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Ed Gein and his older brother Henry lived on a rural farm near Plainfield, Wisconsin. Their father, George Gein, worked as a tanner and carpenter but was frequently intoxicated. Augusta, Ed's domineering mother, held the real authority in the household. A religious fanatic, she constantly warned her sons about the dangers of premarital sex and condemned "evil" women. George died in 1940, and Henry passed away four years later in a marsh fire, though there was later suspicion that Ed may have been involved. Ed remained on the family farm with his mother, rarely venturing beyond the nearby counties. When Augusta died of a stroke in 1945, Ed, then 39, was left alone. He sealed off her bedroom and much of the house, living only in the kitchen and one other room. Between 1950 and 1955, he secretly visited three local cemeteries at night, exhuming at least ten graves. He took various parts from the bodies, sometimes returning items to the graves. He fashioned bowls from skullcaps and created chair seats and lampshades from human skin. On special occasions, he would dance under the moonlight wearing stitched skin garments, including masks made from his victims’ faces. Ed’s first known murder occurred on December 8, 1954, with another on November 16, 1957. He attacked his final victim in her store, dragging her body to a truck parked behind the building. That evening, the victim’s son found the store locked, the cash register missing, and a trail of blood leading to the back door. He remembered seeing Ed there the day before. Police searched Ed’s farm and discovered the victim’s headless body hanging by the heels from the rafters in his shed. Gein was arrested and eventually admitted to the crimes. On January 16, 1958, he was committed to Central State Hospital in Waupun, Wisconsin. By November 1968, he was declared competent to stand trial. Diagnosed with chronic schizophrenia, he was found not guilty by reason of insanity and returned to Waupun. It has been speculated that Gein may have killed two men who hired him as a hunting guide in 1952 and subsequently disappeared. Additionally, body parts from two unidentified young women, teenagers, were found at his farm, unlike his other victims who were middle-aged or elderly. This aspect was never fully investigated. In 1978, he was transferred to Mendota Mental Health Institute. Gein was considered a model patient and died peacefully in his sleep in the geriatric psychiatric ward in 1984. He is buried beside his mother in Plainfield Cemetery.
