Ed Gein...
The Real Texas Chain Saw Massacre

written by Chuck Foster
Feb 2003

Sheriff Art Schley entered the house of Ed Gein with a torch that provided just enough light to reveal the grotesque silhouette of a naked corpse hanging upside down, legs spread apart, head missing, and the body gutted from the genitals to the throat. It was the body of Bernice Worden....

Edward Theodore Gein (rhymes with “green”) was the second son born to George and Augusta Gein on August 27th, 1906 in the small farming community of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Ed and his older brother Henry lived an ordinary life for the early 1900's; they attended school, worked at the family-owned grocery store, and went to church every Sunday. Like today though, what appears to be normal can often be quite unnatural, which was true for the Gein family. Their father George was an overlooked alcoholic and their mother Augusta was a domineering, religious nut who preached fire and brimstone to the boys day and night. Around 1914, the Gein family sold their grocery store and bought a 160 acre farm seven miles outside town. Young Ed and Henry were discouraged from women by their mother who worked them endlessly and instilled the idea of sex as an unforgivable sin.

In 1940, Ed and Henry lost their father; Ed was thirty-four years old and still a virgin, having only his mother for any kind of female companionship. His brother Henry had began to question Ed about his infatuation with their mother - then after three long years of arguments, Henry's fate was a mysterious death. The two brothers awoke early on May 16, 1944 to burn off some marshland on the farm, but according to Ed, the fire quickly grew out of control. According to Ed, he and Henry decided to split up but Henry never returned home after the fire was put out.

Ed called some local neighbors to help search for him, but after an unsuccessful search the local sheriff, Frank Engle showed up to help out. On this second search, Ed led Sheriff Engle directly to Henry's body, and was quoted as saying "funny how that works." Although Sheriff Engle noted the body was sooty, unburned, and the head showed bruising, coroner George Bader declared asphyxiation as the cause of death.

Ed and his mother continued to manage the large farm all alone, but on December 29th, 1945 she died from a series of strokes. At the age of thirty-nine, Ed was now all alone for the first time in his life. He left his mother's room intact and sealed it off, then he boarded the rest of the upstairs off and continued to live in one room downstairs and the kitchen. He no longer needed to farm the land for an income, the government gave him a subsidy through a soil-conservation program and he became a local handyman for extra cash. During this time Ed was known to be helpful and reliable throughout the community, not once were his eccentricities thought to be sinister or harmful. He was often seen at Mary Hogan's tavern and reportedly asked her and shopkeeper Bernice Worden out to a movie on several occasions. Even though he was never known to have any intimate relationships with either women, it was known that he did have a crush on both of them.

Ed started to spend his free time reading books on human anatomy and Nazi concentration camp experiments. He eventually enlisted the help of an old friend Gus (who was a weird loner also) to help him secure a corpse from the local cemetery for medical reasons. Over the next ten years, he carefully chose fresh bodies from the obituaries, always picking a female corpse. Ed's experiments with the dead bodies were bizarre to say the least, he constructed objects from the bones and skin, he even stored organs in the fridge that he was rumored to eat later and was known to give meat to neighbors. Gus, who was later institutionalized, said Ed had revealed his plan to make himself a woman to him once, which explained his study of the human anatomy. Unfortunately for Ed, the closest he ever came to a successful sex change was his full woman body suit, complete with a face mask and breasts constructed completely out of human skin.

Around this ten year period between 1946 and 1958, the communities around Plainfield reported a number of unexplained disappearances. The first was eight year old Georgia Weckler, who disappeared after a babysitter dropped her off in her driveway; a few years later, fifteen year old Evelyn Hartly. Then on December 8th, 1954, the disappearance of Mary Hogan put the community of Plainfield in a panic. Local farmer Seymor Lester walked into her tavern to find a pool of blood on the floor and a .32 caliber cartridge nearby. The local sheriff at the time, Harold Thompson, assessed that Hogan had been shot and dragged out the back door, where she was loaded into a vehicle. The sheriff could find no leads or suspects at the time, and the case went unsolved until 1957.

Shortly after Mary Hogan's disappearance, a neighbor of Ed's reported that he had been joking with him about her disappearance by saying to Ed "if you had spent more time courting Mary, she'd be cooking for you instead of being missing." Ed was reported to have smiled and said, "She's not missing. She's down at the house now." This was followed by several other reports about Ed and his strange behavior by local children who visited his house and said he had "bunches" of heads in his room that appeared to be human. Ed debunked their claims by saying they were "shrunken heads" purchased through the mail. Even reports of a ghost were reported in Ed's yard by locals – the apparition of a naked woman, dancing in the full moonlight was common.

It all came to a crashing halt for Ed on December 16th, 1957. It was the first day of hunting season and most of the town stores were closed, except for Bernice Worden's local hardware store. Ed had been to her store the day before inquiring about some anti-freeze. He returned the next day about 9 a.m. to make the purchase, then left. He returned a few moments later, asked if he could look at a .22 rifle, loaded it in front of her with some shells in his pocket, then shot her.

Shortly after this, Ed 's neighbor Elmo Ueeck visited him to apologize for shooting a deer on his property. Normally Ed would have been upset because he didn't hunt, but he told Elmo "not to worry about it."

Later on that afternoon Ed had one more visitor, Bob Hill, who asked for a ride into town to get a car battery. Bob noticed Ed was covered in blood. Ed said he had been dressing a deer that morning, even though it was commonly known Ed wasn't a hunter. Bob thought nothing of it. He invited Ed over for dinner, which is where he was later taken into custody by deputies Dan Chase and Poke Spees for the murder of Bernice Worden.

At Ed Gein's home, Sheriff Schley found more than he had ever imagined possible. Bernice Worden beheaded, hanging upside down and gutted like a deer. Four human noses in a cup, a pair of human lips attached to a shade so the lips would pucker up when opened, four chairs with human skin covering them, and a drum made from a coffee can and human skin. A pair of human skin leggings, a full upper body torso, nine face masks, belts, bracelets, and a purse also made from human skin were found. The refrigerator was full of human organs, and the head of Bernice Worden was found with nails driven into the ear canals and twine attached to the nails so it could be hung on the wall. The dried face and hair of Mary Hogan from 1954 were also found, and I can't forget the dozen skulls in his home the children had reported were there as well.

Even though Gein could only account for 12 bodies, the coroners office identified at least 15 different bodies or parts there-of in his home. The fireplace was examined and found to have unidentifiable bits of tooth and bone in the ash as well. In the end, Ed Gein was put through a series of mental examinations where he was found unfit to stand trial and committed to the Central State Hospital. Ten years later, Gein was determined sane enough to stand trial where he was then found guilty by reason of insanity. At the age of 72, he was eventually moved to a low security mental hospital where he finally died at the age of 78.

Now what does this have to do with the Texas Chainsaw Massacre? A lot, I must add. The writer and director of TCM, Tobe Hooper, had relatives in Wisconsin that he visited as a young boy. The stories of Ed Gein haunted him in nightmares many nights until he put Leatherface onto film years later. The Ed Gein story also inspired other movies like Psycho, Silence of the Lambs, and the movie Ed Gein. Truly a great campfire tale.