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Hey, weirdos! I'm Alayna.
I'm Ash. And this is Morbid.
morbid today yeah we're hitting a biggie today whoa we're hitting a biggie and it's going to be real morbid and it's going to be real morbid for about three episodes fantastic uh well we're doing ed gein um yeah we're doing ed gein guys as you know from clicking on this episode i've only ever really heard this covered probably on like maybe like two other shows really yeah Yeah.
Because it's covered on every podcast. Well, I don't listen to like a lot of true crime just because we do it a lot.
Yeah. Not because I don't, you know.
Appreciate. Yeah, exactly.
But yeah, I'm hesitantly excited to hear your coverage.
Yeah. I mean, this is definitely one of those that, like I said, has been covered everywhere.
Like that's, I think that's why we just like waited a little while.
And also because it's like a.
It's gnarly. It's a heavy story.
It's a sad story. It's an awful story.
It's a gruesome story.
It's all those things.
And I knew it was going to be a multi -parter, so you got to like, you know, you got to place those in the right spots.
Yeah. But you know what?
The time has come, and you guys have asked for this episode for a long time, so it's time to cover the man who, you know, is the inspiration behind some of the most iconic horror characters.
Multiple? There is.
Psycho is based after him.
Oh. Norman Bates. That's Ed Gein.
Shit, I forgot that.
Also, confession, profession I still haven't seen it we gotta make you watch psycho oh no I want to actually yeah we're gonna have we're gonna do that on screen yeah we'll do it um you know silence of the lambs Texas chainsaw massacre all of those things were at least in part inspired a little bit by this case okay I forgot that silence of the lambs was at least little bits and pieces are taken you know for characters or for the stories for sure and I mean I see why it's a very strange and unsettled settling case like this guy isn't prolific when it comes to murdering people and prolific by standards
of like how many people he murdered yeah uh but he's prolific in many other ways many other not good ways depraved ways yeah and he also is a murderer he committed horrible murders yeah maybe of his own family who knows shoot and we will get into it um but yeah so let's start off with just talking about who ed gein is okay let's go right into his pretty horrific childhood oh good love that uh so edward theodore gein was born august 27 1906 in lacrosse wisconsin 1906 also i know i hate that i like both of those names edward and theodore yeah i mean they're great great names that's the thing like
they're they're very these are just like names that are so palatable they are you know it's okay not anymore it's okay if you like them uh but he was the second of two boys born to George and the pretty infamous Augusta Gein that name also pops off Augusta Gein Augusta Gein I would not fuck with her mostly because I know a lot about her at this point like just like the little because I've just been like leaking out I need to say something let about Augusta but Augusta Gein well you know I say she's infamous only because she seems to have definitely played a role in twisting Ed Gein's mind into
something that was kind of beyond repair yeah for sure um it's sad it's really sad like it's it's horrific how she treated her children I feel like this is very much a nurture versus nature yeah I mean he flipped a bit so who's to say you know like because I always it's it's so hard to like that's a hard debate I feel like you can never pinpoint for sure but we always say and like it's pretty clear in studies and such that like nurture has plays a role it just plays a role like it's not always the that's that's the cause and nature is not always that's the cause it's the mixture of both I feel
like is always the one that's the the ticking time bomb yeah i feel like in in every case it's probably like some combo of both and it's just a matter of how much yeah which one is way more than the other one you're right exactly and here i would say nurture was definitely the higher one on the scale yeah always the way it's because we have to remember like kids minds are so easily molded because they are just open to whatever and like their caregivers are the ones that are going to be the ones that have the most influence over what what they think, what they believe, how they feel about themselves,
how they feel about the world around them.
It's very easy to turn a kid into just whatever kind of robotic, scary human you want to turn them into if you really go for it.
And it sounds like Augusta really went for it.
She had an agenda here.
And obviously, something's wrong.
Something's wrong with Ed Gein.
Something's big wrong.
Something's wrong with Ed Gein on a cellular level.
Because the things he did are just far beyond the scope of any imagination and like we say a lot of people have shitty childhoods and a lot of people have shitty parents and a lot of people have caregivers that put shit into their mind and somehow they are able to break out of it someday that's true or at least be able to manage enough to not murder people and you know decorate their house with remains if you can manage not to do that i would would say that's best i i would say you're you're really you're doing well you're doing what you can because also that's not fucking easy no so for real
good job good job you're like like because if you you know like trauma is trauma trauma especially childhood trauma like i can't imagine like the you know there's certain levels but it's like at the high level of childhood trauma drama I can't imagine no having to come out of that and become a functioning adult no I'm 27 and I'm still working on it so you know well done if you're working through it right now well done if you have plans to work through it and well done if you have worked through it good job on all those friends everyone good job guys um but George and Augusta had wed in December
1899 and according to crime writer Harold Schrecker Schrechter excuse me that's hard to say that's It's hard to say.
It's Schechter. Schechter.
There it is. It's kind of fun to say.
Harold Schechter. He said, quote, their marriage had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare.
That's a writer, though.
That sentence is metal as fuck, but the reality is sad and horrible.
A lacerating nightmare.
Yep. That'd be a really good band name.
Had the quality of a particularly lacerating nightmare.
What a description.
interruption. You gave me everything I needed.
It's so elegant. It is and it gave me everything I needed to know about that marriage.
You do. I know like a particularly lacerating nightmare.
Got it. Got it. That's not a marriage I'd like to be a part of.
No definitely not. So it's sad.
Already you're like oh fuck.
Hmm. So even by early 20th century standards for marriage which was definitely not like let's get married because we love each other.
Romance romance romance.
It was was really like you gotta be practical with your marriage basically it's like for the best of the of the family kind of thing right george and augusta's marriage made little sense even by those standards like to those around them people were like you sure you really you guys sure about that george had suffered a lifetime of hardship and as a result he had no faith in religion no faith in God he was not into that he had developed cripplingly low self -esteem he had a tendency to judge himself so harshly like everything was his fault he believed wow he would put everything on himself and I
think he had also been kind of taught that yeah I think he had also grown up in a place where he was the scapegoat that's sad Augusta on the other hand was I'll give it to her she was a hard worker like if she augusta gain is a hard worker she's just she's gonna be a hard worker she was industrious and she was also she had a strong work ethic very rigid sense of morality and that came because from her being a deeply religious woman um she was also a stern disciplinarian she was self -righteous domineering and inflexible oh fun great qualities in a human And she is also someone who, quote, never
doubted for a moment the absolute correctness of her beliefs or her right to impose them by whatever means on the other people around her.
By whatever means, that's the part that really got me.
She sounds like a fucking nightmare, to be honest. Like, if you're, like, you believe what you believe, if you think you have a right to impose those beliefs by whatever means necessary on people who don't want that, that's fucked up.
Also, what does that mean by whatever means necessary?
Isn't it very ominous?
It's got a very ominous tone to it.
It truly does. And again, she was, I'll give it to her.
She was a hard worker and she probably could have thrived as a business owner if she had just become a business owner and not decided to delve into the realm of being a mother.
Yeah, she doesn't very, she doesn't sound very motherly to me.
Yeah, there's not a lot of nurturing happening here by, you know, conventional standards.
uh i again open a business she would have killed it yeah but she did not um there wasn't really a honeymoon phase for the geins i don't think no i didn't i didn't really see that coming down the pike yeah it's it's not like oh the honeymoon phase is over and now she shows who she is no like it's you know again a marriage of practicality and i don't even really know how practical it was nobody's really sure why this happened to be quite honest that's like really sad because i feel like we say this so much but you think about like walking down the aisle taking bows the whole nine and just for what for a lacerating
nightmare that's particularly lacerating nightmare yeah so her i mean she had already kind of shown george who she was that she was you know very religious very strict very all this but her true personality really revealed itself pretty quickly after they got married, she was like, well, here it goes.
That's so rough that like, it was already pretty rough before they got married and then he's like all in and it's like, hmm, but wait, there's more.
Yeah. And George, like I said, he had crippling low self -esteem.
He had zero self -worth.
I mean, he was already kind of a shadow of a guy at that point and he became even more of a shadow.
Yeah. Like this is not going to help.
Yeah. He just withdrew into himself.
unfortunately he began drinking very heavily alcoholism shortly followed things got so bad at one point because it was a constant house of like according to all the sources we could find that it was a constant house of the two of even before kids them just being miserable with each other and like george just kind of retreating into himself drinking and kind of isolating and him berate and her berating him so it's just that kind of awful environment of just neither one of of them are doing well with each other you know not something you would ever want to bring kids into no but back then obviously
i know it was like yeah not as easy to not have kids of course if you could have a perfect world here yeah if you could choose like just black and white probably don't right but but at one point george snapped and hit augusta oh that's not the answer but the violence is not the answer and shechter wrote that afterwards quote she would draw herself What?
Like, outwardly. I don't think God is, like, down with that.
Like, I don't think God is down with you hitting people either.
No. I think this is, none of this is really.
This is awful. Yeah, it's not great.
So, not surprisingly, I would say, Augusta's views on sex as a whole were extreme.
Ugh. Even for those among us who consider themselves the most pious, i would say that her views are a little scary oh no um sex before marriage was just out of the fucking question i mean unquestionably a sin you will die for and burn in the pits of hell like don't do not pass go do not collect five hundred dollars like you death bye wow um but even within marriage sex between husband and wife and only husband and wife of course always was It was unpleasant and just a responsibility necessary to procreate.
Like something, fuck, we just have to do it.
And it's only to have kids.
That's it. It reminds me in Gilmore Girls of Lane Kim and her mom, Mrs. Kim.
Yes. When Lane's getting married and she's trying to like explain to Lane, you know, the wedding night.
And Lane's like, no, no, no, I got it.
And she's like, no, let me explain it to you.
And she says, if you're lucky, you only have to do it once like me.
oh my god and blaine's just like ah if you're lucky that's so sad if you're lucky you only have to do it once oh my god and i was like oh my that's that's stuck with me which i go miss kim oh but like just one just one time and then never again fuck that sorry and that was augusta's view on it just like do it to have kids yeah that's it and out of religious obligation conjugation can have kids wow so this is all like not great this is wild this is so dark yeah you ain't seen nothing yet i'm like this is so dark and then i just sip my pop yeah i'm just like just wait until part two oh good uh but because you
know augusta seems like she's a little intolerant of anything and it's certainly anything less than perfection she also kept the immaculate home really which like good for her like good for you keeping an immaculate home it's hard that's tough to do especially you know when you're living in 1906 yeah without a swiffer without a swiffer i feel like it's really dusty in 1906 but she kept it but that was part of her like obsession with perfection too it wasn't like she just liked her home clean it was like all is lost well and there's that whole phrase i'm sure she lived by cleanliness Godliness
is next to godliness.
Godliness, yeah. I think you had it right, yeah.
Wait, I think we said the same thing.
I think you said next to godliness, which I think is right.
It's next to. I think I said close to.
Yeah. I said like down the block or something from it.
It's in a nearby county to godliness, I think.
uh but but like given that giving her obsession with perfection her intolerance for essentially anything her attitudes towards sex it's pretty unclear besides religious obligation why she would have thought children was her path in life i think just because you didn't want to and i think it was like social expectation it was also 1906 not a lot of ways to prevent that from happening i suppose except that they were having sex only to have kids right so that was the agenda here so i think it was a religious and social obligation for sure um but it certainly wasn't out of love for the need to nurture
another living thing doesn't sound like it but whatever the case henry gean was born in january 1902 this is ed's older brother okay and was followed four four years later, by Ed.
Now, in the early years of Ed and Henry's lives, George struggled to keep the family afloat.
He was working, you know, just whatever jobs he could find to provide, even the most essential of needs.
It was tough times.
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Hey there, my weird weirdos.
I want to take a minute to recommend another podcast called Who Took Misty Copsie?
In September of 1992, 14 -year -old Misty Copsie leaves the Washington State Fair with her best friend and is never seen again.
Her body is never found.
At the time, western Washington is home to prolific serial killers like the Green River Killer, which leads to different theories on who's responsible for what happened to Misty.
Over the course of eight episodes, host and cold case investigator Sarah Kalin speaks with Misty's friends and family, looks at police records and different anonymous tips to try to figure out if Misty's disappearance is the work of a serial killer or someone who knew her.
No suspects are ruled out.
After 33 years, Sarah Kalin hopes to answer the question, who took Misty?
You guys are going to love this.
If you listen to Morbid, we know that you love a cold case and we always tell you a cold case is never cold.
So definitely give this a listen.
Definitely look into the case.
Listen to Who Took Misty Copsey wherever you get your podcasts.
After a few years, he went into business for himself and he opened a small meat and grocery shop in 1909, which is like, okay, George.
Nice. But George had no business sense, no experience whatsoever.
Definitely not experience owning a business of that kind or any kind of that.
So the store just started falling downhill, went into financial problems. Oh, no. And Augusta's solution to this issue was just push her husband aside and take over the operation of the store.
Okay. She put him in the position of a clerk.
She said, you're nice to people.
She said, demote it.
and while this you know this didn't do anything to improve their uh domestic relationship i imagine if you already hate each other working together is not the answer probably not great and especially her demoting him and just taking it over but one thing about augusta she's gonna get it done she's gonna get work done she's gonna do it her work ethic and determination were exactly what was is needed for this store.
And she did turn things around in a very short period of time.
And she ended up managing them into a place where they were financially sustainable.
Nice. All right. Okay, Augusta.
Again, it feels like this is where Augusta would have thrived.
She didn't enjoy domestic life.
I think out of, again, social and religious obligation, she felt like that was her duty and that is what she was supposed to do.
But I think if she could have opened her mind a little little bit she would have been a great businesswoman and then just that way demote him to go take care of the kid exactly like hopefully he's got his drinking under yeah because again she that's the other thing it's like we also have george falling into the shadows here and right you know his alcoholism is kind of taking things over it ends up fucking with his health later yeah i'm sure like you know it's and obviously you know he did hit her so it's like this is just not a great situation for anybody it's just like damn man oh man it's all
bad it's all bad and um again just become a business owner and then the world would have been all right unless ed gein you know that's always something to strive for but although things in the business were doing well you know finally at home things were definitely not yeah not great following henry's birth augusta struggled to bond with him when he was little um and that's and seemed almost resentful of his presence and I wondered quickly I was like could this be undiagnosed postpartum and I do wonder if that played a role in here but when you read a little more into it it doesn't feel like it
has the hallmarks of that kind of situation okay it feels like it's just who she is she this wasn't the path she was planning to take like out of a want to take it yes it was more out of a expectation yeah and then it's also i think what happened i think if she had had she really wanted a girl yeah and i'll explain why in a second but i think if she had had a girl she would have been a little more bonded okay or what she saw as bonded in her own head you know what i mean like not a conventional bond i don't think i don't think i just don't know if she was capable of that kind kind of thing, to
be honest. But because it was a boy, she really wasn't happy.
She had always maintained a, I mean, bottom of the barrel opinion of men, like, they're all bad, they're all horrible.
And again, she wanted a girl, so she was very disappointed when she had a boy.
I'm wondering about like what her upbringing was like.
Yeah, she was raised in Germany.
Oh, wow. Yeah. So there's not a lot known about her upbringing, but you know, who knows.
But she saw, so when she got pregnant for a second time, she saw that as an opportunity to get what she wanted.
And then she got another boy.
So she was equally disappointed.
But Schecter writes, quote, Augusta was not the kind to give in to despair.
And she took the swaddled newborn in her arms and made a sacred vow.
This one would not grow up to be like the rest of them.
This which sounds like that that could have the whisper of a promise you know like pretty all right like it's a little okay like you're just like oh okay are you you like love him into being good man you know like is that that no and also like him and his brother are not that far apart so why can't they both be good ones exactly i don't understand because henry was like neglected neglected and abandoned by her like just totally yeah i don't want anything to do with you and then i think so i think she looked at henry as like that's the mistake i didn't want that then she has another child she's
like well that's also a mistake but she's like i guess i should try to fix this one like make it what i want both girl and ed became something like a pet to augusta stuff and again this is not to to say that she treated him with kindness and compassion and love and nurturing because unfortunately some people don't do that to their pets no she just focused a lot of time on him mostly bad attention and the way that she saw it was if i can't have a girl i can't have the or even the child i want in any way because she just did not see these children as the ones she wanted she figured you know what at least
ed i can shape him into being at least something resembling what i want if not physically at least in character oh no so for years augusta would berate ed at every opportunity and because her her main plan here and this is what makes me think this is more just like augusta is an asshole yeah because it's like she had a plan here and her plan was to break ed completely so that she could he would literally just worship her and he she could control his every thought yeah like that was and that's fucked up like that's not just to think that way is so maniacal in your own kid yeah and he would she
would tell him that he was stupid tell him you did pointed out every mistake he made would humiliate him any slip up he made was a big deal and she would just make him feel the lowest of the low that's really sad and would always remind him only a mother could love you so she literally told him no one else will love you will ever love you only your mother could love you me and it's like and it's literally like you are such a fucking waste that only i could love you so like don't even bother i can't imagine treating number one anybody this way but i can't imagine treating a child this way a child and your
child yeah only a mother can love you can you imagine like hearing your mom say those words like that's really fucked up that's so fucked up and we know, going to do some damage.
That is very traumatizing.
And again, her whole idea was to make him fear her, respect her, and worship her.
Yeah, big time. And that is so diabolical.
It is. That's exactly it.
It's so fucked up. So while she would never be capable of recognizing it, her very abrasive personality and, I mean, self -righteousness had left her feeling isolated Isolated from everyone around her.
Like, she wasn't going to admit that, but she was.
She was isolated. I mean, who would want to hang out with a woman like that?
She sucked to be around.
Yeah. And George loathed being around her and did everything he could to stay away from her or just avoid catching her ire, like any of her attention.
This is so sad. And again, in Ed, she saw an opportunity not to build a lasting relationship through trust and love and nurturing and compassion, but to manipulate and twist him into who someone someone who would love her un -fucking -conditionally with no matter what and would desperately seek her approval and praise.
That was the other part of the equation was she needed him to desperately need her praise and approval.
Because nobody else really did, it sounds like.
And all of that together would mean he would never leave her.
And that was her whole idea, is you will never leave me.
And that's not why you have children.
You want to send them off into the world.
Yeah, and you want to hope that they come back out of their own volition to be with you.
So this is unhealthy.
And with few other influences to contradict any of this abuse, it didn't take long for Ed to become totally reliant on her for all social, emotional, any of his needs.
He relied on her for everything, every move he made.
and years later whenever anyone would ask about his mother he would literally become tearfully sentimental and would say she was like nobody else in the world wow like he was even when she died even he was like she was everything because he had she had just ingrained that she'd beaten it into him it's literally like uh it's wild also what a way to word that yeah because because i I think she might have not been like anyone else in the world.
She was unique. When Ed was seven years old, Augusta decided the family could make more money farming than they would operating the store.
So she sold off the business and relocated the family to a small farm outside Camp Douglas, which is about 40 minutes outside La Crosse.
And, you know, while it was true that she did believe there was going to be a good future in farming, it was like, you know, profitable.
It felt like it was a good move.
She did have another motive for this.
It was to get her family, particularly her youngest, her young and impressionable baby Ed, away from the urban and what she believed to be evil landscape of La Crosse.
But for unknown reasons, the farm outside Camp Douglas didn't work out.
And then less than a year later, they moved again.
So in 1914, they ended up settling on a 195 -acre farm.
Bitch, I wish. And it was in Plainfields.
My God. Which is a pretty small, really rural community on the other side of the state.
And to be honest, their farmstead, when compared to everyone else's, was very sprawling.
It was a two -story— It was huge.
It was huge. And there was a two -story home, there was a bunch of outbuildings, a large barn, there was all kinds of stuff.
And the property was actually purchased and owned by Augusta.
Interesting. Not George.
And back then, that's like— Virtually unheard of.
Exactly. Exactly. Unheard of.
It's real estate and business.
Anything would be like this is why it was strictly in the domain of men at that time.
And again, Augusta really had the chops to be a thriving businesswoman if she had just changed her fucking tune.
Yeah. But if fleeing urban moral decay truly was her intention, she couldn't have picked a more appropriate location, to be honest. Like it was the right move.
Their nearest neighbors were like a quarter mile away.
Damn. And the house was surrounded on all sides by meadowland, trees, fields.
It was total isolation, and Augusta liked it.
That's a lot to bring a child, like, kids into, though.
Like, kids don't need to be isolated.
Isolation is tough.
That is a tough thing.
And she was isolating because she said the religious and moral standards of Plainfields were scandalously low, she had determined right after getting there.
According to Augusta.
I'm sure they were probably, like, some of the most religious people ever, And she's like, not enough.
Literally, in reality, Plainfield, the people there, were as hardworking and God -fearing as most of the other rural Midwestern communities at the time.
So there you go. I had a feeling.
But looking down on them allowed Augusta to feel morally superior, which is what she lived for.
In fact, she not only deemed the town to be of low moral character, but also concluded that the churches, there were a lot in Plainfield, were insufficient to provide moral and religious guidance for Ed in particular.
and she said, nope, I'm going to take the responsibility on of providing religious instruction to him.
Oh, goody. Yeah. Now, in their new home, she continued to dominate Ed's life.
I mean, occupying every moment of his time, nitpicking at everything he did.
In fact, the only time Ed had any break was the hours that he was at school.
But there he kind of faced a different set of problems. So he was living in constant stress and abuse and manipulation, all kinds of things, obviously at home.
So nobody can really tell what kind of student he would have been if he wasn't going through all that.
He did like, I guess, so, I mean, things were what they were.
So he did struggle in the classroom, but he was an avid reader.
And he was a very good reader.
Living an isolated life on the farm, like you were pointing at and being completely cut off from peers and potential friends by his mother.
Ed was incredibly incredibly lonely and like had and like socially inept you feel weird being like that's so sad as the guy that ed gein was lonely yeah it's like it's like we always say the kid feel bad for the kid because that's really fucked yeah and on the off chance that he did make any kind of like fleeting connection with someone from school just like a friend the relationship was immediately cut off because when augusta found out about it she would be like they're from an awful family family no way like you are not to speak to them they're evil she would literally cast them out as evil
like they're a demon in a child's body you are not to talk to them what the fuck so terrify that kid to be like oh fuck like I can't tell where these demons are in kid bodies oh my god yeah to go that far I can't imagine not wanting my child to make friends like what yeah and the isolation and loneliness made him seem odd to other kids at school obviously and even when he tried to, like, imitate their normal social behaviors, he would come off as, like, really robotic.
Oh, that's really sad.
And, like, sometimes inappropriate.
Like, he just didn't know how to do it.
And he had a congenital lazy eye.
Oh, no. And he also had a growth on his tongue that impeded his speech sometimes.
Oh, no. So he would often get picked on.
Yeah, of course. Decades later, when he underwent a series of psychological testing for his crimes, his IQ was determined to be very average.
Wow. So he was not, like, below.
He was not high above.
He was just average.
So he was struggling strictly from a social standpoint.
Yeah, from social and just, yeah.
And, like, an emotional kind of situation.
But he only made it as far as 8th grade, and he graduated 8th grade at 16, and then he stopped school.
Oh, wow. To work on the farm.
16, 8th grade? Yeah.
Exactly. That's rough.
So things at school might have been bad for Ed, but they were definitely no better at home at this point.
While the idea of owning a farm made sense to Augusta at the time, she and her husband had no farming experience.
I was wondering. Yeah.
And they didn't have the money to hire someone who did or pay for the machinery that, you know, would make the work less arduous and terrible.
Yeah. So instead, they just worked all day just to produce enough food to feed themselves and nothing more to really show for their work.
Awesome. And things only got worse by the time Ed and Henry reached their teenage years.
Because now they were spending the majority of their time working on the farm, but their father's heavy drinking had finally caught up to him.
And in addition to him having significantly decreased productivity because of this, he was getting sicker.
He started exhibiting signs of psychological decline as well.
Oh, wow. With no additional money to hire help, there was really nothing they could do except take all of George's slack on the three of them.
So Augusta, Henry, and Ed are just working to the bone.
Damn. okay now not in school and completely cut off from the outside world at this point ed was isolated on the farm with only his brother and his mother and his brother is like kind of ambivalent to him right now like they're they're like they're fine like they're not mean to each other they're not but like i think henry was struggling in his own i'm sure way and henry had a much different view of augusta than ed had yeah and we find out later that ed had no idea ed did not know how henry felt he thought that this just we all love mom we all worship mom like see and that leads you to believe
too because i know we were having like the nature versus nurture discussion that like something in that nature is off yeah because for henry to see that like this is and also having like the exact same experience as ed like mostly i know she kind of like picked on ed more well i I think that's where the thing bends a little.
That's the fork in the road.
She kind of just abandoned Henry.
Right. Like she didn't want anything to do with him.
But he saw her for what she was.
So he saw that and he was angry because he was being treated as nothing and probably berated and abused and whatever.
Right. But Ed was the, he certainly got abused.
He certainly got berated.
But it was an obsessive kind of like, I'm molding him to be what I want him to be.
But Henry was just isolated completely from her.
and so I think the way that he saw it was like like I hate her I don't like her I obey her because I'm scared of her and he will eventually tell Ed this and we'll see where that leads but even I feel like that's still such a nature thing like in like that small capacity because with him like Henry undergoing all those same circumstances like that we were just saying like you could see him turning out yeah fucked up too like absolutely the fact that he was was abandoned and she treated him so shitty exactly so there's something off in both ways for sure but yeah he just we'll find out when he but in this in these
moments Ed was thinking that Henry is in the same boat right because he's not seeing he's not understanding that like this is a different scenario right so it's interesting what happens when he finds that out oh good now and also his parents are just completely unstable in every way imaginable So he doesn't have a lot to go to.
So to cope, he would retreat into books and fantasy a lot.
And as he grew older, those fantasies increasingly included women.
He was being told constantly that women are evil.
Women are morally bankrupt.
Women are disgusting.
Women will ruin you.
Awesome. something like he was literally like it was hammered into his head but he's a human like and he's a young boy at this point like it's just natural and giving her given her feelings about sex in general and the wickedness and immorality of the locals augusta swiftly and strongly addressed her son's growing interest in women he was like oh this is not gonna this is not gonna work so he she focused nearly all of her ire on the corrupting influence of modern women she just started hammering this shit in that was like the main thing of all her religious teachings to him now because she saw
that he started just like liking girls yeah like having a crush or something or just being like wow she's pretty right like and she was like nope can't have that I'm the only woman for you it's like oh wow okay Okay.
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now despite having literally no experience with basically no experience with modern women whatever she believed modern women to be augusta had seen enough in the newspapers and magazines to know that they were morally bankrupt and no son of hers was ever going to sink as low as to associate with women.
Oh my. Not gonna associate.
Whenever the subject came up, mostly because she would bring it up because she was obsessed about it, she would immediately reach for her Bible and begin quoting scripture.
And according to Schechter, she would take both of her boys by the hand and make them swear to her that they would keep themselves uncontaminated by women.
Uncontaminated. If their lusts became too pressing to resist, she would say even the sin of Onan, Onan, I think, was preferable to the vileness of fornication.
Dave looked it up. And it's a passage from Genesis where it basically says that Onan, or Onan, I don't know, he pissed off God because he, quote, spilled his seed on the ground instead of into his wife.
No, I'm leaving. So masturbation, we're talking about.
She's saying they're both sins, fornication and masturbation are both sins.
But she's saying masturbation is preferable.
But she's saying I'd rather you whack it than touch disgusting women.
And she told Ed in order to show he loved her, he had to stay a virgin or he didn't love his mother.
Oh, that is on so many levels.
Yeah. Fizzity, fizzity, fucked.
And this is like a 17, 18 -year -old boy.
Oh, God. That she's sitting there saying, you have to stay a virgin or you do not love me.
That is putrid. That is, that's rancid.
That is rancid. Oh, my God.
Yeah. Yeah. So not great.
And it should go without saying that, you know, given the dire circumstances on the farm, the just unending isolation and the overwhelmingly negative and twisted influence of his mother, the Gein family stood no chance of getting any better at this point.
Yeah. Does it sound like it?
Not great. So by the late 1930s, and this is just like depressing.
It's like after a lifetime of of misery, abuse, heavy alcoholism, and just seeing a shadow of yourself, George Gein's health had declined to the point where he was barely able to get out of bed, and he could not leave the house.
Wow, what a life. Finally, on April 1st, 1940, George Gein died from heart failure at age 66, much to the relief of his wife and children who were sick of picking up the slack of the farm while also taking care of him.
Oh. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.
I hope his next life was better.
I hope something. Like, damn, that's rough.
It sounds like he had a rough life leading up to childhood and everything.
It just never got better.
So for the last several years of his life, George's family had basically viewed him as a burden at that point.
I know, it's all depressing.
But now that they were free of that burden, all it kind of did was free them up to work more.
Yeah. And at the same time, the American military entered World War II the following year and still eligible for the draft. Ed was called to nearby Milwaukee for the exams that would see if he was eligible for military service.
Had he been deemed eligible and sent to Europe, the Gein farm in Augusta's life probably would have crumbled into ruins, to be honest. Yeah.
But fortunately for her, the army rejected Ed because of a growth on his left eyelid, which caused the lid to droop and slightly impaired his vision a little bit.
Oh, okay. His mother was very relieved, so he was not eligible for military service.
Without their father to care for, Ed and Henry began taking odd jobs around Plainfield in order to help support their mother and keep the farm running.
Yeah. And although, like, he had only gone to school until eighth grade and had struggled, Ed Gein was very adept at, like, manual labor.
Because, obviously, he had done a ton at the farm.
Like his whole life.
Yeah. Yeah. Um, so he had no trouble finding work around town, like installing windows, you know, fixing roofs, like doing these little odd jobs, like other small tasks.
Handyman stuff. He was known as like a local handyman.
Okay. You could call Ed and he'll fix that shit.
He's good at it. What a thought.
Um, and surprising, oh, there's another thought here.
So surprisingly, he also had no trouble finding work as a babysitter.
What a fucking thought.
yep many of the families in and around plainfield hired him as a babysitter can you imagine knowing growing up as a child that ed gein babysat you said that man babysat my ass babysat my ass what and i mean like that sounds ghoulish mortifying that sounds ghoulish it sounds that is a baller two treats in a lie though you win in a lie you fucking win that game use that don't lose that don't uh maybe you do lose that honestly time honestly you don't want to think about that but honestly thinking about like the awful hideous rancid acts he is going to commit later in his life that should that is rightfully
shocking to think of him as a babysitter uh yeah but when you really think about this okay it makes a little bit of sense because porcual Paul?
Ed Gein is stunted.
I don't know where he's stunted, but he's stunted.
Of course. That boy has no social skills to even consider.
He feels very weird around his peers.
He doesn't know how to act.
He feels judged. He's terrified.
He's always feeling the eyes of everybody else on him.
But with kids, he feels like, I can just hang with them.
Like, he's literally, I think these, And these kids, all they care about is that you're being nice.
Well, and it was probably a way for him to, like, have fun, because he never had fun in his childhood.
Yeah, and I think these kids probably helped him have fun.
And it's like, all these kids care about is that you're nice and you're playing with me.
They don't care that you're weird. And he was nice to them?
And he was nice. And he played with them.
From everything I could find, nobody had problems with their kids with him when he was, like, of that age.
Right, that's fucking crazy.
Like a teenager kind of thing.
there was no reports of anything weird happening no reports of him hurting a child not being anything but a very decent babysitter that people kept hiring over and over again that's so interesting and I think it's partially because he probably related better because they had the social skills that he had which is none to see that's really sad you don't need to act a certain way around kids they just care that you're funny and you hang out right you know so when you think of it that way you're like okay like maybe i can see because it was shocking to me that like people kept hiring him i was like
is everyone all right in plainville but plainfield but i get it i mean he seems by all reports that and how would they ever well that's the thing how are you supposed to know and at this point it doesn't seem like he's showing any quote -unquote signs of what he's going to become it seems like at this point he's a weird kid he's just a weird odd shy like painfully shy child kid yeah and so if he's being good that he was shy like he wasn't like this scary thing right so it's like again if he's being good with the kids how would these people have any other idea that he could become this monster right
but who now the time working outside of the home and away from augusta stuff.
Proved to be positive for Ed and Henry.
But it was Henry who like really benefited from the whole thing.
Ed had always been a little defiant when it came to his mother's strict rules, because again, different situation between the two of them.
And he always had a very tumultuous relationship with her.
Yeah. So Ed kind of reluctantly left his mother's side to go do these jobs, like he was not happy to be away from her.
Interesting. Yeah. But Henry thrived when he was away from the farm.
Oh, I'm sure. He was probably like - Thrived.
Let's live, baby. Yeah, like he was like, see you later.
He was like, YOLO, see ya.
And again, this distance and finally breaking away from what I can only imagine is a completely stifling and suffocating environment on that farm.
I'm sure it was fucking awful.
Oh, yeah. This gave Henry a little more perspective on Ed's relationship with Augusta.
Like even more so, he was able to see like something's wrong here.
Yeah. He had always found it a little more than strange, their relationship but i think he really like was like wait a second and the brothers really it was the only thing they never saw eye to eye on they were always pretty pretty decent with each other wow because again while ed held their mother in the highest esteem it came as a shock to him when he learned that henry fucking loathed her and obeyed her out of pure fear wow he was was shocked and he was angry he was like what do you mean you don't love her like what do you mean you loathe her what are you talking about and he was like fuck
her like are you kidding me have you looked at our life sir what so they disagreed vehemently on their opinions about their mother and this was the first time they'd ever like come to this at one point but ed loved his brother very deeply according to him and after the passing of their father he was kind of the only other person that Ed had in his life and he was the only one in his life who didn't dominate and consume him.
So it's like this is a very different relationship but I almost think that he didn't even know how to handle that kind of relationship.
Didn't know what to do with it.
Yeah, I mean, that makes sense that he wouldn't know.
If Henry was Ed's last connection that even somewhat approximated some kind of love and support or anything like that.
Which it sounds like he might have been.
That connection came to an end on May 16th, 1944.
1944, a fire broke out on the Gein farm.
According to Ed, he and Henry had been burning some grass and vegetation near the marshland on the property when the fire escaped control.
And they needed to call for volunteer firefighters to help put out the fire.
Now, despite Ed's explanation, there's always been a little confusion about how this fire started, whether it was intentional or not, and how it got so far out of control.
But whatever the cause, when the firefighters got there pretty quickly and were able to get the fire extinguished, but when the smoke cleared, Henry was nowhere.
What? And so they gathered a search party to look for Henry and Ed seemed to lead the search. He first told them, I don't know where Henry is, like, I have no idea.
Then he led the search team directly to Henry.
Okay. Who was found laying face down, dead, from what later was going to be determined to be a heart attack.
A heart attack? There's also reports that it's asphyxiation that he died of.
Okay. But I saw more heart attack than asphyxiation.
What members of the search team and volunteer firefighters couldn't understand was how Henry had seemed to have died as a result of the fire, yet neither his body nor his clothes showed any signs of smoke or fire damage.
Also, there were bruises on his head that could not be explained.
What? And when the fire investigators mentioned all this to Ed, Ed's reply was, and I quote, funny how that works.
What? Funny how what works?
It doesn't work, actually.
Ed, I think Henry is Ed's first murder.
You think so? And I think he killed him because he could not handle what he had found out about his mother.
Wow. Or I think that Augusta said something that led, that Ed's twisted mind took as kill him.
What the fuck? And I think it's kill him, be alone with mom.
Oh, I really hate that a lot.
I think it's a little mixture of all of those things.
And how do you think he did it that he ended up with bruises and a heart attack?
I think he probably beat him over the head with something or hit him in the head with something.
Didn't do like a typical autopsy.
They didn't do any autopsy.
Oh, there was no autopsy.
So they said, this looks weird. Let's not do anything about it.
They were like, yeah, weird. Cool, cool, cool.
Yep. So I think that his brother, Henry, is his first murder personally.
And just the response of like, funny how that works.
Funny how that works.
And led them right to him.
Yeah. Like, too weird. What the fuck?
Right? And he was far away from the fire?
Yeah. What? Exactly.
It doesn't make sense.
No one wanted to investigate this?
Hello? No. Do you think they were scared of this family?
I don't even think so.
I think they were just, it's the 40s.
They were just like, eh, whatever.
They put on their fedora and walked away.
Oh, no, not the fedora.
I think when Henry, after Henry died, Ed's last tie to reality was severed, essentially.
Yeah. And he was now left alone on the farm with Augusta.
With Big Mama. Which, to be honest, is probably likely how she would have preferred it all along.
Yeah. So she was probably fine with that.
Unfortunately, it wasn't long before Ed's life was upended again because just a few months later, his mother, who he had always saw as indestructible, began complaining that she was feeling sick and faint.
He rushed her to the nearest hospital and they learned Augusta had suffered a stroke and she would need to be on bed rest for the foreseeable future.
He was at the hospital and home on the farm just doting on her wherever she was, refused to leave her bedside, spent his days waiting on her and his evenings reading to her from the Bible like he was forever watch next to her.
That's sad. It is sad.
By the fall of 1945, she appeared to be making some pretty significant improvements, actually, and had even begun to walk around a little bit.
That's good. With Ed's help.
And so it seemed to boost his spirits.
He thought she was going to make a comeback.
But unfortunately, those spirits were crushed in late December when Augusta had a second stroke.
And this time it was much more severe.
So Ed got his mother rushed to the hospital, but it was too late.
Augusta Gein died December 29th, 1945 at the age of 67 years old.
Wow, young. I know.
A life full of hatred will do that to you.
That'll do it. And Ed boarded up Augusta's bedroom and kept it as a museum and shrine to her.
gotta do what you gotta do a la norman bates now yeah now in the span of five years ed had lost the three people who were his entire world his entire world yeah that's it that's the farthest reach he had but when his mom died it unmoored him that's a different real way kind of solitude that's a different kind like he's been alone his whole life, in my opinion.
For sure he has. But this is...
I cannot, like... Psychologically, none of us can understand what was happening here because the damage that had already been done to that psyche there.
Like, there's a vacancy within that psyche.
Exactly. Yeah. Wow.
Yeah. And again, no matter what happened, for as long as he knew, Augusta was was the driving force in his life like he what what do you do like you relied on she made sure you relied on her for every fucking part of your being yeah and when she's gone that's the thing she did I'm like did you think of that Augusta that when you're gone what the fuck is he going to do well no I think it was a very self -serving it is that's the thing it was a very a short -sighted way of doing things it's like because when you're gone man I know he said and I think that's it it she's like it's not my problem when i'm
gone well that's exactly it that's whatever and it's like that's so fucked up like because what the fuck did you leave the world here like i can tell you you left ed fucking gain that's what you left like jesus but now without her there on the farm he was like you said a totally different kind of alone and he had none of the skills necessary to deal with the grief right because you need to like children need to be taught how to process process emotions properly.
Of course. Because they don't fucking know how.
Or you at least need to hold their hand through it so they can understand how to do it themselves.
Right. And he was never taught that.
Neither was Henry. Neither one of them were taught that.
None of them. So now he's dealing with this, like, overwhelming grief and has no skills whatsoever to deal with it.
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This was such a recipe.
Yeah. It really was the whole thing.
It's all bad. But in the years before Henry and Augusta's deaths, the Gein farm had been, it had become unsightly and kind of in need of some repairs like you know it was weather beaten like it was just regular wear and tear but it was kind of becoming like a little little over the top i mean that's a huge farm to maintain on your own yeah like some of the windows needed to be replaced like roofs needed patching like that kind of shit but he was good at that shit he was good at that shit but they all required money to do that and the geans didn't really have any so they did the best they could while
all of them were together other but after henry and augusta died ed simply let it just fall to ruin like because he was also grieving grief the lawn had become overgrown with weeds the pastures were you couldn't even tell they were pastures anymore and he sold off all the animals oh wow um and the hulking farm equipment was just left to rust in the yard it's like you should have sold that too bro yeah so it's no longer an operating working farm and so ed had to look somewhere else to make money um so we worked briefly for the town clearing brush from the roadside but eventually fall a you know
he kind of fell into a routine of like odd jobs and then continued the babysitting and this is him in like his early 40s huh which i was shocked by that like i don't love that i could understand the younger ed like you know the teenager just like babysitting your kids whatever especially in the 40s it's like sure watch my kid yeah like whatever teenager is available they're just like sure yeah Yeah.
But like what's going on here?
I don't know. I can't say that I'll necessarily make that choice in my life.
You won't have edgy babysitting.
Just like a 40 year old man babysitting your children.
Yeah. This was a strange one for me.
But apparently, by all accounts, nothing came out of those situations.
This is so uncomfy.
But again, this is from the 40s.
So who knows, you know so his experience on the farm in the past meant that you know he had at least enough experience that when harvest time came he was able to find work on other farms too so he was able to do that you know the rest of the time he was like a handyman doing all that stuff but other than that he could just be found sitting at home among piles and piles of trash and dusty dusty old antique objects and debris that just cluttered every livable space you look at pictures of that place it's so sad it's horrifying it's like hoarding straight up hoarding such a psychological like illness
yeah and while she like i said while augusta was alive she kept it meticulous it was very clean obviously he's going through something with the fact that like he wasn't able to keep it up like you would think that she ingrained that so much in him that he would want do it for her yeah but i think he just he couldn't it sounds like and without the tether to her yeah his real illnesses and his real like sick mind just broke loose very much so the like the the term unmoored is really yeah perfect for what he was at this point it's sad too because this could have been like such a beautiful home oh
yeah like looking at pictures of it i'm like wow it's gorgeous now i'm gonna give a quick trigger warning for what i'm gonna talk about next because i am gonna talk about like because he got into nazi stuff so i just want to give that quick little trigger warning that it's gonna be brief i'm not gonna go into anything graphic or anything like that but just the mere mention i just want you to know that it's i'm gonna be talking about it yeah i know that's that's um now he's alone in the house you know and i want you to pay this is the 40s he's got no money he's this place is just lit by a lantern
oh my god you know like just he's sitting there alone i'm just looking at pictures of the inside of this while you're talking he entertained himself with crime and pulp magazines that had yeah literally looking at a photo where there is a detective yes magazine laying right there top a pile of garbage yeah and the thing is like these we've talked about these before in some of the cases where like like, perpetrators became obsessed with these kind of magazines.
So I think when your mind is already in a bad place, these are not the greatest places to go.
No. But since the war, these pulp and crime magazines had become preoccupied with horror stories about the real -life horrors perpetrated by the Nazis during the war.
And among the stories that fascinated him most were those about Ilse Koch, the so -called bitch of Buchenwald.
Oh, no. The wife of Nazi Commander Karl Otto Koch, who was in charge of the concentration camps at Buchenwald.
He held no official position within the Third—or she held no official position within the Third Reich, but she was known, because remember she was called the bitch of Buchenwald.
She was known for her enthusiasm for cruelty and terror.
Oh. And it honestly made her one of the most notorious figures in the Nazi Party.
That's how bad she was.
um she was known to have collected the bones and skin of those killed during the holocaust and she would later have them made into ornaments decorations lampshades among other things that is beyond um as one of the most monstrous figures to emerge during what is already a fucking dark period yeah coke's actions were literally the stuff of nightmares it sounds like like literally the stuff and like when you can't conjure the kind of cruelty and terror that she inflicted but that made her real life exploits perfect fodder for the pulp and horror magazines of the day oh wow so he's he's just taking
this in this is his fourth this is his only touchstone to reality is just taking all this in all the time you wish that he had just read like better home and garden right just like get on a handyman trip you know yeah like on your your own property like get it learn how to have an herb garden diy yeah just like that would have been so nice different diys different diys wise exactly so like just you know just i never just anything else i think it's just like when you think about it you're like how does your mind and i guess you have to be like broken in so many ways and that's why none of us can understand it
yeah it's like why do you want to go that route you know like why that can't make you feel good but i guess it does make some people like twisted people think they're feeling good you know the human mind is so scary instead of doing something productive or that makes you feel like you're doing something or creating something abuse like but again just broken in so many ways it's the only way to say it um and again to ed whose grasp on reality had always been somewhat somewhat tenuous.
The stories about Koch and the other evil figures from the SS were fascinating, particularly those that sexualized figures like Koch, because that was a thing.
And Irma Greese, who was another female figure in the Nazi party.
Oh, yeah. Their horrible behaviors would become fetishized and sexualized.
Oh, that's heinous.
To him, they were interesting because to him, they seemed fictitious.
They didn't seem like real people um kind of like his like pirate stories that he would read because remember he was very much into fantasy um and his favorites that he liked to read about in fantasy like fiction yeah yeah was those involving fictional headhunting tribes and other you know brutal cultures that were again fictitious yeah that would keep trophies from their victims like shrunken heads or drums made with human skin and bones oh so these are like fantasy stories that but they're fucked up someone who is like of you know like functioning mind and body right can read and say wow what a tale
right like that was crazy reading it and being like this is real and this is what needs to happen in my life oh yeah so this guy who's like sitting here and he's and he's just consuming things about nazism and like the fetishizing of these horrible women in the nazi party and then he's also reading these detective magazines so it's like he's getting a one -handed these awful stories about these fucking monstrous women that are being sexualized for doing monstrous deeds and then on the other hand he's reading these detective magazines where women are usually like the like sex you know like femme
fatale not even that like they're usually just like the sex object that's like the bad guys tied up the sex object and like you know i mean you get at the pictures of yeah oh you know i didn't even know that's what you were talking about those magazines oh so you're getting two very conflicting very extreme very horrifying portrayals of women right and you're getting like i don't know what i couldn't imagine what is happening in this what a storm of awful happening in this farmhouse like i can't even and then he's sitting there like trying to reconcile all the shit that has been twisted up inside
of him since It goes without saying that the profoundly rigid and very archaic worldview that Augusta Gein put inside of her son, the ugliest of which was reserved for women and sexuality, like, really hammered those two things and had a very deep, twisted influence on Ed.
And in the absence of literally any other meaningful social connections or even casually contradicting opinions to hers, he only heard her opinion and view on everything.
that was it her views became his views which even if he mostly kept them to himself those were what he knew that's all he knew so sitting there alone in this dark empty like completely cluttered and dirty farmhouse with only gruesome stories and his even more gruesome imagination to keep him company, that shit started to warp big time, big time.
And you add in like the grief and confusion and anger.
This is just a recipe for disaster.
And so it was blending Augusta's hateful rhetoric with violent, often like really fucked up sexual fantasies born out of that pulp fiction that he was consuming.
And it was only a matter of time before he was going to snap and he was going to to bring these fantasies into his reality.
Right. It's hard to pinpoint exactly where the lines between reality and delusion started to blur with Ed because it was all kind of fucked up.
Yeah. But by most accounts, that triggering event was the death of his mother in 1945.
That's where a lot of people point to.
Not long after she was buried, in fact, Ed began to feel as though he were living in a complete haze.
And sometimes he would move around just thinking he saw her, thinking he heard her.
He would smell things that he suspected weren't there, like he was losing it, losing a grip on reality.
Because again, he's so fucking isolated.
So isolated. And sometimes he would just have these feelings, he said, that people were watching him.
And other times he said he could hear his mother's voice or he would catch her scent in the house.
Oh, my. But there were other voices, he said, too.
He could hear other voices, and he said these voices were laughing at him and mocking him.
Oh, that's really sad.
And so he said he learned to cope with this by laying still and picturing his mother's face.
That was the only way he knew how to cope.
Oh, man. But after a while, even that wasn't enough to control his urges.
Oh, my God. And Ed had been religiously visiting his mother's grave, obviously, like daily.
Yeah. And a little more than a year after Augusta's death, he began toying with the idea of having her back.
I forgot about this part of the story.
So he dug her up one night.
Yeah. He took her head off and he kept it.
And he was intending to quote unquote shrink it like he had read about in those fiction stories.
He ended up using a book he had to preserve it somehow.
Interesting. So that's happening, which we're going to get a little more into his grave robbing adventures.
Don't worry. But first let's talk about the disappearance of Mary Hogan.
Okay. Okay. So following Augusta's death, Ed probably would have liked to have just shut himself in the darkness of the farmhouse pretending his mother was still alive and just reading his horrible stuff he was reading, but he needed income.
So he had to go into town to work a little and buy supplies essentially.
You know, babysit. And he was weird. He had strange habits.
He had like peculiar ways, but a lot of the residents of Plainfield were like, we just felt bad for him.
Yeah. Like he wasn't mean.
He wasn't like a dick.
it wasn't bothering people he wasn't bothering people we just felt bad so if they had the time they would kind of indulge him as he talked about like that shit he was reading in like crime magazines and stuff they just be like yeah totally wow um and it never really occurred to anyone that ed seemed to have an inordinate fascination with stories about lust killings and other violent crime only later they were like that was a little weird um that's interesting to me that like he was just like shooting the shit with people talking about this and nobody in the moment was like it's a little concerning
that that man lives all alone and talks about nothing except for less killing that's strange a little weird yeah uh they feel they kind of viewed his fascination with this stuff as they viewed his awkwardness with women you know he was odd he was probably emotionally stunted he had progressed really emotionally not much beyond adolescence thanks to his domineering mother.
They all knew Augusta.
So they were like, you know, he just, you know, he's just a weirdo.
He just was who he was.
And it's not his fault.
So, you know, people just tolerated Ed and were nice to him.
Like, everybody was nice to him.
Nobody was a dick. But no one really went out of their way to check in with him on the farm after his mother's death.
Like, they would check in with him when he was out and about.
They'd be like, how you doing?
Right. What's going on?
Like, how's the farm?
But nobody was going out of their way to visit him at home.
Yeah. Yeah. And since no one paid him a lot of attention when he was around, or they just didn't care, really few, if any, people noticed when Ed stopped coming into town very often.
He stopped those. He retreated very deeply, even more deeply into that farmhouse, isolating, increasingly indulging that dark imagination he had.
And again, the one place he would only go was like what ended up being Mary's Tavern.
It was in town. When he would go into town, He would just stop at this place.
It was really the only place he would go.
Outside of like, you know, a little store to buy supplies.
Yeah, yeah. This was kind of a seedy bar located in Pine Grove.
And given his father's alcoholism, he wasn't a drinker.
Okay. But his interest in the bar wasn't really that.
It was really who was serving the stuff at the bar.
He first noticed the proprietor of Mary's Tavern, Mary Hogan, when she opened the bar in 1949 and he was fascinated by her immediately.
Which is sad because you wonder if it's like, did he know what to do with that?
Yeah. Or did he accept it?
Or was he – how was he fascinated by her?
Like, did he think she was pretty?
Yeah, like who's to know?
Did he want to strike up a – like, if he had known how, would he have wanted to strike up a conversation?
But then what he does, you end up being like, well, fuck.
You're a monster. Yeah.
that's the thing like these different like mo again like he didn't have a chance but he's a fucking monster of course like of course i don't know why i said it like that i'm just really shook right now it's as you should be um but yeah he was fascinated with mary hogan uh throughout his early life he had you know he had expressed like i said at least a passing attraction to women in the general sense he expressed it out until his mom was like you should die for that but mary Mary Hogan was the first woman that Ed seemed to be very taken with.
Born in 1901 in Duesenberg, Germany, Mary came to Plainfield's area from Chicago in 1949, where she had at least one husband and a very murky past. A few facts are really known about her life, and there are plenty of wild, unsavory rumors floating around Plainfield, including speculation that she had mob ties.
Okay It was just like The rumor mill with her Yeah But to Ed She was an amazing figure That reminded him In many ways Of his mother Awesome Physically And in her Commanding presence He's looking to To replace his mom Very much so But if Augusta Gein Was a paragon Of all things good And right in the world According to Ed Mary Hogan Was the exact opposite Oh no According to Harold Schechter Quote Hogan was a foul -mouthed Tavern keeper With a shady Even sinister past oh man mary sounds hilarious she kind of does now on the afternoon of december 8th 1954 plainfield resident seymour lester headed down
to mary's tavern to get some ice cream for his daughter he came upon a terrible scene oh no he entered the tavern and he quote found the tavern empty and bloodstains leading from the bar room through the door to a spot where a car or truck had been parked not knowing what happened only that there was clearly violence he reported the discovery um and the man who came was vilus waterman he took his time getting to the scene and then took even longer reporting the disappearance to the sheriff so nobody was moving fantastic and grooving here that's always what we're looking for yeah it's really great now
during their search of the bar in the living quarters out back sheriff's deputies confirmed that mary hogan was definitely nowhere to be found and it looked like someone had been shot inside the bar oh wow um there was a large amount of blood on the floor and they discovered a 32 caliber cartridge on the ground.
The area behind the bar had been rifled through, like the cash box where the neighbors believe she kept all the money was like pulled out.
And they believe she kept large amounts of cash there.
But the only money they found was some crumpled up $1 bills and a roll of nickels.
According to those who knew her, Mary was very fearful of strangers and kept the door locked during the day.
She would only open that door to people she knew, which meant her attacker was likely someone she knew.
Right. Aside from the large amount of blood and really small amount of evidence, there was really nothing else to show what happened to her.
And during their canvass of the houses around the tavern, deputies learned that the neighbors had seen, quote, a dark green 1950 or 51 Dodge pickup truck with wooden racks parked outside the tavern on several occasions in the weeks leading up to her disappearance.
In fact, one neighbor claimed to have seen that truck driving nearby that same evening that she went missing.
In quote, there was something covered with a tarp in the rear.
Oh. But they were unable to get a look at what it was.
According to neighbors, the truck was memorable because it was missing a license plate.
Mm -hmm. Now, based on the evidence collected at the scene, Sheriff Harold Thompson put out an alert for the truck and notified surrounding counties that Mary Hogan was nowhere to be found.
But they weren't really hopeful that she was going to be found alive at this point, because according to crime scene technicians who had processed the scene, quote, Quote, the amount of blood lost by the shooting victim, assumed to be Ms. Hogan, precludes the possibility of her being alive.
Wow. Now, investigators theorized Hogan had been at the bar drinking a cup of coffee when the intruder arrived and based on the state of the register and cash box, they figured it was likely the motive was robbery.
At the time, her disappearance was just one of many mysteries that was baffling local and regional investigators.
In 1947, 8 -year -old Georgia Weckler disappeared disappeared after a neighbor gave her a ride home from school and dropped her about a half mile from her house before driving away oh man hundreds of locals aided in the search for georgia and there was a big reward offered for information leading to her her return but other than a few reports of like a black sedan near her house at one point they never found her wow she's disappeared oh that's awful and then that happened again a few years later in october 1953 a 15 year old Evelyn Hartley, disappeared while babysitting for a family friend in La Crosse.
So the father of Evelyn was unable to reach her by phone, so he went to the house where she was babysitting, and he knocked on the door, but no one answered.
Oh, wow. So he spotted Evelyn's glasses and one shoe on the floor through the living room window, and so he made his way inside through an open basement window, and he found his daughter's belongings, but she was nowhere to be found.
Outside, he found footsteps and a trail of blood leading away from the house.
And later during their investigation of the scene, investigators found additional blood trails and evidence that Evelyn had been forced into a car nearby the house.
Oh, God. They never found her.
What? Yeah. And there were others.
There were men, women, children, all who disappeared under mysterious, like, abductions.
But they were never followed up.
Like, there was no ransom, no attempt to contact the families.
their bodies were never found just disappeared and this wasn't ed and this wasn't ed huh not that they could not that they could prove and in the months and years that followed mary's disappearance it seemed that it was just another one in line of those disappearances i'll get the fuck out of there and a year later on her the anniversary of her disappearance one local paper paper published a follow -up article saying quote authorities investigated all possible leads but but nothing more appears known today than when the situation was first discovered on December 8th, 1954.
Unlike the others, though, investigators would eventually learn what happened to Mary Hogan.
Yeah. And it was going to be a lot worse than any of them could have ever imagined.
Yeah. And I'm going to leave you there.
I had a feeling that's a lot to process for everyone involved.
There's a lot. There's a lot coming in part two.
That's really sad that she was just operating a tavern, like, doing her best. Yeah, she's just doing, she's running a business, keeping everyone happy.
And this man comes along.
And this man becomes fixated on her because he's a creep.
Oh, wow. All right.
Yeah. Well, we're going to go do something that's good for our brains after this.
Yeah. And with that being said, we hope you keep listening.
And we hope you keep it weird. weird, but not as weird as Augusta, because she kept it the weirdest up until Ed.
And not as weird as Ed.
Never as weird as Ed.
I was gonna give you that warning next time, or maybe never, because I feel like you don't even need to know that.
You should definitely know that.
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Hey, weirdos. you know Ash and I have covered some seriously dark tales about romance gone really wrong.
Oh yeah, there are so many cases where too good to be true turns out to be exactly that.
Well, get ready for a love story that's gonna blow your minds because this one is happening right now.
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Meet Travis. He falls head over heels for Lily Rose.
She's gorgeous, she's understanding, and she's literally perfect.
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That's right! Lily Rose is an AI companion, a computer program designed to be Travis's Dream Woman.
And at first, it seems like a perfect relationship.
But when Lily Rose's behavior starts getting strange, this love story takes a dark and twisted turn that no one saw coming.
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