All language subtitles for Worlds.Most.Evil.Killers.S01E03.English

-In November 1957,

police in the small town
of Plainfield, Wisconsin,

were searching for a missing
woman named Bernice Worden.

They were about to make

one of the most
gruesome discoveries

in U.S. criminal history.

-One of them turned down his
flashlight and beamed it around

and saw this object that was
hanging from the rafters,

which at first they thought
was some kind of gutted deer.

They realized,
to their incredible horror,

that it was a woman's corpse
that was hanging by its heels.

-The twisted killer was
a quiet loner named Ed Gein.

Hidden inside the 51-year-old's
rural farmhouse

was a ghoulish treasure
trove of human remains.

-There was a lampshade
made of human skin.

They found the remains
of 12 human heads,

gloves made out of the skin
from a corpse's fingers.

-You think of this happening,
you know, now,

it would still be shocking.

But back then, in a small,
tiny rural community,

it was breathtaking.

-America had woken up inside
the nightmare of Ed Gein,

one of the world's
most evil killers.

♪

♪

♪

The gruesome crimes of Ed Gein
horrified '50s America.

When his rural home was searched
on the 16 November 1957,

the police uncovered
a gothic house of horrors.

As well as the remains
of two missing local women,

they found an array
of human bones, skulls,

and skin that had been fashioned
into furniture and clothing.

The town of Plainfield
was in complete shock.

One of the residents
who remembers the effect

Gein had on Plainfield
is Max Harrington.

-I think shock would be the
biggest thing that we could use

to describe the atmosphere
in the community.

And we were still pretty much
clannish community at that time

when a lot of the families that
were here had always been here.

It took your breath away,
you know, you just --

you know, it was shocking.

It still is.

People don't do things like that
in a small town on a normal day.

That's just not part
of what we grew up with.

-The story
of this twisted killer

begins over a century ago.

Ed Gein was born
in La Crosse County, Wisconsin,

on 27 August 1906.

By the time he was 8 years old,
his parents moved Ed

and his older brother, Henry,
to Plainfield.

-Well, the Gein family
moved to Plainfield

from La Crosse, Wisconsin,

partly because of
the mother of the family,

the matriarch, Augusta,

had decided that La Crosse

was a kind of Sodom-
and-Gomorrah-like hellhole.

And she didn't want her children
to be corrupted

by all the immoral influences
of the big city.

Needless to say, La Crosse
was not a particularly big city,

but they moved to
a remote farmhouse

about six miles west of,

you wouldn't necessarily say,
"downtown Plainfield,"

because there was
no uptown Plainfield.

-It's not the largest city
in the state of Wisconsin,

but it's plenty big enough
for those of us that live here.

-Plainfield was a very remote,
isolated,

featureless little village.

A state guidebook at the time

described it
as totally nondescript.

The population was very small,
never more, in it's history,

I think, than 700 or 800 people.

You know, probably the entire
population of the village

could have fit into a New York
City apartment building.

-The Gein's 150-acre farm
was located on the corner

of Archer and 2nd Avenue.

Ed rarely got to leave
the property

and socialize
with other children.

-His mother, Augusta, is a very
domineering character, indeed.

She is a devout Christian and
she has some very extreme ideas

about sin and about morality.

And she drums into her sons
that they're not to socialize

with anybody
outside of the family

because all of the people
around them in the local town

are sinners, they're evil,
all the women are whores.

And so she creates this very
insular family environment

where they're quite isolated
from the rest of the community.

And that has a really
significant impact on them.

-Gein seemed to have been
very friendless.

Whenever he would make
some kind of friend

on those rare occasions,

when he would try
to make a school friend

and bring home a school friend,

the mother would immediately
find some reason

to disapprove of the other child

and forbid Ed from
ever bringing him home.

So he grew up again in a state
of complete social isolation.

-And Gein's relationship
with his father

was also far from perfect.

-Well, the father, George,
was an alcoholic.

He appeared to have been
somewhat free in his use

of physical punishment.

But mostly the picture
that emerges of George is of,

you know, kind of
a hapless individual,

who was, as all three male
members of the family were,

under the thumb of his wife,

and again, who was regarded,
as much as anything else,

as sort of obstacle
or impediment to the household.

-As Ed entered adolescence, his
life became even more insular.

-He dropped out of school when
he was around about 12 or 13

to work on the family's farm.

And he was considered
to be a bit of an oddball.

He was quite a loner.

And he enjoyed
quite solitary pursuits.

So, he really
quite liked reading

and was quite a prolific reader.

So, he was somebody
who didn't really fit in,

but worked incredibly hard
to keep the family farm going.

-On April 1, 1940, Ed's father,
George, died of heart failure,

leaving 33-year-old Ed,
his brother, Henry,

and Augusta alone
on the family farm.

-Ed's older brother, Henry,
seemed to have freed himself

a little more emotionally

and psychologically
from Augusta's dominance.

And even, apparently,
on a couple of occasions,

expressed some criticism
of their mother

and the hold she was
exerting over both of them.

So, Ed, who, at least
on a conscious level,

worshipped his mother,

and saw her as a kind of goddess
who could do no wrong,

appears to have been both
a little shocked,

you know, that Henry would find
any cause to criticize Augusta,

and possibly built up some kind
of animosity toward Henry

for that attitude.

-Ed became a handyman
doing odd jobs around Plainfield

to help with living
expenses on the farm.

-We used to see Ed occasionally.

I'd see him around town, and he
was always a friendly person,

quiet, friendly,
usually had a joke to tell.

He always had time
to say hello

and asked after how you were,

a person you would
never expect of anything

other than being
a decent sort of person.

-In May 1944, death would hit
the Gein family once again,

but this time, in more
suspicious circumstances,

after a brush fire on their
farmland got out of control.

-Ed and Henry were out there
trying to put out the fire

and they got separated
and Ed could not locate Henry.

And he went and got help, but
then after getting this help,

he led the other people directly
to where Henry's body lay.

And there was some mysterious
bruises on Henry's head.

The official verdict
of the medical examiner

was that Henry had died
of a heart attack

while fighting this fire
and had injured his head

when he fell and hit a rock.

But afterwards when Gein's
crimes were uncovered,

there was a lot of talk

that perhaps Henry
had been a victim of Ed's.

That Ed, in fact,
had killed Henry partly

because of Henry's
criticism of Augusta.

-The impact upon their mother,
Augusta, was phenomenal.

She really broke down
about Henry's death,

and she had a stroke.

But of course, by then,
you know,

the psychic bond
between Augusta and Ed

was so incredibly
intense already,

evidence seems to suggest

that with the other two men
out of the way,

Ed reveled in having
his mommy alone to himself.

-But Gein's mother never really
recovered from her stroke

and their time alone
only lasted for 19 months.

-Ed nursed her
very, very diligently,

even apparently, would get
into bed with her on occasion

and stroke her and comfort her.

And then she seemed to recover,
but then she suffered another,

this time fatal, stroke.

-August Gein died
on December 29, 1945.

39-year-old Ed was
completely devastated.

-'Cause his mother
was so domineering,

I think she really did
stunt his development,

and he almost got stuck

at a kind of teenage
adolescent phase in his life.

So, looking at how he behaved
at the funeral,

he was in his 30s at this time,

and he was reported to be
wailing like a small child.

So he hasn't got that kind of
emotional control

that's associated
with 30-something men.

-The death of his mother
left him completely,

completely isolated.

You know, living in this
increasingly ramshackle,

dilapidated farmhouse

that he ceased
to take care of whatsoever.

Augusta was his only
real human contact.

So it was at that point,
you know,

that Gein embarked on
these various, outrageous,

that would ultimately make him

this notorious figure
in American crime.

-Alone and isolated from
the rest of society,

Gein spiraled out of control.

Over the next 12 years,

he became obsessed
with re-creating

the world he shared
with his mother.

It would lead him to a series
of dark and disturbing crimes

that would eventually
culminate in murder.

-One of my summer jobs when I
was a student in high school

was mowing the cemetery.

And two of my buddies and I,
that was about a four-day job

for us to mow that.

And we would see Ed
out there on occasion.

He'd come out,
and if he saw us working,

he'd always come over
and say hello,

and, again, sometimes have
this little story to tell.

And he was very good
about stopping

and see his mother's grave.

-I think neighbors saw him
as an odd, very meek,

somewhat simple-minded person,

but one who is always
willing to pitch in

when some farmwork
needed to be done

or some chore
needed to be run for them.

But they, of course,
had no sense of the life

that he was pursuing inside

that incredibly creepy,
dismal world of his own farm.

-It was a world
that 51-year-old Gein

had managed to keep hidden away
until the winter of 1957.

-November 16, 1957, was
the first day of deer-hunting

season that year, and it was
a day when, basically,

the entire male population
of the town

would have been out in the woods
hunting deer, as Ed knew.

Ed drove into town
to the Worden Hardware Store.

The Worden Hardware Store
was owned by a woman

named Bernice Worden.

-I knew Mrs. Worden quite well.

She and her family ran
the hardware store here

for many years,

almost everybody in
the community knew Mrs. Worden.

-Ed had kind of been
hanging around the store

for a couple weeks previously.

He had developed something of an
obsession with Bernice Worden.

-He would talk to her,
he would ask her out,

and it was quite clear

that she really wasn't
that interested in him.

-Ed came in, asked to buy
half a gallon of antifreeze,

which Bernice Worden
poured out for him

and wrote out a receipt.

He went back out to his truck
then came back inside

and asked her to see a rifle
that was in the window.

When Bernice Worden
turned her back to him,

he shot her in
the back of the head

and then loaded her corpse
in his truck,

and drove back to his farm.

-Gein had murdered
the 58-year-old woman

in broad daylight.

-It was deer season,
so deer season,

it's, like,
a ghost town around here.

Everybody --
in those days, especially,

everybody was out hunting.

And she wasn't even missed
for quite some hours.

And then someone reported
that she wasn't at the store,

well, that was her son,
of course.

-Later that day, Frank Worden
returned from the woods

and found the store empty.

His mother wasn't there.
He was very perplexed by that.

And then he saw a trail of blood

across the floor
of the hardware store.

And not only realized, you know,

that some foul play
had occurred,

but immediately suspected
Ed Gein,

because Gein had been
kind of bothering his mother

for the past few weeks.

-And there was one piece
of evidence that confirmed

Frank Worden's suspicions
to the police.

-When they went to search
the place,

they found the receipt
for the antifreeze

that was in Ed's name.

And they just worked backwards,

saying that he was probably the
last person to see her alive.

But they didn't suspect that
he was as deranged as he was.

-One set of lawmen went out
in search of Gein.

They found him having dinner
at a neighbor's house,

and they arrested him.

And then another set of lawmen
went out to Gein's farmhouse.

And that's where they made
these discoveries

that really sent shockwaves
around the world.

-On a dark winter's night,

officers from
the Plainfield Police Department

began to search the Gein farm
for Bernice Worden.

-They couldn't get into the
house, so they went around back,

and entered into what was called
the "summer kitchen,"

which was a little shed outside.

-This property didn't have
any electricity,

so they were
pretty much fumbling around

in the dark with flashlights.

But I don't think
they expected to find

what they did find there.

-One of them turned down his
flashlight and beamed it around

and saw this object that was
hanging from the rafters,

which at first they thought
was some kind of gutted deer --

although it didn't look
like a deer.

They realized, to their
incredible horror,

that it was a woman's corpse
that was hanging by its heels,

and been completely gutted.

-She'd been strung up,
essentially,

and she was slit from
her sternum to her pelvis.

So, she'd essentially
been butchered by Ed.

It really was
the most grotesque thing

that these officers
had ever come across.

-And they realized
they had found the body

of Bernice Worden.

And, of course, both of them
just stumbled out in horror

and vomited, you know,
at the sight of this thing.

-When the news spread
across the town,

the residents of Plainfield
were in complete shock.

-When I heard of his arrest,
I couldn't believe it,

I was sure they had
the wrong person

because it just didn't
seem like anything

that they were telling us

was the Ed that we all knew.

And that was a Saturday night,
we were at a dance,

and the story
went through there,

and everybody said,
"I don't believe it."

But it was true.

-After finding the butchered
body of Bernice Worden

in a shed at Ed Gein's farm,

the police officers move their
search into the main house.

-He boarded up some areas
of the family's home

to maintain the rooms
as his mother had left them.

And in other parts
of the property,

he just started hoarding things.

You know, you would have trash
and rubbish build up,

and it really became
a complete hovel.

-He had reversed the normal
process of trash disposal.

You know, and instead of taking
all his garbage to the dump,

would go to the dump
and bring it into his house.

It was just this incredible
chaos of trash and garbage.

-But there was more than
just household waste.

-The middle of that wreckage,

they discovered
these incomprehensible,

unspeakably awful objects

that had been fashioned
out of human body parts.

There were chairs that
we upholstered in human flesh.

-There was a lampshade
made of human skin.

They found the remains
of 12 human heads,

gloves made out of the skin
from a corpse's fingers.

-There was a jar
containing human noses.

There was a box full
of female genitalia,

some of which had been painted,
and tied with ribbons.

There was a belt fashioned
out of female nipples.

There was a shade pull
made of human lips.

-They found all types of things
that belonged to people

that were no longer people,
and it was shocking.

I mean,
you think of this happening,

you know, now,
it would still be shocking.

But back then, in a small,
tiny rural community,

it was absolutely --
it was breathtaking.

-Ed Gein's farmhouse was the
habitation of a literal ghoul.

You know, somebody who had been
living amidst

these horrific relics
of human dismemberment.

It was a madhouse.

-Gein's fascination with death
and corpses had been growing

ever since his mother had died
12 years previously.

-Ed had always enjoyed reading.

It was quite a solitary pursuit,

so that's not
particularly surprising.

But after the death of his
mother and his brother,

he started to read
an awful lot more,

and his taste in literature

really did span
quite a wide spectrum.

He read pornographic magazines.

He read medical textbooks.

And he developed a particular
interest in Ilsa Koch,

who worked at one of the
Nazi concentration camps

and collected patches
of skin of the prisoners

who were detained there.

And I think all of this

was fueling
a very active imagination.

So, he's developing these
obsessions and these interests,

and he's quite skilled as a
farmhand at this point and time.

He knows how
to slaughter animals.

He knows how
to prepare carcasses.

He's from a community
that's very much

into its hunting
and its fishing.

So, at some point, reality and
fantasy are going to collide.

-As the search of the farmhouse
progressed, officers found

that the grotesque
collection of body parts

became even more disturbing.

-Among the most hideous of all
the items were human skin masks

that were hanging from
the wall of his bedroom,

the faces of women that had
been filleted from the skulls

and that had been preserved.

Some of them had lipstick
applied to them

and that had been hung
on the walls as decorations.

And then, most notoriously,
there was a skin suit

that Ed had crafted out
of the upper torso of a woman

and the leggings of a woman.

And apparently,
as he later confessed,

he would put on this skin suit,

and put on one of
the female skin mask,

and caper around in his yard,
pretending to be his mother.

-Gein's macabre collection
had been acquired

from the very same cemetery
where his mother's body lay.

-Two years after the death
of his mother, in 1947,

he starts grave-robbing.

So he's going into
a local burial ground,

he's digging up bodies,

and he's taking things
from the bodies.

Now, he's not taking jewelry
or items of any value.

He's actually taking body parts.

It really is
an absolute house of horrors.

So, what started off
as an interest,

which was confined
to the pages of a book,

has now become a reality

behind the doors of this
rather bizarre house.

So what he's doing,
in a really grotesque way,

is trying to bring his mother

back to life in some way,
shape, or form

because he was just
so dependent upon her

for a sense of his own identity.

-And the search wasn't over yet.

Officers would soon discover,

inside a paper bag
in Gein's home,

the severed head of a woman

who'd been missing
from Plainfield

for over two years.

-I think that the real
tipping point for Ed Gein

was when his mother
and his brother died.

Because even though this family
was very intense

and rather extreme
in its beliefs,

it was still a check
on his behavior.

There was still that informal
surveillance over him.

And I think
that kept him contained.

But once he was on his own,

he was free to ruminate
and fantasize,

and his behavior was
only going to escalate.

-You know, it's, like,
some crack opened up, you know,

in the civilized part
of his head,

and all this weird,
archaic stuff

going back to the days,

you know, when our species
did engage in these bizarre,

unspeakable rituals,

you know, flooded out
and took possession of him.

-With Gein in custody, officers
continued to scour his home

and they were about to make
another startling discovery --

a local woman, who'd been
missing for almost three years.

-There had been a female
tavern keeper named Mary Hogan,

who ran this roadside tavern
outside of Plainfield,

who had disappeared
very, very mysteriously.

-In those days,
we had 18-year-old bars

where teenagers
could go and have beer.

And she ran one of those.

It was kind of a modest place,
to be very kind,

but she disappeared before

I was old enough to frequent
those establishments.

-When she went missing, he'd
said some rather bizarre things.

He said to one
of the townspeople,

"Oh, she's not missing.
She's up at the house."

But because he was
a bit of a misfit

and because he was a bit weird,

people didn't really take what
he said very seriously at all.

So that one was allowed
to slip under the radar,

until this grizzly discovery
a few years later.

-In searching through
Gein's house of horrors,

the investigators
opened up some receptacle

and saw this face
and pulled it out

and realized
it was Mary Hogan's,

that she had been another
one of these victims.

-Gein had murdered Mary Hogan
on December 8, 1954,

three years previous
to killing Bernice Worden.

-I think there was some sense

in which he associated her
with his mother.

You know, she almost seemed
to be, like,

the shadow side of his mother.

And I think, in killing her,
again, he was both enacting

some kind of homicidal rage
toward his mother,

but I think, also,
there were times

when he just ran out
of suitable female corpses

and had to make his own.

-Back at
the local police station,

it was time for Ed Gein
to start talking.

-Well, for the first day
after his arrest,

I think Ed felt like
a bit of a fish out of water.

He didn't quite know
how to react.

But he did start talking
after about 24 hours.

And the first thing he said was
that he wanted an apple pie

with a slice of cheese on it.

And that really does show

the emotional immaturity
of this guy.

And when you got somebody
whose development stops

at a particular point,

they don't develop
those complex emotions

that enable them to empathize
with other people

or to think through the
consequences of their actions.

So what you've got here is
a teenage boy in a man's body,

and he was capable
of some really terrible things.

-And he was subjected to
a very lengthy interrogation.

He freely confessed to
the murders of Bernice Worden

and Mary Hogan.

When the police first broke
into Gein's house

and discovered this
crazy mass of body parts,

their first assumption
was Gein was a serial killer.

It was only during his
interrogation that he revealed

that they were taken
from the corpses

he had dug up
from the local cemetery.

And people, in a way,
had a hard time believing that

than that he was
a serial killer.

That seemed, like, totally
beyond the bounds of belief

for a whole variety of reasons.

-Human bodies are traditionally
buried six-feet underground.

That's a lot of digging.

That's a lot of work to get
to them through packed earth.

He'd need spades, picks.

He'd need to be strong
and he'd need, one assumes,

to do it at night

because he'd need to be
undisturbed.

-I'm not sure he did recognize

that what he was doing
was wrong.

You know, there are some
necrophiles who think,

"Well, I wasn't really
hurting anybody.

You know, they're dead anyway."

-Gein confessed to investigators
that between 1947 and 1952,

he'd regularly visited
the local cemetery after dark.

-He would often follow
the local newspapers

and read the obituaries.

And when some middle-aged
or elderly woman,

who bore some vague resemblance
to his departed mother,

died and was buried,

he would apparently go out
to the cemetery at night,

while the soil was still fresh,

and easily dug up
and exhumed these coffins

and remove the bodies

and sometimes take the entire
corpse back to his farmhouse,

sometimes just take
parts of the corpse

back to the farmhouse
and leave the rest there.

-Investigators decided to dig up
some of the graves

to see if Gein
was telling the truth.

-When they uncovered them,

they discovered that the coffins
had been broken into

and the bodies were missing or,

you know, there were just parts
of the skeleton remaining there.

-He admitted to grave-robbing
nine corpses,

but the maths
didn't quite add up

because the police had found 12
human heads in Gein's property,

and he'd only admitted

to 11 offenses
against separate people.

So the numbers never
really added up properly.

So there's always been
questions over that.

-Ed Gein's crimes were
in the late '50s -- 1957.

The state of forensic science,
in those days,

was far less than we have now.

Things like DNA simply
didn't exist as a tool.

So identification could
potentially be very difficult

and I would suspect in,

certainly, some of the body
parts, simply impossible.

-There was no doubt that Gein
specifically targeted females.

All the graves he desecrated
belonged to women.

-I think he was both trying
to rebuild his mother,

but I also think that he was
taking revenge on his mother.

That kind of love and hate
of Mommy were manifested,

both by his attempting
to bring her back from the dead,

but also perpetrating,

you know, these atrocities
on the corpses of female bodies.

-It's been reported
that Gein did, in fact,

try to return Augusta to the
family home after her funeral.

-There's some indication
that he initially tried

to exhume his mother's corpse.

You know, apparently,
Ed missed the presence

of his mother so much,

you know, he wanted
to bring her back,

and somehow in his madness,

you know reconstitute her
in his household.

He couldn't get to his mother's
grave because the soil

in that part of Wisconsin
is very sandy

and many coffins are buried
within concrete vaults

to prevent the sand
from collapsing on them.

And that was apparently true
of Augusta Gein.

-In November 1957,

Ed Gein was charged with
the murder of Bernice Worden.

The media descended on the tiny
town of Plainfield, Wisconsin.

-Well, the cultural context
of the Gein case

is quite an interesting one,

because I think this was
one of the first cases

that gathered an awful
lot of attention.

There was a media circus
that developed around this

because nothing like this
had ever really happened before.

It was something completely new.

-It spread very quickly
through the local newspapers.

And you know, and then through
the Associated Press

and so on to the national media.

You know, Plainfield, which,
you know, had always existed

from the time of its founding
in happy obscurity,

you know, suddenly found itself
to be the center of national

and even international
attention.

-It was just
an exasperating time.

And then we were inundated
by nosy Nelly's

that all thought that,

"Boy, I got to go drive
by that old farmhouse."

And then we became, I don't like
to use the word chaotic,

but a very unsettled
community for a while.

-Plainfield was suddenly famous

and famous for the most
horrifying of reasons.

You know, that it was the home

of America's
most notorious psychopath.

-The entire community
was stunned.

For the previous decade, they'd
been living in the same town

as a real-life bogeyman.

It would now be down
to the courts

to decide whether or not
Ed Gein was insane.

On November 21, 1957,
the 51-year-old pleaded

not guilty by reason of insanity

at his arraignment
at Waushara County Court.

And it was declared that
he was unfit to stand trial.

-Their indication that Ed
was clinically psychotic,

that he had hallucinations,
that he heard voices,

or the trees would start
talking to him.

Most serial murderers
are not psychotic, but Ed seemed

to have the symptoms
of some form of psychosis.

-Gein was sent to
the Central State Hospital

for the Criminally Insane
in Waupun, Wisconsin,

which is now
a maximum-security prison.

70 miles away in Plainfield,

the community was trying
to get back on its feet,

but the shadow of Ed Gein
lingered over the town.

-In 1958, the property
that Gein had lived in

was due to be auctioned off.

And I think the last thing that
local people wanted was for this

to become some kind of shrine,

some kind of attraction

for people
who were morbidly fascinated.

So a few days
before the auction,

the property was burned
to the ground, essentially.

-A lot of talk of arson.

They had been cleaning up around
there and had been burning

trash up around
that particular day, too.

So then, that was --
or anyway,

that was an excuse
of a possible cause,

that maybe the wind
got something in the evening

and got some live embers
in there.

A lot of the neighbors weren't
too happy with having talk of it

being turned into a museum
of sorts.

But there was a lot of stories.

Anyway, it's gone.

People still kept coming,
though,

even after the house was gone.

For years, still had people
coming to drive by the empty lot

where the house used to stand.

-In March 1958, the car
which Gein used to transport

the bodies of his victims

was bought at an auction
for over $700

by a carnival operator,

who charged fascinated Americans
25 cents for a photograph

at a macabre sideshow.

-I think what we're seeing here
is the rise

of the serial killer
consumer culture.

People are fascinated
in these kind of cases.

And some criminologists refer
to this as "wound culture,"

that we're essentially
drawn to the trauma

and the suffering
of other people

and we're drawn to the artifacts
that exist around these cases.

-Gein remained in the Central
State Hospital for 11 years,

until doctors determined that he
was finally fit to stand trial

for the first-degree murder
of Bernice Worden.

The hearing lasted for a week,
and on November 14, 1968,

Judge Robert Gollmar
had reached a verdict.

-He was tried and found guilty
of the murder of Bernice Worden.

But then he was judged insane
and stuck back

in the mental institution.

-I think that was possibly
somewhere he may have thrived

'cause he had structure,
he had a routine,

he had people watching over him
and looking after his needs.

-Forensic psychologist
Dr. Helen Morrison

interviewed Gein
during his time in hospital.

-I was working at that time
as a staff psychiatrist,

and I was covering
all the units.

And when I was asked to go over
to see this person,

I went over to see it,
and I saw Ed Gein.

He was not at all coherent.

He was such a little person that
I found it hard to picture him

as the person who'd committed
all these homicides.

He lived there very peacefully.

He never caused any problems,

never had any type
of behavioral thing,

no type of,

I guess you could say,
consequence for bad behavior.

-Gein's quiet nature in hospital
was in stark contrast

to the monster
Helen had heard so much about.

-I received a letter
from one of his neighbors,

who used to be a friend of his.

She was a little girl.

And she remembers
going over to his house

and he would serve soup
and everything.

Well, it turned out
the soup bowls

were the skulls of many
of his victims,

and people never knew it.

-On July 26, 1984, Ed Gein
died of lung cancer, age 77.

He was buried next to his mother
on the Gein family plot,

at the same cemetery
which he so often desecrated

during his career of horror.

Gein has left a lasting impact
on the small community

where he committed
his ghoulish crimes.

-We really wouldn't care to have
that be our claim to fame.

You know, we've turned out
lots of doctors and architects

and some really good people
out of our schools here.

We're very proud of them.

We'd rather be known for
a tremendously good population

than to be credited
for only one issue.

-But just like the carnival
operators of the 1950s,

people continue to try
and get their hands

on grizzly souvenirs
related to Gein.

-In the year 2000,
somebody was found

to be selling parts
of the gravestone

that had been erected
at Gein's grave.

For people who are fans
of the serial-killer cult,

this was just the gift
that kept on giving.

-Well, they keep
putting up headstones

and the headstones
keep disappearing.

There's a whole category
of collectible

that has come to be known
as "murderabilia,"

and Gein relics are particularly
prized among people

who collect
that kind of morbid relic.

-Over 60 years since
the horrific crimes,

Gein has grown into a notorious
figure in American folklore,

a killer of almost
mythic proportions.

-The two things that are
fascinating about Ed Gein

is the fact that he only,
as far as we know,

murdered two people,

which is a lot less
than many infamous killers,

but he's had such a huge legacy
in films, books, music.

He seems to have become
a sort of pop-culture murderer.

-At the time the Gein crimes
were being revealed

in the press,

there was a writer of pulp
horror named Robert Bloch,

who had moved to Wisconsin
to be with his wife's family.

And at some point, when Gein
was being interviewed

by various psychiatrists,

all these headlines
in the papers

were trumpeting the fact
that Gein had been motivated

by these deranged,
oedipal conflicts.

You know, that he was this
desperately sick mama's boy,

you know, who was perpetrating
these atrocities

on middle-aged women,

you know, who reminded him
of his mother.

And this caught the attention
of Robert Bloch,

who decided this could
potentially make the basis

of a good horror novel,

and that became
the book "Psycho."

In the book "Psycho,"
Norman Bates, actually,

after he's arrested,

compares himself at the end
of the book to Ed Gein.

So, the connection is made very,
very explicit there in the book.

Anyway, "Psycho," as we know,
turned into one of the great,

classic horror movies
of American cinema.

You know, if you look at
horror movies before then,

there were all these
Eastern European monsters,

Frankenstein and Dracula
and the Wolf Man,

you know, or else they were
aliens from outer space.

You know, with "Psycho,"
"Psycho" establishes

and, you know, Ed Gein
establishes, you know,

this quintessentially
American figure of horror,

the ordinary,
middle-American guy

who turns out to be
this monster in disguise.

And then, of course,
Gein becomes the basis

for Tobe Hooper's "Texas
Chainsaw Massacre,"

and later on
for Thomas Harris' character,

Buffalo Bill,
in "Silence of the Lambs."

You know, so Gein has this very,
very direct influence

on American horror cinema.

-But Gein's crimes
were not fictional.

They were very real.

And he remains one
of the most infamous murderers

in U.S. history.

-We think of Gein

as this notorious
American serial murderer.

But in many ways, he doesn't
really fit that profile.

You know, for example, he wasn't
a sexual sadist in the way

John Wayne Gacy or Ted Bundy
were, or Jeffrey Dahmer.

You know, he wasn't driven

by that particular form
of deviance.

-Well, I think he was
brought up in a vacuum

that created the conditions

for someone who would go on
to do evil things.

So whilst most people
are shocked and repulsed

and absolutely horrified
at some of the things he's done,

because he didn't have
that filter

and that check on his behavior,

he was able to escalate
to a level of evil, I think.

-Evil is something that,
you know, professionally,

people don't believe in evil.

But I truly believe
that he was evil.

I think there are people
who would like to say

that the devil got into him

and made him
do these awful things,

but I think he was born evil.

-The Ed I knew
was not an evil person.

He did things that
normal people do not do

and there's no doubt about that.

And to kill two people
is certainly not the person

who you would really like
to invite

to your neighborhood party.

But, yeah, he was --

there was something in his head
that didn't click right.

-Ed Gein's crimes are the stuff
of genuine nightmares.

The man with an unhealthy
obsession with his mother

brazenly murdered two women

and kept a bizarre collection

of gruesome keepsakes

inside his house of horrors.

He truly deserves to be
remembered as one of the world's

most evil killers.

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