American Psycho
Norman Bates had nothing on Ed Gein
A human abattoir—there was no more accurate description for the grim discovery that police made on Nov. 16, 1957, in a shed near Plainfield, Wis. The shed's owner, Ed Gein, was a middle-aged farmer who admittedly had suffered a traumatic childhood. His father was a violent drunk; his mother a fanatical Lutheran who taught him that most women were prostitutes. But only criminal insanity could explain why Gein had butchered his victims, carved off their flesh, and sewn a suit of human skin.
When police recovered from the shock of finding a decapitated corpse dangling from its heels and gutted like a deer, they arrested Gein and began asking questions. They quickly found that he had been slaughtering for years. The mild-mannered killer instantly became an international curiosity and, later, a horror icon. Among other characters, Gein inspired Norman Bates in Psycho, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
Though he was officially charged with only two murders—of store clerk Bernice Worden and tavern owner Mary Hogan—Gein was in possession of many other human remains, most taken from local graves. As a child, Gein had been fascinated by stories of headhunters, pirates, and Nazis—people who turned out to have much in common with the Butcher of Plainfield. He made lampshades out of human skin, shrank heads, and exhumed the corpse of his mother.
Immediately confined to a mental hospital, Gein was later found not guilty of the murders by reason of insanity. He died of heart failure in 1984.
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