231. Ed Gein Homeland Horror

Unfiltered Halloween 🎃 2025! Come have a spooky listen with Badgerland Legends Jeff ! He is a returning guest to the show for a reality check on the circulating Ed Gein story! Knowing all things Wisconsin is Jeff’s forte and he does not disappoint on Ed!How many liberties did they take with the new series out? You may be shocked to learn, quite a few…However they didn’t need to, ole Eddie boy was up to tons of no good! In my opinion the true story is so much creepier with tons of missing answers and “lost” information! Come check it out today and have a safe and Happy Halloween 👻
A big Thank You to Jeff at Badgerland Legends! Please check out his links and give him a follow today Guest Links Badgerland Legends Jeff IG https://www.instagram.com/badgerlandlegends?igsh=MTAxdjViMnN6Ym9reQ==https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3HY1DSV?ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_TQ9ZW2EZS8SQQ7205RN9&language=en-US&fbclid=PAQ0xDSwKXPgJleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp4q6luc-nR69xcicfCYluEVIbK7Yz1q9Cdi3JRyf_lTSj2r601fa0UG6V9cS_aem_vByFIyH7U76egQHRFXh4JQ
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Please know my podcast and its information presented are for entertainment or informational purposes. I do not threaten or wish any harm to any nation,creed, color, religion etc …. God Bless 🙏#Halloween #Monsters #Netflix #Murder #EdGein #Wisconsin #Serialkiller #murdercase

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I'm awake, are you. I wonder how many miles I've fallen.
It seems I'll get to the center of the yearth curious,
isn't it? And really nothing is quite impossible. Let's go
now to our new episode of The Unfiltered Rise with
Me Heidi Love. Hello everyone, and welcome to another episode

(00:27):
of The Unfiltered Rise with Me Heidi Love. And today
I have back a friend and a repeat guest, and
I hit him up for this podcast because he was
putting some work out there and I was like, guess
what we got to talk about this? Jeff, Jeff from Badgerland,
How you doing today?

Speaker 2 (00:42):
Doing awesome? Thanks for having me back. Talking more weird Wisconsin.
Last time we talked about James Strang, the Mormon pirate King. Tonight,
we're gonna die a little deeper and a little darker
into somebody that's been making a lot of headlines lately,
and that is mister ed Geen, the Butcher of Playing Field.

Speaker 1 (01:06):
Now I know how to do it right because it
was so inaccurate. I was so mad.

Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah. So what she's talking about is the Netflix series
that came out. It was produced by Ryan Murphy and
it was called Monsters, and I watched about two episodes
and then I kind of had to tune out because
it just did not serve Ed's life or do justice
to it, and there was just way too many inaccuracies.
So we're going to kind of give you this straight

(01:33):
dope and kind of a timeline of Ed Geen's life
and kind of what he did. We can talk about,
you know, how do you watch the whole series, and
maybe she can interject on where some things kind of
went awry in the series, but we'll hop right into it. So,
like you said, my name's Jeff Badgerland Legends. Badger Land

(01:54):
is Wisconsin. So I grew up only about fifteen miles
from the Green Farm in Wisconsin, and even in the nineties,
people still had memories of Geen Geen's farm. And one
classmate of mine, his mother grew up in Plainfield and
his grandmother had several stories about Old Eddie, even that

(02:14):
she went roller skating with Ed Geen. That was her
claim to fame, miss Miss Staples there in the Plainfield.
So a lot of lare growing up in central Wisconsin,
and you know, Geen, he is kind of a household name. Now,
even before this series came out, people kind of knew
about his misdeeds, and a lot of Wisconsin is associated

(02:39):
with people like Geen, like Dahmer because of kind of
the shock and awe that they have inflicted on the nation.

Speaker 1 (02:49):
So true, that's true. I think the thing about it
is too, is that they came from a time where
there were a lot of photos taken at the crime scene.
And I can't remember the book, but I still have
those pictures and they're like grizzly. Yes.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yes, So, although not technically a serial killer, I think
FBI changed their definition of serial killer to be two
murders unconnected with the cooling off period. So ed Gean
technically is probably a serial killer, but not really. He's
more of a grave robber and a body snatcher. But

(03:29):
the character of ed Geen has been a direct inspiration
for things like the Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the Silence of
the Lands and Lambs, and most notably Psycho Now. Like
I said, most recently, Netflix, they produced that mini series
loosely depicting ed Geen. The series has kindled kind of

(03:51):
a new curiosity in Geen. Although I only made it
through two episodes, this series has provided so many visuals
for this presentation, so I guess I found some value
in it. That way, it gets a lot of these
pictures that I'm gonna show you tonight, our screen grabs
or kind of promotionals for it, including this one here.
So if this does go on YouTube, it doesn't get

(04:15):
struck down. That's probably the best place to view this.
Or you can listen to it on podcasts too.

Speaker 1 (04:22):
Yes, yes, we I think we do, okay, unless we
play clips. Clips are always a nightmare.

Speaker 2 (04:28):
Yes, I just didn't know about the content, so hopefully. Yeah.
So Edward Theodore Gan He's born to Augusta and George
Dean in a little place called Lacrosse, Wisconsin, on August
twenty seventh, nineteen oh six.

Speaker 1 (04:43):
His mom he was twelve.

Speaker 2 (04:44):
His mom looks she looks like childbride. Totally gosh. Yeah,
so ed was the youngest of two sons. Henry, his
older brother, was five years older. At the time of
edsburs so Georgia and Augusta they got married I believe
in nineteen hundred and then I believe Henry, his older brother,

(05:04):
was born in nineteen oh one, so they didn't waste
any time, but they stopped at too and we'll kind
of get into that and the reason why. Because George
Geen he was an abusive alcoholic. He worked periodically, really
couldn't hold down a trade or a craft or a career.
He was a carpenter, he was a tanner, he was

(05:25):
a farmer, and he worked at the Greenes grocery store
there in Lacrosse, which Miss Augusta she managed that. Now,
Augusta from the lore and definitely in real life, she
was a fanatically religious woman. She was of German descent
and Lutheran was her her religion of choice. And the

(05:50):
only reason to enter George's marital bed was because she
wanted children, and she got Henry, she got Eddie, and
she probably closed up shop after that.

Speaker 1 (06:03):
Yeah, I think so, from you know what we've seen.

Speaker 2 (06:05):
Yeah, and from hearing the tales of George, he was
really an absentee. Father wasn't really involved. He was kind
of a beleaguered individual. I think between the alcohol and
Augusta's harping, he just was kind of a shell of
himself by the end. So Augusta, she was really the
one that supported the family through that grocery business. And

(06:30):
if you're ever in a green A gain grocery store.
I'd probably skip past the meat department, probably be on
so Augusta. Of course, she grew to despise George. She
felt he was worthless and gave him no part in
really being there for his boys, so she kind of
kind of shunned him, even though he he did eventually

(06:53):
move to Plainfield, which we'll get to in a second.
So it said nineteen thirteen and he's age seven he witnessed.
Now this is apocryphal, so I wanted to take this
with a grain of salt, but it seems weird enough
that it's been repeated and documented that d witnessed his
parents slaughtering a pig at age seven, and he found

(07:16):
it strangely arousing the ordeal of slaughtering a pig. So
that might kind of peer into his sexuality and kind
of his psychology around that.

Speaker 1 (07:30):
Well, with her repression of things, I mean, I'm sure
it started early. You know, little kids check their own
business out and whatnot, and you know, then you start
taking this fight or flight response into a weird place
if you can't be normal, you.

Speaker 2 (07:49):
Know, exactly. So at age eight, the Gaines they moved
to Plainfield. They purchased one hundred and ninety five acre farm,
not a small crop land. The main driver for that
move was as she wanted to leave the immorality of
the big city and the centers that inhabited. So she
moves which probably at the time probably four and a

(08:10):
half five hour car drive. Today you can make it
about two with the with the interstate system. But even today,
Plainfield is pretty remote. And for them to go to Lacrosse,
which is a rivertown it's home to several colleges. Today
it's kind of on the come up as far as

(08:32):
Wisconsin towns regions go. But back then, you know, Lacrosse
was a small river town, and then to move inland
to Plainfield, Wisconsin, which is smack dab in the heart
of the state, it just seemed like a huge culture
shock and adjustment. Now, if you look at the map today,
you'll see the Green Farm is right there, and all

(08:58):
around it there are farm fields. Locals would either call
this region a prairie chicken country because of this strange
bird that likes to inhabit the prairie lands there. It's
abundant in cranberry production as well as potato fields, so
there's not a lot of not a lot happening around Plainfield, Wisconsin,

(09:20):
even to this day. I thirty nine cuts right through
the heart of Plainfield, but if you don't get off
on the exit, there's nothing really there.

Speaker 1 (09:31):
To this day, we know the house isn't there.

Speaker 2 (09:36):
The house.

Speaker 1 (09:36):
I'm gonna let you. I'm gonna let you wait on
that because I'm sure it will come.

Speaker 2 (09:40):
It will come up. Yes, Yeah, So Ed and Henry
they're enrolled in grade school. It was a one room
schoolhouse with only about twelve students. Surprisingly, I couldn't find
a picture of this particular school, but this one is
nearby in Adams County, so this was probably about ten
miles so something very similar, something close to this time period. Now,

(10:04):
Geen he was socially awkward and also had a growth
on his left eyelid. Now that growth it caused in
an asymmetry and made it appear that it had a
lazy eye, so it was probably something that was weird.
Often it said that Geen would kind of laugh to himself,

(10:25):
kind of laugh at his own jokes. He was socially awkward.
He was also very sheltered, like his brother was his
only real friend and Augusta, so he didn't have a
lot of socialization, socially awkward. He's got this growth on
his arm. He was a smaller child, kind of sickly looking,
so he didn't really make a lot of friends. In

(10:45):
any friends that he did make, Augusta did not approve of.
So it was clear Augusta was protective of her boys
and really didn't want them to leave the nest. She
wanted kids, and who wanted to keep her.

Speaker 1 (11:00):
Boys enmeshment syndrome.

Speaker 2 (11:04):
Yeah soon. Now it said that at age twelve, Augusta
caught ed pleasuring himself in the bathtub. Now he was
roundly punished by Augusta and was told his genitals were
the curse of man. Now that's another one of those
apocryphal tales. But seeing what we know about Augusta, it

(11:26):
seems like something that's plausible. That really repressed his sexuality
kind of at a point where he was coming of
age to say, hey, your genitals are disgusting and you
shouldn't pleasure yourself and you shouldn't even think about pleasuring women.

Speaker 1 (11:46):
Didn't she want a girl too? Like she was like
weirdly obsessed with making him a girl. Is this true?

Speaker 2 (11:51):
Do you know you know what, I haven't heard that,
so that might be one of those other apocryphal tales.

Speaker 1 (11:57):
But you know, that's what I heard, that she used
to dress him as a girl because she wanted a
girl so bad. And I don't know if this is true. Guys,
this is just like you know, in the.

Speaker 2 (12:10):
There's a lot of researcher out there on Ed. I
haven't stumbled upon that, but you know what, I won't
be surprised.

Speaker 1 (12:15):
I can look into it though, Yeah, wild I just think,
you know, if that was going on, it will explain
a lot for the.

Speaker 2 (12:22):
Future, and it would make sense. You know, she has
Henry her boy, and then she'd probably want a girl,
so it's plausible. Well, at age fourteenth, Ed graduated eighth
grade and his schooling was finished. You know, although Ed
received no secondary education, he was an avid reader. And

(12:42):
we'll circle back on that on a bit. Now. One
of the myths that kind of comes up her own
geen was that he was kind of an idiot, that
he was low IQ. Now, I think he was tested
when he tested for the army, and he had about
average IQ. I think if we had to guess, his
emotional quotient was definitely through the floor. So I think that,

(13:07):
you know, how we kind of quantify IQ intelligence quotients
compared to emotional quotient, how you really interact with your world.
I think he was average at that but definitely with
emotional and social awareness very low, and that I think
caused a lot of problems. So Ed he's twenty one,

(13:31):
and Henry's twenty six, and Augusta made them promise to
stay chased. Didn't want them carousing with other women, didn't
like the other women that they were around, or any
other girls. So he said, Henry and Ed, you guys
need to stay virgins for the rest of your time.

(13:51):
And you can imagine how repressive that would be sexually.
First we hear about the story in the bathtub, and
now we hear about this when Ed is twenty one one.
Where you know, most people at this time in the
early nineteen hundreds, they're already well settled with families. They
only go to school till they're thirteen. You know, maybe
mom and dad saw them off a piece of land,

(14:12):
maybe helped them build a house. You know, they're already
settled in, you know, having a family. But at twenty
one and twenty six, it is highly unusual for two
young men to be single, and you know a lot
of times when men are of that age and they
are not settling down, there's a lot of trouble and
kind of get into that in a little bit here.

Speaker 1 (14:32):
Yeah, yeah, it seems really old for the twenty six
year old for sure.

Speaker 2 (14:35):
Definitely. So during as childhood she repeatedly poisoned the boys
on the thoughts of women. Now, Geeton's father, although physically present,
he was beleaguered in being down man. As we talked
about early. The mental anguish that he suffered from Augusta,
coupled with his alcoholism, made him little more than an

(14:56):
absentee father. So he wasn't really a good role model
for for the boys either. And then seeing how Augusta
treated George, they might have not wanted a wife of
their own because they didn't necessarily want to have a
wife like that. Maybe they could tolerate it as their mother,
but you know, why would they want to repeat that cycle? Well,

(15:19):
nineteen fourteen rolls around and Ed Geen was thirty four
at the time, and he lost his father, George Geen.
Now I've heard that he died of pneumonia, and then
I've also read that he had congestive heart failure. I'm
not a healthcare professional, but I think those two and
two can kind of go together.

Speaker 1 (15:40):
So if he's an alcoholic, yeah, he's probably got something
called parisees of the throw. They get these horrible problems
in their throat and it does cause pneumonia.

Speaker 2 (15:52):
So yeah, yeah, So George gen he is gone in
nineteen forty four, I'm sorry, nineteen forty at age sixty six,
and now it's just Augusta, Henry and Ed on their
desolate farm. Nineteen forty two rolls around, war breaks out
and the draft is called. Now Ed he is thirty

(16:14):
six at the time of the war, but he is
still eligible for the draft, and he is not the
oldest son on the farm, so he can't lodge that
act the agricultural exemption. Now I think Henry may have
been able to so Ed he goes down to Milwaukee
for his combat fitness assessment, but that pesky growth on

(16:37):
his eyelid seems to spare him from the draft. They
said he had inadequate vision to serve, so he was
deemed unfit for service. So that was kind of a
saving grace from him going into either the European or
the Pacific theater. Now, by the time Ed was thirty eight,

(16:58):
his brother Henry began openly criticizing his mother. Ed, being
very close with mother, took this as a great offense.
Now there's a scene in the in the Gaen mini
series where they show Ed strike Henry over the head

(17:19):
with a log and then drag his body. Well, some
sort of event transpired. We're not sure exactly what it
was and how it was depicted in the series may
be accurate, it may be a little bit of reach.
But any which way, Ed and Henry they were out

(17:40):
in the fields and they were doing some fire mitigation,
doing some controlled burns. A lot of times you'll see
it in the prairie lands where they will burn off
some of the dead dead wood or the prairie grass
to make sure that if there is a wildfire, it
won't spread to the woodlands, you know, setting the whole
property ablaze. So anyways, they were out in the field,

(18:01):
they were doing a control bird and it sounds like
the fire got out of hand and Ed lost Henry
amongst the smoke. Well, when the authorities arrived, Ed led
the responders directly to Henry's lifeless body. Now, Henry's body
was untouched by flames. There was, however, bruising on Henry's head,

(18:24):
and the County Corner listed the death as asphyxiation from
the inhalation of smoke. Now, they dismissed that bruising or
the bump on Henry's head to maybe he hit it
while collapsing from the smoke inhalation. And the bottom line
is they didn't believe that foul play was involved since
they didn't believe that ed this kind of soft spoken guy,

(18:47):
was capable of killing somebody, especially his brother, so that
was kind of completely dismissed. They kind of went over
that in the series, and I think they gave a
fair representation of that. So ed Gean manchild, mama's boy,
socially awkward, all things that would best describe him, but

(19:10):
a killer for the authorities anyway, that was a stretch.
So did Edgean kill Henry Gan? We can't be certain,
but the events that unfolded afterward make the circumstances of
Henry's death open to speculation, So I don't think we'll
ever know, But it's really hard to completely brush that

(19:34):
off as no, he had no hand in it, but
circumstantially it's very possible. Well, it's now late in nineteen
forty four, Augusta, she is just grieving the loss of
her firstborn. She lost her husband less than four years earlier.
I mean, there was probably some mixed feelings on that. Well,

(19:55):
she suffer as a stroke and some say it was
from the stress of the loss, but it can also
just be chalked up to poor health and age. Now,
remember we talked about Gaen not being well educated but
an avid reader. Well, Augusta, after Henry's death, she became
concerned about Ed's reading habits. Now, amongst his library were

(20:19):
stories on human anatomy, pulp magazines, and adventure magazines. The
pulps told fantastical stories about people fighting savage tribes in
far flung, far flung jungles, headhunters, cannibalism, and barbaric practices
like the crafting of shrunken heads. So he's in Wisconsin,

(20:42):
he loses his dad, he loses his brother. He starts
diving into all of these pulp magazines. At this time,
the war is ending, and he gravitates to one particular figure.
Her name is Ilsa Cook, and she is nicknamed the
Bitch of Buchenwald or the she Wolf of the SS. Now,

(21:07):
I've shown this poster here. This is an actual poster
from a nineteen seventy five movie called Ilsa, She Wolf
of the SS. When you look at it, it almost
looks like it would be a prop in like a
Tarantino film. But this was an actual movie that was
released in nineteen seventy five. And Ilsa Cook. She's portrayed

(21:29):
as this kind of sexy she Nazi dominatrix and it's
kind of a weird, kind of fetish kink thing. But
the person that this was based on, Ilsa Cook, was
a real person and somebody who ed kind of fantasized
about and Ilsa. She was the one of the commanders,

(21:53):
along with her husband Karl, of the Buchenwald concentration camp
in Germany. In One prominent story is that Cook fashioned
a lampshade out of human skin. Now, she worked with
doctors at the camp to remove skin from bodies that
had tattoos on them. If she didn't want any old
human skin lampshade, she wanted prominent tattoos displayed on those

(22:17):
lamp shades. I macab Martha Stewart's If you would.

Speaker 1 (22:23):
Yikes.

Speaker 2 (22:24):
Yeah, So these stories of cook savage headhunters, shrunken heads,
and action adventures really stuck with Ed. Now, remember Geen,
he's a sad momus boy from central Wisconsin. His biggest
adventure was a trip to Milwaukee for his draft assessment.
He really had no knowledge of the outside world and
he led a sheltered existence. Now it's easy for him

(22:46):
to slip into delusions and fantasies about places and cultures
he's never been to and hasn't witnessed in a lot
of the stuff in the pulp magazines that he'd been
reading were highly fictionalized, kind of fantasy accounts of the
outer world. Now couple that with the unhealthy relationship with
his mother, clear mental illness, and you have a recipe

(23:10):
for disaster. Now you have Henry gone, ed and Augusta.
They're left to look after the farm. You know, it's
Ed and Augusta against the world. And then one day
around Christmas, Ed and Augusta they need some straws to
bed some of the animals that they have living at
the farm. So they go over to this neighbors and
his name was Smith. Now Augusta and ed Theys witnessed

(23:35):
Smith beating a helpless dog to death. This is also
depicted in the Gaen miniseries, and there is a woman
inside of Smith's resident that yelled out for Smith to stop,
to stop beating that helpless dog. Now, Augusta, she was
thrown into a fit of rage not over the beating

(23:57):
of that dog, but because Smith was living in sin
unwed with a woman that wasn't his bride. So he
referred to this woman as Smith Harlot. So it really
shows you the psychology of Augusta to not take exception

(24:18):
to this man being like unbelievably cruel to an innocent animal,
but rather his sexual proclivities to shacking up with an
unmarried woman. So within a week of that incident, Augusta
she suffers another stroke. Now it speculated the strength of
the Smith's situation was the catalyst. And then Augusta died

(24:41):
on December twenty ninth, nineteen forty five, nineteen forty five,
at the age of sixty seven. So this is within
a week of the Smith incident. Now this really twisted
ed because even more since he thought maybe Smith shacking
up with this woman was what led mother to having

(25:05):
an additional stroke and her eventual demise, so it really
stuck with him, and then he had to deal with
the pretty much the loss of his entire world in
five years. His father, his brother, and now his mother
all gone by the end of nineteen forty five. Now,
Geen biographer Harold Scheckter, he stated that Geen lost his

(25:28):
only friend in one true love and he was absolutely
alone in the world. So now you have Ed Geen
on a remote farm. He kind of pals around with
some of the neighbors. He goes into town and and
talks to people, but he doesn't really have anybody that
he really connects with. In August or Augusta. She wasn't

(25:51):
the best influence on Ed, but she was definitely like
the celestial body that Keene gravitated around. He's a middle
aged bachelor. He didn't have much of a social life.
He occasionally went roller skinning, and I talked about that
family legend of roller skating, so that might lend some
credence to that. That is actually depicted in the Gaen

(26:14):
documentary and a scene and we could talk about the
quote unquote girlfriend in a bit here.

Speaker 1 (26:20):
Yes, the girlfriend forty years of a sexual friendship. Sure, sure, yeah, exactly, Yeah, no,
I'm not buying that.

Speaker 2 (26:29):
Yeah, I think they both had similar curiosities, but any
romance there. I know there was an article that came
out after Ed was arrested that Ed proposed to her
in her not feeling like she could live up to
ed Gen's standards or expectation, which in hindsight just seems

(26:52):
ridiculous seeing how ed Gean life kind of unraveled and
the absolute filth and school that he lived in to
not being able to live up to those standards just
seems ridiculous. And I know they they chose like a
cute paramour actress in the in the series, but yeah,

(27:14):
she wasn't too desirable in real life. But one thing
that I found.

Speaker 1 (27:23):
Of fifty, she was like fifty.

Speaker 2 (27:25):
I think I think she was Adelaide Watkins. I think
she was probably about fifty when when Ed was nabbed.
So I found it funny that people trusted their children
with Ed. He was often called on to be a
babysitters for families in the community, and he enjoyed the

(27:45):
company of children because he found them easier to relate to.
Now there aren't any real accusations of Ed being untoured
to children, So I don't think there was that element.
I just think he was kind of simple in the
emotional maturity that he was able to relate to children

(28:07):
better than adults. And it just seems kind of weird
that you would leave your kid with Ed Keane. But
a lot of people did it and apparently nothing happened.

Speaker 1 (28:16):
So yeah, they did it again, so the kids must
have had fun. I did look that up that it
was true, and I thought, oh my gosh. But in
the series they got him scaring the crap out of
the kids and showing him dead bodies like none of that.

Speaker 2 (28:30):
Oh man, Yeah, I missed that part. There is maybe
something that's inspired on that I'll get to in a minute.
But after mother died, he didn't have much semblance of
a social life, only those, you know, brief interactions with
other community members, but he really didn't have any like
enduring friendships that he would be able to confide in

(28:51):
like he would with Augusta. So within a year of
Augusta's passing, Ed began having strange visions auditory hallutions nations,
especially of Augusta. He began to visit the cemetery where
Augusta was buried, and he sat vigil at her grave side.
Now he thought maybe he could pray her back to

(29:12):
life like Lazarus in the Bible, you know, John John
eleven thirty eight. Now it's often speculated that he dug
up his mother. Now it's never been confirmed that he
actually dug up his mother, but there were.

Speaker 1 (29:27):
She had an internment. She luckily not because she was
afraid that he would dig her up. It just happened
to be that she had a cement internment. And so really, yep,
they could. He couldn't for summ reason, you know, because
he couldn't get past the seen.

Speaker 2 (29:44):
And so it's interesting.

Speaker 1 (29:45):
Because there's behind that.

Speaker 2 (29:47):
Yeah, there's a story of the filmmaker Errol Morris, documentarian
and Werner Herzog also documentary, you know, kind of a
an ar tour Jack of all trade's actor director, documentarian
that Errol Morris. He moved to Plainfield to learn about
Gaen and he lived with one of his neighbors, and

(30:10):
Errol Morris always wondered he noticed that there was a
kind of a rough circle around Augusta's gravesite, and he wondered,
had he.

Speaker 1 (30:20):
Said he had tried. Yeah, multiple times that he literally
dug like this was not okay. That guy saw that
because it was not for lack of trying to digger.
He just couldn't get through this event.

Speaker 2 (30:36):
Like, Okay, you have to send me that. Yeah, I'll
have to verify that. But yeah, that's that's interesting because
Errol Morris and Werner Herzog they talked about actually doing it,
and Verner was on a shoot in Alaska and they
were supposed to meet in Plainfield on September tenth of
it was in the late seventies and start digging the grave. Well,

(31:00):
he drove and he made it to Plainfield. But guess what,
Errol Morris, he was still in LA. He wouldn't do it. Now.
Errol Morris, he has a connection to Wisconsin and Madison.
He grew up in LA But he did do his
I believe his graduate program at the University of Madison,
and then he lived in Plainfield for a little bit.

(31:20):
And then he also was able to get interviews with
Ed Green. Now he was working on an ed Green project,
but he never finished it and never got published. So
I wonder now, if with all of the buzz around Green,
if he'll dust that stuff off and I actually put
it put it on. He totally should. Yeah, But Erner Herzog,

(31:42):
he actually pissed picked Plainfield as a filming location for
one of his earlier films, Strazik, which kind of depicted
a bleak countryside, which was well fitting for Plainfield. So
they both had connection. Berner shows up at Augusta Gaines's grave,

(32:03):
Errol Morris chicken out, and apparently the two were not
on speaking terms after that for quite a while because
Errol Mortris did not show up. So I'll have to
look into the internment thing. If you can send me that,
I'd love to read it.

Speaker 1 (32:18):
And I just never Yeah, I just have an AI verification,
so it's not like legitim Yeah, I.

Speaker 2 (32:25):
Wonder where yeah, with the with the sources, because I've
always heard that they wanted to verify that. But yeah,
I guess put another pin in that. So so Ed, Yeah,
he's he's completely broken. He's in shambles. He thinks, maybe,
you know, if he prays hard enough, maybe he can
bring Augusta back and and starts frequenting local cemeteries. But

(32:51):
at first he left without leaving any offense. Well, we're
not exactly sure when, but ed of course he began
digging up these freshly buried coffins, which he scouted from
local obituaries or when he visited the three cemeteries that
he visited, he dug up fresh graves. Although depicted in

(33:14):
pop culture, he did not crave sexual satisfaction from the corpses.
And that was one thing after he got arrested that
they really tried to pin them on and say, you know,
do you get pleasure from this sexually? And he kind
of kept changing the subject. I think he almost found
it like offensive, like, yeah, I won't do that, And
in one of the interviews he said, not really because

(33:34):
they stink, you know. So I think he was kind
of off put. I think he had other kind of
a twisted fascination in mind, and it wasn't necessarily sexual satisfaction.
So instead, ed Gean he created a woman suit so
that he could inhabit his mother's visage to literally crawl

(33:56):
into her skin. So it wasn't necessarily for that satisfaction.
Maybe you know, this was a path to some kind
of commune or resurrection with his lost mother. So nineteen
fifty nine, a few years after Augusta's death, there were

(34:16):
two hunters that disappeared in Plainfield, a guy by the
name of Victor Travis and Ray Burgess. Now a search
was conducted which only turned up one of the hunter's jackets.
I believe that was Travis's jacket and his hunting dog
in the woods near Keen's property. The two men, they

(34:37):
have now been found. They've never been found to this
day in Heights. In hindsight, some speculate they may have
crossed Keen and he added them to the arts and
crafts section of his shit. Now that's unsubstantiated. I know.
I found this news article that's posted here, and this
says that the links to the woodsmen, which would refer

(35:01):
to Victor Travis, that his disappearance was due to hoodlums,
specifically Ray Burgess, who was from Chicago. They thought maybe
he was associated with some kind of mob related activity.
He came into a bar and displayed a lot of money,
and he think that he thinks that maybe he had

(35:23):
something to do with the disappearance of Travis. So it's
long been speculated that, oh, yeah, they were hunting near
Keene's property, maybe they crossed onto Ganes's property. Shot a
deer and then Gan dispatched him. It's kind of unfounded,
but something to at least speculate weird, weird miss weird

(35:44):
disappearances around the Green property. But to this day, yeah,
neither of them have found so they can't really substantiate
that one way or the other. Now, remember there was
the speculation of the demise of Henry. We talked about
the two Hunters missing. Well, nineteen fifty three, there was

(36:06):
a babysitter, Evelyn Hartley, that went missing in Gane's birthplace, Lacrosse, Wisconsin.
Now it was speculated to be a victim of Green,
but at that time it was probably like, like I said,
like a three and a half four hour drive from
Plainfield ter Lacrosse. You know today you can hop on

(36:26):
the interstate and cut across and get there in about
two hours. But it's a bit of a stretch to
think ed this lonely guy would venture out that far
to nab a babysitter when it really didn't fit his emo.
The one thing I found kind of synchromistically about this

(36:49):
is the day that she went missing was October twenty fourth,
nineteen fifty three. What's the day today?

Speaker 1 (36:56):
Heidi Oh wow, that's so.

Speaker 2 (37:01):
Yeah, it's kind of a little.

Speaker 1 (37:03):
Like braces and stuff like the in the show they
portrayed her as like having foot from polio.

Speaker 2 (37:11):
I guess, drum oh leg braces. I thought you meant
braces on her teeth.

Speaker 1 (37:16):
Yeah, like something about her being in the hospital and
then she got out.

Speaker 2 (37:19):
And yeah, I don't know, I don't know.

Speaker 1 (37:22):
Yeah, they could have made that up, Like I.

Speaker 2 (37:24):
Said, Yeah, I think Ryan Murphy likes to add on
little details like that just to interage the story. I mean,
it may have been true, but I from my research,
I haven't read specifically about that's just a you know,
fifteen year old girl left alone and she goes missing.

Speaker 1 (37:41):
Creepy.

Speaker 2 (37:43):
So nineteen fifty four rolls around ed he gets his
first confirmed kill, at least one that he confesses to.
It's in a little town of Bancroft. It's not too
far from Plainfield. It's still a smell town today, and
there's this place called the Pine Grove Taver Pinegrove Tavern.
I was able to find a picture of it, and

(38:04):
it looks like your quintessential Wisconsin hole in the wall
dive bar. It's definitely a place I would want to
go and have a beer and kind of check out
the locals. But it looks a little rundown in this picture.
And this was the place where ed Gen did his

(38:25):
first killing. It's not there anymore, but ed was known
to stop by this place every once in a while.
He wasn't an avid drinker, I know, George Gen alcoholic.
I think ed you know, on the insistence of Augusta,
really stayed away from booze, but he was known to
have the occasional beer, and you know, it was a
way for him to socialize with the bartender. And the

(38:47):
bartender in this instance was a full figured lad lady.
Her name was Mary Hogan. Now she's a German immigrant.
She's similar stock to Augusta, and she looked a lot
like Augusta. Now, the one thing that kind of deviated
was that Augusta was very proper in her lifestyle, where

(39:13):
Mary she was foul mouthed, She owned a bar, and
she may have even been a madam on the side,
bringing in women from other communities for a little extra
revenue for her and the ladies over the night. So
it seems like there may have been a disagreement between

(39:35):
Hogan and Keen and Hogan or and then Keen shot her.
Now it's said to happen on a slow night on
a Thursday in December, and the next day people arrive
at the tavern and they find us stray thirty two
caliber cartridge on the floor. The cash box had been

(39:59):
rifled through. The investigators couldn't really verify how much money
was in there before, they just see that there's some
money missing. And then the investigators found blood spots on
the floor. And then after further investigation, they found evidence
of dragging out the door, and then the snow out
the door was disturbed and more blood was near where

(40:22):
evidently her body was loaded into the car. Well, they
looked and they really couldn't find her, and they really
didn't know after that what happened to Mary Hogan. And
like I said before, Bancroft today very small town, very
remote community, and I can only imagine what it was
like in the late forties.

Speaker 1 (40:43):
So in the fifties, right, they're all out on the
farm too, that's true anyone.

Speaker 2 (40:50):
Yeah, So it's very remote. You know, if Gean took it,
there probably won't be anybody around to see. It's not
like downtown Plainfield. It's out in the stick. So it
said that the day after Gen killed Hogan, he admitted
to a work acquaintance acquaintance to somebody who was working
with a guy by the name of Elmo Yuke, that

(41:10):
he killed Hogan. Well, Elmo heard this and he just
dismissed Ed and thought it was just a fanciful tale
from Ed. Kind of a strange guy. It's like, he's
not really capable of that. I'm sure that's not what happened.
It's just been reading too much pulp comics. But it
seems like that this was a true admission and Ed
wanted to get it off his chest. Now here's the

(41:32):
thing about Ed. He was reclusive. If he was mild mannered,
he may have given people the creeps because of his
lack of social awareness and some of his interests. Now,
like I said earlier, he was of average IQ, but
really didn't have the social intelligence to go with it.
So nobody suspected that Geen was capable of any of this,

(41:52):
just from outward appearances and kind of his small stature.
So at the time Plainfield and the surrounding area it
was predominantly Christian, it was agrarian communities, and nobody really
can seem conceive of crimes of grave robbery, body snatching, dismemberment,

(42:13):
and much less murder. So the fun projects that Ed
had cooking up in his summer kitchen were just beyond
the imagination of the West Chera County locals. So from
nineteen fifty four to nineteen fifty seven were not really
sure what Ed's day to day or night to night
activities look like. Where they're more graves robbed and body snatched. Now,

(42:37):
the one thing about Ed is that he often exhumed
fresh graves to procure his material, and then he'd recovered
the grave, and he always was mindful to make it
look like they weren't disturbed. Now they're fresh burial, fresh
burials in remote cemeteries, so visitors they might not suspect

(43:00):
any disturbance because they might not see and they might
just think, oh, yeah, that's just a fresh grave. So
Ed was able to get away with quite a few
of them, and they're not really sure how many. Well,
it all kind of comes to a boiling point. On
November sixteenth, nineteen fifty seven, Ed he stops at the
local hardware store in Plainfield. The building still survives to

(43:25):
this day, but it is just a storage facility now Gean.
He has a friendly chat with Bernice Warden and her son,
Deputy Frank Warden. Now it's the eve of gun deer
hunting season, and Ed asked Frank's if he plans to
go out hunting the following day. Now, that seems like
a pretty innocuous conversation that you would find anywhere in

(43:48):
central Wisconsin and deer hunting. Oh yeah, you plan out
to go out tomorrow? Oh yeah, I'll be out there
at five in the morning. But there may have been
a nefarious motive for Ed asking that question, because that
following day, Deputy Sheriff Frank Worden enters his family store
where he makes a grim discovery. The cash register was

(44:11):
open and there was blood spider on the wall and
blood covered the floor. Warden's mother, Bernice, the proprietor of
the establishment. She was missing. Now Worden. The first thing
he did he was he checked the transaction journal and
noticed that the last transhot transaction was recorded for anti freeze.

(44:33):
In Scrawled on that receipt was the name and Geen.
So they immediately had a suspect on the missing women.
And this was the first or the second one to
disappear in only about four years time. So Worden goes
to the sheriff to report what he's discovered. In that
man hunt for Geen is on. They catch up with

(44:55):
Geen at a neighbor's house and they corner him when
he eventually can where he eventually confesses to the crime.
In fact, during the questioning the sheriff at the time,
Arch Schlay reportedly assaulted Gaen by banging his head and
face into a brick wall. As a result, Geen's initial
confession was ruled inadmissible because they believe it was coerced

(45:18):
or they got it from torture, so Shlay. He ends
up dying of heart failure in nineteen sixty eight. He's
only forty three years old, and they said that Schlay
was traumatized by the horror of Geen's crime, along with
the fear of having to testify against Geen, especially after

(45:38):
assaulting him. So sadly, Sheriff Schlay, he didn't make it
to see Ed be put away forever. He dies sadly
at forty three from heart failure.

Speaker 1 (45:51):
And he really did find his mother.

Speaker 2 (45:54):
I don't know if that Yeah, I'm going to get you.
I'm going to get into that yet, right.

Speaker 1 (45:58):
I'm not going to ruin it. But it's sad, no
wonder he died, is what I'm saying.

Speaker 2 (46:03):
Yeah, So the horrors that man must have faced, you know,
first going into Warden's hardware, finding his mother gone something
very similar that happened just years earlier, in nineteen fifty four,
three years earlier. And then to see that the same
thing happened to his mother must have just completely shocked him.

(46:24):
So the Sheriff's department dispatched the game property where they
enter through the shed where they discover Miss Warden's body.
It's split open in like a field dressed animal, disembold
and headless. Now you think it's the opening day of
gun season. There are many properties across Wisconsin that have

(46:45):
a deer hanging in a similar manner to this, you know,
strung up and spread open. You know, maybe not headless,
but you know, Gean, it's almost like he's like cospling
deer hunting, which is seeing in the manner that she
died from a bullet wound. Now, this is when the

(47:06):
sheriffs enter gains what he calls the summer kitchen, which
is kind of a detached kitchen, and they discover Gain's
house of horror. So it wasn't enough to find the victim,
miss warden strung up, and then they have to go
into his house and just see his cabinet of curiosities
for the lack of a better term. So they find

(47:29):
ed was living in just absolute filth and squalor, and
found amongst the refuse were bulls made from human skulls
that was very notable prop in the gen series, human
skulls mounted on bedpost, a belt made of human nipples
that was also covered human, several chairs covered in human skin,

(47:53):
mass made from skin and female heads, a lampshade like
we talked about ilsa cook made from human skin, and
other items of just extreme grotesquerye So really just a
house of horrors now despite the abject squalor of his
mean living quarters, Augusta's bedroom and her living area, they

(48:17):
were boarded off and preserved like they were like a
museum or a monument to the deceased. So he was
living in just absolutely trash. If you look at the
slides here of with the crime scene investigators discovered and documented.
But then you go to the Augusta's wing of the house,
and it's well preserved, the upstairs and all of her quarters.

(48:43):
Now you asked about this earlier, about edgean kind of
showing the local kids some gross stuff. Well, a sixteen
year old who would attend baseball games and movies with
him and his family reported that Geen kept shrunken heads
in his house. He had described and he had described
these as relics sent by a cousin who had served

(49:03):
in the Philippines during World War Two, which kind of
harkens back to those pulp magazines that Ed loved so much.
Oh yeah, I got these from my cousin in the Philippines. Now,
upon investigation by police, these were determined to be real
human facial skin, carefully carefully peeled from corpses and used
by Geen as masks kind of in the illustration here,

(49:28):
so real. Just, I couldn't even imagine a sixteen year
old seeing that, you know, being able to follow it
away as oh, those are just shrunken heads, but then
probably learning after the fact that they were actually you know,
plainfield residents faces. Just, I don't think that kid would
ever be the same.

Speaker 1 (49:47):
Have you seen some of the pictures of that lady
strung up and stuff.

Speaker 2 (49:52):
You know what, I haven't I really haven't came looking
for them, to be honest. But I've read.

Speaker 1 (49:58):
The I was reading a book. Yeah, I was reading
a book about this and they were in there and
I was not prepared.

Speaker 2 (50:06):
Was that the Scheckter book?

Speaker 1 (50:08):
I think so? And it was so I was like,
oh my gosh, and they are out there.

Speaker 2 (50:14):
I mean, yeah, if you look far like stuff like
that just I'm just revolted by So I don't really
have the stomach for that. So reading the descriptions was like,
that's enough. I don't need to put a picture with it.

Speaker 1 (50:27):
But for the man that saw that with his own especially.

Speaker 2 (50:32):
His mother, yeah, I just don't know how you'd ever
recover from that. And obviously he did because he died,
you know, yeah, a stress related ailments by the time
he was forty three, which just makes sense.

Speaker 1 (50:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (50:48):
So in the end, Gene admitted to making at least
forty nocturnal visits to three local graveyards to procure material
for his project. Now, he mentioned that he was in
eight days like state. Of course, that begs the question
was he simply in a some kind of psychosis fuche
state or was he under the direction of an other

(51:12):
worldly force? And I know on the Unfiltered Rise we
like to kind of dabble into that. Was there something
more driving ed than just mental illness?

Speaker 1 (51:22):
Makes you wonder. It really makes you wonder where he
was alone and also where he's out you know, necromancy,
whether he I know he didn't well, I don't know
what he says. He didn't do anything weird, but even
just digging people up and the things he took from them,
which I don't know if you're going to talk about
even that, but like there's a level of like why

(51:45):
would you do that?

Speaker 2 (51:46):
Then you know, like what was he serving by doing this?
And that really makes you question. And then reading all
of the graphic accounts in all of these pulp magazines
and different publications that he came across, did he ever
dabble into anything else? Did he ever let something enter

(52:08):
that he couldn't get rid of this?

Speaker 1 (52:12):
And he wanted to be his mother so like that, yes.

Speaker 2 (52:16):
Under he kind of wanted it. Yes, he either wanted
to like reincarnate her or become her or somehow raise
her from the dead. It was a really just a
bizarre psychology that I don't think any anybody who is
of sound psychological mind can really reason a way. So

(52:38):
you really have to wonder was it just a you know,
simple psychosis or was there was there something more there.
Now I'll just give a quick rundown of the rest
of Gane's life after his incarceration, so we can, you know,
kind of have kind of a free and open chat
about the other topics. So November twenty first, nineteen fifty seven,

(52:59):
ed was arranged on one account of firstree murder that
was for Worden. He pleaded not guilty by the reason
of insanity. He was diagnosed with schizophrenia and found mentally incompetent,
thus unfit for trial, so Geen he was sent to
the Central State Hospital for the criminally Insane in Wapaon, Wisconsin.

(53:20):
But then in nineteen sixty eight, Geen was determined to
be mentally able to confer with counsel and participate in
his defense, so this is actually going to be his trial.
The trial was held without jury at the defense's request,
and Judge Robert H. Goldmar presided over the trial. Golmer,

(53:42):
of course, found him guilty. A second trial dealt with
Geen's sanity, and after testimony by doctors for the prosecution
and the defense, Golmar ruled Geen not guilty by reason
of insanity and ordered him committed back to that Sine hospital.
So they essentially found him guilty but too insane to

(54:07):
actually institutionalize in a normal jail, so he ends up
going to a mental institute. And then nineteen seventy four
it files a petition that he had fully recovered from
his insanity, so of course that motion was denied. He
actually was insane enough to think that, oh I recovered

(54:28):
from my insanity and maybe maybe they let me go.

Speaker 1 (54:31):
Yeah, I gotta get out now I've done that time.

Speaker 2 (54:34):
Obviously, that did not happen. Sokean's property and possessions they
were actually auctioned off just months after he was arrested. Well,
they had planned to, and rumors world that the site
would be kind of a tourist attraction, that somebody wanted

(54:55):
to make it into some kind of Macobre haunted house.
And in about ten days before that auction, the house
mysterio mysteriously caught fire and was completely destroyed. Now they
were doing like a trash burning not too far from
the main farmhouse, and apparently some of the coals somehow

(55:19):
ignited the house. Although it was determined that there was
no like like the fire, it didn't spread through the
grass or the brush to the main structures. So Arson
was the likely suspect for that, in considering what was
being planned with the property or the plain field locals

(55:41):
not wanting to attract this attention. I think somebody definitely,
probably on the orders of the sheriff, probably ignited it
and burned it down.

Speaker 1 (55:51):
And as for him, yeah, for him, just because of
the heartachre.

Speaker 2 (55:56):
Yeah for word and probably yeah, I think it was.
It was likely one of the locals or the sheriff
that said we got a towards that thing or where
we can't live with this, but one of.

Speaker 1 (56:08):
Have just been condemned anyway, should have been condemned, it.

Speaker 2 (56:12):
Was, yeah, But yeah, somebody just wanted as a tourist
attraction at that time. And his car affords a dan
which was used to haul the bodies of victims. It
was sold at auction. Now a carnival sideshow operator purchased it,
and he even attempted to show it at local affairs,

(56:33):
but oftentimes he was shut down by the local authorities
because they didn't want that attention at their fair. They
didn't think that was appropriate. So there's still posters out
there about Edgen's death car. I know Cult of Weird
they did an interesting article on ed Gens death car,
but that car pretty much up and vanished and nobody

(56:54):
knows where it is today. I'm sure there are several
collectors that would like to get that in their collection,
but as far as we know, it may be in
a private collection. Maybe may have been destroyed because he
could make money off of it, so he might have
just sold it for what he could get for it.
It's it's really hard to tell. But there are several
items that kind of have have made the claim to

(57:17):
being from ed Gaines farm. I know there's a knife
set that's rumored to be out there. There's also Zach
Beggin's Haunted Museum in Las Vegas apparently has a one
of the cauldrons that was found on his farm property.
But it's a cauldron or like a big like almost
like a big kettle, So how do you really claim

(57:38):
the provenance of that, But he has it displayed there
at his museum that it was you know, Edgan's cauldron
that apparently he used to boil off the skin and
flesh from bones. Why somebody'd want that in their museum,
I'm not sure. I'm not in that state of mind,
so I can't tell. But I don't want anything to

(57:58):
do with that. So Gean he dies at the Mendota
Mental Health Institute from the effects of lung cancer on
July twenty six, nineteen eighty four. He lived into my lifetime,
and he was nineteen. He was seventy seven at the
time in nineteen eighty four. Now, the funny thing is
is I grew up about fifteen minutes from the Keen property,

(58:22):
about fifteen miles as the Crow flies where he died
at Mendota Mental Health. That's only three miles from where
I'm sitting right now. So I actually had visited the
property because I'm just kind of a fascination out. You know, Mendota,
We've we've heard about it for years. This is where
at Gean lived out the majority of his last days

(58:44):
and died. And when I was on the property, I
dis covered that there is a huge complex of Indian mounds.
So it was kind of kind of serendipity for me.
Because I was looking for one thing and I found
something else. And I've been fascinated with with mounds ever
since I moved to the Madison area. So seeing that
and seeing that they have one of the best preserved

(59:07):
Indian mounds sites in the Madison area right there on it,
which is kind of peculiar that that's on the same
property that they keep the insane people, I.

Speaker 1 (59:18):
Think still do they still keep people there?

Speaker 2 (59:21):
Yeah, it's an active place.

Speaker 1 (59:23):
Wow, that's wild. Oh my gosh. Okay, that's a long
time ago. That's shocking.

Speaker 2 (59:31):
Now we're talking about Gaen Yeah. Wa, you know, anyway,
where where was I?

Speaker 1 (59:39):
Okay? So I said wow, because I was shocked that
the the mental institution is still there. And usually with
those old, older ones, they have to renovate them so
much that they don't, you know, continue.

Speaker 2 (59:55):
So there was a state hospital on site for years
and it's still there. It's boarded up, but there is
the main facility and it's kind of a campus. So
I'm not sure like how many buildings that ed Gen
was in are still there because they keep pretty you know,

(01:00:18):
private records of that obviously, and I haven't heard, like,
you know what, I'll go to local like paranormal speakers,
and you know ed Gen will come up, and especially
in Madison, you know, people will come up after after
the the paranormal speaker and say, oh, yeah, I was
at Mendota and I met ed all the time. You know,

(01:00:41):
he was the model patient. He was such a nice guy.
And there's a story about a psychology professor that was
doing like her residency at Mendota. And I believe she
is like a professor in Milwonkee now and she had
been like an intern there or or a resident, and

(01:01:02):
she went to one of the social functions and this
kindly old man asked her to dance. And then after
she was done dancing, somebody said, do you know you
just dance with that's ed It kind of got wwillies.
So it seems like everybody who has been you know,
works at Mendota. Madison's like a huge healthcare place, so

(01:01:24):
there's a lot of people that have worked at Mendota.
They'll have a story or two about ed Gen. And
it seems like he, you know, after he was he
was nabbed, he was just you know, a very docile individual.
I think Augusta really beat any kind of sense of
rebellion odd of him. So you know, I think he

(01:01:46):
just accepted but this is where I'm going to live
out the rest of my life.

Speaker 1 (01:01:49):
And and meds, right, like maybe they figured out his meds.
But honestly, what if it was just that house, you.

Speaker 2 (01:01:57):
Know, well, it could be the house, it could be
the prob it could be yeah, the ghost of Augusta.
Who knows?

Speaker 1 (01:02:05):
It makes you wonder because he got out of there.
And I mean, let's not misinterpret the importance of other
people too, because I mean, honestly, like if you were
in the middle of nowhere, right, this is why people
got cabin fever. Yeah, I mean I get it, like
he's not got the money to go to town every
day or you know, so, yeah, I get it. He

(01:02:27):
needed a dog, I don't know.

Speaker 2 (01:02:30):
Yeah, he needed a friend, Gane really needed a friend,
so Gean. He died nineteen eighty four, seventy seven. He
was interned between his parents and his brother and the
headstone has since been removed to it being stolen and
it has been recovered. I think it was stolen like
two thousand and recovered in two thousand and one, and

(01:02:51):
it was like the head or did they get it
the show. Well somebody, well, so I.

Speaker 1 (01:03:00):
Know they were vandalizing it, but I think it's funny
that they returned it.

Speaker 2 (01:03:05):
So if no, they didn't return it, they had to
actually go get it. So just a brief story, there
was a a like the head of the Ed Green
fan club. Apparently somehow it came into his possession. I
don't think he's the actual one that stole it. It's
not that big. It's you know the size of a

(01:03:27):
small a normal small sat. Yeah, flat, and you can
see you can see Henry and Augustas and Georgia's here.
They were all pretty much the same size. So anyway,
somebody stole it. It somehow got into this guy's possession
out in Seattle, and somebody posted a picture a circa

(01:03:50):
two thousand and that police. I don't know how that worked,
if they be high or who, because it would have
been an interstate from Wisconsin all the way out to
Seattle and they somehow recovered it. So so we don't
know exactly where it is today. There's several parties that

(01:04:11):
you know, have several people that say this person has
it in their office, or this person has it in
their basement, or it's in the washera county courthouse basement
or the washeria Sheriff's department. I wouldn't want that long
term storage, but uh it is. It is in good
hands apparently, but they really don't want anybody to know.

(01:04:34):
And if you find pictures of the green gravestone online,
you'll see that there's a bunch of chips in it,
and you'll see Augusta's kind of has the chip out
of the corner there. Well, people were coming to Edgen's
gravestone and they were, you know, either coming with a
hammer or a chisel or both and kind of taking
a little piece of Edkeen with them. And then if

(01:04:55):
you look there is not so much in this picture,
but some other pictures that I have posted in the past,
there's a pretty big indentation in between the graves where
people will come out with like a little vial or
test tube and they will take a little scoop of
dirt off of Edgen's gravestone and put it into a

(01:05:18):
vial as like a kind of macomb souvenir. Yeah, so
it's really crazy to think how much attention and influence
this guy has had because of his ghoulish activities. His
house of Horrors, and you know, just kind of his
personality have just been a well spring of inspiration. You know,
Geen he directly inspired Norman Bates, although Robert Block, the

(01:05:43):
author of that book, says, you know, he's kind of
a composite character. He's not based on one real person.
You know, maybe some of the events surrounding the ed
Gean situation kind of informed Norm Bates, but it's pretty
clear that Norman Bates was really based on ed Green.
You know, maybe he took some creative liberties between Norm,

(01:06:06):
but it seems definitely that Norman Bates Edkean pretty interchangeable
as far as a fictionalized version, and a Buffalo Bill
from Silence of the Lambs kind of has the skin
suit stuff, and he makes him more of this kind
of transsexual character, which I don't really think ed Geen was.

(01:06:28):
I think he really wanted to inhabit the skin of
his dead mother, not necessarily change his gender or become
the opposite sex or become a lady. I think in
the Confessions they tried to get him to admit that,
and he really wasn't having any part of it. I

(01:06:48):
could because I just think that was not something that
he really thought about, as well as the chainsaw wielding
dead skin mask wearing leather face of Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
So all of those characters were kind of inspired by
the activities of Geen. And not to mention the countless

(01:07:12):
edge Lord metal bands that have had songs about Geen
odes to ed Geen, anything based by him. Dead skin
Mask was one of the songs that directly references him.
It's just crazy how this guy has been so influential
in pop culture. Just an old man doing some very

(01:07:37):
bizarre shit in the wild Wisconsin has really really, you know,
it inspired a whole new genre. Psycho was the first
slasher movie, so there was no real slashers, and that
was very low budget. Hollywood didn't want Elfred Hitchcock to
really make it, so he took his TV crew and
they filmed it in black and white, and could you

(01:07:59):
imagine that shot in color? I just don't think it
would have had the same effect. So just being just
a touch point for culture, you know, ed Gean, It's
it's crazy how much influence he's had.

Speaker 1 (01:08:15):
Yeah, yeah, and I want to believe him, like okay,
and like you didn't want to do naughty things or whatever.
But then the storage of the Volvos and the the painting,
I just am like, wait then, why is it always
the privatey? You know, it makes you kind of go
back and forth, like part of you is like, ah,

(01:08:36):
he's just an awkward weirdo, and then the other part
of you is like, what were you really doing?

Speaker 2 (01:08:41):
Yeah? And we'll never know, you know, because a lot
of the you know, a lot of the time that
they spent in confession with Ed, he really didn't give
up a lot of details, you know, leading the witness,
the person interrogating him, whether it was a psychologist or
law enforcement, you know, he just kind of like went
along or maybe something like that, or maybe maybe this

(01:09:02):
maybe that you know, he just not really couldn't pin
him down on really his bizarre psychology. You know. That's
really is where I want to see Errol Morris and
see his stockpile.

Speaker 1 (01:09:16):
So I guess what, shut up. I looked it up
while you were chatting, and he says he lost it. No,
he did, he says. I don't know if that is
true or he just doesn't want the limelight. Like part
of me thinks that if he didn't publish it, and
this whole thing about the mom and like trying to

(01:09:37):
dig her up or whatever, like all of this weird
stuff and then he lost he lost it. And I'm like,
he also did say on there on the tapes that
ed never tried to dig up as he said, he
never got to his mom. He never got to her.
He tried, but he never.

Speaker 2 (01:09:53):
Oh, okay, per that guy.

Speaker 1 (01:09:57):
But like there's no proof, so is he protecting It
almost makes me think that he's protecting him because there's
no effing way you lost it, sir.

Speaker 2 (01:10:08):
Yeah, And obviously as a film director, he knows that
the tapes and all of the the production material that
goes with a documentary, especially something at the scale of
ed Gean, is invaluable for him to quote unquote lose it. Yeah,

(01:10:28):
I don't know, come on, hold on on us, buddy.

Speaker 1 (01:10:31):
He must feel bad for him, or he saw some
shit that was really evil, like either that or he's
like he gave it up. He gave up, like, yeah,
there was some weird shit happening to me and I
was inhabited or whatever, and maybe the dude doesn't want
to do that. You know, who knows it's crazy.

Speaker 2 (01:10:49):
So yeah, the the ed Gean influence and just the
black hole that surrounds him is is just endless.

Speaker 1 (01:10:57):
The psycho thing that you talked about to the moon.
They did show it in the Monster Show, and they
showed people like throwing up, and I mean, it wasn't
that bad. But I guess if you'd never seen it, right,
you've never seen it.

Speaker 2 (01:11:11):
And you got to think how big of a turning
point in culture that movie was because.

Speaker 1 (01:11:16):
Maybe people have a baby like a lady had her
baby fature.

Speaker 2 (01:11:21):
I want to know. I want to know how much
of that was true. Because I looked it up.

Speaker 1 (01:11:25):
That was true, and the throwing up and heart attacks
and ambulances. I did a full research on that one.
That one was true more than ai. I looked it up,
but I was like, there's no way. And then but
then you think about it, like because for me being
a mental health nurse, I was like, really, like, okay,

(01:11:46):
these are people butchering pigs, Like we don't do that,
but like we're okay watching a horror movie, but we're not. Okay,
probably most of us gutting things or whatever. I mean,
I grew up in with a family that did. But
if you didn't, you know, you never saw that once
in your life, you'd probably be shook. But these people
have done that and it's vice versa. How funny is that?

Speaker 2 (01:12:08):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's a that's a strange twist on it.
And like, just like you said, like I grew up
in CenTra, Wisconsin, I grew up a deer hunter. So
even you know, being thirteen year old and having to
thirteen years old, you know, taking your first kill shop
on a deer and then having to you know, drag
it out and field dress. You know, it was it
was shocking. You know, that was just a way of

(01:12:30):
life for people back in the day. And apparently a
dean was a rouse bi by pigs being slaughtered for
some reason.

Speaker 1 (01:12:38):
But the deer hanging thing got me because my dad
was my stepdad was an avid hunter and we always
had deer out in the garage.

Speaker 2 (01:12:48):
Like you said, you know, yeah, I did too. And
I can remember my friend who was a little more
of a bleeding heart. He didn't grow up in a
deer hunting family, so if we had a deer hanging
in our garage, he did not want to come anywhere
near that.

Speaker 1 (01:13:06):
I always made my dad put stuff on the head.
I didn't like seeing the head, but the body was whatever.

Speaker 2 (01:13:12):
Yeah, and you know it's I guess it's just a
way of life, especially you know, growing up in a
deer hunting community. But for them to be that reviled
by a slasher movie.

Speaker 1 (01:13:27):
They didn't show that much in that show, remember, like
I don't think I mean it was more suspensive.

Speaker 2 (01:13:33):
Yeah, yeah, but.

Speaker 1 (01:13:35):
I thought, oh my gosh, really this is weird. But
it did really ruin the actor's life too.

Speaker 2 (01:13:41):
It showed, Yeah, they showed that that kind of the
exposition in the second episode where they really honed in
on I'm drawing blank. Anthony Perkins, the actor that played
Norman Beats and kind of his secret homosexual love life
and how the playing Norman Baits really kind of affected him.

(01:14:05):
But he also reprised the role in two of the spinoffs. Two.
And the funny thing is that his son, Oswald Perkins,
is a director and he did that Long Legs movie
with Nicholas Cage. Have you seen that yet?

Speaker 1 (01:14:25):
Yes?

Speaker 2 (01:14:26):
Yes, that is creepy. So that's Anthony Perkins son who
produced that that movie. And amongst a couple other horror
movies that I know, there's The The I Am, The
Little I Am, The pretty little thing. There's a Netflix
series that he did, and then there was one other
one that just came out before Long Legs. That's a

(01:14:48):
very very talented movie director. And to think that, yeah
he was. He was Anthony Perkins son in Norman Bates
and Psycho and having kind of growing up in his.

Speaker 1 (01:14:59):
Shadow man, that would be. And the guy said it
kind of typecast him. You know, he just couldn't get
a regular job after that, and he was going through
all the conversion therapy type stuff and you know, they
well he should have gone to BYU. They electrocuted people
for that there. In fact, yeah, current prophet of the
LDS Church right now, Dollan h Oaks was in charge

(01:15:22):
of electrocuting the BYU people and torturing them to try
and convert them. Yeah, that's a real story, guys, I know,
I know, because they're just so weird they can't keep
their hands out of the weird shit. I'm like, gosh,
and you know, gotta mention it. But yeah, this kind
of stuff was really prevalent back then, which is to

(01:15:43):
us like thinking cal like, we're going to electrocute people
to convert them or whatever they were doing to that guy, like,
that's just bananas. You know, I can't imagine. But I
don't even think he was really gay. I don't think
he was gay either. I don't. I think he was
just so confused.

Speaker 2 (01:16:01):
Well said that that he every every time that he
laid with a man, that he would vomit afterwards. So
it just seems kind of kind of weird, like what
was was there some kind of fascination that trauma. Yeah,
that's something there, and you know, it's it's unfortunate. But

(01:16:23):
if you want to hear more on the Grizzly Tale
of Ed Geen, my co host and I did a
two hour breakdown for our podcast, the Wisconsin Legends podcast,
you can find that wherever podcasts are served. You know,
we we'll probably published that as the first episode of
our Wisconsin Legends podcast. We did. We did about two

(01:16:46):
and a half seasons, and we thought about picking it up,
but we've both been so busy. But we tried to
get real evergreen content, like the entire the Ed Gaenlaw,
the Dammer Law. There was a series of murders that
happened in Madison where we both live in the nineteen seventies,
and you know, a lot of them have gone unsolved

(01:17:07):
to this day. So we kind of dive into some
of the deeper topics in Wisconsin. So if you want
to check out that, check check that out on Wisconsin
Legends podcast feed, check me out at Patriline Legends on
Instagram and Facebook.

Speaker 1 (01:17:23):
Awesome, Well, I'm going to make sure this gets out
before this will be our Halloween episode, all right, they
will be excited to go check this out. I think
I think that will be fun. And even if you
guys can't do your podcasts together, maybe you guys could
do separate research podcasting and put them together or something.

Speaker 2 (01:17:42):
Yeah. So I think if you listen to the podcast,
we go into quite a quite a few different kind
of tangents, whether it's the lore behind Green or some
of the psychological analysis of Gaen or some of their
religious implications. You're like really to dive deep into it.
So I think if you're fascinated on this topic, if

(01:18:03):
you you know, are more interested because of the Netflix series,
or you know the Netflix series like me and a
lot of people left a bad taste in your mouth,
it might be a good refresher to listen to this.
And then I know you're probably familiar with this guy,
Dan Cummins Time Suck. He did ed Geen episode a
few years back that was was really good as.

Speaker 1 (01:18:25):
Well, And just for people that watched the show, I
do want to put out there. No, he didn't help
catch Ted Bundy. He never met Ted Bundy. He says
he never slept with any dead people. You know, there's
a lot of baloney in this show. So you guys
have got to go do you know, like we always say,
go do your research. Yeah, I don't think did he

(01:18:48):
have a body part boiling on the pot when they
went in?

Speaker 2 (01:18:52):
I don't think so.

Speaker 1 (01:18:54):
I don't think he did. I can't remember, but I.

Speaker 2 (01:18:56):
Mean there was enough horrors that that wouldn't just be
a little ghost to have that.

Speaker 1 (01:19:02):
Yeah, it was a lot because he was.

Speaker 2 (01:19:04):
At a neighbor's house or for dinner, So I doubt
he had something actively cooking on the stove. Yeah, there was.
There was enough atrocities happening in that kitchen that they
didn't need to have that detail.

Speaker 1 (01:19:18):
Yeah, no kidding and let alone. The girlfriend thing is
really interesting, like I don't know if she was mentally
did you do you know if she really was mentally
ill as well?

Speaker 2 (01:19:29):
Her song I don't know if there was ever any determination.
I know she came out saying that right after he
was nabbed about how you know, like, oh yeah, Ed
Gane proposed me, but not so much. I mean sounds
kind of crazy just in that saying that, you know,
I dated Ed Green and he proposed to me, but
he really didn't propose to me. But then there was
another article that ran, you know, a couple of weeks later,

(01:19:51):
and I think, you know, somebody got there and said,
you really need to recant this, where she kind of said,
you know, I just kind of made that up.

Speaker 1 (01:19:58):
So can you imagine? And somebody's like, are do you
ever want to get married in your lifetime? Like, oh
my gosh, what's wrong with you? I don't think she
did if I remember, I.

Speaker 2 (01:20:08):
Don't think so. Yeah, I'll have to look to see.
I'm sure after the there's gonna be so many breakdowns
after that that series that say you know, what really happened?
So I'm sure somebody will do the deep dive. It's
trustworthy because yeah, like like you with the the Augusta
Gane thing, there's so much AI slop out there that

(01:20:29):
you know, it's just hard to know what actually happened.
The the judge that presided over the Game case, he
wrote a book on it, and Edward gean America's America's
most Bizarre murderer. So he actually presided over the Green
trial and wrote a pretty substantial book. There was another

(01:20:51):
guy named Scott Bowser who's a local guy who did
you know, kind of a deep dive into the Green book.
And then there's the Harold Scheckter book as well.

Speaker 1 (01:21:02):
That one I think is the spooky one. If you
guys read some of these, be prepared.

Speaker 2 (01:21:07):
And I think that one came out in two thousands,
So yeah, they're not for the faint of heart, but
it's interesting if you're interested. I know you work in
in psychology, so fast normal psychic abnormal psychiatry. Psychiatry, psychology
is your jam.

Speaker 1 (01:21:26):
Yeah right, yeah, exactly. And and for you moms that
have little children, love your boys, but do not enmesh
with them, because every time we see enmeshment, it's a
bad day. Yeah. They don't learn, they don't learn how
to do normal things. Like Howard Hughes's mother was enmeshed
really badly. He goes crazy later this one, you know,

(01:21:49):
Ted Bundy's mom was pretty in mesh, there's there's a
lot of weird stuff. Well his grandma, his grandma mom.
You know, that's a whole other thing. But anyways, yeah,
don't do that. So, yeah, don't tell them they can't
have sex and touch themselves whatever, like be careful, you know, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:22:09):
Really you never know what your kid is going to
say on a psychologist couch, you know, fifteen years from now.
So think about the words that you say to your kids.
I know it's tough for me. Some dumb but.

Speaker 1 (01:22:22):
Yeah, being a hard ass is one thing, but yeah,
I think it's where you I've actually read a lot
of things on this and this isn't to say go
be overboard, okay, because I was abused so that's not okay.
But I'm just saying the ones that they say had
no rules and or too much lovey dovey stuff, weird stuff,

(01:22:42):
sleeping in the same bed when they're older, those are
the people that have the worst outcomes and not the
hard asses. Like usually they have some complaints in they're
like you were kind of a jerk, you know, like whatever,
But the kids that actually have like serious psychological stuff
a lot of times is this weird no rule, no
consequences type kids. And you say, buddy, yeah, yeah, you

(01:23:04):
see it with the menandas brothers. You see it with
a lot of things, you know. And granted there may
or may not have been abuse there. I don't know,
I don't know whatever. Anyway, fascinating stuff. I loved it.
Love the presentation. I can't wait. You know, listen, I'm
gonna listen to this one. I didn't see this one,
so I'll have to go listen. I'm gonna listen myself.

(01:23:27):
All right, you guys check him out. And he also
did a show with me if you want to hear
about the beaver King, the King of.

Speaker 2 (01:23:35):
The King, King of Island, the Mormon and it and
the beaver k definitely prodigious with his prowess as as
any good Mormon man, right.

Speaker 1 (01:23:47):
And the manned woman dressed up wife is my family.
Oh and I didn't even know until Jeff came on
and we were playing.

Speaker 2 (01:23:56):
But the funniest part is it was as you suspect it.
And I'll leave it at that because we want people
to go listen to that one. It was wasn't it
wasn't what you suspected, and.

Speaker 1 (01:24:08):
It wasn't my pioneer Mormon family. We'll say that too.
So you guys gotta go check that out because I
think my actual awe and shock is visible.

Speaker 2 (01:24:21):
I love your parallel research in real time and you're like, oh, okay,
it's not right. Oh yeah, that's fun.

Speaker 1 (01:24:28):
I was shocked. So yeah, this is great. And he
also on his ig and stuff, he does a lot
of posts that are really cool, you know, with Wisconsin,
he's always posting really cool historical stuff. So we check
it out. Yeah, thanks Heney, thank you so much for
coming on. I appreciate it. This is going to be
a great one for them for Halloween, so I also you,
thanks so much.

Speaker 2 (01:24:49):
Bye until next time.