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Norman Bates, Leatherface & Buffalo Bill: The One Man Who Made Them
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Three of horror's most iconic monsters share a single origin — Ed Gein, his Wisconsin farm, and the woman suit. This chapter follows the crimes, the discoveries, and the night a barn changed American culture forever.
Audio is available on Spreaker — see link below.
Three fictional monsters changed American horror forever. Norman Bates.
Ed Gein grew up in Plainfield, Wisconsin, in conditions that left very little room for anything resembling a normal interior life. His father, George, was an alcoholic whose violence ran through the household like a current.
What happened in the years between Augusta's death and the first murder is partly documented and partly inferred from what investigators eventually found. Gein became reclusive.
In December of nineteen fifty-four, a tavern keeper named Mary Hogan disappeared from her bar in Pine Grove, about thirty miles from Plainfield. There was blood on the floor and a shell casing.
On November sixteenth, nineteen fifty-seven, Bernice Worden didn't open her hardware store in Plainfield on time. Her son, Frank Worden, was a deputy sheriff.
The inventory from the Gein farm took time to process. The house itself was largely in decay.
Gein was charged with first-degree murder in Worden's death. He was found incompetent to stand trial and committed to a state psychiatric hospital.
In nineteen fifty-seven, Alfred Hitchcock was one of the most successful directors in Hollywood. He read the newspaper coverage of the Gein case with considerable attention.
The detail that tends to get less attention than the barn inventory is the simplest one. Gein operated for roughly a decade without detection in a community small enough that everyone knew him.
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