"THE BUTCHER OF PLAINFIELD: Inside Ed Gein's House of Horrors" (Part 1 of 2)

Reid Carter begins a two-part weekend special on Ed Gein, timed with Netflix's Monster series. November 16, 1957: Sheriff Art Schley enters Ed Gein's Wisconsin farmhouse looking for missing hardware store owner Bernice Worden and finds her headless body hanging from the ceiling. Then the inventory begins: lampshades made of human skin, skulls turned into bowls, furniture upholstered in human flesh, a "woman suit" made from real women. Reid covers the murders of Bernice Worden and Mary Hogan, the dozens of graves Ed robbed, and his confession delivered with chilling calm. Part one of the story that inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw Massacre, and Silence of the Lambs.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
Calarogus Shark Media. Good morning, I'm Reed Carter. Saturday, November sixteenth,
nineteen fifty seven, Sheriff Art Schlay and Captain Lloyd's Schoforster
push open the door to ed Gen's farmhouse outside Plainfield, Wisconsin.
They're looking for Bernice Warden, the fifty eight year old
hardware store owner who disappeared that morning. The last receipt

(00:25):
in her store has ed Geen's name on it. There's
a trail of blood leading out the back door. The
farmhouse is dark, cluttered, smells of death and decay. Shlay
moves through the kitchen toward a summer kitchen in the back.
He lights a match. Hanging from the ceiling, suspended by ropes.
At the ankles is a headless human body, gutted, dressed

(00:47):
like a deer carcass. It's Bernice Warden. That's when Schlay
starts looking around, really looking, and what he finds over
the next several hours will haunt him for the rest
of his life, will haunt everyone who enters that farmhouse
will change American horror forever. Lamp shades made from human skin,
wastebaskets made from human skin, chair seats upholstered in human skin,

(01:12):
bowls made from the tops of human skulls. A shoe
box containing nine volvas, leggings made from human leg skin,
a corset made from a female torso, four noses, whole
human bones, a pair of lips on a window shade drawstring,
ten female heads with the tops sawed off, a hanging
human head, masks made from the faces of real women,

(01:36):
a mammary vest made from female breasts, and a full
woman suit, an entire body suit fashioned from real human
skin that someone could wear to become a woman. This
isn't fiction. This isn't a Netflix horror series. This is
what police found in ed Geen's farmhouse on November sixteenth,
nineteen fifty seven, and we're about to tell you how

(01:57):
it got there. I'm Reed Carter. Netflix just released Monster,
the ed Geen Story. Before you watch the Hollywood version,
hear the real story. This is part one of Celebrity Trials.
The Butcher of Plainfield November sixteenth, nineteen fifty seven. Plainfield, Wisconsin,

(02:19):
population six hundred and forty two. The kind of small
town where everyone knows everyone, where crime means kids tipping
over mailboxes, where the biggest excitement is Friday night football
and the Saturday hardware store run. Bernice Warden owns Worden
Hardware and Implements store on Main Street. She's fifty eight
years old, widowed. Her son Frank is the Deputy Sheriff

(02:39):
of Waushara County. She's respected, hard working, reliable. Opens the
store every morning at eight sharp Saturday morning. Her son Frank,
stops by the store around eight thirty. His mother isn't there.
The store is open, but nobody's behind the counter. Frank
finds the cash register open, finds blood on the floor,
Finds a trail of bloe blood leading out the back

(03:01):
door to where his mother usually parks. He finds the
last receipt written in the sales book for anti freeze,
a half gallon of anti freeze sold on credit. The
name on the receipt ed Geen. Frank Worden knows ed Geen.
Everyone in Plainfield knows ed Geen. Quiet bachelor farmer who

(03:22):
lives alone on the Old Green property about seven miles
outside town. Does odd jobs for people, baby sits occasionally harmless,
odd maybe keeps to himself, but harmless except now Frank's
mother is missing. There's blood on the floor, and ed
Geen's name is the last thing written in her sales book.
Frank calls Sheriff Art Schlee. They drive to Geen's farm.

(03:46):
The house is dark, seemingly empty, but there's a pickup
truck parked outside, fresh tire tracks. They decide to wait
for a search warrant rather than enter immediately. While they wait,
they canvass the neighborhood, ask around about ed Geen, and
they start hearing stories, odd stories, Ed talking about how
he could get women's bodies anytime he wanted, Ed talking

(04:09):
about the anatomy of women in disturbing detail, Ed making
unsettling jokes about death and bodies. Still, he's ed Geen,
weird Ed who does odd jobs and babysits kids. He
might know something about Bernice's disappearance. But he's not a suspect,
not really, not yet. By late afternoon they have the warrant.

(04:30):
Schlay and Captain Schofforster approach the farmhouse. It's a decrepit
two story building hasn't been maintained in years, boards, loose windows,
broken paint peeling. The property looks abandoned, even though Ed
lives there. They enter through the front door. The interior matches,
the exterior trash everywhere, old newspapers, stacked floor to ceiling, clutter, filth, decay.

(04:57):
The only room that looks maintained is Ed's bedroom and
a small kitchen area where he apparently eats. They move
through the house room by room. Everything is covered in
dust and grime, piles of junk, random objects. The place
feels more like a hoarder's nest than a home. Then

(05:17):
Schlay enters the summer kitchen, a small addition off the
back of the house that stays cooler in warm weather.
It's darker here. He lights a match. That's when he
sees the body hanging from the ceiling, suspended by ropes
tied around the ankles, headless, gutted from sternam to pelvis,
completely eviscerated. The torso has been split open and all

(05:40):
internal organs removed. It's been dressed out like a deer carcass,
like something you'd see hanging in a slaughterhouse. Shlay staggers back.
He's seen bodies before. He's a sheriff in rural Wisconsin.
He's seen farm accidents, car crashes, hunting incidents. But this
is different. This is deliberate methodical, surgical. He forces himself

(06:02):
to look closer. The body is female, the head has
been cut off cleanly, the hands are bound. This isn't
a hunting accident. This is murder and butchery. Schlay runs
outside and vomits. Then he calls for backup, every available officer,
the state police, anyone, because if ed Geen did this

(06:23):
to Bernice Warden, what else is in that house? The
answer is everything, everything you could possibly imagine if you
were designing a house of horrors, and things you couldn't
imagine because they're too depraved for normal human minds to conceive.
The inventory takes hours, it takes days, It takes weeks

(06:43):
before they've cataloged everything found in Edgen's farmhouse, and with
each new discovery, the horror deepens because this isn't just
about Bernice Warden. This is about dozens of victims, dozens
of women who ended up as household items in ed
Geen's collection. Once police realize what they're looking at in

(07:06):
ed Gen's farmhouse, they start documenting everything, photographing everything, cataloging
every single item, because this isn't just a murder scene.
This is evidence of crimes beyond comprehension. Let me walk
you through what they found and understand. These aren't props
from a horror movie. These are real human remains turned

(07:27):
into functional household objects by a man who lived alone
on a Wisconsin farm. In the kitchen they find four
chairs with seats upholstered in human skin. Not covering, not decoration.
The actual seat material is human skin that's been tanned
and treated and used as upholstery. Someone sat in these chairs,
ed sat in these chairs, maybe offered them to guess

(07:47):
when people visited. They find a waste basket made from
human skin. A functional waste basket, something you'd throw trash into,
made from a real woman's skin. They find lamp shades,
multiple lamp shades made from carefully removed and preserved human skin.
Someone turned on these lamps red by the light they cast.

(08:08):
The skin is thin enough to let light through, thick
enough to be structurally sound. In the bedroom they find
bowls made from the tops of human skulls. The skulls
have been sawed in half horizontally, the top portion removed,
the inside cleaned out. The result is a bowl shaped
object made from the upper half of a human skull.

(08:31):
These bowls contained random items, nails, rubber bands, everyday odds
and ends. Ed used them as storage containers. They find
a shoebox. Inside are nine volvas preserved in newspaper, just
sitting in a shoebox like someone else might store photographs
or mementos. Nine women's genitalia, carefully removed and saved. They

(08:53):
find a heart, a human heart, sitting in a saucepan
on the stove, like Ed was planning to cook it
for dinner, or maybe he already had, nobody knows. They
find a refrigerator in the summer kitchen, near where Bernice's
body was Hanging Inside the refrigerator is a human head,
carefully preserved, the face intact. But here's where it gets

(09:15):
even worse. They find masks, multiple masks made from real
human faces, not replicas, not rubber Halloween masks, actual preserved
human faces that have been carefully removed from skulls and
treated to maintain their appearance. You could hold these masks
up to your own face. You could wear them, and
based on the evidence, Ed did wear them. They find

(09:38):
what investigators initially describe as a mammary vest, a vest
made from a female torso with breasts attached. The entire
chest and breast area of a woman removed, preserved, and
fashioned into a wearable item. They find leggings made from
human leg skin, complete leg skins that have been removed,

(09:59):
treated and could be worn. They find whole human bones, femurs, skulls, ribs,
some cleaned and displayed, others just lying around like furniture parts.
They find ten female heads with the tops sawed off.
Ten women's heads kept as souvenirs with the skull caps removed,
Some mounted on bedposts, others sitting on shelves. They find

(10:19):
four noses in a cup, just four human noses stored
in a cup like spare buttons. They find a pair
of human lips hanging as a decoration on a window
shade pull actual lips, dried and preserved, used as home decor.
They find a drum made from human skin stretched over
a can, a functional drum, an instrument made from a person.

(10:40):
And then they find the woman's suit. This is what
haunts investigators most. It's a complete body suit made from
the skins of real women, the torso, arms and legs
of multiple women, pieced together to create something someone could wear,
could put on, could become a woman by wearing the
skin of dead women. Scattered throughout the house are organs

(11:01):
in various states of preservation, internal organs that ed apparently
kept because he found them interesting or useful. Hearts, livers, intestines,
all stored like someone else might store tools or crafts supplies.
The Wisconsin State Crime Lab later determines that ed Gen's
farmhouse contains remains from at least fifteen different women, fifteen

(11:25):
not including Bernice Warden, whose body was still hanging when
police arrived. Think about that number. Fifteen women whose bodies
were turned into household items. Fifteen women who ended up
as furniture and decorations and masks and suits in ed
Geen's house. But here's what makes this even more disturbing.
Ed Geen didn't just kill these women. That would be

(11:46):
horrible enough. Most of these women ed dug up from
their graves. The grave robbing started years before Bernice Warden's murder, started,
years before anyone even suspected Quiet ed Geen of anything
worse than being awed. He would read obituaries in the
local newspaper, find middle aged women who'd recently been buried,

(12:08):
wait for a quiet night, go to the cemetery with
a shovel and dig them up. Sometimes he took the
whole body, sometimes just the head, sometimes just specific parts
he wanted for whatever project he had in mind. He
was selective, methodical, patient. This wasn't impulsive grave robbing. This
was a systematic operation spanning years. Police eventually connect ed

(12:31):
to at least forty grave robberies. Forty over the course
of about twelve years, ed Gen dug up at least
forty graves in three different cemeteries around Plainfield, all women,
all middle aged, all matching a specific physical description. When
they excavate some of the graves Ed mentioned, they find
empty caskets or caskets with only the lower half of

(12:53):
the body remaining. Ed preferred taking the parts from the
torso up more useful for his purposes. The night watchman
at one cemetery remembers seeing a dark figure near fresh
graves multiple times over the years, but never investigated because
he assumed it was grieving family members. It was Ed

(13:14):
with a shovel robbing graves while the watchman unknowingly stood
guard and ed did all of this while maintaining his
reputation as harmless. Odd Ed the guy who babysat your kids.
The guy who did odd jobs for seventy five cents
an hour, the guy who helped farmers with butchering because
he was good with a knife. That guy that was

(13:35):
ed Geen, and he was spending his evenings robbing graves
and his weekends turning corpses into furniture. But ed Geen
didn't just rob graves. He murdered at least two women,
maybe more. Definitely two Bernice Warden, whose body was hanging
in his summer kitchen when police arrived, and Mary Hogan,
whose disappearance three years earlier suddenly makes terrible sense back

(14:00):
with more in a moment. December eighth, nineteen fifty four,
three years before Bernice Warden's murder, Plainfield, Wisconsin. Mary Hogan
owns a tavern about five miles from ed Geen's farm.
She's fifty one years old, divorced, runs the tavern by

(14:24):
herself most evenings. It's a small operation, local farmers, regulars,
people from town stopping by for a drink. Late afternoon,
December eighth, a customer enters the tavern. The place is empty.
There's blood on the floor, a lot of blood, a
blood trail leading out the back door, shellcasings from a
point three to two caliber rifle. Mary Hogan is gone.

(14:46):
Police investigate, no body, no witnesses, no suspects, just blood
and shellcasings and a missing woman. The case goes cold.
Mary Hogan becomes another unsolved disappearance in arl, Wisconsin. Maybe
she ran away, maybe she had enemies, Maybe it was
a robbery gone wrong, nobody knows. Fast forward to November sixteenth,

(15:10):
nineteen fifty seven. Police are searching ed Gen's farmhouse. They've
already found Bernice Warden's body, already started cataloging the horrors.
Then they find a mask, a mask made from a
human face. But this face is different from the others.
This face has been carefully preserved with particular attention to detail.

(15:32):
The skin tone is different, darker tanned from sun exposure.
The features are distinct, recognizable. One of the investigators recognizes
those features, the prominent nose, the shape of the face.
He'd seen this face before at Mary Hogan's tavern. This
is Mary Hogan's face, carefully removed, preserved, and kept by

(15:54):
ed Gean as a mask. They keep searching. They find
mary Hogan's head in the refrigerator. The same refrigerator, where
Ed stored other body parts like someone else stores leftovers. Suddenly,
Mary Hogan's disappearance makes sense. She didn't run away, She
didn't have enemies who killed her. Ed Geen walked into
her tavern on December eighth, nineteen fifty four, shot her

(16:17):
with his point three to two caliber rifle, dragged her
body out the back door, drove her to his farm,
and over the following weeks, dismembered her and incorporated her
remains into his collection. Mary Hogan became a mask, became
a head in the refrigerator, became part of the inventory
that police discovered three years later. She disappeared on a

(16:38):
Tuesday evening in nineteen fifty four and wasn't found until
nineteen fifty seven, by which time she'd been reduced to
identifiable remains in a house of horrors. The investigation into
Mary Hogan's disappearance had focused on her estranged husband, her
ex boyfriends, customers who might have had grudges. Nobody looked
at quiet Ed Geen. Nobody suspected the bachelor farmer, whoccasionally

(17:00):
stopped by the tavern for a beer. He was just
ed harmless. Ed except Ed had seen Mary Hogan and
decided she fit his criteria. Middle aged, dark hair, sturdy build,
reminded him of someone, so he killed her, took her body,
and kept parts of her as trophies for three years
while investigators chased false leads and her family wondered what happened.

(17:22):
That's the thing about ed Geen that makes the story
even more chilling. He didn't just kill impulsively. He selected
victims based on specific criteria. Women who looked a certain way,
women who reminded him of someone, women he could incorporate
into his collection. Bernice Worden fit the criteria. Mary Hogan
fit the criteria. The women whose graves he robbed all

(17:43):
fit the criteria. There was a pattern, a type, a
specific esthetic ed was pursuing with his murders and his
grave robbing, and for years nobody noticed because ed Gean
was harmless. Ed Gean babysat children, ed Gean helped with
farm work. Ed Gan made joke and laughed and seemed
like just another lonely bachelor farmer trying to get by.

(18:05):
Mary Hogan's family didn't get closure for three years, didn't
know she was dead until police found her remains in
Ed's house. Didn't know she'd been murdered, dismembered, and turned
into a mask until November nineteen fifty seven. Bernice Warden's
son found his mother's body the same day she disappeared,
but he had to live with knowing what ed had
done to her, how she'd been butchered, how her body

(18:28):
had been dressed out like a deer carcass, how Ed
had methodically removed her head and internal organs with the
same skill he'd used helping farmers butcher livestock. Two women murdered,
at least forty graves robbed, fifteen different bodies identified in
the remains, and all of it happening in quiet Plainfield, Wisconsin,
where everyone knew ed Geen and nobody suspected a thing.

(18:54):
We'll be right back with ed Gen's confession and the
grave robbing operation that supplied his house of horrors. Ed

(19:15):
Geen didn't start with murder. He started with graves, and
he was patient about it. Nineteen forty seven, approximately two
years after his mother, Augusta died, ed is forty one
years old, living alone on the family farm. Isolated, grief stricken,
he starts reading obituaries in the Plainfield newspaper, looking for

(19:36):
middle aged women, looking for women who fit his criteria.
When he finds one, he waits, waits for the funeral,
waits for the burial, waits for a few days so
the grave is no longer watched. Then, on a quiet night,
he drives to the cemetery with a shovel Ed is
a farmer. He knows how to dig. He's strong, patient, methodical.

(19:58):
He excavates down to the casket. Usually takes him several
hours of steady digging. He works alone in the dark,
listening for anyone approaching, but cemeteries at two in the
morning are empty. Nobody's watching except the dead. He reaches
the casket, pries it open, looks at the body inside.

(20:18):
If it's too decomposed, he moves on. If it's relatively fresh,
He takes what he needs, sometimes the whole body, sometimes
just the head, sometimes specific parts. He's selective. Then he
fills in the grave, smooths over the dirt, makes it
look undisturbed. By morning, there's no sign anyone was there.

(20:39):
The family visiting the grave the next week has no idea.
The casket six feet below contains half what they buried.
Ed does this approximately forty times over twelve years, forty graves,
three different cemeteries. Never gets caught, never even gets suspected
until after they find Bernice Worden's body and he starts confessing.

(21:00):
Police eventually excavate several of the graves ed mentioned. They
find empty caskets, caskets with only the lower half of
the body remaining, Caskets that ed had carefully opened, robbed
and resealed without anyone noticing. Think about the families of
these women. Think about burying your mother, your wife, your sister,
visiting the grave bringing flowers, believing their resting peacefully, then

(21:25):
finding out years later that ed Geen dug them up
weeks after the funeral and turned them into lampshades. That's
the additional horror of ed Geen's crimes. He violated not
just the living, but the dead. Women who died natural deaths,
been buried by grieving families, should have been at rest. Instead,
they ended up as furniture in ed Geen's farmhouse. The

(21:48):
graves ed robbed all belonged to middle aged women. Most
were between forty five and sixty years old. Most had
died of natural causes heart attacks, cancer, age related illness,
Their deaths were normal, their burials were normal. What happened
after was anything but normal. Ed specifically targeted women who

(22:09):
resembled his mother. That's what the psychiatric evaluations would later reveal.
Every woman whose grave he robbed looked like Augusta Geine,
same age range, same build, same general appearance. Ed was
trying to resurrect his mother through the bodies of women
who reminded him of her. But grave robbing has limitations.

(22:29):
Bodies decompose. Preserved remains aren't the same as fresh bodies,
and Ed wanted fresh bodies. Wanted to work with material
that was pliable, usable, fresh enough to treat and preserve
and fashion into his creations. That's why he murdered Mary
Hogan in nineteen fifty four. That's why he murdered Bernice
Warden in nineteen fifty seven. Fresh bodies, women who fit

(22:53):
his criteria, women he could kill and butcher and add
to his collection without waiting for them to die natural
and be buried and be dug up after decomposition had started.
The grave robbing was practice was experimentation, was ED learning
what he could do with human remains. The murders were
the graduation. The moment Ed decided he didn't have to

(23:15):
wait for women to die and be buried. He could
create his own supply, and he did methodically, carefully, with
the same patience he'd shown digging up graves in the
middle of the night. Ed Geen didn't kill in rage,
didn't kill impulsively. He killed the way a craftsman approaches
a project, selected his materials, planned his work, executed with precision.

(23:40):
Mary Hogan disappeared and nobody suspected Ed. Three years later,
he walks into Bernice Warden's hardware store and does it again,
and probably would have kept doing it if Frank Warden
hadn't found that receipt with Ed's name on it. If
Ed had paid cash instead of credit, he might never
have been caught, might have killed again and again until

(24:02):
someone finally noticed the pattern. Ed Geen is arrested the
evening of November sixteenth, nineteen fifty seven, at a neighbor's
house where he'd been eating dinner. He's not home when
police first search his farm, because he's having dinner with
his neighbors, making pleasant conversation, acting completely normal while Bernice

(24:23):
Warden's body hangs gutted in his summer kitchen seven miles away.
Police bring him to the station. He's calm, cooperative, almost cheerful.
They start questioning him about Bernice Warden. Ed doesn't deny anything. Yes,
he was at the hardware store that morning. Yes, he
bought anti freeze on credit. Yes he shot Bernice Worden

(24:43):
with his point three to two caliber rifle. Yes, he
put her body in his pickup truck. Yes, he brought
her back to his farm. Yes, he hung her up
and dressed her out like a deer carcass. He explains
all of this matter of facty, like he's describing how
he fixed a fence or repaired attractor. No emotion, no remorse,
no apparent understanding that what he's describing is horrifying. It's

(25:05):
just what happened, just the facts. When investigators ask about
Mary Hogan, Ed confirms that too. Yes, he killed Mary
Hogan in December nineteen fifty four, walked into her tavern,
shot her, dragged her body out, brought her to his farm.
Same process as Bernice, same methodical approach. Two murders. Ed

(25:26):
confesses to both. Provides details that only the killer would know.
Case closed, except then investigators start asking about the other
remains in his house, the furniture made from human skin,
the masks made from faces, the bulls made from skulls.
Where did all of that come from? Ed explains about
the grave robbing. Says he started doing it a few

(25:47):
years after his mother died in nineteen forty five. Says
he wanted to have women around, wanted to study them,
wanted to understand female anatomy, so he robbed graves forty
graves over twelve years. He provides names, dates, cemetery, locations,
specific graves. He remembers. Some he can't remember exactly. Forty

(26:08):
graves over twelve years means some blur together, but he
remembers enough that investigators can verify his confession. They excavate graves,
find them empty or partially empty, find that Ed was
telling the truth about his systematic grave robbing operation. Then
comes the strange part. Ed claims he can't really remember
the murders. Says he was in a daze when he

(26:30):
killed Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden. Says it's like he
wasn't fully conscious, like someone else did it and he
watched from outside his body. Says the memories are fragmentary, unclear,
dream like, but he remembers the grave robbing perfectly, remembers
which graves he opened, remembers what he took, remembers how

(26:51):
he treated the remains and fashioned them into his creations,
crystal clear memories of twelve years of grave robbing, But
murders he claims happened in a daze. This becomes important
later during his competency evaluation. The psychiatric experts debate whether
Ed was legally insane at the time of the murders,

(27:11):
whether he understood right from wrong, whether the days he
describes as real dissociation or convenient amnesia. But in the
immediate aftermath of his confession, investigators are just trying to
understand the scope of what they're dealing with. Two murders,
forty grave robberies, at least fifteen different bodies remains in
the house. Items fashioned from human skin and bone covering

(27:35):
every surface. A woman's suit made from real women's skin
that Ed apparently wore to become a woman. Ed explains
that too, says he wanted to know what it felt
like to be female. Says he wanted to become his mother.
Says wearing the woman's suit and the face masks allowed
him to transform, allowed him to bring his mother back,

(27:56):
allowed him to be her. He describes this without embas harassment,
without shame, like he's explaining a hobby like making suits
from human skin is equivalent to woodworking or model building,
just something he did with his time. The interrogating officers
are experienced detectives. They've dealt with murders before, but nothing

(28:17):
prepared them for ed Gan sitting there, calmly explaining how
he turned corpses into furniture, how he selected which body
parts to use for which projects, how he treated and
preserved the skin to make it workable, how he fashioned
bones into utensils and organs into decorations. Ed is helpful, cooperative,
answers every question, provides details, even apologizes at one point,

(28:42):
not for the murders or the grave robbing, but for
the mess in his house. Says he knows it's cluttered,
Says he's been meaning to clean up. Says his mother
would be ashamed of how he let the place get
so disorganized. His mother. Everything comes back to his mother.
The grave robbing targeted women who looked like her. The

(29:02):
murders targeted women who reminded him of her. The woman's
suit was an attempt to become her. Augusta Gean has
been dead for twelve years, but she's still the most
important person in ed Gean's life. And tomorrow we'll tell
you about Augusta Geane, about how she raised Ed, about
how she controlled him, about how her death created the

(29:23):
void that Ed tried to fill with corpses and grave
robbing and murder. But for now understand this. On November sixteenth,
nineteen fifty seven, ed Geen confessed to crimes that shocked
rural Wisconsin and eventually shocked the world. Confessed calmly, clearly,
without apparent remorse or understanding of the horror he'd created.

(29:46):
Confessed while Sheriff Art Schley, who discovered Bernice Warden's body
hanging in Ed's summer kitchen, sat in another room, trying
not to vomit and wondering how he'd missed this, how
everyone in Plainfield had missed this, How harmless odd Ed
turned out to be one of the most depraved killers
in American history. That's part one of the Butcher of Plainfield.

(30:12):
The crimes, the discovery, the confession. Two women murdered, forty graves, robbed,
fifteen different bodies turned into household items, a farmhouse in
Wisconsin that contained horrors beyond comprehension. Tomorrow's Sunday we answer
the question everyone's asking, how how does a quiet bachelor
farmer become this? How does someone start robbing graves and

(30:34):
end up murdering women? How does ed Geen happen? The
answer involves Augusta Gean, Ed's mother, who dominated every aspect
of his life until her death in nineteen forty five,
who raised him in isolation, who taught him that women
were sinful and disgusting, who forbide him from having relationships
or friends, who created a void in Ed's life that

(30:55):
he spent twelve years trying to fill with the bodies
of women who looked like her. Tomorrow we cover the
psychology the trial that never really happened, because Ed was
found incompetent then insane, the decades Ed spent as a
model patient in a mental hospital, his death from cancer
in nineteen eighty four, his burial in an unmarked grave,

(31:17):
and most importantly, his legacy. Because Ed Geen inspired Norman
Bates in Psycho, inspired Leatherface in Texas, Chainsaw Massacre inspired
Buffalo Bill in silence of the Lambs. Ed Geen, the
quiet farmer from Plainfield, Wisconsin, became the template for the
modern cinematic serial killer. His crimes became entertainment, his victims

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became forgotten in the cultural fascination. With the Monster. Tomorrow,
we talk about why that matters, Why ed Geen shouldn't
be fascinating. Why the Netflix series you're about to watch
is built on the real horror that Bernice Worden and
Mary Hogan experienced. Why turning ed Gen into a character
means forgetting he was real, his victims were real, and

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his crimes weren't a movie. Before you watch Monster the
ed Gen Story on Netflix, you needed to hear the
real story. Today, you heard what ed did. Tomorrow you'll
hear why everyone thinks they understand him and why they're wrong.
I'm read Carter. Bernice Warden was fifty eight years old,
hardware store owner mother Frank Worden's mother. The last receipt

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she ever wrote was for a half gallon of anti
freeze sold on credit to ed Geen. That receipt saved
her from becoming another unsolved disappearance, but it didn't save
her life. Mary Hogan was fifty one years old, tavern
owner divorced, lived alone, worked alone, disappeared alone. Nobody found

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her for three years. By the time they did, she
was a mask in ed Gene's bedroom. That's how Mary
Hogan's story ended. Remember their names because tomorrow, when we
talk about the cultural legacy of ed Geen, when we
discussed them movies and shows and books he inspired, we
need to remember he wasn't entertainment. He was a man
who murdered two women and robbed forty graves and turned

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human remains into furniture. That's not a Netflix series. That's
what really happened in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in nineteen fifty seven.
See you tomorrow for part two. This is Celebrity Trials.