WARNING: DISTRESSING CONTENT. The ‘most grotesque killer in US history’ Ed Gein admitted to exhuming bodies from numerous cemeteries before finally being caught for murder
A new Netflix series has given viewers a dark look inside the mind of the ‘most grotesque killer in US history’ – and true crime fans are horrified.
The highly anticipated Monster: The Ed Gein Story was released on Friday (October 3), and profiles notorious killer Ed Gein.
It’s the latest follow-up in director Ryan Murphy’s Monster series, which has so far included shows on the Menendez brothers and Jeffrey Dahmer.
The writer’s latest show sees Charlie Hunnam star as Ed Gein, a sadistic killer who inspired fictional monsters like The Silence Of The Lambs killer Buffalo Bill. He also inspired Psycho and The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
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From ten years, the murderer and body snatcher dug up graves near his remote home in Plainfield, Wisconsin, to practice necrophilia and harvest body parts.
Gein also murdered and mutilated two women, with police making an unthinkable discovery when they finally searched his home in 1957.
Mary Hogan, 54, had mysteriously vanished from the local area – but no-one suspected Gein initially. Then another woman, Bernice Worden, 58, vanished from her hardware shop.
The deputy sheriff in the area became suspicious of Gein and arrested him. That night, the cops went inside the killer’s home and found Bernice’s headless body hanging from the ceiling in the shed.
Polce also found bowls made out of human skills, organs in jars and chairs made from human skin. Human noses and lips, all carefully preserved, were also discovered. Gein confessed to shooting, killing and decapitating Bernice as well as Mary three years later.
Psychiatrists suggest that Gein’s depraved acts were directed towards women who physically resembled his late mother Augusta.
During his confession after being arrested, Gein reportedly said that he said he wanted a “woman suit”, that looked like his mother, who be was disturbingly obsessed with.
It was intended to allow him to “become his mother – to literally crawl into her skin,” according to forensic psychologist and author Katherine Ramsland.
The local sheriff, Art Schley, was reportedly so distressed by the scene that those close to him attributed it to his untimely death of heart failure aged 43 in 1968. He would not live to see Gein’s trial.
In a police interviews, Gein was asked if he sexually abused the corpses he dug up. The killer denied he ever did this, saying: “They smelled too bad”.
Gein was also suspected of being responsible for the disappearance of two children Georgia Jean Weckler, eight, and Evelyn Grace Hartley, 14. Both vanished while babysitting.
Evelyn is portrayed by Addison Rae in the Netflix series and is Gein’s second victim in the show. The gruesome murder is similar to a scene in the horror movie The Texas Chainsaw Massacre – although there is no evidence Gein committed this murder.
There were also neighbours who went missing, before Gein was arrested including James Walsh, 32.
Gein passed lie detector tests when questioned about the three cases. After admitting the murders of Bernice Worden and May Hogan, Gein was in court on murder charges in late 1957, but was declared unfit to stand trial after being diagnosed with schizophrenia.
He spent a decade in mental health institutions before authorities determined he was capable of participating in his own defence, and he finally faced court.
In the end, the jury returned a verdict of guilty but legally insane, and Gein was sentenced to life in a psychiatric institution. He died from lung cancer at the age of 77 in 1984.
