WEBVTT - Ed Gein: The Serial Killer's Serial Killer 0:00:00.720 --> 0:00:04.440 Attention, Orlando and New Orleans. Stuff you Should Know is 0:00:04.519 --> 0:00:08.760 coming to your town October nine and ten, which is soon, 0:00:09.280 --> 0:00:11.760 which means the time to buy tickets is running out 0:00:12.119 --> 0:00:15.319 and f y I our shows tend to sell out, 0:00:15.720 --> 0:00:18.759 so go to s Y s K live dot com 0:00:18.800 --> 0:00:21.919 and you'll find links to tickets and info and you 0:00:21.920 --> 0:00:25.160 should probably go now. We'll see you in October, and 0:00:25.680 --> 0:00:27.920 if you want to come see me, do my End 0:00:27.920 --> 0:00:30.520 of the World live show. I'll be in Chicago on 0:00:30.520 --> 0:00:34.800 September twelve and in Austin, Texas on October two. Ticket 0:00:34.840 --> 0:00:37.360 links are weirdly hard to find, so just search End 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:40.800 of the World Josh Clark, Austin, or Chicago, and your 0:00:40.840 --> 0:00:44.000 friendly search engine will help you out. See you in Orlando, 0:00:44.120 --> 0:00:48.680 New Orleans, Chicago, and Austin. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, 0:00:48.880 --> 0:00:57.480 a production of I Heart Radios, How Stuff Works. Hey, 0:00:57.560 --> 0:01:00.800 and welcome to the horror show. I'm Josh, there's Charles, 0:01:00.960 --> 0:01:05.720 have you Chuck Bryant, there's Jerry over there, and um, 0:01:05.920 --> 0:01:10.120 we are about to pass out from nausea. Yeah, I 0:01:10.120 --> 0:01:12.120 think we need to issue a strong c o A. 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:15.880 Oh yeah, um, I don't know. Maybe some parents might 0:01:16.120 --> 0:01:18.640 depends on what you title this thing. They might think 0:01:18.760 --> 0:01:22.360 ed Gan was like a children's show host or something. Yeah, 0:01:22.400 --> 0:01:25.119 I guess that's possible. So, yeah, it's a good idea. 0:01:25.200 --> 0:01:28.240 We preface this with this one is really just not 0:01:28.319 --> 0:01:31.959 for kids. I don't even know what agent would really start. 0:01:32.000 --> 0:01:37.680 Maybe I don't know. It's really grizzly and gross. Yeah, 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:41.280 maybe no one should listen to this. How about that? Um, 0:01:41.319 --> 0:01:43.399 before we give him further started, just let me throw 0:01:43.480 --> 0:01:46.840 one more thing in. Okay, okay, I am doing an 0:01:47.000 --> 0:01:51.720 End of the World live show in Chicago on September twelve, 0:01:52.320 --> 0:01:55.600 Just saying, so if anybody wants to go see you 0:01:55.640 --> 0:01:58.160 can get tickets to come see me do my End 0:01:58.200 --> 0:02:00.960 of the World live show in Chicago on September twelve 0:02:01.680 --> 0:02:06.800 at l H hyphen St dot com. Enough set, that's great, 0:02:07.200 --> 0:02:10.720 Thanks Chuck. So we're talking about ed Geene, who is 0:02:10.880 --> 0:02:16.320 most decidedly not a children's show host. Um, although ironically 0:02:16.320 --> 0:02:21.000 he was a babysitter from time to time. It's baby 0:02:21.320 --> 0:02:24.040 the most shocking thing I've ever read in my life. Yeah, 0:02:24.200 --> 0:02:27.160 although I mean it doesn't seem like he posed much. 0:02:27.200 --> 0:02:30.000 I mean, obviously he was a threat to anything, but 0:02:30.040 --> 0:02:33.480 that was not his m O. No kids weren't, which 0:02:33.520 --> 0:02:35.560 will see later. Some people are like, it doesn't matter, 0:02:35.600 --> 0:02:39.520 He's probably still a child killer. It just doesn't fit there. 0:02:39.560 --> 0:02:42.120 He had a very specific m O for sure as 0:02:42.120 --> 0:02:44.640 far as killers go, and he doesn't qualify as far 0:02:44.680 --> 0:02:46.520 as I know, as a serial killer, although I think 0:02:46.560 --> 0:02:50.200 that's just silly, but um, he failed to hit the 0:02:50.520 --> 0:02:52.760 big three mark, I guess is what it takes to 0:02:52.760 --> 0:02:57.000 be a serial killer? Well proven at least. Yeah, that's true, 0:02:57.080 --> 0:02:59.600 that's true. So he's possibly a serial killer, I guess. 0:03:00.360 --> 0:03:03.000 And if you um have never heard of edg geen 0:03:03.840 --> 0:03:05.840 fret not, we're going to tell you all about him. 0:03:05.880 --> 0:03:09.240 But I would wager that you have at least encountered 0:03:09.480 --> 0:03:13.160 some character based on him, because there's probably no real 0:03:13.240 --> 0:03:17.640 life killer or criminal that was just stick with killer. 0:03:17.960 --> 0:03:23.760 Who's inspired more utterly deranged characters than Ed Gene has. Yeah, 0:03:23.880 --> 0:03:26.720 for sure, I mean we we know the Big Three 0:03:27.000 --> 0:03:31.799 or of course Psycho with Norman Bates Texas, Chainsaw Masacre 0:03:31.880 --> 0:03:35.600 with leather Face, and of course Silence of the Lamps 0:03:35.600 --> 0:03:39.760 with Hannibal Lector there was James James Gum who is well, 0:03:39.760 --> 0:03:43.480 that's true. James Gum was the Buffalo Bill character right 0:03:43.560 --> 0:03:48.720 exactly who was right? None of which are Hannibal Elector. No, no, no, 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:52.040 Hannibal Elector was even like man, that guy's off his rocker, 0:03:53.160 --> 0:03:55.960 Do you think, Yeah, I think a little bit. I 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.760 think he was kind of like this. Maybe at least 0:03:58.760 --> 0:04:02.000 he felt he was sloppy or something. He definitely knew 0:04:02.000 --> 0:04:04.000 he was smarter than that guy, so I think he 0:04:04.040 --> 0:04:07.280 looked down on him in one way or another. So 0:04:07.520 --> 0:04:11.120 um edg. Geen story starts, as so many of our 0:04:11.200 --> 0:04:16.320 stories start, at birth. Back in nineteen o six in Wisconsin. 0:04:16.720 --> 0:04:19.640 He was born little Edward Theodore Geen, And I'd like 0:04:19.720 --> 0:04:22.520 to say like things started out normally, but I don't 0:04:22.560 --> 0:04:25.440 get the impression that there was a single normal day 0:04:25.680 --> 0:04:29.359 in ed Gaen's entire life. He he just really pulled 0:04:29.440 --> 0:04:31.600 up the short straw, as it were, as far as 0:04:31.640 --> 0:04:35.680 the birth lottery goes. Yeah, he uh. You know. His 0:04:35.760 --> 0:04:40.200 father was an abusive alcoholic. His mother she under grocery 0:04:40.200 --> 0:04:43.400 store for a little while and Lacrosse, Wisconsin, but she 0:04:44.120 --> 0:04:49.240 was Augusta was by all accounts, a um mentally ill, 0:04:49.440 --> 0:04:54.920 religious zealot, overbearing, overbearing. There needs to be a stronger 0:04:54.960 --> 0:04:59.960 word in this case, super overbearing, super overbearing mother yeah 0:05:00.120 --> 0:05:04.240 times infinity Yeah. And the and the religious the religious 0:05:04.240 --> 0:05:07.520 stuff is just off the charts as far as um, 0:05:07.600 --> 0:05:13.120 anything to do with sex and intercourse was the worst dirty, 0:05:13.279 --> 0:05:16.840 possible thing imaginable. And that she hammered this into her 0:05:16.839 --> 0:05:22.560 two boys. She really didn't hammer by, I guess, grabbing 0:05:22.600 --> 0:05:25.800 their genitalia sometimes and railing at them about how this 0:05:25.880 --> 0:05:28.839 is the devil's unit or whatever she'd call it. I 0:05:28.880 --> 0:05:31.560 don't know. She probably could have called the devil's unit. 0:05:31.640 --> 0:05:35.839 I don't think it's entirely impossible. But she realized she 0:05:35.839 --> 0:05:39.039 looked around their town of Lacrosse, Wisconsin and said, this 0:05:39.120 --> 0:05:42.520 place is a sinkhole of filth. There's a quote from her. 0:05:42.680 --> 0:05:45.240 I guess it's an ed geen doing an impression of 0:05:45.279 --> 0:05:47.800 his mom, which will find out later. He really liked 0:05:47.800 --> 0:05:51.440 to do a lot um And she moved her whole family, 0:05:51.480 --> 0:05:55.080 sold the family grocery store, and moved from Lacrosse, Wisconsin 0:05:55.440 --> 0:05:57.960 to a little town called Plainfield, which had a population 0:05:58.000 --> 0:06:02.200 of about five hundred. In Plainfield was it had been 0:06:02.360 --> 0:06:05.240 established decades before, but it was still so small that 0:06:05.279 --> 0:06:09.320 they'd only built the fire station and the local school 0:06:09.720 --> 0:06:11.960 within the last like seven eight years. It was a 0:06:12.080 --> 0:06:15.119 very tiny little town, and so you'd think like, Okay, 0:06:15.200 --> 0:06:18.000 maybe Augusta Gean could could relax a little bit here. 0:06:18.480 --> 0:06:21.480 Not so, Yeah, did you look up a picture of her? 0:06:22.400 --> 0:06:26.200 I didn't. Actually, I don't think I have ever seen her. Yeah, 0:06:26.240 --> 0:06:28.880 she looks like you would think. Yeah, I think I 0:06:29.000 --> 0:06:31.599 just had such a mental image of her. I assumed 0:06:31.640 --> 0:06:33.240 I knew what she looked like, and she does not 0:06:33.360 --> 0:06:35.719 look friendly, let's put it that way. I could see 0:06:35.760 --> 0:06:39.720 that hair in in a kind of a tight bun maybe, 0:06:39.720 --> 0:06:44.159 and then with the calico lace um neck dresses. Yeah. 0:06:44.160 --> 0:06:46.160 I mean, no one smiled in pictures back then, but 0:06:46.279 --> 0:06:49.560 she and the only photo that I found was especially 0:06:49.560 --> 0:06:54.480 good at the photo scowl right. So you know, they 0:06:54.520 --> 0:06:56.880 moved to Plainfield, where she thought things would be better, 0:06:57.040 --> 0:07:01.159 I guess, and uh not a sinkhole of health, and 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:03.200 it was not any better. There was there was no 0:07:03.320 --> 0:07:06.440 place that Augusta Geene could have gone that would have 0:07:06.480 --> 0:07:09.720 been suitable for her. I think that's absolutely true. Yeah, 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:11.640 because there were other human beings there, and I think 0:07:11.680 --> 0:07:15.680 she considered just about everyone filth uh, unless they were 0:07:15.760 --> 0:07:17.440 you know, maybe the preacher and who knows. She may 0:07:17.480 --> 0:07:19.920 have considered her preacher filth. I could see that, and 0:07:19.960 --> 0:07:23.239 she definitely considered her husband filth, considered her husband filth 0:07:23.320 --> 0:07:26.520 and women, um, you know, in any woman that had 0:07:26.520 --> 0:07:30.040 been on a date with another man, she uh had 0:07:30.120 --> 0:07:33.880 bad things to say about it. Seems like yeah, so, um, 0:07:34.000 --> 0:07:36.640 that was actually not a good move for the family. 0:07:36.880 --> 0:07:39.520 You know, they've been doing okay from from what I 0:07:39.560 --> 0:07:41.720 could tell, is as far as they could do okay 0:07:41.760 --> 0:07:45.440 with an abusive, alcoholic, shiftless father, um and an angry 0:07:45.480 --> 0:07:49.480 mom and lacrosse. I think they've been doing better financially. 0:07:49.640 --> 0:07:52.240 They moved to Plainfield and they started farming, and their 0:07:52.320 --> 0:07:56.560 dad was fairly useless to begin with. But secondly, the 0:07:56.880 --> 0:07:59.800 soil that the land, they were not used to farming, 0:07:59.800 --> 0:08:02.840 this kind of sandy soil where they didn't have any 0:08:02.840 --> 0:08:05.080 idea what they were doing with farming anyway, so they 0:08:05.080 --> 0:08:07.960 had a really hard time growing crops. And then apparently 0:08:07.960 --> 0:08:10.680 the neighbors weren't the friendliest neighbors around, so nobody stepped 0:08:10.720 --> 0:08:12.520 in to help them and show them what to do, 0:08:12.840 --> 0:08:15.880 so they endured some real hardship on the farm. That 0:08:16.000 --> 0:08:19.560 was problem. One problem too was ed Geen was not 0:08:19.800 --> 0:08:23.840 one to leave the house very much. And when he did, 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:26.680 he went to school. And it's not like school was 0:08:26.760 --> 0:08:29.880 a respite for him or a place to escape from. 0:08:29.920 --> 0:08:33.160 It was just as hellish as it was at home. Basically, Yeah, 0:08:33.160 --> 0:08:36.440 it was. It was pretty bad for Ed. He had 0:08:36.600 --> 0:08:39.080 a week eye on one side, He had a growth 0:08:39.120 --> 0:08:41.840 on his tongue that made him talk different than the 0:08:41.840 --> 0:08:44.240 rest of the kids. Uh, he had sort of a 0:08:44.440 --> 0:08:48.760 feminine appearance and all of this, you know, and you know, 0:08:48.840 --> 0:08:51.200 and this is bad at any time in history probably 0:08:51.480 --> 0:08:55.120 and when you're a little kid in school, but back 0:08:55.160 --> 0:08:58.000 then it was really bad. And of course he was 0:08:58.120 --> 0:09:01.440 bullied and teased, and he would come home crying and 0:09:01.520 --> 0:09:03.600 his father would beat him for crying and call him 0:09:03.600 --> 0:09:07.040 a sissy. And things are really getting out of hand, 0:09:07.080 --> 0:09:10.120 Like his his mom won't let he or Henry really 0:09:10.200 --> 0:09:13.240 leave much at all. Um, so they're just stuck in 0:09:13.360 --> 0:09:18.920 isolation where his psychosis and you know, later found out 0:09:18.960 --> 0:09:22.520 to be seriously mentally ill, obviously, but it certainly didn't 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:24.719 help to be in this kind of environment, not at all. 0:09:24.800 --> 0:09:27.000 But I mean, this is this was life for him. 0:09:27.040 --> 0:09:29.280 This is how he lived. He and his his older 0:09:29.280 --> 0:09:31.960 brother Henry, who had him by I think four years 0:09:32.040 --> 0:09:35.760 or something like that. Um, this was their life, and 0:09:36.040 --> 0:09:39.600 Henry had like this. He was not as wrapped up 0:09:39.600 --> 0:09:42.640 in their mother as Ed was. Not by a long shot. 0:09:42.880 --> 0:09:46.959 Henry felt totally comfortable criticizing his mother. He saw her 0:09:47.040 --> 0:09:49.960 as mentally imbalanced. He was just not under her spell 0:09:50.080 --> 0:09:53.320 like Ed was. Um. But that's how they grew up, 0:09:53.360 --> 0:09:55.440 that's how they lived. And she made them both promise 0:09:55.800 --> 0:09:58.240 that they would die virgins because sex was just so 0:09:58.280 --> 0:10:02.080 awful and dirty. Um. And then in nineteen forty the 0:10:02.160 --> 0:10:06.240 family um took a turn for the different when George, 0:10:06.440 --> 0:10:09.240 their dad, died of a heart attack, and that actually 0:10:09.280 --> 0:10:12.200 kind of opened up Ed's life a little bit more. 0:10:12.760 --> 0:10:14.760 Number one, he had his mom all too himself, right, 0:10:15.240 --> 0:10:18.280 But number two, just by virtue of having to go 0:10:18.360 --> 0:10:21.320 out and make more money, he had to go out 0:10:21.559 --> 0:10:23.880 of the house and do things like odd jobs and 0:10:24.320 --> 0:10:27.040 babysit and that kind of stuff. So it changed his 0:10:27.120 --> 0:10:28.600 life a little bit. But it's not like it had 0:10:28.640 --> 0:10:32.640 any big lasting effects for the better. Yeah, for sure. Um, 0:10:32.720 --> 0:10:34.679 he didn't quite have her to her to himself yet 0:10:34.720 --> 0:10:38.360 because Henry was still around. But Eddie, you know, like 0:10:38.360 --> 0:10:40.280 you said he didn't travel much. I think the furthest 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:44.160 he ever traveled away from his house was one time, Um, 0:10:44.240 --> 0:10:46.040 when he was thirty six, he went to Milwaukee, a 0:10:46.120 --> 0:10:49.959 hundred and fifty miles away for military inspection, where he 0:10:50.000 --> 0:10:52.880 did not get in to the military because of his 0:10:53.160 --> 0:10:56.640 lazy eye, which, uh could have changed the course of 0:10:56.720 --> 0:11:00.000 his history. You know, had he gotten accepted into military 0:11:00.000 --> 0:11:03.560 service and gotten under the out from under the thumb 0:11:03.640 --> 0:11:06.120 of his mother, could change to the course of a 0:11:06.120 --> 0:11:08.120 lot of people's history, you know what I mean, Yeah, 0:11:08.160 --> 0:11:14.400 for sure. So uh, four years later, after dad dies, UM, 0:11:14.520 --> 0:11:16.960 he and his brother they're working at the house. They're 0:11:16.960 --> 0:11:19.800 burning some brush. The fire gets out of control, and 0:11:19.800 --> 0:11:22.960 then Henry is found dead and everyone's like, you know, 0:11:23.040 --> 0:11:24.920 he died in this fire. He died in this fire. 0:11:25.480 --> 0:11:27.840 Upon a little bit of investigation, and it seems like 0:11:27.880 --> 0:11:30.840 that's about all they did. Uh, that was bruising on 0:11:30.920 --> 0:11:34.920 Henry's head and neck, and uh they listed his cause 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:39.400 of death as being asphyxiation. Anyway, and like we said earlier, 0:11:39.400 --> 0:11:43.640 it was never proven. But it seems like since uh 0:11:44.080 --> 0:11:46.880 edit led them to the body, even though he said 0:11:46.880 --> 0:11:49.360 he couldn't find Henry during the fire. Yet here's where 0:11:49.360 --> 0:11:51.600 he is. It's a little fishy. It was all fishy. 0:11:51.679 --> 0:11:54.040 So you know, to this day, people say that Ed 0:11:54.280 --> 0:11:57.920 killed his brother and that was probably his first murder, Yeah, 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.800 which is a it's a pretty significant first first murder, 0:12:00.880 --> 0:12:05.199 murdering your own brother, you know. So now Ed really 0:12:05.200 --> 0:12:08.720 does have his mom to himself. But apparently from what 0:12:08.800 --> 0:12:12.199 I read, she really her health took a really um 0:12:12.760 --> 0:12:16.520 bad term for the worse after Henry died. Um, she 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:19.280 really took it hard. And so in less than a 0:12:19.360 --> 0:12:22.760 year she suffered a stroke and um it was basically 0:12:23.400 --> 0:12:27.240 a housebound, if not um bed bound, and Ed took 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:29.240 care of her, which I get the impression that Ed 0:12:29.360 --> 0:12:31.640 was more than happy to take care of his mom 0:12:31.720 --> 0:12:34.720 day and night. Oh yeah, for sure. I Mean it 0:12:34.840 --> 0:12:39.320 was a um, just such a twisted manipulation that was 0:12:39.360 --> 0:12:42.920 going on because on one hand she's just screaming at 0:12:43.000 --> 0:12:46.040 him and calling uh, putting him down, calling him a 0:12:46.080 --> 0:12:49.440 failure and a weakling. And then other times he would 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:51.880 she would call him into bed to like sleep with 0:12:51.920 --> 0:12:54.439 her and hold her, and she would whisper to him 0:12:54.480 --> 0:12:56.080 and say that he could spend the night in her 0:12:56.080 --> 0:12:59.200 bed and stuff. So like he didn't know which way 0:12:59.360 --> 0:13:03.600 was up. It was just standard elderly mom and middle 0:13:03.640 --> 0:13:07.560 aged son stuff, you know. But we all go through it. 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:10.360 It's true. We've all crawled into our mom's bed and 0:13:10.360 --> 0:13:14.079 slept the night at age forty five. But this didn't 0:13:14.160 --> 0:13:16.960 go very well for ed Um. He still was laughing 0:13:17.040 --> 0:13:21.160 it up though. Here's the thing. He was the um. 0:13:21.240 --> 0:13:23.760 He was so devoted to his mom that any attention 0:13:23.800 --> 0:13:28.240 from her, negative, positive, whatever, would have been like that, 0:13:28.240 --> 0:13:30.880 that's he needed that, that was normal to him. However, 0:13:30.920 --> 0:13:34.839 he got it um. So he uh, he took care 0:13:34.840 --> 0:13:37.439 of her. He cared for one way or another. And 0:13:38.280 --> 0:13:42.840 she died um in which is what was that a 0:13:42.920 --> 0:13:47.400 year after her his brother died. Yeah, so she didn't 0:13:47.440 --> 0:13:49.880 even last a year after Henry died. She dies of 0:13:50.000 --> 0:13:53.240 from what I saw was pneumonia and probably another stroke. 0:13:53.840 --> 0:13:57.199 And now here's the thing. Ed Geane, who was almost 0:13:57.240 --> 0:13:59.120 never allowed to leave the farm, and when he did 0:13:59.160 --> 0:14:03.160 he encountered but who were extraordinarily unfriendly to him. He 0:14:03.240 --> 0:14:06.560 had turned into um, a bit of a weirdo, you 0:14:06.600 --> 0:14:09.679 could say, even just from the outside, just from you know, 0:14:09.760 --> 0:14:13.160 what normal people knew about him. In town, he was 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:16.720 considered an oddball in a weirdo but generally harmless. But 0:14:16.760 --> 0:14:21.880 now he was totally and utterly alone on this family farm, 0:14:22.200 --> 0:14:24.440 and the first thing he did was board up his 0:14:24.560 --> 0:14:28.680 mom's rooms so that he could establish a shrine tour. 0:14:29.080 --> 0:14:31.480 The rest of the house, though, kind of fell into 0:14:31.520 --> 0:14:34.240 what you would call disrepair. Yeah, I mean there was 0:14:34.280 --> 0:14:37.040 serious neglect at that point. He didn't seem to care 0:14:37.040 --> 0:14:40.520 about keeping the house up except for that pristine room 0:14:40.600 --> 0:14:46.680 where mommy lived. Uh. He started getting into some unusual 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:52.280 things like anatomy books and um pornography and horror novels, 0:14:52.280 --> 0:14:58.040 pulp horror, um, Nazi Nazi books about Nazi atrocities, and 0:14:58.120 --> 0:15:00.000 he would he would start to go out a little 0:15:00.040 --> 0:15:02.800 that he generally still stayed around the farm, and like 0:15:02.880 --> 0:15:06.560 we said earlier, unbelievably worked as a babysitter and as 0:15:06.600 --> 0:15:09.320 a handyman around town. So he started to kind of 0:15:09.320 --> 0:15:10.960 appear a little bit in town. And no one thought 0:15:11.000 --> 0:15:14.800 a lot about the guy, um, except like the occasional 0:15:14.800 --> 0:15:18.040 time when he would stop in at this pub Mary 0:15:18.080 --> 0:15:21.400 Hogan's and Pine Grove and he would say weird things 0:15:21.520 --> 0:15:25.000 about some horror novel or some Nazi book that he 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:28.080 was reading to the point where people were like, that's 0:15:28.160 --> 0:15:31.880 a very to talk about head hunting and sex change operations. 0:15:32.160 --> 0:15:35.120 This is what they called it back then. Uh, it's 0:15:35.120 --> 0:15:38.240 an odd thing to talk about at a bar in 0:15:38.400 --> 0:15:41.920 rural Wisconsin, especially for sure. And he would also he 0:15:42.000 --> 0:15:45.400 had a weird habit of like laughing suddenly apropos of 0:15:45.440 --> 0:15:48.040 nothing that anyone else could could put their finger on. 0:15:48.440 --> 0:15:50.520 So it seemed a lot like he was laughing at 0:15:50.520 --> 0:15:52.760 his own jokes, that kind of stuff. He was an 0:15:52.760 --> 0:15:56.520 odd dude. But again, the town was They considered him 0:15:56.560 --> 0:15:59.720 so harmless and so trustworthy that they would let him 0:15:59.720 --> 0:16:02.320 baby sit their children. He wouldn't hurt a fly. He 0:16:02.360 --> 0:16:05.680 had a reputation from um the way that people put 0:16:05.680 --> 0:16:08.720 it of not going deer hunting with the rest of 0:16:08.760 --> 0:16:10.680 the guys, which I mean, like, if you don't go 0:16:10.760 --> 0:16:13.440 deer hunting in Wisconsin in the forties and fifties, what 0:16:13.560 --> 0:16:15.200 is wrong with you? You know what I mean. But 0:16:15.280 --> 0:16:17.600 he was known to be too squeamish to to do 0:16:17.680 --> 0:16:19.800 something like deer hunting, so he didn't deer hunt. That's 0:16:19.800 --> 0:16:25.040 how the town viewed him. Um. And if you look back, though, 0:16:25.560 --> 0:16:27.920 there were a lot of red flags that he was 0:16:27.960 --> 0:16:31.000 putting up that. In retrospect, with all of the information 0:16:31.040 --> 0:16:36.560 that the town's folk later had, UM really seemed very 0:16:36.600 --> 0:16:38.800 fishy that they were just kind of waving awful lot 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:42.480 of stuff like, for example, that bar owner the bar 0:16:42.560 --> 0:16:47.200 he went to Mary Hogan's tavern, she disappeared and no 0:16:47.240 --> 0:16:50.120 one knew where she went. For three years, she just vanished. 0:16:50.120 --> 0:16:51.760 There was a little bit of blood left behind at 0:16:51.800 --> 0:16:53.720 the bar, but one night, as she was closing the 0:16:53.720 --> 0:16:57.080 bar down, she just vanished. And Ed used to joke 0:16:57.120 --> 0:16:59.720 about how Mary was staying at his house for the 0:16:59.800 --> 0:17:02.920 not eight um, and the townspeople thought that was weird 0:17:02.960 --> 0:17:06.560 but not necessarily remarkable, maybe a little tasteless, um, But 0:17:06.640 --> 0:17:10.040 in reality he had murdered Mary Hogan Um back in 0:17:10.160 --> 0:17:14.480 nineteen Should we take a break right there? Oh? Yeah, 0:17:14.640 --> 0:17:18.680 that was an abrupt cliffhanger. We're on the wrong side 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:42.040 of the cliff. We'll come back right after this. You stop, 0:17:44.200 --> 0:17:46.720 all right, So we're back on the wrong side of 0:17:46.720 --> 0:17:48.879 a cliffhanger. Well, wait a minute, Wait a minute, So 0:17:49.000 --> 0:17:54.199 Mary Hogan disappeared. What happened, Chuck, What possibly happened to 0:17:54.240 --> 0:17:59.120 Mary Hogan? She was murdered by who by Ed Gaan 0:17:59.160 --> 0:18:02.480 on December eight, and I didn't see that coming. He 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.880 shot her. He shot her with the THIRTI caliber pistol, 0:18:06.359 --> 0:18:09.560 put him into his pickup truck, and took her back 0:18:09.600 --> 0:18:12.080 to the farm. And this is not something that was 0:18:12.160 --> 0:18:16.760 known until seven when everything really unraveled. It was the 0:18:16.800 --> 0:18:20.080 full three years though that he was still in town. Uh. 0:18:20.080 --> 0:18:22.359 And I guess occasionally making a joke about what happened 0:18:22.400 --> 0:18:27.000 to Mary, right, So, Um, when you say things unraveled 0:18:27.040 --> 0:18:30.480 for him one night, like they found out everything. They 0:18:30.480 --> 0:18:32.360 went from thinking he was just an odd little dude 0:18:32.359 --> 0:18:37.240 who wouldn't even kill a deer two coming across the 0:18:37.240 --> 0:18:42.639 the most depraved, deranged human being in the history of 0:18:42.680 --> 0:18:44.920 American crime up to that point. There may have been 0:18:44.920 --> 0:18:48.119 people to come later on, but A Gene was the 0:18:48.280 --> 0:18:54.360 first truly depraved killer in America that America had ever known. 0:18:54.480 --> 0:18:58.000 Proved me wrong, somebody who loves true crime proved me wrong. Yeah, 0:18:58.040 --> 0:19:01.960 And here's the thing. He was Um. He had survived 0:19:02.040 --> 0:19:05.080 things like the local kids coming by peeking in his 0:19:05.200 --> 0:19:09.280 house and saying they saw human shrunken human heads hanging 0:19:09.320 --> 0:19:11.800 in the living room. And he survived all that and 0:19:11.880 --> 0:19:14.080 laughed it off and said that, you know, my cousins 0:19:14.560 --> 0:19:16.680 served in the South season World War two and sitting 0:19:16.720 --> 0:19:20.480 these little heads back as souvenirs. Whereas it not not 0:19:20.480 --> 0:19:23.560 not that the kids are like wrong or mistaken. It's no, 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.640 I got shrunken heads are just souvenirs. Yeah, But as 0:19:26.680 --> 0:19:30.960 it turns out, they were real human heads, right, So 0:19:31.040 --> 0:19:33.679 they were real human heads. They weren't from the South Seas, 0:19:34.400 --> 0:19:38.080 and um Edd had shrunk them himselves. Actually, he had 0:19:38.200 --> 0:19:40.360 read some books on that kind of thing and probably 0:19:40.359 --> 0:19:42.720 talked about it at the bar, which he probably regretted 0:19:42.720 --> 0:19:45.960 when those teenagers started running their mouths around town. But 0:19:46.240 --> 0:19:48.080 um he didn't have to worry about that for very 0:19:48.119 --> 0:19:52.000 long because in nineteen fifty seven, in November of nineteen 0:19:52.040 --> 0:19:55.840 fifty seven, he went to the local hardware store, Warden's 0:19:55.880 --> 0:19:59.680 Hardware Store. And Warden's Hardware Store was owned and operated 0:19:59.680 --> 0:20:03.520 by a woman named Bernice Warden Um and she was 0:20:03.560 --> 0:20:05.399 working that day. It was towards the end of the 0:20:05.480 --> 0:20:08.680 day and ed Geane came in. He needed a jar 0:20:08.800 --> 0:20:11.840 of Annie freeze, and she sold it to him, filled 0:20:11.880 --> 0:20:15.560 out of receipt, gave him the receipt. Um, and I 0:20:15.600 --> 0:20:19.000 guess I presumed that that was done. Their business was done. 0:20:19.520 --> 0:20:22.680 But Ed walked over to the wall and got down 0:20:22.720 --> 0:20:25.719 a twenty two caliber rifle and pulled the twenty two 0:20:25.760 --> 0:20:28.320 calibershell out of his pocket, put it in the rifle, 0:20:28.520 --> 0:20:33.240 and then shot Bernice Warden in her head. And um, 0:20:33.359 --> 0:20:36.840 he apparently then and this is this is where the 0:20:36.880 --> 0:20:40.240 podcast really starts to get grizzly. Everybody, so just buckle 0:20:40.320 --> 0:20:44.800 in or maybe press stop here. But the the amount 0:20:44.840 --> 0:20:47.400 of blood that they would later find in this hardware 0:20:47.440 --> 0:20:50.680 store was so much that they presumed that Ed cut 0:20:50.680 --> 0:20:53.560 Bernice Warden's throat after he shot her in the head 0:20:54.000 --> 0:20:57.000 and then dragged her to the loading dock where he 0:20:57.160 --> 0:21:00.680 took her body away. That's right. So uh, he put 0:21:00.720 --> 0:21:03.560 their rifle back on the rack. Um didn't even bother 0:21:03.600 --> 0:21:06.200 to take out the shell that he had brought, took 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.760 the cash register and um, and I don't get the 0:21:09.800 --> 0:21:11.840 idea that that was to make it appear as if 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:13.520 it were a robbery. Even I think he just needed 0:21:13.520 --> 0:21:18.720 the money. Probably that's possible, um, although who knows. But uh. 0:21:18.920 --> 0:21:22.439 Bernice Warden had a son named Frank, and he was 0:21:22.640 --> 0:21:25.880 a deputy, and he came back into town after deer 0:21:25.920 --> 0:21:30.639 hunting like everyone did in Wisconsin in the nineteen forties, excepted. 0:21:30.720 --> 0:21:33.359 He stopped by the old hardware store, and it was 0:21:33.480 --> 0:21:35.639 very odd to him because she was not there. The 0:21:35.680 --> 0:21:38.440 door was unlocked, the back door was open, and then 0:21:38.440 --> 0:21:40.760 he notices a little trail of blood from the front 0:21:40.840 --> 0:21:44.560 to the back door, and very quickly and easily just 0:21:44.640 --> 0:21:47.680 looked at the little receipt pad saw that half gallon 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:49.800 of andy freeze was the last receipt made out to 0:21:49.960 --> 0:21:53.080 ed Geen called the sheriff and they went to Gaen's 0:21:53.119 --> 0:21:58.679 farmhouse to question him, and very quickly found Bernice Warden 0:21:59.640 --> 0:22:02.200 behind the house hanging in what's called the summer kitchen. 0:22:02.800 --> 0:22:04.480 I guess that's where you go when it's really hot 0:22:04.600 --> 0:22:08.200 to cook. That's not outside the house. Uh. And again 0:22:08.480 --> 0:22:10.440 this is where it gets super grisly. You've got one 0:22:10.440 --> 0:22:14.120 more chance to stop. Turned back now. But he basically 0:22:14.160 --> 0:22:16.879 treated her as if he had been deer hunting. She 0:22:17.000 --> 0:22:21.400 was disemboweled and dressed like a deer, hanging naked upside 0:22:21.400 --> 0:22:26.000 down from a pulley, beheaded and fully fully dressed and 0:22:26.040 --> 0:22:28.560 butchered like a deer would be. So I want to 0:22:28.640 --> 0:22:31.879 I want to just restate something. One of the two 0:22:31.920 --> 0:22:36.159 people who found her was her son, Like he walked 0:22:36.200 --> 0:22:39.920 into the summer kitchen and there's his beheaded, disemboweled mother 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:45.120 hanging by her ankles in ed Gein's summer kitchen, just 0:22:45.320 --> 0:22:47.080 like imagine that. Like if you read all of the 0:22:47.119 --> 0:22:50.639 accounts of this stuff, no one ever stops and points 0:22:50.640 --> 0:22:53.760 out that, like, poor Frank Warden found his mother like this, 0:22:54.520 --> 0:22:57.400 But they he did, and the sheriff was there too, 0:22:57.720 --> 0:23:02.280