Ed Gein, a serial killer well-known for skinning dead people, passes away at age 77 from cancer-related complications on July 26, 1984, in a Wisconsin jail. Gein was the model for author Robert Bloch’s Norman Bates in the 1959 book “Psycho,” which was later made into the Alfred Hitchcock and Anthony Perkins starrer “Psycho” in 1960.
An alcoholic father and an overbearing mother who taught her son that women and sex were wrong gave birth to Edward Theodore Gein on August 27, 1906, in LaCrosse, Wisconsin. On a remote farm in Plainfield, Wisconsin, Gein and his older brother were raised.
Police discovered Bernice Worden, a missing store clerk, at Gein’s farmhouse in November 1957. They discovered her headless and gutted body. Authorities found a collection of human skulls along with furniture and apparel, including a suit, manufactured from human body parts and skin, after doing more inquiry. Gein admitted to the police that he had uncovered the graves of recently buried women who had resemblances to his mother. Even though authorities discovered the remains of 10 women in Gein’s home, only two murders—that of Bernice Worden and another local lady named Mary Hogan—were finally connected to him.
Gein was committed to a state hospital in Wisconsin after being deemed mentally unfit to stand trial. Before it was destroyed by fire in 1958, most likely the result of an arsonist, his farm drew large groups of curious onlookers. Gein was given the okay to go to trial in 1968, but the judge finally declared him guilty due to insanity, and he spent the remainder of his days in a state institution.
Ed Gein’s wife: Was Ed Gein married?
His marital status was not revealed.
