The fascination with serial killers never seems to end. Reading about Ramirez reminds me of one of the most famous serial killers. I heard way too much about him as a child and it always haunted me. He was alive and well (not mentally of course) during my childhood. Eddie Gein is still remembered and famous today. I think that one of the things that intrigues people about serial killers, not just murderers, but cold blooded, monsters is that they can look so normal. Ramirez not only looks normal but he is handsome. Ted Bundy was exceptionally handsome and charismatic. He was able to charm women with his innocent college boy charm and good looks.
The most horrifying thing about them is that they do not look like monsters. If you see a snake, spider or something poisonous or repulsive you know to stay away from it. You know that it is dangerous. You can’t tell by looking at these monsters that they are monsters. True there are ones that appear creepy. I think that John Wayne Gacey was rather creepy looking. I personally think that clowns are creepy. But he didn’t have horns and cloven hooves. Jeffery Dahmer was not especially appealing, but didn’t look like a monster. Then there is the notorious Scott Peterson, who although he is not a serial killer, cold-bloodedly murdered his wife and unborn son. He is a handsome charismatic man who charmed most people that he met.
This is the story of one of the most famous serial killers, long before Ted Bundy, Jeffery Dahmer, or Richard Ramirez was born.
Edward Gein was a Mama’s boy. He was born in La Crosse Wisconsin on August 27, 1906. His mother smothered him and his older brother Henry.
Their father was an alcoholic that Augusta loathed. She put him down to her sons and dominated them with an iron hand. She was fanatically religious and pummeled them with the Bible.
She started her own grocery business that was very successful and later bought a large farm in Plainfield Wisconsin for her sons to protect them from the evils of the world. She kept them pretty well secluded from society. After their father died the boys helped run the farm, and made money doing odd jobs. Henry was more normal and chastised their mother for dominating Eddie. He was worried about the unhealthy attachment that Eddie had with his mother. Eddie was shy, and effeminate and very backward.
When the boys were fighting a brush fire in 1944 Henry died under rather mysterious circumstances. Eddie took the police to his brother’s body and they never suspected any foul play until later.
The following year Eddies’ mother passed away. She had a series of small strokes and Eddies’ only true love was gone. He idolized her and was appalled that his brother criticized her and the relationship that she had with him. He was alone for the first time in his life. He continued to baby-sit for neighbor kids, (doesn’t that make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up?) He would share stories with the kids that he had read. He would tell them stories about death-cults and shrunken heads that he was obsessed with.
He would visit the graveyard at night and started digging up women’s bodies. He said he didn’t have sex with the dead bodies because they smelled bad. He did make artifacts out of their body parts. He also cooked and ate parts of their bodies. There was a bowl made out of a human skull and he would make skin out of their bodies. He wanted to know what it felt like to be a woman, and have breasts and a vagina. It was later discovered that he sewed human female skin into clothing for himself to wear to simulate being female.
When his young charges told stories about shrunken heads in his house, the neighbors started gossiping. When they would see Eddie they would joke with him, and he would smile shyly. Little did they know until later the blood-curdling truth.
Mysteriously several young girls came up missing and when the headless corpse of Bernice Worden was found hanging like a gutted deer in Eddies’ house there was no denying that he was the murderer. The house was filled with the stench of rotten food and bodies and horrific artifacts made out of human remains. There were lampshades made out of human skin, and other hideous things he fashioned out of his victims.
The movie Psycho, The Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs are based on the life and bizarre murderous behaviors of Eddie Gein. He later was sentenced to life in a Mental Institution where he happily lived out his days. He made friends and was very well liked and well behaved. No one would ever suspect the quiet gentleman of being the heinous monster that he was.
