Ed Gein

Edward Theodore Gein was an American murderer and body snatcher from Plainfield, Wisconsin, whose crimes — discovered in November 1957 — permanently altered American pop culture. Though officially confirmed to have killed only two people, Gein had spent years exhuming corpses from local cemeteries and fashioning items from their remains, including bowls made from skulls, lampshades from face skin, a vest made from a woman's torso, and chairs upholstered with human flesh. Gein's crimes were uncovered when police investigating the disappearance of hardware store owner Bernice Worden found her decapitated and dressed body hanging in his shed. A search of his farmhouse revealed the full extent of his activities — a house of horrors that traumatized the officers who entered it. Gein had lived alone on his isolated farm since his domineering mother's death in 1945, and had become increasingly disturbed in the years that followed. Psychiatrists found Gein mentally unfit to stand trial, and he was committed to a psychiatric institution. He was eventually tried in 1968 and found not guilty by reason of insanity, spending the remainder of his life institutionalized. He died at the Mendota Mental Health Institute in Wisconsin in 1984. Despite his relatively small confirmed kill count, Gein's case had a profound influence on American fiction and horror. He was the partial inspiration for Norman Bates in Robert Bloch's novel Psycho, Buffalo Bill in The Silence of the Lambs, and Leatherface in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre. His case fundamentally shaped the "monster-next-door" archetype in American crime and popular culture.