Psycho, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, The Silence of the Lambs, and basically the whole career of Rob Zombie owe a great deal to Ed Gein.
Officially, Ed Gein was not a serial killer. Officially, he “only” killed two women: 58-year-old Bernice Worden, the owner of a hardware store, in 1957 and 51-year-old Mary Hogan, the owner of a bar, in 1954. The general baseline used to define a “serial killer” is three or more murders. But his brother, Henry, died suspiciously in 1944 following a fire Ed started to clear out some vegetation. Some, including Harold Schechter, believe this fire was used to mask the murder of Henry Gein. There are also missing persons from the 1940s and 50s around the town of Plainview, WI that Ed Gein was asked about following his arrest. No evidence was found connecting him to these people, however.
What is known, apart from the two women, however, is that Ed Gein robbed multiple graves (9, by his own count). He would dig up bodies and remove parts to turn into….items. A lampshade, doorbell, belt, chair… And he liked masks. His ultimate goal was to make a woman suit that he could wear. It’s horrendous, and macabre, and happened at a time that we typically picture as idyllic and heavily censored. This was the America of Leave it to Beaver and “I like Ike”. This was before the Day the Music Died. This was the America that tens of millions of Boomers grew up in, nostalgically looked back on, and seek to return to under Donald Trump.
Harold Schechter is a Professor Emeritus of, basically, true crime at Queens College. When I told my wife about this, she immediately perked up and said, “that’s a thing you can be?” Well, not really. But he has been a true crime writer for 40 years, and has a particular focus on serial killers. He and writer/artist Eric Powell explore the life of Ed Gein here, and attempt to understand why he did the things that he did.
How much of what they conclude is a result of out-dated psychology is beyond my ability to critique, but a lot of what they depict comes down to his over-bearing mother.
They also loosely touch on the broader culture context in which these events played out. The book starts with a brief description of Alfred Hitchock’s films, and throughout the book the reactions from the people of Plainview are given brief mention.
This book never felt exploitative, or seem to revel in the grisly details of what Ed Gein did. As someone who tends to avoid true crime because, in my opinion, it’s a genre that all too often forgets the subjects actually existed, and the victims often still have friends and family in the world, I appreciated that this book never seemed to lose respect for what it was discussing.