Behind The Horror - The Horrifying True Story Of Ed Gein
I must give a warning here that what we’re about to discuss contains very gruesome details of gore and violence. If you believe you may be effected by this, you may want to skip over this part. Consider this your warning.
Police reportedly found the body of Bernice Warden hanging upside down from a beam in the barn, gutted and with her head missing. It was said that her body was so badly disfigured that they assumed it to be the body of an animal, realising upon further investigation that it was actually human. When entering the main Gein house, they continued to find scenes of pure atrocity.
A window shade made out of human lips, chairs upholstered with human skin, masks made of human faces hanging on the walls, small bins and bowls made from human heads, a human heart set in a pan on the stove, and a box under Gein’s bed filled with female body parts. In the fridge they discovered a decaying human head, which they later identified as the head of Mary Hogan who went missing three years earlier.
They also found clothing made from human skin, including a belt made of nipples, tights forged from human legs, and a jacket fashioned also with a pair of women’s breasts. And later, on November 17th 1957, Bernice Warden’s head was found outside, wrapped in a bloody sack, which Gein later admitted he was going to use as a decoration.
After his arrest, Gein stated that he went into a ‘dazed state’ and only ever imagined stealing bodies and committing murder; he never thought he would go through with it. The next day following his arrest, news had spread fast and Ed Gein’s gruesome crimes had become widely known.
In January 1958, Gein was admitted into the Wisconsin Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane following an earlier plea of not guilty by reason of insanity. It would be a whole ten years later that Gein would finally be prosecuted.
On November 14th 1968, Ed Gein was deemed medically fit to stand trial and was charged with first degree murder. He avoided the death penalty and instead was resentenced to the Central State Hospital.