like, children need to be taught how to process emotions properly, because they don't fucking know how. Or you need to hold their hand through it so they can understand how to do it themselves. And he was never taught that.

Neither was Henry, neither one of them were taught that, none of them. So now he's dealing with this like overwhelming grief and has no skills whatsoever to deal with it.

This is this was such a recipe. Yeah, it really was the whole thing. It's all bad. But in the years before Henry and Augusta's death, the Gein Farm had been it had become unsightly and kind of in need of some repairs. Like, you know, it was weather beaten.

Like, it's just regular wear and tear, but it was kind of becoming like, a little, little over the top. I mean, that's a huge farm to maintain on your own. Yeah, like, some of the windows needed to be replaced.

Like, roofs needed patching, like that kind of shit, but he was good at that shit, he was good at that shit. But they all required money to do that, and the Geins didn't really have any.

So they did the best they could while all of them were together. But after Henry and Augusta died, Ed simply let it just fall to ruin, like because he was also grieving grief. The lawn had become overgrown with weeds. The pastures were, you couldn't even tell they were pastures anymore.

And he sold off all the animals, oh wow, and the hulking farm equipment was just left to rust in the yard. It's like, you should have sold that too, bro, yeah.

So it's no longer an operating, working farm, and so Ed had to look somewhere else to make money. So he worked briefly for the town, clearing brush from the roadside. But eventually, you know, he kind of fell into a routine of like odd jobs and then continued the babysitting. And this is him in, like, his early 40s.

Huh, which I was shocked by that. I don't love that. I could understand the younger Ed, like, you know, the teenager, just like babysitting your kids, whatever, especially in the 40s.

It's like, Sure, watch my kids. yeah, like, whatever teenager's available, they're just like, Sure, yeah.

But like, what's going on here? I don't know, I don't know about that. I can't say that I'll necessarily make that choice in my life. You won't have Ed Game babysitting your children.

Just like a 40 year old man babysitting your children. I don't know. Yeah, this was a strange one for me, but apparently, by all accounts, nothing came out of those situations.

This is so uncomfy, but again, this is from the 40s, so who knows, you know? So, his experience on the farm in the past meant that, you know, he had at least enough experience that when harvest time came, he was able to find work on other farms too. So he was able to do that.

You know, the rest of the time he was like a handyman doing all that stuff. But other than that, he could just be found sitting at home among piles and piles of trash and dusty old antique objects and debris that just cluttered every livable space. You look at pictures of that place, it's so sad, it's horrifying.

It's like hoarding straight up hoarding, such a psychological illness. And while she, like I said, while Augusta was alive, she kept it meticulous, it was very clean.

Obviously he's going through something with the fact that, like, he wasn't able to keep it up. Like, you would think that she ingrained that so much in him that he would want to do it for her, but I think he just he couldn't, it sounds like. And without the tether to her.

Yeah, his real illnesses and his real like sick mind just broke loose very much. So like the term unmoored is really.

Yeah, perfect for what he was at this point. It's sad, too, because this could have been like such a beautiful home. Oh yeah, like, when you have pictures of it, I'm like, Wow, it's gorgeous.

Now I'm going to give a quick trigger warning for what I'm going to talk about next, because I am going to talk about. Like, because he got into Nazi stuff. So I just want to give that quick little trigger warning that it's going to be brief. I'm not going to go into anything graphic or anything like that, but just the mere mention. I just want you to know that it's. I'm going to be talking about it for a minute, that's, that's.

Now he's alone in the house, you know, and I want you to pay. This is the 40s, he's got no money, he's. This place is just lit by a lantern. Oh my god.

You know, like, just he's sitting there alone. I'm just looking at pictures of the inside of this while you're talking. He entertained himself with crime and pulp magazines that had.

Yeah, literally looking at a photo where there is a detective Yes magazine laying just right there.

Top a pile of garbage. Yeah, and the thing is like, these. We've talked about these before in some of the cases where, like, the perpetrators became obsessed with these kinds of magazines. So I think when the your mind is already in a bad place, these are not the greatest places to go. No?

But since the war, these pulp and crime magazines had become preoccupied with horror stories about the real life horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the war. And among the stories that fascinated him most were those about Ilse Koch, the so-called Bitch of Buchenwald. Oh no, the wife of Nazi Commander Carl Otto Koch, who was in charge of the concentration camps at Buchenwald. Um, he held no official position within the third, or she held no official position within the third Reich, but um, she was known because, remember, she was called the Bitch of Buchenwald.

She was known for her enthusiasm for cruelty and terror. Oh, and it honestly made her one of the most notorious figures in the Nazi party. That's how bad she was. She was known to have collected the bones and skin of those killed during the Holocaust.

And she would later have them made into ornaments, decorations, lampshades, among other things. That is beyond fun. As one of the most monstrous figures to emerge during what is already a fucking dark period, yeah, Koch's actions were literally the stuff of nightmares.

It sounds like, like, literally the stuff like, you can't conjure. The kind of cruelty and terror that she inflicted. But that made her real life exploits perfect fodder for the pulp and horror magazines of the day. Oh, wow.

So he's he's just taking this in, this is his, this is his only touchstone to reality is just taking all this in. All the time. You wish that he had just read like, Better home and gardens, right?

Just like, get on a handyman trip, you know? yeah, like on your own property, like, learn how to have an herb garden. DIY, yeah.

Just like that would have been so nice. Different diys, different diys. Exactly. It's like, just, you know, just I never I'm like just anything else.

Yeah, I think it's just like, when you think about it, you're like, how does your mind? And I guess you have to be like, broken in so many ways. And that's why none of us can understand it. Yeah, it's like, why do you want to go that route, you know, like, why?

That can't make you feel good, but I guess it does make some people, like twisted people, think they're feeling good. You know, the human mind is so scary. Instead of doing something productive, or that makes you feel like you're doing something, or creating something of use. Like. But again, just broken in so many ways.

It's the only way to say it. And again, to Ed, whose grasp on reality had always been somewhat tenuous. The stories about Coke and the other evil figures from the SS were fascinating, particularly those that sexualized figures like Coke because that was a thing. And Irma Grease, who was another female figure in the Nazi party, oh yeah.

They were like their horrible behaviors would become like fetishized and like sexualized. Oh, that's heinous. To him, they were interesting because to him, they seemed fictitious. They didn't seem like real people. Kind of like his, like pirate stories that he would read.

Because, remember, he was very much into fantasy, and his favorites that he liked to read about in fantasy. Like fiction, was those involving fictional headhunting tribes and other, you know, brutal cultures that were again fictitious, that would keep trophies from their victims. Like shrunken heads or drums made with human skin and bones. So these are like fantasy stories that, but they're fucked up. Someone who is like of, you know, like, functioning mind and body.

Right, can read and say, Wow, what a tale, right? Like? That was crazy reading it and being like, this is real and this is what needs to happen in my life.

Oh yeah, so this guy who's like, sitting here and he's just consuming things about Nazism and like the fetishizing of these horrible women in the Nazi party. And then he's also reading these detective magazines, so it's like he's getting on one hand. These awful stories about these fucking monstrous women that are being sexualized for doing monstrous deeds.

And then, on the other hand, he's reading these detective magazines. Where women are usually like the like sex, you know, like femme fatale, not even that like. They're usually just like the sex object that's like, the bad guys tied up the sex object. And like, you know, I mean, you get the pictures of, yeah?

Oh, I didn't even know that's what you were talking about. Those are the kind of things. Oh so you're getting two very conflicting, very extreme, very horrifying portrayals of women, right? And you're getting like, I don't know what.

I couldn't imagine what is happening in this, what a storm of awful happening in this farmhouse. Like, I can't even. And then he's sitting there, like trying to reconcile all the shit that has been twisted up inside of him since he was born. It goes without saying that the profoundly rigid and very archaic worldview that Augusta put inside of her son, the ugliest of which was reserved for women and sexuality. Like, really hammered those two things and had a very deep, twisted influence on Ed.

And in the absence of literally any other meaningful social connections, or even casually contradicting opinions to hers, he only heard her opinion and view on everything that was it. Her views became his views, even if he mostly kept them to himself. Those were what he knew, that's all he knew.

So sitting there alone, in this dark, empty, like completely cluttered and dirty farmhouse, with only gruesome stories and his even more gruesome imagination to keep him company. That shit started to warp big time, big time, and you add in, like the grief and confusion and anger. This is just a recipe for disaster. So it was blending Augusta's hateful rhetoric with violent, often like really fucked up, sexual fantasies born out of that pulp fiction that he was consuming.

And it was only a matter of time before he was going to snap and he was going to bring these fantasies into his reality, right? It's hard to pinpoint exactly where the lines between reality and delusion started to blur with Ed. Because it was all kind of fucked up, yeah. But by most accounts, that triggering event was the death of his mother in 1945..

That's where a lot of people point to. Not long after she was buried, in fact, Ed began to feel as though he were living in a complete haze. And sometimes he would move around, just thinking he saw her, thinking he heard her, he would smell things that he suspected weren't there. Like he was losing it, losing a grip on reality, because again, he's so fucking isolated.

So isolated, and sometimes he would just have these like feelings. He said that people were watching him. And other times, he said, he could hear his mother's voice or he would catch her scent in the house. Oh my.

But there were other voices, he said, too. He could hear other voices, and he said these voices were laughing at him and mocking him. Oh, that's really sad. And so, he said. He learned to cope with this by laying still and picturing his mother's face.

That was the only way he knew how to cope. Oh man. But after a while, even that wasn't enough to control his urges. And Ed had been religiously visiting his mother's grave, obviously, like daily. And a little more than a year after Augusta's death, he began toying with the idea of having her back.

I forgot about this part of the story. So he dug her up one night. Yeah, he took her head off and he kept it.

And he was intending to quote, unquote, shrink it. Like he had read about in those fiction stories, he ended up using a book he had to preserve it. Somehow interesting.

So that's happening, which we're going to get a little more into. His grave robbing adventures. Don't worry, but first, let's talk about the disappearance of Mary Hogan. So, following Augusta's death, Ed probably would have liked to have just shot himself in the darkness of the farmhouse, pretending his mother was still alive and just reading his horrible stuff.

He was reading, but he needed income, so he had to go into town to work a little and buy supplies. Essentially, you know, babysit, and he was weird.

He had strange habits, he had, like, peculiar ways. But a lot of the residents of Plainfield were like, we just felt bad for him. Yeah, like he wasn't mean.

He wasn't like a dick, he wasn't bothering people, he wasn't bothering people. We just felt bad. So if they had the time, they would kind of indulge him as he talked about like that shit he was reading in, like crime magazines and stuff.

They'd just be like, Yeah, totally wow. And it never really occurred to anyone that Ed seemed to have an inordinate fascination with stories about lust killings and other violent crime. Only later they were like, that was a little weird, that's interesting to me, that, like, he was just like shooting the shit with people talking about this. And nobody in the moment was like, it's a little concerning that that man lives all alone and talks about nothing except for lust killing.

That's strange, a little weird, yeah. They kind of viewed his fascination with this stuff as they viewed his awkwardness with women, you know, he was odd.

He was probably emotionally stunted, he had progressed really emotionally not much beyond adolescence, thanks to his domineering mother. They all knew Augusta, so they were like, you know, he just, you know, he's just weirdo.

He was who he was and it's not his fault. So, you know, people just tolerated Ed and were nice to him, like everybody was nice to him, nobody was a dick.

But no one really went out of their way to check in with him on the farm after his mother's death. Like they would check in, like with him when he was out and about. They'd be like, how you doing, right, what's going on?

Like, how's the farm? But nobody was going out of their way to visit him at home. Yeah, and since no one paid him a lot of attention when he was around, or they just didn't care really. Few, if any, people noticed when Ed stopped coming into town, very often he stopped those.

He retreated very deeply, even more deeply, into that farmhouse, isolating, increasingly, indulging, that dark imagination he had. And again, the one place he would only go was like, what ended up being Mary's Tavern. It was in town. When he would go into town, he would just stop at this place, It was really the only place he would go.

Okay, outside of, like, you know, a little store to buy supplies. Yeah, yeah. This was kind of a seedy bar located in Pine Grove, and given his father's alcoholism, he wasn't a drinker.

Okay, but his interest in the bar wasn't really that it was really who was serving the stuff at the bar. He first noticed the proprietor of Mary's Tavern, Mary Hogan, when she opened the bar in 1949, and he was fascinated by her immediately. Which is sad because you wonder if it's like, Did he know what to do with that?

Yeah, or did he accept it, or was he? How? Was he fascinated by her? like? like, did he think she was pretty? did he want to strike up a conversation?

Like, if he had known, how would he have wanted to strike up a conversation? Yeah, but then what he does? You end up being like, Well, fuck, you're a monster. Yeah, that's the thing. Like these different like again, like he didn't have a chance, but he's a fucking monster.

Of course, like, of course, I don't know why I said it like that. I'm just really shook. Right now, it's as you should be.

But, yeah, he was fascinated with Mary Hogan throughout his early life. He had, you know, he had expressed, like I said, at least a passing attraction to women in the general sense. Yeah, expressed it out until his mom was like, you should die for that.

But Mary Hogan was the first woman that Ed seemed to be very taken with. Born in 1901 in Duesenberg, Germany, Mary came Germany like his mother, Yeah, just like mama. Mary came to Plainfield area from Chicago in 1949, where she had at least one husband and a very murky past. A few facts are really note about her life.

And there are plenty of wild, unsavory rumors floating around Plainfield, including speculation that she had mob ties. It was just like the rumor mill with her. Yeah, but to Ed, she was an amazing figure, that reminded him in many ways of his mother. Awesome.

Physically and in her commanding presence, he's looking to to replace his mom. Very much so. But if Augusta Gein was a paragon of all things good and right in the world, according to ED, Mary Hogan was the exact opposite. Oh, no.

According to Harold Schechter Quote, Hogan was a foul-mouthed tavern keeper with a shady, even sinister past. Oh man, I was like, Mary sounds hilarious, she kind of does now.

On the afternoon of December 8th, 1954, Plainfield resident Seymour Lester headed down to Mary's Tavern to get some ice cream for his daughter. He came upon a terrible scene. Oh no. He entered the tavern, and he, quote, found the tavern empty and bloodstains. Leading from the bar room through the door to a spot where a car or truck had been parked. Not knowing what happened, only that there was clearly violence, he reported the discovery.

And the man who came was Vilas Waterman. He took his time getting to the scene and then took even longer reporting the disappearance to the sheriff. So nobody was moving. Fantastic moving and grooving here.

That's always what we're looking for. Yeah, it's really great now. During their search of the bar and the living quarters out back, sheriff's deputies confirmed that Mary Hogan was definitely nowhere to be found. And it looked like someone had been shot inside the bar. Oh, wow. There was a large amount of blood on the floor and they discovered a 32 caliber cartridge on the ground.

The area behind the bar had been rifled through. Like the cash box, where the neighbors believe she kept all the money was like, pulled out, and they believe she kept large amounts of cash there. But the only money they found was some crumpled up $1 bills and a roll of nickels. According to those who knew her, Mary was very fearful of strangers and kept the door locked during the day. She would only open that door to people she knew, which meant her attacker was likely someone she knew, right.

Aside from the large amount of blood and really small amount of evidence, there was really nothing else to show what happened to her. And during their canvas of the house or houses around the tavern, deputies learned that the neighbors had seen, quote, a dark green 1950 or 51 Dodge pickup truck with wooden racks parked outside the tavern. On several occasions in the weeks leading up to her disappearance, dun-dun-dun. In fact, one neighbor claimed to have seen that truck driving nearby that same evening that she went missing. In Quote, there was something covered with a tarp in the rear.

Oh, but they were unable to get a look at what it was. According to neighbors, the truck was memorable because it was missing a license plate. Mm-hmm. Now. Based on the evidence collected at the scene, Sheriff Harold Thompson put out an alert for the truck and notified surrounding counties that Mary Hogan was nowhere to be found. But they weren't really hopeful that she was going to be found alive at this point.

Because, according to crime scene technicians who had processed the scene quote, the amount of blood lost by the shooting victim assumed to be Miss Hogan precludes the possibility of her being alive. Wow, now. Investigators theorized Hogan had been at the bar drinking a cup of coffee when the intruder arrived. And based on the state of the register and cash box, they figured it was likely the motive was robbery. At the time, her disappearance was just one of many mysteries that was baffling local and regional investigators. In 1947, eight-year-old Georgia Weckler disappeared after a neighbor gave her a ride home from school and dropped her about a half mile from her house before driving away.

Oh man. Hundreds of locals aided in the search for Georgia, and there was a big reward offered for information leading to her return. But other than a few reports of like a black sedan near her house at one point, they never found her. Wow, she's disappeared.

Oh, that's awful. And then that happened again. A few years later, in October 1953, a 15-year-old Evelyn Hartley disappeared while babysitting for a family friend in La Crosse. So the father of Evelyn was unable to reach her by phone. So he went to the house where she was babysitting and he knocked on the door, but no one answered.

Oh, wow, so. He spotted Evelyn's glasses and one shoe on the floor through the living room window. And so he made his way inside through an open basement window, and he found his daughter's belongings, but she was nowhere to be found. Outside, he found footsteps and a trail of blood leading away from the house. And later, during their investigation of the scene, investigators found additional blood trails and evidence that Evelyn had been forced into a car nearby the house.

Oh God, they never found her. What? Yeah, and there were others.

There were men, women, children, all who disappeared under mysterious like abductions, but they were never followed up. Like there was no ransom, no attempt to contact the families, Their bodies were never found, just disappeared. And this wasn't Ed, and this wasn't Ed.

Huh, not that they could, you know? not that they could prove. And in the months and years that followed Mary's disappearance, it seemed that it was just another one in line of those disappearances. Oh, get the fuck out of there.

And a year later, on her, the anniversary of her disappearance, one local paper published a follow-up article saying authorities investigated all possible leads. But nothing more appears known today than when the situation was first discovered on December 8th, 1954.

Unlike the others, though, investigators would eventually learn what happened to Mary Hogan. Yeah, and it was going to be a lot worse than any of them could have ever imagined, yeah.

And I'm going to leave you there. I had a feeling that's a lot to process for everyone involved, there's a lot, there's a lot coming in part two. That's really sad that she was just operating a tavern, like doing her best.

Yeah, she's just doing, she's running a business, keeping everyone happy. And this man's comes along, and this man becomes fixated on her because he's a creep.

Oh wow, all right. yeah, well, we're going to go do something that's good for our brains after this, yeah.

And with that being said, we hope you keep listening, and we hope you keep it. Weird, but not as weird as Augusta, because she kept it the weirdest up until Ed, and not as weird as Ed, never as weird as Ed.

I was going to give you that warning next time, or maybe never, because I feel like you don't even need it. You should know that, you should definitely know that, yeah.

Wow.

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