Edward Theodore Gein

Edward Theodore Gein was born on August 27, 1906, to Augusta and George Gein in La Crosse, Wisconsin. He was the second of two boys born to the couple. The death of Eddie's mother was a milestone in the life of this serial killer. Soon after her passing, Eddie became increasingly lonely. He spent much of his spare time reading pulp magazines and anatomy books. The rooms he lived in were full of periodicals about Nazis, South Sea headhunters and shipwrecks. From his readings Eddie learned about the process of shrinking heads, exhuming corpses from graves and the anatomy of the human body. He became obsessed with these stories, and he would tell neighborhood children about them. Eddie also enjoyed reading the local newspapers. Unsurprisingly, his favorite section was the obituaries.

It was from the obituaries that Eddie would learn of the recent deaths of local women. Having never been able to enjoy the company of the opposite sex, he would fulfill his fantasies by visiting gravesites at night. Although he later swore to police that he never had sexual intercourse with any of the dead women he had exhumed because "they smelled too bad," he did take a particular pleasure in peeling the skin from their bodies and wearing it.

When policemen finally gained entrance to his house, they encountered unexpected bizarre items in his pocession. The strange-looking bowl in his dining room was the top of a human skull, and the lampshades and wastebasket were made from human skin.

A morbid inventory began to take shape as they discovered more and more human remains made into household objects throughout his home:

an armchair made of human skin

female genitalia kept preserved in a shoebox

a belt made of nipples, a human head, four noses and a heart.

a suit made entirely of human skin.

All of this bizarre handicraft made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based on Eddie, which became the central theme of the Albert Hitchcock's classic thriller "Psycho".

In 1974, the classic thriller by Tobe Hooper, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, also included many Geinian touches. This movie helped put "Ghastly Gein" back in the spotlight in the mid-1970's. Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for the character of another serial killer, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs. Like Eddie, Buffalo Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in insane rituals.