Today I Learned: Ed Gein Had Shrunken Human Heads from the Philippines
Ed Gein, better known as the Plainfield Killer/Butcher or just the guy with serious mommy issues, has been the latest killer dramatized on Netflix drawing polarizing debate on whether to glorify these twisted individuals.
Showrunner Ryan Murphy has also been well on his way to crafting his own “Murphyverse” of notorious killers throughout history such as the Milwaukee cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer, and the Menendez brothers.
However, his depiction of Gein portrayed by the talented Charlie Hunman in Monster: The Ed Gein Story, has drawn some flak for its highly fantasized nature such as the cartoonish Winnie the Pooh-esque voice he used for the infamous killer.
Gein’s claim to infamy is his penchant for fashioning furniture out of human flesh, thanks to his offbeat hobby of grave-robbing and murdering middle-aged women who may or may have not resembled his highly puritanical mother.
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But did anyone ever expect there to be a link between the Philippines and the real-life killer who inspired characters like Leatherface from The Texas Chainsaw Massacre (1974), Norman Bates from Psycho (1960), and Buffalo Bill from The Silence of the Lambs (1991)?
While not really a moment that would make the Pinoy Pride alarm bells go off, this discovery was definitely not on our Bingo cards after going down an Ed Gein rabbit hole, after bingeing the show in one sitting.
Is it just us or is it everyone’s morbid fascination to take deep dives into messed up individuals of yesteryear right after watching revolting scenes of inhumanity?
We came across a December 2, 1957 Time Magazine profile on the rail-thin, mild-mannered Plainfield Wisconsin native, who kept human face masks (and no, not the ones that make your skin glow and tighten your pores, but the kind that came from real people).
Here’s the kicker: the piece detailed how Ed once showed a then-16-year-old Bob Hill, the son of a neighboring storekeeper, two shrunken heads he claimed came from the Philippines—supposedly from a friend of his.
A chamber of horrors at Gein's Crib
We are not going to be doing fact vs. fiction here since we wouldn’t want to give away the creative freedoms Murphy’s show takes in portraying the Butcher of Plainfield. But we will be doing a quick rundown on how the scene was set when the world was introduced to this chilling juncture in American criminal history.
Gein wanted to literally become his mother, Augusta Gein, who had died of a stroke in 1945—by creating a skin suit made of, well, human skin that he harvested from graves and, at times, from his two victims: tavern owner Mary Hogan and store owner Bernice Worden.
The handyman and farmer idolized his mother as truly virtuous and became fully devoted to her.
The Time article described Augusta as a “domineering wife” and the “undisputed head” of the Lutheran Gein household.
Local police at the time didn’t know what they signed up for when they walked into Gein’s farmhouse as they apprehended him for the murders: a “chamber of horrors” as Time magazine put it.
“I was sort of in a daze-like,” Gein, who was 51 when he shot local general store proprietor Bernice Warden, had said describing how he felt when he did the deed.
The poor woman was shot with a .22 rifle, thrown into the store’s service pickup truck, taken to the farmhouse to be eviscerated, and strung up on a meat hook like livestock. Police discovered a trail of blood from the store and found a receipt for a gallon of antifreeze made out to Gein. Ed was later arrested at a grocery store in West Plainfield. Cops followed Ed home, where they faced, at that time, unimaginable gore and horror.
Here’s the grocery list of body parts and how they were used in Gein’s home: ten skins of human heads, surgically separated from their respective skulls; assorted pieces of human skin made into small belts and upholstered chair seats; and, oh look, a box of noses. Add to that a belt made from female human nipples, skin lampshades, and human skull bowls—for good measure.
The 51-year-old Gein had Ilse Koch or the “Beast of Buchenwald” to thank for his almost Pinterest board-inspiration for human skin fashioned into furniture.
Koch, had been the wife of Nazi commander Karl-Otto Koch, who fancied lampshades and other items prepared from human skin. He had discovered these by reading pulp magazines and adventure stories involving cannibals or Nazi atrocities.
Gein lived in a dump—in practically unlivable conditions, to say the least—but, strangely enough, his mother’s room remained mostly untouched since her passing, aside from the occasional cobwebs and rats. The man didn’t even have electricity or plumbing, and we can only imagine the aroma of his place.
He took DIY cosplaying too far as he made his “woman suit” out of actual women, as experts still saw Gein suffering from consciously loving his mother while hating other women. The certified mama’s boy grew up without going on any dates and lived mostly caring for just his mother after the rest of his family passed away.
To give you some context, his puritanical mother hammered into the young Geins the evils of drinking and the belief that all women were naturally promiscuous and of the devil.
A classic Oedipus complex is often arrived at when looking at Gein’s case due to his mother’s tyrannical reign over his father, and brothers. A sickening obsession with his mother was sure to ensue.
Despite all the viscera and sinew sprawled about the Gein farmhouse, he denied engaging in either cannibalism or necrophilia, claiming he preserved body parts just to look at them.
Unlike hall of fame (or more appropriately infamy) serial killers Jeffrey Dahmer and Ted Bundy, who respectively were cannibals and necrophiliacs.
Eventually in a court of law, Gein had been found not guilty by reason of insanity since he was a diagnosed schizophrenic and was ordered to stay in Central State Hospital for the Criminally Insane for the rest of his life. He died of lung cancer in 1984 at age 77.
So, you might probably want to ease up on the skin suits if you’re thinking of going as Ed Gein for the spooky season.
