September 3, 2025 • 26 mins
🪑 The killer who inspired Psycho, Texas Chainsaw, and Silence of the Lambs—Ed Gein turned human skin into furniture. 🏠 Inside his isolated farmhouse: lampshades made of faces, belts from nipples, and his mother's preserved room. 🔍 Exclusive crime scene photos reveal his obsession with female body parts and mommy issues. 🌍 How this Wisconsin ghoul influenced horror culture worldwide. ⚰️ From grave robbing to murder—inside the mind of Hollywood's favorite monster. ⚠️ Warning: Contains extremely graphic details of corpse desecration. 😱
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🎙️ CONNECT WITH CRIMINAL EMPIRE:Follow us for exclusive content, breaking news, and behind-the-scenes access:
📱 Facebook: Mk-Ultra CAST
➡️ https://www.facebook.com/FREEBRENTCIRCLE🐦 X (Twitter): @MkUltracast
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Mondays & Thursdays @ 9PM EST⚠️ Got a case suggestion or feedback?
Hit us up on social media!Remember to rate, review, and share—help expose these criminal empires to the world.#CriminalEmpire #MafiaHistory #SerialKillers #TrueCrime #TrueCrimePodcast*All episodes contain graphic content. Listener discretion is strongly advised.
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:13):
On November seventeenth, nineteen fifty seven, police in Plainfield, Wisconsin,
arrived at the dilapidated farmhouse of Eddie Gean. He was
a suspect in the robbery of a local hardware store
and disappearance of the owner, Bernice Warden. Geen had been
the last customer at the hardware store and had been
seen loitering around the premises. Geen's desolate farmhouse was a
(00:36):
study in chaos. Inside junken rodding garbage covered the floors
and counters. It was almost impossible to walk through the rooms.
The smell of filth and decomposition was overwhelming. While the
local sheriff, Arthur Schleigh, inspected the shed with his flashlight,
he felt something brush against his jacket. When he looked
(00:58):
up to see what it was, he ran into he
faced a large dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams.
The carcass had been decapitated, slid open, and gutted. To
be sure, an ugly sight is a familiar one in
that deer hunting part of the country, especially during deer season.
It took a few moments to sink in, but soon
(01:20):
Schley realized that it wasn't a deer at all. It
was the headless, butchered body of a woman. Bernice Warden,
the fifty year old mother of his deputy Frank Warden,
had been found. While the Shock deputies searched through the
rubble of Eddie Dean's existence, they realized that the horrible
discoveries didn't end at missus Warden's body. They had stumbled
(01:43):
into a death farm. The funny looking bowl was the
top of a human skull. The lampshades and wastebasket were
made from human skin. A ghoulish inventory began to take shape.
An armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved
in a shoe box, a belt made of nipples, a human head,
(02:03):
four noses, and a heart. The more they looked around
the house, the more ghastly trophies they found. Finally, a
suit made entirely of human skin. Their heads spun as
they tried to tally the number of women that may
have died at Eddie's hands. All of this bizarre handicraft
made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired
(02:27):
to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based
on Eddie, which became Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho. In
nineteen seventy four. The classic thriller by Toby Hooper, The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, had many Guinean touches. However, no character
is an exact Eddie Geen model. This movie helped put
(02:49):
ghastly Geen back in the spotlight in the mid nineteen seventies.
Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for another serial killer, Buffalo
Bill in the Silence of the Lambs. Like Eddie, Buffalo
Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in
some insane transvestite ritual. How does a child evolve into
(03:10):
an Eddie gen A close look at his childhood and
home life provides many clues. Edward Theodore was born on
August twenty seventh, nineteen o six, to Augusta and George
Gene in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Eddie was the second of two
boys born to the couple. The first born was Henry,
who was seven years older than Eddie. Augusta, a fanatically
(03:34):
religious woman, was determined to raise the boys according to
her strict moral code. Sinners inhabited Augusta's world, and she
instilled in her boys the teachings of the Bible daily.
She repeatedly warned her sons of the immorality and looseness
of women, hoping to discourage any sexual desires the boys
might have had for fear of them being cast down
(03:55):
into hell. Augusta was a domineering and hard woman who
believed her view views of the world were absolute and true.
She had no difficulty forcefully imposing her beliefs on her
sons and husband, George, a weak man and an alcoholic,
had no say in raising the boys. In fact, Augusta
(04:15):
despised him and saw him as a worthless creature, not
fit to hold down a job, let alone care for
their children. She took it upon herself to raise the
children according to her beliefs and financially support the family.
She began a grocery business in Lacrosse the year Eddie
was born. It brought in a fair amount of money
to support the family comfortably. She worked hard and saved
(04:38):
money so that the family could move to a more
rural area, away from the immorality of the city and
the sinners that inhabited it. In nineteen fourteen, they moved
to Plainfield, Wisconsin, to a one hundred ninety five acre farm,
isolated from any evil influences that could disrupt their family.
The closest neighbors were almost a quarter of a mile away.
(05:00):
Although Augusta tried diligently to keep her sons away from
the outside world, she was not entirely successful because they
needed to attend school. Eddie's performance in school was average,
although he excelled in reading. The reading of adventure books
and magazines stimulated Eddie's imagination and allowed him to momentarily
escape into his own world. His schoolmates shunned Eddie because
(05:23):
he was effeminate and shy. He had no friends, and
when he attempted to make them, his mother scolded him.
Although his mother's opposition to making friends saddened Eddie, he
saw her as the epitome of goodness. He followed her
strict orders the best he could. However, Augusta was rarely
pleased with her boys. She often verbally abused them, believing
(05:45):
that they were destined to become failures like their father.
During their teens and throughout their early adulthood, the boys
remained detached from people outside of their farmstead. They had
only the company of each other. Eddie looked up to
his brother Henry and saw him as a hard worker
and a man of strong character. After their father died
in nineteen forty, they took on a series of odd
(06:08):
jobs to help financially support the farm and their mother.
Eddie tried to emulate his brother's work habits, and they
both were considered by townspeople to be reliable and trustworthy.
They worked as handymen mostly, yet Eddie frequently babysat for neighbors.
It was babysitting that Eddie really enjoyed, because the children
were more comfortable for him to relate to than his peers.
(06:31):
He was, in many ways socially and emotionally retarded. Henry
was worried about Eddie's unhealthy attachment to their mother. On
several occasions, Henry openly criticized their mother, something that shocked Eddie.
Eddie saw his mother as pure goodness and was mortified
that his brother did not see her in the same way.
(06:51):
It was possibly these incidents that led to the untimely
and mysterious death of Henry in nineteen forty four. On
May sixteenth, Eddie and Henry were fighting a bush fire
burning dangerously close to their farm, According to police, the
two separated in different directions attempting to put out the blaze.
During their struggle, the knight quickly approached and soon Eddie
(07:14):
lost sight of Henry. After the fire was extinguished, Eddie
supposedly became worried about his missing brother and contacted the police.
The police then organized a search party and were surprised
upon reaching the farm to have Eddie lead them directly
to the missing Henry. The latter was lying dead on
the ground. The police were concerned about some of the
(07:36):
things surrounding Henry's death. For example, Henry was lying on
a piece of earth untouched by fire, and he had
bruises on his head. Although Henry was found under strange circumstances,
police were quick to dismiss foul play. No one could
believe shy Eddie was capable of killing anyone, especially his brother. Later,
(07:56):
the county coroner would list asphyxiation as the cause of death.
The only living person Eddie had left was his mother,
and that was the only person he needed. However, he
would have his mother all to himself for a very
brief period. On December twenty ninth, nineteen forty five, AUGUSTA
died after a series of strokes. Eddie's foundations were shaken
(08:20):
upon her death. Harold Scheckter, in his book Deviant, explained
that Eddie had lost his only friend and one true love.
He was absolutely alone in the world. After his mother's death,
he remained at the farm and lived off the meager
earnings from odd jobs that he performed. Eddie board it
off the rooms his mother used the most, mainly the
(08:42):
upstairs floor, the downstairs parlor, and the living room. He
preserved them as a shrine to her and left them
untouched for the years to follow. He resided in the
lower level of the house, making use of the kitchen
area and a small room located just off the kitchen,
which he used as a bedroom. It was in these
areas that Eddie would spend his spare time reading death
(09:04):
cult magazines and adventure stories. At other times, Eddie would
immerse himself in his bizarre hobbies that included nightly visits
to the graveyard. After the death of his mother, Eddie
became increasingly lonely. He spent much of his spare time
reading pulp magazines and anatomy books. The rooms he inhabited
were full of periodicals about Nazis, south sea head hunters,
(09:28):
and shipwrecks. Eddie learned about the process of shrinking heads,
exhuming corpses from graves, and the anatomy of the human body.
From his readings. He became obsessed with these weird stories,
and he would often recount some of them to the
children he babysat. Eddie also enjoyed reading the local newspapers.
His favorite section was the obituaries. It was from the
(09:52):
obituaries that Eddie would learn of the recent deaths of
local women. Having never enjoyed the opposite sex's company, he
would quench lust by visiting graves at night. Although he
later swore to police that he never had sexual intercourse
with any of the dead women he exhumed, they smelled
too bad. He did take particular pleasure in peeling their
(10:14):
skin from their bodies and wearing it. He was curious
to know what it was like to have breasts and
a vagina, and he often dreamed of being a woman.
He was fascinated with women because of the power and
hold they had over men. He acquired quite a collection
of body parts, some of which included preserved heads. On
(10:36):
one occasion, a small boy that he sometimes looked after
visited Eddie's farm, He later said that Eddie had shown
him human skulls that he kept in his bedroom. Eddie
claimed the shriveled heads were from the South Seas, relics
from headhunters. When the young boy told people of his experience,
his story was quickly dismissed as a figment of the
(10:57):
young boy's imagination. Then, somewhat later, the boy was vindicated
when two other young men visited Eddie Gen's farm. They
too had seen the preserved heads of women, but thought
them to be just strange Halloween costumes. Rumors began to circulate,
and soon most of the townspeople were gossiping about the
strange objects Eddie supposedly possessed. However, no one took the
(11:21):
story seriously until Bernice Warden disappeared years later. In fact,
people would often joke with Eddie about having shrunken heads,
and Eddie would just smile or make reference to having
them in his room. No one thought he was telling
the truth, or maybe they just didn't want to believe
it was true. During the late nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
(11:42):
Wisconsin police began to notice an increase in missing persons cases.
Four cases particularly baffled police. The first was that of
an eight year old girl named Georgia Weckler, who had
disappeared coming home from school on May first, nineteen forty seven.
Hundreds of residents and police searched an area of ten
square miles of Jefferson, Wisconsin, hoping to find the young girl. Unfortunately,
(12:07):
Georgia would never be seen or heard of again. There
were no right suspects, and the only evidence police had
to go on were tire marks found near the place
where Georgia was last seen. The tire marks were that
of a ford. The case remained unsolved and wouldn't be
opened until years later, when Eddie Dean was convicted of murder.
(12:28):
Another girl disappeared six years later in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Fifteen
year old Evelyn Hartley had been babysitting at the time
she had vanished. Evelyn's father repeatedly tried to phone the
girl at the house where she was babysitting, and there
was no answer. Worried, the girl's father immediately drove to
where she was babysitting. Nobody answered the door. When he
(12:50):
peered through a window, he could see one of his
daughter's shoes and a pair of her eyeglasses on the floor.
He tried to enter the house, but all the doors
and windows were locked except for the back basement window.
It was at that window where he discovered blood stains. Petrified,
he entered the house and found signs of a struggle.
Immediately he contacted police. When police arrived at the house,
(13:15):
they found more evidence of a struggle, including bloodstains on
the grass leading away from the home, a bloody handprint
on a neighboring house, footprints, and the girl's other shoe
on the basement floor. A regional search was conducted, but
Evelyn was nowhere to be found. A few days later,
police discovered some bloody clothing articles that belonged to Evelyn
(13:36):
near a highway outside of Lacrosse. The worst was suspected.
In November of nineteen fifty two, two men stopped for
a drink at a bar in Plainfield, Wisconsin before heading
out to hunt deer. Victor Travis and Ray Burgess spent
several hours at the bar before leaving. The two men
in their car were never to be seen again. A
(13:58):
massive search was conducted, but there was no trace of them.
They had simply vanished. In the winter of nineteen fifty four,
a Plainfield tavern keeper named Mary Hogan mysteriously disappeared from
her business place. Police suspected foul play when they discovered
blood on the tavern floor that trailed into the parking lot.
(14:20):
Police also discovered an empty bullet cartridge on the floor.
Police could only speculate about what might have happened to
Mary because they had no bodies and little useful evidence.
Like the other four missing people, the only other standard
tie among these cases was that all of the disappearances
happened around or in Plainfield, Wisconsin. On November seventeenth, nineteen
(14:44):
fifty seven, after discovering Bernice Warden's headless corpse in the
shed and her head and other gruesome artifacts in Eddie's house,
police began an exhaustive search of the remaining parts of
the farm and surrounding land. They believed Eddie may have
been involved in more murder. The bodies might be buried
on his land, possibly those of Georgia Weckler, Victor Travis
(15:05):
and Ray Burgess, Evelyn Hartley, and Mary Hogan. While excavations
began at the farmstead, Eddie was being interviewed at Watoma
County jail House by investigators, Geen at first did not
admit to any of the killings. However, after more than
a day of silence, he began to tell the horrible
(15:26):
story of how he killed Missus Warden and acquired the
body parts found in his house. Gean had difficulty remembering
every detail because he claimed he had been in a
day's state at the time leading up to and during
the murder. Yet he recalled dragging Warden's body to his
fore truck, taking the store's cash register, and taking them
(15:46):
back to his house. He did not remember shooting her
in the head with a twenty two caliber gun, which
autopsy reports later listed as the cause of death. When
asked where the other body parts came from discovered in
his house, he said that but he had stolen them
from local graves. Eddie insisted that he had not killed
any of the people whose remains were found in his house,
(16:07):
except for Missus Wharton. However, after days of intense interrogation,
he finally admitted to the killing of Mary Hogan. Again,
he claimed he was in a day's state at the
murder time, and he could not remember exact details of
what actually happened. The only memory he had was that
he had accidentally shot her. Eddie showed no signs of
(16:30):
remorse or emotion during the many hours of interrogation. When
he talked about the murders and of his grave robbing escapades,
he spoke very matter of factly, even cheerfully. At times.
He had no concept of the enormity of his crimes.
Geen's sanity was in question. It was suggested that during
(16:50):
the trial he plead not guilty because of insanity. Gen
underwent a battery of psychological tests, which later concluded that
he was indeed emotionally impaired. Psychologists and psychiatrists who interviewed
him asserted that he was schizophrenic and a sexual psychopath.
His condition was attributed to the unhealthy relationship he had
(17:11):
with his mother and his upbringing. Gane apparently suffered from
conflicting feelings about women, his natural sexual attraction and the
unnatural attitudes that his mother had instilled in him. This
love hate feeling towards women became exaggerated and eventually developed
into full blown psychosis. While Eddie was undergoing further interrogation
(17:31):
in psychological tests, investigators continued to search the land around
his farm, police discovered within Eddie's farmhouse the remains of
ten women. Although Eddie swore that the remaining body parts
of eight women were taken from local graveyards, police were skeptical.
They believed that the remains could have come from women
(17:51):
Eddie may have murdered. The only way police could ascertain
whether the remains came from women's corpses was to examine
the graves Eddie claimed he had robbed. After much controversy
about the morality of exhuming the bodies, police were finally
permitted to dig up the graves of the women Eddie
claimed to have desecrated. All of the coffins showed clear
(18:12):
signs of tempering. In most cases, the bodies or parts
of the bodies were missing. There would be another discovery
on Eddie's land that would again raise the issue of
whether Eddie did in fact murder a third person. On
November twenty ninth, police unearthed human skeletal remains on the
Green farm. It was suspected that the body was that
(18:33):
of Victor Travis, who had disappeared years earlier. The remains
were immediately taken to a crime lab and examined. Tests
showed that the body was not that of a male,
but of a large, middle aged woman, another graveyard souvenir.
Try as the police did, they could not implicate Eddie
in the disappearance of Victor Travis or the three other
(18:54):
people who had vanished years earlier in the Plainfield area.
The only murders Eddie could be held responsible for were
Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan. When investigators revealed the facts
about what was found on Eddie Gan's farm, the news
quickly spread. Reporters from all over the world flocked the
small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. The town became known worldwide,
(19:18):
and Eddie Gean reached celebrity like status. People were repulsed,
yet at the same time drawn to the atrocities that
took place on Eddie Gan's farm. Psychologists from all over
the world attempted to find out what made Eddie tick.
During the nineteen fifties, he gained notoriety as being one
of the most famous of documented cases involving a combination
(19:41):
of necrophilia, transvestism, and fetishism. Even children who knew of
the exploits of Eddie began to sing songs about him
and make jokes too, As Harold Scheckter suggests in his
book Deviant, exercised the nightmare with laughter. These distasteful jokes
became known as giegers and were quick to become popular worldwide.
(20:03):
Back in Plainfield, residents endured the onslaught of reporters who
disrupted their daily life by bombarding them with questions about Eddie. However,
many of them eventually became involved in Eddie's mania and
contributed what information they had. Plainfield was now known to
the world as the home of the infamous Eddie Geen.
(20:24):
Most residents who knew Eddie had only good things to
say about him, other than that he was a little peculiar,
had a quirky grin and a strained sense of humor.
They never suspected him of being capable of committing such
ghastly crimes, but the truth was hard to escape. The little, shy,
quiet man the town thought they knew was in fact
(20:46):
a murderer who had violated the graves of friends and relatives.
After Geen spent thirty days in a mental institution and
was evaluated as mentally incompetent, he could no longer be
tried for first degree murder. Plainfield people immediately voiced their
anger that Eddie would not be tried for the death
of Bernice Warden, yet there was little the community could
(21:07):
do to influence the court's decision. Eddie was committed to
the Central State Hospital in Wappun, Wisconsin. Soon after Eddie
was sentenced to the mental institution, his farm went up
for auction and some of his other belongings. Thousands of
curiosity seekers converged on the small town to see Eddie's
possessions auctioned. Some of the things to be auctioned off
(21:29):
were was car, furniture, and musical instruments. The company that
handled the business of selling Eddie's goods planned to charge
a fee of fifty cents to look at Eddie's property.
The citizens of Plainfield were outraged. They believed Eddie's home
was quickly becoming a museum for the morbid, and the
town demanded something be done to put it to an end.
(21:52):
Although the company was later forbidden to charge an entrance
fee to the auction, residents were still not satisfied. In
the early moree warning of March twenty eighth, nineteen fifty eight,
the Plainfield Volunteer Fire Department was called to Eddie's farm,
Gean's house was on fire. The place quickly burned to
the ground as onlookers watched in silent relief. Police believed
(22:14):
that an arsonist was responsible for the blaze because there
was no electrical wiring problems with the house. Although police
carried out a thorough investigation, no suspect was ever found.
When Eddie learned of the destruction of his house, he
simply said just as well. Although the fire destroyed most
of Eddie's belongings, there were still many things that were salvaged.
(22:38):
What was left of Eddie's possessions would still be auctioned off,
including farm equipment and his car. Eddie's nineteen forty nine
fort Sedan, which was used to haul dead bodies, caused
a bidding war and was eventually sold for seven hundred
and sixty dollars. The man who purchased the car later
put it on display at a county fair where thousands
paid a quarter to get a peek at the green
(23:00):
Ghoul car. It seemed to the people of Plainfield that
the public's fascination with Eddie would never end. After spending
ten years in the mental institution where he was recovering,
the courts finally decided he was competent to stand trial.
The proceedings began on January twenty second, nineteen sixty eight,
to determine whether Eddie was guilty or not by reason
(23:21):
of insanity for the murder of Bernice Warden. The actual
trial began on November seventh, nineteen sixty eight. Eddie looked
on as seven witnesses took to the stand. Several of
those who testified were lab technicians who performed the autopsy
on missus Warden, a former deputy sheriff, and a sheriff.
Evidence was heavily stacked against Eddie, and after only one
(23:44):
week the judge reached his verdict. Eddie was found guilty
of first degree murder. However, because Eddie was found to
have been insane at the time of the killing, he
was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and acquitted.
Soon after the trial, it was a escorted back to
the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. The families
(24:04):
of Bernice Warden, Mary Hogan, and the families of those
whose graves were robbed would never feel justice was served.
They believed Eddie escaped the punishment due to him, but
there was nothing more they could do to reverse the
court's decision. Eddie would remain at the mental institution for
the rest of his life, where he happily and comfortably
spent his days. Scheckter describes him as the model patient.
(24:28):
Eddie was happy at the hospital, more optimistic, perhaps than
he'd ever been in his life. He got along well
enough with the other patients, though he kept to himself
for the most part. He was eating three square meals
a day. The newsmen were struck by how much heavier
Eddie looked since his arrest five years before. He continued
to be an avid reader. He liked his regular chats
(24:50):
with the staff psychologists. He enjoyed the handicraft work he
was assigned stone polishing, rug making, and other occupational therapy forms.
He had even developed an interest in ham radios and
had been permitted to use the money he had earned
to order an inexpensive receiver. All in all, he was
a perfectly amiable, even docile patient, one of the few
(25:13):
in the hospital who never required tranquilizing medications to keep
his craziness under control. Indeed, apart from certain peculiarities, the
disconcerting way he would stare fixedly at nurses or any
other female staff members who wandered into his line of vision.
It was hard to tell that he was particularly crazy
at all. Superintendent Schubert told reporters that Gene was a
(25:36):
model patient. If all our patients were like him, we'd
have no trouble at all. On July twenty sixth, nineteen
eighty four, he died after a long bout with cancer.
He was buried in Plainfield Cemetery next to his mother,
not far from the graves he had robbed years earlier.
On November seventeenth, nineteen fifty seven, police in Plainfield, Wisconsin,
arrived at the dilapidated farmhouse of Eddie Gean. He was
a suspect in the robbery of a local hardware store
and disappearance of the owner, Bernice Warden. Geen had been
the last customer at the hardware store and had been
seen loitering around the premises. Geen's desolate farmhouse was a
(00:36):
study in chaos. Inside junken rodding garbage covered the floors
and counters. It was almost impossible to walk through the rooms.
The smell of filth and decomposition was overwhelming. While the
local sheriff, Arthur Schleigh, inspected the shed with his flashlight,
he felt something brush against his jacket. When he looked
(00:58):
up to see what it was, he ran into he
faced a large dangling carcass hanging upside down from the beams.
The carcass had been decapitated, slid open, and gutted. To
be sure, an ugly sight is a familiar one in
that deer hunting part of the country, especially during deer season.
It took a few moments to sink in, but soon
(01:20):
Schley realized that it wasn't a deer at all. It
was the headless, butchered body of a woman. Bernice Warden,
the fifty year old mother of his deputy Frank Warden,
had been found. While the Shock deputies searched through the
rubble of Eddie Dean's existence, they realized that the horrible
discoveries didn't end at missus Warden's body. They had stumbled
(01:43):
into a death farm. The funny looking bowl was the
top of a human skull. The lampshades and wastebasket were
made from human skin. A ghoulish inventory began to take shape.
An armchair made of human skin, female genitalia kept preserved
in a shoe box, a belt made of nipples, a human head,
(02:03):
four noses, and a heart. The more they looked around
the house, the more ghastly trophies they found. Finally, a
suit made entirely of human skin. Their heads spun as
they tried to tally the number of women that may
have died at Eddie's hands. All of this bizarre handicraft
made Eddie into a celebrity. Author Robert Bloch was inspired
(02:27):
to write a story about Norman Bates, a character based
on Eddie, which became Alfred Hitchcock's classic thriller Psycho. In
nineteen seventy four. The classic thriller by Toby Hooper, The
Texas Chainsaw Massacre, had many Guinean touches. However, no character
is an exact Eddie Geen model. This movie helped put
(02:49):
ghastly Geen back in the spotlight in the mid nineteen seventies.
Years later, Eddie provided inspiration for another serial killer, Buffalo
Bill in the Silence of the Lambs. Like Eddie, Buffalo
Bill treasured women's skin and wore it like clothing in
some insane transvestite ritual. How does a child evolve into
(03:10):
an Eddie gen A close look at his childhood and
home life provides many clues. Edward Theodore was born on
August twenty seventh, nineteen o six, to Augusta and George
Gene in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Eddie was the second of two
boys born to the couple. The first born was Henry,
who was seven years older than Eddie. Augusta, a fanatically
(03:34):
religious woman, was determined to raise the boys according to
her strict moral code. Sinners inhabited Augusta's world, and she
instilled in her boys the teachings of the Bible daily.
She repeatedly warned her sons of the immorality and looseness
of women, hoping to discourage any sexual desires the boys
might have had for fear of them being cast down
(03:55):
into hell. Augusta was a domineering and hard woman who
believed her view views of the world were absolute and true.
She had no difficulty forcefully imposing her beliefs on her
sons and husband, George, a weak man and an alcoholic,
had no say in raising the boys. In fact, Augusta
(04:15):
despised him and saw him as a worthless creature, not
fit to hold down a job, let alone care for
their children. She took it upon herself to raise the
children according to her beliefs and financially support the family.
She began a grocery business in Lacrosse the year Eddie
was born. It brought in a fair amount of money
to support the family comfortably. She worked hard and saved
(04:38):
money so that the family could move to a more
rural area, away from the immorality of the city and
the sinners that inhabited it. In nineteen fourteen, they moved
to Plainfield, Wisconsin, to a one hundred ninety five acre farm,
isolated from any evil influences that could disrupt their family.
The closest neighbors were almost a quarter of a mile away.
(05:00):
Although Augusta tried diligently to keep her sons away from
the outside world, she was not entirely successful because they
needed to attend school. Eddie's performance in school was average,
although he excelled in reading. The reading of adventure books
and magazines stimulated Eddie's imagination and allowed him to momentarily
escape into his own world. His schoolmates shunned Eddie because
(05:23):
he was effeminate and shy. He had no friends, and
when he attempted to make them, his mother scolded him.
Although his mother's opposition to making friends saddened Eddie, he
saw her as the epitome of goodness. He followed her
strict orders the best he could. However, Augusta was rarely
pleased with her boys. She often verbally abused them, believing
(05:45):
that they were destined to become failures like their father.
During their teens and throughout their early adulthood, the boys
remained detached from people outside of their farmstead. They had
only the company of each other. Eddie looked up to
his brother Henry and saw him as a hard worker
and a man of strong character. After their father died
in nineteen forty, they took on a series of odd
(06:08):
jobs to help financially support the farm and their mother.
Eddie tried to emulate his brother's work habits, and they
both were considered by townspeople to be reliable and trustworthy.
They worked as handymen mostly, yet Eddie frequently babysat for neighbors.
It was babysitting that Eddie really enjoyed, because the children
were more comfortable for him to relate to than his peers.
(06:31):
He was, in many ways socially and emotionally retarded. Henry
was worried about Eddie's unhealthy attachment to their mother. On
several occasions, Henry openly criticized their mother, something that shocked Eddie.
Eddie saw his mother as pure goodness and was mortified
that his brother did not see her in the same way.
(06:51):
It was possibly these incidents that led to the untimely
and mysterious death of Henry in nineteen forty four. On
May sixteenth, Eddie and Henry were fighting a bush fire
burning dangerously close to their farm, According to police, the
two separated in different directions attempting to put out the blaze.
During their struggle, the knight quickly approached and soon Eddie
(07:14):
lost sight of Henry. After the fire was extinguished, Eddie
supposedly became worried about his missing brother and contacted the police.
The police then organized a search party and were surprised
upon reaching the farm to have Eddie lead them directly
to the missing Henry. The latter was lying dead on
the ground. The police were concerned about some of the
(07:36):
things surrounding Henry's death. For example, Henry was lying on
a piece of earth untouched by fire, and he had
bruises on his head. Although Henry was found under strange circumstances,
police were quick to dismiss foul play. No one could
believe shy Eddie was capable of killing anyone, especially his brother. Later,
(07:56):
the county coroner would list asphyxiation as the cause of death.
The only living person Eddie had left was his mother,
and that was the only person he needed. However, he
would have his mother all to himself for a very
brief period. On December twenty ninth, nineteen forty five, AUGUSTA
died after a series of strokes. Eddie's foundations were shaken
(08:20):
upon her death. Harold Scheckter, in his book Deviant, explained
that Eddie had lost his only friend and one true love.
He was absolutely alone in the world. After his mother's death,
he remained at the farm and lived off the meager
earnings from odd jobs that he performed. Eddie board it
off the rooms his mother used the most, mainly the
(08:42):
upstairs floor, the downstairs parlor, and the living room. He
preserved them as a shrine to her and left them
untouched for the years to follow. He resided in the
lower level of the house, making use of the kitchen
area and a small room located just off the kitchen,
which he used as a bedroom. It was in these
areas that Eddie would spend his spare time reading death
(09:04):
cult magazines and adventure stories. At other times, Eddie would
immerse himself in his bizarre hobbies that included nightly visits
to the graveyard. After the death of his mother, Eddie
became increasingly lonely. He spent much of his spare time
reading pulp magazines and anatomy books. The rooms he inhabited
were full of periodicals about Nazis, south sea head hunters,
(09:28):
and shipwrecks. Eddie learned about the process of shrinking heads,
exhuming corpses from graves, and the anatomy of the human body.
From his readings. He became obsessed with these weird stories,
and he would often recount some of them to the
children he babysat. Eddie also enjoyed reading the local newspapers.
His favorite section was the obituaries. It was from the
(09:52):
obituaries that Eddie would learn of the recent deaths of
local women. Having never enjoyed the opposite sex's company, he
would quench lust by visiting graves at night. Although he
later swore to police that he never had sexual intercourse
with any of the dead women he exhumed, they smelled
too bad. He did take particular pleasure in peeling their
(10:14):
skin from their bodies and wearing it. He was curious
to know what it was like to have breasts and
a vagina, and he often dreamed of being a woman.
He was fascinated with women because of the power and
hold they had over men. He acquired quite a collection
of body parts, some of which included preserved heads. On
(10:36):
one occasion, a small boy that he sometimes looked after
visited Eddie's farm, He later said that Eddie had shown
him human skulls that he kept in his bedroom. Eddie
claimed the shriveled heads were from the South Seas, relics
from headhunters. When the young boy told people of his experience,
his story was quickly dismissed as a figment of the
(10:57):
young boy's imagination. Then, somewhat later, the boy was vindicated
when two other young men visited Eddie Gen's farm. They
too had seen the preserved heads of women, but thought
them to be just strange Halloween costumes. Rumors began to circulate,
and soon most of the townspeople were gossiping about the
strange objects Eddie supposedly possessed. However, no one took the
(11:21):
story seriously until Bernice Warden disappeared years later. In fact,
people would often joke with Eddie about having shrunken heads,
and Eddie would just smile or make reference to having
them in his room. No one thought he was telling
the truth, or maybe they just didn't want to believe
it was true. During the late nineteen forties and nineteen fifties,
(11:42):
Wisconsin police began to notice an increase in missing persons cases.
Four cases particularly baffled police. The first was that of
an eight year old girl named Georgia Weckler, who had
disappeared coming home from school on May first, nineteen forty seven.
Hundreds of residents and police searched an area of ten
square miles of Jefferson, Wisconsin, hoping to find the young girl. Unfortunately,
(12:07):
Georgia would never be seen or heard of again. There
were no right suspects, and the only evidence police had
to go on were tire marks found near the place
where Georgia was last seen. The tire marks were that
of a ford. The case remained unsolved and wouldn't be
opened until years later, when Eddie Dean was convicted of murder.
(12:28):
Another girl disappeared six years later in Lacrosse, Wisconsin. Fifteen
year old Evelyn Hartley had been babysitting at the time
she had vanished. Evelyn's father repeatedly tried to phone the
girl at the house where she was babysitting, and there
was no answer. Worried, the girl's father immediately drove to
where she was babysitting. Nobody answered the door. When he
(12:50):
peered through a window, he could see one of his
daughter's shoes and a pair of her eyeglasses on the floor.
He tried to enter the house, but all the doors
and windows were locked except for the back basement window.
It was at that window where he discovered blood stains. Petrified,
he entered the house and found signs of a struggle.
Immediately he contacted police. When police arrived at the house,
(13:15):
they found more evidence of a struggle, including bloodstains on
the grass leading away from the home, a bloody handprint
on a neighboring house, footprints, and the girl's other shoe
on the basement floor. A regional search was conducted, but
Evelyn was nowhere to be found. A few days later,
police discovered some bloody clothing articles that belonged to Evelyn
(13:36):
near a highway outside of Lacrosse. The worst was suspected.
In November of nineteen fifty two, two men stopped for
a drink at a bar in Plainfield, Wisconsin before heading
out to hunt deer. Victor Travis and Ray Burgess spent
several hours at the bar before leaving. The two men
in their car were never to be seen again. A
(13:58):
massive search was conducted, but there was no trace of them.
They had simply vanished. In the winter of nineteen fifty four,
a Plainfield tavern keeper named Mary Hogan mysteriously disappeared from
her business place. Police suspected foul play when they discovered
blood on the tavern floor that trailed into the parking lot.
(14:20):
Police also discovered an empty bullet cartridge on the floor.
Police could only speculate about what might have happened to
Mary because they had no bodies and little useful evidence.
Like the other four missing people, the only other standard
tie among these cases was that all of the disappearances
happened around or in Plainfield, Wisconsin. On November seventeenth, nineteen
(14:44):
fifty seven, after discovering Bernice Warden's headless corpse in the
shed and her head and other gruesome artifacts in Eddie's house,
police began an exhaustive search of the remaining parts of
the farm and surrounding land. They believed Eddie may have
been involved in more murder. The bodies might be buried
on his land, possibly those of Georgia Weckler, Victor Travis
(15:05):
and Ray Burgess, Evelyn Hartley, and Mary Hogan. While excavations
began at the farmstead, Eddie was being interviewed at Watoma
County jail House by investigators, Geen at first did not
admit to any of the killings. However, after more than
a day of silence, he began to tell the horrible
(15:26):
story of how he killed Missus Warden and acquired the
body parts found in his house. Gean had difficulty remembering
every detail because he claimed he had been in a
day's state at the time leading up to and during
the murder. Yet he recalled dragging Warden's body to his
fore truck, taking the store's cash register, and taking them
(15:46):
back to his house. He did not remember shooting her
in the head with a twenty two caliber gun, which
autopsy reports later listed as the cause of death. When
asked where the other body parts came from discovered in
his house, he said that but he had stolen them
from local graves. Eddie insisted that he had not killed
any of the people whose remains were found in his house,
(16:07):
except for Missus Wharton. However, after days of intense interrogation,
he finally admitted to the killing of Mary Hogan. Again,
he claimed he was in a day's state at the
murder time, and he could not remember exact details of
what actually happened. The only memory he had was that
he had accidentally shot her. Eddie showed no signs of
(16:30):
remorse or emotion during the many hours of interrogation. When
he talked about the murders and of his grave robbing escapades,
he spoke very matter of factly, even cheerfully. At times.
He had no concept of the enormity of his crimes.
Geen's sanity was in question. It was suggested that during
(16:50):
the trial he plead not guilty because of insanity. Gen
underwent a battery of psychological tests, which later concluded that
he was indeed emotionally impaired. Psychologists and psychiatrists who interviewed
him asserted that he was schizophrenic and a sexual psychopath.
His condition was attributed to the unhealthy relationship he had
(17:11):
with his mother and his upbringing. Gane apparently suffered from
conflicting feelings about women, his natural sexual attraction and the
unnatural attitudes that his mother had instilled in him. This
love hate feeling towards women became exaggerated and eventually developed
into full blown psychosis. While Eddie was undergoing further interrogation
(17:31):
in psychological tests, investigators continued to search the land around
his farm, police discovered within Eddie's farmhouse the remains of
ten women. Although Eddie swore that the remaining body parts
of eight women were taken from local graveyards, police were skeptical.
They believed that the remains could have come from women
(17:51):
Eddie may have murdered. The only way police could ascertain
whether the remains came from women's corpses was to examine
the graves Eddie claimed he had robbed. After much controversy
about the morality of exhuming the bodies, police were finally
permitted to dig up the graves of the women Eddie
claimed to have desecrated. All of the coffins showed clear
(18:12):
signs of tempering. In most cases, the bodies or parts
of the bodies were missing. There would be another discovery
on Eddie's land that would again raise the issue of
whether Eddie did in fact murder a third person. On
November twenty ninth, police unearthed human skeletal remains on the
Green farm. It was suspected that the body was that
(18:33):
of Victor Travis, who had disappeared years earlier. The remains
were immediately taken to a crime lab and examined. Tests
showed that the body was not that of a male,
but of a large, middle aged woman, another graveyard souvenir.
Try as the police did, they could not implicate Eddie
in the disappearance of Victor Travis or the three other
(18:54):
people who had vanished years earlier in the Plainfield area.
The only murders Eddie could be held responsible for were
Bernice Warden and Mary Hogan. When investigators revealed the facts
about what was found on Eddie Gan's farm, the news
quickly spread. Reporters from all over the world flocked the
small town of Plainfield, Wisconsin. The town became known worldwide,
(19:18):
and Eddie Gean reached celebrity like status. People were repulsed,
yet at the same time drawn to the atrocities that
took place on Eddie Gan's farm. Psychologists from all over
the world attempted to find out what made Eddie tick.
During the nineteen fifties, he gained notoriety as being one
of the most famous of documented cases involving a combination
(19:41):
of necrophilia, transvestism, and fetishism. Even children who knew of
the exploits of Eddie began to sing songs about him
and make jokes too, As Harold Scheckter suggests in his
book Deviant, exercised the nightmare with laughter. These distasteful jokes
became known as giegers and were quick to become popular worldwide.
(20:03):
Back in Plainfield, residents endured the onslaught of reporters who
disrupted their daily life by bombarding them with questions about Eddie. However,
many of them eventually became involved in Eddie's mania and
contributed what information they had. Plainfield was now known to
the world as the home of the infamous Eddie Geen.
(20:24):
Most residents who knew Eddie had only good things to
say about him, other than that he was a little peculiar,
had a quirky grin and a strained sense of humor.
They never suspected him of being capable of committing such
ghastly crimes, but the truth was hard to escape. The little, shy,
quiet man the town thought they knew was in fact
(20:46):
a murderer who had violated the graves of friends and relatives.
After Geen spent thirty days in a mental institution and
was evaluated as mentally incompetent, he could no longer be
tried for first degree murder. Plainfield people immediately voiced their
anger that Eddie would not be tried for the death
of Bernice Warden, yet there was little the community could
(21:07):
do to influence the court's decision. Eddie was committed to
the Central State Hospital in Wappun, Wisconsin. Soon after Eddie
was sentenced to the mental institution, his farm went up
for auction and some of his other belongings. Thousands of
curiosity seekers converged on the small town to see Eddie's
possessions auctioned. Some of the things to be auctioned off
(21:29):
were was car, furniture, and musical instruments. The company that
handled the business of selling Eddie's goods planned to charge
a fee of fifty cents to look at Eddie's property.
The citizens of Plainfield were outraged. They believed Eddie's home
was quickly becoming a museum for the morbid, and the
town demanded something be done to put it to an end.
(21:52):
Although the company was later forbidden to charge an entrance
fee to the auction, residents were still not satisfied. In
the early moree warning of March twenty eighth, nineteen fifty eight,
the Plainfield Volunteer Fire Department was called to Eddie's farm,
Gean's house was on fire. The place quickly burned to
the ground as onlookers watched in silent relief. Police believed
(22:14):
that an arsonist was responsible for the blaze because there
was no electrical wiring problems with the house. Although police
carried out a thorough investigation, no suspect was ever found.
When Eddie learned of the destruction of his house, he
simply said just as well. Although the fire destroyed most
of Eddie's belongings, there were still many things that were salvaged.
(22:38):
What was left of Eddie's possessions would still be auctioned off,
including farm equipment and his car. Eddie's nineteen forty nine
fort Sedan, which was used to haul dead bodies, caused
a bidding war and was eventually sold for seven hundred
and sixty dollars. The man who purchased the car later
put it on display at a county fair where thousands
paid a quarter to get a peek at the green
(23:00):
Ghoul car. It seemed to the people of Plainfield that
the public's fascination with Eddie would never end. After spending
ten years in the mental institution where he was recovering,
the courts finally decided he was competent to stand trial.
The proceedings began on January twenty second, nineteen sixty eight,
to determine whether Eddie was guilty or not by reason
(23:21):
of insanity for the murder of Bernice Warden. The actual
trial began on November seventh, nineteen sixty eight. Eddie looked
on as seven witnesses took to the stand. Several of
those who testified were lab technicians who performed the autopsy
on missus Warden, a former deputy sheriff, and a sheriff.
Evidence was heavily stacked against Eddie, and after only one
(23:44):
week the judge reached his verdict. Eddie was found guilty
of first degree murder. However, because Eddie was found to
have been insane at the time of the killing, he
was later found not guilty by reason of insanity and acquitted.
Soon after the trial, it was a escorted back to
the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. The families
(24:04):
of Bernice Warden, Mary Hogan, and the families of those
whose graves were robbed would never feel justice was served.
They believed Eddie escaped the punishment due to him, but
there was nothing more they could do to reverse the
court's decision. Eddie would remain at the mental institution for
the rest of his life, where he happily and comfortably
spent his days. Scheckter describes him as the model patient.
(24:28):
Eddie was happy at the hospital, more optimistic, perhaps than
he'd ever been in his life. He got along well
enough with the other patients, though he kept to himself
for the most part. He was eating three square meals
a day. The newsmen were struck by how much heavier
Eddie looked since his arrest five years before. He continued
to be an avid reader. He liked his regular chats
(24:50):
with the staff psychologists. He enjoyed the handicraft work he
was assigned stone polishing, rug making, and other occupational therapy forms.
He had even developed an interest in ham radios and
had been permitted to use the money he had earned
to order an inexpensive receiver. All in all, he was
a perfectly amiable, even docile patient, one of the few
(25:13):
in the hospital who never required tranquilizing medications to keep
his craziness under control. Indeed, apart from certain peculiarities, the
disconcerting way he would stare fixedly at nurses or any
other female staff members who wandered into his line of vision.
It was hard to tell that he was particularly crazy
at all. Superintendent Schubert told reporters that Gene was a
(25:36):
model patient. If all our patients were like him, we'd
have no trouble at all. On July twenty sixth, nineteen
eighty four, he died after a long bout with cancer.
He was buried in Plainfield Cemetery next to his mother,
not far from the graves he had robbed years earlier.
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