Speaker 1: Attention, Orlando and New Orleans. Stuff you Should Know is
Speaker 1: coming to your town October nine and ten, which is soon,
Speaker 1: which means the time to buy tickets is running out
Speaker 1: and f y I our shows tend to sell out,
Speaker 1: so go to s Y s K live dot com
Speaker 1: and you'll find links to tickets and info and you
Speaker 1: should probably go now. We'll see you in October, and
Speaker 1: if you want to come see me, do my End
Speaker 1: of the World live show. I'll be in Chicago on
Speaker 1: September twelve and in Austin, Texas on October two. Ticket
Speaker 1: links are weirdly hard to find, so just search End
Speaker 1: of the World Josh Clark, Austin, or Chicago, and your
Speaker 1: friendly search engine will help you out. See you in Orlando,
Speaker 1: New Orleans, Chicago, and Austin. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know,
Speaker 1: a production of I Heart Radios, How Stuff Works. Hey,
Speaker 1: and welcome to the horror show. I'm Josh, there's Charles,
Speaker 1: have you Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and um,
Speaker 1: we are about to pass out from nausea. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: think we need to issue a strong c o A.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, um, I don't know. Maybe some parents might
Speaker 1: depends on what you title this thing. They might think
Speaker 1: ed Gan was like a children's show host or something. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I guess that's possible. So, yeah, it's a good idea.
Speaker 1: We preface this with this one is really just not
Speaker 1: for kids. I don't even know what agent would really start.
Speaker 1: Maybe I don't know. It's really grizzly and gross. Yeah,
Speaker 1: maybe no one should listen to this. How about that? Um,
Speaker 1: before we give him further started, just let me throw
Speaker 1: one more thing in. Okay, okay, I am doing an
Speaker 1: End of the World live show in Chicago on September twelve,
Speaker 1: Just saying, so if anybody wants to go see you
Speaker 1: can get tickets to come see me do my End
Speaker 1: of the World live show in Chicago on September twelve
Speaker 1: at l H hyphen St dot com. Enough set, that's great,
Speaker 1: Thanks Chuck. So we're talking about ed Geene, who is
Speaker 1: most decidedly not a children's show host. Um, although ironically
Speaker 1: he was a babysitter from time to time. It's baby
Speaker 1: the most shocking thing I've ever read in my life. Yeah,
Speaker 1: although I mean it doesn't seem like he posed much.
Speaker 1: I mean, obviously he was a threat to anything, but
Speaker 1: that was not his m O. No kids weren't, which
Speaker 1: will see later. Some people are like, it doesn't matter,
Speaker 1: He's probably still a child killer. It just doesn't fit there.
Speaker 1: He had a very specific m O for sure as
Speaker 1: far as killers go, and he doesn't qualify as far
Speaker 1: as I know, as a serial killer, although I think
Speaker 1: that's just silly, but um, he failed to hit the
Speaker 1: big three mark, I guess is what it takes to
Speaker 1: be a serial killer? Well proven at least. Yeah, that's true,
Speaker 1: that's true. So he's possibly a serial killer, I guess.
Speaker 1: And if you um have never heard of edg geen
Speaker 1: fret not, we're going to tell you all about him.
Speaker 1: But I would wager that you have at least encountered
Speaker 1: some character based on him, because there's probably no real
Speaker 1: life killer or criminal that was just stick with killer.
Speaker 1: Who's inspired more utterly deranged characters than Ed Gene has. Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure, I mean we we know the Big Three
Speaker 1: or of course Psycho with Norman Bates Texas, Chainsaw Masacre
Speaker 1: with leather Face, and of course Silence of the Lamps
Speaker 1: with Hannibal Lector there was James James Gum who is well,
Speaker 1: that's true. James Gum was the Buffalo Bill character right
Speaker 1: exactly who was right? None of which are Hannibal Elector. No, no, no,
Speaker 1: Hannibal Elector was even like man, that guy's off his rocker,
Speaker 1: Do you think, Yeah, I think a little bit. I
Speaker 1: think he was kind of like this. Maybe at least
Speaker 1: he felt he was sloppy or something. He definitely knew
Speaker 1: he was smarter than that guy, so I think he
Speaker 1: looked down on him in one way or another. So
Speaker 1: um edg. Geen story starts, as so many of our
Speaker 1: stories start, at birth. Back in nineteen o six in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: He was born little Edward Theodore Geen, And I'd like
Speaker 1: to say like things started out normally, but I don't
Speaker 1: get the impression that there was a single normal day
Speaker 1: in ed Gaen's entire life. He he just really pulled
Speaker 1: up the short straw, as it were, as far as
Speaker 1: the birth lottery goes. Yeah, he uh. You know. His
Speaker 1: father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother she under grocery
Speaker 1: store for a little while and Lacrosse, Wisconsin, but she
Speaker 1: was Augusta was by all accounts, a um mentally ill,
Speaker 1: religious zealot, overbearing, overbearing. There needs to be a stronger
Speaker 1: word in this case, super overbearing, super overbearing mother yeah
Speaker 1: times infinity Yeah. And the and the religious the religious
Speaker 1: stuff is just off the charts as far as um,
Speaker 1: anything to do with sex and intercourse was the worst dirty,
Speaker 1: possible thing imaginable. And that she hammered this into her
Speaker 1: two boys. She really didn't hammer by, I guess, grabbing
Speaker 1: their genitalia sometimes and railing at them about how this
Speaker 1: is the devil's unit or whatever she'd call it. I
Speaker 1: don't know. She probably could have called the devil's unit.
Speaker 1: I don't think it's entirely impossible. But she realized she
Speaker 1: looked around their town of Lacrosse, Wisconsin and said, this
Speaker 1: place is a sinkhole of filth. There's a quote from her.
Speaker 1: I guess it's an ed geen doing an impression of
Speaker 1: his mom, which will find out later. He really liked
Speaker 1: to do a lot um And she moved her whole family,
Speaker 1: sold the family grocery store, and moved from Lacrosse, Wisconsin
Speaker 1: to a little town called Plainfield, which had a population
Speaker 1: of about five hundred. In Plainfield was it had been
Speaker 1: established decades before, but it was still so small that
Speaker 1: they'd only built the fire station and the local school
Speaker 1: within the last like seven eight years. It was a
Speaker 1: very tiny little town, and so you'd think like, Okay,
Speaker 1: maybe Augusta Gean could could relax a little bit here.
Speaker 1: Not so, Yeah, did you look up a picture of her?
Speaker 1: I didn't. Actually, I don't think I have ever seen her. Yeah,
Speaker 1: she looks like you would think. Yeah, I think I
Speaker 1: just had such a mental image of her. I assumed
Speaker 1: I knew what she looked like, and she does not
Speaker 1: look friendly, let's put it that way. I could see
Speaker 1: that hair in in a kind of a tight bun maybe,
Speaker 1: and then with the calico lace um neck dresses. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I mean, no one smiled in pictures back then, but
Speaker 1: she and the only photo that I found was especially
Speaker 1: good at the photo scowl right. So you know, they
Speaker 1: moved to Plainfield, where she thought things would be better,
Speaker 1: I guess, and uh not a sinkhole of health, and
Speaker 1: it was not any better. There was there was no
Speaker 1: place that Augusta Geene could have gone that would have
Speaker 1: been suitable for her. I think that's absolutely true. Yeah,
Speaker 1: because there were other human beings there, and I think
Speaker 1: she considered just about everyone filth uh, unless they were
Speaker 1: you know, maybe the preacher and who knows. She may
Speaker 1: have considered her preacher filth. I could see that, and
Speaker 1: she definitely considered her husband filth, considered her husband filth
Speaker 1: and women, um, you know, in any woman that had
Speaker 1: been on a date with another man, she uh had
Speaker 1: bad things to say about it. Seems like yeah, so, um,
Speaker 1: that was actually not a good move for the family.
Speaker 1: You know, they've been doing okay from from what I
Speaker 1: could tell, is as far as they could do okay
Speaker 1: with an abusive, alcoholic, shiftless father, um and an angry
Speaker 1: mom and lacrosse. I think they've been doing better financially.
Speaker 1: They moved to Plainfield and they started farming, and their
Speaker 1: dad was fairly useless to begin with. But secondly, the
Speaker 1: soil that the land, they were not used to farming,
Speaker 1: this kind of sandy soil where they didn't have any
Speaker 1: idea what they were doing with farming anyway, so they
Speaker 1: had a really hard time growing crops. And then apparently
Speaker 1: the neighbors weren't the friendliest neighbors around, so nobody stepped
Speaker 1: in to help them and show them what to do,
Speaker 1: so they endured some real hardship on the farm. That
Speaker 1: was problem. One problem too was ed Geen was not
Speaker 1: one to leave the house very much. And when he did,
Speaker 1: he went to school. And it's not like school was
Speaker 1: a respite for him or a place to escape from.
Speaker 1: It was just as hellish as it was at home. Basically, Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was. It was pretty bad for Ed. He had
Speaker 1: a week eye on one side, He had a growth
Speaker 1: on his tongue that made him talk different than the
Speaker 1: rest of the kids. Uh, he had sort of a
Speaker 1: feminine appearance and all of this, you know, and you know,
Speaker 1: and this is bad at any time in history probably
Speaker 1: and when you're a little kid in school, but back
Speaker 1: then it was really bad. And of course he was
Speaker 1: bullied and teased, and he would come home crying and
Speaker 1: his father would beat him for crying and call him
Speaker 1: a sissy. And things are really getting out of hand,
Speaker 1: Like his his mom won't let he or Henry really
Speaker 1: leave much at all. Um, so they're just stuck in
Speaker 1: isolation where his psychosis and you know, later found out
Speaker 1: to be seriously mentally ill, obviously, but it certainly didn't
Speaker 1: help to be in this kind of environment, not at all.
Speaker 1: But I mean, this is this was life for him.
Speaker 1: This is how he lived. He and his his older
Speaker 1: brother Henry, who had him by I think four years
Speaker 1: or something like that. Um, this was their life, and
Speaker 1: Henry had like this. He was not as wrapped up
Speaker 1: in their mother as Ed was. Not by a long shot.
Speaker 1: Henry felt totally comfortable criticizing his mother. He saw her
Speaker 1: as mentally imbalanced. He was just not under her spell
Speaker 1: like Ed was. Um. But that's how they grew up,
Speaker 1: that's how they lived. And she made them both promise
Speaker 1: that they would die virgins because sex was just so
Speaker 1: awful and dirty. Um. And then in nineteen forty the
Speaker 1: family um took a turn for the different when George,
Speaker 1: their dad, died of a heart attack, and that actually
Speaker 1: kind of opened up Ed's life a little bit more.
Speaker 1: Number one, he had his mom all too himself, right,
Speaker 1: But number two, just by virtue of having to go
Speaker 1: out and make more money, he had to go out
Speaker 1: of the house and do things like odd jobs and
Speaker 1: babysit and that kind of stuff. So it changed his
Speaker 1: life a little bit. But it's not like it had
Speaker 1: any big lasting effects for the better. Yeah, for sure. Um,
Speaker 1: he didn't quite have her to her to himself yet
Speaker 1: because Henry was still around. But Eddie, you know, like
Speaker 1: you said he didn't travel much. I think the furthest
Speaker 1: he ever traveled away from his house was one time, Um,
Speaker 1: when he was thirty six, he went to Milwaukee, a
Speaker 1: hundred and fifty miles away for military inspection, where he
Speaker 1: did not get in to the military because of his
Speaker 1: lazy eye, which, uh could have changed the course of
Speaker 1: his history. You know, had he gotten accepted into military
Speaker 1: service and gotten under the out from under the thumb
Speaker 1: of his mother, could change to the course of a
Speaker 1: lot of people's history, you know what I mean, Yeah,
Speaker 1: for sure. So uh, four years later, after dad dies, UM,
Speaker 1: he and his brother they're working at the house. They're
Speaker 1: burning some brush. The fire gets out of control, and
Speaker 1: then Henry is found dead and everyone's like, you know,
Speaker 1: he died in this fire. He died in this fire.
Speaker 1: Upon a little bit of investigation, and it seems like
Speaker 1: that's about all they did. Uh, that was bruising on
Speaker 1: Henry's head and neck, and uh they listed his cause
Speaker 1: of death as being asphyxiation. Anyway, and like we said earlier,
Speaker 1: it was never proven. But it seems like since uh
Speaker 1: edit led them to the body, even though he said
Speaker 1: he couldn't find Henry during the fire. Yet here's where
Speaker 1: he is. It's a little fishy. It was all fishy.
Speaker 1: So you know, to this day, people say that Ed
Speaker 1: killed his brother and that was probably his first murder, Yeah,
Speaker 1: which is a it's a pretty significant first first murder,
Speaker 1: murdering your own brother, you know. So now Ed really
Speaker 1: does have his mom to himself. But apparently from what
Speaker 1: I read, she really her health took a really um
Speaker 1: bad term for the worse after Henry died. Um, she
Speaker 1: really took it hard. And so in less than a
Speaker 1: year she suffered a stroke and um it was basically
Speaker 1: a housebound, if not um bed bound, and Ed took
Speaker 1: care of her, which I get the impression that Ed
Speaker 1: was more than happy to take care of his mom
Speaker 1: day and night. Oh yeah, for sure. I Mean it
Speaker 1: was a um, just such a twisted manipulation that was
Speaker 1: going on because on one hand she's just screaming at
Speaker 1: him and calling uh, putting him down, calling him a
Speaker 1: failure and a weakling. And then other times he would
Speaker 1: she would call him into bed to like sleep with
Speaker 1: her and hold her, and she would whisper to him
Speaker 1: and say that he could spend the night in her
Speaker 1: bed and stuff. So like he didn't know which way
Speaker 1: was up. It was just standard elderly mom and middle
Speaker 1: aged son stuff, you know. But we all go through it.
Speaker 1: It's true. We've all crawled into our mom's bed and
Speaker 1: slept the night at age forty five. But this didn't
Speaker 1: go very well for ed Um. He still was laughing
Speaker 1: it up though. Here's the thing. He was the um.
Speaker 1: He was so devoted to his mom that any attention
Speaker 1: from her, negative, positive, whatever, would have been like that,
Speaker 1: that's he needed that, that was normal to him. However,
Speaker 1: he got it um. So he uh, he took care
Speaker 1: of her. He cared for one way or another. And
Speaker 1: she died um in which is what was that a
Speaker 1: year after her his brother died. Yeah, so she didn't
Speaker 1: even last a year after Henry died. She dies of
Speaker 1: from what I saw was pneumonia and probably another stroke.
Speaker 1: And now here's the thing. Ed Geane, who was almost
Speaker 1: never allowed to leave the farm, and when he did
Speaker 1: he encountered but who were extraordinarily unfriendly to him. He
Speaker 1: had turned into um, a bit of a weirdo, you
Speaker 1: could say, even just from the outside, just from you know,
Speaker 1: what normal people knew about him. In town, he was
Speaker 1: considered an oddball in a weirdo but generally harmless. But
Speaker 1: now he was totally and utterly alone on this family farm,
Speaker 1: and the first thing he did was board up his
Speaker 1: mom's rooms so that he could establish a shrine tour.
Speaker 1: The rest of the house, though, kind of fell into
Speaker 1: what you would call disrepair. Yeah, I mean there was
Speaker 1: serious neglect at that point. He didn't seem to care
Speaker 1: about keeping the house up except for that pristine room
Speaker 1: where mommy lived. Uh. He started getting into some unusual
Speaker 1: things like anatomy books and um pornography and horror novels,
Speaker 1: pulp horror, um, Nazi Nazi books about Nazi atrocities, and
Speaker 1: he would he would start to go out a little
Speaker 1: that he generally still stayed around the farm, and like
Speaker 1: we said earlier, unbelievably worked as a babysitter and as
Speaker 1: a handyman around town. So he started to kind of
Speaker 1: appear a little bit in town. And no one thought
Speaker 1: a lot about the guy, um, except like the occasional
Speaker 1: time when he would stop in at this pub Mary
Speaker 1: Hogan's and Pine Grove and he would say weird things
Speaker 1: about some horror novel or some Nazi book that he
Speaker 1: was reading to the point where people were like, that's
Speaker 1: a very to talk about head hunting and sex change operations.
Speaker 1: This is what they called it back then. Uh, it's
Speaker 1: an odd thing to talk about at a bar in
Speaker 1: rural Wisconsin, especially for sure. And he would also he
Speaker 1: had a weird habit of like laughing suddenly apropos of
Speaker 1: nothing that anyone else could could put their finger on.
Speaker 1: So it seemed a lot like he was laughing at
Speaker 1: his own jokes, that kind of stuff. He was an
Speaker 1: odd dude. But again, the town was They considered him
Speaker 1: so harmless and so trustworthy that they would let him
Speaker 1: baby sit their children. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He
Speaker 1: had a reputation from um the way that people put
Speaker 1: it of not going deer hunting with the rest of
Speaker 1: the guys, which I mean, like, if you don't go
Speaker 1: deer hunting in Wisconsin in the forties and fifties, what
Speaker 1: is wrong with you? You know what I mean. But
Speaker 1: he was known to be too squeamish to to do
Speaker 1: something like deer hunting, so he didn't deer hunt. That's
Speaker 1: how the town viewed him. Um. And if you look back, though,
Speaker 1: there were a lot of red flags that he was
Speaker 1: putting up that. In retrospect, with all of the information
Speaker 1: that the town's folk later had, UM really seemed very
Speaker 1: fishy that they were just kind of waving awful lot
Speaker 1: of stuff like, for example, that bar owner the bar
Speaker 1: he went to Mary Hogan's tavern, she disappeared and no
Speaker 1: one knew where she went. For three years, she just vanished.
Speaker 1: There was a little bit of blood left behind at
Speaker 1: the bar, but one night, as she was closing the
Speaker 1: bar down, she just vanished. And Ed used to joke
Speaker 1: about how Mary was staying at his house for the
Speaker 1: not eight um, and the townspeople thought that was weird
Speaker 1: but not necessarily remarkable, maybe a little tasteless, um, But
Speaker 1: in reality he had murdered Mary Hogan Um back in
Speaker 1: nineteen Should we take a break right there? Oh? Yeah,
Speaker 1: that was an abrupt cliffhanger. We're on the wrong side
Speaker 1: of the cliff. We'll come back right after this. You stop,
Speaker 1: all right, So we're back on the wrong side of
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger. Well, wait a minute, Wait a minute, So
Speaker 1: Mary Hogan disappeared. What happened, Chuck, What possibly happened to
Speaker 1: Mary Hogan? She was murdered by who by Ed Gaan
Speaker 1: on December eight, and I didn't see that coming. He
Speaker 1: shot her. He shot her with the THIRTI caliber pistol,
Speaker 1: put him into his pickup truck, and took her back
Speaker 1: to the farm. And this is not something that was
Speaker 1: known until seven when everything really unraveled. It was the
Speaker 1: full three years though that he was still in town. Uh.
Speaker 1: And I guess occasionally making a joke about what happened
Speaker 1: to Mary, right, So, Um, when you say things unraveled
Speaker 1: for him one night, like they found out everything. They
Speaker 1: went from thinking he was just an odd little dude
Speaker 1: who wouldn't even kill a deer two coming across the
Speaker 1: the most depraved, deranged human being in the history of
Speaker 1: American crime up to that point. There may have been
Speaker 1: people to come later on, but A Gene was the
Speaker 1: first truly depraved killer in America that America had ever known.
Speaker 1: Proved me wrong, somebody who loves true crime proved me wrong. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And here's the thing. He was Um. He had survived
Speaker 1: things like the local kids coming by peeking in his
Speaker 1: house and saying they saw human shrunken human heads hanging
Speaker 1: in the living room. And he survived all that and
Speaker 1: laughed it off and said that, you know, my cousins
Speaker 1: served in the South season World War two and sitting
Speaker 1: these little heads back as souvenirs. Whereas it not not
Speaker 1: not that the kids are like wrong or mistaken. It's no,
Speaker 1: I got shrunken heads are just souvenirs. Yeah, But as
Speaker 1: it turns out, they were real human heads, right, So
Speaker 1: they were real human heads. They weren't from the South Seas,
Speaker 1: and um Edd had shrunk them himselves. Actually, he had
Speaker 1: read some books on that kind of thing and probably
Speaker 1: talked about it at the bar, which he probably regretted
Speaker 1: when those teenagers started running their mouths around town. But
Speaker 1: um he didn't have to worry about that for very
Speaker 1: long because in nineteen fifty seven, in November of nineteen
Speaker 1: fifty seven, he went to the local hardware store, Warden's
Speaker 1: Hardware Store. And Warden's Hardware Store was owned and operated
Speaker 1: by a woman named Bernice Warden Um and she was
Speaker 1: working that day. It was towards the end of the
Speaker 1: day and ed Geane came in. He needed a jar
Speaker 1: of Annie freeze, and she sold it to him, filled
Speaker 1: out of receipt, gave him the receipt. Um, and I
Speaker 1: guess I presumed that that was done. Their business was done.
Speaker 1: But Ed walked over to the wall and got down
Speaker 1: a twenty two caliber rifle and pulled the twenty two
Speaker 1: calibershell out of his pocket, put it in the rifle,
Speaker 1: and then shot Bernice Warden in her head. And um,
Speaker 1: he apparently then and this is this is where the
Speaker 1: podcast really starts to get grizzly. Everybody, so just buckle
Speaker 1: in or maybe press stop here. But the the amount
Speaker 1: of blood that they would later find in this hardware
Speaker 1: store was so much that they presumed that Ed cut
Speaker 1: Bernice Warden's throat after he shot her in the head
Speaker 1: and then dragged her to the loading dock where he
Speaker 1: took her body away. That's right. So uh, he put
Speaker 1: their rifle back on the rack. Um didn't even bother
Speaker 1: to take out the shell that he had brought, took
Speaker 1: the cash register and um, and I don't get the
Speaker 1: idea that that was to make it appear as if
Speaker 1: it were a robbery. Even I think he just needed
Speaker 1: the money. Probably that's possible, um, although who knows. But uh.
Speaker 1: Bernice Warden had a son named Frank, and he was
Speaker 1: a deputy, and he came back into town after deer
Speaker 1: hunting like everyone did in Wisconsin in the nineteen forties, excepted.
Speaker 1: He stopped by the old hardware store, and it was
Speaker 1: very odd to him because she was not there. The
Speaker 1: door was unlocked, the back door was open, and then
Speaker 1: he notices a little trail of blood from the front
Speaker 1: to the back door, and very quickly and easily just
Speaker 1: looked at the little receipt pad saw that half gallon
Speaker 1: of andy freeze was the last receipt made out to
Speaker 1: ed Geen called the sheriff and they went to Gaen's
Speaker 1: farmhouse to question him, and very quickly found Bernice Warden
Speaker 1: behind the house hanging in what's called the summer kitchen.
Speaker 1: I guess that's where you go when it's really hot
Speaker 1: to cook. That's not outside the house. Uh. And again
Speaker 1: this is where it gets super grisly. You've got one
Speaker 1: more chance to stop. Turned back now. But he basically
Speaker 1: treated her as if he had been deer hunting. She
Speaker 1: was disemboweled and dressed like a deer, hanging naked upside
Speaker 1: down from a pulley, beheaded and fully fully dressed and
Speaker 1: butchered like a deer would be. So I want to
Speaker 1: I want to just restate something. One of the two
Speaker 1: people who found her was her son, Like he walked
Speaker 1: into the summer kitchen and there's his beheaded, disemboweled mother
Speaker 1: hanging by her ankles in ed Gein's summer kitchen, just
Speaker 1: like imagine that. Like if you read all of the
Speaker 1: accounts of this stuff, no one ever stops and points
Speaker 1: out that, like, poor Frank Warden found his mother like this,
Speaker 1: But they he did, and the sheriff was there too,
Speaker 1: and very quickly they called for backup. And back in
Speaker 1: the day in rural Wisconsin, backup meant like all the
Speaker 1: neighbor folk, all the men in the in the surrounding county,
Speaker 1: we were deputies basically, So they all showed up, and
Speaker 1: pretty soon they launched this investigation of edg Geen's house,
Speaker 1: and in very short order edg Geen's house would be
Speaker 1: known as the House of Horrors. And that's a pretty
Speaker 1: good name for it, actually, considering what they found there,
Speaker 1: because they caught um a game basically right in the
Speaker 1: act of of field dressing um Bernice Warden. But this
Speaker 1: is definitely not his first rodeo as far as that
Speaker 1: was concerned. No, but it appears as if it was
Speaker 1: only the second time that he had ever actually killed someone.
Speaker 1: What they found was really disturbing. You know, human body
Speaker 1: parts used, uh in exactly the ways that they were
Speaker 1: in silence of the lambs, as far as like using
Speaker 1: human skin and human bones and skulls to make into
Speaker 1: other things. UM yeah, I mean the most horrifying stuff
Speaker 1: that you could imagine. Uh. And they realized that it
Speaker 1: was probably about fifteen women, um in total, you know,
Speaker 1: from all the various parts that they were able to
Speaker 1: get together, and uh, he had only killed two of them.
Speaker 1: So that presented a bit of a conundrum until ed
Speaker 1: Gean said basically, uh, you know what I do. I
Speaker 1: I'm digging up people from their graves. Yeah he said that. Um,
Speaker 1: later on he was caught just so utterly red handed.
Speaker 1: It was ridiculous. But they spent hours and hours, like
Speaker 1: maybe ten twelve hours during that first um, that first investigation,
Speaker 1: and it wasn't a big house, but they were just
Speaker 1: turning up so much horrible, twisted, bizarre stuff made out
Speaker 1: of body parts that it just took that long to
Speaker 1: catalog and and combed through everything. Um. But he said, no,
Speaker 1: I've been robbing graves because I am capable of raising
Speaker 1: the dead, So I go and rob graves. And the
Speaker 1: first grave I ever robbed was my mother's grave about
Speaker 1: a year and a half after she died back in Um.
Speaker 1: I went to the grave site, dug her up, I
Speaker 1: opened her casket, and I pulled her head clean off
Speaker 1: of her body with my bare hands, which is the
Speaker 1: grizzliest thing any human being has ever done in their
Speaker 1: entire life, in the history of the world. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: it's interesting in the uh they never went and exhumed
Speaker 1: the grave site as part of the investigation, which is
Speaker 1: really strange. So they're taking Edgain's word for it. I guess,
Speaker 1: um they had dug up other ones chucks, So I
Speaker 1: don't know if maybe they were just satisfied that, like
Speaker 1: promise they found one or two, They're like, fine, we'll
Speaker 1: believe you on the rest of them. And I guess
Speaker 1: maybe in the nineteen forties that was like they got
Speaker 1: their man, you know, I don't know. Yeah, I'm not
Speaker 1: sure what that would have done in the case of
Speaker 1: his mother's grave. You know, sure it's like, hey, what
Speaker 1: whatever you do to your mother's eighteen month old corps
Speaker 1: is your business. I guess I don't think that. I
Speaker 1: don't think that was a case. Uh. But this is
Speaker 1: where Errol Morris weirdly comes into the story. Uh. And
Speaker 1: I feel like we talked about this on another episode
Speaker 1: at some point. Oh really this was news to me.
Speaker 1: But Errol Morris, the documentary filmmaker, he was going to
Speaker 1: do a story about ed Geen spent about a year
Speaker 1: in playing Field in the seventies doing his research that
Speaker 1: he uh, he never made the film, but his pal
Speaker 1: Verner Hertzog, they had sort of a interesting relationship over
Speaker 1: the years. But Berner Herzog said, you know what, you're
Speaker 1: going to go back and dig up the grave and
Speaker 1: the dead of night. Rold and Errol uh did not
Speaker 1: show up. Apparently herd Zog did though they had the Yeah,
Speaker 1: they had like an appointed night and day and time
Speaker 1: and everything, and Herzog was there right probably with the
Speaker 1: shovel or two and maybe some coffee and donuts. I
Speaker 1: would imagine snacks were not in order. But you never know,
Speaker 1: think Caeryl Morris made the right decision in that in
Speaker 1: that case, because you know, grave robbing, even for verification
Speaker 1: for a research project or research for a project that's
Speaker 1: you don't want to do that kind of thing. So,
Speaker 1: as far as we know then, no one has ever
Speaker 1: verified Ed's story about his his him taking his mother's head,
Speaker 1: But there's a lot of other good evidence that that
Speaker 1: that was the case, that he did do that, because
Speaker 1: one of the things they found in his house were
Speaker 1: faces human faces of women. And this is a really
Speaker 1: important point here, women all roughly of the same age build, um,
Speaker 1: look kind of and all of those women happened to
Speaker 1: look kind of like his mother. And so over the
Speaker 1: years a lot of people have said, like, why did
Speaker 1: he do this? What was the problem? But one of
Speaker 1: the first psychiatrists after he was caught, and we'll talk
Speaker 1: a little more about and being caught, but um, one
Speaker 1: of the first psychiatrists who examined him, said, UM, I'm
Speaker 1: pretty sure I have figured out why this guy did this.
Speaker 1: He was robbing graves and trying to resurrect the dead,
Speaker 1: when really he was trying to resurrect his mother, and
Speaker 1: he was robbing the graves of women who looked like her.
Speaker 1: Both of the women, Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden who
Speaker 1: he murdered, they bore a rough resemblance to his mom.
Speaker 1: And so what he was ultimately doing in his head
Speaker 1: was was creating a substitute mother, or recreating his mom,
Speaker 1: reanimating his mom so that she could never leave him again,
Speaker 1: because he brought her back from death. In reality, if
Speaker 1: you were a teenager looking through egg Gean's window at night,
Speaker 1: he was dressing up in a suit of skin made
Speaker 1: from women who he had murdered or whose graves he
Speaker 1: dug up so that he could pretend more accurately to
Speaker 1: be his mother. That's right. Uh, he admits, Like you said,
Speaker 1: he was called super red handed, so he admitted fully
Speaker 1: to those murders. Although uh Hogan's the confession about Hogan
Speaker 1: was ruled it admissible because they basically, you know, beat
Speaker 1: him to a pulp while he was in the waiting room. Well.
Speaker 1: Plus also with with Bernice Warden, he he always said
Speaker 1: that it was an accident, which was bs, but that
Speaker 1: he never confessed to purposefully murdering her. That's right. Um,
Speaker 1: it was you know, and inappropriately, uh, I guess inaccurately
Speaker 1: relayed that there was a human heart, uh and a
Speaker 1: frying pan on the stove. Um. It turns out that
Speaker 1: was not true, but that was enough to get rumors
Speaker 1: started that he was a necrophile. That he was a
Speaker 1: cannibal and was eating human organs because human organs were
Speaker 1: found all over the place. Uh, it seems like that's
Speaker 1: probably not true. Um, but maybe we should take a
Speaker 1: break and talk a little bit about the trial of
Speaker 1: ed Gen and what happened right after this. Well, wait
Speaker 1: a minute, wait a minute, before we take a break, Chuck,
Speaker 1: let's just say he was convicted. We'll be right back
Speaker 1: right after this. So we're on the other side of
Speaker 1: a cliffhanger again, that's right. Uh. Edgean has a lawyer
Speaker 1: named William Belter who throws in not guilty by reason
Speaker 1: of insanity plea. And at the time he was found
Speaker 1: unfit to stand trial in because they diagnosed him as
Speaker 1: having schizophrenia, and uh, he went to Central State Hospital,
Speaker 1: where he stayed for ten years until they finally did
Speaker 1: say you are fit to stand trial ten years later. Uh.
Speaker 1: And then sort of anticlimactically, he was found guilty of
Speaker 1: the murder of Bernice Warden, um, but found insane at
Speaker 1: the time. So basically, just go back to Central State Hospital, right,
Speaker 1: And he petitioned years after that, in nineteen seventy four
Speaker 1: to be released. He was like, Okay, maybe I was
Speaker 1: crazy at the time. I'm not anymore, let me out,
Speaker 1: and they said no. He said okay, and he never
Speaker 1: He never tried again. He would have had much of
Speaker 1: a shot. No, apparently the guy, the doctor, the director
Speaker 1: of the hospital, the Central State Hospital, used to receive
Speaker 1: pretty frequently death threats if if he ever let ed
Speaker 1: Geen out. Yeah, I'm sure that he didn't even need those. So. UM.
Speaker 1: A lot of people, including the judge who presided over
Speaker 1: a Gain's case in nineteen sixty eight, who went on
Speaker 1: to write a book, strongly suspected Gaine was responsible for
Speaker 1: other disappearances and murders, not just his brother Henry's, but
Speaker 1: also some local ones. There were two hunters who went
Speaker 1: missing in nineteen fifty one. Um. The only thing that
Speaker 1: was ever found of them was one of their jackets
Speaker 1: and their dog, one of their dogs, but they in
Speaker 1: their cars just vanished mysteriously. Um. And again was later
Speaker 1: questioned about and he's it. I didn't kill him, but
Speaker 1: my neighbor did. And I can show you where the
Speaker 1: bodies are, and I guess the authorities went. Now that's okay. Um.
Speaker 1: There was an eight year old girl who went missing.
Speaker 1: A fifteen year old girl who went missing. Um. And
Speaker 1: so some people think that Edging really did kill multiple people.
Speaker 1: And it's possible because he still never admitted to murdering
Speaker 1: Bernice Warden, right, So maybe he did and he just
Speaker 1: would have never fessed up. I don't know, but it does,
Speaker 1: like you were saying way earlier, it goes against his
Speaker 1: m o murdering kids and then murdering men. What he
Speaker 1: was after were women that looked like his mother. That's
Speaker 1: that was my impression. Yeah, And as you would expect, uh,
Speaker 1: a house like this, after something like this goes on,
Speaker 1: becomes It was already sort of the stuff of legends
Speaker 1: because of kids poking their face in and seeing you know,
Speaker 1: heads hanging on the wall. But after this happened, like
Speaker 1: you you can imagine exactly like what happens, people are
Speaker 1: coming by to see the how else driving by the
Speaker 1: House of Horrors, vandalizing the House of Horrors. Um. They
Speaker 1: posted notice eventually that the contents of the house and
Speaker 1: the farm we're going to be auctioned. And you know, understandably,
Speaker 1: the townspeople went nuts. Uh, They're like, you can't auction
Speaker 1: this stuff out. We've already got enough problems with the
Speaker 1: notoriety in our little, quiet, small town that we all
Speaker 1: love population And in March twentieth they took matter into
Speaker 1: their own hands, seemingly allegedly because the house burned to
Speaker 1: the ground one night and they never uh, they never
Speaker 1: caught who did it, But it's pretty clear that it
Speaker 1: was an entire town of people with pitchforks and torches. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm pretty sure they're handing out like kool aid and
Speaker 1: saltines at that thing as refreshments. I think the whole
Speaker 1: town did it, you know. Yeah, But it did not
Speaker 1: stop the curiosity of this house. Of course it didn't.
Speaker 1: I mean like people still came and still do go
Speaker 1: to to see the lot where this was. Um, but
Speaker 1: it did. It was probably pretty effective to to cut
Speaker 1: down a lot of looky lose. There was no real
Speaker 1: pilgrimage or shrine for people to go to with with
Speaker 1: just an empty field. I think maybe like the driveways
Speaker 1: still there, I don't know, Um, it's not much to
Speaker 1: look at. So yeah, there's gonna be a lot less
Speaker 1: people that come to playing field. But a couple of
Speaker 1: things were auctioned off, one of which was supposedly as
Speaker 1: cauldron where he kept um disemboweled embowels. I guess um
Speaker 1: that is not necessarily ever been proven as correct. That
Speaker 1: actually is his cauldron is just allegedly as cauldron. But
Speaker 1: his car was definitely auctioned off um. And there's a
Speaker 1: bidding war that that that started between like fourteen bidders,
Speaker 1: and the winning bid was from Bunny Gibbon, who was
Speaker 1: a carnival sideshow operator who bought the car to promote
Speaker 1: at sideshows. And Bunny Gibbon started promoting it as ed
Speaker 1: geins Ghoul car which he used to transport bodies to
Speaker 1: and from the rave and transported Bernice Warden back to
Speaker 1: his house and Bunny Gibbons put a a mannequin in
Speaker 1: the cars again as the driver and a mannequin as
Speaker 1: Bernice Warden's body and charged twenty five cents to come
Speaker 1: take a peek at it. Yeah, and he sold a
Speaker 1: lot of those admission tickets. UH sold like two thousand
Speaker 1: of him over a two day period. It's a lot
Speaker 1: for a carnival, it is. And you know, people are
Speaker 1: attracted to the macab and I kind of always have been.
Speaker 1: So he made a little money. Um, although it was
Speaker 1: very controversial and he got some good good bad publicity
Speaker 1: because of it, which was fine with him. Um, But
Speaker 1: at some point some of these fair started to say, no,
Speaker 1: we're not gonna let you come in here and bring
Speaker 1: this car in here. We're basically going to shut you down. Uh.
Speaker 1: The sheriff arrived at one and shut him down, and
Speaker 1: then he basically said, you know what I'm taking. I'm
Speaker 1: taking my car onto greener pastures in Illinois. We're hopefully
Speaker 1: I'll be able to show my car there. Yeah. I
Speaker 1: guess Illinois was fine with it, or it just petered
Speaker 1: out or something, because after that, the trail kind of
Speaker 1: goes cold, and no one has any idea what became
Speaker 1: of ed Gein's car. So it may be out there somewhere.
Speaker 1: It may be in parts in different cars. It may
Speaker 1: just be a cube, who knows it. Maybe part of
Speaker 1: your refrigerator could be. But no one knows what happened
Speaker 1: to ed Gaen's car. Yeah, we do know what happened
Speaker 1: to ed Gain's cauldron. Uh. If that was in fact
Speaker 1: his cauldron, woman named Evelyn Mayer bought it in n
Speaker 1: and planted flowers in it representing the victims. Fifty years later,
Speaker 1: her grandson Dan McIntyre found it in his parents garage,
Speaker 1: had it verified by people from the auction that they
Speaker 1: were you know, they at least say that was that
Speaker 1: was the one. Uh. And then four years ago it
Speaker 1: was auctioned off and now is on display at Basin's
Speaker 1: Haunted Museum in Las Vegas. Wow. I would go see that, wouldn't.
Speaker 1: You don't know. I don't know if I would fly
Speaker 1: out in Vegas to see it or anything like that,
Speaker 1: but if I were walking down the street and they're like,
Speaker 1: come on in, I'd probably go in. I don't think
Speaker 1: I'm not interested in that stuff. Um. I want to
Speaker 1: also let me give a shout out because I hadn't
Speaker 1: heard anything about the cauldron before, but um, I found
Speaker 1: out about that from the site Cult of Weird. Cult
Speaker 1: of Weird. I'm not sure. It's a good little site,
Speaker 1: and I think they might actually be based in Wisconsin.
Speaker 1: So I just want to tip my hat to them
Speaker 1: for teaching me about Gaine's Cauldron. Interesting, So, Chuck, When
Speaker 1: um Ed Gaine was still alive, he was very much
Speaker 1: a legend. He didn't die until and long before that
Speaker 1: he was basically made into this legendary boogeyman. When the
Speaker 1: first character that was based on him hit the big screen.
Speaker 1: It was a Norman Bates and Hitchcock's Psycho, and Hitchcock
Speaker 1: had made this movie based on a book that had
Speaker 1: come out I think the year before by an author
Speaker 1: named Robert Block, also called Psycho, and Block was from Wisconsin,
Speaker 1: so he kind of fashioned the meat of the story,
Speaker 1: or the bones of the story around the edgeen crimes.
Speaker 1: Was that intentional? The bones are the meat? Yeah? You
Speaker 1: know what's really sad is it absolutely wasn't interesting. I
Speaker 1: was like, what, why are you making that face? I
Speaker 1: don't understand. Uh. The next movie was a little more
Speaker 1: on the nose. Uh. In nine four there was a
Speaker 1: low budge movie called Deranged and it was about a
Speaker 1: killer name Ezra Cobb, but it was very clearly modeled
Speaker 1: on ed geen Um. And when you look at even
Speaker 1: the production stills of this thing, he's like eating brains
Speaker 1: out of a skull and making suits of skin. It's
Speaker 1: it looks really pretty horrific. It was a Canadian movie,
Speaker 1: but it starred as Azra Cobb a k A. Ed
Speaker 1: geene One, Robert's Blossom, one of my favorite character directors
Speaker 1: who was no longer with us. What else was I in?
Speaker 1: He played Old Man Marley and Home Alone? Okay, wow, wow,
Speaker 1: I'll bet he did a good ed Geen. He did,
Speaker 1: and when he was younger he looked. I mean, if
Speaker 1: you think he was scary and in Home Alone, you
Speaker 1: should have seen him when he was in his twenties.
Speaker 1: I can imagine those Canadians. Man, they'll they'll make a
Speaker 1: ghastly film. Have you ever seen um uh um strange Brew.
Speaker 1: I actually love that movie. Yeah, I bet you that.
Speaker 1: I'm not sure if that one ages, I'll be curious.
Speaker 1: I was like, come on, what's a what's a movie
Speaker 1: associated with Canada? And come on, Josh, come on. Um.
Speaker 1: So the next step was actually the same year The
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw Masker came out, the same year that Deranged did.
Speaker 1: And Toby Hooper knew about the egg Geen story because
Speaker 1: he had relatives in Wisconsin who are like, listen to this,
Speaker 1: and they told him. He said, I'm gonna grow up
Speaker 1: to make a crazy movie about this based on this
Speaker 1: some day, and he did. He made the Texas Chainsaw
Speaker 1: Man o Secre, which was one of the all time
Speaker 1: great that's just horror movies, but indie movies of all
Speaker 1: time for sure. Have you ever read there's a Texas
Speaker 1: Monthly like long form article about the making of the
Speaker 1: Texas Chainsaw mascre. Have you ever read it? No, but
Speaker 1: Texas Monthly is a pretty good rag. It is a
Speaker 1: good rag. I think maybe Skip Pollen's worth throat. They've
Speaker 1: got a few really great writers there. But um they
Speaker 1: they used to There was another like much much bigger
Speaker 1: like studio film shooting in the area at the same time,
Speaker 1: and the crew from the Texas Chainsaw Masacre would go
Speaker 1: to that set and act like they worked there for catering,
Speaker 1: like during lunch and stuff like that. It would go
Speaker 1: steel catering food and just pose like they were supposed
Speaker 1: to be there, and then they go back in films more,
Speaker 1: although they also frequently get kicked off a set and
Speaker 1: get caught. I went to a catering trucker too in
Speaker 1: my neighborhood in l A when I wasn't working on them. Well,
Speaker 1: you're letting them, you're not ruining their shots, so they
Speaker 1: owe you, you know. I was just getting to breakfast
Speaker 1: Breedo occasionally. Uh So As far as Gene well, of course,
Speaker 1: we mentioned Silence of the Lambs. Uh In n But
Speaker 1: as far as Gene goes, he was a model prisoner
Speaker 1: um or well, you know, I guess in the in
Speaker 1: the home where he was it wasn't a prison. Well
Speaker 1: he was in Carson. He wasn't honored to leave. So
Speaker 1: do you call him a prisoner though? I guess patient? Patient? Inmate? Maybe?
Speaker 1: How about inmate? All right? He was a model inmate. Uh.
Speaker 1: There was one quote from a cook that said Eddie
Speaker 1: was normally a very unassuming, quiet, helpful kind of guy.
Speaker 1: You didn't know who what he had done, you would
Speaker 1: think nothing of him. Uh. And like you said, he
Speaker 1: died there in four Um of cancer and respiratory illness
Speaker 1: on July and was buried in playing Field with his
Speaker 1: family at three am, obviously too in the dead of night.
Speaker 1: Um ironically across from a grave that he had robbed. Um.
Speaker 1: But they smartly eventually removed his headstone and put it
Speaker 1: in storage because it was stolen in two thousand. Then
Speaker 1: they founded in Seattle a few months later, they were like,
Speaker 1: let's just leave this unmarked between Henry and Augustus Graves. Really,
Speaker 1: what good is it doing? Like what are they saving
Speaker 1: it for? You know? Oh? I mean there may be
Speaker 1: laws against destroying a headstone. Oh I'll bet you're right.
Speaker 1: I'll bet you're right. So yeah, you can go visit
Speaker 1: their graves now. And the gap in between their headstones
Speaker 1: is that's where a gain is buried. And there's one
Speaker 1: more thing, like we were a lot of people talk
Speaker 1: about cannibalism, a lot of people talk about necrophilia, but
Speaker 1: it's not at all clear that he ever ate any
Speaker 1: person and that he ever engaged in any actual like
Speaker 1: sex act with anybody that he murdered or dug up.
Speaker 1: And in fact, remember he promised his mother that he
Speaker 1: would remain a virgin his whole life. He said that
Speaker 1: he had never had a sexual encounter with anybody else
Speaker 1: living or dead, just himself, you know what I mean?
Speaker 1: That was it. So he's probably not in necro file either.
Speaker 1: Let's say for Ed Gaine, Wow, this was a ghastly episode,
Speaker 1: wasn't it. Um. If you want to know more about
Speaker 1: Ed Gaine, mob, there's a lot that you could go read,
Speaker 1: like we didn't even we purposefully didn't really go into
Speaker 1: the stuff that they found at his house. It was
Speaker 1: really bad. So if this floated your boat and you
Speaker 1: want to get all sick, oh go check it out.
Speaker 1: In the meantime, it's time for a listener mail. This
Speaker 1: is called eyewitness identification. Real life story Here, Hey guys.
Speaker 1: A few years ago, I saw a man crouching by
Speaker 1: my neighbor's bike she kept locked to a chain fence
Speaker 1: between our properties. Watch for a few moments to confirm
Speaker 1: he was working towards stealing the bike. When I asked
Speaker 1: him when he was doing, he muttered nothing, and I said, well,
Speaker 1: it kind of looks like you're trying to steal my
Speaker 1: neighbor's bike, so I'm gonna call the cops now. First
Speaker 1: of all, Karen, I don't know if that was you
Speaker 1: shouldn't probably engage that that man. That's true, but it
Speaker 1: was pretty hilarious line. Yes, uh, he ignored me and continued.
Speaker 1: So I stood there about five feet away, separated by
Speaker 1: that chain link fence. He continued and uh, describing his
Speaker 1: clothing and features to the police over the phone. When
Speaker 1: the dispatcher asked how old he looked, it took everything
Speaker 1: in me not to pause and ask him his age.
Speaker 1: So unfortunately, the man got away with the bike before
Speaker 1: the cops arrived, so they drove around looking for him,
Speaker 1: came back a while later with a man on a
Speaker 1: bike who did bear a very close resemblance to the thief.
Speaker 1: Even the clothes were super similar. The guy matched the
Speaker 1: description I had given so closely the cops would not
Speaker 1: could not believe it when I repeated, uh, no, he's
Speaker 1: not the guy. Uh. The only reason I was so
Speaker 1: certain is because it took I really took the time
Speaker 1: to look at him for a moment. I'm a terribly
Speaker 1: unobservant person, and it really made me realize what a
Speaker 1: poor witness I would make after the fact, how hard
Speaker 1: it could be to note those necessary details when your
Speaker 1: brain is on autopilot. They were never able to catch
Speaker 1: the petty by thief, but very glad they didn't arrest
Speaker 1: the innocent man. And how dumb am I for standing
Speaker 1: next to a criminal? Well, I call the cops on him. Well,
Speaker 1: at least she knows now, she's she's got some perspective. Now, Yeah,
Speaker 1: she says, is before our camera phones and such, So
Speaker 1: next time I'll just snap a picture. Yeah, sir, can
Speaker 1: you look at me? Great? Thank you? And that is
Speaker 1: from Karen and Memphis. And Karen said, come to a
Speaker 1: show in Memphis. She said, you guys could sell out
Speaker 1: the orpheum, No problem. Oh yeah, I looked it up
Speaker 1: the orpheum sea so. Oh, I don't know, Karen, we
Speaker 1: cannot sell out the orpheum, no problem. No, I don't
Speaker 1: think so. If you have something about half that size, yeah,
Speaker 1: we could try that. We might be in business. Maybe
Speaker 1: we can do it to Memphis or a special show
Speaker 1: at grace Land. That'd be pretty cool. Cheez, that'd be wonderful.
Speaker 1: We could do it in that the television room, yeah,
Speaker 1: or orton Sun Records, or on the Lisa Marie. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: was that the plane it's been on there? It's great. Okay, Well,
Speaker 1: if you want to get in touch with this, like Karen,
Speaker 1: did Karen be a little safer next time? It's a bike? Okay? Um.
Speaker 1: You can go onto our website Stuff you Should Know
Speaker 1: dot com check out our social links there, or you
Speaker 1: can send us an email to stuff podcast at i
Speaker 1: heeart radio dot com. Stuff you Should Know is a
Speaker 1: production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For more podcasts
Speaker 1: for my heart Radio, visit the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts,
Speaker 1: or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. H