All language subtitles for Ed.Gein.Original.Psycho.S01E02.The.Farmhouse.Of.Horrors.1080p.AMZN.WEB-DL.DDP2.0.H.264-RAWR_track3_[eng]

Gein was left alone
with his mother.

And then when she died,
that's when his madness

really began to flower.

They found the victim,

amazingly, at his home,
hanging upside down.

I believe she was beheaded.

He executed very, very swiftly.

What he was interested in was

bringing their bodies
back to his farmhouse

and performing...
you know, these horrific operations.

There's one item that we have,
and it is...

the only known piece of human
remain evidence from the case.

He created some kind of a skin

that he would be able to get into
and become his mother.

This is not somebody who...

who is experiencing
a sudden emotional reaction.

This is somebody who is
fundamentally, utterly disturbed.

Me
and my detectives needed evidence.

So we went up to Ed's house
to take a look around.

I barely took two steps before I
brushed something with my shoulder.

There it was,
hanging from the rafters.

A headless body.

A woman slit open from
the breastbone to the belly.

Gutted. Clean.
Hung upside down by the ankles.

Bernice Worden's heart
was in a bag.

It was about 18 inches from his bed,

along with kindling and cloth that

looked like it was firestarter
for Gein's wood stove.

And basically, come to find out
that Gein had the intention of

burning Bernice Worden's heart
to get rid of it.

Bernice Worden's body was washed...

but looking at Gein as a whole,

a whole total, like, case...
it made...

it would almost make more sense
that he saw blood and it was...

and the body was dirty
cos he had her on the ground.

And so he washed her off.

So, from a hunting and farming town,

you would see that
and you would think,

"Oh, it looks like, you know, how
you would prepare a deer basically."

The rest of the
house, if you could call it that,

wasn't better.

Trash ankle-deep.

Old clothes, rusted cans,
broken tools,

dentures lined up
on the mantel like trophies.

A sink full of sand. Horror comics
stacked in corners like scripture.

Ed's handiwork.

When you get to the house and you
know he's killed the one victim,

and you find all these body parts
from numerous other bodies,

it's-it's a new game for them.

They have no idea
what they're dealing with.

So I'm sure they had a tough time.

He was pretty clearly insane

just by the stuff that he did.

All the... the souvenirs and trinkets

he brought back to his house.

Made belts. He made...
made items out of human skin.

I mean,
that's really beyond the norm.

Obviously, that's so bizarre.
Most serial killers avoid detection.

Ed Gein did not avoid detection.
Clearly.

True... unbelievable... horror.

Furniture made from human skin.

Skulls made into soup bowls.

A belt stitched from human nipples.

One woman's face peeled like
an orange and pinned to the wall.

Why in God's name had he done this?

The two women he killed,
Mary Hogan and Bernice Worden...

he executed very, very swiftly.

What he was interested in

was bringing their bodies

back to his farmhouse

and performing, you know,

these horrific operations
on their bodies.

Gein was not interested
in subjecting his victims...

...to prolonged, agonising deaths
for his own sexual pleasure.

There were lips
hanging by a string near the window.

A lampshade made from a face
stitched with precision.

Then it dawned on me...
he wasn't just killing.

He was crafting.

He was making trophies.

One item in particular
that's most interesting to me

are all of his interviews.

And the transcripts from him.

It was really eye-opening to see,
just again how...

how he was behaving and how
he was speaking about the crimes

as well as just interacting
with another human being.

Remember
the heart also that was in the bag.

What did you tell me?

That's the idea.
The idea of burning.

You see, that was in that waste.

I was wondering, Ed,
you selected the heart to burn,

and remainder of the intestines
remained in the box with their head.

Well, they would be quite hard
to burn when they're fresh.

And you thought that maybe
because the heart was a solid mass.

- That's right.
- And how about the lungs?

Well, them was separated.

Could have been afterwards.
This was too fresh.

And with Bernice, did you have
any thoughts in your mind

when you removed her face,
that it was because

of the resemblance to your mother?

I couldn't say.

I personally
got the feeling that...

he was just very... very, very...
mentally ill.

Quite frankly.

And again, it's not that
looking at mental illness

will excuse horrible crimes.

It really just seems
like somebody that's lost

and doesn't really get
the gravity of what he's doing

and doesn't... is kind of
just detached from reality.

I think the fact that what
he's doing is creating things

which seem to be practical, useful,

just speaks to exactly

how disturbed his mind is.

He's not presenting these as...
as trophies of...

of what he's done.

He's beyond that awareness even.

He's so far
in his own disturbed reality

that he's creating these...
practical devices.

They're not... It's not
trophies in the way that I...

you... you often see
with a serial killer.

What astonished me
was how detailed he got,

the pride he had in his work.

Told me what tools are used,

how he made sure not to damage
the skin when he cut her open.

He also told me a story.

Once when he was little,
he walked into the barn

and saw his mother butchering a pig,

letting the blood run into a bucket.

He said that left
a real impression on him.

Of course,
the press soon got wind of it all.

Reporters started
throwing around words.

Cannibal, necrophile... psycho.

Next day he started talking more.

I asked him about Bernice.

Ed told us he'd walked into Worden's
hardware asking for antifreeze.

Then he asked to see
the .22 rifle in the window.

When she turned her back, he slipped
a bullet from his coat pocket,

loaded the gun, and shot her
point blank in the back of the head.

Ed told us
how he dragged her lifeless body

to the back room,
out the loading dock

into her own delivery truck.

And parked it out on East Road
in the pines, out of sight.

Later, he moved her body
into his own car.

Took her home,
hung up her like venison.

There were a lot
of claims being made

as soon as Gein was arrested.

But rumours
were starting from the police.

They were starting
from newspapers.

They were starting from the 55

news journalists
that were on Plainfield.

There were more...
more journalists than people

that actually lived there,
at points.

I mean, you can really see
how the case evolved

and got more and more sensational

as... as people were kind of
left to wonder

what was actually found,
what happened?

Shy, polite,
sitting there opposite me,

slowly confessing,
eating a ham sandwich.

Even asked for a slice of apple pie
like the world was still normal.

We asked him about what
we'd seen up there at his farm.

The body parts.
How many other women had he killed?

He thought about this
for a long time.

Then told us where
he got the rest of the bodies from.

Ed, what is your explanation
for the bucket or pail?

Let's see, I'm trying
to get that straightened out.

I think that
was some kind of container.

Wastebasket?

That's probably what it was,
or something.

- What is it made of?
- That is...

That's human skin.
- That's human skin.

Do you know who it came from?

Let's see. I'm...

I'm afraid I couldn't exactly say,
but that is from a leg, I believe.

- From a leg?
- Or probably from two.

I don't know.
You know, it's so...

Let's see.
Is that soiled in two places?

It's soiled. It's dirty.
It's in two pieces.

Well,
that could be probably from thighs.

- The thighs?
- Yes, or something like that.

Are they from a living person
or a person in a grave?

That's from a person
from the grave.

Ed began
calmly and coldly explaining

about his grave-robbing.

Said it started in '47,
18 months after his mom died.

Told me he couldn't take
the silence in that house.

Said the loneliness gnawed at him.

Every room echoed with her voice.

Said he had visions, dreams.

And then the idea formed
in his twisted mind.

He thought maybe, just maybe...

...he could bring her back...
from the grave.

He tried to resurrect her.

He tried to bring her back to life.

There's some evidence
that hers was the first corpse

he tried to exhume.

But he was unable to get to it

because... like other...
graves in that area

...where the soil
is very, very sandy...

her coffin was encased
in a cement... vault.

So he couldn't get to it.

But he began to dig up the corpses

of other women of Augusta's

approximate age and stature.

You know, these were women
he knew from the community.

He would read the obituaries
in the local paper,

and whenever one of
these women would die,

he would go to the graveyard
at night and dig up her corpse.

And, as I said,
bring it back to the house.

The first time
he tried was to dig up his own mama.

He said he made about 40 trips
to local cemeteries,

but most nights he'd panic
and go home empty-handed.

But nine times,
he got exactly what he wanted.

He brought their recently-buried
bodies back home,

being careful to leave the graves
looking untouched.

Said he only took women
who reminded him of his mama.

That they were still warm.

What did he want them for?

Ed Gein,
he was doing grave-robbing.

He was bringing victims home.

Not people that he killed
necessarily, but people

that he would go and dig their grave
up and bring body parts to his house

and have them all over
his house like souvenirs,

and very strange, I believe,
sexually-related kind of things.

His need for some, some kind
of human bonding is so powerful

that it's driving him to go
and dig up bodies

that may resemble his mother's
to some extent

in a... in a desperate attempt
to restore

that sense of existence, of balance.

Displaying signs of... of...

...incredible trauma
at the loss of somebody

who had, nonetheless,
been extremely cruel to him.

The first was Grace Beggs,

69 years old, buried in 1947.

Then came Elsie Sparks, 55,
followed by Marie Bergstrom,

who was 85 when she passed.

Mabel Everson,
another widow, was next.

Then there was Eleanor Adams.

Her grave
was the first we confirmed.

We went there and it was empty,
just like he said.

He'd taken her back to his home
to begin his work.

The term necrophilia
was originally invented

to describe a 19th-century
French military man

named Sergeant Bertrand.

He'd raid cemeteries,
dig up corpses,

until he found one of a recently
buried lovely young woman.

And then have sex with it.

Whereas Gein was, like,
bringing these corpses back

to use their body parts
for home improvement projects.

You know,
he wasn't really driven,

you know, by this incredibly
perverse sexual desire.

After her, Ursula Callanan,

Lola Foster, Harriet Sherman,

and finally, Alzadia Abbott.

Nine women in total
desecrated, defiled...

...taken from the earth by a monster

who thought
he could bring back the dead.

When he had them in his home...

...he got to work.

He skinned them, peeled their faces,

tanned their hides,
used bones for tools,

lips for decoration.

Said he never did things
to the bodies.

Claimed they smelled
too bad like that.

Were there other bodies
that were never found?

Unfortunately,
there isn't a lot of information

available about the other victims
that were grave-robbed.

To kind of show how if, you know,

if Gein was telling the truth
about his grave-robbing

and to kind of set
the victims' families at ease.

Because Gein was naming
who he recalls robbing graves of

and they were able to spot-check

essentially three of the nine graves
Gein claimed to rob,

and recovered the caskets
in the same state

Gein remembered leaving them,

which was more or less empty,
save for a few bones.

But are there more?
We don't know.

Again, it's the span of time
it makes sense with the amount

of victims that he's confessed to.

But again, could there be more?
It's possible.

He did seem very forthcoming
with the nine.

And it's...
it's kind of hard to believe

that there would be a tenth
that he was just omitting.

He said he didn't
know how many bodies he'd taken.

Said he was in a daze.

Said sometimes even buried pieces
back into the grave.

Some of the skin and flesh
wasn't quite right.

The shrinks call it psychosis, schizophrenia.

But, to me, it was simple.

Ed never stopped needing his mama.

He needed in some way
to bring her back from the dead.

He needed his trophies
to remind him of Mom.

There's one item
that we have in the collection,

and it is the only known piece

of human remain evidence
from the case.

So, it is...

It was really shocking
to see at first.

It is...
It's something that looks mundane.

So my husband opens
this tiny little jewellery box,

and he pulls out this keychain.

It's a lock of a woman's hair
attached to a keychain

for the Shell service station

that happened to be
right across the street

from Bernice Worden's
hardware store.

And when we received it,
we were told by this man

that we gained the collection from

that he thought
it was a victim's hair.

On the back
it's handwritten name, address:

Ed Gein, Plainfield, Wisconsin.

And he put it in my hand
so I could look at it closer.

And immediately when I put it
in my hand, I was...

I just had the immediate thought
that I verbalised,

I was like,
"I think it's his mom's hair."

That has become one of the most
important pieces of the archive.

Even after
she died, he kept her room pristine.

Slept in a shed room by the kitchen

like he wasn't worthy
of the rest of the house.

For Ed Gein all human bonding,

all human connection has been...

encapsulated within the person,
the body of his mother.

So I think he's driven by this...

...desperate pain to recreate

some physical...
representation of her.

On the one hand, he was
trying to again restore his mother.

He was trying to bring
his mother back to him.

But at the same time,
because of these...

...mutilations and operations
he performed on the bodies,

you know, there was some aspect

of hostility and hatred
and aggression.

He was both trying
to bring her back,

and he was also wreaking
some kind of vengeance on her.

Psych evaluations suggested

he was a schizophrenic
with split identities.

Edward No.1 and Edward No.2.

Nice home boy...

...and psycho killer.

There was this
profound ambivalence,

this overwhelming love,

and this commensurate,
if unconscious hatred of this woman,

you know, who had dominated
and destroyed his life.

We can't say what produces
creatures like Ed Gein.

You know, there are some...
human beings...

whose behaviour
is ultimately inexplicable.

Ed didn't kill for pleasure.

He killed to build her again.

Piece by piece.

Stitch by stitch.

You told me before
about the strict teachings

from your mother
regarding women in general,

that, on many occasions
during the time of her illness

and after her death,
you would have preferred to...

be a woman rather than a man.

Well, I...
I know I thought of that a lot.

Do you have any
recollection of telling me

about considering the removal
of your penis and testicles?

Yes. That did come into my mind

quite a few times
when I was younger.

The one thing
he was most proud of creating,

we found it hanging in the closet.

A full suit made of human skin.

Stitched from the torsos of women.
Tanned and cured like leather.

Breasts, bellies, thighs all sewn
together, crudely and carelessly.

Ed called it the woman's suit.

Said he wore it
when the moon was full.

Said it helped him
feel close to his mama.

The woman's suit that we know
Ed Gein made out of skin

and wore around the house
is... another level.

What's not clear to me
if there is... if this is, again,

a desperate attempt,
at her vivification,

bringing her back to life,
embodying her,

and somehow
making her alive again.

The pain he's experiencing
is because he's been naughty.

He knows that his mother
wanted him to be female.

If he becomes female,
that he can reverse this situation,

this pain that he's experiencing
at her absence.

And it's as if he thinks
that he can somehow...

...in this woman's suit
win her love, get her back.

You know,
he had this upper torso skin suit.

And he also had cut out the vulvas

of a number of some of his victims,

which during one of his confessions,

he... kind of admitted to somehow
strapping on himself.

And he would, apparently go outside
at night and caper around...

you know,
pretending he was his own mother.

Was that it?
Did he want to become her?

I can't stop
seeing the horrors we found.

Faces. Whole faces
stitched in the crude masks...

...or sliced off noses.

Nine vulvas,
one painted with silver spray paint.

One stuffed with sawdust.

The horrors kept coming.

And then the proof we needed.

He wasn't just a ghoul
and a grave robber.

He was a murderer.

Because right there,
folded neatly in wax paper...

Mary Hogan's face.

A face I knew.

It was... beyond belief,
beyond understanding.

Beyond evil.

Both Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan
were killed in November, December,

which is right around the time
his mother passed away.

So is it possible that he was
almost going back into...

into some sort of

like, almost a trauma response to,

you know, being simultaneously
obsessed with his mother

as a way of coping with her abuse?

Ed didn't deny
a thing. Told us he'd wear the suit.

Said he'd walk outside
under the stars,

stretch out his arms
and imagine he was her.

So there is some evidence
that Gein

wanted to turn himself into a...
into a female.

In the 1950s,

there was... a very, very...

famous person
named Christine Jorgensen.

She actually grew up

not far from where I grew up

in the Bronx, New York.

Christine Jorgensen,
who was a transsexual, very early.

But, in any case,
Gein was very, very fascinated

by the Christine Jorgensen case.

Ed's room
was filled with anatomy texts,

lurid pulp fiction, crime comics...

...Nazi atrocity books,
horror magazines.

His own sick library
of blood and bondage,

bodies cut up on every cover.

And the kind of material that
we know Ed Gein was looking at...

horror magazines, anatomy material
Nazi paraphernalia.

To somebody with the kind
of disturbance of mind that he had,

this will have been
absolutely lethal.

It shaped and gave form
to the possibilities.

It gave him storylines to pursue.

Whether horror magazines
or Nazi paraphernalia...

...trained his vulnerable mind.

Augusta had this
extreme aversion to,

if not loathing of the opposite sex.

Had been hoping
that her second child, Ed...

would be a girl.

There's a good deal of evidence,
you know, that she treated him

often as a helpless little girl.

You know, this was the aspect that
ultimately the writer Robert Bloch,

who wrote the novel Psycho,

picked up on when he created
the character of Norman Bates.

You know,
you see those characteristics

very clearly in Norman Bates
and his relationship to his mother.

After the news broke,

the whole country
lost its goddamn mind.

Life magazine
ran a photo spread.

Headlines called him
The Butcher of Plainfield.

Later, Hollywood came calling.

Within years,
we saw Norman Bates in Psycho,

Leatherface in Texas Chainsaw.

Even Buffalo Bill
in Silence Of The Lambs.

One aspect of Gein's... crimes

that has always so shocked people

and that became the inspiration,
for Thomas Harris's character,

Buffalo Bill
in The Silence Of The Lambs,

was that he flayed

the upper torso
of one of his female victims

and made what at the time, the
newspapers called a mammary vest.

I would say most people know
Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

They know Psycho. They know Buffalo
Bill from Silence Of The Lambs.

And even the people
that know Ed Gein by name

don't really have the accurate
information out there because again,

there's so much misinformation
floating around.

They know he was the guy
that made stuff out of skin,

but the items that they're citing,

like the nipple belt,
the lampshades,

are things that actually
weren't found in the house.

They were things that have
been added to the narrative

after...
after the initial case broke.

It started with, you know, Bernice
Worden's heart in a paper bag.

He also has pieces of skin in a box,
and he has

a chair that he made
out of human skin.

And that quickly evolved into...

he had skulls adorning his bedposts

and the whole masks
set up on his, like,

at eye level as you walk
through his house and there's...

a heart in a potbelly stove
and just all of these things

that, again,
people are just embellishing

for the sake of...
obviously selling a story.

But they also could because it was
such a weird case to begin with

that, who's to say if he created
a wastebasket out of human flesh,

why wouldn't he create a,
you know, a lampshade?

Reporters
showed up from all over the world.

Everyone wanted
a piece of the story.

But what they missed,
what they'll never experience...

...is the silence of that farm.

The smell of death...

...we had felt
walking through his front door.

And this mask
that you wore over your face,

could... could that be Mary Hogan?

You know,
I can't say for sure on anything.

Well, do you remember
bringing Mary home with you?

The whole thing seems impossible,
but... can be. Must be.

Do you remember
removing her intestines?

See, I don't...

That that is all a blank.
- How about her vagina?

Do you remember removing her vagina?

Like I say, it's a daze. I guess.

Remember my asking you earlier,
Eddie,

about these two pieces of tissue?

And you said they were breasts
turned inside out.

And you thought maybe
they could be Mary Hogan's.

They could be.
I...I can't remember.

And for what reason
did you possess them?

Well, kind of a remembrance,
I believe, to remind me of her.

Your mother?

On the 21st of November, 1957,

after being formally charged,

Gein's attorney entered
a plea of insanity.

The judge committed Ed
to the Central State Hospital

for the Criminally Insane in Waupun,

pending psychiatric evaluation.

Psychiatrists said Gein
was legally insane

and he was not
mentally competent to stand trial.

On the 6th of January, 1958,

Judge Bond heard expert
testimony from three psychologists

and agreed with
the hospital's recommendation.

Ed Gein was then
committed indefinitely

to the State Mental Hospital.

We all have predispositions,

and Ed Gein had a predisposition
to mental illness.

But the background, the environment
in which he grew up...

Over...
Year after year after year,

being exposed to the psychological

and the physical context
that he was,

are what created... the serial killer
that we know is Ed Gein.

After many years in
the Mendota State Mental Institute,

they finally did put Ed
on trial in 1968.

Doctors said
he was still legally insane.

Couldn't tell right from wrong.
Still, the people needed closure.

They brought him back
to Waushara County.

In the trial, when Ed Gein's
psychiatrist was testifying,

he specifically mentioned

when Ed Gein's mother passed,

all of the people
in Plainfield paid their respects,

and they came to Gein's house
to extend their sympathies

and say, you know,
"We're here for you.

And if you need anything,
we're here."

And they essentially,
they promised to Gein

that they would
still pay attention to him

and still have an interest in him
even after his mother's passing.

And as soon as the funeral and the
newness of her death subsided,

he felt abandoned because
nobody kept an interest in him

and nobody came to visit him.

And he was really
just left to his own devices.

And necrophiliac acts are typically
people that fear rejection,

and they have abandonment issues.

And those two things
definitely check.

And you don't have to actually
have sex with a dead body

to be a necrophiliac.
It's just any interest in the dead.

Took the jury
all of a day to decide.

Guilty, but not responsible.

Judge ordered him back
to the insane asylum

to be locked away for good.

In the asylum
said he was treated well.

That the food was good.

Told one visitor
he was studying religion.

Later on in 1974,
he petitioned for release,

said he wanted
to see the world, go travelling.

Four doctors stood up
and said not a chance.

He would rot there in that hospital.
Folks felt cheated.

Somebody like Ed Gein,

the disturbance,
the degree of the disturbance

was a long time in the making.

Was the product of a very drawn out,
iterative process

where he became
slowly more and more disturbed.

And indeed, he was very disturbed
for a long time before anything

came to the surface.

Reversing that much disturbance

would be considered
a monumental challenge.

After Ed was locked up,

they planned
to auction off his farm.

Even charged folks 50 cents
just to walk through it.

But holding it on Palm Sunday?

That didn't sit right
with Plainfield folks.

Felt like mocking the dead.

And so on March 20th,

that house went up in flames.

Whole town watched.

And standing there, quiet as ever,

was my deputy, Frank Worden,
Bernice's boy.

Just watching it burn.

They never did find out who did it.

But when Ed heard the news,
he just said...

"Just as well."

Damn right.

Whenever we look at
a figure like Ed Gein

or Jeffrey Dahmer...

you know, or any of those figures

who, again, seem... seem
almost supernaturally horrible.

We're always looking for some answer
as to what made them that way,

because that's comforting.

You know, if we could reduce
these terrifying phenomena

to simple, manageable explanations,

again, it makes you feel...
more in control of things.

I don't believe that any human
beings are fundamentally born evil.

But it's hard to describe...

...the behaviour that Ed Gein did
as anything else.

Nurses said he never caused trouble.

Spent his last years
reading, drawing.

Said "please" and "thank you".
Model patient.

And get this - still sewing too.

Pillows this time. Skilful as ever.

It's very interesting that we find
Ed Gein finally thriving,

seeming calm and happy
in the mental hospital

when he's...
he's finally incarcerated.

This doesn't surprise me
because here we have him

finding a place of safety.

He's no longer isolated.

And what's more,
it's the absolute authoritarian care

that he will have remembered...

receiving as a young boy.

He will have...
He'll feel that sense of safety...

that he felt under the...

under the power of his mother.

He still heard
voices, still talked about his mama.

Like she'd be home any day now.

Ed died in July of '84.

Cancer of the liver.

They buried him
in Plainfield Cemetery

next to his brother and mother.

Word got out.
His headstone was stolen in 2001.

Still missing.

Tourists still visit, though.

I...sort of believe,
you know, the universe...

is the cosmos divided into...

two opposing forces.
Love and evil.

You know that there are
certain acts are so appalling

that the only way you can really
adequately describe them

is by calling them evil.

I don't think that anybody is born
destined to do terrible things.

I think it's a combination
of not just, like,

your environment and your
upbringing, but also biology.

So, to a degree,
the way you're born,

there are some differences within
the brains of people that do kill.

And everybody has
their own opinions, of course,

but when somebody
makes a comment like,

"Oh, yeah, they're just a monster."

I think that takes away from...

from the kind of social
and cultural responsibility

of why people end up this way.

Even though some of
the physical things that he did

are among the worst
we've ever seen from...

from any serial killers,

his motivations are not the worst,

psychologically speaking,
that I've ever seen.

The grotesqueness
and the extremeness

of what Ed Gein did,

I think, actually,
are slightly at odds

with the... underlying
psychological processes.

I've seen... I've seen worse

underlying psychological narratives

driving criminals' behaviour.

Ed Gein was driven by...

a narrative of pain.

Rather than a narrative of...

a desire to... to... to cause pain.

We all
find it fascinating, I guess...

...what humans can be capable of.

I guess some folks
might feel sorry for Ed.

The ultimate mommy's boy looking for
the love he'd never find.

The Original Psycho.

Don't have nightmares.

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