Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein (pronounced /ˈɡiːn/; August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and grave robber. His crimes, which he committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, garnered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin.
After police found body parts in Gein's house in 1957, he confessed to killing t...
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Edward Theodore "Ed" Gein (pronounced /ˈɡiːn/; August 27, 1906 – July 26, 1984) was an American murderer and grave robber. His crimes, which he committed around his hometown of Plainfield, Wisconsin, garnered widespread notoriety after authorities discovered Gein had exhumed corpses from local graveyards and fashioned trophies and keepsakes from their bones and skin.
After police found body parts in Gein's house in 1957, he confessed to killing two women, Mary Hogan, a tavern owner, in 1954, and Bernice Worden, a Plainfield hardware store owner, in 1957. Initially found unfit to stand trial, following confinement in a mental health facility, he was tried in 1968 for the murder of Worden and sentenced to life imprisonment, which he spent in a mental hospital.
If Gein was guilty of murdering only the person he was convicted of killing, he would not technically meet the definition of a serial killer, though his case influenced the creation of several fictional serial killers, including...
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