Pod Insights Murder With My Husband 290. Ed Gein's House of Horrors About this episode On this episode, Garrett and Payton dive into the case of Ed Gein. A killer who’s murders where so disturbing that it’s effects still linger today.
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Case Sources -
Deviant by Harold Schecter
Biography.com - https://www.biography.com/crime/ed-gein-inspired-horror-movies
Britannica.com - https://www.britannica.com/biography/Ed-Gein
Marca.com - https://www.marca.com/en/lifestyle/tv-shows/2023/08/24/64e76afdca4741cd5e8b4585.html
Medium.com - https://medium.com/tftunderworld/ed-gein-the-sadistic-monster-that-inspired-the-texas-chainsaw-massacre-b1a6fcb6fc79
Collider.com - https://collider.com/ed-gein-horror-movies/
Wikipedia.com - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Norma_Bates_(Psycho)
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Transcript 11,367 words · 5 speakers
Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.
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1:00 Payton Moreland? You're listening to an Ono Media Podcast. Hey, everyone. Welcome back to the podcast. This is Murder with my Husband. I'm Payton Moreland.
1:07 Garrett Moreland? And I'm Garrett Moreland.
1:08 Payton Moreland? And he's the husband.
1:09 Garrett Moreland? And I'm the husband.
1:10 Payton Moreland? Well, it's spooky season and we have a special guest on the show. Everyone watching, say hi to Mr. Skelly. And if you're not watching, Mr. Skelly is with us on set today.
1:22 Garrett Moreland? It is a... It's not a real person. Don't worry, everybody.
1:26 Payton Moreland? I'll cover yours.
1:27 Garrett Moreland? It's a skeleton that we got. The whole bottom of him is currently duct taped because he was leaking his insides.
1:34 Payton Moreland? Sand everywhere.
1:36 Garrett Moreland? So we duct taped him. He's good to go. Not gonna lie, if I came downstairs at nighttime, that would be a little freaky.
1:42 Payton Moreland? Yeah, Loki, he's really big.
1:44 Garrett Moreland? Daisy is really pissed off. She does not like this skeleton. She's very jealous. But she needs to get over it. Hope everyone is having a great Monday. Spooky season. Then we have November, then we have December, then we have 2026. And then at one point, at some point, we all get old and we die, you know? Life just kind of flashes before your eyes. We love you, guys. We hope you're doing great.
2:10 Garrett Moreland? For my 10 seconds, something I've always wanted to do. And I, I say I'm gonna do it every year, then it never happens is I've always wanted to be that house that gives out, you know, like big candy bars. But then every year it comes and then Peyton and I realize we haven't bought candy yet. And then we go to the store a day before and we buy some candy and I don't know. It would be cool to do like huge candy bars or something crazy. What do you think babe?
2:34 Payton Moreland? Yeah.
2:35 Garrett Moreland? You don't really care about that?
2:36 Payton Moreland? I mean.
2:37 Garrett Moreland? Did you, did you not trick or treat when you were younger?
2:40 Payton Moreland? No, I did.
2:41 Garrett Moreland? Oh.
2:42 Payton Moreland? It was just always snowing.
2:44 Garrett Moreland? Oh, I guess that's, oh, in Idaho?
2:46 Payton Moreland? Yeah.
2:47 Garrett Moreland? Guess that's true. I never really experienced that growing up.
2:49 Payton Moreland? I was in my snow, I had my snowsuit over my costume.
2:53 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, I never really thought about that. That sucks. If you live somewhere where it snows, I am sorry. How does that work actually? If you live somewhere where it's dumping snow and you just don't trick or treat, I assume?
3:05 Payton Moreland? I mean.
3:05 Garrett Moreland? And everyone just hangs out inside, right?
3:08 Payton Moreland? We would go like even if it's snowing, but I guess if it's a full blown storm, no, you wouldn't go. If there was snow on the ground, we would still go.
3:15 Garrett Moreland? Oh, okay. Anyways, I don't know. I've always wanted to get big candy bars, so maybe I'll end up doing that. I'll keep you guys posted on Instagram or something. Other than that, it sounds like we have a pretty wild case today. You guys should all know this. I only know what it is, what it's gonna be about because Peyton mentioned it to me yesterday. And apparently there's a new Netflix documentary that came out about it as well.
3:39 Payton Moreland? Documentary is a very.
3:42 Garrett Moreland? Oh, was it like a?
3:43 Payton Moreland? It's like a.
3:45 Garrett Moreland? Reenactment?
3:45 Payton Moreland? Reenactment.
3:46 Garrett Moreland? Okay, got it. Oh, you can take it away from here, baby.
3:49 Payton Moreland? All right, you guys, if you don't know what we're covering. Uh, Netflix just dropped its third monster series on Ed Gein. Ed Gein is a prolific killer. I don't know if he can be qualified as a serial killer, but he definitely, his name is brought up often when people talk about serial killers. Because they believe he's one of the very first most disturbing killers that we have documented. And he influenced a lot of American culture. Once people learned about his life. Again, uh, Netflix just dropped the new monster series based on Ed Gein.
4:33 Payton Moreland? And I'm just gonna give my quick thoughts on it before we start, so that way I don't have to do it throughout. It is definitely not a documentary and it is definitely not an accurate depiction of the Ed Gein case. So we will be covering Ed Gein and I, if you're watching this series, will go through and kind of tell you what's different from the series. I do still think it's a good series. It's just not Ed Gein case. I do love that they tie in the influence that he had on American culture. And one of the things I think they went for the most was how monsters influence monsters all the way to the point where
5:17 Payton Moreland? there's even a scene where Ed actually looks right at the camera, kind of breaks the third wall and says, "Am I the monster or are you the monster? Because you can't stop watching." So basically like-
5:31 Garrett Moreland? Oh, that's freaky.
5:33 Payton Moreland? So basically he's saying like-
5:34 Garrett Moreland? That's wild.
5:35 Payton Moreland? People who are fast, because he was influenced by World War II and Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. That's kind of what pushed him in. So they're saying like that influenced him, which then influenced directors to make movies based on Ed Gein that we then watched and became obsessed with. And now we're all obsessed with your crap. So, but I still think they could have done that theme while sticking more to the facts of the case. Because it just, like I said, is really messy in terms of the actual story when you're using actual names. But I digress. It's a disturbing watch, but yeah, definitely not an accurate representation. That being said, Gary, do you know anything about Ed Gein?
6:18 Garrett Moreland? The only thing I know is that he would wear-
6:22 Payton Moreland? Okay, yep.
6:23 Garrett Moreland? Can I not say it?
6:24 Payton Moreland? No, you can.
6:25 Garrett Moreland? That he'd wear people's faces.
6:27 Payton Moreland? Yeah. How do you know that? Because I said it?
6:29 Garrett Moreland? Yes.
6:32 Garrett Moreland? Because you said it when you were talking to somebody the other day.
6:34 Payton Moreland? Yeah.
6:36 Garrett Moreland? That's about the only thing I know.
6:37 Payton Moreland? Okay. Let's get into today's episode. Our sources for this episode are Deviant by Harold Schecter, Biography.com, Britannica.com, marca.com, Medium.com, and collider.com. All right, let's face it. Every day, doing this show feels kinda like spooky season to us. When you're constantly talking about the worst products of mankind, it is easy to feel like the world is just one big horror film. But the man we are talking about today might be in a league of his own. He's a son so twisted, he gives new meaning to the term mama's boy.
7:21 Payton Moreland? He's a man so deranged that his biography feels more like a legend meant to scare children to sleep. He's a monster so disturbed that he inspired not one, but several well-known horror films. But today's subject was no storybook myth. He was a human, just like the rest of us, who somewhere along the journey, lost his way. Ed was a handyman, he was a farmer, even dabbled in babysitting. He was a seemingly average, though odd, man, blending in with the rest of society. And honestly, that might be the most horrifying part of it all.
8:07 Payton Moreland? So let me set the scene. It is 1954, in central Wisconsin, in the area of Plainfield, to be exact. And I just need to say, Plainfield is a quiet, desolate area, even for the 50s. So it is definitely like out in the middle of nowhere in the 50s. The roads are lined with picturesque farmland, silos sprouting from the rolling hills, cattle grazing in the pastures. Outside of the one main street in Plainfield, there is really not a lot to do.
8:49 Payton Moreland? There is a hardware store, a gas station, a bank. They do have a couple churches scattered around the area. One weekly newspaper delivering the mundane updates of Plainfield. And a tavern or two where people go to spread news and gossip. Especially after a long day on the farm, which is what most people there do. Now, one of the popular locations is called Mary Hogan's Tavern. It is located in a little stretch, seven miles or so outside of Plainfield Village called Pine Grove.
9:28 Payton Moreland? And Mary's Tavern is often bustling with people just looking to blow off steam. It honestly doesn't look like much from the outside. It looks more like a roadside warehouse than like an inviting tavern that a bunch of people go to hang out. But it's what's inside that counts. And Mary Hogan was actually the face of that bar, so it was named after her. She was a portly woman with a thick German accent, a foul mouth, and a pretty shady past. The facts about Mary's past honestly may have been rumors since not too much is really known about her. Some said she was divorced twice, which in the 50s is a big no-no.
10:11 Payton Moreland? Some said she had connections to the mob. Some said that she had worked in the big city as a madam before moving out to the middle of nowhere to tend a bar. But on a cold December afternoon in 1954, the rumors whispered about Mary Hogan would take on an entire new meaning. So it's a few weeks before Christmas, Wednesday, December 8. A farmer named Seymour Lester strolls into Mary's bar in the middle of the day, just like he usually does. He slaps his hat down on the counter and sighs as he waits for Mary to pour him a beer.
10:52 Payton Moreland? He's used to being the only one alone here this early in the day, but today does seem unusually quiet and Mary isn't even there to say hello. So he's looking around, looking for someone, an employee. And that's when he peers over the bar and he sees a pool of blood on the floor. So he's not going to waste another second in that place. It's a pretty large pool of blood. He decides to get out of there. He races to the nearest farmhouse up the road and calls not the police, but he calls the town chairman of Pine Grove first, which just screams, "Small town."
11:30 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, that's funny.
11:30 Payton Moreland? And then after that, he calls the sheriff's. Yep, he calls the sheriff's office. Now, before long, Mary's tavern is swarming with deputies, taking a closer look at this pool of blood. And that's when they find their first real piece of evidence. There is a 32 caliber cartridge on the ground next to that patch of blood. What Seymour didn't stick around to notice was that there was also a trail of blood leading out the back door of the tavern and into the parking lot. So over the next several days, the tavern goes from a local hangout to a full blown crime scene.
12:12 Payton Moreland? The state crime lab comes in to search for fingerprints and other clues. Police go door to door, farm to farm, questioning people in the area. Now, on December 8th, 1955, so this is a whole year later. Mary Hogan's case is no closer to closure than it was a year ago. And then another year goes by and nearly another, and still no one knows where Mary went. There's no clues, no substantial leads, until November of 1957, when another crime leads police down a path that will forever change Plainfield and its legacy. So now I'm going to introduce you to another woman named Bernice Warden.
12:57 Payton Moreland? Now unlike a lot of the locals, Bernice wasn't born in Plainfield. She was actually originally from Illinois. She moved to Plainfield when she was a young girl though, so this was the place that she always thought as home. And when she was in her twenties, Bernice married another local named Leon Warden. They bought and ran a little hardware store in town. And over the years, they had two children, a boy and a girl named Frank and Miriam. By 1957, though, things had really changed for their family. The kids were now adults. Frank was a police officer in Plainfield and Miriam was a mother of her own kids and their father, Leon, had passed away over two decades prior. So now Bernice ran the hardware store in town,
13:42 Payton Moreland? mostly on her own, sometimes with the help of her son. And because of the way she handled herself, everyone in town had a lot of respect and admiration for Bernice. They knew she was a family woman with good Methodist values. Again, religion was very important in this small town in the 50s. Bernice loved the simple pleasures in life, like spending time with her grandkids, going fishing out on the lake. In fact, people in Plainfield seemed to like Bernice so much that they actually gave her the Citizen of the Week Award in the summer of 1956.
14:17 Garrett Moreland? Citizen of the Week, okay.
14:18 Payton Moreland? And I do want to point out that she was the first woman to ever get it.
14:22 Garrett Moreland? Okay, cool.
14:23 Payton Moreland? But on the morning of November 16th, 1957, again, this is years after that first murder, Bernice's story would meet a tragic end. That day was a special one for the people of Plainfield because it was the start of hunting season. And I want to note that almost every one of the men in Plainfield was in the woods on the opening day of hunting season this day. So many of the shops in town were actually closed because of this, but 58-year-old Bernice knew the men might need supplies from her hardware store, so she did open her doors like usual that morning.
15:04 Payton Moreland? But later in the day, the man working across the street at the local gas station noticed something strange. Bernice's shop seemed quieter than usual, so he walked over and checked the front door. It was locked. Maybe Bernice had decided to close up for the day since all the men were hunting. But there was also one thing that seemed unusual. Bernice had left the lights on inside the hardware store. Now, word of this gets back to Bernice's son, Frank, the adult son, later that day. And around 5:00 PM, he stops by the store to check on his mom.
15:44 Payton Moreland? Now, remember, he is a deputy sheriff, so he knows pretty immediately that something is off here. Not only is his mother not at the store like she should be, the cash register inside is wide open, though it doesn't seem like anything is stolen. And he notices blood stains on the floor. So by 7:00 PM, the main streets flooded once again with cop cars, all invested in now Bernice Warden's disappearance. Was this the same person who had killed Mary Hogan? That's all they can think. But there's one thing different between Bernice's case and Mary's case.
16:24 Payton Moreland? And that is, inside the shop, there was actually a sale receipt for antifreeze. It was made out earlier that day to another local man in town. A well-known, kind of weird oddball named Ed Gein.
16:44 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
16:45 Payton Moreland? So this is how police go. Was this the last person to visit? And now Bernice is missing. This is how they initially...
16:53 Garrett Moreland? And he is from?
16:55 Payton Moreland? Yes.
16:55 Garrett Moreland? This small town?
16:56 Payton Moreland? Uh, he was mostly raised there, yes.
16:58 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
16:59 Payton Moreland? He wasn't born there, but he was mostly raised there.
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19:46 Payton Moreland? So before I get into what police do, once they, you know, catch this lead of Ed, they're not necessarily thinking he's the murderer, but he's the last one. There's a receipt there. So they're going to look into it. But before I go there, we need to understand the man inside the monster. We need to know who Ed Gein himself is before I tell you the details of this story, because his history and past actually influences his crimes pretty heavily.
20:15 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
20:15 Payton Moreland? So Ed was born on August 27th, 1906.
20:20 Garrett Moreland? Oh, man.
20:22 Payton Moreland? In La Crosse, Wisconsin. This is about 90 miles away from Plainfield, okay? And his childhood was pretty rough from the start. His mother Augusta and his paternal grandparents were all German immigrants who would come to America to start a new life. Now Augusta found her way through religion in America, while Ed's father, George, found his way through the bottle, alcohol. Augusta was incredibly devout, okay? I'm, I'm saying strictest of the strict. She read the Bible to Ed and his older brother, Henry, who was six years older than him, basically daily.
21:07 Payton Moreland? And at a very early age, Augusta instilled in her two boys, the idea that all women were corrupt, that they were whores, that they were sent to earth with no goals other than to tempt. Man with sin.
21:28 Garrett Moreland? Sounds like an amazing person.
21:29 Payton Moreland? So she basically is, sex is horrible. You will never, ever, ever be intimate with a woman because they are evil. They are of the devil. And even saying like, the only time I ever slept with your father was when I was trying to make you guys, other than that, sex is evil. Like, she was just very, this is not religious, this is mental illness.
21:53 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, I was gonna say, why? Like, what?
21:54 Payton Moreland? Well, she's using the excuse as of Christianity, but it's obviously not Christianity. So, um, this doesn't change when the family finally moves to Plainfield in 1914. Now, I do want to note that the reason they move is because she starts to tell George, Ed, and his brother, Henry, that this also small town in Wisconsin, that's 90 miles away from Plainfield, where they're gonna move, is starting to turn into Sodom and Gomorrah. And it's, she's talking like, oh, it's a huge, like, it's this big city, and everyone's sinning, and we can't raise our kids here.
22:34 Garrett Moreland? And there's like 50 people in the city.
22:35 Payton Moreland? Yeah, it's still a small town. It's just not as small as Plainfield. So, they end up moving to Plainfield in 1914, and they settled on a 159-acre plot of farmland that's on the rim of town. Now, they lived in a two-story L-shaped, white frame farmhouse. Okay, just think of like a creepy haunted farmhouse in any scary movie. It's equipped with a barn, a chicken coop, and an equipment shed. It was quiet, it was very remote. Their nearest neighbors were about a quarter mile down the road, and Plainfield Village, which is where Bernice Warden would one day open that hardware store, was about six miles away. So they're about six miles out of town, if you will.
23:20 Payton Moreland? But Augusta liked keeping the family away from the rest of Plainfield and the sinners in it. She did not trust anyone with her boys. It was Augusta Gein against the world.
23:33 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
23:33 Payton Moreland? Even her husband, George, had a hard time finding his place in the family. Augusta judged her husband very harshly. She berated him. She destroyed his confidence as a man. She was the disciplinarian in this home. And as a result, he spent his evenings after working as a carpenter and a tanner over at the pub. He would go there. He would forget about his life. He would procrastinate returning home, which meant that Ed Gein and his brother Henry really didn't see their father much. And when they did, he was kind of a shell of a man, although that was better than him coming home drunk because that allegedly
24:15 Payton Moreland? meant Ed, Henry and Augusta were going to catch a beating from their drunk husband slash father, which is also maybe why Augusta kept her son so close to the point where Ed didn't even go to school until he was eight years old. And as you can imagine, Ed had a really hard time fitting in with other kids who had by now kind of hung out with other kids and honed their social skills. So while Ed was smart and his grades were good, making friends was not his strong suit. But I'm not saying he was mean. He was just odd. And if Ed did ever make a friend, Augusta shut it down really fast. When he would run home to tell his mother about some boy that offered his ball on the playground, Augusta
24:59 Payton Moreland? would make up lies about the little boy being like, I know his parents. They are sinful. They are not people of God. And then wouldn't let Ed play.
25:07 Garrett Moreland? She like possessed? Like why? Like there's zero rhyme or reason to be doing this?
25:11 Payton Moreland? And mentally ill. I would, I mean, I think she just is so far gone in this.
25:15 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
25:16 Payton Moreland? And this continued in.
25:19 Payton Moreland? Uh, pretty in intense ways. All because Augusta had a really intense connection with Ed Gein from the time he was little. And Ed didn't really know any better. In his mind, his mother was nearly equivalent to God. Like, he held her on this pedestal. He thought she was the, the perfect woman, this perfect Christian woman.
25:43 Garrett Moreland? Was it, was the name of it sexual?
25:45 Payton Moreland? Allegedly.
25:46 Garrett Moreland? Okay. So I'm gonna, I'm gonna say probably.
25:50 Payton Moreland? Most people do believe so. The show does somewhat insinuate it, but there's never been confirmation.
25:56 Garrett Moreland? That's also hard. It's so far back then that like, we'll probably never have confirmation.
26:00 Payton Moreland? No.
26:01 Garrett Moreland? But I would, I would say probably. Okay.
26:04 Payton Moreland? So because of this intense mama's boy connection, like he thought his mom was God. He thought that she was something to be feared and loved simultaneously. But even if Ed wanted to make friends, it wouldn't have been easy for him because of how socially behind he was. His classmates did see him as odd. He would sometimes laugh at inappropriate times, like he didn't always catch on. Um, he had a lazy eye. He had a speech impediment, not to mention an interesting lopsided grin that he would kind of wear. Um, but the more he was picked on, the more he realized that his mother was right about these other kids.
26:45 Payton Moreland? And maybe about the world as a whole, like the more he was shut out from the society, the more he believed his mom and turned into her. So Ed dropped out of school just a few years after he began. At 14 years old, he finished the eighth grade and then just went to work on his parents' farm. While also picking up other small jobs around town, like a handyman, a babysitter. But even once he and Henry reached adulthood, neither of them were converted to society enough to be able to move out of their parents' farmhouse.
27:16 Garrett Moreland? Got it.
27:16 Payton Moreland? So despite the emotional and physical torment at home, they stuck around through their twenties and then into their thirties. But a lot changed for the Gein family. In 1940, when Ed was around 34 years old. So by that point, years of drinking had taken a toll on 66 year old George Ginn. And after years of wasting away, he died on April 4th, 1940. Now, his death seemed to bring a sense of relief for the family more than anything else. It was no secret that George had been treated as a burden on the family for years. He wasn't working. He was wasting the family's money away on booze.
27:57 Payton Moreland? Between that and the abuse he would inflict when he was drunk. Ed claims he was happy to step into the role of man of the house after his father's passing. This was a role that Augusta actually pushed on him more than his older brother, Henry, because her and Henry's relationship wasn't like her and Ed's. So that means he needs to step it up financially. So for the first time in 1942, the 36 year old Ed traveled away from home to see if he could join the army. Only they, again, this is 42, World War II. They rejected him because of a growth on his left eyelid, which made his vision kind of bad. So he was sent back to Plainfield with his tail between his legs,
28:41 Payton Moreland? ready to continue the variety of jobs he'd been doing at home his whole life. So babysitting did seem to be one of Ed's favorites. Again, if you've watched the show, this is an entirely different babysitting story than what they show. Now that he was an adult and no longer a peer, Ed actually loved kids because he was very childish in his own ways. They seemed to accept him a lot more than the rest of the community. But there was something about Ed's immaturity and just like stunted growth that really bugged his older brother, Henry. Ed was an unhealthy mama's boy. But since the passing of their father, it appeared much worse.
29:21 Payton Moreland? Ed was seeing Augusta as more faultless than ever, constantly defending, standing up for her. Maybe because she was the only parent left, Ed did everything for her to a fault. And Ed had always looked up to Henry, but when Henry brought this issue up with Ed, like, hey. Your relationship with mom is unhealthy. We gotta get out of here. This isn't normal. Ed took it as full blown criticism on like his existence, like this is his security and safety. And it seemed to fester from there. And then in 1944, something happens. That made people for the first time ever look at Ed Gein a little bit differently in town. So that May, a fire breaks out on the Geins' property.
30:06 Payton Moreland? And again, the way this is shown on the show, there's no evidence of that, just suspicion, but they make it seem factual on the show. So at first, this fire was controlled. It was Ed's way of burning the marsh to get rid of dead brush. But before long, according to him, the fire gets out of hand. Henry, who is still living at the farm and helping his little brother, um, him and Ed get separated. According to Ed in The Smoke and Flames, Ed said it wasn't until he put out the fire that he even realized Henry was missing. He goes into town and asks for help from a few locals, including a deputy sheriff. They all return to the family's farm that night and help Ed look for his missing brother.
30:47 Payton Moreland? But something happened during that search, so he goes and gets all these people and then they get back to the farm. And Ed literally leads this group of people to exactly where his brother is lying on the ground.
30:58 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
30:59 Payton Moreland? And
30:59 Garrett Moreland? Got it.
31:00 Payton Moreland? So he leads the search party straight to the brother. And when they find Henry, his clothes are covered in dirt and soot, but his like body doesn't look burned at all. He does have a few bruises on his head. At this point, he is definitely dead. So when they confront Ed-
31:17 Garrett Moreland? But he's not burned.
31:18 Payton Moreland? No. So
31:19 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
31:20 Payton Moreland? They confront Ed, they're like, well, okay, and I want to mention, Henry is 43 years old. At this point, still living at home under his mom's
31:28 Garrett Moreland? Yes.
31:28 Payton Moreland? rule. Um, and they're like, how did you, like, you walked us straight to him? He looks at them and says, quote, funny how that works. Again, he's odd. Everyone just kind of has a little bit of sympathy for him because he's so odd and because of his home life, but the like the response, just like weird, like what people were like, what? So the autopsy reported that Henry likely died of asphyxiation from the smoke and maybe had hit his head when he passed out on the ground. Some said that wasn't surprising. Henry was said to have a bad heart. There were a few who felt like based on Ed's response and just their home situation, that maybe
32:09 Payton Moreland? this wasn't an accident, that Ed might have been responsible for his brother's death, maybe because he was critical of his relationship with Augusta or was threatening to leave. Unfortunately, that relationship between Ed and his mother wasn't long for this world either because despite the cold hearted woman, many believed Augusta to be, she supposedly had a really hard time coping after Henry's death. And in 1945, less than a year later, she began suffering from a series of strokes. During which Ed becomes her full time caregiver. So this mother that he loves, this relationship is very unhealthy. He begins doting on her.
32:53 Payton Moreland? No matter how much he did for her, though, he couldn't restore her health. And in December of 1945, she dies after a second stroke at the age of 67. So now Ed Gein, who has never lived on his own, we're not even sure he can be a functioning adult, is all alone. All his family is dead. He has no friends and he's living alone at this farmhouse in the middle of nowhere with time on his hands. So he kind of begins 40 years old now. He's kind of going into town. He's, you know, a little odd and he, he ends up spending a lot of time at Mary Hogan's Tavern. This is our, the first victim that we covered.
33:37 Payton Moreland? So he spent countless nights there, sitting in the corner, watching the rest of Plainfield's community laugh and hang out. It probably brought Ed back to his school day. Only this time he couldn't run home and cry to his mother and say, hey, these people aren't including me and just her be like, well, the rest of the world is sinners. So, I mean, Ed did play nice, though. Many people said he was a good neighbor, like despite the fact that he had lost his entire family. He would help out if someone needed a hand hauling grain or repairing a fence. But there were some signs that Ed had been deteriorating since his mother's passing. Both he and his family's farmhouse looked quite rundown from the outside.
34:19 Payton Moreland? It was pretty obvious that Ed was not showering or bathing. He wasn't shaving. The home from the outside looks like it's falling into despair. And Ed's lurking around town had become more noticeable by people. They were like, what, what is he always doing here? Especially around 1957, when he seemed to develop an obsession with a local businesswoman. A 58-year-old grandmother that actually bore a bit of resemblance to Augusta, his now dead mother. This woman, 58-year-old Bernice Warden, the second victim. Okay?
34:59 Garrett Moreland? Here we go.
35:00 Payton Moreland? So that year, 50-year-old Ed had been making an unusual amount of trips to the-
35:06 Garrett Moreland? Question, real quick, were they, was the town not completely freaked out that someone just got killed in a small town and nobody knows who it is?
35:14 Payton Moreland? Yes, they were, but they didn't have any clues. Because the first murder had absolutely no clues. They didn't know where to start.
35:22 Garrett Moreland? That's just freaky. Like you're in a town that's extremely small. Someone gets murdered and you're just supposed to, all right, let's just go on with-
35:29 Payton Moreland? Years go by.
35:29 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
35:30 Payton Moreland? Yeah, it's extremely scary.
35:32 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
35:33 Payton Moreland? But keep in mind, they hadn't found her body. It was just a pool of blood. So-
35:38 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, so that's even creepy.
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38:51 Payton Moreland? I don't know if, like, just kind of like making conversation with her, but maybe flirting. But you know how when little kids like have a crush, they're kind of mean?
38:59 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
38:59 Payton Moreland? It was almost like that. He would go in and ask this older woman who bore a resemblance to his dead mother, ask her to go out to the movies with him, ask him her to go ice skating. Bernice was polite, but pretty stern with Ed, typically turning him down with excuses, which again is vastly different than what they show on the show. Now, it wasn't clear if Ed was asking her because he was romantically interested or if it was because she was one of the few people in town who kind of gave him the time of day, even when she didn't need something from him.
39:34 Garrett Moreland? I feel like a lot of these shows that do.
39:38 Payton Moreland? Like fictional reenactments?
39:39 Garrett Moreland? Yes, they do reenactments of serial killers.
39:45 Garrett Moreland? They always make the killer, I think that they do it on purpose, but they always try to make the killer a little likeable or they try to make you feel bad for the killer.
40:00 Garrett Moreland? And I find that really interesting because they've killed people. And I just don't know the cause behind trying to make us feel like we should like them.
40:11 Payton Moreland? So I was actually having this discourse on my Twitch stream the other day because I was saying this monsters series that has done very infamous coverings of killers. It's on Netflix that is very popular, has gotten into some heat for doing this for like, number one, not just dramatizing a story, but like literally changing a story and changing facts that sometimes make you feel bad for the killer.
40:38 Garrett Moreland? It's not like it's a Harry Potter book and they're changing the movie. Like this is a real life event that happened that was tragic. I'm not sure why we're
40:48 Payton Moreland? Right. And then
40:49 Garrett Moreland? Doing that.
40:50 Payton Moreland? A lot of the time it's not even about like the story I'm telling you has given you more background on these victims than the show even did.
40:57 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
40:58 Payton Moreland? And not only that, they changed the victims' characters to be people they weren't even.
41:04 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
41:05 Payton Moreland? So it's like, that is so disrespectful to like portray a victim as someone they weren't in a show where you're not everyone is a true crime fan and I would say it's the minority who even know the facts of Ed Gein's case. And so this is the only only exposure they're going to get to Ed Gein's case.
41:24 Garrett Moreland? I mean by it, people will, and they do go, oh, I mean, like,
41:27 Payton Moreland? This is what happened.
41:28 Garrett Moreland? Well, people start to, uh, what's the word?
41:33 Payton Moreland? Empathize?
41:34 Garrett Moreland? No, yeah, empathize, but they start to reason with, well, maybe this makes sense. Maybe it made sense why they killed them. I I kind of get, you know?
41:43 Payton Moreland? So, and I also said this.
41:48 Payton Moreland? Mental illness or a study of someone's psyche might be an explanation for the bad things they did, but it is definitely not an excuse.
42:00 Garrett Moreland? Or a reason.
42:00 Payton Moreland? Reason. And we need to like walk that line a little more safely. Because when you start, when you learn about someone's history and it it does, it is sucky.
42:13 Payton Moreland? You can't like, you can't make it an excuse for their behavior because there are lots of people.
42:20 Garrett Moreland? When we start justifying things, that's where we get into trouble.
42:22 Payton Moreland? So it might be an explanation, um, which there's an explanation for everything, but that doesn't make everything excusable.
42:29 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, I just find it interesting. Um, and we can keep going.
42:33 Payton Moreland? I'm, I was just the most distraught about the fact that like, for instance, I'm telling you about Ed's relationship with Bernice right now. And that he had this fascination with her in the show. They have a full blown sexual relationship. And they show her as this older woman who was kind of the town lady who becomes obsessed with Ed. And then his dead mom tells him that she has STDs and so he kills her. And like Bernice didn't have, you know what I mean? So it's just like the portrayal of the victim.
43:10 Payton Moreland? Uh, anyways, so Bernice's kids, they find it creepy that Ed had taken such an interest in their older mother. So you can imagine what was going through Frank Warden's mind when his mother's missing. And Ed Gein's name is on the receipt the day his mother disappeared. So it was alarming to say the least, that and the fact that just the day before he had spoken to Ed, who asked him point blank if he was planning to go hunting with the other men in town on opening day tomorrow. Now Frank was thinking, maybe Ed had been planning some attack against his mother for a while. And that's why he wanted to know if Frank would be gone. And he knew the first day of hunting season, all the men would be off in the woods.
43:53 Payton Moreland? I mean, this is what's running through Frank's mind when his mother's missing and he sees the receipt. Now, upon hearing his name, a few detectives begin looking around town for Ed. They want to talk to him. Some of them had gotten wind that Ed might be at a neighbor's home, the Hills, having dinner with them and their kids. So when police arrived, they find Ed sitting in the driveway with the Hills' son. And he was actually about to give him a ride into town. So they knock on the window, Ed rolls it down and. Seemed rather confused as to why officers were even there. They asked him if he would come down to the station and answer a few questions. And without any fight at all, Ed gets out of the vehicle and walks into the back of the squad car.
44:37 Payton Moreland? As the officers asked Ed to run through his day, he says something pretty strange. He immediately goes, I'm being framed. And when the officers are like, what for? He says, for Bernice Warden, followed by, she's dead, isn't she? Now, at this point, no one knew for sure whether Bernice was alive or missing or had been murdered. Obviously, Ed Gein just cleared this right up for police. So later that evening, and this is probably the most infamous part of this case. Later that evening at around 8:00 PM, two officers just to go over to Ed Gein's property while he's obviously not there to see if there's any sign of Bernice.
45:18 Payton Moreland? This is the rundown farm that people had been kind of noticing from the outside. So they go through and the second the door opens, they are hit in the face with this horrific smell. Now, it is completely dark inside, so they use their flashlights to peek around. And this is when they notice there is trash and junk everywhere inside this house. And you just have to look at the pictures. I can't even put into words the state of this home. It is horrific, like absolutely horrific.
45:58 Payton Moreland? There is rotting food, there is newspapers all over the place, there's tools, there's garbage all over the place. But that is not all. Police are walking through, it smells horrific, it is, there are flies, there's everything. They are going through and they're just seeing odd things in the home. They see this chair and they realize that the center of the chair has been cut out and replaced with like what looks like leather.
46:23 Garrett Moreland? Oh, no.
46:23 Payton Moreland? But they start to realize like. I think that's skin like is that a pig skin?
46:29 Garrett Moreland? Oh my gosh.
46:31 Payton Moreland? What is this? They see this chair and they're like, okay, this is very weird. Then they noticed that the drawstrings to the blinds in the house, like the cord.
46:41 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
46:41 Payton Moreland? Is made of human lips.
46:44 Garrett Moreland? Holy shit.
46:44 Payton Moreland? Like tons of lips.
46:45 Garrett Moreland? No way, dude.
46:47 Payton Moreland? Yes. Um, that's when they find a lamp.
46:50 Garrett Moreland? Oh my gosh.
46:51 Payton Moreland? They find a lampshade. So like the cover of a lamp.
46:54 Garrett Moreland? I'm gonna throw up.
46:55 Payton Moreland? That is like stitched together and they figure out that that is also human body that has been turned into a lampshade. They go into where he sleeps and on the bedposts, like think of an old bed of his bed. There are actual human skulls like sitting on top of the bedposts.
47:16 Garrett Moreland? First of all, how is he getting this many? Like what's? Hello?
47:21 Payton Moreland? I will get there.
47:22 Garrett Moreland? This is insane.
47:22 Payton Moreland? There's only two women missing. We'll get there.
47:26 Garrett Moreland? Okay. Oh.
47:28 Payton Moreland? What?
47:28 Garrett Moreland? Was he going to graves? Yes. Oh my gosh. Okay. You can keep going.
47:34 Payton Moreland? So it wasn't even really about the murder. It was about his fascination with dead bodies.
47:41 Garrett Moreland? Okay, which?
47:42 Payton Moreland? He didn't even really murder that many people. He just.
47:45 Garrett Moreland? I will say is absolutely horrible, but I, if I were to make a scale, I would say killing somebody is probably worse.
47:51 Payton Moreland? A hundred percent.
47:52 Garrett Moreland? I mean, he obviously killed two people, so he's a, I mean, he's still a complete, I mean.
47:57 Payton Moreland? Mentally ill. That's what I was saying.
47:59 Garrett Moreland? Like, no.
48:00 Payton Moreland? Not.
48:01 Garrett Moreland? Get out of here, but okay, anyways.
48:04 Payton Moreland? Yes, he obviously does kill.
48:05 Garrett Moreland? I just was, I was just curious if it was more killings or if it was dead people.
48:09 Payton Moreland? I can't believe you caught on to that.
48:10 Garrett Moreland? I mean, it's illegal. There's a reason that.
48:12 Payton Moreland? You can't defy a, that's disgusting.
48:14 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, there's a reason it's illegal. It's absolutely disgusting and it's horrendous. I can't believe people would ever do that.
48:18 Payton Moreland? Okay, so they see these skulls. Okay, you just have to imagine the cops in this tiny town this long ago.
48:26 Payton Moreland? What the, what is going on? Okay. I just, I'm gonna go into, um, there's shoeboxes sitting in the house. And when they open the shoeboxes, it is full of women's noses. Like he cut off the noses and kept them in the shoebox. It gets worse. There's also a shoebox full of vaginas. Just like collected vaginas that have been cut off. There are pants, like pants that he could put on made from the skin of human legs. So he like cut off the skin and then sewed it together so he could wear pants of legs. There is a belt that's just completely made of nipples, like a full belt that he could wear that's just cut off nipples.
49:12 Garrett Moreland? Holy, it doesn't even like there's, this is uncomprehendable.
49:18 Payton Moreland? And he's living alone, babe. He's in his 50s. He's alone in this, he's odd, like it's just so disturbing.
49:26 Garrett Moreland? You can't even wrap your mind around something like this. No, like he's, um, he's from hell.
49:33 Payton Moreland? So the list goes on and on. Okay. I haven't even told you everything, but everyone knew Ed Gein was different, but this is a nightmare beyond what any of them could have imagined. This is a house of horrors. And just when they thought it couldn't get worse, one of the detectives felt something grace his back. So he turns around to look and this is in like the shed. There is a body hanging upside down from the ceiling from its heels. So think like a bar, each foot is attached and it's upside down, hanging from the ceiling. There's no head on the body. So it's missing a head. And then also this body has been eviscerated. It has been cut from its chest all the way down to in between its legs.
50:18 Garrett Moreland? He was skinning him basically.
50:20 Payton Moreland? Yeah, it's cut open. Think of like a pig hanging in a meat house. That is what a human body is doing. It doesn't take them long.
50:28 Garrett Moreland? It probably smells, I cannot even imagine the smell.
50:32 Payton Moreland? Well, police are absolute, like, I mean, If you saw an image of this, like it is absolutely scary.
50:40 Garrett Moreland? Oh, every one of them probably needed to go to therapy for 50 years.
50:44 Payton Moreland? And when they like noticed the body, it's actually, it's missing a head, but it's actually fresh enough that they realized this is most likely Bernice Warden.
50:55 Garrett Moreland? That's so sad.
50:56 Payton Moreland? That he had cut her head off, cut her all the way open and then hung her upside down like in a meat factory. So, uh, police officers are going outside to vomit. Others are just trying to take in what they're seeing. There's a bag behind one of the doors in the kitchen. He reaches down, picks it up. There's a clump of human hair inside. He pulls it out and it's a woman's head hanging from a bag inside the kitchen.
51:22 Garrett Moreland? Unbelievable.
51:24 Payton Moreland? But it's not Bernice Warden's head. It is Mary Hogan's. The woman who had gone missing from her tavern years before the head is just sitting here. Now, I do want to note that there is a human heart sitting in a frying pan on the stove and.
51:43 Garrett Moreland? He would know, you cannot tell me he wasn't eating these.
51:47 Payton Moreland? Yes, so it's alleged. He never said he was, there's never any factual evidence.
51:52 Garrett Moreland? He 100% was.
51:53 Payton Moreland? But why else is there a human heart in a frying pan?
51:56 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, why else are we collecting a Binozes and human body parts? He 100% was eating these.
52:01 Payton Moreland? It's just safe to say that like his house is essentially a human body, just like strewn about, cut up everywhere. Like it, it just doesn't even make sense.
52:11 Garrett Moreland? I'm a big, um, I very much understand
52:17 Garrett Moreland? how being raised can affect who you are, what happens, different traumas, different things. Huge, huge, um, believer, comprehend all of it, understand it, therapy, so on and so forth. This is next level.
52:32 Payton Moreland? Yeah, so.
52:33 Garrett Moreland? Like this. Is leaps and bounds beyond what I thought was possible.
52:38 Payton Moreland? Yes, so like I said, he was raised in a horrific setting. No one should ever be put through isolation.
52:45 Garrett Moreland? I mean, we take, we take an example of like the Mendez brothers or something, right? I mean, there's, yeah, anyways.
52:52 Payton Moreland? So there might be an explanation for why Ed Gein was odd.
52:56 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
52:56 Payton Moreland? Why he might be unhealthy, why he might struggle with mental illness. This is beyond that.
53:00 Garrett Moreland? No, there's no explanation for this.
53:02 Payton Moreland? This is beyond that. This is sick. This is not, you can't even attribute it. Like you might be able to find some explanation in it, but.
53:10 Garrett Moreland? Like no internet. It's like, how do you like?
53:13 Payton Moreland? Oh, we'll get there.
53:14 Garrett Moreland? Okay.
53:15 Payton Moreland? So this news quickly makes its way back to the station where Ed Gein is currently being questioned. And to say these officers are shocked, they probably didn't even believe it. Like when they get the news that this is what they're discovering at his house, they're probably like, what? So from what I can tell, Ed Gein was never suspected of having anything to do with Mary Hogan's disappearance. So to find both her and Bernice Warden's insides, pieces of them inside Ed Gein's house is mind boggling. All of these officers knew Ed, okay? It's not like this was a stranger. This is a small town. He was the quirky, oddball neighbor. Never in a million years did they expect his house to be an example of mutilation and murder. But looking back now, there might have been signs.
54:01 Payton Moreland? Some people around town who'd hired Ed for a job remembered him making an odd statement after Mary disappeared. One of them had made a comment to Ed, something like, if you had spent more time courting Mary, she'd be cooking for you right now instead of missing, to which Ed replied, she's not missing. She's down at the house right now. So he's so mentally ill that he's like, kind of not even keeping, like he's not even catching on to what people are saying. Apparently he would reuse this statement on other people. Now, of course, everyone just thought Ed was making some weird joke. Now it's clear he wasn't kidding. And he was willing to say even more when police pressed him down at the station. So now we're going to have straight out of Ed's mouth. He had just one request before he started talking to them about his house.
54:44 Payton Moreland? He wanted some apple pie with a slice of cheese. Now, when Ed was asked how the murder of Bernice Warden went down, he said this. He walked into Bernice's store that day and had her refill a jug of antifreeze. He left, but then immediately went back because he forgot something. He wanted to see one of the guns she had on display. He was thinking of buying a new model. While Bernice had her back to Ed, he took a bullet out of his overalls, loaded the gun that she had just taken off the wall to show him and pulled the trigger. He also claimed, I don't know, though my memory is a bit foggy. He said he recalled vaguely then dragging her body across the floor to the back of his truck. He also remembered taking her back to his house, stringing her up, her body up like that. But then he's like, I don't know, details are a little foggy.
55:26 Garrett Moreland? I don't even know if he like actually feels bad. Like I think the lot, not the logic, the side of him that grew up and people saying, hey, don't kill people. Hey, don't this, which is what he kind of comprehends. But I don't think he actually like thinks he did anything wrong.
55:45 Payton Moreland? No, I don't think he's even really capable of understanding.
55:48 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, I don't think he knows. I truly don't think he knows.
55:50 Payton Moreland? I think when we're talking about the insanity defense, this is the perfect case for the insanity defense.
55:56 Garrett Moreland? Yeah.
55:57 Payton Moreland? You're still responsible for what you did, but it's looks different. During the confession, he also admitted to killing Mary Hogan. He said the events were really similar lately. He just went in, she was alone and he killed her. But clearly there was a lot more to the story because police had found over 40 different body parts inside of Ed's home. And so they're like, Ed, there's not just two women inside your home. We found a lot of things. So can you tell us about the skulls? Can you tell us about the nipple belt? He tells them something none of them anticipated and Garrett guessed. Oh, I didn't murder those people. I just took them out of the cemetery. He's like, I didn't do that. I just, I just dug them up out of the cemetery.
56:38 Payton Moreland? He said he'd been reading obituaries, looking for women who kind of matched his mother. Like that's who he was burglarizing. He would watch to see women around his mother's age who died. And then he would go that night and dig their freshly buried bodies up and then take the body home. And sometimes he wouldn't even take it home. Sometimes he would mutilate it right there in the grave and then bury it back and leave. Now unfortunately.
57:04 Garrett Moreland? Which is so weird that it's almost like half respectful.
57:07 Payton Moreland? To confirm Ed's stories, police obviously would later go dig these graves up. It's the truth. So after spending nine hours, nine hours, getting the full confession from Ed, because that's like, you have to have an explanation for everything they found and it took nine hours. He was taken to the county jailhouse where he would await next steps. Ed was formally charged with first degree murder for Bernice Warden, but interestingly not for Mary Hogan because of cost and resources and a bunch of.
57:38 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, I mean, he was gonna be in jail for life, so it probably didn't matter at that.
57:41 Payton Moreland? But they don't charge him with that. It obviously doesn't take long for Ed to lawyer up and enter a plea not guilty by reason of insanity. The next step was to see if Ed was fit to stand trial. The judge ordered a 30 day observation period at the Central State Hospital for the criminally insane. It was there, the doctors and officials would try to get answers to an even bigger question. They're watching to see if he's sane enough to stand trial, but also why kill? Like, why did he do this? Because this is obviously, there's no motive. So what is the motive? It didn't take long for police to realize both Mary Hogan and Bernice Warden were of similar stature and somewhat close in age, and they both bore an eerie resemblance to Ed's mother Augusta.
58:25 Payton Moreland? Through his time in the state hospital, doctors dug into an even deeper issue. The fact that Ed Gein seemed to have an Oedipus complex, which meant feelings of attraction for his mother and feelings of hatred for his father.
58:45 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, and you, and we kind of talked about it, or I mentioned it at the beginning. Yeah, can that happen without them being sexually active? But considering everything that I've heard in this case, there's no doubt in my mind that the mom wasn't grooming, abusing, so on and so forth.
59:02 Payton Moreland? Allegedly.
59:03 Garrett Moreland? Alleged, I mean, it's.
59:06 Garrett Moreland? 2025. This was in the 50s.
59:08 Payton Moreland? Who's suing us?
59:09 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, who's suing us?
59:10 Payton Moreland? Um, his doctors there also determined he was, quote, "A very suggestible person who appeared emotionally dull, has rather rigid moral concepts, which he expects others to follow, and tends to project blame for his own inadequacies on others. But if Ed loved his mother so much, why would he target women like her?" Now, this is where, like, behavioral psychology really starts to take a turn. Ed Gein was huge for the BAU, okay? Because the idea was that they come up with
59:47 Payton Moreland? was that Ed developed obsessive or even conflicting attachments towards his mother that ran deeper than just love. It became mental illness. Remember, Augusta had a strict hold over Ed, controlled all of his life. She also at least emotionally abused him in many ways. And since that's the case, Ed may have experienced both unconscious desire and frustration towards Augusta that led to some very dark and destructive behavior, which he took out on women that resembled her, but also why he wanted to wear them. Because he loved them, but he hated them. So after
1:00:30 Payton Moreland? that 30-day assessment, doctors gave him an official diagnosis back then: schizophrenia. They deemed him unfit to stand trial. It was a huge blow to the victims' families, who would not get to see Ed Gein have his day in court. Instead, he was admitted to Central State Hospital indefinitely for treatment.
1:00:49 Garrett Moreland? I 100% understand, but I honestly think it's the first case that I've heard in a long time on this podcast where I'm like, "They are actually insane."
1:00:59 Payton Moreland? Yeah.
1:00:59 Garrett Moreland? Like, they're insane.
1:01:00 Payton Moreland? Like, he wasn't in the same world we were in.
1:01:01 Garrett Moreland? Like, he doesn't...
1:01:02 Payton Moreland? He's in reality.
1:01:03 Garrett Moreland? Yes, yes.
1:01:05 Payton Moreland? So, a lot of people in the Plainfield area were actually outraged with this decision. I mean, this is huge for a town. It was huge for the nation. I mean, Ed Gein is... A no name and some of them decided to take revenge on what little was left of the Gine estate in March 1958, five months after Ed was committed, his home, the farm home, was supposed to be put up for auction. How anyone?
1:01:28 Garrett Moreland? No, burn that, burn it down to the ground.
1:01:30 Payton Moreland? Instead, it mysteriously caught fire in the middle of the night.
1:01:33 Garrett Moreland? Honestly, that's the better decision there.
1:01:35 Payton Moreland? By the time the fire department arrived, the place was not worth saving. The only, which actually there is a lot of Ed Gine memorabilia out there that like the police collected and stuff, but most of the house was burned down. So all we have is pictures. When Ed heard about the news in the hospital, his response was, quote, "Just as well." Like he had, this place was his, if you could see the inside of his brain, it was out in this home and he could have cared less that it burned down.
1:02:04 Garrett Moreland? I don't think he has this, any comprehension about anything.
1:02:08 Payton Moreland? A decade later in January of 1968, circumstances changed for Ed. His doctor decided that he was now a little bit better after spending 10 years in the hospital and no longer unfit to stand trial. So on November 7th of that year, Ed's trial for the murder of Bernice Warden began. His defense attorney argued that the trial be conducted with just a judge, no jury. The whole thing lasted about a week. The results were rather disappointing. The judge found him not guilty by reason of insanity still.
1:02:38 Garrett Moreland? Yeah. I mean, he's not just going to get better. This guy is insane.
1:02:41 Payton Moreland? So he wasn't going to go to prison. He was going to go back to the Central State Hospital. And that's where Ed lived out the rest of his days. In 1984, at the age of 77, he died at the institution from cancer and respiratory problems. He was buried next to his mother. Now, all the families buried together, so many people went on to
1:03:02 Garrett Moreland? Interesting.
1:03:03 Payton Moreland? Hurt his grave that he no longer has a tombstone.
1:03:05 Garrett Moreland? Oh.
1:03:06 Payton Moreland? It's just an empty plot because
1:03:08 Garrett Moreland? Okay. Yeah.
1:03:09 Payton Moreland? Obviously. And while Ed Gine might've been dead, his horrific story lives on. And this is where the show, like I said, I found it fascinating that they kind of tied these two things together. But Ed Gine, this horrific story goes on to be immortalized in the horror film genre. He became the inspiration behind one of the most iconic villains to date, which I don't think Garrett knows this. Norman Bates in the movie Psycho is based on Ed Gein. Norman Bates has this obsession with his mother. He's a mama's boy, very unhealthy.
1:03:44 Garrett Moreland? It's based off him.
1:03:45 Payton Moreland? It's based off Ed Gein and he influenced other legendary monsters like Leatherface in the Texas Chainsaw Massacre.
1:03:52 Garrett Moreland? No, I don't think so at all. I was gonna say, um.
1:03:56 Payton Moreland? Silence of the Lambs?
1:03:56 Garrett Moreland? Yes.
1:03:57 Payton Moreland? Yes.
1:03:57 Garrett Moreland? Yes, thank you.
1:03:58 Payton Moreland? Buffalo Bill.
1:03:59 Garrett Moreland? Yep.
1:04:00 Payton Moreland? In Silence of the Lambs and maybe because of that, Ed Gein's story feels more like a fever dream. Because it's been like portrayed in three really big horror movies and he changed. This changed the horror genre. Before Ed Gein, the horror genre was vampires, Frankenstein, monsters. Ed Gein turned the horror genre into human monsters. That's when the humans began to be the monsters. That's covered in the show. He was a nightmare so dark that it seems hard to imagine this actually happened in real life. So I want you to take this, this time to let it sink in.
1:04:38 Payton Moreland? Remember there are real monsters out there lurking in the real world, monsters so evil that they inspire fiction. And the scariest ones can blend in seamlessly with the rest of society. They babysit your kids, they fix your roof, they offer you a ride into town. So be careful because if there is one thing we can take away from Ed Gein's case. It is that the most terrifying monsters are the ones that look and act just like us. And so Ed Gein is lumped in with all of these serial killers.
1:05:17 Payton Moreland? He killed two people though, so the infamous name of Ed Gein is actually just alarming. And that is the case of Ed Gein.
1:05:28 Garrett Moreland? Insane. I, I didn't.
1:05:33 Garrett Moreland? I mean, until we started getting into it and then I realized that it was Graves. I was like, wait, he didn't kill. I mean, killing two people is crazy, but.
1:05:40 Payton Moreland? You think of him as this infamous serial killer.
1:05:43 Garrett Moreland? I thought it was gonna be like, he killed sixty people and he skinned everything. Like, I had no idea.
1:05:49 Payton Moreland? His name is looped in with Ted Bundy, Jeffrey Dahmer. I mean.
1:05:53 Garrett Moreland? Who, they've killed a lot of people.
1:05:55 Payton Moreland? I think it's just the horror of the reality of him and his inner mind and his world. And his backstory and his bringing up that kind of lumps him in with these people.
1:06:07 Garrett Moreland? Yeah, disgusting, crazy, honestly crazy.
1:06:10 Payton Moreland? So again.
1:06:10 Garrett Moreland? You did a good job, man.
1:06:11 Payton Moreland? Thank you. I wanted to stick to the facts. Again, I do think as a fictionalized work of art, the show is good, but I just want everyone to remember that this show is fiction. It really doesn't fall. I mean, yes, the obsession with World War II and Nazis was real. He did have these magazines that would show the experiments Nazis did. And that's kind of like what inspired his work in his home. But just take everything with a grain of salt. This is the factual story. There are real victims who are not portrayed correctly on that show.
1:06:52 Payton Moreland? And that is my only hang up with it. But yeah, that was the covering of Ed Gein. If you want to go watch the show now, like I said, it is like, I do think the production's good. I think the music is good. I think the set is good. But yeah, now Garrett knows the monster Ed Gein. And that is it for today's episode. I love it.
1:07:15 Garrett Moreland? And I hate it.
1:07:16 Payton Moreland? Goodbye.
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