The Travelers Guide To Ed Gein

Edward Theodore Gein was one of the most notorious murderers in U.S. history. The particularly bizarre and morbid nature of his crimes shocked the world, even though it may never be known if he committed more than two murders. Besides the death of his brother in 1944 under mysterious circumstances, six people disappeared from Wisconsin towns of La Crosse and Plainfield between 1947 and 1957. Gein was conclusively linked to only two, though it is suspected there were more.

The following comments are of my own opinion after hours of research into the history of Ed Gein. One of the first questions people have asked me about Ed is "was he a cannibal and did he ever have sex with his victims"? My answer has always been no. After going over all the interviews the police and psychologists had with Ed Gein, I noticed that Ed always seemed to tell the truth. Now he did admit to trying to have sex with Bernice Worden, but he could not achieve an erection. He also admitted that the bodies smelled bad of embalming fluid.

Another question people have asked me about was how Ed Gein got the idea of making things out of human skin and remains.

Ed Gein was an avid reader of true crime and World War 2 atrocities the Germans did to the prisoners in the concentration camps. After the defeat of Nazi Germany, claims circulated that Llse Koch, wife of the commandant of Buchenwald concentration camp, had possessed lampshades made of human skin, and had specifically tattooed prisoners killed in order to use their skin for this purpose.

Ed's mother Augusta always wanted a daughter and when she decided to have a second child, she was disappointed when her son Ed was born and was not shy of telling him that. Ed always wanted to please his mother and therefore wanted to become a girl, so that is why he built the "skin suit", so he could be a girl.

Ed Gein will always be part of history and be linked to the town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. Unfortunately, that will never change for the people of Plainfield.