Deviant Criminology
Dr. Richard Weaver Jr., Heather Kenney, and Rachel Czar take listeners on a journey through the world of true crime. With their unique careers in the criminal justice and academic world; they work to provide an entertaining and educational experience for listeners. This podcast examines many areas of true crime including; the formation of laws, cases that defined caselaw, and crimes that impacted the world. Please join us on this journey as we transition from professionals in criminal justice and academia to budding podcasters.
Deviant Criminology
Ed Gein: A Distorted Childhood, Unspeakable Crimes, and Their Cultural Impact
Ed Gein's life is a disturbing exploration of trauma, isolation, and the dark legacy of mental illness manifesting in heinous crimes. By dissecting his journey, we reflect on the societal implications and responsibilities surrounding such tragedies.
• Ed Gein’s childhood marked by dysfunction and neglect
• Augustine Gein’s toxic influence on Ed's psyche
• The impact of familial violence and isolation
• First confirmed murder of Mary Hogan
• Arrest after the murder of Bernice Worden
• Ed's gruesome artifacts discovered in his home
• Trial outcomes and psychiatric evaluation
• Cultural impact and ethical implications of glorifying criminals
• Importance of remembering the victims and their stories
www.deviantcriminology.com
Nothing creeps me out more than kind of like the story of the person that we're covering today. He's the first serial killer, supposedly I don't think he is, he's only got two confirmed that we know that had a fan club established. He was admired by other serial killers. In fact John Wayne Gacy did paintings of him. So today we will be talking about the life and crimes of Ed Gein. So I am Richard.
Speaker 3:I'm Heather.
Speaker 2:And we are Deviant Criminology. So Ed Gein has kind of left a lasting impact on American culture and true crime history. So he's kind of the groundwork for so many things that now we consider like the nightmares that we had as children and middle-aged and a lot of this kind of goes back to his upbringing and then the glorification that would come afterwards in media. So I guess, to start it off, ed Gein was born on August 27th 1906, only 73 years before I was, only 73 years before I was. So in La Crosse, wisconsin, his childhood was marked by dysfunction.
Speaker 2:His father was George Gain, who was a severe alcoholic who would often be absent and when he was present was kind of abusive. So imagine Ed kind of growing up in a family where dad's just stumbling home drunk every night, walking up the stairs of the house, being physically and verbally abusive to his mother and him and his brother On that. His mother was Augusta. She was a fanatically religious woman who dominated the household. So it's very interesting to have this alcoholic father dynamic. But yet the mother was very dominating in the situation. So that may show some of the relationship aspects that would come back later to influence Ed's life and then finally Ed's life. And then, finally, there was Henry Gane, who was five years older than Ed.
Speaker 3:So the family moved to an isolated 195-acre farm near Plainfield Wisconsin in 1915. It's kind of funny because there's La Crosse Wisconsin and Plainfield Wisconsin and there's also a La Crosse Indiana and a Plainfield Indiana, both of which I have family that live in.
Speaker 2:I did not know. There was a La Crosse Indiana.
Speaker 3:There is. It's in northern Indiana.
Speaker 2:There's like a lack of names for cities in Indiana. We are not very creative with our names.
Speaker 3:No.
Speaker 2:It's like the Irish nicknames and the Italian nicknames. Yes, like Greenfield.
Speaker 3:Greenland, whiteland, indiana just really went for the lights right there on that one. Ed's upbringing was characterized by extreme isolation, rarely leaving the farm except for school, verbal and physical abuse from both parents and bullying at school due to his physical features and shyness, his childhood was marked by a dysfunctional family environment and his mother's extreme religious beliefs, which significantly shaped his development and we'll see as we go on.
Speaker 2:like his mom, her devout religion, almost borderline into misogyny against women and a hatred of other women, and Ed also was not. It's kind of portrayed him always as kind of like this bumbling idiot and kind of not very bright. But he actually was intelligent, Like he excelled in reading, probably not as good at math from what I've seen, but very good at reading, writing. He enjoyed those aspects of education. So it's not like he was just some idiot which kind of you see this physical example of him and this view of him, but that's not who he was.
Speaker 2:So a little bit about the community itself. So in 1920,. So a little bit about the community itself. So in 1920, the population numbered somewhere around 1,550 residents in Plainfield. These numbers are a little off because the statistics that we'd normally use from like census and stuff aren't really accurate. For this time period Plainfield Township contributed another 750 residents and then other surrounding townships added as many as 1,500 more. So the general population of what would have been seen as Plainfield in the 1920s was roughly around 3,400 men, women and children. A very small rural part of Wisconsin which I think kind of plays a part in the development of this story as it moves forward.
Speaker 3:Because he's so isolated and he's basically only exposed to those weird family elements that he's dealing with.
Speaker 2:That and there's also this thing with like once the stories of what he becomes breaks later on, a lot of local newspapers and stuff don't really cover the story because there's this not wanting to make a bad example or shine a bad light on kind of rural communities. So a lot of the local papers briefly covered it but didn't get into any details or cover it for an extended period of time.
Speaker 3:So, as you said, plainfield was a small rural town and the area was characterized by farm fields, wetlands and woodlands. The Lincoln Highway passed through Plainfield, bringing increased traffic and visitors. By 1922, the Lincoln Highway was partially paved through Plainfield. The community had a small police force of fewer than five men. Local businesses included grocery stores, restaurants and garages. The town had a generally sedate atmosphere before major events.
Speaker 2:And as this is coming in, yeah, it's a very small rural town, it's building up a little bit and most of everything's locally owned, Like not now where there's like these chain stores and stuff. All of these are locally owned businesses and everybody kind of knows each other and Ed's family was a farming family as well, so these weren't outcast people. You know that we'll get into like the, the, the gain families known. Well, the economy of the area first was kind of, like I said, more farming and that played a significant part of the local economy. So, like farmers, like Ed's dad would have kind of almost been at an elevated status over just the like the local business owners and stuff, because the farming is what was bringing money into the area and with the presence of those grocery stores, restaurants and garages it did bring in a little bit more diverse population of business owners and try to grow the economy. But even into his older years it was primarily this farming community.
Speaker 3:So his mom, augusta she was a devout Lutheran and had profound impacts on his upbringing. She was very religious and extremely controlling, and extremely controlling, preached about the innate immorality of the world, especially women as sinful and seductive, believed all women were naturally promiscuous and instruments of the devil, read the Bible verses daily focusing on death, murder and divine retribution, and instilled in Ed that sex was evil. The family, of course we said earlier, had moved to that 155-acre farm in Plainfield, wisconsin. So he was isolated. Augusta, his mom, took advantage of that isolation to turn away outsiders and Ed rarely left the farm except for attending schools. Augusta punished Ed whenever he tried to make friends At school. He was shy and struggled to fit in with other children. He had a lazy eye and a lesion on his tongue that affected speech. The classmates often shunned him and despite social difficulties he did fairly well academically, especially in reading.
Speaker 2:And I think there's like so much to unpack there with kind of that upbringing. Like we don't really talk about his father and really the most we know is he wasn't very fond of his father. Um, the father again was an abusive alcoholic that kind of would come home late and things like that, and kind of didn't want to be near the house, uh, which kind of makes sense when we kind of see how augusta is. But this is one thing that we see is this controlling mother you know, that's something that's been reported by other sadistic murderers um, is this over controlling, overbearing mother that kind of instilled this, not only that women are evil, but you're not good enough, no woman's ever going to be good enough for you and no woman can love you um, like I can.
Speaker 2:And. But it also makes you wonder about her history and dynamic, which of, of course, we don't really know anything about. But what type of family did she grow up in? What was you know? If she's dealing with abuse from her husband and putting up with it, even though she's this controlling like, why? Like she's a very fascinating character that obviously it's way too late now to be able to learn more about.
Speaker 3:And with that dynamic you always wonder was she so controlling because his dad was drunk and maybe absent, not showing up? Or was that drunk, absent and not showing up because she was so controlling?
Speaker 2:Yeah, which came first, the psycho mother or the drunk father? Yes, there's so much to kind of again, as we've talked about with other cases, that those two things of each side, like Ed ed, when you look at his life, like there's so much abuse and trauma that happens, but that doesn't excuse the other side of him of what we'll see. He becomes um, and there very much is, or lack of a better term and a literary reference like a jekyll and hyde to him and he idolized his mother, even though she had that extreme religious controlling attitude, to the point where he became obsessed with her.
Speaker 3:Augusta fostered a deep disdain for women in both Ed and Henry. His brother, george, who was Ed's father, was an alcoholic and physically abusive, and Augusta resented her husband and developed a hatred for men in general.
Speaker 2:So at this point she hates everybody and I think we see again that this will come up in what ed does in the future. Um, this hatred towards men, because I think there's ed loves her but I don't think she ever reciprocates it in the way he needs to develop that attachment. He develops an unhealthy attachment, like Bowlby would say, like those stages of development. He didn't hit those and was stunted One the trauma of his father, who's obviously not going to attach to him and he's not going to have any relationship to, and then this mother who's almost telling you how horrible you are, but that's the only person that's giving you any type of attention and negative attention is better than anything and she almost becomes an idolized figure in his life. That she's right. Women are superior. Well, my mom is not always like. It's just almost that dual contrast that's being presented to him that creates this twisted view on society and life.
Speaker 3:And it's an interesting dichotomy where she says that women are evil and seductive but men are weak. When she says weak, like what exactly does she mean by weak as far as can't resist women? Like what exactly is that?
Speaker 2:which it also goes back to what was dad doing when he was out, not coming around like right? There's so much stuff that I think from like anybody that studies criminal psychology I would love to know more about the parents in that dynamic. But again, it's so long ago and, as we'll see, moving forward kind of after this case and almost till his death, there's not a lot written about it, like it's almost kind of like swept under the rug. He kind of gets a resurgence after his death.
Speaker 3:So, at age 12, augusta, which is his mom, caught Ed masturbating and grabbed his genitals, causing him the curse of man. Ed dropped out of school at 14, after completing the eighth grade, which, as you mentioned, some people thought of him as being uneducated or slow, and I'm thinking maybe with him dropping out of school at that point and having the speech problems that he had might have contributed and and lazy eye might have contributed to that perception. He developed an increasingly intense attachment to his mother and he believed that men were weak and possibly wanted to be a woman like his mother so there's reports again.
Speaker 2:I always go back to like, when people are telling you stories, after somebody comes out and stuff comes out, it's harder to say if it's fact or fiction. Like, is the story true and you're just now telling it because people are listening or are people listening? So now you're telling a story, but there are stories that ed um, in a bar, uh, that he frequented quite often, had talked about learning that there was a surgery that could change a man to a woman and there was a conversation about that's not even possible. And Ed was like, well, yeah, it is, and you know, it's very interesting to me because I've thought about that. So there is talk that he had in his later life, had conversations about, basically, gender identity, sex change, basically, like I'm trying to think of a better word, um, which I think can directly go back to a point, to this thing that he's been taught that you know, men are evil and his mother was didn't like men and he wanting to be a woman, maybe to be more accepted by his mother. But also this very specific incidence at 12 years old, when his mother catches him supposedly masturbating and threatens to cut off his genitals, saying you know, this is the curse of all men.
Speaker 2:It's reminiscent, of course. I mean art usually reflects your life. Sometimes of in red dragon there's the scene that's verbally heard of, uh, the grandmother catching the boys Like he'd wet himself, I think, and she grabs and threatens to cut it off, and that kind of goes back to that gender. That now you're seeing your own body is disgusting and that can really, especially at this young age. Again, we talked about those stages of development. Now you're already seeing yourself as disgusting and your own thoughts and natural ambitions as harmful and disgusting. So masturbation now becomes a dirty sin that you're creating instead of something that may be more natural.
Speaker 3:But at the same time she hated women and thought they were evil and seductive. So to some extent it almost wouldn't make sense for him to want to be a woman either, because that's also evil and the sexuality that goes with that is evil.
Speaker 2:But mom's a woman.
Speaker 3:And she has the last wish Moms are always right. You know that right. Yes, Moms are always right.
Speaker 2:I don't know If I had a Ouija board I would ask my mother. So one thing that's very interesting is his mental health history. So Gaines' mental health history issues were evident from a very early age, exhibited signs of gender confusion and unhealthly sexual development which I think you know what the stories can directly relate back to his mother's not only talk, but I mean telling you that your own genitals are disgusting and men are disgusting. I think probably doesn't help that he would later be diagnosed with schizophrenia and then he also kind of displayed particular beliefs and immaturity towards sexuality. So stunted sexual growth. Again, you know, if you believe in stage theory, development really brought on by Bowlby about attachment and life course development, that makes sense, all these things that he's experiencing.
Speaker 2:So the first person to die was his father, george, in 1940. Then his brother, henry, died suspiciously in 1944 during a brush fire and then finally his mother, augusta, died in 1945. And this is kind of a tipping point for Ed. The one thing that's interesting about this is Henry and Ed were kind of known people in the community. Ed and Henry would do like odd jobs for people, help people out, and they were pretty liked. So then comes this mysterious death of henry in 1944. So the incident occurred during a fire near the family farms in plainfield, wisconsin. So, according to reports, ed and henry were working to clear some vegetation by setting fire to the farm area and this took a tragic turn. And this is a common, common thing, like you see it in, like even Indiana, where, like, they'll burn old territories because supposedly the ash and stuff will help replenish the soil.
Speaker 2:But the official cause of Henry's death was ruled as asphyxia due to smoke inhalation. However, the circumstances surrounding his death have raised suspicion about Ed's potential involvement. So one, there were some injuries to Henry's body that didn't match up with just an asphyxiation or any cardiac. There were actual injuries. But second, when Henry went missing during the fire, ed had reported the disappearance to the police. But yet when they came back with a search party, ed was immediately able to take them to Henry's body. So he's disappeared, but yet oh, he's exactly right here. Upon examination of the body again, suspicious bruising was discovered on his head. This physical evidence, combined with Ed's uncanny ability to locate the body, has led to some questions about was Ed possibly involved? And one thing that may have brought that up is Henry was kind of antagonistic towards their mother and defensive of Ed. So, henry, very much was kind of the protector of Ed against his mother's abuse and you were saying as well that.
Speaker 3:That when it came to that disagreement that Henry was critical of their mother and Ed did not appreciate that. And about this disagreement that Henry was critical of their mother and Ed did not appreciate that. And about this time Henry was also getting ready to move out and move in with a divorced mother of two, so his departure might have also had an impact on his death.
Speaker 2:And I mean that's interesting because it may have had feeling almost like he was going to be abandoned. You know dad's left, you know gone natural circumstances again. But I think what's interesting to remind our listeners is that they are 38 and 43 at this age, prospectively still living at home. You know, ed still has this unhealthy attachment with his mother who obviously, when you're hearing that henry's having to defend them from the abuse that's coming from his mother even in his late 30s, that this is unhealthy. But the loss of henry removed that potential buffer that was there between ed and his mother. So for another year ed has is stuck with his abusive mother and develops even, uh, a deeper, unhealthy obsession with her. So, uh, the following year of henry's death likely intensified ed's dependence on his mother because now he no longer had kind of his only friend really, uh, setting the stage for his extreme reactions once her, uh, his mother passes and he's all alone.
Speaker 3:Which, once she passes, he has that very unhealthy attachment that manifests in. You know he was very obsessively devoted to her. After her death he starts sealing off her room and other parts of the house, and the crimes that he commits ultimately seem to have been driven by that relationship with his mother Right so after Augusta's death, um Ed has her buried in a local cemetery.
Speaker 2:but this kind of he's alone and it kind of starts this vicious cycle where he kind of he starts visiting her grave a lot. So as he's visiting her grave he's driven by this intense loneliness and he starts this weird practice of digging up graves. Uh, so it basically becomes a grave robber, specifically taking human remains. In a particularly gruesome act, gane exhumed his own mother's body from her grave. Then he proceeded to remove her head, which he twisted off with his bare hands. Gane then took the severed head home and it's reported that he tried to shrink it. He'd read some books about head shrinking and the thought he could redo it. This act kind of marked the beginning of his grave robbing spree, during which he would make numerous nocturnal visits to local cemeteries over the next few years where he exhumed multiple bodies, primarily targeting middle aged women. Remain reminded him, um, of his mother. So, and this is just starting to really like this is taking a hard turn, like this goes from obsession to obsession and it continues to devolve.
Speaker 3:Somewhere I read it was like 40 nocturnal visits to, so it wasn't just like he went a couple times, he went often.
Speaker 2:Yeah, this is like. The timeframes are between 1947 and 1952. And again, he primarily targeted middle-aged women who had either recently died or, being a small town that he knew, had died, exhuming the bodies and he took home different pieces of the body. To become more macabre, he started making creations with the human remains. So Gane created a number of disturbing items from human skin, including lampshades and chair seats made from human skin. He would make bowls from human skulls. He had face masks and then went on to describe design, probably one of the most disturbing things, but also something that would become iconicized in film.
Speaker 2:Later, ed Gein created a woman's suit, and it was one of the most disturbing aspects of his collection of human skin items, and here are kind of some of the details. So Gein's goal was to create a suit made from human skin that he could wear to become his mother and literally crawl into her skin. The suit was made from pieces of skin taken from female corpses that Gein had exhumed from local graveyards. Made from pieces of skin taken from female corpses that Gane had exhumed from local graveyards. This included, like a vest with breasts attached and leggings made from human leg skin. Gane would wear this suit along with masks made from female faces and go out on his property and dance in the moonlight.
Speaker 2:If any of this kind of starts to sound familiar, it is very much the scene in Silence of the Lambs, made popular by the Goodbye Horses song or, if you're Clerks 2, with Jane Silentbottom. So when police searched Gaines' house later, they found the partially completed skin suit, along with other clothing items that he had made from human remains. The suit was part of Gaines' larger obsession with the female body and his desire to transform himself into a woman. While gruesome, the woman's suit was never actually completed. It remained a work progress when police arrested him and this really goes back to that gender dysmorphia and, I think, mother's abuse. And I want to say I think that mother's abuse and I want to say I think that that key moment of him being caught and her really degrading him had to have something to do with that.
Speaker 3:I mean it had to have some type of an impact.
Speaker 2:I don't again like we'll get to like what his outcome is or anything, but I don't know how you would use that as a mitigating factor in a trial if you're a defense attorney, like, yeah, you've done these things, but look at this childhood and the abuse, like the true psychological harm that was done.
Speaker 3:And that might be why he ended up where he was instead of getting the death penalty.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So this disturbing creation highlighted the depth of Gaines' psychological issues and an unhealthy attachment to his deceased mother. The concept again of wearing a skin suit is seen in the fictional character of Buffalo Bill in Silence of the Lambs, which, god bless my loving wife. A couple years ago for my birthday she got me a death's head, skull moth, like it's framed and everything. And again, it's not that I have this like oh, buffalo bill and Ed Gain are great. It's that I've kind of dedicated my life to fighting against people like this and studying them and helping educate people about how to um spot, identify and protect themselves against them and it's kind of a neat reminder of me. Plus it's like one of my favorites like Will. It's kind of a neat reminder of me. Plus it's like one of my favorites Like Will Graham, who's one of the profilers and that was kind of my inspiration to get into criminal justice.
Speaker 3:So, even though all these grave robberies are happening at this point, he hasn't actually killed anybody.
Speaker 2:Yet.
Speaker 3:Yet that's going to change, unfortunately for Mary Hogan. So Mary Hogan, a woman who was in her 50s, was a tavern owner and she was shot and taken to Ed's farm. Some of the key details with this crime again, she was the tavern owner in Pine Grove, wisconsin, which was near Plainfield, wisconsin, and Ed was known to frequent her establishment regularly. On December 8th of 1954, at that tavern, which was about six miles away from his farm, he used a .22 caliber gun to her forehead to execute her and afterwards, when she disappeared from the tavern, the only thing that was left behind was her blood and the empty bull and the empty bullet shell casing. The police immediately suspected foul play, but they could never solve the case.
Speaker 2:they didn't have enough evidence, but ed had taken her body back to his farm that's one of those like start into madness but sounds kind of a little premeditated because he brought the gun but then it's.
Speaker 2:And one thing that I think is I don't know because I couldn't find anywhere, I've seen some that said he didn't drive and people like would give him rides and then others that's. So again we don't have the records and I don't know if, like, he just took the gun out of a truck, if it was there, or if he brought it specifically to kill her. Like, was this premeditated or a crime of opportunity? Because going forward, his second murder seems more like a crime of opportunity than it does a crime of premeditation. His second murder seems more like a crime of opportunity than it does a crime of premeditation. But later Gaines would confess to killing Hogan when questioned about his second murder. So during the search of Gaines' property, authorities found Hogan's face among the gruesome collection of human remains that we had talked about. Nat's search came off the back of his second murder.
Speaker 3:Which was Bernice Worden, and that was in 1957. She had been a hardware store owner who was shot and decapitated. The murder of Bernice Worden by Ed Gein was a shocking crime and it ultimately led to the discovery of all of Ed's horrific activities at his house. Again, we said that she was the 58-year-old hardware store owner in Plainfield, wisconsin, and on November 16, 1957, she was shot again with the .22 caliber rifle and her son, deputy Sheriff Frank Worden, found the store empty, with bloodstains on the floor, but there was a sales slip for antifreeze. That was the last receipt that had been written from Worden that morning. Ed was supposed to be in the store the previous evening and was going to come back to pick up that antifreeze. And since he was the last one to have seen her, he was the prime suspect evening and was going to come back to pick up that antifreeze.
Speaker 2:And since he was the last one to have seen her. He was the prime suspect, so Gane was arrested at a Plainfield grocery store. That evening. When police took Gane back to the farm and searched it is when they made the gruesome discovery and I've seen some pictures of this of like he had human flesh, part of the skin, so stuff like this was like hanging from the rafters and the barn and being he was trying to strip her like a deer, Like you know. Pardon the graphicness, but it really displays the depravity he had and kind of his ability to easily separate. This wasn't a stranger to him. This was somebody he knew. Both of these were people he knew. He'd had dinner before one of the murders. He'd actually had dinner with like one of the families of one of his victims. Like small town. He was targeting people he knew. He was taking the body parts of people he knew, including his own mother, Like. There's obviously a lot of psychological issues going on here.
Speaker 3:And one of the things that we talked about before we started recording was his nickname being the butcher of Plainfield. Do you want to speak on whether you think that that's an accurate description and why? Why not?
Speaker 2:So I to me. I think again you're giving a moniker that raises him to a level of something that he's not. He's just a murderer. He killed two people. There's rumors that he killed more. The problem I have with that is he didn't leave that town and there's no other murders that are reported in that time. So to try and glorify him as like a serial killer he's not trying to glorify him as some ingenious, like criminal mind. He's not. He's just obviously a very psychologically disturbed individual that targeted women and had a lot of his own sexual dysmorphia issues going on.
Speaker 3:Which to me the nickname kind of fits because of the way they found Warden and her body, because it would have been a similar thing to what a butcher by profession would have done with cows and deer butcher by profession, would have done with cows and deer.
Speaker 2:I can concede if you put it in that fact. But I think just where I was coming from was more of just kind of like the glorification of like oh he's this mass murdering, like killed a lot of women, like noah's too, but you put in the concept of how the body was hanging.
Speaker 3:Absolutely I could see it that way that was how I conceptualized it when I heard that nickname.
Speaker 2:Two different minds looking at it from two different perspectives.
Speaker 3:So again inside of his house they found all kinds of horrific objects made from all of those different body parts you know masks, skulls used as bedposts and kitchen utensils, lampshades made with faces, chairs that were upholstered with human skin. And so at that point he's obviously immediately arrested, and that's in that 1957 timeframe, and he is arraigned on one count of first degree murder on November 21st 1957. Murder on November 21st 1957. And that was for the second murder, the one Bernice Worden's murder, and he's found unfit to stand trial and he is sent to Central State Hospital. Exactly what happens when he's at Central State Hospital I'm not 100% sure on, but because he's unfit to stand trial. That's kind of the end of the legal proceedings at that point.
Speaker 3:But they pick back up in 1968. So we're approximately 11 years later, fast forward into the future, and at that point somebody says he is mentally fit to stand trial. So the defense attorney waives his right to a jury trial, which is something that you can do. We all know there's jury trials and you have a right to a jury trial jury of your peers but you can waive that right. And if you waive that right, then the judge becomes the trier of fact and decides whether you're guilty or not guilty. And in this case the defense attorney waived that right and requested a trial to the court and I'm guessing part of that would have been because of the sensational nature of the case. I also think there wasn't really a really good defense at that point in time to say he didn't do it. I can't think of anything that I would be able to present to try to prove that he didn't do it. It's not like there was somebody else living in the house. It's not like he could blame Henry or his mom or anybody else, like he was pretty much stuck with that guilty point. And one of the things with the trial to the court sometimes you don't have to get into as much detail and then it gives you more leeway to basically beg for forgiveness or leniency from the court and the judge and not draw it out and not have all of those proceedings so that you can focus more on the psychological aspect, not whether he's guilty or not guilty, because you know he's going to be found guilty, but focus more on the look at all these things this person has gone through, look what led them up to this point and at the conclusion of that trial.
Speaker 3:That again began November 7th of 1968, it lasted about a week and he was found guilty. But then they went through the second phase of the trial where they were asking psychologists and psychiatrists to testify whether he knew right from wrong at that point when the murder actually happened, whether it was intentional or accidental. Murder actually happened, whether it was intentional or accidental, and he said that he wasn't really sure, saying he didn't really remember what had happened that morning. But he didn't aim the rifle, which I don't know how you can say I didn't aim it at her and at the same time say I don't remember what happened. But that's you know. That's where you're at.
Speaker 3:So the second part of the trial began on November 14th and in that second part they were dealing with whether or not he was sane and the defense was arguing that he was not guilty by reason of insanity and at the end of the day the judge agrees that he was not guilty by reason of insanity. That doesn't mean you're not guilty and you get to leave the courthouse. That means that you weren't mentally able to form the mental intent that was required at the time to commit the crime. But you did the acts. So because of that he went back to the mental institution.
Speaker 2:And I've seen and read many cases where people have tried to use insanity, Like oh, I was enraged or I didn't know where I was, and usually you look at everything's normal and then the crime happens. I don't think there's any way you're gonna look at ed mean's life and be like, yeah, he's a completely normal guy until the murders, like there was obviously a lot going on with this individual, when you're making human lamps and digging up your own mother and ripping her head off with your bare hand and potentially killing your own brother. So and that's I mean really. I mean, if you go with this, potentially he committed three murders but you have two that I don't even know. If you'd say that, that's the other thing. I don't see any sexualness in nature as much as it was he was trying to get skin. I never saw anything about him trying to sexually assault or any proof of sexual assault, more of like cutting it up to use it as a deer. You would not as a human being.
Speaker 3:One of the things I read said that he denied ever doing anything like that because he said that they smelled bad or something along those lines.
Speaker 2:And in that I mean again with the abuse he took from his mother. I mean he may have seen his genitals as vile and never, ever touched himself again out of fear, like I don't know. I mean I don't want to get that much down the road of kind of like perverse, twisted uh ness of his mind when it comes to his own sexuality. But there obviously was the one to remove or hide his own genitals, um, either through the creating of the woman's suit or the talk about the sex change operations that were being done over in Europe.
Speaker 3:So, yeah, he definitely did not have a healthy relationship with his sexuality at that point in time.
Speaker 2:No, and I think that goes back to that. I have no sympathy for the man that murdered these people. I have a lot of sympathy for the child that was abused and came up to become that monster.
Speaker 3:And it also makes me wonder what might've happened to prevent that eventuality.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 3:If he could have been saved, which you know. Again, that's something we never know, like nature versus nurture and what. What were the breaking factors and at what point was he beyond being helped?
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's, it's very. Or what if his you know, he hadn't killed his brother and his brother was there to take care of him? And his mom dies a year later and he's got his brother, what healthy life could he have had? I mean, I hate doing that in the what ifs, but I guess when you're talking from an investigative standpoint, when you're talking from an investigative standpoint, that's what we're supposed to be doing. You know what if somebody had intervened at that point or provided those services?
Speaker 3:And probably also from the social worker standpoint, to know when we need to intervene and what services we need to try to provide.
Speaker 2:Absolutely, and why it's important to do outreach even now in those more rural areas, because they lack the resources. The government doesn't have the resources in those areas to provide those services, but the community knows who needs help. There's just not the resources to help push people out there and there's not the nonprofits or the religious organizations that are funded well enough to be able to check on everybody. So this is kind of a glowing example of what if there had been people in the school that were looking for those signs, if the community knew that Ed's father has, you know, substance use disorders with alcohol, and the children may have not been in a safe environment. Again, a lot of what ifs. But that's the point is okay, what can we take and learn from this so we can try and make something better? And we kind of see that a little bit in his incarceration.
Speaker 2:So Gaines spent the rest of his life in psychiatric institutions but he's considered a model patient when he gets to the Mendetta Mental Health Institution. So he's described as blissful, he's calm, he's cooperative by staff. They were actually very friendly with him, like a lot of reports to staff, like they would celebrate his birthday. They would make sure he got fed Like he never had any negative interactions with other patients and he never required tranquilizers either. He just he got along well with other people, which kind of shows when potentially again, I don't know. I mean, it'd be great to get to those records but when he had people that were showing him compassion and caring, like he became a different person, like he was able to adjust, but people were treating him like he deserved to be treated like a human being and I really believe in my heart and hope that that was because there were psychologists and social workers and nursing staff that were treating him as a human being, not as a monster.
Speaker 3:And maybe just not being isolated, because it seemed like he was a handyman in town and even though he wasn't popular and didn't have a lot of friends, at least on some level he could be normal in those interactions because he was being a handyman and babysitting and things like that, where if you were the creep of town, nobody would be letting you near their house and their kids yeah, that's kind of the thing that's interesting about him was that he was like he babysat people's kids.
Speaker 2:People said he was amazing with their children. He was never harmful, he wasn't like creepy. People liked him but he never felt accepted and I think that went back to his mother and then when she died he became very recluse. But, like I said, even the night of the um bernice's murder he'd had dinner with some people before that even happened and they said there was no signs of any maladaptive. He wasn't vulgar, he was very friendly. Like every once in a while he might say something kind of off color, but it was never intentional.
Speaker 3:So um, or maybe just being in the house was bad because you talked about how he sectioned off house like parts of the house to preserve it and to preserve where his mother was in his mother's room. Maybe if he had gotten out of that house and out of that environment and had that mental separation between his mother and himself, maybe that would have been helpful.
Speaker 2:And then there's also that he was diagnosed with schizophrenia, right, I don't know what that looks like, but it's always because we've become so indoctrinated through television and representations of him in media, like when we go to like Norman Bates, which now we're just moving on to the impacts of he had on culture, which some are good and some are bad, but like what we're in the the Bates Motel movie, I'm not even sure I know what the hell that psycho thank you, god psycho um, he's constantly fighting with his mother but you know, like the not well-hit secret is that his mother's dead and it's the voices in his head and it's kind of.
Speaker 2:It's kind of these voices in his head and it's that schizophrenic part of him. So we don't know what he was hearing, the problems that he was having from that. Don't know if schizophrenia was the right diagnosis because if he didn't have any problems beforehand, but then he may. You know, there's so many things we don't know because, again, records weren't good there and the family was isolated. But he really did kind of have this um, massive impact on culture.
Speaker 2:Um, again, like I said, there were serial killers that have kind of looked to him. He was the influence for silence of the lambs, psycho, texas chainsaw massacre, multiple uh books, movies, songs. Um, there's a song that I was just listening to before we started this kind of just a myself in this mind frame by amigo the was just listening to before we started this kind of just a. Put myself in this mind frame by amigo the devil called the recluse is kind of coming from the view of ed gein and the way he looked at women. So, but there's also ed gein fan clubs and there's also places that kind of have risen him up and I think that you can look at what somebody did from a criminal justice standpoint and see them as a case study. But I think it becomes very twisted when we start kind of glorifying them and turning them into these dark heroes.
Speaker 3:And I think you see that a lot with the whole murder memorabilia type aspect of things, and at one point in time his house was actually going to be auctioned off and there was a fire which ended up destroying the house and they had had a fire to dispose of things that was about 75 feet away. But the investigation said that the fire did not spread from that bonfire location to the house that that house was suspected to have been, you know, uh, burned down because of arson. But the fire chief at the time was the son of bernice warden. So it's kind of interesting that it burned down and he's the fire chief and his mom died there and right before it gets auctioned off it burns down um, in other words, my folk hitters a fucking tragedy.
Speaker 3:Yeah, I'm kind of glad it did yeah one, and otherwise they would have who knows what they would have turned it into.
Speaker 2:As far as you know, a spectacle worst attraction, things like that you mean like 25 ghost hunting shows going there swearing that they saw orbs that were just dust flying around, trying to glorify again ed keene's atrocities, not bernice warden and mary hogan who were the victims. Like, if you want to start a fan club, start a bernice warden or a mary hogan to remember them, not the person that took their lives. But that's again just me.
Speaker 3:So some type of memorial for them. Yeah, yes, um. And along with that same thing, his car was sold for the equivalent of what would have been eight thousand dollars in 2023, and it was sold to a carnival sideshow operator, who then turned around and charged people 25 cents a piece to come see the car.
Speaker 2:So I, I crash will point uh, the true crime, like the, the crime, mobilia, murder, belia, stuff. But at the same time, like I've gone to museums of death and stuff to kind of see some of the stuff, because at the same time there is a fascination with, like I mean, it's not owning something that person had, but like here are the writings of these people, or here are the things that give us insight into their brain, like oh, here's an envelope with their name on it. That's just trash, dude. Like I don't care whose it is, that's just trash. But their writings and what they were, thinking that that's something I guess has historical value, that probably does need to be in a museum. But his car I'm going to charge you 25 cents really.
Speaker 3:And I think there's also a difference between a museum where you're trying to look at relevant evidence and facts and information and again, like you were saying, trying to figure something out so maybe we can make this not happen again, versus just like a ooh, look where I'm at. I took a picture where this specific thing happened.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think the museum kind of stops being like like looking into history when it's got the Ed Gein, welcome to the Museum of Death. Then you're kind of exploiting it Exactly. But there's a thin. I think again, as we've said, about some other crimes we've seen, especially in 1930s bank robbers and stuff like you know, people got to do what they got to do to make some money and no, they're not physically harming anybody, but they're just finding a way to make a couple of dollars off what somebody is going to do anyway. So I want to knock it. If you're a murder, be a person. Or you've got museums like that, like hey, you do you, you do you, but as long as you're not harming anybody. Just remember that the families of the people these people murdered aren't getting a dime from that. So it's not helping them in any way and you're not really honoring the memory of victims or just glorifying the people that took their lives.
Speaker 3:And with this case you mentioned Mary, mary Hogan he never actually stood trial or pled guilty or anything for that. So at the point where he was incarcerated and put into the insane asylum, they said it's not worth the investment of money and resources, even though he had admitted that he killed her. He never admitted to his brother you know, killing his brother but he did admit to killing Mary but they never prosecuted it or had that listed as something. That was something he got held accountable for.
Speaker 2:And you've kind of talked about that before, kind of like the waste of funds, like you've already got them incarcerated. If there were to come a day that he might've gotten out, then maybe he would have tried again like to go for those charges, but he's not going anywhere.
Speaker 3:I think sometimes it's cathartic, though for the victims especially if he said he did it and he confessed and he admitted to it to just have that moment in court where they would be allowed to say this is what I lost, and to be heard by the judge in the court and say whatever they wanted to say in front of the defendant court and say whatever they wanted to say in front of the defendant.
Speaker 2:My question on that, though, is and to a prosecutor like is it really worth, when you know that probably what you're going to get is not guilty by reason of insanity?
Speaker 3:Again, I think it would be up to the victim, Like to me. It wouldn't increase any value for me personally, but at the same time if I had a victim who felt strongly like I really wanted this opportunity to speak to the judge, I think at that point it'd be nice. Even again, like maybe you could have it as a separate part of the sentencing hearing, you know, as some type of aggravating factor where that victim gets to address the court. But if that's what they want, I feel like they should have that.
Speaker 2:Yeah, no, I definitely agree with that. Like you want to again, again, honor the victims, not the murderer. So I think, in the end, ed gaines disturbing life and crimes continue to fascinate us. I mean, we're doing something about this now, um, and there's dozens of podcasts and movies and everything else, um, and it horrifies people decades after his death and it does leave an indelible mark kind of on the crime genre and the true crime genre and pop culture. But, like with everything else, I think in the end, what we really need to take away is the names of the victim, not glorify the killer. Yes, he had a lot of problems. We need to analyze that, but his face doesn't be on a shirt those victims.
Speaker 2:I want to thank you all so much for listening to our little podcast. This is created with love and passion for criminal justice and true crime. So if you're enjoying the podcast, please follow us, like or rate us on whatever system you're listening to us on, subscribe to our podcast podcast and download episodes. Downloads are important for our growth, as is growing our listeners. So if you wouldn't mind, take the time to ask your friends, family, co-workers, tell them about us through word of mouth, social media. I don't care if you even scream at strangers on the streets to help us kind of get out there who we are. If you're interested in learning more, you could visit our website at wwwdeviantcriminologycom. There you'll find some stuff about our backgrounds, references, show notes for each episode. You can also follow us on our Facebook page at Deviant Criminology. On our Facebook page at Deviant Criminology. We also have an Instagram page, which is Deviant underscore Criminology. Or find me at Dr Richard Weaver on Instagram, and as we grow, we hope to develop a community that will grow with us.
Speaker 1:So again, thank you for taking the time to listen and have a good week. ©. Transcript Emily Beynon.
